The Mr. Birthright Skater Con Episode!

“Whenever I’m in an intense firefight, I just turn on the soothing sound of Kwok’s voice in my helmet,� Master Chief supposedly said while drinking a pina colada at Applebees.

Tired, but still kicking!

-Tegan & Sara - The Con
-Superman: Birthright
-Skate vs. Tony Hawk Proven Ground
-Mr. Bean's Vacation
-Back To You
-Australian odd news
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New X-men #42 – Skottie Young deserves major props for successfully trying different art styles (take notes Salvador Larocca!): burnt style (Deadpool covers), manga style (Magik arc), retro style (the cover), and what I call dusty style (this issue).  I may not like them all, but wow, I’m impressed how different they all are. But as for the story, this is my first non-Magik related issue and I’m really glad I stayed on. I didn’t really get all the Purifier storyline, but it really played off of the “X-men as a familyâ€? theme I really like. Seeing the Astonishing team trying to take care of the New X-Men was great (esp Wolverine randomly running the back of one scene chasing after Pixie). It wasn’t a masterpiece in the traditional and technical sense, but at the end of the day this is the one that captured my attention and whimsy the most. Pick of the week. Grade: A

Countdown #32 – The art seemed extra wonky (esp on Piper) this issue. I like how some plotlines are running into others (ex: Rogues / Zatanna).  Just a normal issue.  Crap book of the week.  Grade: C-

World War Hulk #4 – More smashing. Ready to see the end of this, not because I dislike the series, but more just to move on. I’m actually kind of interested to see Sentry battle the Hulk next issue. Grade: C

Captain America #30 – Wow. Wow. Wow. This was a great issue and combined with getting the omnibus this week it rekindled my amazement with this series (esp after taking a while to be won over).  One very interesting thing for me is his handling of Tony Stark, which is probably my favorite portrayal of him post-Civil War. With the way things are going, Iron Man might be coming in to save the day.  Only under Brubaker’s handling would I actually be rooting for that.  Grade: A+

The Divorce Episode!

"I wish this episode had come out a few months earlier, would've saved the Big Aristotle some money in divorce settlements. Oh well, I guess I'll have to make Shaq-Fu 2 now," Shaquille O'Neal was quoted saying while filming Ka-zaam part 3.

Tune in for a discussion of three "divorces"
-Jenna Fisher's divorce announcement
-Comic fans divorcing Countdown
-iTunes and NBC call it splitsville

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JSA #9 – Pick of the Week. I’ve only been reading JSA since the Lightning Saga, so after two character-focused issues, I was wondering if the book was capable of also doing normal superhero mission storylines as well.  Johns basically proved me doubly wrong, both setting up the Kingdom Come sequel (very excited) and having a fun group time in the community.  Eaglesham’s art is once again serviceable, but his illustrations of Power Girl make me think that if a JSA movie ever comes out, Serena Williams should be in the running to play Power Girl – hey it worked for White Chicks, right?  Also, Alan Scott looks like he’s one foot in the grave; is he really that old?  Grade: A

Green Lantern #23 – Wow, that Anti-Monitor is big. It’s good to see the various Lantern storylines start to converge and the great thing is that it feels like the roller coaster is just about to reach the top before the crazy plummet (into fun).  Jordan using the Sinestro rings definitely has to be one of the highlights of this series. Can’t wait to see Superboy Prime come into action. Grade: A-

Spider-man Fairy Tales #4 – This has been a surprisingly fun series. Here we see Peter as a knight trying to win the affections of Gwendolyn, completely unaware of the adoring servant MJ.  In the light of OMD, there seemed to be tons of allusions to MJ being out of the picture, but hopefully it was just coincidental.  Nick Dragotta illustrates the tale for Cebulski in a manner that seems very fitting for the medieval tale.  It’s not mind-blowing, but just a fun re-imagining of the mythos.  Grade: B

New Avengers #34 – Good but not great. Thankfully they took the time to downplay the “Who’s a skrull?â€? issue and make some leeway in the Hood and symbiote sublots.  I’m normally a Yu lover, but some of the faces seemed very over-sketched in this issue and I never would’ve known that Logan got his nuts blown off unless for his subsequent jokes.  Grade: B

Daredevil #100 – Art was great, no disagreements there. As for the story, it was good but somewhat of a letdown in light of my expectations from the cover.  And calling it over-sized doesn’t count if half of it is a reprint. Grade: B

Countdown #33 – In this week’s mini-podcast, I’m going to try and defend my reasons for sticking with Countdown. The Rogues consistently are the highlight of the story and I liked how it bled into the previous Zatanna storyline.  I’m not thrilled with the Mary Marvel story, but I’m hoping the arrival of Kyle Rayner (inconsistency aside with the current GL storyline) will pick up the Atom storyline.  It’s been worse, but by default, this is the crap book of the week.  Grade: C

The Beautiful Rushing Love War Episode!

"Good thing there's over 67 episodes of Kwok Talk cause I'll be needing something to listen to this upcoming NBA season," Greg Oden said (supposedly) while blocking a shot.

Still enhanced and fancy! And a little loopy from late night recording.

-Rush Hour 3
-Beautiful Katamari & Stranglehold demos
-Secret War by Brian Michael Bendis
-Interpol - Our Love to Admire
-Day of Conception without Traffic Signals!
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Question of the week: Where should the inevitable Rush Hour 4 take place?
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Thanks to DHL not shipping over the weekend, my reviews are even later than usual.

Incredible Hulk #110 – I love Amadeus Cho, but by the end of the book I was getting weary of his “Hulk is not a killerâ€? theory; I’ll let it slide this time because I have really come to like the character and how they illustrate his thinking during battle.  I’ve generally liked how they’ve been using this book to flesh out the WWH story.  Has Hercules always been this funny?  He makes me laugh at least once every issue.  Grade: B+

New Warriors #4 – Finally the group gets to go to battle and the death of a teammate ups the odds at least.  The series hasn’t gotten either severely better or worse since the reboot, but serves as a nice bookend to Avengers: Initiative (which I hope they have some interaction with down the line).  I’m in it at least until they reveal Night Thrasher’s identity.  Jubilee really needs a cooler costume and code name…and possibly a breast reduction (has she always been that busty? Geez…).  Grade: B-

Uncanny X-men #490 – Ugliest cover this week. The fleshing out of Masque’s purpose was helpful but the slow burn of the plot didn’t make for a super exciting issue (except for Warpath getting ugly-fied).  Grade: C

Countdown #34 – ARGHHHHHH! We get the Rogues, but absolutely nothing of the Deathstroke interaction. The Flash confrontation was necessary and should make for some interesting stuff to work with. The Atom storyline is just too much off-panel.  Look at the big brains on Jimmy! Grade: B-

Checkmate vol 2 – I was really hoping this would’ve had the Outsiders crossover in it. Not so much. Checkmate is one of those books that I need to re-read to fully catch all the detail. Grade: Undecided

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #6 - I have been really harsh on this series so far, but Brian K. Vaughn's first issue in his run really knocked it out of the park. BKV REALLY has a handle on Faith and her voice and for the first time I felt like I was watching the TV show. Amazing. Grade: A

Sorry, but it looks like KT - #67 will be delayed until a further date. The powerbook may have processed its last bytes, leaving me computerless in the meantime. Is it bad that I kind of wish it died so I could get a new computer (thank you extended warranty!)?

Amazons Attack #6 – With the splash page of the battlefield at the end of issue #5, I held out hope that this very disappointing series would at least have a fun mindless battle at the end.  Nope.  Just like every previous issue, the story was a fragmented mess due to the story playing out in other DC titles.  Instead of getting to see the JLA/JSA slug it out with Amazons, we only see the aftermath and Wonder Woman confronting her mother. While I like a fight that involves throwing an entire plane at your enemy, the conflict resolves way too cleanly and has very little of the action somewhat alluded to at the end of the last issue. The surprise ending has interesting implications, but requiring wikipedia to tell me who it was and why the events are important really speak poorly of this lackluster mini-series.  Grade: F

Avengers: The Initiative #5 – Overall, I thought the book was ok (despite “Hulk needs fiberâ€? face shots), but had some points that prevented it from being great (or at least good).  The introduction of the covert team could lead to some fun stories, but right now I don’t really care for some of the team (Constrictor, Trauma, Bengal).  Mutant Zero is an interesting introduction, but really teeters the line of possibly being absurd and needlessly cryptic. Cloud Nine’s questionable methods and changes could lead to a potentially interesting side story.  I feel like this series would really benefit from a JSA-character exploration approach.  Grade: C

Countdown #35 – One of my biggest gripes about the series ended up biting me in the butt this week.  All along, I’ve been hoping that they would cut down on the number of storylines being addressed in a single issue to allow them to have more than one page of development per issue. Unfortunately for me, that meant sacrificing the Rogues storyline right at the cliffhanger of Deathstroke showing up. Most of the other storylines were on par with how they had been going, but I’m worried that the Search for Ray Palmer plot will suffer from “Amazons Attackâ€?-itis (the disease of too much going on in another title).  The Parallax story was nice with the Sinestro Corps event going on, so I hope a Sinestro one will be coming down the pipeline.  Grade: C

WWH: X-men #3 – If the New and Astonishing X-teams weren’t able to take down the jolly green giant, do the Uncanny and X-Factor teams really stand a chance? It seemed like a bit of let down and I kind of felt like Hulk when he asks who all these heroes are.  More mindless mutant beatdowns. While I liked the Jersey joke when Hulk pulled off Rockslide’s arms in issue #1, did we really need it rehashed with Monet?  And while I like seeing Colossus getting his arms broken and Wolverine getting the snot kicked out of him, the Hulk/Professor X confrontation was sorely lacking in this fight-fest.  Like WWH, the low stakes in the fight seemed to limit the excitement.  The only change coming out of this series was Juggernaut’s seemingly return to being a baddie.  Hopefully he’ll get an updated costume out of it. Grade: C-

The Animals Are Vick-torious Superheroes Episode!

It's the return of the "A" episodes to tide you over between our normal episodes. We start off like everyone and their mother talking about the Vick sentencing and somehow manage to end on Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man. And I get to show pictures of my dog, Piper.
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