In Generations: The Archers, Kate Bishop and Clint Barton, the two Hawkeyes, find themselves on an island where some of Marvel’s most notorious marksmen are on a Hunger Games type of survival game. Since Clint doesn’t know her and is still wearing his old tacky costume, Kate assumes she’s mysteriously transported to the past by someone. Forging a friendship, the two work together to determine what the hell is going on, and who is behind it. They find the mastermind, but so do the other marksmen, including the homicidal maniac Bullseye, and that’s when the arrows and knives and swords start flying.
It’s a crazy-ass fun story, and I like it.
Thursday: woke up, went to work, got busy, went home. Watched episodes 2 and 3 of True Detective season 3 to decompress and thought the series is doing good so far. I hope it will not be like season 2 which, despite its stellar cast, is forgettable at best. For the third season I am putting my faith in Mahershala Ali.
Before sleeping, I pre-ordered comics for next week at Filbar’s. It’s an interesting bunch (Heroes in Crisis #5 and the first issue of Fight Club 3, among them) and it’ll cost me big, but so what?
During my last visit to Filbar’s Megamall I saw this Chase collected edition TPB at their bargain section. Thinking of buying it, I considered the pros and cons. Pro: it’s 352 pages long and worth only a little over P900 (down from P1,300 plus); con: P900 is still too much. Pro: it’s a nifty looking book with a cool old-school cover; con: I know zip about the character and for all I know the story is shit. Pro: story looks interesting based on the synopsis; con: I still have tons of comic books to read.
With me still in cost-cutting mode, I pre-ordered only one comic book this week: Marvel Comics Presents #1. It’s an anthology, and I dig anthologies, so why not? The first story features Wolverine fighting a demon summoned by a gypsy woman facing execution by the Nazis. Then it was followed by two one-and-done’s — one has Namor in WWII having moral dilemma over the Allied forces’ intention to nuke Japan to oblivion, while the other has Captain America bonding with a teenage daredevil over motorcycles and dreams. It’s a good issue, but whether or not I’ll pre-order #2 is still a big question mark.
Picked this old John Constantine comic from the to-read pile today hoping for some dark magic voodoo vibe and angst-ridden witticism (duh, look at that grim-looking cover), but turned out there was little of that in “The Boogeyman,” the issue that kicks off the Dangerous Habits volume. Penned by Jamie Delano, the story features John in his saddest sad sack form, reentering the lives of Marj and Mercury and inadvertently causing a rift between them. Drunk and obviously wrestling with inner demons, John’s a hard dude to love, much more welcome to your home. One can’t help but pity the bastard.
In reading Punisher #218, in where Frank Castle dons the War Machine armor, I couldn’t help but wonder about an entertainment industry where exclusive rights, ego clashes and bureaucracy do not get in the way of filmmaking. Imagine an MCU movie where Jon Bernthal gets hold of Don Cheadle’s armor in the Avengers/Iron Man movies and moves to bring down the government of a rogue state. That’d be awesome, even though, seriously, Punisher in a hi-tech armor is kind of weird. Still, a film industry without much legal restrictions could make the world a happier place.
Picked up from where I left off in the Adam Glass run of Suicide Squad today. Issue #14 is kind of disturbing. I imagine feminists angrily raising their fists at the violent treatment of Harley Quinn here by her beloved “puddin,” the Joker. One scene shows her hanging by her neck, with a chain for a noose, as the Joker gleefully interrogates her. It’s sick, it’s twisted, and I wonder if this issue got flak when it was released years ago, even though there were fewer hotheads on the Internet back then, and political correctness wasn’t as big as it is today.
Whoa. Five comics in a day! The last three issues that completed the Jessica Jones: The Pulse TPB, and the first two issues of Dead Man Logan — the latter I read online because of cost-cutting measures (triggered by the knowledge that I spent a whooping P27,000 on pre-orders last year). I can always score the TPB, anyway. More economical that way.
A comic book a day 