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Thursday, July 07, 2011 ( 7/07/2011 06:17:00 AM ) Bill S. MID-WEEK MUSIC VID: Been several weeks since I've done one of these: here's a video from Finland's the Latebirds. # | Tuesday, July 05, 2011 ( 7/05/2011 09:22:00 AM ) Bill S.  “IT ISN’T REVENGE I WANT, JESSE, IT’S A RECKONING!” With the final entry of Radical Comics’ four-ish re-imagining of the Wyatt Earp legend, Earp: Saints for Sinners, the big showdown between our hero, Doc Holiday, and the James Gang (not to be confused with the 70’s band that gave us Joe Walsh) against an army of Pinkerton goons takes place. Lots of bloody shoot-outs, plus a sequence where Earp goes Jack Bauer on slimy Vegas kingpin/mayor Flynn -- as well as some scene chewing thuggery by Alan Pinkerton, who has kidnapped Earp’s shapely lady love Josie. The girl holds her own, natch, much as we’d expect her to.While our title lead by and large remains a tough guy cipher throughout the Matt Cirulnick/M. Zachary Sherman plotted adventure, his mercenary buddy Doc adds much needed character spice to the proceedings. “I cut off Osama Bin Laden’s head with the sharp end of a rock after I finally beat him unconscious with my bare hands,” Holiday tells Flynn in a scene obviously written long before more current events, but since this book’s plainly set in an alternate dystopian America, I guess we can let it pass. Colin Lorimer’s painted art is up to the demands of broad action, though he perhaps overuses the big overhead shots. It’s generally stronger in the one-on-one conflicts: the crowd pleaser is the pummeling mano-a-mano finale ‘tween Earp and Pinkerton, of course, and it’s as brutal as you’d expect it to be. The days when western showdowns took place with foes shooting at each other from a distance on a sunny dusty street are long gone. If they ever existed in the first place. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: fifteen-minute comic # |Monday, July 04, 2011 ( 7/04/2011 08:19:00 AM ) Bill S.  “BEING KIDNAPPED IS NEVER QUITE THE WAY YOU IMAGINE IT WILL BE.” After recently following The Mysterious Affair at Styles, I strongly felt the urge to return to the murderous British countryside. Though a much more recent work than Dame Agatha Christie’s debut, Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie still contains the cozy elements of classic estate murder mystery: dark deeds done in an idealized pastoral setting. Set in the 1950s, the book’s narrator even makes mention of Dame Agatha, noting that the puzzle presented before her is worthy of a Christie novel.She’s right, too. The book’s detective/narrator is 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, a precocious young girl who lives with her widowed father and two older sisters in a mansion called Buckshaw. Upper crust, the de Luces are struggling financially, and when a dead bird with a stamp affixed to its bill is found on the mansion front doorstep, it proves the overture to murder and the unraveling of a history going back to dad de Luce’s school days. The thick plot revolves on a rare stolen stamp known as the Ulster Avenger. Flavia’s philatelist father has more than a passing knowledge of this ultra-rare collectible, swiped from his old headmaster by a fellow student -- and when the grown-up version of that same pilferer shows up poisoned in one of Buckshaw’s gardens, Father is the one arrested on suspicion of murder. It’s up to Flavia to ferret out the true killer. As the book’s narrator, Flavia proves an entertaining guide. Scientifically minded -- with a particular affinity toward poisons -- she doesn’t conform to the outmoded standards of girlish gentility to which her sisters aspire. Alternately canny and naïve, strong-willed and unsentimental, she’s like a well-read overseas cousin to the heroine of True Grit. Her investigations place her in serious jeopardy on more than one occasion, but we never doubt that she’ll be the one to expose whodunit. Bradley’s writing beautifully conveys the voice of his brainy heroine -- along with the world of his post-war rural setting. If the killer’s identity isn’t all that startling, the unraveling of the twisty line of events leading to that corpse in the quiet English garden will hold most mystery lovers’ attention. Too, the scenes focusing on Flavia’s own prankish experiments with poison (conducted at the potential expense of her siblings, of course) proving an amusing subplot. Since her debut in 2009, Flavia has appeared in two more mysteries with a fourth announced for publication later this year. On the basis of this first, I know I’m looking to bicycle once again with our sharp-eyed girl through the English countryside. Labels: tidy little mysteries # |Saturday, July 02, 2011 ( 7/02/2011 07:23:00 AM ) Bill S. WEEKEND PET PIC: S'been a shitty week, but not so shitty that we can't put up a pet pic starring  THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark." # | |
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