Scott's Blog of Doom

Warning:  Comic discussion ahead.  Non-geeks can run away now.

Anyway, as everyone I’m sure knows by now, I’m firmly a DC Guy and have been ever since the 70s.  My bookshelf is packed with the Showcase Presents series, in fact.  However, I’ve been a big fan of the Marvel movies thus far and Iron Man was so good that I dropped a few bucks on Ebay and picked up Essential Iron Man volume 1 for cheap, and I’ve really been digging it.  I love the Essentials/Showcase format with the B&W comics and a ton of content for the price of a regular TPB and would like to check more of them out.  I got Avengers Volume 1 ages ago and was kind of hot and cold on it (early Justice League-ish era was great, the Hawkeye/Scarlet Witch/Quicksilver stuff not so much), but other than that I’ve got no exposure to early Marvel.  I really don’t want to get into X-Men because the continuity is frankly overwhelming and I don’t find it all that interesting, but I’m open to Wolverine.  I do find myself really enjoying the fun and simple Stan Lee storylines in Iron Man, so here’s my short list of what I’m looking at before I start dropping $20 a book:

- Captain America.  I’ve always liked the character and it seems like a good counterpoint to Iron Man.  Not sure if the goofy 70s stuff in the early Essentials volumes are worth getting through to get to the Englehart classics of the 80s, but I’m leaning towards giving it a shot, especially with the current nostalgia hoopla surrounding the character.

- Fantastic Four.  Lee and Kirby!  I’ve never been a fan of the franchise but it seems like it would be a Fun Superhero Comic, which is something I always like jumping into. 

- Spider-Man.  The obvious one, and the one comic that I flirted with in my younger years and collected in the 90s before the Clone Saga drove me away for good.  The older stuff I’ve read, though, always seemed to be very heavy-handed angst stuff at times.  I’ve read enough of it over the years that I don’t think it would be any huge pleasant surprise for me like Iron Man was. 

Stuff I have no interest in:

- Dr. Strange.  Occult stuff holds no great interest for me.

- Silver Surfer.  Never got the character, never cared about “message” in my comics. 

- Sub-Mariner.  Underwater characters?  Take a pass.

Anyone have any Essentials recommendations I’m missing?

http://www.pajiba.com/guides/the-most-heartbreaking-television-episodes.php

Really good list here.  That episode of Futurama just destroys me every time, as you keep waiting for the wacky punchline and it never comes, and it’s just so sad.  I’d also have to nominate:

- Bill’s funeral on Newsradio.  Who could be so evil and heartless as to rob the world of Phil Hartman’s genius? 

- The finale of Blackadder IV.  The march up the stairs for the “big push” and Blackadder’s resignation to his fate, followed by the fade into the overgrown fields…gut-wrenching.  They made a lot of jokes about how pointless and futile that the first World War was on that show, but that one shot of the battlefield turning into a grassy acre sums it up brilliantly. 

- The ending of the first season of 24.  The first of many bad endings to a bad day for Jack Bauer, and the sign that this was a show that wasn’t going to pull punches with “favorite” characters. 

Hey Scott. I was wondering if you could once again plug my site http://www.freewebs.com/wrestlinglists I've added a new feature on the site that will allow your loyal readers to not only search your star ratings by promotion, but now they can also search by the actual star rating. On the navigation bar at the top of the home page, you can find links that are labeled "*5*", "*4 3/4*" and so on that will have a comprehensive list of your ratings for that particular rating number. Thank you for plugging and as a side note, I wanna thank you for all the plugging you've done for my site and for visiting, as you say you do. Scott Keith ****+ Ratings is now the #1 search on Google when typing in "Scott Keith ratings", and that is pretty awesome to me. Thanks again.

 

Always happy to plug my own material.