#they may have just been complaining about mutants and masterminds

[girl-hwat]

rip BIG SHOT animation meme, troy lougferd is made for you

[etraytin]

Quarantine, Day 232

October 28 Busy day today, as promised! I got up this morning and got the kiddo going on his schoolwork (asynchronous learning day means he had lots of time to work on catch-up assignments) and then headed off to my doctor's office. I lost the labwork order I needed to get my routine yearly bloodwork, so they printed it off and brought it outside to me so I didn't have to enter the office. Doctors and dentists and the like are extremely concerned with keeping unnecessary people out of their offices, which makes sense. At the kiddo's pediatrician, they appear to have renovated an empty space next door into an entirely segregated sick-child waiting room, rather than the simpler left-side-well, right-side-sick waiting room they had before, separated by a wall bisecting most of the room. Now both those sides are for well children and sick children can't come into the office proper at all. I am hoping this is a healthy winter for the kiddo.  But anyway! With my paperwork in hand, I bopped down to the blood testing center for my blood draw. That wasn't much different from usual, aside from a very avant-garde arrangement of chairs in the waiting room that had many fewer chairs, all pointing in different directions away from one another. Routine labwork cost me 26.33, a weird number that included a 20 dollar copay and then 6.33 cents of coinsurance for the various tests. It was a weird number, but at least it was considerably less than I would've paid without our exceedingly expensive insurance. I didn't have to wait very long and the phlebotomist did a good job with me. I asked specifically for a back-of-the-hand draw, partially because I'm a tough stick and partially because I wanted to be able to show the kiddo what it looks like. It was a model wound, tiny with minimal blood and only slight swelling. The kiddo seemed somewhat reassured about his own upcoming draw, but only somewhat.  I went home and showed off my hand and checked to make sure everything was still going well. On the way, I stopped for gas at the new Wawa and got myself a big cup of pumpkin spice coffee with hazelnut creamer. It's the most wonderful time of the year! Also I was very hungry from fasting. Kiddo had gotten quite a bit of work done on his school stuff and my husband got good news from his own morning telemedicine appointment, so all was copacetic. I stayed home for about an hour and figured out what assignments the kiddo still had to do, and then it was off on another adventure through the bridge-tunnel to pick up my auction winnings!  Now I know the natural reaction here might be "You bid on another auction? Did you learn NOTHING from the Takis adventure?" I understand your reaction and the answer is yes I did learn something, but not very much. I certainly didn't bid on any massive job lots at this auction, which was for a beauty shop that had shut down. I placed lowball bids on all kinds of interesting and useful things, was outbid on most of them, and purchased what was left. In this case, that amounted to two large three-drawer plastic storage bins, one small three-drawer storage bin, and nine pounds of reinforced cotton coil. I also got a bonus in that one large drawer was full of a dozen rolls of little-bitty garbage bags, the perfect size to scoop litter into. I won't need to scrounge grocery bags for years!  (Also, the guy who helped me find my items at the auction house definitely remembered me from last time, and I suspect I may be hearing about the takis adventure forever now.)  Your other question at this point may be "what is reinforced cotton coil?" and the answer is that it is very weird and cool stuff. Imagine a cotton ball, the sort you use for makeup or cleaning or whatever. Now imagine a cotton ball that is still the same diameter, but four hundred feet long, wrapped up in a tight coil and shoved into a cardboard box. Reinforced just means that there is a paper tape inside the middle of this long cotton rope, giving it a bit more structure. Originally it's for salon use. It's the stuff they wrap around your head when you get a perm so the chemicals don't seep out onto your face, and something about manicures too, but I have bigger ideas. You have any idea how many kitten butts can be wiped with a cotton ball a quarter-mile long? (I have three boxes of the stuff, so 1200 feet and change.) How many ears can be cleaned? How many crocheted catnip mice stuffed? I'm sure there's lots of other things that can be done with it, and I'm open to ideas. If I get the drop spindle I want for Christmas, maybe I'll try and make yarn from it. So many uses!  With my van once again filled with cheaply acquired auction goodies, I headed back home to impress my guys with such weird bounty and also eat some lunch. In the afternoon, the kiddo had a dentist appointment, which has historically not been a great time for us. Kiddo is not quite as nervous of the dentist as he is of the phlebotomist, but it's pretty close. This was just a cleaning, though, so no shots and no pain and it was okay. He actually did really well holding still and following directions, and he doesn't need anything else for six more months. Yes! I was so happy that we walked next door to Gamestop where he picked out Fallout 4, which was on an excellent sale because it's kind of old now. He can't play it until he is done with his catch up work, but both he and my husband are very excited about it.  Husband made dinner, an experimental spaghetti variant involving crushing diced canned tomatoes with a potato masher, because I was trying to explain to MIL how to attach files to email again. She wanted to send me some documents so I can three-way-call with her and the financial advisor tomorrow, but she couldn't access her own email and couldn't figure out how to move the scanned documents (sixteen pages, each one its own file) anyplace that I could access them. She finally got one good picture of the first page with her camera and texted it to me, and then we decided that was enough for now. I don't know bologna about this stuff anyway, so hopefully the advisor will explain it to both of us tomorrow. The spaghetti was good.  Evening was less busy, which was nice. Kiddo took a shower with minimal complaining, and decided that he really wants to join our online Mutants and Masterminds group, which is two years older than he is by now. I told him that was fine, but he has to be willing to really work on his posts because this group requires good spelling and complete sentences in every post. (This is true, and ordinarily we probably wouldn't have a player this young despite no official rules against it, but we have put thousands of dollars into owning the site over the years and that ought to come with at least small privileges.) I don't know if he'll actually do it, but he's coming up with a character concept and we'll help him build it and see how it goes. It would be excellent writing practice! We'll get started on that tomorrow. 

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of Marvel: Week of May 8th, 2019

Best of this Week: Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #6 (Legacy #30) - Tom Taylor, Juann Cabal, Nolan Woodard, Federico Blee and Travis Lanham

I wasn’t expecting to be punched in the gut today.

The book begins with Spider-Man at the whim of Doctor Octopus, trapped under a cable from the Manhattan Bridge with the villain holding a boxed macguffin above his head. Suddenly, a new hero emerges: Spider-Bite a nine and half year old who handedly defeats Doc Ock until Vulture flies him away. With the young Spiders help, Peter is able to get the cable lifted from his back and the two chase down the fiends!

Upon making it onto the train that the two escaped to, it is revealed to be a trap set by The Green Goblin who reveals his new team of villains; The Sinister Sixty! In a beautiful, but very chaotic, double page spread of a STAGGERING SIXTY panels, the two defeat the villains before the real mastermind is revealed, a very upgraded Stilt-Man. Together, Spider-Man and Spider-Bite defeat Stilt-Man and retrieve the box, containing a Spider-Man action figure with many points of articulation and it is a very, very fun adventure! Until Spider-Bite starts coughing.

AND HERE’S THE GUT PUNCH.

I won’t spoil what happens for the rest of the issue, but the title of the book really lives up to ts idea. It’s not too often that we get these kinds of issue where a hero will do something small for the citizens of their universe. There’s always a huge threat or big bad villain to combat, but hardly time to be grounded, to connect with the reason that they fight crime in the first place. Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has been surprisingly amazing thus far when it comes to storytelling and art. While I have complained the Cabal’s art made NYC feel empty in the past, this book felt so full of life, even when there was so much happening on screen that it became a little hard to focus, he pulled it back. The action was amazing, dynamic and had a great flow to it, making sure that neither Spider-Man nor Spider-Bite completely outshined each other, but still giving most of the spotlight to the kid.

I want to see more issues like this from more series. Even if they’re only just fillers because this one was all kinds of exciting and heartbreaking and insanely inspiring at the same time. I highly recommend everyone to read this. Even if you haven’t read the other issues, this one stands up on its own as a very heartfelt story.

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There’s no hope for redemption in Namor now.

Runner Up: Invaders #5 - Chip Zdarsky, Carlos Magno, Butch Guice and Travis Lanham

Namor has always skirted the line between anti-hero and villain during his many years of publication. He fought against the Nazis in World War II, but he’s also had stalemates with world Governments for their treatments of the sea. He’s stood up for mutant rights, but he’s also become part of the Phoenix Force and fought the Avengers. He’s helped saved the universe more times than he can count, but he’s also helped destroy many more.

The last few years haven’t exactly been kind to him either. Between being murdered and brought back to life by the Squadron Supreme, losing control of Atlantis to Hydra Cap and having Celestials crash down into his home, Namor has had enough. Enlisting the help of the US Navy Commander grandson of one of his WWII war buddies, Namor plans to launch bombs that supposedly only targets humans.

Steve finds out about the initial plans and tries his best to cut off the Commander before he can help initiate the launch. He calls the Admiral in charge of the ship that the missiles are held on and when she tries to intervene, she and her crew are viciously murdered by the Commander and other Atlanteans.

At the same time, original Human Torch, Jim Hammond, tries to find Namor to put a stop to his plans, but is ambushed by the madman. Namor savagely beats him and notes that Jim could have helped Atlantis rebuild after its destruction during Secret Empire. Hammond tries to appeal to Namor's emotions and uses their friendship, but whatever Charles Xavier did to him during his amnesia period has driven him mad with grief and rage. Namor, egged on by the ghost of his best human friend, Tommy, says that he does what he does for his people and decapitates Hammond.

Captain America arrives shortly after calling the Avengers to help stop the launched missiles. He tells Namor that his plan has failed, that the Avengers will stop The Commanders missiles and they do. But Namor, being the cunning King/Prince he is, notes that while that may be true, they didn't stop the missiles that Atlantis launched in “retaliation” to America's aggression.

In my opinion, Namor has truly never been better than he is right now. His rage and deepening insanity are making him a more compelling character than his times as a petulant king or reluctant supervillain. I love the callbacks to his early Invaders years and the time gap between his disappearance and him being found post amnesia. This is the unhinged man that we all knew that he could be and I am here for it.

There's also a sort of Shakespearean quality to the story being told. The Prince is going mad because of the ghosts that he's seeing, with greater power than he has ever wielded. He betrays his friends and everyone else close to him because he only feels that they are out to destroy him, so he, in mad arrogance, goes after them. It's tragic to see a hero fall like this, which only makes this even more perfect.

Not only is the story awesome, but Guice and Magno's art still compliment and enhance each other. Magno draws everything with a beautiful near realism and colors very brightly, contrasting the very dark tone of the story. I particularly love the way that he depicts The Human Torch and how he looks enveloped in fire. Guice, of course, still dips in the grit and grim of the 1940s and shows a bit of a lighter side to Namor, back in the good old days.

Invaders continues to captivate me and seeing the new lengths that Namor is willing to go to protect us people is terrifying. I'm gleefully anticipating the next issue, high recommend!