You're a little late I'm already torn


Ever feel like you’re being pulled in 10 directions at once? Ever feel half of those pullers don’t have your best interests at heart? If so, I’m hip. Let’s have a coffee one day and talk about it.

I’m busy being a pussy about facing an administration that has denied me twice before. If I am denied a third time, does that make me their savior?

Doubtful.

The wallpaper below is a cover to one of the delayed Civil War books. I think Spidey may be realizing he backed the wrong pony on that whole “Whose Side are You On?” jazz.

Once I get my situation sorted, I’ll be back with regular-ish pithy responses to world situations, thoughts on stuff I watch/read/hear, and maybe even a little bit of life experiences again. Seems the universe has seen fit to throw more life-stuff my way. Nothing terribly exciting. But at least it’s something.

The rows of life’s ducks have much to fear from me. Fear that is only felt when you go a’hunting with Dick Cheney. Armed with only A’s and B’s(and a scant C), I face the dreaded administration alone.

During my painful transition have the above widescreen wallpaper of Spiderman being ripped asunder by his friends. I’m not sure what’s sadder, that I equated my life to a fictional character’s woes or the fact that I can name all those grabby hands looking to wishbone Spidey.



Fall into Snowtown


I’ve mentioned Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith‘s new, and modestly priced Fell briefly before. The above is a wallpaper I threw together featuring images from issues 1, 2, and 4.

“What’s so special about Fell?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you.

In the world of Fell, Detective Richard Fell did something very naughty, or very right, in his previous precint because he has been transferred to the feral city of Snowtown. Snowtown is the ultimate city without pity. Think of as Sin City if it were real and all the “ladies of the night” didn’t look like supermodels with a fetish for leather kink.

This is a real, surrealized, dirty town filled with the familiar Eliis characters. The hero who’s not knight in shining armor-like but he knows what is right and acts on that instinct without fail. The woman who acts like a real human being rather than some brainless doll with big boobs. She may be a bit crazy but hey, nobody’s perfect. The endless parade of crazy people who I swear Ellis must have met in real life cause that kind of crazy and seriously fucked-uppedness can’t have come from his brain. And if they did, like I suspect, I fear for that poor old man’s soul.

Then there’s Templesmith’s art and the wonderful experience of it. His drawings match so well with Ellis’ cynical style that I’d swear they were joined at the hip or maybe the same person acting out a role as a double agent of comics genius.

The book costs only $2.00. That’s on purpose. Ellis wanted to give something to those comics fans who can’t afford the bigger books. I have to admit, paying 4 dollars and up for various books is daunting to say the least. It makes it difficult to take chances on new works cause you’re not sure if it will be worth the ride in the long run.

Because of the low price there are less story pages. Around about 16 or 18 if I remember correctly. Templesmith and Ellis are using the nine panel structure so there is no sense of lost story or pacing. Each story is self contained so any Joe/Jane BLow can come off the street and experience Snowtown without feeling they need to read previous issues(although I highly recommend that they do).

As for the leftover pages, Ellis has dedicated that to random bits of knowledge in comics writing and ideas on the industry. So anyone who wants to learn something about creating a book like this has hit the jackpot of all jackpots. If you don’t care about the biz, well you’ve got a neat and complete, gritty story in your hands and no reason to bitch.



Wolverine is Scared


And I don’t mean scared in the way of, “My beastial nature is too much so I have to forever walk a lonely path”. Wolverine is “piss in your pants there’s a monster hiding under the bed waiting to eat me and I’m totally helpless” scared.

Whedon gets points from me for making Wolverine this kind of scared. You rarely get to see him that way. Normally he’s too busy being a badass or striking the angry pose to bother showing fear.

The following is taken from John Cassaday‘s awesome cover artwork for an upcoming Astonishing X-Men cover. He gets all the creative points. I merely rearranged it and added perspective with well placed blurring so as to have a neat looking desktop for a few weeks. This is usually the time it takes for me to get bored with the image and move along.

“Torn”, the current arc on Astonishing X-Men is slow in coming, we’re talking Planetary slow(this began around 1999 and is currently on issue 25) or mountains crumbling into the sea slow, but it is not lacking in amusement. The latest Big Bad’s being what I think is the new Hellfire Club featuring Xavier’s evil twin sister Cassandra Nova, Danger, the classic Sebastian Shaw, the treacherous Emma Frost and several others who have chosen not named themselves yet.

It’s times like these when I appreciate the graphic novel form. One complete story in your hands with only your own laziness in the way of finishing it.



New Setup


Been doing fluff-ier pieces here of late.

Can’t be helped.

On the homefront, I updated my OS to XP…finally. The ride is definitely smoother.

Microsoft can still bite my ass, though.



It returns


I’ve decided to resume my desktop photos:



Clean-up


You see all those bookmarks covering Lord Kanchi? That crap gets posted today. I made this site to prevent that kind of massive bookmarking. There’s no reason for my desktop to be cluttered.

The links could end up anywhere on this site.



Continuity error


There hasn’t beena new my desktop in a while. Here’s the semi altered Napster desktop.

-groonk



It is all yellow


My Kill Bill obsession is spreading to all my pages.



Vertigo


My friend Matt over at Impending Distractions pieced together this Vertigo poster to convert into a wallpaper or screensaver. As you can tell, I liked that wallpaper idea.

The little black box in the left hand corner tasks us to name all the characters featured. I sectioned off a bar and tasked myself.

From left to right. The guy with the red and green glasses is Spider Jerusalem, I believe the pumpkin head guy is Merv from The Sandman, the big green guy is Swamp Thing, the lovely pale lady behind the bar is Death, the cheeky blond guy is John Constantine, the purple lady in the back is Black Orchid, followed by Lord Morpheus and just below him is The Corinthian.

I have no idea who all the other freaks in that strip are.



The White Queen