Marvel announced that Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato will be handling the writing and art chores on the Thunderbolts in the near future. I have mixed feelings about this upcoming change in creators. On the one hand, I think that Warren Ellis has a great take on the super hero genre as exemplified by his creation Planetary. However, seeing the new cast of characters that he will be using is not something that appeals to me. Venom? The Green Goblin? Bullseye? All three of those characters elicit a groan from me. Thankfully Songbird will still be there and Moonstone will also be making a return. As for Deodato and his pencil style, I have to say that I like it.
Thunderbolts has not been a part of my monthly reading for some time, but it is a title that always hovers on the periphery for me. I was not there at the start, but once I became aware of the book through seeing Melissa in Avengers Forever, I gave it a try. Plus Busiek was writing it at the time so that also sweetened the allure. Finally there was the underlying theme of people who had made mistakes in their lives trying to be better people. I have no idea if Ellis is going to continue this approach or go off in a new direction.
I have to wonder as others have online if this change was sparked in response to the success of the DC title The Secret Six written by the very talented Gail Simone.
]]>Sundays seems to be good days for me to exercise and I like that pattern. Now if only I could extend that discipline to carry over into the middle of the week, then some serious progress would be had. I have a few ideas as to why my drive seems to taper off once I am at home. The biggest deterrent would be that I don't have an extensive array of exercise equipment sitting at my house to motivate me. Yes, there is a new gym within walking distance of my place, but I'm not sure if I want to explore that option, because I'm not all that comfortable about exercising in public. Perhaps that might sound strange, but when I use the gym at work, there is no one else there except me and I like it that way. In my opinion there is something odd about sweating in the company of strangers and the last time that I ever did any public form of exercise within the confines of a room was probably the semester of weightlifting that I took in college. Even that was different, because we were all roughly the same age and had about the same goal in mind. We wanted a good grade.
I suppose that if I went to the gym there would be the appeal of attractive fit women around me, but that might be too much of a distraction for me. Passing a good looking woman on the bike trail is not the same as being within talking distance of her as we each sweat for half an hour. Obviously there are people who see a gym as a means of dating, but for me that would just get in the way of why I am there. I also think of the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine meets Jimmy, the person that talks in the third person much to her confusion. Meeting a female version of Jimmy would be very disturbing. Nor do I want to be the guy ogling the women as they do their routines. It was okay in college when we were all the same age, but now I would be the thirty something guy gawking at the twenty something women and I don't think that I would appreciate that label.
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I did some poking around on various message boards and found out that very few people if any are pleased with what Bruce Jones is doing with Nightwing. Most of the posts that I read cited his run as the all time low point for the character and I'm not sure why they are so offended. I guess no one can write Grayson the way that Marv Wolfman did two decades ago and that probably explains why DC is having him take over the writing chores in a couple of months. I am curious to see if Marv can live up to the hype or if his supporters will be making excuses for him.
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Years ago Erik Larsen started his own comic book at Image called Savage Dragon. I think that I was vaguely aware of this when it happened, but this was also during the time when I was drifting away from collecting any comic books. During the middle of the 1990's, there was very little being offered that I wanted to read and I had lost almost all interest in the medium. So in other words I was late to the party when it comes to the green skinned policeman with a fin on the top of his head.
Since that time I've read a fair number of issues of the book to get a taste of what Erik is trying to do and in some ways I can see the appeal. Characters have died and stayed dead unlike the revolving door policy often seen at the Big Two. Plus there is the added bonus of the same creator pouring his heart and soul into one creation for year after year. These are his ideas and his alone. He does not have to answer to an editor and or any marketing people. He is simply creating what he feels is a great story through words and pictures.
Sadly he hasn't been able to maintain my loyalty for any length of time. More often than not I scoop up a pack of back issues through an online auction rather than reading the book on a monthly basis. However, he did manage to lure me back recently by finally releasing the origin of the Savage Dragon in a stand alone issue. Having read it, I can't say that I was disappointed by the story, but at the same time it didn't excite me that much either. Perhaps if Erik references that story in the future and expands upon it, I will be more satisfied with it.
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