Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

thoughts

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Deathblow #13-15

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]It’s time to return to Deathblow without Tim Sale and after the epic tale of the Black Angel, and I had no idea what to expect.

What I do know is that Brandon Choi is now down to scripting just this and Gen13, and I miss the guy! Not only for his consistency, but for the way the entire WildStorm Universe gelled under his pen.

deathblow_013As great as Choi was on the global intrigue of Stormwatch and the teen angst of Gen13, something about this pair of procedural tales makes me think his heart remains in these gun-for-hire stories. These three issues are by far the best of Deathblow yet, despite them having nothing to do with his mega-arc with the Black Angel.

Choi imports of a noirish the vampires and werewolves from Wetworks for a noirish tale in issues #13-14. It works perfectly to establish Michael Cray’s new status quo nine months after his battle with the Black Angel. Now he’s a gun for hire who can’t help but step into supernatural affairs.

The story is tense, bloody, and maybe the first true mystery tale we’ve seen from WildStorm. It also feels an issue or two longer than it actually is (in a good way) thanks to being packed with plenty of rising action and fine details.

Similarly, the Navy Seals one-shot that follows is a satisfying standalone story that fleshes out the mysterious Gamorra mission where Michael Cray met Mr. Waering. It also ties in some plot threads from as early as Deathblow #0, with the Seals-in-training on the base all gunning for Cray’s head due to the spectacular bloodbath of Costa Mesa. It’s a thrilling little mystery with no easy resolution that leaves us as confused as Cray.

On art, original Stormwatch inker Trevor Scott has made the leap to penciller and his work is perfect for Deathblow! He’s nowhere near Sale’s look – and more like Whilce Portacio than Jim Lee. As amazing as Sale’s approach was, there is something deeply satisfying about seeing Deathblow drawn in Image’s house style. There’s nary a bad page here, and some truly interesting panel work. Scott isn’t addicted to splash pages like most Image artists, and he delivers a lot of interesting framing, smaller sequential panels, and silhouetted bodies.

At the start we’re back to the sickly gray and green palette from colorist Ben Fernandez, which will give you whiplash if you’re coming directly from Linda Medley’s warm limited palette on the last arc. Fernandez warms things up when Cray touches down in LA. It’s such a relief to see some saturated reds that aren’t blood (although, there is still plenty of blood). Issue #15 has downright normal colors as we see Cray driving the I-5 by day.

The Choi/Scott synergy on this trio of issues is remarkable. These are two of the first totally throwaway, fill-in types of stories we’ve seen on any WildStorm book, yet they both are gripping reads that only serve to make what came before more interesting.

Want the recap? Keep reading for the full plots of this trio of awesome issues. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. We’re in the home stretch! Tomorrow brings us Union (1995) #1-3 & Gen13 (1995) #0-1 (in two separate posts), followed by Team 7: Objective: Hell (1995) #1-3 on Tuesday, and then we’ve reached the main event – WildStorm Rising!

Need the issues? These issues have never been collected. For single issues try eBay (#10-12) or Amazon (#13, 14, 15). [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Deathblow #13-15

on action

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I want to talk to you for a moment about the difference between support and action.

It has both nothing and everything to do with politics, but it’s not political.

Two years ago I lost a friend and one of the people I loved most on this planet, Dante Bucci. It was a crushing loss and still is. I can’t even type his name without crying, so I am crying right now as I write this.

dante-hands-photo-pic-5I saw so many friends who I hadn’t seen in a long time at the events held to remember Dante’s life. I gave all of those friends massive hugs, because that’s what Dante did every time he saw me. I spoke to them. We shared stories with one another.

One conversation, in particular, sticks out. It was with a brilliant musician and a phenomenally kind human being. As we talked, I excitedly rattled of all of the aspects of her life I was proud and excited to be supporting. Her shows, her new songs, her tours. She looked genuinely shocked.

“Wow, Peter,” she said with a huge smile, “I had no idea you cared so much!”

“Well, I LIKE all of your posts and I listen to your songs!” I replied. We kept talking and we’ve kept on talking since then, but I haven’t liked any more of her posts.

I haven’t liked, or hearted, or little round angry-faced a single message on Facebook since that day.

I think of all the times I silently supported Dante instead of telling him I loved him, that he was brilliant, and that he made me want to be a better musician. I think of that musician friend and how she had no idea how much I cared about her success.

Now, every time I am tempted to add my silent support to something I instead say those words of support. When I love one of my friends’ songs I tell them about it in the most effusive language I can summon.

Like buttons, smiley faces, emojis, and animated GIFs are fun because pictures can be worth a 1,000 words. They are a wonderful shorthand for support, agreement, and affection. People treat them as digital currency.

Don’t let having them at your disposal cause you to lose sight of the power of words – not just words spoken to those you care about, but even to strangers who have said or done something you value.

There are people today across America who are expressing very personal feelings – fears and aspirations – and you are going to be tempted to use your hands to click a button to express your support for them. Please don’t. Please use your voice to say something instead. I promise you, it’s going to matter so much to them.

Furthermore, don’t let your ability to comment in support from the comfort of your home and your own bubble of safety cause you to lose sight of the power of action. Going to dinner with a friend is action. Going to a show is an action. Hugging someone you love is an action. Intervening if you see someone else being harassed or bullied is an action.

So is voting.

Please take action when you can, my readers, when you feel able and safe to do so When you can’t please make your voice heard.

Please be safe and well. And, if you ever need to talk, I’m only a tweet or an email away.

Vote!

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EV has accompanied me to the voting booth for every election since the 2014 primary, so the people at our polling place know her on sight even when I am an ever-changing chameleon who then was short-haired and in business clothes but now has long purple hair and wears cowboy boots.

“She’s getting so big!” one older woman exclaimed. EV is now too large to perch on the edge of the card tables while I sign my name to the voter rolls

“Are you going to help your dad vote today?” ask another.

EV responded with her shy toddler smile, and I said, “Well, it is the most exciting thing you can do.”

The older woman chastised me, “Your life must not be very exciting, then.”

My response?

“What could be more exciting than having the right to vote?”

Crushing Krisis: Blog of Tomorrow (a Patreon launch event)

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Behind-the-Scenes at the Patreon Introduction Video

Behind-the-Scenes at the Patreon Introduction Video

patreon-squareWelcome to a very special month of Crushing Krisis, which I have dubbed “Blog of Tomorrow”!

Why is it so special? I’m glad you asked!

I am marking my ten-year anniversary of using WordPress with the launch of a Patreon campaign. Patreon allows readers to become Patrons who cover the costs of running CK.

Rather than tempt you to pledge your support with promises of future content you can only imagine (and that I might not be able to produce), I’m bringing you the real thing – along with the 16 years of blog posts and comprehensive Marvel Collecting Guides you already love.

For the next 30 days you’ll get a future vision of what I think CK could be a year from now with your regular support and interaction, and with my full non-parenting attention on blogging. It’s something I’ve never had the opportunity to do before. My hope is that if you love it, you’ll become a Patron to help me make this a reality for CK.

Here’s a glimpse of the content you’ll read on CK this month:

I want you to feel the need check Crushing Krisis every single day the way you would all your other favorite websites. The difference is that I’m doing this all on my own without other contributors, artists, editors, or advertising dollars. And, while posting won’t remain at this insane intensity come December, it will still feature regular content just like what I’m producing this month.

Here’s my pitch video from Patreon, where I’ll be making another series of almost-daily posts to explore behind-the-scenes details of running a 16-yr-old blog.

At the end of the month, commenters, mailing list subscribers, and Patrons will help me decide what future content to focus on first. We’ll unlock new and regular features as the pledge total rises.

Want Wonder Woman and Maurice Sendak readalongs instead of Image and Dr. Seuss? Want more original music and less music essays? Wish I’d talk more about movies? I’ll be asking you at the end of the month.

Read on for more of the backstory on this unprecedented month of content. [Read more…] about Crushing Krisis: Blog of Tomorrow (a Patreon launch event)

things blow up sometimes

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If you visited CK anytime between 5pm this afternoon and 10 minutes ago you witness a really confusing muddle of a half-installed WP theme and a cascade of PHP errors.

That’s all due to some sprucing up I did today to prepare for my big November plans for CK. November will mark my 10th anniversary on WordPress, and my ninth anniversary on this lovely, plain little WP theme, Very Plain Text.

I don’t tend to give a lot of thought to the interoperability of old things until they up and die. I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that E’s iPad from 2010 is trapped on version 5.something of IOS and cannot load any apps from the App Store since the lowest IOS they’ve been developed for is v6. I was puzzled when my old PreSonus FirePod didn’t have drivers to work on the newest operating systems – sure, it’s a decade old, but I payed good money for that hardware only a decade ago!

The sad fact is, a decade is now forever when it comes to technology. Heck, four years is practically an eternity. It’s not so much planned obsolescence as forced obsolescence.

Which brings me to tonight. I did a bad developer thing and changed multiple variables of my WP install at once without backing up first, and as a result none of my plugins wanted to speak to each other on the Admin Panel anymore. To make things worse, when I turned on debugging in WP_Config, a massive litany of errors unfurled because apparently when your WP theme was last updated to work with WP2.6 and you’re on WB4.6 pretty much every function call it uses has been deprecated in some way. It was impossible to figure out what other things were broken through the waterfall of complaints about my theme.

Three frantic hours of pulling back-ups later and everything was back to normal (well, normal for my 9yr-old theme) except for my one most relied-upon plugin, WordPress Editorial Calendar. It was still borked.

I’ve written about my love for WordPress Editorial Calendar before, and that love has never ceased. Nothing ever gets done here without it; if you notice I’m making halfway decent posts at a rate of more than once per week, it’s because I am spending quality time with my EdCal. Yet, even after all of my rollbacks it was still throwing a “Unable to Parse” and “Unexpected token” error. I was tearing my newly re-purpled hair out. There was only one hit on Google and WordPress.org and it had no guidance for me. I had reversed everything to the state it was in when I woke up this morning!

Except… except when I rolled out of bed this morning and immediately started doing SQL in Sequel Pro (seriously: not working at an analytics company anymore, but that is still my life), I noticed a few recent post titles that had wrong punctuation and edited them directly in SQL. And some of that punctation could be escape characters in some contexts. Could it be that even thought the rest of my blog was fine, those unescaped title characters were killing my EdCal?

Yup.

So, if you’re ever getting those errors on EdCal, try going far into the future and then scrolling back week by week until you hit a week that throws the error, then review your post titles for that week.

And, I’m very grateful that everything is back to nine-year-old normalcy here on CK. You should take a moment right now to appreciate some of the older things in your life whose function you take for granted.