Wolverine: Coming Soon

Dear Wal,

I'm excited. I'm much more excited about this movie than I am about Man of Steel, although I'm going to see both when they come out. Naturally. This is a chance for redemption after the disaster that was Origins. I will never forgive that movie's existence, and what it did to Deadpool. I mean, come on, such a waste of a great character. Deadpool's dark humor coupled with his tendency to break down the fourth wall could be such a great movie. The guy is hilarious. He's at the top of my list of X-Men that need their own movie.
And that brings me to what I know will be most critic's problem with Wolverine: another Wolverine movie, really? But, the fact is, Wolverine is pretty freaking awesome. I don't think I've met anyone who doesn't like Wolverine. Plus, Hugh Jackman is amazing.
Wolverine also has a rich mythos to draw from, and this movie I think is doing exactly that. Although I've never read any Wolverine comics (he's on a very long list, and keeping up with the New 52 is eating all my spending money) I know he spent some time in Japan honing his fighting skills, and some of the most important events in his life occurred there, including meeting the love of his life (besides Jean *cough*). Wolverine is based off a miniseries by Chris Claremont of the same name. It revolves around a love story, and the personal conflict that exists within Wolverine. Claremont paints Wolverine as a man not driven by animosity and memory loss, but one who is driven by a strong sense of honor. Claremont's interpretation of Wolverine basically defined the Wolverine of the 80's and 90's, making him a much more complex, dynamic character. Or so Wikipedia and a helpful reviewer on Amazon tell me. This sounds like an amazing book, and possibly a good jumping on point for someone who wants to start reading Wolverine comics (me).

Excited? Not excited? Afraid it's going to suck? (Let's face it, we all are.) Comment below.

/endrant

Horse Movies

Dear Wal,

If you hadn't guessed it already, I love horses. So it's perfectly plausible that I also love horse movies. They were my childhood. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, The Black Stallion, Black Beauty, Dreamer, Man From Snowy River...the list goes on. I love these movies not only because they are full of fantastic horses, gorgeous horses, but also because they are uplifting. While they may be sad, there is always an uplifting moral to the story. In Spirit, it was freedom. In the Black Stallion, it was the triumph of the mythic, the ancient, over the modern. In Black Beauty, it was a happy ending. Likewise for Man From Snowy River. In Dreamer, it was triumph over an impossible
I always cry during these movies. It doesn't matter how happy some parts may be, there is always a part where the horse and the rider get really close to giving up. Then they pull themselves out of the depths of despair and rise to the occasion. That's the way it always happens. It doesn't matter that I know this, it doesn't change anything at all about my reaction. I still sit through the whole movie, bawling my eyes out. I went to see Secretariat when it came out, because I consider that horse to be one of the greatest horses of all time, and I cried all through that movie. Every scene. Didn't matter what it was about. I was also alone in the theater with a bunch of older people, who had probably actually seen the horse race in his prime. I swear, I was the only young person in there. Things don't look good for modern horse racing, although personally that's an institution I wouldn't mind seeing go down in flames. What they do to those horses borders on abuse. In fact, by any other definition it would abuse. Tangent. I'll rant about the injustices of horse racing some other time.

Do you cry during horse movies? If not, what movies make you cry? Comment below.

/endrant

P.S. We watched Flika this evening. I've seen the movie about a thousand times, and I still cried.

First World Yarn Problem

Dear Yarn manufacturers,

Why can't you name the colors of your yarns something intuitive? For example, instead of calling something Mermaid, just call it Teal for Pete's sake. Mermaid, however, isn't that hard to figure out. Because, where do mermaids live? In the sea. And what color is the sea? Teal. (You've been lied to if you think it's just blue.) Summer Sky is also an intuitive alternate name for blue, because the sky is blue.
However, there are some names that just make no sense at all. For instance, Glamour. Lots of colors are glamorous. Even brown can be glamorous. How the heck am I supposed to know what color Glamour is supposed to be? So, because you name your yarns stupid things I have to go digging through the WHOLE line and ALL the colors to find one by the color number instead. And of course, I'll forget the color number along the way and then have to look it up again, or lose the sticky note it belongs and start the whole freaking process over again. Eventually, I figure out that Glamour is supposed to be pink.
I understand there are a lot of pink yarns in your line. So suck it up and use a thesaurus. Here's what Wikipedia has to say on the matter of pink. Obviously there are lots of different names for pink that still include pink in the title.

/endrant

P.S. I've been sticking labels on yarn for six hours straight. My back is killing me. Humor me, please.

Top 5 Best Superhero Costumes

Dear Wal,

These are just my personal favorites...it was a hard list to choose from. There are just as many really cool costumes as their are terrible ones.

1. Invincible

2. Modern Nightwing (Red or Blue :D)

Props for having the best and worst
costumes.

3. Whatever Version of Wolverine this is:

4. Catwoman (ZIPPED UP D<)

5. Neal Adams Batman

I know the blue is a little...blue, but I like it.

Am I right? Am I wrong? Any better ideas? Comment below.

/endrant

Prezi Adventures

Dear Wal,

I had an assignment recently where I could do a prezi about anything. Anything. So, guess what I did?

Batman.

This is proof that I could write pages and pages about Batman. Maybe I'll get to do a thesis about him someday.

/endrant

Top Five Worst Superhero Costumes Ever

Dear Wal,

As a reader of superhero comics, I've gotten used to a lot of strange things showing up in my comics. However, there are some things that I just fail to understand, such as these costumes:

1. Retro Nightwing

For some reason, Dick Grayson thought this was a good idea.

I really just...don't understand

2. Mysterio

Otherwise known as Fishbowl Man

3. Vibe

What is it with male superheros and V-necks? No, just...no.

I don't either, buddy.

The reboot is just as bad

3.The Phantom

I have one question. What's up with the stripes?

I mean...just...what?!

4. Dick Grayson Robin

It's a wonder he didn't get shot. That yellow cape...

Dick has no fashion sense

5. Wonder Woman

I can forgive that she's an Amazon warrior, wearing a bathing suite as "armor." But what's up with the stars?

How is this Greek?

/endrant

Windows 8: Compatibility Issues

Dear Wal,

Gotta love the sad face

I've been having some problems with Windows 8. Namely, compatibility issues. If there is an incompatible program on my computer, it causes the computer to bluescreen, restart, and repeat the whole process over again until I figure out which program is causing the problem. When I first updated my laptop to Windows 8, the program causing the problem was Skype. Fortunately, that was easily fixed as there was an app in the Windows Store for Skype. However, in order to get it I had to go through this huge fenangled process of making a Windows account. It felt a little like selling my soul.
I don't appreciate this, Microsoft. I like having the freedom to download whatever program I want off the internet. I know you like to make money, but this is frankly ridiculous. I spent two hours, I repeat-two hours-trying to sign up to your stupid service, and all I wanted was Skype, a program I could have downloaded in about two minutes on Windows 7.

But this is more like what my face looks like when my
computer bluescreens

The next problem I had was the printer. Granted, this printer has always sucked. We've had problems with it on every computer, no matter the operating system, since we bought the printer. The printer that preceded it sucked too. My personal opinion, all printers were spawned from hell. But Windows 8 feels the need to freak out every time my laptop tries to connect to the printer. I made the mistake of trying to print something yesterday, and lost about a half an hour's worth of work on a story I've been working on. Jason's story, in fact. So you can imagine how panicked/ticked off I was. Thankfully, today I finally managed to disconnect the laptop from the printer.
But besides the compatibility problems and my being paranoid about sharing my personal information (even though basically the entirety of the internet probably has it by now) Windows 8 is fantastic. I don't even miss the start button. The start screen with the tiles is so much easier and so much more elegant. I don't have to dig through a list of names to find the program I'm looking for, I can just find the logo on the right tile. Everything about this setup is just so much easier to use. It took a little getting used to and a lot of help from Google in the beginning, but now I know my way around the system very well. The main reason I upgraded in the first place was in the hope that a new operating system would speed up my laptop, because it was a complete slug on Windows 7 for some odd reason, and it did speed up considerably. I don't have to wait more than thirty seconds for my computer to boot, or for any programs to load. As far as I'm concerned, the benefits far outway the drawbacks.

/endrant

P.S. It's 11:09. I really need to get better with this whole schedule thing.

WHY, DAMIEN, WHY?!

Dear Wal,

I found out about something horrible today, and it's completely wrecked my week. If you read DC's New 52, then you know what I'm talking about.

Damien Wayne is dead, and probably not for long. This is old news by a week, but I'm still going to complain.

For anyone who doesn't know, Damien Wayne is Bruce Wayne's and Talia al Ghul's son. She took his DNA and genetically engineered the perfect child, Damien. Then she trained Damien to be an evil ninja assassin. Yeah, it's a long, strange story.
Damien hasn't even been around that long-only since 2006, when he was introduced in Batman and Son by Grant Morrison. Grant Morrison has always been one of my favorite comic book writers. I mean, the man's a bona fide genius. But my trust has been violated. I was already a little iffy about the speedy death and return of Batman himself, but now Robin as well, another Robin?
Granted, I've never been a fan of Robin. I didn't like Dick Grayson as Robin. Jason wasn't cool until he was dead. I liked Tim Drake. I never even knew Stephanie Brown was Robin until recently (and apparently she died too. What is it with people and killing off the Robins?) I've always preferred Batman on his own, because Robin just never seemed to fit very well into a Batman story unless it was written extremely well. Case in point, The Long Halloween. But that book just got everything right.
However, Damien was a different story. He was Bruce's actual son, and neither Bruce or Damien were very happy about it. In addition to that, the rest of the Batfam was mostly hostile towards Damien as well. Things in the Batfam haven't been this tense since Dick left the nest and became Nightwing. For a while, Damien and Tim couldn't be in the same room without getting into a fist fight. But eventually, everyone finally got used to Damien and accepted him. Sure, he still had a long way to go before he got along with everyone, but he and everyone else in the Batfam had grown as people because of him. For me, at least, the character was cut short just as he was starting to really bloom. 

And you know what the worst part of all of this crap is? They're going to bring Damien back. We all know it's going to happen. He's the son of Talia al Ghul for crying out loud. Why is this such a problem, you might wonder, since I seem to like this character so much? 

Allow me to explain. 

In superhero comics, no one ever stays dead. There is always a lazarus pit, or a magic Kryptonian stasis, or just a simple misunderstanding. The resilience of these characters completely negates any attempt to kill them. Plus, superheroes are icons. Some might say they're our modern Greek gods. So, naturally, they can't stay dead. This trend is one of the few things I hate (abhor, loath, shall I go on?) about superhero comics. If you're going to kill a character, then leave them that way. If the only reason you're killing the character, is to bring them back to life a few story arcs later and return the story to the status quo of before, then why did you kill them in the first place? The purpose of death in fiction is to shake up the story, and often to bring it back to reality. Death doesn't just affect the character who passes on, but also all the characters around them. Family and friends grieve, and the whole fictional world has to find a way to go on with a part of itself missing. If you magically revive the character who has passed on, he or she doesn't fit into that hole anymore.  Just look at Harry Potter, and the pivotal importance that death played in those books. Would J.K. Rowling have brought Dumbledore, Sirius or Fred back to life? Nope. 

Although, I have to say the way Jason Todd's death and Resurrection were handled was excellent. 

/endrant

P.S. Arrow was a repeat tonight. ): I was hoping it would cheer me up, but no. 

The Gunslinger and Giant Demon Birds

Dear Wal,


I'm actually remembering my dreams for once, so here goes with another strange one. I was on a quest again, except this time I know who I was with. I was with Gandalf, Eddie and Roland. Weird combination, right? Not really, when you consider that The Dark Tower is basically Lord of the Rings crossed with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Anyway, we were on the moor from The Hound of The Baskervilles, or one like it, and we came across this house on the side of a hill. It was really strange because the house was round, and made out of a bunch of random sticks that were all jumbled together in a ring. Inside of it, there was a gigantic abandoned hornets  nest. It didn't have a roof, and it was perched on the side a hill that was so steep it was almost vertical. We couldn't figure out what it was, until all of a sudden it dawned on me:
It was a nest.
We all started running. Because, I mean, this was a big nest. Whatever lived in it had to be gigantic, and would probably return hungry. We crossed the moor and reached a forest. A glassy river wound its way through it, perfectly tranquil. In it, a herd of wild horses were wading. They just looked at us, they weren't afraid of us. I guess they had never seen people before. Eddie decided he was going to catch one of them and tame it so he could ride it. He did manage to catch one, a gorgeous bay, but he started man-handling it and scaring the crap out of it. So I took it from him and I was like, uh-uh, nope. You go ruin a different horse. This one is too gorgeous to waste. I walked for part of the trip after that, so I could work with the horse before I rode it. Then I woke up.
Even in my dreams, I'm not-so-secretly trying to start a natural horsemanship revolution.

/endrant

P.S. I've started a dream journal, finally.

The God Chair and Squeezey Bottles

Dear Wal,

I've been dreaming again. This time, I was fighting a god of some kind. I don't know who he was-he might have been one of the New gods, or one of the Greek gods-but I have a feeling that he was probably Q. Anyway, I was with a bunch of other people, and we were on some sort of quest. I guess Q was the menace of the universe or something like that, and we had to defeat him. We finally tracked him down in the Iceberg lounge from Arkham City. Q was like final boss in a fantasy video game, except we were in Arkham City. Because even my subconscious thinks in terms of superheroes. But the problem was, we didn't know how to defeat Q. There was no special weakness to hit, or certain sequence of moves to use. He was practically invincible. He was sitting in this big green chair, like GL's castle from Kingdom Come and just laughing at us as we threw everything we could at him. Finally, Q decided he was tired of watching us struggle, and made another chair like his. He told us that if one of us sat in it we would have as much power as he did. I didn't want to do that, because I didn't want to be a god, so instead I started grabbing stuff that was sitting on the arm of the chair.
One thing I grabbed was some kind of weird flair that you could light and use as a weapon. I tried to hit him with it and that didn't do anything, so instead I grabbed these squeezey bottles filled with green poison-one in each hand-and started squirting the poison on Q as if I were putting ketchup on a hot dog. I'm not sure why the first delivery system for the poison my subconscious thought of was a squeezey bottle...who knows. When you think about it, it's a pretty impractical way to poison someone. Unless the poison was absorbed through the skin.
Anyway, my last train of thought inside the dream was that Q was a water elemental, because water smothers fire and water is cleansing. It makes sense, right? My alarm clock rang at that most inconvenient moment, so I never got to find out whether or not Q was a water elemental. We would have probably all died in the end, anyway. My dreams usually end like that.

/endrant

Deadshot Returns

Dear Wal,

I had forgotten about Floyd Lawton. I almost didn't recognize him when he showed up again in this episode of Arrow. Of course, I was foolish enough to believe he was dead. Stupid me. No one ever dies in superhero stories. Nope, instead they just get sent back in time or suspended in a super fancy Kryptonian stasis. I'm getting distracted.
Anyway, instead of being dead it turns out that arrow didn't actually pierce Floyd's skull. It just blinded him in one eye. And thanks to an artificial red prosthetic from courtesy of the Triad, Lawton is back. Still, however, Lawton can't seem to actually shoot and kill someone. If he's a good enough assassin that the Triad is calling him in to take out Merlyn, then he should be able to kill someone instantly, right? Nope. Instead, he's relying on a poison that obviously has an antidote now, thanks to Oliver. But that glowing red eye is cool, right? Much better, I think, than the weird lens he used before.

Why it's raining bullets, I don't know.

In a twist of fate, the Hood ends up saving Merlyn: the man who nearly killed him just a few episodes ago. And in the process, a new member has been added to the People-Who-Know-Who-Hood-Is-Club (PWKWH....IC!). It's not who you think. I promise. The fact that the Triad and Merlyn's people were going at it, with Hood, Tommy and the police caught in the middle, made this episode completely action packed. I had to stop and remember to breath, occasionally.
I was starting to worry a little about the main story arc, so it's reassuring to get back to Merlyn and his super secret gang of super secret people. Everything was floundering for a while there, I was worried they might pull a Smallville on us and wait until the beginning of next season for the climax for the current season. That could still happen, in fact I think it's probably more likely than the season getting a tight ending. After all, they have to keep us coming back for more. Something I will most definitely do, however the season ends.

One of the better parts of this episodes is seeing the dynamic between Malcolm and his son Tommy develop. Sure, we know Tommy hates Malcolm's guts, and we know Malcolm is the bad guy. But is he really? This episodes brings that into question in a big way, showing that maybe Malcolm's motives might be in the right place, even if his methods aren't exactly honorable. Then again, the Hood's methods aren't exactly honorable either. He's hunting down people and killing them, treading even closer to the fated line of good and evil than Batman usually does. (Since we all know Hood is basically just a Batman replacement. Why don't they just make a Batman show already?)

/endrant

P.S. As a Doc Who fan, I don't know about you but I'm having a hard time not seeing Jack Harkness in Malcolm Merlyn. I know, I know. Different characters, even if they are played by the same actor.