Before The Comeback Is Set Back By A Rollback...

In New York City, comic book stores reopened under "Phase 2" in June, so there's been time to slowly catch-up on what was postponed over the last few months.

 Months of buying nothing means that what I did buy looks like a batch of books, but had there been no pandemic, I realized I would've only picked out 2 regular-sized comic books a month on average. On one month, I would've purchased 3 regular-sized comic books a month. And the purchases weren't particularly adventurous - it really looks like I'm just keeping tabs on what new adventures Batman and Batgirl are up to.

 I was able to flip through the pricey "extravaganza" issues of Catwoman, Robin, The Flash, Joker and Green Lantern - the Green Lantern one was, surprisingly, the one worth buying, while the rest looked superficial with empty calories. 

Justice League Dark features on-the-rise new writer Ram V. working the script off of James Tynion's plot and is serviceable, if very middle-of-the-road. It'll be interesting to see new storylines entirely by V in the future and how they fare, because the only distinction that made it worth checking out the next issue is that he has a good grasp of pacing, dialogue and characterization.

Now, on to the new Adventures of Bruce & Babs. It was nice that I was able to get the issue of Batman with the Stanley "Artgerm" Lau cover of Punchline, because there was a lot of hype surrounding it, even though her story reads like weak tea compared to the stories that introduced Harley Quinn in Batman: The Animated Series, although, to be fair, I remember not thinking anything of Harley until after Paul Dini wrote "Harley and Ivy" - that episode was her breakthrough, so it's possible that Punchline will probably have her moment in the future, while her first appearance and "origin" (which, honestly, was really sketchy and lacking meat to feel definitive) are just perfunctory things for posterity right now. Like, for example, if Eiza Gonzalez is cast to play her in a movie, then these early books become hot. Right now, it's empty calories. 

Speaking of Batman: The Animated Series, two new comic books were launched to coincide with an expansion to a popular line of toys. Batman: The Adventures Continue and reprints of The Batman Adventures comic book from the early-90s. Ironically, the reprint comic is printed on better-quality paper than either the original issue or the trade paperbacks that reprinted the issue, offered at 79 cents more than the cover price of the original. It's actually a better deal than when it was offered 27 years ago. It's also a good issue that sets the style early. The Batman vs. The Penguin story is told with the same complexity expected of the traditional Batman books, but not the ones sold at the time. With hindsight, the approach in these early issues has more in common with Steve Englehart's 70's Batman comics, but I look back fondly on my memory of reading that 1st issue when it debuted, with the Danny Devito Penguin voiced by Paul Williams.

With Batman: The Adventures Continue, I thought the story was let down by the artwork. Ty Templeton's art style feels pretty basic compared to other artists I've seen work in this "animated" style, which is really just a way of saying it's drawn the way Bruce Timm might draw it, except we've seen him not draw it this way - check out the Mad Love comic book and you'll see his drawing style is more exaggerated, with more influences and a wider frame-of-reference informing what he's doing. If they couldn't get Bruce Timm back, I would've liked to have seen Rick Burchett, Tim Levins or Dario Brizuela try it. Otherwise, the book is a fun, safe bet.

Opinions on Batgirl comics vary wildly. I always rooted for Barbara Gordon to get out of the wheelchair and be Batgirl again, whereas the people who claim to prefer her replacements - Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brow - well, the sales of those books really needed to be there to not make anyone in editorial agree that they were great. Dan Didio's decision (typical of most of the decisions he made to reboot books) to make Barbara Batgirl again was based on sales possibly being better if the character headlining the book wasn't a 2nd/3rd generation character. In the long run, sales turned out relatively the same, but this time the title character is consistent with how she appears on merchandise and television, so you can argue that Barbara wins by seniority and experience, brand-wise. If they replace her again, well, I have one less book to buy, plus I'm still rooting for Lily Collins to play Babs in the movie...

   The resemblance is incredible.

I'm certain Cecil Castellucci's Batgirl scripts have been all about increasing the suspense and threat with bigger villains, but I have half-jokingly suggested on Twitter that her inspiration for story ideas comes from tropes found in folklore & mythology. This makes her stories more interesting than most of the Batgirl storylines we have had in a long time since the "Batgirl of Burnside" arc, five years ago. Castellucci's first arc, "Oracle Rising" has Barbara re-encounter her first villain (Killer Moth), plus The Terrible Trio - villains that appeared in the previous arc by the former writer of the book, Mairghead Scott, but the real villain of the piece is the evil Oracle android, whose origins have no explanation, but we get visual clues that she might be a construct of Superman villains Brainiac & Lex Luthor as part a line-wide crossover, The Year of The Villain, so, essentially, Castellucci is offering us Batgirl vs. Evil Twin, a common trope in mythology. Unfortunately, there's a huge continuity problem: Castellucci seems to be writing this as if "Oracle" was a sophisticated artificial intelligence system that Barbara employed, akin to the TV series, Person of Interest, which is a huge retcon, since Oracle was just an alias Barbara used when she became a computer hacker, offering Intel/communications/tech support to Batman and the Justice League in the 1990's. Was anyone in editorial aware? Cecil's main Batgirl reference is the  Bronze Age Batgirl comics, which explains the presence of Jason Bard as a would-be love interest in her book, even though he had previously appeared as a villain in Batman Eternal (and within that story, it was Barbara who was responsible for the crippling injury that damaged his leg; she threw him off a rooftop). Anyway, if you can get over these hurdles, it's good, Stan Lee-style superhero spectacle and the art is fabulous.

The next arc in Cecil's run was literally Batgirl vs. A Dragon. In mythology, dragons represent greed - the monomyth of the greedy dragon who collects treasures and virgin princesses and hoards them in his castle or cave, but doesn't do anything with this stuff; he's just a hoarder. The heroic knight has to journey to slay the dragon and recover the dragon/treasure. Well, if Batman can be seen fighting dragons and hanging out with dinosaurs around the same time, then Batgirl can fight a dragon, too. This is also the first time Batgirl is regarded as equal to a Knight in shining armor, a parallel usually reserved for Batman. 

So, we've seen her fight old villains, fight an evil twin, slay a dragon...and then, in the short arc that just wrapped, Cecil has Babs fight another new villain, but it's a villain that's a pastiche of a classic archfoe - Auric Goldfinger.

Okay, not really, the adventure is clearly a parallel of Goldfinger, with KGBeast standing in for Oddjob and Batwoman standing in for Felix Leiter. It's a classic trope in superhero stories to have the hero fight a villain whose schemes ape established pop culture characters from books, movies and TV shows. The Batman villain Ra's Al Ghul was always compared with Fu Manchu and James Bond villains like Doctor No & Ernst Stavro Blofeld. With Batgirl, Cecil Castellucci created a James Bond-style female villain for Babs and, as a bonus, tossed in an underused Batman villain as her henchman and included a team-up with guest-hero Batwoman...who might also be standing in for Pussy Galore in addition to Felix Leiter, since the original solicits for issues 45 & 46 claimed this was going to be a 2-part team-up with Catwoman, but it's possible that character was removed because she appears prominently in the main Batman storyline, so, ironically, inserting Kate Kane in her place makes the Bond analogy even more crystal clear, because in the Goldfinger book, Galore was also a lesbian.

Whether or not my theory is a deliberate approach or a subconscious one on Cecil's part isn't really important, but I found it amusing that it fits well. Her next issue is another trope: an encounter with the Devil:

This issue isn't out yet. I hope I'll get a copy.

I'll wait for the trade to check out what Harley Quinn's romance with Booster Gold looks like...same deal with the Batman Beyond comic book..

How will Poison Ivy & Blue Beetle react to this?

COVID-19 vs. Comic Books: "That's ALL, Folks"?!

What a difference a week makes!

This germ has bigger muscles than Superman..

The hammer had fallen on Monday. On the week before, the people of the United States were warned to be cautious, stay away from large gatherings, wash their hands, wear gloves, to not cough & sneeze on people, consider rinsing yourself off rather than waste/hoarding toilet paper...but the numbers were climbing, people were taking the Corona virus either too lightly or had no real choice and had to continue going about their day...I saw the comic shop that I go to was selling everything at 20% discount, so I rolled the dice and went in on Friday, saw only 3 people there (luckily, 7 people did not enter the premises, so the 4 of us were safely equidistant), made my purchases and skedaddled promptly.

The quick fox returns to the den from the trip deep down the rabbit hole, covered in dirt on the long way back, yet with tail intact, feeling none the worse for wear and enlightened...

Non-essential is the key word here. Beginning Sunday, all the comic shops that weren't closed are ordered to close. This is something comic book people feared...the death of the Direct Market from having no business, lots of unsold products, no sense of when exactly will they be back in business, no idea if recovery is possible. I see a lot of the shops are turning to online sales for now, but I've also heard & read the word "Non-essential" used to describe books as a low priority for the post offices and other delivery services. Some crowd-funding entrepreneurs think they're being clever by disguising their book bundle in boxes that look like they contain food, but that doesn't sound foolproof. 

So..with all the talk of the Direct Market going down comes talk that the publishers will go down  with them. A lot of the books published within the last two decades were clearly marketed to a specific type of consumer - the guys who spend maybe 30 or 40 dollars minimum per week, who aren't shy with using their debit/credit card. They're usually men, regardless of whom the books are aimed at (I don't really want to bring up Comicsgate vs. SJW audiences in this post, but I will say that the retailers have a right to be concerned if the publisher is cranking out product for a target demographic that's not buying them enough to make healthy sales while losing the longtime consumers who stopped buying when they saw they were phased out and there was nothing new for them). Within the last month, I've seen that the old tricks can still turn a trick:

Y'know...when you hear about a comic book being "sold out", that doesn't mean they were sold to customers walking into the store..it means the retailers purchased all the copies printed by the publisher. If the publisher wants to, they'll offer to print out a Second Edition that the retailers can purchase...and if all the retailers order all the copies from that 2nd then maybe the publisher offers a Third Edition...and of course, none of this means your average consumer brought a copy of either - it could mean the retailers have the copies sitting in storage, hoping that turns into a pile of gold...and it could, now, because ALL the comic shops in the country are closed, indefinitely, so all these new books that are supposed to come out within the next 3 months are either not going to be shipped to stores (because the retailers are hoping for a last-minute reimbursement/cancellation) or take the new books but not order anything new indefinitely until they can see light at the end of the tunnel. The consignment system is tricky because success with comic book sales depends on speculation, which is why a number of shops were depending on toy sales over the last few years...toy stores are not considered "essential" either. 

So for now, the shops are screwed, the publishers are screwed. Lots of doom and gloom talk on social media. I expect a mass implosion when business resumes..lines will be slashed by more than 3/4 - you're only going to see the shops remaining in business fall back in the late-1990s groove of severely under-ordering books, even main Batman books - the "Pull List" is a thing of the past...and what remains of the Direct Market is going to recoil back into the cave-like atmosphere that gave comic shops a stigmatization that never went away. 

The Bubble has burst.

I'm going to have to just wait for the trades to read more about Punchline, the Joker's new girlfriend, who kinda acts like Mercy Graves, Lex Luthor's valet...well, there's only so many personalities a female comic book villain can have, but she looks great.

"Superman: Kryptonite" by Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale

The end of my loosely-connected trilogy of essays devoted to stories featuring kryptonite in Superman comic books is long-overdue...and really awkwardly put, since why would any non-Superman comic feature a story about kryptonite if it wasn't setting up an appearance by Superman? It's one of the few things that can kill Superman, the irony that it's made from the remains of his home planet; you're killing him with a "souvenir from home".

Kryptonite can be annoying, because it allows for Superman to be in peril of garden-variety gangsters and thugs; why waste imagination coming up with formidable foes for Superman to spar with, when a purse-snatcher holding a green rock the size of a penny could knock him out?

So..you can imagine the conceit in which Cooke has the audacity to suggest that the villain of his tale could be a giant sentient, telepathic chunk of kryptonite that's been passed around over the decades to various owners like the Hope Diamond, only to reveal that it was actually a cage for a telepathic alien imprisoned like a fly in amber, after briefly becoming intangible during Krypton's explosion, then trapped inside the meteorite while phasing in, ultimately using his mental prowess to force gangster Tony Gallo to act as his proxy on behalf, ultimately reforming the psychotic capo in an uneasy puppet show...I $#!+ you not, that's part of the plot in this book.

Superman: Kryptonite is actually the classiest Superman arc I've ever read, but I don't think it caught on with readers the way people say other stories have, like "Red Son" or "Whatever Happened To The Man From Tomorrow?" - but it's good company with those tales on your bookshelf of Superman stories...if you have one. It's got a sci-fi/noir feel to it, only cheapened, in my opinion, by the appearance of the post-Crisis version of Lex Luthor - the boring 1980's business tycoon. Again, just my opinion, but I prefer the Tony Stark version of Lex Luthor that was more prominent in the Silver and Bronze Age, who occasionally appears in Modern Age comics in the last decade since Infinite Crisis. Luthor didn't appear in the original tale that introduced kryptonite and he shouldn't have appeared here, even if it's abundantly clear that the only reason he's in this is to depict a new origin for the infamous kryptonite ring that he wore...which gave him cancer due to being in nonstop close proximity to it's radiation...which resulted in him faking his death and transplanting his conciousness in a cloned body that posed as the original's "son" until the clone body deteriorated and he made a deal with DC's equivalent of the Devil - Neron - in exchange for having his restored...I  $#!+ you not, this junk actually happened in the Superman books during the 90's...a character worthy of antics deserving to be banished to the now non-existent "quarter-bins" really shouldn't be seen in a classy joint like Superman: Kryptonite.

What else could've derailed this story? It was used as a launch for a new ongoing comic book series, Superman Confidential, a counterpart to another title, Batman Confidential, which was supposed to be the successor to the venerable 1990's Batman comic Legends of The Dark Knight..

..just as a sidebar, I can't help thinking a book titled Legends of The Man of Steel would've been more interesting to have for an anthology book that was going to offer stories in a similar vein - tales set in the early years of Superman's career - but Coinfiential must've sounded "kewl" to the guys occupying the DC Comics offices at the time...

Batman Confidential lasted a few years, whereas Superman Confidential never got off the ground...this opening arc was plagued with delays (I think Tim Sale was also working on the TV series "Heroes" during this time - 2006) and DC Comics editors tried filling the schedule with mediocre fill-in stories by other writers and artists. That strategy for dealing with late books tends to piss off retailers and fans alike, because too long a wait invariably kills interest and hurts sales. It couldn't have helped that five of the six issues that serialized this story had drab covers. Issue #3 has the best cover - with the giant Kryptonite rock in the background and the "villain", Tony Gallo, in the foreground.

Another problem is that Darwyn Cooke could be his biggest critic. The introduction featured in the hardcover and paperback editions has Cooke somewhat writing apologetically, that brainstorming  ideas for a standable Superman story arc that could stand the test of myriad continuity changes and reboots was no picnic and appreciated all the help he got from working with Sale, plus the fact that this tale was a total reboot of a Golden Age tale that was executed frivolously (my observation from Cooke's summation, not necessarily his) and he was grateful to just see it done and in print, at last.

That...bellies the confidence and talent on display, here. All parties involved were up to the task and did a great job. It's one of the best Superman comics I've read. And it's even better collected as a graphic novel. I $#!+ you not.

"It's Superman's Cousin's Show! Starring Superman's Cousin!"

A live-action Supergirl TV series is in development for the CBS network, which is interesting, because her comics are a mixed bag. Rather tellingly, DC Comics never printed a Greatest Supergirl Stories Ever Told reprint collection, but they have with Batgirl, Green Lantern, even Captain Marvel (!), who can only be reffered to as Shazzam nowadays because Marvel Comics wouldn't like that. For a long time ( and I'm making a long story short ), Supergirl couldn't even be Superman's cousin! Oh, she could be the shape-shifting clone of Lana Lang who assumed the identity of an insane goth girl named Linda Danvers and later develop new powers and complications that made her "Supergirl" in name only that were relevant in the wake of pop culture trends like The X-Files and Buffy, The Vampire Slayer...but it wasn't Supergirl.

Honestly, I predict a Supergirl TV show  will ignore the comics for the most part, which I believe is the formula that's made recent series like Arrow and The Flash successful - both have very little in common with the source material at all, even Gotham, which claims to draw inspiration from bits and bobs of Batman comics, but is really evolving into a Game of Thrones-style series about the origin of Batman, his supporting cast and rogues gallery as they converge in Gotham City. And Batman is in it - as young Bruce Wayne, who is portrayed as an armchair detective of sorts. Again, there are no callbacks to any specific comics; anyone who believes so is trying to reach hard.

So I doubt Supergirl will be based on any comics. Her characterization will probably depend on whoever is cast in the role, too. A fanpage devoted to the character on Facebook characterized her as a "warrior princess"...where did THAT come from?  As for villains?  They could lean on the Superman rogues gallery for villains least-likely to appear in the films, like Livewire, The Prankster, Mr. Mxyzptlk, etc..and Reactron - the only rogue I remember from her comics. Ambush Bug might show up (because he appeared in her comic once), possibly Granny Goodness and the Furies will be big players...maybe Kara will take up roller-hockey or join a rock band, becoming a Riot Girls-esque hipster - who knows? Maybe Batgirl will show up to set up a spin-off series?

If I had to imagine a premise for this character...I would say that instead of arriving on Earth after the destruction of Krypton, her rocketship/escape pod landed on the future Earth of The Legion of Superheroes and...having spent a brief, yet significant time as a member of the Legion, time travels to present-day Earth to check up on Superman and perhaps save the Earth, but ultimately decides to stay. So...we've got a Supergirl who was a ring-bearing member of the Legion (and also a former member of the Red Lanterns) but is new to Earth. That's a sketchy outline for a pilot, but I see this character as someone who is.. a nice, but relatively aloof foreign exchange student arriving in a new place.

Meanwhile, there's cool art from fans, professional fan-favorite artists and cosplayers on the internet..I particularly like model/cosplayer Enji Night's Supergirl and the cape-hoodie combination design on one illustration...but then, I selected all of these pictures for this post, so of course I like them all! Enjoy!

Update: more details about the show have been revealed - Supergirl's civilian identity will be "Kara Danvers" and she'll have an older step-sister named Alex. They're looking for actresses between the ages of 22-26 to play 24 year-old Kara. After glancing at other websites offering suggestions, I like the idea of casting Claire Holt as Supergirl/Kara and I would suggest Alona Tal as Alex..of course, they could just go with casting unknown newcomers in both roles, as they did with The Flash and Green Arrow. The wheels are in motion in Hollywoodland..

UPDATE: Melissa Benoist has been cast as Supergirl. The magic of fan art allows me to imagine a series that might appeal to fans of "Veronica Mars" and most of CBS' prime time lineup of detective procedurals. I suppose it'll be fun to see Supergirl hold a magnifying glass with her heat vision to give the bad guys a hot foot... :)

The Terrific 10 of 2013

Here we are -  a list of ten neat "things"  I liked in 2013, all funnybook/pop culture related/available in better-than-average comic shops, with emphasis on "things"  because the #1 on this list was not a comic book, yet it was the most "comic book" of all. So, without further  ado...

10. Tales of A Sixth-Grade Muppet: When Pigs Fly -  coinciding with the release of The Muppets and subsequent revival of that franchise's film franchise was a series of novels written and illustrated by Kirk Scroggs  (in the style of the Diary of A Wimpy Kid  series) about the Muppets consoling a boy after he is suddenly transformed into a Muppet...and still has to go to school anyway. There were four books in all, but the final installment is the best, because it jettisoned the sitcom kiddie novel trappings in favor of high fantasy - most of it is set inside the USS Swinetrek ... the ship from the Pigs In Space sketches on The Muppet Show. Suddenly the series feels like a Roald Dahl book...and that's a good thing.

9. House of Fun #1 - Evan Dorkin gave his humor comic Dork!  a name change when he moved it to Dark Horse, naming it after his & wife Sarah Dyer's website, HouseofFun.com, and adding color! Perennial favorites Milk and Cheese are also present, along with a new Eltingville Club story and recurring sitcom-spoof The Murder Family, plus a lot of great stuff.

8. Superior Spider-Man #5: I'm happy to say that I've been enjoying the adventures of "Otter" (Doctor Octopus swapping minds with presumably dead Peter Parker and assuming the latter's life and superhero identity for the past year of Spider-Man comics,  hence the change-of-adjective in the book's title), largely because Marvel's stance on who Peter Parker/Spider-Man is  for the last decade has resulted in comics that didn't interest me, but this stuff, with Otto as Spider-Man...feels like the Spider-Man comics I read when I was a kid in the late-80s and 1990s...and in that sense, this is classic Spider-Man - not Steve Ditko or John Romita Sr., but David Micheline & Todd McFarlane, Howard Mackie & John Romita Jr., Todd Dezago & Mike Weiringo, Tom Defalco with Pat Olliffe & Ron Franz, and J.M. Dematteis with Sal Buscema or Luke Ross. YES...that was my Spider-Man: decadent,  domesticated, happily married  (Yes! He was happy!) not particularly accessible,  but the only time Spider-Man was accessible (in my humble opinion) was his origin story in Amazing Fantasy #15 .
Anyway, I chose issue #5 of Superior  for this list because it's an early standout issue - that cover alone lets you know the kid gloves are off fairly early in the game; writer Dan Slott's greatest accomplishment throughout this past year was to present "Otter" as a fully-realized character and not a placeholder.  I look forward to seeing how this storyline wraps up (as hinted) in the Goblin Nation storyline.

7. The All-New Ghostbusters #1: rumors of a new sequel to Ghostbusters have hinted at a lot of things, most prominent the rumor that a new team of GB's will appear alongside the old guard ( I heard Jonah Hill and Emma Stone have been cast ). Anyway, IDW had some fun with these rumors by relaunching their Ghostbusters comic with a new #1, featuring a new team made up of recurring characters that had been introduced in recent storylines, led by Janine the receptionist for a half-dozen issues before the "good ol' boys" came back. I'm sure Dan Ackroyd and Ivan Reitman have their own ideas, but this was fun.

6. Doctor Who vol. 2 #12 : this issue marked the conclusion to "Sky Jacks", a fun four part arc that brought Clara Oswald into IDW's Doctor Who comic book series. Those among you familiar with the concept of the Tardis - the Doctor's "bigger-on-the-inside" time machine, will REALLY love this one, since the show doesn't really have the budget to show a WW2 bomber flying inside it. :)

5. The House of Mystery: my blog, my list, my rules - the public library had all 8 volumes of the DC Vertigo revival of DC Comics' code-approved  Silver Age horror series, written mostly by Matthew Sturges (with Bill Willingham contributing material here & there) from a few years back. It starts off rocky, with the tone of contributions by Willingham clashing with Sturges' storylines before the latter takes over writing all the material,  allowing it to find its groove before the announcement of its cancellation forces a rushed conclusion. I noticed how (or maybe it's just me seeing things) Sturges scripts seemed to switch influences midstream from Joss Wheddon to Russell T. Davies and ending with Steven Moffat. Very timely. I loved it. I DO strongly recommend you skip Willingham's story in the premiere issue about the girl getting pregnant with the mosquito boyfriend...what was Bill smoking that night when he thought that up?

4. Superheroes! Capes, Cowls and The Creation of Comic Book Culture : you may recall a post from last fall, in which I reviewed a documentary on PBS about comic book superheroes (DC & Marvel  Comics superheroes,  mostly) and I thought the thesis inferred from watching it was that you didn't need to read the comics to enjoy the characters, because they had become subsumed within mainstream pop culture, perhaps in a cynical way...and they left out stuff! :)  Laurence Maslon, who worked on that documentary and cowrote this  companion book, had read my review, and left his comments,  including a suggestion that I check out this book - I'm glad I did. The book presents a stronger case for the film's argument that the genre has become ingrained within our pop culture landscape...and I believe that's because the authors - Maslon with Michael Kantor - offer new voices. With the exception of Jim Steranko talking about his work on Nick Fury, and Neal Adams (taking a break from defending his work on Batman: Odyssey , for a change), I had heard a lot of those guys in the film on older interviews giving the same answers they always give in documentaries and books/magazines about comics, so the programme was likely a success among newer audiences. This book was well-written and deserves a place on your bookshelf.

3. The Joker: The Clown Prince of Crime: Miracles happen. Small miracles, at least. Who knew that DC Comics would actually release all 9 issues of The Joker's late-70s solo series in a handy, affordable (!) trade paperback - in color!!  This was the treat of the year.

2. Jim Henson: The Biography: Brian Jay Jones's excellent book about the man who created the Muppets is fantastic and heartbreaking at the same time; the last 1/3 of the book reads like a workaholic's fever dream, as Jones chronicles every single project that Henson was working on during the last few years of his life and how his multitasking had spread him too thin creatively, resulting in a string of flops (The Jim Henson Hour in particular,  which is sad, because I do remember watching that show and missing it when t was yanked). If there was never any doubt about how creative the man was, Jones does shed light on his faults, perhaps eerily foreshadowing his untimely demise due to a bacterial infection that may have been preventable,  because, as I insist that you should read and see, the man was always busy. He was a genius - he could never stay idle and content where he was; he had an entrepreneurial spirit and optimism that kept him going...even when his final days were spent as the eye of a tornado that he thought he was calming by adding another gust of wind.  Sad, brilliant,  joyous and heartbreaking - the epitome of "gone too soon".

1. Doctor Who: The Day of The Doctor: THIS ...was the best "thing" of 2013. I really didn't care about what Marvel was doing, or DC Comic's 3D "wiggle" covers or Zombo the Clown (Jeff Lester's favorite) or Dark Horse's Battlestar Galactica-esque interpretation of George Lucas's pre-1st draft scribbles of "The Star Wars"...and nobody could've anticipated just how fantastic Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special would be. I've already written about the special before...but I may have neglected to add that this was the best thing of 2013.

And now you know.  :)