Kate and I went and saw Iron Man 2 this morning at Tysons. Despite it not getting extremely high marks from some reviewers, I enjoyed it as much as I did the first one. When it comes down to it, both Iron Man movies aren’t really about good versus evil. It’s about Tony Stark. Iron Man 2 showed us a rather different side of Mr. Stark compared to the first movie. Go check it out.
After last weeks Free Comic Book day, I decided that it’s time I start becoming a bit more familiar with some titles that are out there. Yesterday I received my first order from Things From Another World, although, it was just the first issue of a three part Fraggle Rock collection that is being put out by Archaia. Compared to other releases of Fraggle Rock stuff that I’ve seen, this one actually has some decent art work. My only complaint is that the Trash Heap looks a bit more like a green blob than a pile of trash.
I really do love Fraggle Rock and it’s probably one of the few shows I watched as a child that stood the test of time. I was raised on just about everything Jim Henson and there was even a time when I wanted to work with puppets and such. I’ve always been fascinated by them and I often feel that you just can’t replace them with CGI. I twitch when I try to think what movies like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth would have been like if they were done with 3D creatures instead of puppets.
Unlike a lot of people my age, I really didn’t read a lot of comic books when I was younger. The only one I read with any sort of frequency was Richie Rich and I think that was mostly because I liked the robots. I kind of have a thing for robots. Now, I’m not physically interested in them because that would just be creepy and seven different shades of wrong. Even after watching a show like Chobits, I do not have any dreams of having…well, you know. After all, I’m happily married.
While I knew about comic books like Spiderman and the X-men, I was more interested in their cartoon form when I was younger. Actually, when it comes to super hero type stuff, I still don’t have much of an interest in those sort of comics. I totally enjoy animated shows and movies but the comic books don’t draw me in. Getting these Fraggle Rock books are really just to satisfy my love for Henson stuff.
Now, I do read an fairly large assortment of manga. I’m into typical shonen stuff like Bleach, Death Note and Naruto but I also love stuff like Kare Kano and Love Hina. In the recent past, I considered American comics to be mostly super hero books and I didn’t look further into the situation. Once I started working on BS/OD, I started becoming a bit more aware that there was more to American comic books than Superman, Batman and an assortment of titles for little kids. So, I decided to finally give some of them a chance.
What am I going to start reading? Well, I’m still looking into things but I have settled on a couple titles. One is a new series called Scarlet by Brian Michael Bendis. Other than the premise given on TFAW’s site, I don’t know much else about the series but it sounds like something I would be interested in. The other series is called Devolution and it’s going to be put out by Storm Lion comics. I caught the preview of it in one of the free books I got on Free Comic Book Day. The art and the story look interesting and it’s got mechs. I like robots and I like mechs. I like them a lot.
