One step ahead of disaster

A couple of weeks ago, I was selected for the dreaded task of Jury Duty. I had been called once before while in college at Eastern Michigan, but since it was almost three hours to drive back home to Grand Rapids, I took the exemption. As someone who has always been intrigued by the legal process, I was interesting in seeing how the process worked first hand. My interest was dented slightly by the fact that, because I live in Wayne County, the court I was selected to serve at was the Third Judicial Court at the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in downtown Detroit.

I wasn’t thrilled to go Downtown, not because of the stereotypes of violence and safety concerns (I’ve had nothing but positive experiences when I’ve visited the city), but because I’ve never really developed a sense of how to get around down there. I’m familiar with the Wayne State area, Greektown, Foxtown (Comerica Park & Ford Field), and Joe Louis Arena/Cobo Hall , but how to get from one to another and how they relate to each other is just something I don’t know. And now that it is construction season, Downtown would be even more difficult to get around. As luck would have it, the night before the day of my service, a bunch of people from my work went to the Detroit Tigers/Texas Rangers game. Not only did the Tigers put up the best offense of a disappointing season thusfar (a 19 to 6 victory), but I was able to get my bearings for the next day since the court was near Comerica.

Well the day of service came, and I was able to find the court and parking somewhat without incident. The list of prohibited items for the building made it seem like they were extremely paranoid (and somewhat ridiculous) and that security was going to be tough, but the security check in process was very smooth. Once all of the juror were accounted for, a short, but cheesy, orientation video was shown (disappointingly featuring one of my all-time favorite movies, 12 Angry Men). Then the court staff went into more details about how the day was going to go. I want to give props to ladies that were running the show. They did an excellent job of explaining the process of jury selection, sympathizing with the fact that most, if not all, of us did not want to be there, and making sure all of us understood what was going on as the day went on. And they did it in such a way that added humor and avoided insulting anyone’s intelligence or falling into a monotonous sounding routine.

I’m not sure if it was just the policy of that particular court, but the Third Court uses the “One Day/One Trial” term of service. This means if one servers a full day without being called or is called to serve on one trial, that person’s service is complete. I brought a few books to read and got comfortable with my back to the clock, fully prepared to last the whole day. I perked up when the names were called for the various trials that were going on, but was never one of potential jurors to be called. Again the staff did a great job of keeping us informed and giving us periodic breaks to get some air. When it got to be noon, there were 66 of us left in the room that had not been called or let out for lunch. We were waiting on one trial that may need us all for a large jury pool. However, 12:30 came and there was no need for us and we were all sent home with a letter saying we had served and a thank you. I contemplated grabbing some tickets for the afternoon Tiger’s game since I was a couple of blocks from Comerica, but decided I had spent enough money there the night before. I had a nice gyro in Greektown (I’m a little bit better with that part of Detroit now) and went home.

So, even though it would have been somewhat inconvenient to be involved in a trial, it would have been interesting to see a little bit more of the jury process. If what one of my coworkers said was true, I’ll probably get called again sooner rather than later. Still, like I said, the staff there did an awesome job. As bad as the political reputation is in Detroit (most of it deserved), we definitely need to give credit to those who do the thankless job of making jury duty less of a hassle than it already is.

Detroit is a great sports town. I’m a proud fan of all four major sports (even the Lions) and feel blessed that (despite the Lions), the teams are all legitimate contenders in their respective sports. I enjoy the Pistons the most, since I’m a big basketball fan. As much of a joy Rasheed, Rip, Chauncy, and the rest are to watch, the Pistons can be equally as frustrating. This first round match up with Philadelphia has been more of a challenge than expected. As I write, things seem to be back under control as the Pistons take control of the series 3-2.

Detroit fans are great. They are passionate about their teams, yet very knowledgeable about the fine details of the sports as well. There are a lot of people that call in to the local sports station, WDFN, that make great points and point out things that I hadn’t thought of. However, this season of playoff basketball has brought a pet peeve of mine to the surface more so than ever before. God love the Piston fan, but he is overly enamored with the bench and overly critical of the coach. Rick Carlisle, Larry Brown, and now Flip Saunders, no coach can do right in the eyes of the fans. If the Pistons win, it’s because of the players and despite the coach and, heaven help us if they lose, it’s all on the coach.

I’ve heard more piling on of Flip Saunder than I can comprehend in these five games. He needs to play the bench, why aren’t we seeing more of <insert player here>, he’s playing the bench too much, he can’t control Rasheed, the other team is making adjustments but Flip isn’t, the players are disinterested and ignoring the coach, I’ve heard it all.

It’s not just basketball that the coach is so critiqued, just ask former University of Michigan coach Lloyd Carr. I’ve often wondered why Detroiters hammer coaches so much. My theory is it’s the union mentality around here, giving us a natural distrust of authority and the tendency to blame the guy in charge.

Flip is somewhat of an easy target. He is a soft spoken guy, and has some weird mannerisms. He’s not a fire-n-brimstone guy. Sometimes it seems like the players are running things and he’s not able to reign them in. I think he’s a pretty good coach. He’s taken the shackles of the of lumbering defensive style of the previous coaches and made the Pistons into a pretty effective offensive team. Good thing, because the league is changing to more of an offensive game. When they’re on, any one on the floor can kill you at any time. They rotate the ball and will find the mismatch that givens them a big advantage (I remember a Cleveland game where they found and scored on Daniel Gibson practically every possession, running him out of the game). And they still play good team defense. It’s not the Bad Boys, but the NBA is different. A team has to be flexible, communicate, and help instead of just committing hard fouls.

Which brings me to the point of my rant here. At some point, the players have to play and execute. A coach can only do so much. When your best players are taking a night off, you’re going to lose and probably not going to look very good in doing it. Part of the adventure of being a Piston fan is as proud as you are when they rise up and beat the crap out of San Antonio and Phoenix, they put up the occasional game against a Philadelphia where they lose respect for their opponent and don’t give maximum effort. Philly is in this series because Chauncy was being outplayed for huge stretches by Andre Miller, Rip becomes a turnover machine, and Rasheed relaxes and doesn’t post up or block shots.

Is Flip the greatest coach in the world? No, I don’t agree with everything he does. However, he needs his players to execute because he is putting them in positions to be successful. They also needs to match the intensity of the opponent. They seem to be on the right path now, but they need to keep it up.

And as much crap as the Pistons have been taking, the great hype machine Boston Celtics are in a real dogfight against a really bad team in Atlanta. Who saw that one coming?

This blog has been very comics-heavy since I began it, but now I’m going to finally break away from that fine topic and talk audiobooks. I enjoy listening to audiobooks and podcasts at work on my Ipod. For some reason I like spoken word better than music while I program away. Obviously, sometimes my mind is working on solving a particular problem and not so focused on what I’m listening to, so I listen to audiobooks of books that I’ve already read. I recently listened to the audiobook for Destiny, the first book of the Rogue Angel series.

For those not familiar with the series, Rogue Angel is a series of action/adventure novels centering around archaeologist Annja Creed. It is published by the Golden Eagle division of Harlequin under the house name of Alex Archer. Annja falls into the mold of swashbuckling adventurers like Indiana Jones and Laura Croft. Her archaeological research and occasional job for the TV show Chasing History’s Monsters taking her to various parts of the globe for her adventures. Annja’s scientific mindset is shaken when she discovers that she is the heir to the mystical sword of Joan of Arc and chosen champion of justice. Naturally, she’s beautiful, an expert martial artist, unflappable even in the most extremely stressful situations, and cleverly overcomes all obstacles. Annja is a little too good at times in the books, but they are what they are, entertaining and fun.

The audiobooks are produced by a company called GraphicAudio. Their slogan is “A Movie In Your Mind,” and really, that’s what it is. Destiny features a full ensemble cast, a full musical score, and more sound effects than you can shake a stick at (I’m sure they even have a shaking stick sound effect). GraphicAudio does an excellent job at bringing the story to life by using gun fire and tense music during the action sequences, clinking silverware and ambient conversation during a dinner scene, and having excellent voice actors. You can literally feel your pulse pick up a little bit when the action is coming fast and furious. I noticed while I was marking off the chapters that the dialogue was changed a little to fit more realistic dialogue and make the book into one continuous story, but nothing is taken away. If anything, the listener gets more out of the experience. People that listen to audiobooks know that they can be really expensive, even when read by a single narrator. One can buy an MP3 CD of a book from GraphicAudio for $12.99 and regular audio CDs for $20.00. That’s awesome.

While listening to Destiny, I was struck by one thought. I had an AM only radio that used to belong to my Grandfather. I used it to listen to Detroit Tiger and Red Wings games while I did my homework for school. However on non sporting nights, the station would replay “old-time” radio programs. Even though it was decades after they were first broadcast, I became a big fan of Burns & Allen, the Jack Benny Show, Dragnet, the Green Hornet, and others. What struck me while I was listening to Destiny is that radio, in its golden age, was doing the same things over 60 years ago. Most shows had a band that provided music to introduce and set the scenes, people acted out scenes, and sound effects were low tech, but did the job of helping the listener imagine what was going on in the program. The perception is that television had killed radio drama, but here we are in the new millennium using the same techniques in audiobooks, with naturally more technology in play.

So I’m a big fan of what GraphicAudio is doing, both in quality of product and price point. I hope they do well and continue to deliver great audiobooks at an excellent price. Definitely check it out, they have a pretty big library of titles to chose from. Also, if you travel a lot or just enjoy audiobooks, pick up a copy of an old radio show. It may seem dated on the surface, but much of the humor still translates today. Also, since I never stray too much from comics, the adventures of Annja Creed have moved over to comics as well. Rogue Angel: Teller of Tall Tales, a six issue miniseries, is now available from IDW.

Yeah, I know I said my indie snobbery was an exception rather than the rule. So here we are again, another great read from a growing favorite publisher of mine, the ever eclectic Oni Press. This week’s Ryan’s Read is Wasteland #15. Written by Antony Johnston, with art by Christopher Mitten, and covers by Ben Templesmith, one is going to be hard pressed to find a better triple threat of creative talent on one book.

Wasteland is another book that I “discovered” after an interview on Fanboy Radio of the aforementioned Antony Johnston. I’m not normally a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story kind of guy, but the premise sounded interesting as Antony described it and the online previews looked cool. After picking up the first issue I was hooked.

The story takes place one hundred years after the Big Wet, an unspecified disaster that has destroyed society and turned America into a desert wasteland. The first arc introduces the reader to a scavenging trader named Michael as he comes to the downtrodden town of Providence and meets the town sheriff, a woman named Abi. As the story expands, we discover that Abi and the mysterious Michael share unusual powers. But don’t think it’s another superpower book, the world of Wasteland contains a fascinating religious and political subtext. The rural people are centered spiritually by shamanic Sun-Singers, who’s myth of Mother Sun, Father Moon, and fabled A-Ree-Yass-I may contain the key to the mystery of the Big Wet. The city aristocracy of Newbegin on the other hand, are lead by a deified blind Lord Founder and a council of artisans that closely guard the remaining technology that keeps the city running. Issue 15 adds another layer to the story, with the origin of the Sand Eaters, desert predators along the lines of Tuscan Raiders from Star Wars. The cool thing is that the first part of the story is told from the sand eaters camp. The bad thing is the accent is heavy and along the lines of, “FINAAALEEE IZZA SANDIIZ ORRAAGIIIIIIN! SEEEEAS KIIIILSA NASSSSSTIS!” A little hard to make out, but a cool idea none the less.

I love this series because of the mystery. Every time I re-read my back issues, I find little clues that I missed. I don’t pretend to have the answers, Mr. Johnston holds his secrets close to the vest. At the end of each issue, we have Walking The Dust, a prose diary of the travels of a woman named Ankya Ofsteen. She has yet to appear in the story, but her observations again add more layers to the world. So great story, re-readability, awesome art (just look at the Templesmith covers!). Two trades out and you can even download the first issue for free from Oni. There…you have no excuses. Go check it out now.

Furthering the theme of going outside the box, the second part of Ryan’s Reads (which should catch me up until Wednesday) brings us Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 Hardcover by David Petersen published by Archaia Studios Press. A couple of things attracted me to this book. The first is the beautiful illustrations and unique “wide” format. It stood out on the new book display at Borders. The second is I’m an unabashed supporter of anyone local in music or comics. So when I found out David was not only a Southeast Michigan native, but a fellow Eastern Michigan University alum, I was definitely going to show some support and buy his book.

Bias aside, the concept is really cool and beautifully executed. It’s not easy being a mouse, being hunted and eaten by pretty much every animal above on the food chain and just trying to survive under harsh conditions. In this story, intelligent mice have banded together for mutual safety and prosperity into a medival type society of small villages and cities. Enter the Mouse Guard, an order of mice dedicated to defense of the colony. The Guard’s duties not only include fighting off larger predators, but guiding common mice safely from village to village, finding new paths through unsafe territories, patrolling borders and watching for weather change. This story follows three members of the guard in relatively peaceful times, Saxon, Kenzie, and Lieam. They happen upon a traitorous plot within the Guard that threatens the great city of Lockhaven, the center of mouse society and the Guard itself. The great illustrations make our heroes cute, but don’t think that they are as quiet or as meek as…well…the average mouse. We see them battle giant snakes and a horde of large crabs. One of the things I enjoy most are the little snippets of Guard history as the introduction to each chapter. These come in the form of Guard oaths and wisdom and they really add to the grand scope of this world of mice. I look forward to the follow-up chronicling the Winter, though I may have to track down the individual issues rather than wait for the next hardcover.

So there you go, two books that are pretty far apart in terms of type of story, but both well worth the read. I find it somewhat odd that my first 3 Ryan’s Reads are all indie books. It makes me look like quite the sophisticated indie comic snob. That’s not really the case. Most of what I read is the standard Marvel/DC superhero fair, but these 3 have stood out above the more mainstream titles. Also these books may not be on the average comic reader’s radar. So broaden your horizons and check them out.

Wow, it didn’t take long for me to get behind on this blog.

It’s been a couple of slow weeks in the comic world so I took a couple of chances on some things. I finished up a couple of those chances this weekend, so I resume my Read o’ the Week with one for each of the two weeks that I’ve neglected to post. First up is Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley, published in digest form (volumes 1-4) from Oni Press. I had been ignoring a lot of the great press it’s getting from places like Fanboy Radio and the like. I was prepared not to like it. From what I had seen and heard about it, it seemed on the surface that it was a book attempting to capitalize on the manga craze. The art seemed weird, with a its strange hybrid manga look to it. And with the main character being in a band, I expected a certain level of music snobbery. I thought there was no way it could be worth the hype it was getting. I mean, a movie? Come on. Having said that, I saw volume 2 at my local shop. It being a slow week, I trusted my fanboy brethren and picked it up.

My assumptions were way off base, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

You can’t help but love Canadian Scott Pilgrim, the protagonist of the story. Though he is in a band, Sex Bob-Omb, his life really has no direction and wanders aimlessly from day to day, sleeping in to the afternoon and going to band practice. He’s 23 but dates the 17-year-old Knives Chau simply for the uncomplicated nature of their relationship (holding hands and listening to her talk about what’s going on at her high school). Everything changes when he meets the literal girl of his dreams at the library, Ramona Flowers. As he falls for the American delivery girl, he discovers that he must defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends before he can date her. The plot goes back and forth between slice of life and absurd anime inspired battles. There are a lot of great supporting characters, my favorite being Scott’s hilarious gay roommate Wallace Wells. There are a lot of laugh out loud moments, both during the battles and just when all the characters meet at the local club. I also like the random, old school rpg elements, like Scott getting a +500 Exp for getting a job. I appreciate Bryan’s love of his home town Toronto, he includes local landmarks like Honest Ed’s and the public library. Scott Pilgrim is a lot of fun and a great read (I bought all 4 volumes). I was wrong to think I wouldn’t like it. Take a chance like I did and you won’t be disappointed.

Ah another type of entry to challenge my drive to blog consistently.

This week I happened upon the first issue Terry Moore’s new series Echo from Abstract Studios. I guess you could call me a passive fan of Terry’s previous work, Strangers In Paradise. I read the first trade and enjoyed it, but got wrapped up in other reads and didn’t end up continuing on to the rest of the trades (I had my wife read it and got her the pocket book volume #1 partially to pick it back up again). I had heard of Terry’s new book but didn’t know much about it. It looked interesting enough to take a chance, so I did.

Well now that it finds its way to my first Read of the Week, you can probably tell that I liked it. From the author’s own words, a spoiler free description:

“Echo is the story of Julie Martin, a photographer taking pictures in the desert when she finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

What we have appears to be a standard superhero origin story. There’s the government/military testing a technology, said technology meeting an untimely end, our main character Julie being at the scene when it happens, and Julie being affected by the technology. Its too so to tell if this is going to end up a hero book, but the mystery and anticipation of where the story goes is a big draw for me. From what I know about Moore’s other work, I can expect great character depth and outstanding artwork. I’m interested to see how it’s received by fans of his previous work.

So I’m intrigued and will definitely pick up the forthcoming issues to see how it turns out. If you’re a SiP fan, check it out because you love Terry Moore. If you’re not, try something different and check it out.

Guys that have read comics for a long time, more than likely at one time, have faced the issue of trying to make his wife/girlfriend understand the habit, love, and attraction of comics. The easiest thing in the world would be to give the significant other an issue of Spider-Man or something and she would love it, and thus the enlightenment of the greatness of comics is revealed. I’m very lucky. I introduced the lovely wife to anime, which I got back into around the time we started dating. She really enjoyed the shows that we were watching together and that translated that into her reading the corresponding manga of some of the series. Since her manga collection now dwarfs my graphic novel collection, the rest is history.

I was e-mailing recommended reads to a friend of mine, and he was wondering what he should have his wife read that she would enjoy. It got me thinking about what comics would appeal to women who don’t read comic (I definitely don’t want to offend the female comic readers out there). Now if I could come up with the perfect way to get females to read more comics, I’d have a nice corner office in Marvel’s NYC headquarters. But, maybe we can come up with some tips to point someone in the right direction.

My friend said that he had his wife read Mark Waid’s run on Fantastic Four and she really liked it. She liked that the FF is a family and that Invisible Woman is a strong character. My lovely wife concurs, she likes kick-ass female characters. My wife also likes the notion of the “sizable chunk” of reading material. She likes the manga because it is a few hundred pages to read for ever volume, verses a comic of 22 pages a month. I don’t get too worked up over the fact that she reads manga easily but doesn’t translate that into its American counterpart. Manga is sequential art and therefore a comic, so we both read comics in my opinion. I try every now and again to have her read one of my books. She really liked Runaways, until her favorite character was killed off (I won’t spoil who it was for those who haven’t read it), and Buffy Season 8. Hope may be on the horizon. She really likes romance in her manga and regular novels. One of her favorite romance authors, Sherrilyn Kenyon, is adapting her novel series Lords of Avalon into comic form. The first issue is available from Marvel and it was pretty good. With popular writers like Sherrilyn and Laurell K. Hamilton (of Anita Blake fame), there may be more comics that will interest female readership.

So what have we learned? Here are some tips to look for when trying to get your wife or girlfriend into comics. 1) Look for a strong female character, 2) Go with a trade paperback version rather than the individual issues, 3) It may not have to be the overall emphasis of the story, but chicks dig romance, and finally 4) Don’t underestimate the power of Manga.

Yes, I’m a little late to the party.

I was thinking to myself one day, “You know, I have opinions. They can’t be any stupider than the rest of the millions of people out there on the little interweb, writing them for all the world to see in their blog. I should get in on the action too and start blogging.” And so the experiment begins. One of my least favorite things in college was writing, so we shall see how long this goes.

A little about myself, I find myself in my early 30s as a web programmer doing mainly Flash at a pretty cool web company north of Detroit, MI. I’m married to my lovely wife of 4 years, Elizabeth, and have two great German Shepherds, Remy & Kiba. Like the stereotypical Gemini that I am, I have many diverse interests which will hopefully give me something to write about here. My main interest is comics. I’ve been a long time fan of the superhero genre, but these days I’ve started to branch out a little into some of the smaller publishers and imprints and found some great stories. I also enjoy anime, manga, and reading young adult fantasy and mysteries (for some reason, YA breaks out of convention and stereotypes of those genres more than the adult versions do). I’m a long time gamer. My favorites, include Sly Cooper and Ratchet & Clank for the Playstation, any Zelda game for Nintendo, and Counterstrike for PC. To counteract decidedly geeky tendencies, I’m also a big sports fan. I love the Detroit team, even the penance of the Detroit sports fan - the Lions, and University of Michigan. Outside of the aforementioned Lions, it is a great time to be a fan in the Motor City. College football and the NBA are probably the tops for me, but I enjoy most of the main sports to some degree and I’m even getting into the English Premier League (Soccer, for the unenlightened).

I hope all those interests will provide good fodder for this blog. Even if the only person reading is my wife (I love you, babe!), here it is for all to read. I hope you enjoy.