hello, gibbon

nope, not the Marvel supervillain. its Ubuntu's release 7.10 running on a VMWare 6.01 workstation hosted on my 64-bit Windows XP.




think i have geek cred? even better, all software mentioned didn't cost a dime.


whoops, i hear the cops comin'. see ya!

doom na doom

oi! this is shaping up to be month with the fewest posts ever. wow. well, between my football mishap (a finger ironically, for a game that has 'foot' in it) and a day job that led to me being put on maintenance dosage of meds for insanity and hypertension, its quite impossible to be blogging like i used to, although this whole exercise is a much calming endeavor and i should be doing more of it. right? riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!!!

doesn't mean i have been idle and ignoring my lovely color books, both old and new. still aim to finish that Daredevil rumination (even if just for one precious reader from Spain), and there's like a thousand things i'd like to put in, given the time. case in point, like this one ...

back when i was a runt in my beloved third world home, comics were hard to come by due to availability and cost. i can hardly afford to subscribe, much less keep track of my favorite spandex heroes' adventures. so i invariably end up with an issue here and there which is either the 2nd half of a great story or a cliffhanger which i never found out the conclusion to.

until the digital age.

thanks to the feisty denizens of this global village, i can finally read the full stories i missed, or complete the circle for others. just like Fantastic Four #259.

back during the height of John Byrne's powers, he churned out his best Marvel work on X-Men and Fantastic Four. this is of course in retrospect, and i had no idea that the issue i held in my hands back then was part of a historic run for Marvel's first family.

the story opens with Sue house-hunting in Connecticut, in an attempt to move the Richards family away from the Big Apple and all the supervillains they attract to the city (and the Baxter building). it is sort of a quiet scene, one i wasn't used to then, because i was used to fistfights, fisticuffs, brawls, donnybrooks and more fistfights. i still hadn't grasped the concept of characterization.

one member of the team also ponders the question of being attacked at any time, given that he just stepped out of LaGuardia airport amidst frightened co-passengers on his commercial flight. well, Ben proves them wrong halfway, because he gets attacked after he leaves the airport.

this is what they mean by "splitting a cab"

so who wants to split a cab with big ol' Benjamin? why, its their old buddy Tyros The Terrible (a.k.a. Terrax The Tamer, a.k.a. Terrence the Testosteroned One).

the Thing, as is his wont, tries to find the best opportunities to yell his patented battlecry.

this is what you get when you stiff a cabbie with the tip

the obvious effect is of course, getting creamed in return and wrecking a Shop-Rite (yeah those things need to be wrecked - kidding!).

i guess the grocery bill's gonna go overbudget

how do we know its a Shop Rite? it says so 3 panels ago.

meanwhile, who is the insidious mastermind who resurrected and sicced ol' Tyros on our heroes? why, there's actually no suspense because Dr. Doom was on the cover. duh. and when said mastermind reveals himself by nabbing Sue who was flying home in their vaunted Fantasticar (or one of its modules), he gets the comeuppance he deserves when she slaps the pregnant Invisible Woman around.

if that's not 'in your face', i don't know what is

Sue notes that she already thought Doom was 'above simple brutality', because she didn't know yet she was fighting a Doom-bot. when she comes face to face (so to speak) with Doom himself, projected on a floating globe, she asks why is he afraid to face any of them, and Doom counters that she should know by now that he does not like to engage in fisticuffs. of course, she may just be baiting him, but she already knows why. duh.

quick interlude: why is the Submariner's eyebrows look like the Golden Arches, only slightly separated? does he moonlight as Ronald McDonald?

back to our scheduled fight, Chris Eva- i mean, the Human Torch had already joined the fray (before Sue even did) with no better results, and Ben still insists on yelling Tyros to submission.

i mean, was there ever an issue that Ben never says it? seriously? there is? there are?

so, okay, Doom doesn't want to sully his immaculate hands dealing with the Fantastic Four, so he resurrects this former herald of Galactus to kick their asses. but as is with great villains, they have their own unique flaws - Doom's ego is way too much for any to bear. Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) is out there somewhere demonstrating his stretching abilities to a young thing doing research and has not joined the fray so far. so this galls the plastic surgeon from that hit F/X TV show.

here's a thought, Doom. if you're able to keep tabs on Sue and Ben, then how in freakin' hell did you not check where the hell Reed is? (finding Johnny is easy - he's always where the girls are).

thus, a pissed Doom emerges into the open and tells Tyros to fall back and do this thing another day. which of course the herald resents, because he's winning. then Doom does what Doom does to the hired help when they talk back at him.

payback is a bitch as Tyros turns against his current employer and fuses his suit. oh, the humiliation.

but help arrives in the form of the Silver Surfer (most noble and powerful of all of Galactus' stooges), who immediately demonstrates to Tyros that having a nice beard is not all its cracked up to be.

Doom, doubly pissed now that he's been left in a frozen stance that resembles either a crane style kung fu stance or some loser surrendering to the cops, tries a gambit that we never knew he was capable of. hint: mental projection. or something.

even MacGyver can't get out this; Doom can!

as always, the conclusion to a big ass fight between two cosmic-powered beings (wait! shouldn't that apply to the trio too, because they are) is a big explosion (we never actually see if the Shop Rite was wiped off the map - pity). Tyros seems to have been atomized (yeah right), and all that remains of Doom is his mask.

we never see Reed at all in this story, but we see another of Sue's lovers (is that accurate?) twice (but that's a mystery for another issue). i'm just glad i was finally able to finish the story 24 years later. damn!

here's a question: if we wiped off the dialogue from above panel, what would you substitute? knowing the past of these two, i'd say this scene is a little creepy.

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Fantastic Four #259-260

nooooooooooooo!!! pt. 2 (yesss!!!)

as if Kyle Rayner going over to the dark side wasn't enough ...


yes, that's Mr No Fear, Hal Jordan himself, once again co-opted into Parallax.

but thank goodness, his new tenure is much shorter than Kyle's (who gets saved by a painting, as foreshadowed in Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Parallax).


and don't tell me this scene does not make you cry and relive your childhood again!


and as much as we get annoyed by Guy Gardner, we look forward to seeing him cut loose next ish, now that the GLs are licensed to kill.

i have a man-crush on Geoff Johns! wooohoooooooooo!

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Green Lantern #24

Queen held by bitches, film at 11

following the death (ho-hum) of Green Arrow, a.k.a. Oliver Queen, right in his honeymoon night with Black Canary (a.k.a. Dinah Lance), we find the grieving widow letting off some steam for non-consummation (among other things - yes, she actually had to kill him ... go read the miniseries, dammit).

but since this is "superhero death" we're talking about, no one accepts death anymore, they try to resurrect anyone who dies. i mean, Ra's Al-Ghul could go straight and make a fortune by selling off his Lazarus Pits. and Vandal Savage could be his technical consultant. hellooooooo??? is anyone reading this?

so Batman believes Dinah that the dead body isn't Oliver's, and so he and Dr. Mid-Nite go try to make their CSI dreams come true.

jackpot! it's not Oliver (like fans didn't know that all along!) - its some shapeshifting schmuck named Everyman (oh that schmuck!). and Dinah thinks she knows who has Oliver. yes, its those bitches who declared war against the U.S. last month, and who took down the phallic symbol that is the Washington Monument. how dare they! and how dare they prevent Oliver from consummating his marriage to Dinah!



er ... Wonder Woman? why are your people being like this? did their "time of the month" suddenly become "time of the year"? what the hell, girl??

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Green Arrow & Black Canary #1