Thursday, July 03, 2008

Best Comic

Two-and-a-half weeks of comics. Ugh. You guys are SO demanding.

Wait, no your not. I only write these things to make my friends who don't update their blogs regularly feel inadequate. ;-)

Here's the list:
Astonishing X-Men #25: Really good start for Warren Ellis' run. The group dynamics are really good. Also, Cyclops gets told he's the world's best superhero, which I used to agree with a long time ago.

Atom #25: Yeah, gotta quit this one.

Avengers Initiative #14: Not too bad: a sort of comedy of errors style twist at the end. One of the more interesting Secret Invasion titles.

Batman #678: I grabbed this one just to catch up. I think I saw this movie: it had John Lithgow and Denzel Washington in it. It was called "Ricochet.

Blue Beetle # 28: A decent enough issue. Jaime's cast is getting so huge that I don't know who everybody is anymore, though.

Brave and the Bold #14: A really good issue. I heart Deadman.

Final Crisis #2: As mentioned before, Grant Morrison really did well with this issue. Not as crazy as Seven Soldiers, more surreal than countdown. Just right. Loved the Japanese superheroes.

Green Lantern #32: The retconning of Green Lantern continues. Let's see if Johns can make Sinestro a sympathetic character. :-)

JLA #22: This feels like a total deja vu moment, as we come back to Amazo. I think Amazo has become overused this past year or so, with the Meltzer run, then the Kid Amazo JLA Classified run, and now this. Yeesh.

JSA Classified #39: Ok...next issue, let's have someone besides Wildcat.

Mighy Avengers #15: The making of the skrull Hank Pym. Very cool. Hank Pym is the Aquaman of the Avengers.

New Avengers #42: The making of Jessica Drew. Not as cool as the Hank Pym issue.

Noble Causes #35: I didn't want this, but it snuck its way into my stack. I still don't want it. The art is kinda lesser grade than previously, and the plot isn't as compelling.

Number of the Beast #6: This one kicked it up a notch as the 1950's heroes of the Wildstorm Universe finally wake up from their computer-generated dream. Next issue: see how they deal with the Authority! I'm hoping The High pummels Apollo.

Rann-Thanagar Holy War #3: Still really good. I love this series, though I think the cast is too big now. They should have left Animal Man and Starfire at home, though I'm sure Starfire is much happier in this comic than in the current Titians series, and Animal Man is just happy being in a book.

Trinity #4
Trinity #5: The series is still doing its job. I'm not getting into the tarot reader stuff in the back of the book, though.

Wolverine #66: This is a really good story. Highly recommend.

Wolverine First Class #4: This book lost a lot of its humor somewhere. I hope it gets it back.

Wolverine Origins #26: I really need to drop this book.

X-Men 1st Class #13: Still very good. Interacting with a young Aaron Stack is just awesome.

The verdict? Lots of really good stuff. I'm going to keep Final Crisis on top, but I'm going back to read Wolverine #66, if that tells you something.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

When carbon counting becomes ridiculous

Another Sciencedaily article. Here's the upshot: Trees rot in water slower than in air. This means that the carbon they are storing doesn't get released into the environment as fast.

What's the suggestion here? That we fill our rivers with dead trees? Seems to me that dead trees that rot and "release their carbon into the environment" are basically becoming plant food for other trees at a higher rate of speed. Are we that hungry to save carbon that we want to starve other trees? I mean, this article reaaaallly stretches towards the global warming point. Dead trees in rivers nor dead trees on the forest floor are the root (ha!) of our carbon problems. I think we can find better fall (ha! again) guys than that.

However, it is cool, science-wise, that there are some 14,000 year old trees still unrotted in the waters underneath the forests of Missouri.