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You know what's surprising me lately? Castle. MightyGodKing likens it to The Thin Man and someone else elsewhere compared it favorably to Murder, She Wrote (only, I imagine, with the age demographic shaved to one-quarter) -- the important thing to remember about it is that it's a trifle. It's a pre-CSI police procedural, more cute than clinical, and you certainly don't watch it for the same reasons you watch other shows ostensibly of the same genre. Took it a while for it to get its sea legs, but it's found a groove and it's one of the more unrepentantly fun shows out there. You get Nathan Fillion going IM A RITER in front of a camera for an hour. Silly, goofy fun.
So the final issue of Planetary came out and...well, the two-and-a-half-year wait didn't do it any favors. It was perfectly excellent for what it was, don't get me wrong, but as it stood, it served as more of an epilogue than an actual final chapter, but that pronounced anticipation might've raised expectations just a touch beyond rational levels -- we already knew from #26 basically what shape the major plot had taken, all that was left was to tie up a few loose ends...one in particular, and handled satisfactorily. (If you haven't read Andrew Wheeler's excellent post on everything that's happened both since the first issue of Planetary was released and since the previous issue of Planetary was released, do read it -- it's been a busy decade.) It was an excellent little series, and I'll be sad to see it go.
Speaking of seeing it go, I did try the first issue of Mark Waid's Irredeemable and maybe I was looking for a reason not to keep going, but I did find one -- in the midst of the created-from-whole-cloth characters standing around laying down necessary exposition one of them insists "I don't want to talk about that day. We said we never would." Of course the day in question is the day in which the Ubermensch main character went murderous bugfuck, and I'm sure this is supposed to be a device to keep the reader interested and intrigued and not smack at all of being coy or a writer stepping in to stop perfectly natural exposition amongst a group of individuals who should, under these circumstances, feel as secure as they're ever gonna. At best it feels contrived, and there's too much artifice in a title that seems to pride itself in being unsentimental for me to suspend myself in. And this is after reading the last issue of The Boys, where Mallory actually appears in flashback, obligingly staying far in the background and keeping his face shadowed -- contrived, sure, but how many other questions were answered in that same issue? Strange, innit?
But my favorite thing from last week? Cyberball Robot Player's Union Says Lockout Likely In 2073 Season. Yes, that Cyberball.
So the final issue of Planetary came out and...well, the two-and-a-half-year wait didn't do it any favors. It was perfectly excellent for what it was, don't get me wrong, but as it stood, it served as more of an epilogue than an actual final chapter, but that pronounced anticipation might've raised expectations just a touch beyond rational levels -- we already knew from #26 basically what shape the major plot had taken, all that was left was to tie up a few loose ends...one in particular, and handled satisfactorily. (If you haven't read Andrew Wheeler's excellent post on everything that's happened both since the first issue of Planetary was released and since the previous issue of Planetary was released, do read it -- it's been a busy decade.) It was an excellent little series, and I'll be sad to see it go.
Speaking of seeing it go, I did try the first issue of Mark Waid's Irredeemable and maybe I was looking for a reason not to keep going, but I did find one -- in the midst of the created-from-whole-cloth characters standing around laying down necessary exposition one of them insists "I don't want to talk about that day. We said we never would." Of course the day in question is the day in which the Ubermensch main character went murderous bugfuck, and I'm sure this is supposed to be a device to keep the reader interested and intrigued and not smack at all of being coy or a writer stepping in to stop perfectly natural exposition amongst a group of individuals who should, under these circumstances, feel as secure as they're ever gonna. At best it feels contrived, and there's too much artifice in a title that seems to pride itself in being unsentimental for me to suspend myself in. And this is after reading the last issue of The Boys, where Mallory actually appears in flashback, obligingly staying far in the background and keeping his face shadowed -- contrived, sure, but how many other questions were answered in that same issue? Strange, innit?
But my favorite thing from last week? Cyberball Robot Player's Union Says Lockout Likely In 2073 Season. Yes, that Cyberball.
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