This Week in Comics

What did I buy the week of April 25th? EVERYTHING!!! No, just a few good stuff. Let me show you.



52: Week Fifty-One
This week in 52 we make it up to the second-to-last issue. Amazing that it has been nearly a year since this comic started and I am still buying it. I can't say that for that many others (Catwoman, Robin, Nightwing, etc) which I dropped during the meantime.
This issue shows Animal Man, Adam Strange, and Starfire all concluding their journies, and I was quite happy with the results. For one thing though, Starfire was never drawn so good as she was when she shows up. It was much better than her usual slutty/model style.
Lobo is also shown as well, and that was cool. I guess I should check out Brave and the Bold next month to find out more about him post-52.
And finally, we have the return of Rip Hunter and Booster Gold as we see their story, which is by-far the most interesting one at this point. I have waited weeks to see them again so I was happy when I did last week. Now they get more screentime.
Also, have you wondered since week 1 or 2 where Mr. Mind was? Well, check him out in this issue.
Brilliant. So much better than last week or before.

Also, check out next week's cover:







Amazons Attack # 1

Was ho-hum. It was much better than anyone else has said it was, and the art has been wonderful. It also will tie-in with Teen Titans in the coming months, so I might as well try it out so later on I will know.



Justice Society of America # 5

This continues a crossover with JLA right now, and if you read JLA # 8...well, basically you wasted time. You might as well have just started here, because JLA # 8 was a waste of time. There was only very very little set up there. Also, suddenly Starman has become less interesting. His personality isn't as cool as I thought it was now that we know who he is, though we always have. Maybe the writers just lost their feel for the character. Or maybe the whole crossover thing has hurt Geoff Johns who I love, because Meltzer is involved and seriously, the only good thing Brad has ever written was Identity Crisis.



Outsiders Annual # 1

For someone who has been growing to hate Winick, I have to admit this issue was a good conclusion, but those three Outsiders issues that led into this...? Yeah, those were a waste of time. They should have really just used this book, with maybe one lead-in, or none at all and tighter writing on Winick's part. The one good thing about this book? The guy who drew that horrible cover is not the artist, who on the interior art, rocks. It is actually drawn good for once.
Now that I know why the Outsiders are criminals, as well have read this far, I might drop the series. I dropped Checkmate months ago, so a crossover with them wouldn't keep me buying, especially when the crossover seems to go on for like...6 or more issues. Too much money for two teams I just barely enjoy.



Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America--Avengers

This one covers the step that be Anger, after last issue's denial. Anger is right. This book was pretty decent, but Jeph Loeb did some things that don't work in continuity. Also, I just am getting tired of him. Spider-Man is given most of this issue...and yet Spider-Man will be the featureed character in the fourth installment of this series, so why see him now? I don't need that much Spider-Man. I was looking more for the Avengers' look at how the death is taken, and we see the Mighty and New Avengers doing thier stuff. But if this book is about teams, then it is a failure. We only see one person from each team really do anything about it. There isn't any reason to make a book about two teams if only two characters of about 15-20 are even used to make the point. Wolverine had his screentime, so we get to see him again. We get it Loeb, you wish you could write Wolverine all the time. Did you know you suck on that series too right now?
Still, just as always, the art is great.



Fantastic Four # 545
I don't really care anymore about this series. I'm done with it. I don't like the New Fantastic Four, but hey, I don't think I ever liked the old one either. I basically just skimmed through this, and yes, Gravity shows up. And yes, I don't give a hoot about Gravity. This is like reading fanfiction...maybe someone at Marvel hired a fanfiction writer.

Now, I love Marvel. It just wasn't their week. It wasn't that good for DC either, except for 52 which bowled me over. JSA wasn't so bad itself either.

One Improvement

To improve the class, just make sure we all know what the heck it is we are supposed to be doing. Also, I know when I had to get an affiliate and a tool I ran into some trouble, so more explanation of what those are and how to get them would greatly have improved this class I believe. I have to say that for the first time this class being offered, it had very little scratches to its finish.

The Best and the Worst

The Best part of class: Hard to tell. I think I liked it all as much as I could. The best part though, probably that when people ask me what class it is, I have no idea what to tell them. The reply I have is, "Well, the class changed. It's something with newswriting and blogs now."

The worst part: 8:30 classes when I have to commute to get there, much like the professor. It is terrible to have to commute since it means waking up earlier and dealing with the mess that is New Jersey roads.

The Duration of My Time on the Blogosphere

Will I remain with this blog even after this class is done? Part of me says yes, part of me says no. Regardless I will continue to for awhile so long as I have time. For the most part I might move on to making a new blog or site. I want to make a change out there. It turns out I'm strongly against littering and as such I hope to do something about it. At this moment I am not too sure what I can do aside from participate with others, but they always have bad timing for me when choosing dates to do clean-ups. What I think I might do is start my own group. Maybe next year here around Monmouth that will be dedicated to cleaning up the streets or just overall awareness that Hey, don't be a jerk and clean up after yourself. If not that, maybe some other environmental group that overall preserves nature.

DC

I am off to DC this evening for a Tuesday of outrageous stress. I will go to the convention there about journalism and I forget the whole title. I will find out more once I get there about what I will be doing. Basically, I am along for the ride on this one with my own intentions basically being that I find out more about Journalism or at least politics. Rush Holt is running it, and he is from a district near mine (Chris Smith is mine).
This is going for the WMCX News as well, so I hope we get good stuff to air the following week.
I sort of forget I will be missing a town or county election that day, but I would have missed it anyway due to school, so it's OK with me.
I do hate missing classes though. I'm the typical guy who would come to school even when sick because it means that such to me. I want to be there. So I kind of wish this event happened at a different time then my classes.
Anyway, away I go soon. Hope everyone has fun where they are!

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa

This movie continues from where the 50 episode TV series left off. First of all, it is not often that things like this happens. That being, an anime movie based on a TV series that actually has anything to do with the TV series itself. Normally the movie is not related to the stories of the TV show and can be pretty much be thought of as never happening. FMA (as it is called) has a continuation present right here from the show itself. Is it really needed? What can another hour or so add to a 25 hour long series? Nothing much. Just a sense of closure, and yet it doesn't even get closure on all fronts. I mean, the only reason you can say there is closure in this story is because pretty much those characters that needed it died. Everyone else is still left without much closure because they are now unable to fulfill that by the movie's end. The only closure there is in this movie, is to the overall theme of the show itself. The story began with two brothers making a mistake in trying to bring back their mother from death. They kept trying to fix mistakes and being selfish and in this movie the two find that being selfish, even with good intentions, doesn't lead to anything good. So what can you do? Fix it.



I think Edward Elric, one of, no, probably the movie's main character, is realizing this at this point of the movie. You can tell he has grown up, and accepted the responsibility of that. This is what I take from the movie. The story offers great art, story, and a bit of action. I just wish Ed and Winry would be together. It sort of seems they like one another, but neither ever admits to it directly. Plus, yeah, Mustang comes out of his funk, but he was waiting for Ed to come back, if Ed leaves again, doesn't that leave him in a funk once more?

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Since I kind of failed, I decided to leave this counter here. Why is putting html in a problem for blogger? I can't have a RSS and I can't even have this. If I could have figured how to put RSS up I would have.

Washington Post

Washingtonpost.com offers solid news stories from around the world, the nation, and the local area. It also supplies many great pieces of multimedia like photos, videos, and more. The shots are done very well actually, as evident by this photo I think looks wonderful:

In addition to photos there are panoramas, which are basically photos again, but much larger and 360. There are also videos which is something new for a newspaper. Obviously some if not all this site is shoveled from newspaper content, but there is material found exclusively here as well to balance that. You can also find podcasts and day in photos segments.

The target audience seems to be first of all, the West Coast with Washington State in mind. But they are a nationally known paper so many probably look to them for credible news. The way it is written seems for those somewhere from the twenties to the forties.

Overall, I like the site. Will I return to it? Probably not. I want a news source that is closer to home, but not in my town because then it would be rather boring as well.

Web 2.0 is the Shiny Sequel to WWW

The Internet has upgraded? Well, in a way, yes! Originally a term first said in 2004 by O'Reily Media, it has come to be known as the next generation of the World Wide Web that emphasize the community aspect of the Internet. No longer are we just handed things we search for. We can make things that others can search for. The second generation is about becoming one with the World Wide Web-ness of it all. Daisuke Nobukawa in Japan can now be my friend just as easily as Samuel Bishop Watterson from down the street (None of these names are real, just for show).

Taken right from the brainstormed ideas of the group, we can see how this is present today. First of all, our reliance on previous sources like Encarta.com or another Encyclopedia web page is now Wikipedia. Wiki, basically a place for groups to make their own encyclopedic content, is the "People's Encyclopedia." You will find links to more sources there, find sometimes credible information (Carson Daly "sucks" because he is a "Pirate"? No, that would be false. That is where the community editing it can take that down to preserve the credibility of the site). There are also sites like photobucket, youtube, and flickr which allow for the sharing of media, as well as things like Napster, megaupload, and bit torrents to provide file sharing. These are all new aspects of Web 2.0.

Overall it is the change in sites from being places to find info to places that create info. It is in maximizing the possibilities of communication among members of the Web. Web 2.0 is a system in which there is more focus on things that could only exist on the Internet and nowhere else out there. You can find information in books already, but can I find encyclopedic information on the show M*A*S*H? No, because I doubt Encarta or World Book would waste their time with it when putting it into their books. On their CD-ROMs, maybe, but the need for CD-ROM versions is not needed if there is a web version. A push for encyclopedias to move into online format where the people can find more information as well as provide it is part of the spirit that is Web 2.0.

The technology has also a trait now where it is more complex, and yet so much simpler. There are blogs, wiki, bittorents, RSS Feeds and so much more that can be used now.

The Web is evolving, and it will continues to until Web 3.0 develops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

This Week's Comics

I bought four comics this week, so I might as well tell people about them.

First up,

Avengers: The Initiative # 1

(No Pic Available--Look at Marvel.com because I can't save it)

This story was originally going to be a mini-series and has now become an on-going. Overall though, is it good enough for that to happen? Probably not. The art was enjoyable at times, but also horrible to look at. Add to that the story is poor. I read it, and was glad to be done reading it. Why does War Machine look so lame? The colorist though, of this series, is great! I love them, and they give what the story and pencils are lacking. At that I can also say the Inker was good, even though what they inked was cruddy.

52 Week Forty-Eight

Another week. This time we get the update on the Question/Batwoman situation as we see the new Question appear on the scene to save Gotham? They never really said if the situation was over. Writing was good as always. Art was really bad. I know this has been going on 48 weeks and the artists are always changing, but this has got to be the first week in all 48 where I just have to say the art is terrible. The only good page was when we see the Question in all their glory for the first time ever. That should be good artwise, and it was, so thanks for that. Coming up soon is the World War III event in Week Fifty, and then it all ends in 52, so that's less than a month away. I can't believe it's been a year. I think this marks the year anniversary of when I returned to collecting comics.

Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America

Wolverine--Denial

How does the Marvel Universe respond to the death of Cap? Through the 5 stages of grieving. First up is Denial, and the character in spotlight is Wolverine and his response to the death. Jeph Loeb writes, and as we learn here, the only good story Jeph Loeb can write is Batman: Husk, and the first volume of Superman: For Tomorrow (Was that him? I can't recall. Maybe it was just a book Jim Lee worked on.) I was highly anticipating this issue, but instead what I get is a story much longer than it really had to be, with characters whose reason to be there had to be explained more than once (basically Wolverine had to keep convincing some of the characters why he need them there, and this goes for more than one character.) Also, Wolverine couldn't just break in? He could get up there in no time to see the body. Why he had to involve Doc Strange makes no sense. Also, he brings Daredevil with him as a human lie detector, when he can do that all on his own using his nose. There was no reason for Daredevil. Wolverine knows how to see through BS. The art was good. It is good because Lenil did not have to draw women, because he sucks at that in all books aside from Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk apparently. Love the art and the color though. And ink.

At least I got the cool cover this time...

Lastly,

Justice League of America # 7

Finally this arc comes to a close. I hate Meltzer. I do. I hate the writer. He is trying something new here and doing the usual team-building exercise in reverse. This is what New Avengers did, and it worked there. Why people keep saying he is the first to do it is BS. Anyway, no one liked New Avengers, but I did. JLA is bad. It is clunky, hard to follow in narrative, and the reason for that is too many characters. But that's odd, JLA is a book that needs many characters. He puts way too many narrative boxes together hoping our minds can handle the thousand different colors I saw in the book. We all know he ran out of colours to use for corresponding characters. How many shades are there? Meltzer and Benes will find them!

Anyway, this book must have been missing a page because at one point it makes no sense. This happens at the same time as a pull-out page of art. First of all, charging me $3.50 instead of the usual $2.99 sucked, and I have this lame fold-out to blame. Waste of money. Anyway, I also had the deilenma of choosing only one of the covers. The above picture is the two covers together, but cut in the middle of Batman and choose the left side and that is the cover I got.

So, all I learned this week is that Marvel and DC love shipping team-books with covers that are too big to fit the whole team so they make two and then make you choose which you want because like you have money to get both. That, and DC sucked this week, while Marvel is borderline thanks to the cool artwork. Still, that JLA cover is cool...So they both get equal win today.

"Are you the man in the box, or the prestige?"

The week it came out over a month ago I bought the Christian Bale/Hugh Jackman/Michael Caine movie The Prestige. After having it this long and having no one to watch it with, I finally got someone to sit down with me to watch it, and I was really surprised. I mean, it was far from what I expected of a movie. I was literally expecting a movie about two magicians competing with one another, and finding that what one does is not illusions, but real. This is done not through magic, but science, the true magic.
It is also a great character piece, and going into the movie I thought Hugh Jackman's character was the one who we should be rooting for, but as the movie, which begins near the end, runs through events the audience finds the truth out.
Overall, come in expecting not just a movie about magicians, but something far more thought-provoking and outrageous.

Free Comic Book Day!!!

Free Comic Book Day is coming up on the first Saturday of May (May 5, 2007) with multitudes of free comics for all to enjoy, as well as a few more additional fun things. Free Comic Book Day is an event that has been set up that gives all members of the comic industry benefits. First of all, the books that the companies supply give publicity for them as well as it's staff. Meanwhile, it boosts the members of the public who visit comic book stores. Hopefully it increases the customer size. Also, it gives the readers FREE stuff! Typically most comic shops will limit how many can be taken (Record Store limits 5 items per person). Still, you will end up walking away with a smile on your face and free comics in a bag. This year there will be a number of comics available, such as: Legion of Superheros in the 31st Century, Transformers the Movie Prequel # 1, Amazing Spider-Man: Swing Shift, Comics Festival 2007, and a number of reprinted material that is now available for free such as Justice League of America # 0 which came out last summer.


For more info, visit the official page at: http://freecomicbookday.com/

So Much Weather It's a Storm

Weather.com is the site on the web for the Weather Channel, and Accuweather.com is an independent site where they have since the 1960s been working to give the best weather out there out of State College in PA. The two are relatively similar, but Weather.com is obviously with the easier to remember address, has more money to shell out, and overall looks better. Judging the two seems hard though, since I'm no meteorologist. If one were more accurate I would not know. Weather.com does offer weather info on your mobile, so that is a good thing. Accuweather seems to want to sell a local feel, and they do, as well as sell giving you and understanding of how weather works and the terminology, especially for kids. Meanwhile weather.com offers info on pollution, ways to stay healthy, things to do outside, weather for areas events happen, and basically a lot about what you can do with this info to suit your need. Accuweather wants you to create weather content. On the level of interactivity they are seemingly equal, while weather.com takes away the blog aspect accuweather has, it does not win in the fact it fails to have all the additional features weather.com has.

Stars and Shields--A Story in Layers Pt. 2

While Steve Rogers is well-known as Captain America, there have been others to wear the uniform throughout the years.

As revealed in the 2003 series, "Truth: Red, White, and Black," the first Captain America was in fact not Steve Rogers, but Isaiah Bradley, an African-American GI who were used as test subjects for the super-soldier serum. The government used those soldiers since they deemed them as inferior, and Bradley is the only one to survive, but the serum has brought on degradation of his body and mind. (http://www.comicbookdb.com/character.php?ID=9318)

For more info on Bradley, http://www.amazon.com/Truth-White-Black-Robert-Morales/dp/0785110720/ref=sr_1_1/002-1238248-6348855?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175527575&sr=8-1

The second Captain America is Steve Rogers, but that Captain America doe not require any more information.

The third Captain America was William Nasland, who was also known as the Spirit of '76. Nasland took over as Captain America for a time after Steve Rogers was lost at the end of WW II. The government put him in this position, and was relieved of it after Rogers returned. Nasland died in the line of duty.

The fourth Captain America was Jeff Mace, another person who was put into the Captain America position by the government in late 50s and early 60s. He also went by the name Patriot.

The fifth Captain America was a young doctor named Steven Rogers who served in the 1950s for a stand-in for Captain America. This was a retcon that was made after Captain America was brought back, and when this incarnation was made a failure since post-WWII Captain America was not as popular fighting the Communists.

The Sixth Captain America is the best-known alternative to Steve Rogers is John Walker, who took over as Captain America when Steve became Nomad when disillusioned with the government. Walker was a much more aggressive Captain America, before Steve eventually took over the spot again. Today Walker is known as U.S.Agent, and is part of Omega Flight.

For more info visit, http://marvel.com/universe/U.S.Agent

Newassignment.com

This site is the test-bed for a future place for citizen journalism to take place. Right now it just has stories brought to it about the subject of citizen journalism as well. It supplies plenty of thoughts and ideas to link to and find a story to help support the start of something new out there. It helps to look at the past, the present, in order to create a future in which those ideas will work out. Aside from that, I just like the name of David Cohn, who edits the site, and I think I have read his work before offline so I found it interesting to see that he was doing this. If not that, I might have confused him with young adult authors Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. Whichever the case, they all are really good writers.
The comments to give feedback make the page also really good.

Yourhub.com

The website Yourhub.com is a place where members of a certain community can share news with one another. I used the community in New York since it was closest, and then the Niagara area since I wrote this paper about it two years ago and some reason whenever I see the name, I must check it out due to instinct. Hey, it says Buffalo though…I need a map, I think to know these places.
Anyway, I looked under the “Stories” tab and found exactly that, news stories that you probably would not find in papers due to how local they really are. For example, the top story was about a neighborhood watch group, and I can bet, that while it is a national thing, no one outside of that area really cares about that area’s neighborhood watch. Only that community would. I am not trying to be disrespectful, but honest. The stories though seem to be about events, which is oddly the next tab. It seems odd that you would need two separate sections for these. In fact, one story about the Niagara Falls YMCA Friday Fun Club appears in both.
The only distinction between the two sections appears to be the fact that the stories one has info about the events in a narrative style, but the events just throws a list of info out.
The blog section seems useless though since it’s the same thing as the stories section. I guess it allows the people to tell their tale, but the stories seem to be by the same people. Some do have an agenda though, so I will let it slide since I did find a YMCA story by a YMCA employee.
Comparing this with Blufftontoday.com I can find that this one is better in the blog/local aspect, but I did like the idea of a collected newspaper thing, which yourhub lacks. If yourhub got that, I would say it was the better of the two, but as of now, they both seem on par. Plus, you have to include that there seems a lack of audio/visual content.
The money for yourhub.com comes from the obviously labeled advertisements, but it is also a licensed product of the Denver Newspaper Agency so money must be coming from there as well, I assume.Comments work, so nice interactivity, but only if there is feedback from the writer as well.