Comic Reviews, 12/9.

-  BATMAN INCORPORATED #5

It should come as absolutely no surprise by now, but Grant Morrison once again introduces a concept — a revelation — in his years spanning Batman run that ties back to the very beginning.  As in… 2006.  It turns out the first thing he wrote was all part of the current villain’s (“Leviaithan”) master plan to finally destroy the city.  In a very strange way.  Those who wished back in 2006 that the Batman of #666, Damien Wayne’s unethical, brutal Batman of the future, would return get their way here.  The dystopian scenario, of utter annihilation, is actually a vision of Bruce’s.  A nightmare ala the dreams he was having back in the “Three Ghosts of Batman” storyline.  It will be very interesting to see how the whole thing ends from here on out.  Morrison is one clever writer, arguably one of the best… but Chris Burnham destroys this issue.  He crushes it.  His work is just paranoid and chaotic enough to capture the madness inside these pages: loose, fluid, dynamic.  The colors are spot on as well, compliments of Nathan Fairbairn.  If you can’t tell I really, really liked this issue.  Love the direction while at the same time the throw back to Morrison’s previous installments.  And super-mega bonus points for bringing back “the hole in things”… Dr. Hurt in such a unique way.

-  SAGA #7

After a month off, one of the best new books of 2012 came soaring back last week with one of the biggest challenges Marko, Allana, and their child have faced thus far: grandparents.  And if that sounds a little strange but oddly familiar it should, that is basically the tag line for this Image book from excellent and becoming legendary writer Brian K. Vaughan and not so upcoming artist Fiona Staples.  The last page of the first arc (now available in trade paperback form) introduced Marko’s parents into the fold, that is expanded upon here by delving into the families past, as narrated brilliantly by the baby herself.  Saga continues to show massive amounts of heart for being so otherworldly and just plain bizarre (see: Page 16… eww).  I’m loving the world the creators have introduced, and continue to show us more bits and pieces and the series moves forward.  I really hope Marko and his mom can track down the disembodied ghost teenager babysitter Izabel, I like her.  If that sounds a little too weird for you then I’d steer clear.

-  FURYmax #7

I get the feeling that I’m one of very few people actually reading this book.  Which is really too bad, cause it’s Garth Ennis.  And Garth Ennis really knows how to write historical fiction and characters like Fury and Castle, this is very much so his book.  He’s been destined to do return to this character ever since Hollywood refused to adapt a Nick Fury movie to theaters on account of how he was writing the character at the time: a piece of shit, degenerate alcoholic who is but isn’t haunted by the people he’s killed and the shit he’s seen, and is essentially waiting to die.  What’s even more fitting is how this book is structured (aging Fury in a hotel room somewhere, recording tapes seemingly for a memoir of some kind, drinking whiskey and recounting his militaristic career with little to no nostalgia) in relation to the new, movie and Ultimate verse, Sam Jackson inspired Nick Fury.  The eyepatch wearing, old, white, bastard Nick Fury is aging out.  He’s a dinosaur.  A relic of America’s 20th Century military industrial complex that doesn’t recognize the world today, not that his was any better.  This issue sees Fury going back to Vietnam, this time paired up with Frank Castle to track down a Northern General who’s “increasing performance by 30%”.  Morally ambiguous, historical, simple… this is something everyone should be reading.

-Sonny

2013′s Secret War.

-  I’ve been getting really into a remix project lately, and will likely come very close to finishing on my days off work this week.  Seems like lately I keep having the same crisis: during instrumental breaks do I go batshit crazy with a guitar or with a turntable.  Obviously this depends on the song, but it’s still hard to be clairvoyant and know which one will work better.  So typically I will just record both and compare and contrast.  First World Producer Problems.

-  I think I’ve posted Ulises Farinas’ art here before, but it’s well worth a second mention:

-  Wired has a good article about how patents actually shackle innovation, not encourage it.  As is evidenced by the Apple v. Samsung lawsuits of the past year.  It’s a long article, but very enlightening.

The past three decades of wanton patent-granting have created a disastrous environment for innovation. Today it’s practically impossible to build anything without violating a patent of some kind—and risking a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for your troubles. Once intended to protect lone inventors, patents now form a kind of shadow tech industry, in which billions of dollars are spent on amassing huge portfolios. (A recent New York Times article noted that Apple and Google, companies that define themselves by innovation, now invest more in patent acquisition and defense than in research and development.)

Why are companies spending so much money on patents? First, as protection. “Patents are like bullets,” law professor Chien says. “They’re cheap to acquire but can cause a lot of damage.” But if you have your own bullets, would-be assassins are less likely to target you. That’s the thinking behind RPX (Rational Patent Exchange), whose clients include Google, Microsoft, and IBM. RPX amasses patents, it says, to keep them out of the hands of lawsuit-happy competitors, and it vows not to sue anyone over them.

-  I’m a massive proponent for not going to war with Iran.  The problem with my viewpoint is we kinda already are at war with Iran.  It’s just a sophisticated war, a secret war.

The dramatic spike in suspected Iranian cyber attacks this year also has some in the U.S. distinctly worried. While direct denial of service attacks on U.S. banks – widely seen as retaliation for US sanctions and attempts to freeze Iran from the international financial system – were seen relatively simplistic, attacks on US allies in the Gulf were more complex.

The most worrying, experts say, were those on Saudi oil firm Aramco and Qatari gas export facilities. Last month, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described the Saudi attack as the most sophisticated yet launched on a private company, effectively destroying tens of thousands of computers – although he stopped short of blaming Tehran directly.

-  And finally, Futurist Magazine Unviels Its Predictions for 2013 and Beyond.

-S.W.

 

Unusual Drone Jamming.

-  Part II of the “Most Unusual Happenings of 2011″ has been posted on UnusualTimes.net.  Again, a selection of favorites from this part:

• The largest bear – ever – a 3,500 pounds (1,600 kilograms) South American giant short-faced bear, was discovered in Argentina. “It blew my mind,” one expert explained.
• Scientists were left scratching their heads after methane gas was detected by a Mars rover in the thin Martian air this year. The confusion steams from the fact that methane molecules are released only by living organisms, and with that they are easily blown apart by ultraviolet light from the Sun, so any methane in the atmosphere must have been released recently. It has yet too be discovered, however, what’s emitting this methane gas.
• An Italian man, shot in the head, sneezes out the bullet. He is expected to make a full recovery.
• Ghostly subatomic particles called, “Neutrinos,” may have been observed traveling faster than the speed of light. If confirmed, the astonishing claim would upend a cardinal rule of physics established by Albert Einstein nearly a century ago.

-  ARTIST OF THE DAY is a guy named James Heimer.  James grew up in Pennsylvania and has a background in (like many artists and designers) skate culture and hardcore.  His main thing seems to be doing concert posters, but his other work is stunning as well.

-  Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” (aka: Alien prequel) finally has got a poster up (the tagline reads, “the search for our beginning could lead to our end”; that statue face points towards some sort of archeology-based finding about an ancient culture… it seems):

-  Disaster looms for gas cloud falling into Milky Way’s central black hole.

“When we look at the black holes in the centers of other galaxies, we see them get bright and then fade, but we never know what is actually happening,” said Eliot Quataert, a theoretical astrophysicist and University of California, Berkeley professor of astronomy. “This is an unprecedented opportunity to obtain unique observations and insight into the processes that go on as gas falls into a black hole, heats up and emits light. It’s a neat window onto a black hole that’s actually capturing gas as it spirals in.”

“The next two years will be very interesting and should provide us with extremely valuable information on the behavior of matter around such massive objects, and its ultimate fate,” said Reinhard Genzel, professor of physics at both UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany.”

-  So that drone that the US government “lost” in Iran?  Yeah, an Iranian engineer has been interviewed about the whole ordeal.  He’s claiming that the way they captured it was by jamming it’s satellite systems until it couldn’t take anymore and crashed.  An opposing group is saying that is a bunch of hogwash, claiming that any amount of jamming — at least right now — could likely not ground such a device.  Interesting stuff.

-Sonny