19 February 1998: Just Fine, A Little Too, and Not Enough

Thursday, 19 February 1998:

Just Fine, A Little Too, and Not Enough

Despite the implication in the e-mail I described yesterday, it turns out I can wear whatever I want to my company's annual dinner. So I think I will.

Well, it's mid-February and we've mostly been getting rain here in Wisconsin. No, nothing like what California's been getting, but certainly atypical for this time of year around these parts. It was coming down quite hard on Monday, and we've had a steady drizzle all day today. It may get up near 50 over the weekend. Strange weather!

Yesterday's comic book haul was quite modest, so I picked up a couple of paperback collections of old issues of Captain America to tide me over (as if I don't have a four-inch-tall stack of comics waiting to be read already):

War and Remembrance is a "what-might-have-been" collection. Back in the early 80s, writer Roger Stern and artist John Byrne teamed up to produce nine solid issues of Marvel's patriotic Avenger. The stories are all quite good, including the single issue in which Cap considers making a bid for the US Presidency, but there's a sense that they were merely gearing up for a good, long run with some very weighty stories along the way, as several germs of long-term plot threads are introduced (including Bernie Rosenthal, who would become Cap's love interest under another writer before being unceremoniously written out by a third writer).

Roger Stern is one of comic books' greatest unsung talents, probably because he mostly applies himself to superhero yarns. But he always has solid plots with outstanding characterization, treating his figures as real people, not archetypes. If he has a weakness, it's that his villains are often one-dimensional, but it's not enough to really hurt his stories. For my money, his best work was his mid-80s run on Doctor Strange.

Operation: Rebirth was published towards the end of Cap's first series, only two or three years ago. It involves picking up the pieces left after the rather messy final plot under writer Mark Gruenwald came to an end. (Gruenwald is another solid writer, but he definitely outstayed his welcome on Cap.) Writer Mark Waid and penciller Ron Garney bring a certain grittiness to Cap's adventures, which they're continuing in his current series which started just a few months ago. Waid has done better work, and his and Garney's rendition of Cap makes him seem a little too aloof, intense, and even downright nasty. It's decent stuff, worth reading, but I'd like them to loosen up a little bit.

I finally won my first auction on eBay today. Actually, I won three of them: Old issues of Justice League of America that someone was selling. I'm paying a nifty bundle for seven old comics, but if he represented their condition accurately, then I'm actually paying somewhat below market price. Good deal!

Yesterday's Babylon 5 episode was "Learning Curve", which involved a thug trying to gain control of the station's underworld, and the involvement of a couple of novice Rangers visiting the station. It was a very weak episode, with several plot holes (Why didn't the thugs kill the Ranger they assaulted? How did the Rangers find the thugs afterwards?), and seemingly little purpose but to spout nice platitudes about why Rangers are who they are. Too bad, as it ended a short run of strong episodes.

Can we reasonably infer from the episode's final scene that Sheridan and Lochley are former lovers? While it could spice things up among some of the rather goody-goody characters, it does seem like a kind of lame contrivance, don't you think?

Michael Rawdon (Contact)