What Kind of Audience Are You?

What kind of audience are you? Do you listen? Do you pay attention? Do you cheer for the people on stage, wanting them to do their best?

I was reading an interview with an actress that was once in Doctor Who. I suddenly flashed back to a convention I attended years ago where she was one of the guests. During a panel where the guests got to get up and do something silly or just say a few words, she did a routine that she'd normally do at the cabaret evening but couldn't as she had to leave early. It was funny and I remember trying to focus on her, willing her to know that I was paying attention and that it was working. It's not that the room was empty or that no one else was laughing, I just wanted her to succeed for some reason.

I've been to concerts where people ignored the opening band. In all fairness, opening bands can be a mixed bag. Sometimes you just don't click with them. Sometimes they're not very good yet. To just ignore them because they're not the band you want to see just seems mean. Sure sometimes there are things that need to be done, conversations to have, beers to get, but I try to pay them some attention, give them some feedback so they know it'll be okay.

Public speaking is hard. Sometimes listening to a public speaker is hard. They are probably nervous. They may stumble. The subject matter may not interest you. You may be tired and bored and trapped at this meeting. I'll admit this can be rough going. I try and don't always succeed. I do try.

When you're having a conversation, do you listen? Or are you just talking, not really listening to the other person?

What kind of audience are you?

What kind of audience would you want?

A Few Thoughts on Comics from The Past Couple Weeks

It's Wednesday. New Comic Day! I suppose before I get more books, I should finish reviewing the books I got last week, huh?

X-Men Second Coming #1 - Have you read an X-Men comic in the last, oh, 25 years or so? This is a lot like that, with nice art and an attempt to make this 'serious' and 'foreboding'. It's not bad, just too familiar. It doesn't feel like there's anything new here.

Punisher #15 - this continues to wallow in Universal Monsters imagery. The letters page is balanced enough to print 'what the heck did you do to Frank Castle?' notes. It remains crazy over the top fun, even when there's an acceptable fill-in artist. I guess they're actually going to change the name of the book to Franken-Castle. Wow. Trust me, I understand how this could be hated, I'm just enjoying the ride.

PvP #45 - collects more of the online strips. Funny geek jokes.

Hack/Slash #30 - as much as I enjoy this book about a girl and her ghoul that fights slashers, it has been looking for a direction of late. This starts a storyline about Public Domain superheroes from the 1940s and their sidekicks, tying their powers into the same energy that powers the slashers. Interesting idea. We'll see how this goes. Not a bad start.

Vincent Price Presents #16 - I always expect these to have a supernatural aspect to the story and they don't always. This one didn't. Not a bad story just kind of an 'oh, that's it?' story. Interesting Euro-manga type art. Acceptable but a bit flat. Actually needed a twist ending.

She-Hulk Sensational - This one-shot was supposed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first appearance of the character. There's a funny story, sort of, a story that feels like an inventory issue that they had laying around that they wanted to burn off, and a random reprint. Not actively bad but, meh. Nothing really to see. Get it for a quarter in a couple years.

Tales of the TMNT #68 - a cancer survivor (in real-life) writes a story where the Turtles get shrunk down and injected into April's sister's body in order to fight off alien cancer. They actually call it alien cancer. I won't mock it because it was clearly something important to the writer. Perfectly Acceptable Comic.

Amazing Spider-Man #627 - I'm never sure if it's a good thing or not when the story starts with a page or two of Peter remembering things from his history. With footnotes. To stories from the 80s. The twist ending works for me but a reader that just started picking this up recently would probably be lost. Instead of my 'oh wow' reaction they'd probably go 'huh?'. Enjoyable to me but might be too continuity bound.

Transformers #5 - Optimus gets a great speech that will probably turn the tide, Rodimus is the idiot we thought he was, and things get Worse. Good stuff.

Fantastic Four #577 - these single story issues feel like they have just an epic scope to them. This one actually feels like it's building to something bigger. Interesting.

Usagi Yojimbo #127 - Usagi gets into more trouble just walking around Japan. You feel bad for him sometimes. He's just walking to the next town, minding his own business, sees a swordsman outnumbered 20 to 1, is suddenly mistaken for a friend of that guy and is forced into fighting to protect himself. It always gets more complicated than that but it works.

And there we go. Caught up for a half-hour or so.

A Few Thoughts on Comics from The Past Couple Weeks

Yesterday was Opening Day for the new baseball season and is therefore an unofficial holiday in Milwaukee. There's drinking involved so it's very serious in its unserious way. That's besides the point as I'm here to catch up on comic reviews. I've got quite a pile from the past couple weeks and I'm going to try doing brief reviews of each. Slightly different than the normal pattern. Let's see if this works.

New Avengers #63 - fight scenes and flashbacks. Some of the characters that primarily only appear in this book have a 'status update' to take them into Siege and prepare them for what lays ahead. Solid.

Mighty Avengers #35 - the team has mostly fallen apart, a massive Avengers villain makes his presence known, and Hank Pym acts weird. Big 'oh wow' moment at the end. The book seems to be building to a punchline of sorts. It's almost a pity that the Avengers as a whole are getting rebooted as it feels like this book just got settled and now is having to cycle through ideas before they could wear out their welcome.

Thunderbolts #141 - the team is sent to steal something from Asgard as part of Siege. They do the bad things you'd expect and then the Mighty Avengers show up. That might give away some of what happens in the other book but maybe not. Acceptable.

Uncanny X-Men #522 - the entire issue involves the rescue of Kitty Pryde. Rough art, some unclear storytelling pages, and no real action makes me wonder if this was dramatic or boring. Leaning towards boring. The X-Men have largely become a joke and that's rather sad.

The Marvels Project #7 - The early days of Captain America is World War II. Win!

Army of Darkness #26 - Ash has been taken over by Hell's Prophet. I'm not sure if this storyline is an interesting way to provide some epic quality to Ash's story or if it's a boring addition of other 'powered' people into this universe. Debating dropping the book.

Thor #608 - considering Thor's barely in this, maybe this should be Tales of Asgard. Interesting 'fill in the gaps' issue surrounding Siege but not really a Thor issue as such.

Project Superpowers Chapter Two #7 - Public domain World War II heroes return. I'm not sure I understand what's going on here. Should have cut this ages ago.

Transformers Last Stand of the Wreckers #3 - action packed, lots of twists and turns, I still enjoy this story.

Zorro #20 - lots of issues of this title have been told in flashback. This is no different. Zorro continues to play cat and mouse with the government yet it's not getting old because there's a feeling of progression, that things are changing in reaction to his actions. Good stuff.

Avengers The Initiative #34 - pretty much all Siege related fight scenes and revelations. Not bad for the middle of a story.

Secret Warriors #14 - Death and explanations. Are all spies double agents or are some triple agents?

Captain America #604 - feels appropriately gritty. At the same time it has the scale of a movie. Good deal.

Doctor Who #9 - beware what the trees are hiding.

Amazing Spider-Man #626 - bad things happen but at least Pete finally gets to explain some things to some people and that gets better for him. It's something anyway.

Futurama Comics #48 - just plain silly in the best possible way.

I still have about another dozen or so. We'll pick this up again later.

Doctor Who - 'The Eleventh Hour' Review

Synopsis:

Little Amelia Pond has a problem. She hears voices by the crack in her bedroom wall. Thankfully when she asks for help it arrives, in the form of a strange man in a blue box that crashes into her garden shed. He hears the voice as well: 'Prisoner Zero has escaped'. It turns out that his blue box is broken and it's a time machine. He'll be back in five minutes to help. Well, have you hear the one about the Time Lord that couldn't tell time?

Thoughts:

I really wanted this episode to work. It's the beginning of a new Doctor as well as a new production team. If the episode did well, then it was a sign that the show would stay strong after these changes and wasn't a cult of personality around any of the former staff.

Thankfully, I loved it.

The early sequence as I summarized it above, is just darling. Little Amelia is a cutie and sweet and the whole thing could easily be rewritten as a children's book without issue. That's meant as a compliment. Moffat continues in his overall writing theme of the innocent childlike fears being real (the bedroom crack in the wall here, but he's used simple things as shadows, statues, and lost children before) and it roots the weirdness in a reality.

We see the story's timeline from the Doctor's perspective, with even a throwaway line to cover over a possible plot hole. Therefore we learn of the consequences of the delay in his return as he does and sees what affect it has on the 'Raggedy Doctor'. The main story is a relatively simple plot that's there to establish our new characters and new Doctor. It holds together and works.

It's hard to tell how much of Matt Smith's Doctor is on display here. He admits to the fact that the regeneration isn't quite complete ('I'm still cooking' he notes at one point) so some of his actions could be down to post-regenerative mania. If this is a sign of things to come, his Doctor seems energetic, a bit goofy, and a touch distracted. He's trying to focus on a hundred things at once as well as talk to you. He's a bit like one of those kids that does four things while doing their homework only he can actually concentrate on them all at once. Admittedly I've been through the new Doctor process a few times now but as I watched I never doubted he fit in. He locks onto the role immediately. From some angles, his face looks very mature. I think he'll do nicely.

I also found it easy to warm to Amy Pond but admittedly her being a pretty red haired Scottish lass probably had something to do with that. Her life continues to get turned upside down by this man in the blue box and she seems fascinated with it and angry at the same time. It's not all been happiness and joy. She's willing to let him know that and I like that. She also doesn't seem to fancy him like some recent companions have done, although there is a scene that might point otherwise.

The TARDIS, for reasons unexplained, took some damage of late and needs some time to regenerate herself. We don't get to see the new interior until it's done and it looks nice. For whatever people want to say about the 1996 Fox TV movie, it has had a lasting impact on the show in the design of the interior. It's been dark and brown ever since as opposed to the bright and white we had for decades. I want to explore it further but it looks more 1996 TV movie than the coral we've had of late, although the console does retain some of the goofier controls that we've had since 2005.

I'm not sure about the remixed title music but the visual sequence is nice, a bit old school without looking exactly like anything else.

Good start. Can't wait until next week!