~ spoiler alert!! ‘our’ local store put this joint on the shelves a week early. get into it!
~ spoiler alert!! ‘our’ local store put this joint on the shelves a week early. get into it!
~ after 50 years of being in fist fights for a living, spider-man discovers than he could wear a helmet instead of a cloth mask, then parade around like he just discovered plutonium (by accident!). if you could use all that tech and shit in one day, why wouldn’t you just use it all the time?
anyway, the point is, the hideous design of the costume notwithstanding (the eyes are wrong!!), how could you show off that weak thing in front of iron man and not feel like a tool? “oh look you have shoulder pads and a turtleneck now; meanwhile, my armor costs more than the space shuttle,” says tony stark. maybe next issue captain america, the guy who runs fucking s.h.i.e.l.d., will be asking you for tactical advice on a brawl w/ doctor octopus, and you can respond ‘we beat them up quickly.’ innovative! when did comics start being written for kids?
also, it looks like spider-woman will still be walking/flying into the next fight in just a spandex bodysuit.
~ here are the ten (10) best spider-man covers of the last decade. these are not the best covers ever, but we have already presented many of those, six years ago. obviously, some of these are not covers of spider-man titles; others are not final production images (no title or logos). they are in no particular order, except that the last one is most irrelevant.
the amazing spider-man 600
~ all the panic can cease; we managed to score a copy of ‘amazing spider-man’ #529 at new york city’s forbidden planet this weekend. we dug through a pile of second printings and uncovered a few first printings; we left two (2) of them on the shelf for anyone who wants to pedal there immediately upon reading this.
~ speaking of marvel comics, it is news to us that marvel and dc have held the rights to the term ‘super hero’ since the 1960’s!
~ speaking of ridiculous ideas, we have seen parked in front of the abandoned church on 47th and kingsessing vans emblazoned with a logo for an ‘anti-graffiti network’ [w]. this is a surprisingly clever use of philadelphia’s limited resources; we need graffiti so much less than we need anti-stabbing, anti-shooting, or anti-getting beaten in the street in broad daylight networks. although, perhaps if more hoodlums were allowed to spraypaint, they would have less time to punch cyclists in the face [+] and steal routers and hand tools [+].
~ we were just as torn up as the next reader when we reached the end of ‘daredevil’ #81 and found that it was the last issue of the bendis/maleev run that has kept us riveted to the title for the past four years. wiping away two (2) months of tears, we cracked open #82 and #83 and discovered brubaker and lark might be able to ably succeed bendis/maleev. if not, we can always revisit ‘hardcore‘.
~ also, we were unable to get our paws on a copy of ‘amazing spider-man’ #529. who knew that ‘asm’ would sell out? that is like being told, ‘we are all out of coke.’ if anyone has an extra copy, you can send it to our box.
~ like the rest of the world, we at the angry red planet don’t talk about africa very often, but as the media is falling over themselves to be the first to say that everyone but them has been ignoring the crisis in the sudan, we have noticed a couple of absurd statements, both in the bbc:…
“One is the pressure from right-wing Christian groups in the US, who have taken up the cause of their fellow Christians in Sudan.
Their nagging – on the issues of slavery and the forcible imposition of Sharia law – helped get sanctions imposed on Sudan in 1997.”
‘nagging’. we know that the british media is expected to appeal to its audience by being testy and salacious, but to refer to warnings of slavery and violent religious laws as ‘nagging’ might be one of the reasons why many of their american cousins think they are full of shit.
…and the washington post:
“We should avoid the situations where we allow member states to hide behind the secretary general, use him as an alibi for their own inaction,” Annan told the Addis Tribune in Addis Ababa, the capital of neighboring Ethiopia.
in the midst of his whining – referring to himself in the third person – that people are calling him out for presiding over a second failure to act against ethnic cleansing, is kofi annan suggesting that ‘member states’ of the united nations should stop calling him lazy and start taking their own actions in sudan? is not this anathema to the purpose of the united nations? is not this type of unilateral action what he and everyone else – apart from the americans’ british cousins – bitched about when the united states decided to invade iraq?
~ according to be new england journal of medicine, one in six of servicemen/women returning from iraq are suffering from psychological damage. only 20% of these people are seeking help. between these guys walking the streets, housewives in fort bragg being killed, and the return of soldiers who are easily coerced into torturing prisoners, it might be safer to move to tikrit for the summer.
~ happy anniversary to our national motto: “bring ’em on!”
~ the amazing era of jrjr. has ended; he is already missed!
~ major media peddlers seem to be telling us that the death of an american solider who turned down millions of football dollars to join the army is somehow more poignant or heartbreaking than the death of hundreds of men and women who were forced to join because of dearth of other economic options. we say that it is not.
~ regarding the pentagon vs. the memory hole [w]: if you are going to be ‘brave’ enough to send americans to their deaths, you should be brave enough to face their images when their remains are returned home.
~ a coffee bean and tea leaf can be seen in the latest ‘spider-man 2’ trailer. there are no coffee bean and tea leaf establishments in new york city.
~ judging from the trailer [w] released today, spider-man will have more screen time in ‘spider-man 2’ than he received in the previous movie. it also appears that they are still using los angeles for some of the street web swinging scenes; maybe sam raimi does not know that eucalyptus trees don’t grow in manhattan? nevertheless, ‘the amazing spider-man’ would have been a better title for the 2nd movie than the one chosen.
~ everyone in the angry red office has been sick over the past two weeks; some of us want to eat but can’t, and others can eat but won’t. in the meantime, we have scrawled a few notes:
— we predict it is more likely that ‘outlaw cleric’ al-sadr will be killed, along with many americans and iraqis, than arrested.
— the local protest over the iraq war would draw more participants if there had been some u.s. flags instead of, or at least in addition to, palestinian flags behind which american participants were expected to march. or if the black panthers spent more time talking about bush (2004) and less time ranting about allende (1973).
— whilst investigating the percentage of local ‘artists’ at the dogwood festival, we noticed two (2) cups with markings that indicated that they contained 64oz. of cola. more surprising than the discovery that the 12″ tall cups were not an attempt at art was the discovery that each 64oz. of cola was intended to be consumed by one (1) human.
— it looks like we will rearrange our favourite spider-man cover list when ‘spectacular #14’ comes out. [+]
— ‘vetted’ is replacing ‘on the ground’ as the media’s latest annoying platitude. [+]
— too few people in this country are aware of the importance of keeping line of secularism from becoming thin.
