Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Another hump day sans humping.

First things, I just did a quick Wikipedia search to reveal the mystery behind the name Wednesday (random knowledge never hurt anybody, unless that random knowledge is sound economic policy and your name is Ron Paul - then it hurts your chances of your colleagues listening to you). Guess what? Wednesday is pretty cool. "The name comes from the Middle English Wednes dei, which is from Old English language Wēdnes dæg, meaning the day of the English god Woden (Wodan) who was a god of the Anglo-Saxons in England until about the 7th century. Wēdnes dæg is like the Old Norse Oðinsdagr ("Odin's day"), which is an early translation of the Latin dies Mercurii ("Mercury's day"), and reflects the widespread association of Woden with Mercury going back to Tacitus." The key part of this information is that Wednesday is relative to "Odin's day." Odin is the father of Thor, which I haven't done the research (brief Wiki lookup), but I'm going to assume Thursday was once actually "Thor's day" because it immediately follows "Odin's day." IT JUST MAKES AWESOME SENSE! NEXT!

I read about twenty comics yesterday (finally catching up). Stand-outs among the last month's books included Deadpool, War Machine (Iron Man Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. #33), and Ghost Rider. The new Deadpool series is perfect thus far (three issues in). The three-part Secret Invasion tie-in was able to establish that ol' Wade Wilson is still wacko, yet he's got the skills to pay the medical bills (or maybe Agency X has a sweet health care package?). One reveal here is that Deadpool is actually working for Nick Fury on this assignment. Looking at the solicits for the next two issues, it looks like DP may be headed for some darker adventures (similar to the pre-Cable & Deadpool, Deadpool series). I'm down. Unfortunately, Medina isn't doing the pencils going forward... hopefully Marvel doesn't pull an X-Factor on me and throw an awful art-scribe on my new favorite book.

War Machine: Weapon of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a solid read (much better than any Iron Man: DoS books since the Extremis story). Away from the book, I read yesterday that Don Cheadle will be taking over for Terrance Howard as James Rhodes (aka War Machine) in the movies. I thought that TH was a perfect casting choice, so I'm a bit bummed... at the same time though, Don Cheadle is awesome and I'm sure he'll serve the role well. Hopefully he's locked up for a couple of films, so we can really see the WM in action. Back to the comic, the coolest thing in this book was the ending (a particularly gnarly new WM armor). Check it out!

Finally, the Ghost Rider series has been fantastic since Jason Aaron took over. His spin that the Ghost Rider is actually a tool of Heaven, mixed with naughty nurses and nuns, as Johnny Blaze seeks Zadkiel for a reckoning - all excellent. The only thing I'm not 100 percent a fan of with this series currently, is the art. The style is fitting most of the time, but here and there the character's faces get very warped and goofy... the inking doesn't help the matter much. Luckily the story is solid enough to cover for any art issues. I wish I could say the same for X-Factor... what a fall from grace (I blame the She-Hulk crossover).

Outside of the Marvel Universe, Driving While Stupid plays tonight. I need to sit down and run through the songs by myself at some point today to make sure I've got them down... I'd say I'm 90 percent certain I won't make any big mistakes. One of the things DWS is known for are crazy, generally obscene things happening at shows (Kenny). I don't think anything is planned yet for this evening... we'll see. It should be fun...

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