There’s just far too many comics to review all of them this week. 14 of them, thanks to Marvel’s poor/genius sched­ul­ing. Instead you get one book from each of the Big Two.

Detec­tive Comics #854

My only brush with Greg Rucka came through his work on 52. Where he put a lot of work into the entwined sto­ries of  Bat­woman and The Ques­tion. So I guess it’s only fit­ting that I get reac­quainted with his work through a book that stars those two char­ac­ters. Yes I’m aware they had their own post-52 minis­eries, but I didn’t read that as, to me , that par­tic­u­lar story seemed to have been played out in the pages of 52 already.

At first glance the Kate Kane in this book seems vastly dif­fer­ent than that one who appeared in 52. She’s less a socialite and more of an army brat. She’s got tat­toos and it’s implied she sleeps (or slept) around. Yes, she’s still a les­bian, and yes it comes up but only in a way to flesh out her “com­mit­ted to the mis­sion” mindset.

Before this book, id you’d asked me to point out art by JH Williams I woul’dve had no chance. Would not know him from a bar of soap. After read­ing this book I have every panel burnt out to my brian. In a good way of course. And the panel lay­out. Wow. There’s one two page sequence depict­ing that I loved. A series of light­ning bolt pan­els depicts Bat­woman talk­ing to Bat­man then head­ing back to base and chang­ing back into civil­lian clothes, under­scored by a shot of Bat­woman, on her motor­cy­cle, shoot­ing across the page.

There’s this incred­i­ble amount of energy that crack­les off every page.

Mean­while over in the Ques­tion backup…sorry “co-feature”, Renee Mon­toya seems to have become DC’s answer to the Heroes for Hire. Using an email account and/or web­site to solicit inves­tiga­tive work. Her first case pit­ting her against human traffickers.

It reads like it was orig­i­nally pitched as a full length story that’s been slimmed down through pre­cise cuts. Noth­ing is miss­ing really, but there’s no great expla­na­tion of the bad guy pos­si­ble motives, just that he’s the damn bad guy.

Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1

After the let­down of an event that was Brian Michael Bendis’ Secret Inva­sion I har­boured a feel­ing that, given half a chance, Matt Frac­tion could easy write the next Mar­vel event. And here it is.

I’m glad it’s not a company-wide thing as I really couldn’t han­dle another one of those from Mar­vel. But it does carry the Dark Reign tag, which I cna’t really get enthused about. Even though most of the Mar­vel side of my pull list involves Dark Reign in some way.

The story seems organic enough. At the end of Secret Inva­sion, when Nor­man Osbourne was given the job of…well what­ever the hell it is he actu­ally does, he put all mutants on notice. Telling Emma Frost that if they couldn’t con­trol them­selves then he would. Or words to that effect.

In this first issue of the inde­ter­mi­nately long minis­eries (there’s no “#1 of #3″ on the cover, just “Chap­ter One”) Simon Trask organ­ises a march on San Fran­sisco in sup­port of a new law to ster­ilise all mutants, which of course leads to all hell break­ing loose. Really, nobody watched the first 10 min­utes of Die Hard 3?

With half of San Fran­sisco on fire Nor­man Osbourne makes good on his promise and sends in the Dark Avengers to con­trol things. Which of course they don’t because they’re all psy­chopaths. Then Nor­man takes Emma Frost aside reit­ter­ates whats he first told her and then pro­motes her to Leader of All Mutants. Charles Xavier shows up to talk down Cyclops, but it’s revealed to the  reader that the real Charles Xavier is lying in a prison cell with his brain leak­ing down his shirt. None of which makes a whole lot of a sense.

But, this is only the first issue, and I’ve got enough faith that Frac­tion will spin out a few inter­est­ing con­cepts before bring­ing every­thing to a decent conclusion.

Of  course Mar­vel get full praise for keep­ing Greg Land as far from this story as pos­si­ble. Marc Sil­vestri han­dles the art in a pass­able fash­ion. It’s a lot more basic than his linework from back when Grant Mor­ri­son wrote the book, with most of the humans look­ing like scare­crows. And a small but sig­nif­i­cant draw­ing of a continuity-breaking, male Loki.

Com­plete List

Detec­tive Comics #854
Green Lantern #42
Aston­ish­ing X-Men #30
Avengers: Ini­tia­tive #25
Dark Avengers #6
Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1
Immor­tal Iron Fist TP Vol 04 Mor­tal Iron Fist
Ms Mar­vel #40
New Avengers #54
Run­aways 3 #11
Secret War­riors #5
Thun­der­bolts #133
Uncanny X-Men #512
X-Factor #45
X-Force #16
Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine #214

Last week I tried to shake things up a bit by review­ing every comic picked up. While it was an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment I didn’t quite  get the response I was after, so we’re back to the three book deal this week.

Power Girl #2

It seems a lit­tle too soon to use the sec­ond issue as an expo­si­tion tool and drawn out ori­gin for the bad guy. Sure, it goes against con­ven­tion, but you know what? I didn’t mind it. Because the rest of the issue was devoted to Power Girl tak­ing on an albino gorilla with a super­hu­man brain. I could read that kind of thing forever.

Incog­nito #4

Still good. Still very good in fact. But it feel like the 2 month gap between issues #3 and #4 killed the momen­tum some­what. This issue is pretty much entirely fall­out. Zack is dis­cov­ered, inter­ro­gated by the SOS, a gov­ern­ment agency tasked with tak­ing down rogue super­pow­ers. (Which I guess in a way makes it the CIA of Incog­nito) and put back on the streets sans pow­ers. The improb­a­bly named Ava Destruc­tion throws a wrench into the whole idea of the bad guys com­ing for Zack’s blood. The pulpy ele­ments are still there, but the noirish tones have really started com­ing to the fore.

Mighty Avengers #26

I was all but ready to give this up after last month’s issue. It’s pretty easy to bag the book with it’s slow pac­ing and char­ac­ters don’t do a hell of a lot — except for Her­cules, who may just be the fun­ni­est char­ac­ter in the Mar­vel stable.

But then you get an issue like this  with crazy War­ren Ellis-style Zeno Rooms, sonic screw­drivers and sci­en­tific equa­tions that take phi­los­o­phy  into consideration.

It’s still dan­ger­ously close to being dropped, but if Dan Slott can keep load­ing the book with off the wall sci­ence stuff and improve char­ac­ter inter­ac­tion then it’ll keep it’s spot on the pull list for now.

Com­plete List

Ex Machina #43
Final Cri­sis After­math: Dance #2 (of 6)
Power Girl #2
Cable #15
Incog­nito #4
Mighty Avengers #26
X-Men: Legacy #225
Angel #22

With the met­ric ton of of video game announce­ments and show­ings at this year’s E3  it was pretty dif­fi­cult to sort the wheat from the chaff. But I’ve man­aged to whit­tle down a list of favourites to the fol­low­ing titles:

Mod­ern War­fare 2

This is the the sixth in the Call of Duty series, but for some bizarre rea­son (prob­a­bly related to the ter­ri­ble, odd-numbered CoD games) they’ve dropped the CoD prefix.

Strangely enough what I’m most excited about in Mod­ern War­fare 2 is the ice climb­ing. Finally a gam­ing mechanic that’s not com­pletely tapped out.

From the game­play video below it looks like Mod­ern War­fare 2 is build­ing on the qual­ity set by it’s pre­de­ces­sor. And it’s good to see Soap still kick­ing around.

The Last Guardian

ICO and Shadow of the Col­los­sus are two of the most mem­o­rable games I’ve ever played. ICO for the emo­tional res­o­nance with ICO and Yorda; and Shadow of the Col­los­sus for hav­ing me make the hard­est deci­sion ever — choose between falling into a crush­ing depres­sion by killing the enor­mous, but beneva­lent Col­lossi or put the game away and miss out on the gam­ing expe­ri­ence of the decade. I haven’t opened that damn case in two years.

While I really want to play this game. I’m in com­plete agree­ment with the Penny Arcade guys. There really is only two ways that this game can end. I don’t think I can han­dle either of them.

.

Brü­tal Legend

I’d been fol­low­ing the devel­op­ment of Brü­tal Leg­end for quite a while, so this year’s E3 footage held no real sur­prises for me. What it did do is reaf­firm just how much I’m look­ing for­ward to play­ing the shit out of it come October.

Jack Black, rock and roll, left of field comedics and wacky adven­tur­ing. What could pos­si­bly go wrong?

Assassin’s Creed 2

I’ve only just started play­ing the first game but the pos­si­bil­ity of more medieval killing sprees has me crazy excited.

The addi­tion of dou­ble assas­si­na­tions, swim­ming(!) and that fly­ing machine from Hud­son Hawk is just icing on a very sharp and pointy cake.

Booster Gold #21

This issue of Booster Gold is the first DC books to show­case their new backup story con­cept, or “co-features” as they’ve decided to call them. A way to keep minor, but loy­ally fol­lowed char­ac­ters that can’t sup­port their own book on the shelves.

If this lit­tle 10-page story, about Blue Bee­tle beat­ing up a giant robot called THINKO! for 3 hours, is any indi­ca­tion then the recently can­celled ongo­ing series must’ve been an absolute gem to read.

Flash: Rebirth #3 (of 6)

I’m not sure I under­stand the point of this series. Green Lantern: Rebirth was fairly straight for­ward: “Hal Jor­dan died a vil­lain, so lets bring him back to life in a way that reaf­firms his hero status. ”

But what about Barry Allen? He died a hero, sav­ing the uni­verse from the big bad at the time only to pop up in Final Cri­sis as the universe’s attempt to cure itself of Dark­seid (no, really!)  There had to be an incred­i­bly good rea­son to keep him around after that, past edi­to­r­ial whim.

Even with the patented Geoff John’s vil­lain reveal page at the end of this issue I’m still at a loss as to why this series exists.

Green Lantern Corps #37

When I showed this cover to Ange her imme­di­ate reac­tion was “Oh yuck.” I couldn’t have said it bet­ter myself. It’s a hor­ri­ble draw­ing of Arisia.

Watch­ing the Dax­am­ites freak the hell out when their super­pow­ers kicked in went a ways to mak­ing up for the ter­ri­ble cover.

Uncanny X-Men #511

Look, I wouldn’t go so far as to say Greg Land is ruin­ing Uncanny, but when every char­ac­ter is posed like a model and either smil­ing or laugh­ing or mak­ing a “porn face” regard­less of whats hap­pen­ing around them then the art becomes at best, panel filler or at worst, utterly detri­men­tal to the story.

I’m sure the script for this page went some­thing like:

STORM floats at the win­dow as a gust of wind BLOWS past her EXPLODING the glass into a mil­lion frag­ments that BLAST into the MASTERMIND SISTERS send­ing them reeling.

While Land had done an neat trick by hav­ing the pieces of glass appear out­isde the panel walls, they don’t seems to con­vey any direc­tion of move­ment. Ther are far worse exam­ples of his stilted style, but I’ll do you a favour and spare you the bur­den of look­ing at them.

You can imag­ine how happy I am that next issue doesn’t seem to have been touched by Land at all. I’m even hap­pier that it’s cen­tered around Beast and his X-Club. One of the bet­ter ideas to come out of Fraction’s plan for Uncanny X-Men.

X-Factor #44

Another solid issue from Peter David. It’s been said that X-Factor is the best X-title being put out by Mar­vel at the moment. I couldn’t agree more.

And now, some 4 months late, my final throughts on my 365 Day Project.

At the very end of my project there was only really twopos­si­ble  outcomes:

1. I could’ve used the skills learned over the year to launch a semi-successful pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness; or
2. come away curs­ing the inven­tion of the cam­era and swear­ing never again to step in front of the lens.

The delay from cross­ing the fin­ish line to get­ting this post up should give you an indi­ca­tion as to where I ended up.

That’s not to say that I didn’t totally enjoy my year of liv­ing pho­to­graph­i­cally, and I did, for the most part.

In hind­sight there’s a few things I could’ve done bet­ter to make the whole process smoother.

20/20 Hind­sight and all that stuff

I first heard about the 365 project around the mid­dle of 2007. Mike, Chris and Richard had started post­ing a photo a day in what I orig­i­nally thought was a small localised group on Flickr. When I realised just how much of the Flickr com­mu­nity it encom­passed, I knew I had to be a part of it. And with my 29th birth­day com­ing up I had the per­fect hook (although in hind­sight, not the most opti­mistic): the last days of my youth.

Know­ing just how ter­ri­ble I am at keep­ing to dead­lines I wrote down a fairly com­pre­hen­sive list of  shots to take. Think­ing that if I had a par­tic­u­larly uncre­ative day I could just fall back on that list.

That plan worked well right up until I lost the list. Some­where  around day 30 or so I think. Not the best start to a year long project by any stretch.

Con­trary to any belief  you may hold, I’ve never been that com­fort­able step­ping in front of a cam­era. Com­bin­ing that with my habit of being eas­ily dis­tracted meant that the each daily shot had to be planned well ahead of time. And we know what hap­pens when I try to plan something.

Equip­ment

Except for a few stray shots I pri­mar­ily used my Canon 350D with the fixed 50mm lens. Set to Aper­ture Pri­or­ity (Av) at an F-stop of 1.8.

If you’re rel­a­tively knowl­edge­able  in the ways of cam­eras then you’re prob­a­bly cring­ing right now.

For every­one else, what I did was take 300 odds shots with a depth of field so tight even the slight­est mis­cal­cu­la­tion meant my giant head would’ve been out of focus. So that’s why a bunch of the shots are out of focus.

Light­ing was a big issue as well. Liv­ing in a house designed to block out direct sun­light and com­pletely lack­ing in any real pho­to­graphic light­ing I strug­gled to get pho­tos with less than a sec­ond of expo­sure. For a few months I made do with the harsh yel­low light of my desk lamp, but when it died I was shit out of luck.

Would I ever do some­thing like this again?

If you’d asked me that straight after the project it would have been an emf­fatic no. Forc­ing myself to take self-portraits every day for a year just con­firmed that I have a great dis­taste for tak­ing self-portraits. How­ever, I wouldn’t be com­pletely closed to the idea of tak­ing a year’s worth of pho­tos fea­tur­ing any­thing but me.