Fridays are all kinds of awesome. Especially today, with a three-day weekend ahead of me. At the moment I'm lunching with my friend Steve. Tom should be coming by soon, if things go as usual.
Smallville last night was great. I'm so happy with Season 8 as a whole thus far. It's reminiscent of Season 3, which was my favorite. The executive producers and co-creators of the show left over the summer, leaving the show in the capable hands of four producers who have been working and writing for the show since Season 2. These guys have revamped the show and brought it back to its core concept: Clark Kent's journey to becoming Superman. And I am loving every minute. By the end of the action-packed season premiere, Clark announced that he would begin working at the DAILY PLANET! This is the ultimate step towards his destiny for us die-hard Superman fans. Plus he happens to be working across a desk from Lois Lane, who has been on the show since Season 4 and began working at the Planet last season. Recently, we've seen Lois begin to exhibit what appear to be latent romantic feelings for Clark, so the iconic relationship is beginning to take root. It's really fun to watch again, especially now that I'm a comics fan. Seeing these epic, iconic events starting to shape up is just too cool. Every episode has at least one "geek-out" moment. If you aren't watching this show already, start. You can watch all of this season's episodes for free on cwtv.com, or if you prefer, you can buy them on iTunes. Either way, at least check it out. You can just jump on from the Season 8 premiere, but I would really recommend starting with the pilot (aptly entitled "Pilot") and working your way through the first seven seasons. It's an incredibly fun, intelligent, well-written, and well-produced show that anyone can enjoy. There's an entire group of people who have never particularly liked Superman, yet
love Smallville, so trust me, it's possible.
Wow. This post started out as being about my life in general, and now its about Smallville. I better set this straight by getting back on the soap box and ranting about something else.
Umm...okay, how about this week in comics? Sure, that sounds good. Let's start with Action Comics #870. For all you non-comic people, Action Comics is one of the two flagship Superman titles. Issue #870 saw some major developments in the Man of Steel's world. He saved Metropolis and Kandor (a Kryptonian city), both of which were plucked from their respective home planets, bottled, and added to the evil Brainiac's collection. He defeated Brainiac, then restored Metropolis to its full size and proper location. Without skipping a beat, Big Blue flew north to the Fortress of Solitude and unbottled Kandor there. Just as he gazed upon the restored Kryptonian city in all its shining splendor, he hears his mother's voice crying out from their farm in Smallville, Kansas. It turns out that after Superman left Brianiac, the evil Coluan fired a missile on the Kent Farmhouse. Martha was directly in the missile's path, but Jonathan, in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice, elderly though he is, dove and pushed his wife out of the way, saving her life. Clark arrives just
seconds too late to find his mother weeping, holding her beloved husband in her arms. He has suffered from a heart attack.
It was a sad ending to an amazing story. Writer Geoff Johns is my favorite comics writer, and for good reasons. He really understands the characters involved and brings them to life....or kills them, in this case. But hey, we've been told for months that a supporting character would be killed soon, so it really came as no surprise. Still, it was a sad moment.
Trinity sucked this week, as it often does. While most comics are published on a monthly basis, Trinity is a weekly. It is limited to 52 weekly issues, so it will last one year. Right now we're at week 19. So far it's been mediocre at best. It tells the story of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman (the DC Comics Trinity) and their real-time adventures over the course of a year. Sounds like it has real potential. But it's executed terribly. These last two weeks, the stories have had nothing to do with the three aforementioned principle characters. They made a quick appearance at the end of this week's issue, but other than that, we really havent seen them in about 2 weeks. Oh well. I hope it gets better. I only continue to buy it at this point because I want to have the full collection. Sticktoitiveness and all that. So here's hoping it starts to pick up. It started getting good around week 13ish. If they can get it back up to that level of quality, or better, I will be happy and the $3/wk will have been worth it.
Also, I bought two independent comics this week. They're biographies of the two presidential candidates. I read the McCain one last night, and I'll be reading the Obama one tonight I'll review them together later on tonight or this weekend. Right now I'm off to work. Later.
