Daredevil & Frank Miller

Working my way through the Daredevil Omnibus (omnibus means "big stinkin' book"). Weighing in at about 800 pages, it's taken me a month to get halfway through so far. I'm not that slow of a reader, I just get distracted by things like work, and eating. I had read Frank Miller's Sin City for the first time this year, and was blown away by the stark black & white art! I thought I'd go and read through Miller's other works I haven't seen for a while. I started reading comics in the 80's and knew a lot of his work, but mostly his later writing on DD, and his Batman work.

I started with the Wolverine mini-series which I had on the bookshelf, and realized it had been so long since I read it last, I picked up on a lot of the story I didn't realize was there. I thought from there I'd try to read pretty much in order, so next up was Daredevil. This was Frank's first comics work that I know of, and it reads just as well as any modern comic today. In my opinion, a lot of older comics don't read as well in story as I remember as a kid. Even though I know the basics of what happens (spoiler: Elektra dies!), I'm still really interested to see how the story plays out!

Last night's plunder. Nice cheeses, yogurt, bag of dog food my dog won't eat (she holds out for table scraps), toaster pastries.
Time- about an hour
Value- $35 (possible upwards of $50, I usually lowball)

Should have stayed home to rest, but was having allergies all day and thought it would do me good to get out of the house.

Invincible Iron Man

Been a while since I did a comics review. One of my favorite reads lately has been Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction (writer), Salvador Larocca (penciller), and Frank D'Armata (colorist). I'm usually an occasional Iron Man reader, sometimes finding it hard to relate to the character of Tony Stark. He's a billionaire, I'm broke. He's a genius inventor, I just figured how to text on my phone. He drives to work in one of the most powerful weapons on earth, I drive a '91 Olds.

The current storyline is what grabbed me the most. Tony Stark was not only the aforementioned billionaire playboy, but was given charge of the US's top peacekeeping force, SHIELD. An alien invasion led to Tony losing everything, and being hunted for precious information stored in his brain. Stark begins deleting information from his technology-enhanced mind to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. This causes him to slowly lose his greatest weapon, his intelligence. As a result, Tony experiences an examination of his life as he needs to use less advanced versions of his armor developed through the years.

I've had a year of trouble and loss to put it simply, so I find I can understand what Tony Stark goes through in this past year's worth of stories. It reminds me of a storyline from the 80's where Tony's alcoholism caused him to lose everything he had, even giving up his Iron Man identity to a trusted friend, while we slowly watched Stark rebuild his life. When we hit rock bottom, we usually find out who we really are as we rebuild ourselves, hopefully stronger than before.

Last night's haul

Great haul of non-damaged goods, this is only about 1/2. Lots of different breads, wraps, donuts, fruit pies, cupcakes. I piled it up in the van and sadly still left a lot there. A lot of the good bread went in our freezer. Out of these shown on the floor, 2 boxes went to our friends at Scouts, and 1 box is going to my neighbor to pay for a favor. Sorry for the bad picture quality.

Had a great night of diving yesterday, check this out:




Many cans of organic split pea soup, gourmet chips, 2 garbage bags of cookies. 2 apples (need more good produce!), fancy crackers, 2 big packs of ground beef. 1/2 doz eggs. Purchase price would have been well over $100. Not bad for 2 hours work!

Wife has been going out with me the past few times, it's nice to have "backup"! I had been going solo a lot, and always felt nervous, being my own lookout. Diving isn't illegal in Akron, but I like to watch out for crazy people or zombies. Strength in numbers is good.

After all that, I was still disappointed in no books from the bookstore. Selling books we find on Amazon has turned into a 2nd part-time job!

What else...working on a re-mastered edition of Children of Light #1. Re-written and lettered, the parts I was least happy with. Tedious work!

Gone diving 3 night in a row, goin to bed early tonight, I think!

Blast from the past

I recently re-connected with a friend through Facebook, that had worked with me on an early version of Children of Light around 1994 or so. They were called the Light Brigade, with a different story, and mostly the same characters. The thing that looks like Igoo from the Herculoids (Google it if you're under 30 or don't get Boomerang on cable) is Paul, Scott is on top of him (I had a white version of his shirt!), Kris and Jen are below. On the left is a shadowy girl who was cut, and replaced with Tasha. The guy riding a tank thing was also cut, but may show up sometime later, too.

Currently working on re-lettering CoL #1 for re-print. The lettering I did by hand was quite horrible! I would have liked to do a totally re-mastered version, re-drawn and touched up, but maybe another time.