Hey strangers. Work has been busy as hell. My anxiety has been crazy high. My downtime has been reserved for doing things I enjoy that calm me down, and less for writing about them. I’m still playing games and reading comics, but I’ve been doing it to keep me healthy and distracted.
But I haven’t published anything in a minute and that’s giving me a whole new type of anxiety. I wrote something really personal and intimate about Avengers: Endgame but I’m not quite happy with it yet, so instead, I’m going to talk about something else while I get my bearings on that. But yeah, I’ve beaten like 12 games since the last Backlog Quest Log update, I just haven’t written about them yet, but hey - that one’s on me, I’ll get to them at some point. I might just do a paragraph dump on each to catch up so the games are fresher when I write about them, I don’t know. Part of me wants to get back to writing more about comics since as you’ll see, I’ve really been falling down that rabbit hole.
COMICS
If I seem biased towards Marvel comics here, that’s because I kind of am. Marvel Unlimited is a pretty incredible service that makes reading comics way too easy. Recently I’ve been re-reading some of my favorite stuff from when I was in high school to see if it holds up, and checking out a few events.
X-Men Deadly Genesis 1-6
Ed Brubaker was one of my favorite writers at Marvel when I was in high school. His Captain America book was the top of my read pile so I was always happy to see a new book from him. It’s funny too, because in Captain America, he was bringing Bucky back from the dead, and in this lead-up miniseries to his own X-Men run he was dredging up something else from the past.
Deadly Genesis is all about Gabriel Summers, a previously unknown brother to Scott and Alex Summers, Cyclops and Havok respectively. It takes place after House of M, so Mutants have their backs against the wall and they’re under constant surveillance of the Office of National Emergency, or O*N*E*. It turns out that the story of the X-Men is a bit more complicated than we were lead to believe. The reason we have mutants like Colossus, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and a bunch of other international heroes is because the original team was caught and being held hostage by Krakoa, the living island. Professor X gathered these then-unestablished characters as a rescue team, but it turns out before he did that, he sent another relief team and they were completely wiped out and the memories of them erased from people’s minds. Gabriel finally wakes up, and is hellbent on revenge, which… yeah, fair. This story handles his ‘return’ to the Marvel Universe.
Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire 1-12 (Uncanny X-Men 475-486)
The start of Bru’s run on X-Men proper, Rise and Fall sees Vulcan take to space to hunt down his absent father, Corsair, living in Shi’ar space, a group of aliens with intimate links to the X-Men. Professor X takes a bunch of second string characters and chases after him. The Marvel cosmic universe was going through changes thanks to the Annihilation event, but this was a more personal kind of story despite the fact that it’s galaxy spanning. The pacing was. Little weird for this series overall, but the marathon nature of Marvel Unlimited makes it a little easier than the originally bi-weekly schedule the series had (bi-weekly for the first few issues, they gave that up pretty quick). One thing that hasn’t endured as well is the multiple artists. Billy Tan kicked this story off with pretty killer art, with lines reminiscent of David Finch but a bit looser and more kinetic. Because of the expedited release schedule though, a fill in artist was brought on and while Clayton Henry is a fine artist that I actually really like, the two styles clash pretty harshly in spite of being a continuous story. That said, the Shi’ar were featured pretty prominently in the 90's X-Men cartoon so it was cool to see them become the stars in one of the first X-Men runs I started reading.
Uncanny X-Men 487-499
The Ed Brubaker run on Uncanny X-Men feels a lot shorter in hindsight than it did at the time. Following Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire, Bru moved into two (and a half) stories before wrapping up and passing the baton onto Matt Fraction. First up was The Extremists, which I really like, and Divided We Stand, which I liked even more. Turns out when you have Bru at the helm with art from Salvador Larroca and Brandon Choi it’s hard to get a bad comic out of it. The former deals with a series of grisly murders happening in the Morlock tunnels and calls a mostly whole X-Men team to task in order to solve them. Divided We Stand is the last story between two status quo shifts, and the big marketing push for 500. It’s a quieter, sweeter story that sees Cyclops and Emma Frost go on vacation to The Savage Land and Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus go through Europe. Cyclops and Emma eventually pack it in and head to San Francisco once shit pops off there and voila, we have the next 40 or so issues of X-Men decided when they move to the Bay.
X-Men Messiah Complex (13 issues)
My first real X-Men Crossover since randomly grabbing issues of Onslaught in the mid 90’s, Messiah Complex holds up really, really well. It deals with the first mutant birth since House of M/Decimation, which has huge ramifications for The X-Men, the New X-Men (students at Xavier’s), The Marauders (evil mutants working for Mr. Sinister), the Purifiers (racist religious zealots who feel divinely inspired to eradicate mutants), the Reavers (a cyborg themed villainous group following Lady Deathstrike), and Predator X (a weird dinosaur like thing that gets more powerful after every mutant it kills and consumes). The stakes always felt super high though out all 13 issues and it did a pretty good job of reminding me how good the other books were. X-Men (before it changed to X-Men Legacy, which I’ve never read), Uncanny, X-Factor, and New X-Men were all books that served very specific purposes and somehow were firing on all cylinders at the same time. This was a really special era for the X-Men franchise where their backs were up against the wall, threats were coming at them from every angle (even occasionally from the fucking wall). New X-Men in particular was an awesomely intense soap opera with big stakes. Characters you thought were safe, weren’t. Also, spinning out of this was a new volume of X-Force, which would have big ramifications down the road. Fuck this crossover is so good. And the cover dress was absolutely gorgeous. I love the layout, it looks so sophisticated, and the David Finch covers unified the crossover and… yeah, nothing else to add, I just love this book.
Son of M 1-6
House of M had a twist ending that made the villain of the story someone you weren’t expecting. This was the follow up series that explored just how desperate they got in its aftermath when the Scarlet Witch de-powered them as well. I think I read the first issue when it came out but finances of a 15 year old made following up on the story kind of a big ask since the next big event was in the pipeline. And you know what? This story was rad. The art was weird and felt almost like an indie comic, it looks gorgeous all these years later in spite of it not really jiving with the more cinematic approach Marvel was taking at the time. The book is heartbreaking and provocative and the hero in this isn’t a hero, they’re a dick and so compelling because of it.
Silent War 1-6
The Inhumans were greatly affected by the end of Son of M and this little mini-event dealt with the natural progression from it. The moon city of Attilan finds itself at war with the US Government after the Terrigen Crystals, the materials needed for Inhuman culture and powers, are confiscated. They butt heads with the Avengers and themselves and the status quo is majorly shook up. The Frazier Irving art is gorgeously haunting, and makes the Inhumans feel genuinely otherworldly. Much like Son of M before it, the art serves to make the story feel different than other contemporary Marvel comics. It makes it feel less like an event (even though it totally is), and more like a horror-war comic (which it also totally is).
Young Avengers + YA Presents + YA the Children’s Crusade
Alright, so, I’m biased because this was one of the first books I remember buying off the shelf, but holy hell I love this comic. The Young Avengers came to be in the wake of Avengers Disassembled. The teenager that would grow up to be Kang the Conquerer goes back in time to ask the Avengers for help, because turning into one of the greatest tyrants in history isn’t something he wants to do, but the Avengers have disbanded. But one Avenger he finds is a deactivated Vision, who activates his protocol to find the next generation of heroes. We get a pretty eclectic cast of characters with close and personal ties to Avengers whether they realize it or not. In 12 issues, Jim Cheung and Allan Heinberg tell three incredible stories. Afterwards, there are a series of one-shots that explore characters or pairs of characters in a more personal way. Following that is a nine-issue miniseries that punches with a lot of weight for a story that was somehow never billed as an event. This story is huge. This story is important. This story is awesome. These three feel like an abridged trilogy for the characters over a five or so year span and I cannot recommend it enough. The only Young Avengers book I haven’t read yet is Dark Reign Young Avengers, but that’s not really a YA series so I don’t feel too bad… but I just found a pretty incredible reading order list for Dark Reign so I might jump on that after all.
Secret Invasion + every tie in
I don’t think I’ve ever been more up a comic publisher’s butt than I have with Civil War. I bought every tie in and was basically subscribing to books I ultimately didn’t care about because of it. By the time Secret Invasion rolled around a few years later, I was wise enough to know I didn’t have to do that… but Marvel Unlimited made it too easy not to.
Secret Invasion is the payoff from some of Bendis’ first big stories at Marvel, spinning out of his New and Mighty Avengers titles. Turns out, the story was too big for two titles, so on top of getting a gorgeously drawn event book courtesy of Leinel Francis Yu, it also touched nearly every major character of the Marvel U. And now, I’m going to tell you which books were worth it.
New Avengers - As important as the main event, read these in order between
issues, the event is where all the action happens but New Avengers is shining a
light on all the clues you’ve missed over the years and doing its best to answer any
questions you could possibly have about how certain things happened.
Mighty Avengers - See above answer for New Avengers.
Captain Britain and MI:13 - So, this book is super dense and hard to jump into if
you’re not familiar with characters like Captain Britain and Pete Wisdom, but it’s a
fun and different team story that’s probably a little hindered by its immediate
tie-in to an event, but eventually becomes a great book in its own right.
Incredible Hercules - After World War Hulk, the Incredible Hulk became the
Incredible Hercules and it’s a super fun book, well done with care by Greg Pak and
co. but ultimately not the most important tie-in. It’s not necessary for the event, but
the series itself is worth reading from the beginning.
Guardians of the Galaxy - Not a super important tie-in whatsoever, but it holds up
really well in re-reading the main series. It’s a perfectly tangential crossover that’s
unexpected and advances the series own agenda. Read it for the series, not for
the crossover appeal.
Avengers: The Initiative - I was never really a fan of this series and not just because
I was #TeamCap during Civil War. Something just felt off about it to me and while I
guess it’s technically an important tie-in just given how involved the Skrulls were
with the Initiative, I can’t say it was the most enjoyable read. The best part of it is
the B-story focusing on a Skrull who left the empire and joined the Initiative
independently, with no intent to help them conquer Earth when they came. That
story rules, but the 3-D Man and Skull Kill Krew part was kind of plain.
Ms. Marvel - For those new, Captain Marvel used to be Ms. Marvel, and this was
her first solo book in quite some time. This tie in is… fine. It’s gorgeously drawn by
Adriana Melo and the narrative boxes are pretty sparse but it’s not the most
exciting story. That said, it’s breezy and fun enough that you won’t feel like you
wasted the five minutes it takes to read each issue.
X-Factor/She-Hulk - the cool thing about a writer helming two books is it makes
crossovers pretty easy. This is a pretty solid McGuffin story but doesn’t affect the
larger story at all. That said, Peter David is an incredible writer and his She-Hulk
and X-Factor runs are worth reading independently anyway. Special shout-out to
the Michael Deodato Jr. covers though, those things are friggin’ gorgeous.
New Warriors - I can barely tell you what happened in this book. There were some
cool set pieces, but since I never really followed the New Warriors, and especially
didn’t after Civil War, the characters mean nothing to me, the conflict meant
nothing to me, and the resolution meant nothing to me.
Thunderbolts - It was a sad day when Warren Ellis stopped writing the
Thunderbolts, and sadder still when his replacement was announced to be Cristos
Gage. I’m not the biggest fan of his writing, I think it’s pretty plain, but this tie-in
was surprisingly fun, and actually very important to the overall story of Secret
Invasion. The art is serviceable, but nothing special.
Black Panther - This was a tie-in I missed and holy hell I wish I didn’t. This was
incredible. I still don’t get how T’Challa wasn’t part of the Illuminati, he totally
should’ve been, but even still, this story while not important to the grander
narrative is an absolute must-read.
Deadpool - I’m always skeptical of series that start off with an event, you’re always
concerned that it’s the momentum of the event propping the book up and not the
other way around. Thankfully, this series started off on a high note and just held its
finger on that piano key for the next 5 years. This tie-in is funny, impressive, twisty,
and cool, and worth reading.
Nova - I wasn’t super in love with this tie-in, but I like the series overall. Yeah,
another one of those.
Iron Man: Director of Shield/WAR MACHINE: Weapon of SHIELD - Like I said
before, I’m not the biggest Cristos Gage fan, and this story doesn’t matter. In spite
of a few cool moments, I can’t recommend this story as being important.
Punisher War Journal - there was no point to this being a Secret Invasion book at
all. Skrulls were in it, I guess? But it makes no sense just jumping into it, and it’s
not worth reading. Wait til Remender jumps on the book and gets weird.
Ok, now that we’ve covered tie-in propers, let’s cover mini-series tie-ins.
Secret Invasion: X-Men - Super gorgeous and well-written mini. Not super
connected to the heart of the Invasion in New York or the Savage Land (the X-Men
had just moved to San Francisco), but super fun to read regardless
Secret Invasion: Inhumans - Not the most fun tie-in, but important to the overall
direction of the Inhumans, so I was stoked to read it anyways in prep for what
comes next to the Marvel cosmos.
Secret Invasion: Front Line - Gorgeous book talking about real people surviving
the invasion of New York. People die in this book, and since they’re not heroes you
know they won’t come back. I really liked this one.
Secret Invasion: Young Avengers/Runaways - Granted, I’m a sucker for the two
teams, I haven’t read Runaways since BKV’s run over 10 years ago, so it wasn’t
the easiest to follow out the gate. That said, given Hulkling’s heritage, I’d rank this
as one of the more important tie-in books
Secret Invasion: Thor - Super fun book where Matt Fraction stretched his legs
before taking over the main Thor series a year or so later. It’s beautifully drawn by
Doug Braithwaite and does a good job of balancing both the story of Thor and
Donald Blake in a newly reformed Asgard. Also, Beta Ray Bill is the shit.
Secret Invasion: Spider-man - Spider-man’s not in this one. Honestly, skip this
unless you’ve read all the Brand New Day spider-man stuff, this is basically a
repository for an extra story featuring Spidey’s supporting cast. The notes from the
editor were my favorite part.
Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four - We see the Baxter Building destroyed in the
beginning of the main book and this tie-in explains what happened, so it’s
technically important in that regard, and for eagle-eyed continuity followers of the
FF. It’s written tightly, it’s drawn pretty well, so I give it about a B.
Secret Invasion: Dark Reign - Yeah, this book rules. Don’t want to spoil things, so
I’ll leave it at that.
Secret Invasion: War of Kings - This book justifies the Inhumans tie-in mini, and
this sets up one of the more major status quo shifts of the event (after Dark Reign,
obvi)
Invincible Iron Man 1-7
Characters come and go in waves. In 2004, Warren Ellis came onto Iron Man and reinvented the character for the 21st century. But then he left, and the title kind of meandered. A lot of new number one’s are meant to signal to customers that there’s a sea-change, a commitment to the series and that there’s a direction that it wants to head down. That’s what Invincible Iron Man was.
And it’s one of my favorite series from the era.
It makes sense that Matt Fraction is friends with Warren Ellis (dude met his wife on Ellis’ message boards for fuck’s sake), because they both have uncompromising visions of what the future could look like. Post 9/11 Tony had to be different, and Fraction took the best parts of pre-and-post and melded them together for this insanely fun ride. It doesn’t hurt that Salvador Larroca turned in some of the best work of his career on this book. The only odd thing that isn’t really that odd but kind of stands out now, is the coloring. It makes the armors and the tech standout, but faces are all lit a bit strangely and look kind of vinyl because of it. I don’t care, I love it, but it’s weird going back and looking at this in comparison to current books who go for a more flat, evergreen technique that makes them pop a bit more like animations rather than stills from a movie.
I read this because from Iron Man 8-19 it’s the fallout from Secret Invasion and I am stoked as hell to see if that holds up.
Uncanny X-Men 500-503
Decided to mention this separately from the other X-Men I’ve read because I wanted to keep the Matt Fraction books together. For these issues, Bru and Fraction were working together but I think it was mostly Fraction’s baby. As much as I love the dialogue in his Iron Man series, I’m a little underwhelmed by it here. The plotting is awesome; the story itself is great, but I’ve repeatedly seen dialogue and narration boxes that see the same word repeated in the same sentence and it drives me fucking crazy. The art is pretty much handled by two creative teams - Greg Land and Terry Dodson. First time around I was blown away by Land’s pencils, but they haven’t aged the best. Everything is stiff and rigid - Dodson is definitely doing all the heavy lifting visually and I’m always excited to see he’s on an arc. I like the new location, I think moving coasts to the bay area gives the team a much needed shot in the arm, especially since they chose to move there, they weren’t forced to. The only thing that really bums me out about it (besides Land’s weird faces), is that… man, they don’t know San Francisco. The geography is all wrong and it takes me out of the story a bit during chases and what not.
GAMES
AC Odyssey
Assassin’s Creed Origins is maybe one of my favorite games of all time. The way it blends elements from other Ubisoft open world games with what makes Creed a unique franchise was incredibly well done and addictive as hell.
Odyssey is that dialed up to 11 and while I’m incredibly happy to be playing it and I find myself still thinking about it when I’m not, I think it’s a little too much. Much the same way I like Arkham Asylum more than Arkham City, Odyssey’s huge, sprawling nature makes it a bit unwieldy at times, and the muddling of play styles between the armor/weapon stats and character progression makes the game feel more like an MMO than an RPG sometimes.
But again, my favorite part about Friday is having the time to play it. It’s really satisfying to go into a new region, destabilize it, and fight to conquer it on the battlefield. Clearing out bases, bandit dens, tombs and temples along the way means I’ll be playing this game for the next hundred years.
Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
I don’t think I’ve ever actually finished a Zelda game. There. I said it. I really like them and have a blast along the way, but the journey is always more fun than the destination. I usually lose interest after the last dungeon and pack it in, but not this time. Playing A Link Between Worlds before bed has been a blast. It’s difficulty is moderate enough where I feel like I’m accomplishing something, but I’ve never been whiteknuckling my 3DS which is perfect because who the hell wants to get that worked up right before bed? The game is charming beyond belief and I’m officially further in it than I was after it launched, so, slow and steady is not winning the race, but it’s at least getting to the finish line before all the doughnuts are gone.
TV
Friends
Back on my bullshit. I can’t fall asleep without the tv on. I’ve had a tv in my room since I was about 8 years old and some kind of dvd player or streaming device since I was 11, so putting friends on before sleep is a great comfort as I make out with my pillow.
I just got to season 3 and it’s pretty easy to forget how much heat the early years were throwing if the last thing you watched was the cartoonish final season. It’s weird watching the show with these people who defined adulthood for child-me and being older than them now, but the pre 9/11 New York with a Clinton White House is a wonderfully stress-free show that’s perfect to fall asleep to.
I’ve had this idea about empirically deciding which sitcom character was the funniest. I want to go through each episode and compare how many laughs/applauses/cheers/aww/etc each character gets in relation to their lines. I’m thinking there needs to be a three episode minimum just so I’m not doing this the rest of my life, but I think it would be interesting to compare characters from different shows and see where Chandler compares to Kramer compares to Sam Malone compares to Urkel. The only real problem(?) Is that it only works for shows with laugh tracks. I’d want to do a bit of research because I’d prefer them to be filmed in front of a live audience rather than added in post, but that cuts out How I Met Your Mother, and for better or worse that was a pretty important show in the mid-2000’s.
And if I keep not writing on a weekly basis, I might just have the time to do it. But I will never cover two and a half men or big bang theory. I won’t even give them proper nouns, I’m especially not giving them any research.
Cougartown
No, seriously. I love Cougartown. It was recently added to Hulu and I can’t think of a more stress free show in the history of shows. It’s basically just day-drinking: the show. Jokes are funny, layered, and feel like a genuine evolution from the show runner’s previous effort on Scrubs while still showing the same roots. If you shrugged this show off in the past I can’t recommend jumping back into it enough.
MOVIES
Avengers Endgame
I have another article in the works about this one. For now I’ll just say I really, really liked it.
Detective Pikachu
Oh man. I wanted to love this movie so bad. The trailers made it look so strange and unique and brilliantly thought out, and for the first three quarters of the movie it was. The first two acts were executed so beautifully but holy shit does this movie jump the shark before credits. The good news is the world is awesome and can totally be revisited with ease. I want to see a rom-com in this universe, a heist movie in this universe, a sports movie. Bit the last thing I want to see right now is Detective Pikachu 2.
Booksmart
I haven’t seen a ton this year (better than most years, but still, not like I was in college), but Booksmart will probably be my movie of the year. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard at such weird, clever jokes. The teen actors were incredible and sold a brilliant script so naturally. It’s going to draw comparisons to Superbad, but Booksmart is, well, smarter, in every single way. I’m really looking forward to what the cast does next and I can’t wait to see what Olivia Wilde chooses for her next project.
And that’s all he wrote.
y’know, for now. See you soon, campeones.