The Cape

Honestly? The Cape is better than I was expecting. It's very simple, but not idiotic simple like Heroes was at its worst; just very uncomplicated. And it's nice to see Summer Glau playing a character who's got her shit together, instead of some form of kook. My only serious complaint right now (caveat: I've only watched the first two episodes so far) is that the pilot should've been at least ninety minutes if not two hours. A lot of the simplicity I'm sensing could have come from the simple fact that they squeezed at least a feature-length movie's worth of plot into one 44-minute episode.

But that said - "Secretary of Prisons"? Really?

Notary Service

Today's strip is dedicated to my now-ex-job in the copy center of a well-known retail operation. I won't mention which one, but it rhymes with "Shmaples". Today I began working in the copy center of a law firm - it's a lot of the same kind of work, but after bouncing around all sorts of customer service positions for the vast majority of my twenties, I have at long last joined the stable nine-to-five workforce; complete with stable nine-to-five benefits. I may continue to use the aforementioned retail operation as the backdrop for any amusing copy center musings that come to me, just because...well, because I really like the background I made for it.

Black Panther #514 - Addendum

Seriously, though - hold a page of Black Panther next to a page of another Marvel series; the text is like half the normal size. It'd actually be easier to read if I downloaded a bootleg and looked at it on my monitor.

Attention VC's Joe Caramagna - I'm callin' you out, pardner.

Black Panther #514

I'm really liking this whole Black Panther: The Man Without Fear thing, and that's coming from someone who reads very few Black Panther comics. BP's premise has a lot of potential, though, and every once in a while someone will come out of nowhere with a left-field take on the character that really intrigues me - the last time was Jason Aaron's Secret Invasion tie-in that was basically Wakanda vs. the Skrulls a la 300. Most of what interests me about the Panther as a character, actually, stems from his status as the leader of a country - which makes the current series all the more impressive since it's basically your typical 616 urban-vigilante story with the hero character's personality being somewhat different than, say, Daredevil's. Maybe that's it - at long last, I might just be sick of Matt Murdock. The emerging supporting cast here isn't exactly the most unique ever, but they're at least as interesting as Foggy & Co.

Ultimate Captain America #1

Okay one caveat to Tuesday's comments regarding the Ultimate line: the solo Utimates miniseries have been awesome, and seem likely to stay that way. Captain America is only one issue in, but neither Jason Aaron nor Ron Garney have let me down in the past, so I'm excited to see more of Ultimate Nuke (and let me tell you, it's hard to say that with a straight face).

And Ultimate Thor? Jonathan Hickman? Forget about it. Even Carlos Pacheco's art is more engaging this time around when compared with his work on the first New Ultimates arc, so either Hickman's design influence is just that huge, or Millar really has lost something in my eyes.

In any event, here's hoping these don't stop with Thor and Cap - I'd suggest giving Warren Ellis Hank Pym if he wasn't already dead. Captain Marvel would be fun, maybe.

Ultimate Avengers vs. New Ulti-- Christ, that's a long title.

If it wasn't supposed to be part of this whole Death of Spider-Man thing, I probably wouldn't be bothering with NANU (heh - "nanu"), but as is, I'm cautiously optimistic. 2010 was the first year in the Ultimate line's existence where I didn't buy every single title, which is another way of saying I got sick of the Ultimates.

Jeph Loeb's New Ultimates, if it can be said to exist at all, is every bit as annoying and forgettable as Ultimatum, but that was expected. What's caught me by surprise is how little Mark Millar's Ultimate Avengers is grabbing me. The first story arc was pretty good. The second arc was alright, though I'm not really a Ghost Rider person. And now this vampire business - I just cannot make myself care.

What's funny about it is that I'm absolutely crazy about the current incarnation of Ultimate Spider-Man. I wish the art wasn't changing around so much, but between Bombshell, den mother Aunt May, and super hero training, this is the most fresh and exciting paradigm Peter Parker's been stuck into in all the time I've been reading comics. Here's hoping the Death crossover brings some of that enthusiasm over to the Ultimates, rather than bringing my apathy to Spider-Man.

Axel Alonso

With all my knee-jerk snark out of the way, I don't really know enough about Axel Alonso to offer a terribly intelligent reaction to his promotion, or to Joe Quesada and this "Chief Creative Officer" business. Greg Land is absolutely an albatross around the X-titles' neck, but whether Alonso has anything in particular to do with his ubiquity, I couldn't say. What I can say is that Second Coming was hands-down the tightest, most coherent and well-executed Marvel event I've read in years and years, so to whatever extent that was his doing, Marvel's in good hands. I guess we'll see.

Invincible Iron Man #33

One thing I love about doing this strip - every now and then, if I really have trouble coming up with an idea, all I have to do is call my roommate over and ask him a random comics question and within 30 seconds, a strip will emerge almost fully-formed from our actual conversation.

I'm crazy about Invincible Iron Man at the moment, but the whole Detroit Steel thing, the app thing in particular, just doesn't excite me as much as other aspects of the series - I'm probably the one person who would be thrilled if it focused way more on the corporate material at the expense of the action. I'm really excited to see what Fraction's going to do with the Mandarin this year, though.