nixsight » an eye out

#MOMBcast 42 – Comic Timings

Nicolas Papaconstantinou — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:54:26 +0000

On #MOMBcast 42, we talked about the following comics:

@JaneMOMB
09:20 Demo #6 (Brian Wood/Becky Cloonan)

@JamesMOMB
14:40 Scarlet #1 (Brian Michael Bendis/Alex Maleev)

@nixsight
23:20 Thor: The Mighty Avenger #1 (Roger Langridge/Chris Samnee)

33:10 Nu Earth – 2000AD tribute book from Failboat Press

38:00 Spotlight: Clumsy (Jeffrey Brown)

MOMBcast 42 is here.
All other episodes are available here.

#MOMBcast 41 – Comic Timings

Nicolas Papaconstantinou — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:30:31 +0000

On #MOMBcast 41, we talked about the following comics:

@JaneMOMB
16:30 Madame Xanadu #24 (Matt Wagner/Marley Zarcone)

@JamesMOMB
23:10 Northlanders #29 (Brian Wood/Fiona Staples)

@DavidWynne
29:00 Captain Swing & The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island #2 (Warren Ellis/Raulo Caceres)

@nixsight
44:10 Invincible Iron Man Annual (Matt Fraction/Salvador Larroca)
45:30 Thor #611 (Kieron Gillen/Richard Elson)

54:10 Particle Fiction! (David Wynne)

01:14:30 Spotlight: The Life And Times Of Martha Washington In The Twenty-First Century (Frank Miller/Dave Gibbons)

MOMBcast 41 is here.
All other episodes are available here.

#MOMBcast 40 – Comic Timings

Nicolas Papaconstantinou — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:41:23 +0000

On #MOMBcast 40, we talked about the following comics:

@JamesMOMB
10:30 Sea Bear & Grizzly Shark #1 (Ryan Ottley/Jason Howard)

@JaneMOMB
20:10 Joe The Barbarian #6 (Grant Morrison/Sean Murphy)

@Chris_TOMP
27:30 X-Factor #206 (Peter David/Valentine de Landro)
28:40 Avengers #2 (Brian Michael Bendis/John Romita Jr)
29:20 Thunderbolts #145 (Jeff Parker/Kevin Walker)

@nixsight
45:10 Zatanna #01 & 02 (Paul Dini/Stephane Roux & Karl Story)

51:00 Daredevil: Shadowland spotlight by Chris_TOMP

01:09:00 Spotlight: Runaways Vol 1 (Brian K Vaughan/Adrian Alphona)

MOMBcast 40 is here.
All other episodes are available here.

#MOMBcast 39 – Comic Timings

Nicolas Papaconstantinou — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:02:47 +0000

On #MOMBcast 39, we talked about the following comics:

@JaneMOMB
12:30 The Killer – Modus Vivendi #1 (Matz/Luc Jacamon)

@nixsight
22.40 DV8 #3 (Brian Wood/Rebekah Isaacs)
25:30 New Mutants #14 (Zeb Wells/Ibraim Roberson & Lan Medina & Nathan Fox)
31:30 New Avengers #1 (Brian Michael Bendis/Stuart Immonen)

38:30 Hideously ill-conceived but heartfelt Al Williamson tribute

MOMBcast Submit! finds this week:
41:30 Ulises Farinas
45:30 Neill Cameron

48:00 Spotlight: Astonishing X-Men Vols 1-4 (Joss Whedon/John Cassaday)

MOMBcast 39 is here.
All other episodes are available here.

#MOMBcast 38 – Comic Timings

Nicolas Papaconstantinou — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:00:51 +0000

On #MOMBcast 38, we talked about the following comics:

@nixsight
15:00 Daytripper #7 (Fabio Moon/Gabriel Ba)

@JaneMOMB
18:50 Demo #5 (Brian Wood/Becky Cloonan)
24:00 Madame Xanadu #23 (Matt Wagner/Amy Reeder Hadley)

@JamesMOMB
27:50 Astonishing X-Men – Xenogenesis #2 (Warren Ellis/Kaare Andrews)
35:20 Chew #11 (John Layman/Rob Guillory)

47:40 Spotlight: Pluto Vol 1 (Naoki Urasawa/Takashi Nagasaki/Osamu Tezuka)

MOMBcast 38 is here.
All other episodes are available here.

#MOMBcast 37 – Comic Timings

Nicolas Papaconstantinou — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:54:54 +0000

On #MOMBcast 37, we talked about the following comics:

@nixsight
21:00 Daytrippers (Fabio Moon/Gabriel Ba)
48:00 UK Thing 2010 – Small Press Highlights (Various)

@JamesMOMB
30:00 Joe The Barbarian (Grant Morrison/Sean Murphy)
36:15 Marvel: Siege (Brian Michael Bendis & Everyone Else/Olivier Coipiel & Everyone Else)
45:30 2000AD (Various)
54:00 Particle Fiction (David Wynne)

@nixsight
58:10 Thought Balloons – Ryan K Lindsay’s high-concept script-writing site – http://thoughtbaloons.blogspot.com/
01:00:00 S.W.O.R.D (Kieron Gillen/Steven Sanders)

@JaneMOMB
01:05:00 Demo (Brian Wood/Becky Cloonan)
01:12:00 Spotlight: Kill Your Boyfriend (Grant Morrison/Philip Bond)

MOMBcast 37 is here.
All other episodes are available here.

Lost 0616 – What They Died For

Nicolas Papaconstantinou — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:00:45 +0000

Jeremy Paxman is doing the full Morris, about the spree shootings earlier today, so it seems like as good a time as any to escape into the brighter, sharper world of Lost.

Oh, yeah, I forgot… Previously on Lost, three beloved characters got obliterated. One literally, and two disposed of at the bottom of the ocean, where their bodies won’t ever be retrieved. Sigh.

So, we start on Jack’s eye – this shot is a favourite convention of the show, and if somebody hasn’t already compiled all of them together, somewhere, it’s bound to happen soon enough.

He’s bleeding inexplicably from his neck again – this time, it’s a pretty serious wound, and it sticks with him once he leaves the mirror, still visible at the breakfast table later on.

Claire is staying with him and his son, and she’s there when Desmond, pretending to be someone from Oceanic, calls to tell Jack that they have found his father’s body, lost at the beginning of this season.

It’s a ruse! Desmond is clearly trying to get the Lostees in the parallel together at LAX. FOR HIS OWN NEFARIOUS PURPOSES!

Jack’s son mentioned his concert later today, and Jack promised that he would attend. Is it cynical to think that he probably won’t make it?

Back on the island, Jack is trying to clean up Kate’s wound. IT HURTS. Kate figures distracting herself with the pain of Jin and Sun’s dying will be a good way to ignore the pain.

Jack and Kate agree that Locke – nonLocke, of course – will have to die for what he did.

Looking at Sawyer now, it’s weird to think that it was only a few story days before this that he and Juliet were loving life as part of the Dharma initiative.

Desmond watches Locke return to work, and Benjamin Linus catches him, trying to make a citizen’s arrest. Desmond beats the hell out of Linus, and at the same time gives Linus a flash-insight into the other parallel. Which is interesting – so far, I think Ben is the only person incidental to the Oceanic flight in the LAX parallel who has been included to such an extent in the off-island/on-island stuff. Desmond, who can remember all iterations, gives a greater beating than is entirely necessary – he’s obviously punishing this Linus for the crimes of the other one.

There’s a great scene with Richard Alpert, Benry and Miles, as they look for the Dharma village… Miles makes reference to the time dilation thing I mentioned in reference to Sawyer, by referring to his time with Dharma as being 30 years before Benry lived there, otherwise known as last week. Benry is back on form while taking charge, as he guides the other two to where he has explosives hidden – there is some marvellously sniffy banter about C4.

Once they get to the village, though, things change, as Miles starts to have a weird reaction with all the deadness around. It’s Benry’s daughter Miles is responding to – after she was killed, and Benry left the island, Richard buried her.

LOL… “what’s that… a secret-er room?” Oh, Miles!

“Are we looking to cripple the plane, or blow it to hell?”
“Blow it to hell.”

Woah, Jim Robinson is at the village. This scientist woman of his is all over the place, isn’t she?

I’d almost forgotten the antipathy between Benry and Widmore. When Widmore left the island, it seemed to be Benry who was in charge, but Widmore has taken the edge in the intervening years. Apparently Jacob came to Widmore after Widmore’s freighter was destroyed. And now, Widmore seems to be entering end-game mode – he rigged the plane, and tells his assistant to sink the boat they came to the main island on.

She sees that nonLocke is coming, at which point Widmore tells Benry et al to hide. Like big girls.

Back in the parallel, Dr Linus explains to Locke what happened to him, as the school nurse fixes him up. What does it mean for Locke to “let go”?

Desmond turns himself in to Sawyer and Miles for what he did to Linus and Locke… which gets him put in a cell with Sayid and Kate. I’m loving Desmond’s cockiness in this parallel, but I can’t help but think it’s building up to something pretty nasty. Also, Miles mentions his father’s work at the museum – we’d seen him previously announcing Hurley at a benefit – and Charlotte is going to be there. There’s a benefit concert at the museum, and I guess that’s probably where Jack and his son are going to be – so I guess he might make the gig after all. I wonder whether Dogen will be in attendance as well?

Sawyer has his guilty moment, and Jack could be a dick about it, but instead he absolves Sawyer completely. However, I figure that won’t be enough for Sawyer.

Baby Jacob steals Jacob’s ashes from Hurley, and leads Hurley to ghosty Jacob, sitting at a fire.

Ghosty Jacob tells him that his ashes are in the fire, and when it burns out, Hurley will never see him again. Which is all mumbo-jumbo spiritual nonsense, of course, but it tallies nicely with the other fantastical elements of Jacob in this world, like the lighthouse that looks out onto distant places and… well, all that stuff.

He says Hurley should go and get his friends, because the end is very near.

“There are both great plans, but I’m going to go with surviving. If you need us, we’re going to be running through the jungle.” Miles is awesome.

Jim Robinson wants to hide from nonLocke, but Benry wants to go out and face the inevitable.

Miles wants to run, and Richard Alpert wants to try to convince nonLocke to leave with him. He says that all nonLocke wants is for Richard to join him.

What appears to happen instead is that nonLocke – as Smokey – instantly and brutally disposes of Richard.

Benry, witnessing this, calmly goes and takes a seat, and waits for nonLocke. When nonLocke appears, you already know this is going to be a great scene.

He offers Benry a trade – a whole bunch of murders for ownership of the island, once nonLocke has gone. Benry gives up Jim Robinson in a second.

Aww, Alex! And there’s Rousseau, who is marginally less crazy, and lots cleaner, in this parallel. They take the knackered Dr Linus home for dinner – he hasn’t met Alex’s mother before, and she tells him that he is the closest thing to a father that Alex has ever had.

It makes him a little teary, the big girl.

Back on the island, it’s hard to imagine that Benry, who seems to be giving up Jim Robinson and his scientist with actual relish, isn’t running some sort of game.

NonLocke dispatches Zoe without blinking, and then bargains with Widmore for the life of Widmore’s daughter.

Widmore says a thing or two about bringing Desmond to the island as a last resort, due to his unique resistance to electro-magnetism, and then Benry kills him. His argument, when nonLocke confronts him about it, is, “he doesn’t get to save his daughter.”

Then Benry quite deliberately reminds nonLocke that he had mentioned some other murders that Benry had to commit.

Everyone else meets Jacob, and to Hurley’s surprise, they can all see him. Kate confronts Jacob about his list, demanding to know why Sun and Jin and Sayid and everybody else had to die.

Then Jacob actually says the name of the episode! He promises that by the time the fire dies out, they’ll all know everything they need to, and that by then, one of them will take over protection of the island.

Locke visits Jack, and lays out their arc in the LAX parallel to date. It all sounds a little contrived when you lay it out like that, Locke!

(No, it doesn’t… Locke’s mistaking coincidence for fate, but it’s actually quite a lovely, warm scene, actually.)

Jacob talks about a mistake he made a long time ago that could cost the lives of everyone that they’ve ever met. He’s talking about what he did to his brother.

Sawyer tells Jacob that he was doing just fine before he was plucked from his other existence, at which point Jacob bluntly lays out that Sawyer wasn’t, that none of them were. He tells them what we already know – that all of their lives were shit well before Jacob pulled them out of them.

Kate’s name was crossed out because she became a mother? Hm… and Jacob utters one of those perfect lines, that the writers must have wryly smiled themselves stupid about when they came up with it:

“It’s just a line of chalk in a cave – the job is yours if you want it, Kate.”

Lol… there is a light that never goes out.

Jacob wants them to kill the monster.

Jacob isn’t going to pick the candidate… they have to choose themselves – he says he wasn’t given a choice, so he wants to give them one.

And Jack doesn’t even give anyone else a chance – he’s up there, volunteering! Of course he is. My guess is, he doesn’t get to be the one who protects the island. It’s been chosen too far from the end of the season, and nothing’s ever easy in this show.

I think Jacob just made Jack immortal. Jears 4 EVAR.

LOLS Desmond only got himself into prison so he could break Sayid and Kate out!

Tonight there’s going to be a jail-break, somewhere in this town… Uh… probably at the jail.

Oh, Ana Lucia, you are such a crooked bitch. And yay! Hurley!

Heh… Hurley recognises Ana Lucia, but Ana Lucia “isn’t ready yet.”

Desmond wtf. Mind you, he’s got good taste, getting Kate to put on a little dress and go to the concert with him.

NonLocke walks because he likes the feel of the ground under his feet. It reminds him that he was once human. The big softy!

NonLocke isn’t fussed that Desmond isn’t in the well. He says that Desmond was Jacob’s failsafe – in case his precious candidates all died. Is he saying that Desmond wasn’t a candidate? He says that Desmond can help him destroy the island.

And that’s that. Penultimate episode, done. Finale here I come…

#MOMBcast 35 – Comic Timings

Nicolas Papaconstantinou — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:09:25 +0000

On #MOMBcast 35, we talked about the following comics:

@JaneMOMB
09:30 Stealth #1 (Robert Kirkman/Marc Silvestri)
13:30 American Vampire #3 (Scott Snyder & Stephen King/Rafael Albuquerque)

@JamesMOMB
20:00 The Avengers #1 (Brian Michael Bendis/John Romita Jr)
26:00 Joe The Barbarian #5 (Grant Morrison/Sean Murphy)

38:10 JonMOMB Spotlight: Kill Audio (Chondra Echert & Claudio Sanchez/Sheldon Vella)

MOMBcast 35 is here.
All other episodes are available here.

#MOMBcast 34 – Comic Timings

Nicolas Papaconstantinou — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:43:39 +0000

On #MOMBcast 34, we talked about the following comics:

@JaneMOMB
19:40 Demo #4 (Brian Wood/Becky Cloonan)
25:00 Madame Xanadu #21 (Matt Wagner/Amy Reeder Hadley)

@nixsight
29:10 New Mutants #13 (Zeb Wells/Lan Medina)
30:45 Daytripper #06 (Gabriel Ba/Fabio Moon)

@JamesMOMB
34:20 Return Of Bruce Wayne (Grant Morrison/Chris Sprouse)
39:30 Siege #4 (Brian Michael Bendis/Olivier Coipiel)

44:10 Spotlight: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life (Vol 1) by Bryan Lee O’Malley

MOMBcast 34 is here.
All other episodes are available here.

Obligatory #BigotGate Post

Nicolas Papaconstantinou — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:30:19 +0000

Two reflective blog posts about (oh dear) bigotgate, that don’t entirely gel with my own thoughts, but are worth a read:

Angry Mob – “You Can’t Talk About Immigration”:

I was pretty certain that the Daily Mail runs huge amounts of stories about immigration, as does the Express, the Sun and other tabloid newspapers. These tabloids and some of the broadsheets also point out that if we reach a population of 70million because of immigration bad things will happen and life in Britain may well end. Immigration, immigration, immigration. One of the key issues of this election. Everyone is talking about it. When prospective and current PMs go on Radio 1 it is the main issue that young voters want to bring up. As far as I can perceive: everyone wants to know what is going to be done about immigration, and they are not shy to talk about it.

Yet it turns out I am badly mistaken, because of course ‘You can’t talk about immigration.’

Elmyra – “I Am An Eastern European”

At that point I completely lost it. I’m not sure I can explain how this whole sordid affair makes me feel, but let me try.

Anger. Anger at Gillian Duffy, anger at all the people who weren’t willing to stand up to her.

Shame. Shame at the realisation that I had only allowed myself to feel this anger after I had been “given permission” by the comment from the native British person who stood up for me. Blaming myself for not standing up for myself earlier, more forcefully.

A desperate need to justify myself. I pay higher-rate income tax. I contribute to the UK economy, I contribute to UK society. I probably pay into the tax system more than I get back out of it. Extending that justification to other immigrants – parts of the UK economy probably would collapse without immigrant labour; I wonder how much immigrants contribute in total to the economy; we all come here to work, and we work damn hard. A range of other economic arguments, all around contribution, all around this incredibly Tory notion of my money being the only thing that entitles me to anything like decent treatment from this society.

More anger. This time at being disempowered and disenfranchised; at being a cheap target for political point scoring because Gillian Duffy and the 60 million people like her have a vote, and I and the couple of hundred thousand people like me don’t, and therefore she will always get a grovelling apology from the Prime Minister, and we won’t.

Mili’s post is well-written and quite sad, and while I think that a lot of people over-reacted to the situation yesterday, I should state right now that I entirely understand why she, as an immigrant, and one from the same group that was mentioned so often yesterday, might feel marginalised or upset by the situation, or more accurately by the fallout. But I have to say that my experience on Twitter yesterday was, barring one particular exception, completely opposite to hers. I found there was no shortage of people attacking Duffy, or defending Gordon Brown. Actually more common in my timeline was people attacking Duffy and attacking Gordon Brown!

Personally, I think that, while people’s feelings on both sides of this furore are understandable, it’s a giant nothing story – and yes, I’m aware that it’s one that I’m adding to. Mrs Duffy’s comments weren’t particularly controversial – they edged into areas that many of us aren’t entirely comfortable with, but after a couple of decades in the UK you start to learn the difference between the casual ambient xenophobia that you get everywhere, and actual boot-heels and beatings racism. You accept that, as guided by some areas of the media, Mrs Duffy and people like her see problems around her, and blame whichever Other there happens to be around, and if it wasn’t Eastern Europeans – who she only mentions briefly as a touchstone – it would be somebody else. And if there weren’t immigrants, it would be gays, and if it wasn’t gays, it’d be teenagers.

And if there weren’t teenagers, it’d be Southerners, or the bastards down the road in Brandlesholme or Bury. Or, as seen in the awesome 3d spectacle “Clash Of The Titans”, the gods. It’s a natural human instinct and coping mechanism to place blame elsewhere.

Brown’s reaction, while superficially sounding quite harsh, is exactly the sort of reaction you’d expect to hear from anybody who, in the course of their job, found themselves having a meeting with a customer or colleague who is outspoken and one-note, who speaks over them without really saying anything, and who won’t respond to any counterpoint offered, but who they can’t speak to too directly for reasons of diplomacy. If you’ve never found yourself so frustrated by a conversation that you’ve professionally had to take part in that you felt the need to sound off when you thought you were in private later, you’ve only had the most wonderful of jobs. That the word “bigot” is getting so many Brits in a froth is embarrassing, when you consider the words most of us would tend to use about someone moments after having them essentially bellow in our face for ten minutes.

(Ok, we should be able to expect better of our Prime Minister, but it isn’t their lack of a personal opinion we’re entitled to; it’s the hope that we’d have people in charge capable of avoiding such technical wardrobe malfunctions. I think discretion is the most important thing we can expect of our government’s behaviour, and discretion isn’t the absence of bad behaviour; it’s the sense to know where and when it’s politic to indulge in it.)

My only real problem with the way Brown carried himself yesterday is that, like Mili, I was disappointed that he apologised. That he addressed the situation when asked directly is his job – I’d have expected a curt if diplomatic response, such as him stating:

“It was frustrating that during our conversation, Mrs Duffy didn’t allow any responses I gave to her concerns, and made inaccurate claims about immigration that I felt couldn’t be answered appropriately at that time. My response in private was ill-considered and born of that frustration. That that private and informal reaction was broadcast is regrettable.”

…without personalising or defining the regret. I’d think that’s as much direct personal consideration, if not more, than any one individual citizen can expect in a country with 60 million souls, and it also serves the purpose of not being interpretable as backtracking on an opinion.

But a lengthy and craven wringing of hands, complete with home-visit, was a waste of a world leader’s time, and it’s something that this country has demanded, and Gordon Brown has bent over for, far too often. I’ve come to know Brown as the Apologising PM, and I think paying this much attention to any one individual’s bruised ego is not a worthwhile use of however small a portion of my taxes go toward paying for this government.

However, I was more uncomfortable with the micro-culture-war that the situation seemed to trigger off in my Twitter Timeline. Considering Mrs Duffy’s comments were, at best, the result of a vague and directionless frustration and ignorance – that a solid proportion of the population, on any side of any argument, can be guilty of at times – and at worst a gentle background xenophobia – that again, everyone is capable of, one way or another – the anger and bile directed at her was disproportionate, and discomforting. There was some humour in some of the pastiches and digs, but most of it – culminating for me in the “bigotedwoman” Twitter account – was the comedic and commentating equivalent of sticking your tongue in your bottom lip, adopting “spastic” voice, and saying “I’M GILLIAN DUFFY AND I’M STUUUPID!”

It was bitter and hard, one-note, and more distasteful than any mild ground-level xenophobia, because – and here’s where my own middle-class inner-snob comes out a little – it was mostly coming from people who are supposed to be better educated, and think of themselves as more tolerant and little-L liberal. Apparently, racism is bad even in its mildest forms, but bigotry against stupid people is perfectly fine.

Gillian Duffy is the political spitting image of Susan Boyle – both have the defining characteristic of being entirely unexceptional, and both very slightly exceeded the super-low expectations of the dignitaries they were paraded in front of – in one case, by not having a voice that sounded like total shit, and in the other by not having the social inhibition to partake of polite discussion – and the surreal ascension of both to intense, divisive talking-point status because of the bewildered responses of the “Important” people they brushed against is bizarre, and exposes some pretty schizophrenic glitches in British culture and society.

(For clarity: I’m not a political correspondent or a sociologist, or anything – This is just, like, an opinion, and one that’s subject to change, if argued well enough against. Like, in the comments!)

nixsight » an eye out

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