Rantalicious

Love in Tights Spring Fling

Okay, it's silly, I know, but I find this sort of thing utterly hillarious. But then, I've always found relationships extremely amusing. When everyone involved is wearing tights and capes, it becomes still more wacky. And wacky is *good*, gentle reader. More fun than an exploding water buffalo!

Cathedral Child

A little book 'o manga which is really, really weird in an X-Files sort of way. You've got lots of wicked strange people running around, a plotline that even *I* don't understand in places, and a sentient Babbage engine. Oh, and surl a-plenty. Brain... hurts...

Heart of Empire #4

More wackiness abounds in a surly British comic published by Dark Horse. They're really going for the Illuminatus thing here, with cross-dimensions a-plenty, schemes a-la-carte, mages a-go-go, and the requisite big piles of sex. Why is it that all these surly British authors always get around to sex at some point in their tales? There's a ponderance for you. Okay, so, Britain's headed by an immortal witch who snatched power during the fall of Cromwell... or something... and has conquered pretty much the entire world, except for the increasingly concerned and surly Americans and a few other people who don't matter too much in our story. Under her hedonistic leadership, good ol' England has become a giant morass of depravity as the wealth of empire floods right on in. Except that the world's going to end or something. Unless a bunch of people from another dimension can reach out telepathically to the witch-queen's surly daughter and persuade her to do something about it. Assuming she doesn't just assume that the voices in her head are just figments of a deranged imagination and go back to being surly. Mmm. Surl-a-riffic. Assuming the author doesn't waste any more space on orgies (we're up to three pages in this one) that could be better spent elsewhere. Those wacky, wacky Brits.

Planetary #5

On a lighter note, this is a very characterization-heavy issue, as our "viewpoint" character, the surly Mr. Snow, goes to have a chat with the guy he rescued in the first issue, Doc Sav... uh, I mean Doc Brass. He's trying to find out some information on the 'Planetary' group... from a guy who's been trapped in a mountain for fifty-odd years? Doc Brass even remarks on this point, much to his amusement. Good, solid, wonderful little stuff.

Earth X #6

And now, something to really surl about. Now, it's one thing where the story makes you hate a major character, makes you really loathe him, makes you want to reach out and smack the heck out of him. It's another thing entirely when that character is the narrator. See, we've got this fellow called the Watcher, who's sitting up on the moon, and he's snagged X-51 to be his "eyes" to take a look at what's going on down on Earth. And he's not being very nice about it either. Meanwhile, down on Earth, everything's slowly going to hades in a hand-basket, and there's not a lot anyone can do about it. But, nonetheless, our heroes (those who're left of them) are starting to come together and make an effort to do something to avert coming disaster. You see, the Celestials, who are the big, bad, surly types of the Marvel cosmic landscape, and who planted the seeds to humanity's meta-genes in the first place, also put in a fail-safe should humanity get too powerful. Namely, all telepathic power on Earth gets transferred to one guy, who will then, no doubt, take over everything, which he's decidedly busily working on. "Bugger THAT," say Our Heroes. "Time to whup some butt." And meanwhile, we have the narrator, X-51, saying "Keen," and the Watcher droning about how resistance to the Celestial plan is futile, how humanity is ultimately irrelevant, how none of this matters... I *so* want Watcher to get a good, swift kick in the head. What a *gigantic* prig. If he's right, then Alex Ross needs to be beaten repeatedly with copies of everything Neitzche ever wrote. How positively irritating. The crowning straw of soul-less suckage here is Watcher eventually gets tired of X-51's continual hope that humanity will once again pull a solution out of its' collective butts, and orders him to delete the sections of his "program" that relate to personality. Excuse me? And X-51, by the end of the issue, does just that. Excuse me? WHAT? "Oh, sure, Mr. Watcher. I'll just delete my humanity. It really *was* nothing but trouble." Um... WHAT? It's at this point, were I or, well, anyone concerned more with character than the All-Important Plotline to be writing this, that X-51 would calmly extend his middle finger and state, clearly and unequivocably, "I don't care if you ARE a nigh-cosmic being. Sit and SPIN, pal." On the other hand, maybe without X-51 not actually questioning anything, Watcher will have less opportunity to say, well, anything. Watcher's goin' down. Or he'd better be. What a complete snot.

Rant 'o the day contains no additives, preservatives or small woodland creatures of any kind. Use only as directed. Do not expose to direct sunlight. Do not fold, spindle, multilate or remove identifying tags. Handle with care. Contains less than 3% milk fat by weight, not by volume. Squeeze the lemon.

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