Monday, May 09, 2005

Watch out for the stairs Mrs. Lockhart!

Another great episode of Family Guy last night, what Peter changes himself into as a Wonder Twin is ...wow. After two episodes, it seems as if Seth MacFarlane and crew are picking up right where they left off with the quick and sometimes crass humor. American Dad on the other hand was forced and not really funny at all.

DC Comics has a new logo. I guess I can understand why, that whole "marketing synergy" thing.

On a good note, DC is strongly promoting the Starman series. The series ran 80 issues, with a couple of side miniseries and a crossover miniseries with Batman & Hellboy. The series finished up a few years ago, and DC finally just published the final trade in the series very recently. I have the first trade and and really enjoyed it. Writer James Robinson created one of the more enduring superheros of the 90s with this series and a lot of people feel his Starman is the only good thing to come out of Zero Hour, the sort of sequel/clean up of Crisis on Infinite Earths . I want to get the rest of the series but I'm not sure if I want the easy trade route or if I want to purchase the individual issues. The main reason for the individual issues are the fantastic covers by Tony Harris who is of course, is the artist on one of the best series on the shelves right now, Ex Machina. I've seen people selling the 80-run issue on eBay a couple of times, heck I've been outbid on at least one occasion.

The Yankees finally won a couple of games, two shutouts. What is most surprising is Kevin Brown pitched one of those games. There's talk of a possible payout to get rid of Giambi, which would make me, and any other smart Yankee fan happy. The Chicago White Sox continue to be the suprise team/story of the year. This is a good thing as one of their best pitchers, Mark Buehrle, along with Mark Mulder and Matt Morris of the Cardinals have been my best pitchers, helping me sustain 2nd place in my Fantasy Baseball league. Outside of Ichiro, I think most of my offense is performing a bit above their average, though a couple of guys like JD Drew and Mike Lowell haven't picked up their slack yet. If all continues as is, I'll be a happy owner for the better part of this season.

I finished up Walter Hunt's second Dark Wing novel over the weekend, The Dark Path and jumped right into the third, The Dark Ascent. On the whole this is entertaining, epic space opera. Hunt set the world about 300 years in the future, mankind has come into contact with a couple of alien races, most notably the Zor, a winged people who are similarly advanced. As a People, the Zor are strongly informed on living their lives by a Mythic religion. The first book was very good as it was discussed in the SFFWorld SF Book Club in June 2003 , the second, The Dark Path, picked up the ball almost a hundred years later, with the humans and Zor living with each other, some more begrudgingly than others, and ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, so I am very happy I acquired the 2nd and 3rd books at the same time. This series, after two books, leaves me wanting to find out what happens next. I like the future setting, and Hunt has created a very interesting race in the Zor. Though this has all the trappings of Space Opera/Science Fiction, there is a nice Epic feel to it as well. Good reading, all told.

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