Thoughts for: Saturday 7th October 2006
The Set. :: [21:26:28]So the last time I posted, or the time before, or whatever, hell I don't know, I only know what day it is because my laptop tells me, I said I would make another post about my fun visit to see my favourite Badger, Mr Mikamoto. Here it is. Me and the wench departed from Hull in the early hours (or rather around the 10am mark) and went for a merry coach trip all the way down to Coventry via a load of other places. When we got to the land of many cathedrals we captured ourself a Badger and went for a meander across the city. There's a lot of Elephant Iconography in Coventry, it worries me, makes me think that Republicans are going to lunge out from behind every bush. Oh, we also saw the devils testicles, which is always a pleasure, although I have to point out the Seraphim above him looks like he's going to take a dump on the poor guy. We got to see the cathedrals too (Which would explain the cold shivers running down my spine) including the bizarre new one which looks like a missile silo (slightly concerned about that, you never know what these christians will get up too). Once our wandering was through we grabbed ourself a Heather and a Chris (and a disturbingly homosexual in apprearance pot plant). Never met Heather and Chris before, nice people, lots of fun. They share my hatred of walking long distances (as all people should). Once this acquisition was made we ventured off for the Set where preparations were made for the housewarming party. Preparations including the Vlad Cake. For those of you who are interested the preparation of the Vlad Cake is simple, all you need to do is buy a cake of the chocolate variety then you need a couple of large bags of Jelly Babies and a whole lot of cocktail sticks. Then you need to stand and one by one (ocaisionally two at a time) impale your Jelly Babies on the cocktail sticks (laughing manically or cursing the little sanctimoneous gelatinous bastiches enhances the flavour) then putting the stick into the cake. Continue this process until the cake is totally covered. Anyhow, moving on. We did venture forth to the land of the GIANT Tesco's. Seriously, this thing was freaking huge, the dudes that collect trolleys outside need a van thing with a trailer just so they can get to one side of the parking lot to the other. The shop is obscenely large and includes a crapload of other shops attached to it. Asda Kingswood is large but this Tesco's was even bigger and then when you consider all the other shops attached to it, it's just massive. So big in fact that if you talk to any of the staff to ask them where something is they go kind of glassy eyed and say something like "There's other sections? There's land beyond this realm?!" Poor bastards get confused like no other. After the booze trip we returned to the Set, once negotiations had taken place with the Taxi company who seemed to not like the idea of sending a taxi big enough for us all. Once we got back at the Set we found ourselves locked out thanks to a sleeping Xander upstairs but eventually managed to gain entry. Party goodness happened and I met a lot more people I hadn't met before, including of course Xander, Kate, Anne, (Anne's boyfriend whose name I cannot remember), James, Roxy and Mike's brother whose name has escaped me at the moment. All nice people indeed, will have to see them again some time. Got into a sword fight or two, Mike drew first blood (again), but I will beat him some day! Mike let me borrow his Iron Hands book which was awesome and I stole his bracelet so I have something to remind me of him seeing as I don't get to see him very often. Everybody had fun and I think next time we will have to have people at Vicki and my house.
:: [21:25:54]I finally got Vicki to watch all of Full Metal Alchemist which she enjoyed thankfully. Just the film to go now but we are taking a break since we managed to watch all 52 episodes in about 2 weeks. If YOU haven't seen FMA you really should. Do it. Do it now.
:: [21:24:35]I can't help but notice that Marvel seem to be culling all the characters they no longer want. For those of you not of a comic persuasion it goes a little bit like this; there were a lot of mutants, a lot indeed but then the Scarlet Witch (under the influence of Quicksilver) went a wee bit loopy (again) and fucked reality over. When reality was returned to normality the vast majority of mutants were transformed into humans. This event is referred to as M Day. Now, when this storyline finished recently they were left with very few mutants indeed (198 to be exact) and since then quite a few of these mutants have died (although a couple have been repowered in a round about way by Quicksilver after he fucked about with the Inhumans Terratergen [sp] mists). So the mutant population has been well and truly culled to a more manageable level. This is generally seen as a good thing and as far as I'm concerned it was a very good idea (even if The House of M wasn't up to much). There were far too many mutants in Marvel and it was just all getting a bit silly to be honest, not to mention that writers were getting lazy, not just in X-books but across the board, with everyone resorting to using mutants as villains or sidekicks because they couldn't think of anything more innovative or original. Hopefully the company will have the common sense to keep the mutant populace down from now on, otherwise we are just going to have the same problem ten years down the line. Besides it means that the mutants that are around get more attention and are treated as full and complete characters in themselves rather than just a set of powers. As a further clean up a lot of former mutants (powered down by M Day) are being killed off in various ways. All in all a lot of characters (including A list, B list and C list) have snuffed it. Next up was the slaughter of Alpha Flight in New Avengers which lasted a whole 2 panels of the issue. That's right, Alpha Flight were killed off, just like that, 2 panels, no more, no less. Harsh really but to be honest Alpha Flight has never been a high seller and they haven't been used in any manner deserving of them in years. Adding to the death toll even more we have the Civil War event. This is the latest title spanning storyline (seems to be popular in comics these days) which revolves around the government and some super heroes deciding that super powered beings should be unmasked and government trained. On the surface a good idea, training for such individuals would be desirable. The problem however is that they made it non-optional and are freely disclosing the identity of everyone. Which obviously causes a serious danger to anyone involved with this super powered beings. Those who refuse to comply get the hell beaten out of them and chucked in a prison in the negative zone where they are held indefinately until they agree to register. Obviously this has pissed some people off and there's a full blown war going on between various factions of super powered beings. The reason I mention this storyline (which is ongoing) is that they are killing a lot of characters in it as well. Only B list characters at the moment but it's leading up to the death of more important characters. One of the more noteable characters to die so far has been Goliath, possible the only super hero that grows which has ever been cool (I remember when he was called Black Goliath in the 70's or 80's, his series was awesome). The point here is that Marvel are doing something they have needed to do for a long time. They are killing off everything they are not using. Drastically reducing the population of super powered beings makes the existing ones more special and to be honest just clears out the embarassing crap from the past. It's a good move and one that DC has been attempting in small doses for a great many years, seems Marvel had the balls to go all the way in one go. I expect many more characters to die before the Civil War story is over. Hopefully this will begin a new age of more creative comics with no nonsense.