News and Notes

Last night was also comic book night. Here are some notable things I picked up:

• The Authority #8, by Warren Ellis, Bryan Hitch, and Paul Neary (Wildstorm): "Shiftships" comes to a rather unsatisfying conclusion. In the letter column, Ellis basically says that The Authority is fun because you get to see really powerful people blowing things up in dramatic manner, but most of the explosions in this issues are off-screen or seen from a distance, and the various ramifications of the invasion from a parallel Earth are not really explored at all. Things going boom isn't in and of itself all that interesting, and "Shiftships" could have used a few more issues to work out right.

• JLA #36, by Grant Morrison, Howard Porter, and John Dell (DC): The first installment of "World War Three" features the return of several individuals who almost defeated the JLA in earlier issues, who have now teamed up to take them on together, just as an immensely powerful -- thing which predates the New Gods threatens to lay waste to the universe. Bad timing, eh? Morrison is naturally enough ending his run on the series with a big bang, though we'll see how well the story holds up. After his first few stories - much like most of what I've ever read by him - the writing on JLA has gotten quite erratic as the issues pile on.

• JLA: Primeval, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Ariel Olivetti (DC): One of DC's expensive "prestige format" books, one rather wonders why they bothered with the nice packaging for what could easily be a fill-in in the regular JLA series (though it's better than the weak fill-ins that Mark Waid has contributed). A mental patient has somehow contacted the Old Gods (a veiled Lovecraft reference) and is devolving the Earth (specifically Dallas) and the JLA back to their prehistoric forms. The devolution doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and the moral of the story seems to be either "don't piss off the Old Gods" or "if your heart is pure, you can resist being devolved back to a monkey". Olivetti's artwork is the best thing going for this story.

• The Sandman: The Dream Hunters hardcover, by Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano (DC): Gaiman retells an old Japanese fairy tale in prose form, with illustrations by Amano, using characters from Gaiman's Sandman comic. The effect is remarkably like Gaiman's earlier work Stardust. The story's not bad, but I found the fabulist stories of Sandman to be among the weakest issues of the series, since they're not really grounded in well-drawn characters or situations, and that's the problem here, as well. Amano's artwork ranges from good to sketchy; it's often hard to tell what an illustration is trying to convey. Overall, I was disappointed in this, expecting something more like the regular series.

Also yesterday I went back to the eye doctor. My left eye has seemed rather weak since I got my new lenses; things are frequently fuzzier than in my right. Which is the way it was with my old lenses. So I'm going to get a new left lens, which should be better, and hopefully will make my eyes equal. The current left lens is not unuseable, but the difference between the eyes is annoying.

So the New Yank Yorkies won another World Series, huh? I watched about ten minutes of Game Three as the Braves wilted and were swept in the Series. My disgust that these two teams have consistently outspent almost everyone and plowed through most of their competition for years now simply rendered the Series uninteresting to me.

I take some small consolation that the Red Sox are the only team who managed to put up a decent fight against the Yorkies in the playoffs, but otherwise, who cares?

I ordered a Handspring Visor PDA today, though I guess it will be at least a month before a receive it. I did order the USB synchronization cradle for it, since I learned that I can buy a PCI card for my (non-USB) G3 Mac for about $35 which will let me use USB peripherals. That seemed like the way to go - start buying peripherals which will still be useable when I buy my next machine, which will almost certainly be USB-native.

I'm looking forward to getting the Visor. I presently have an Apple Newton 100, which is not only a discontinued product, but it's the earliest edition of that product. I bought it nearly five years ago, and it was on the edge of obsolescence then (yes, I got it cheap, to try out). It's quite slow, and is much larger than PDAs today. The Visor uses PalmOS, and is small enough to fit in my pocket. Should be a great step up!

I seem to have generated what may be a new digital age term: e-quaintance, to refer to people whom you know through the Internet (mainly, through e-mail, mailing lists, or some other interactive forum, as opposed to simply reading their Web page). I used the term in some e-mail this week, and one of my readers (who ultimately received the mail) said he liked it. So, credit to me!

Today I had lunch with fellow journaller Jenn. I made a small effort to interest her in Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series. Otherwise, we basically had a good lunch chat. She'll be starting a new job soon, and ironically it turns out that I know the fellow who'll be replacing her at her old job (well, kind of; I think he's replacing the headcount, but filling a different job description).

Oh, and I updated my list of comic books for sale, in case anyone out there cares. Inquiries have pretty much trickled down to nothing in the past year, and I think eBay is largely to blame. I may buy myself a scanner before too long and start selling there myself, just because I want to get the damn comics out of my closet.