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I've noticed a new trend in my comic book reading.  I prefer books with a lead character versus team books.  With the exception of Fables, my top five books are all solo books.  Here is my list followed by some reasons why I like reading the various titles.

Superman
All Star Superman
Fables
Scalped
Red Sonja
Witchblade
Captain America
Green Lantern Corps
Fantastic Four
Wolverine

I love what Ed Brubaker is doing with Captain America.  He writes an excellent espionage book with the best moments of Captain America history intertwined.  For example, Sharon discovering that the Grand Director is still alive made me smile all day long.  Yes, I remember the Grand Director fondly.  He appeared in one of the very first Captain America books that I ever read and is one of the earliest books in my collection.

I need to stop caring about the Fantastic Four.  I am not sure what Mark Millar was hoping to achieve with his first arc on the title, but I was less than impressed.  At best I was disinterested.

I will miss Grant Morrison's take on the last son of Krypton.  Each and every issue of his run was perfect.  Not only was the lead character done with style, but the supporting cast also shone brightly be it Lois Lane or Steve Lombard.

The writing talent of Jason Aaron is my primary reason for liking both Scalped and Wolverine.

By this time next week, I will probably be hundreds of miles away floating on a lake staring at the clouds above me without a care in the world.  Sadly at this moment, I am trying to make sure there is nothing left that I need to do before I can make that future moment happen.  Insert deep breath here.  I have to pay two more bills before I leave and do a few more chores around the house and then everything should be in place.  Then all I need to do is choose some books to bring along to read and bring my beach towel and trunks.

Right or wrong, my real estate agent / broker convinced me this morning not to lower the asking price on my condo.  He did admit that the selling price has gone down in over a year, but that people were still making offers on the asking price that I have had for the past year.  As politely and as patiently as he could, he said that we needed someone who did not mind climbing stairs and yet was able to get the financing to purchase a home.  So I can eliminate older people from being potential buyers and any young people trying to get out of the apartment scene are no longer being approved for loans.  Sigh.

All that I know is that I refuse to let this bother me next week when I am on vacation with my family.

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Somehow I managed not to listen to any music on my computer since last Friday.  How that happens still amazes me.

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Now that I am on disc three of the audio version of the book Three Weeks with My Brother written by Nicholas Sparks, I can see why some people would be offended by the behavior of the Sparks brothers when they are abroad.  There are more than a few times when they come across as shallow if not downright crass.  The author uses such words as boring when he is at museums and they do act rude at various sacred sites.

My weekend is nearly at an end.  In my Bizarro world, Friday is the day to loathe and fear, not Monday, because Friday is the day that begins the four day grind.  Tonight, I will be back amongst the pack.  A team of sled dogs all pulling in different directions at the same time, biting and barking at the same time.  Eight more days of that nonsense and I finally get a real break.  Enough complaining.

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I like to think that I am making progress in my day to day life and try to maintain a healthy balance of fun and necessary tasks.  For example, over the past few days, I went to the grocery store, washed some clothes, put out the garbage and added more salt to the water softener.  Those tasks would be the practical ones that need to be done and do have a certain sense of accomplishment to them.  Then there is my listening to part of the audio book Three Weeks with My Brother by Nicholas Sparks, reading some more of The Man in the High Castle and watching the latest episodes of Battlestar Galactica.  These latter tasks bring me more pleasure than the former.

I have yet to form an opinion on the Sparks book.  The reader has somewhat of a singsong voice, but that can be hard to avoid when reading aloud.  A person feels compelled not to sound monotone and they overcompensate.  Some of the most negative reviews of the book state that the brothers are prime examples of why American tourists are hated around the world.  They disrespect foreign cultures and generally act like frat boys.  I have yet to reach that part of the books so I can say if I agree or not.

The one thing that I have yet to do this year is sit outside on my deck and read a book.  It sounds simple enough, but with almost a solid week of daily heavy rain doing that basic task was denied me.  I came close to pulling the chair out of the garage today, but opted for a little more sleep instead.  Even though I did not make it outside to read today, I did manage to sample some of my monthly shipment from Mile High Comics that arrived last week and made it just a little further in The Man in the High Castle.

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I think that I am going to lower the selling price on my condo.  It has been on the market a year now and I need to sell it so that may be a wise decision on my part.  Even though it does bother me to a degree, I can financially withstand a lower price, because I need less of a profit now.  For example, whether or not I sell the condo soon, I will have my car paid off by the end of the year.  Part of my profits from the condo were going to be used to cover the balance of the car.  Now that is no longer needed.  Plus I have been making mortgage payments on it through the last year so the remaining balance on the mortgage itself is lower.

Only two more weeks of work stand between me and my first vacation since March of this year.  I am so looking forward to some quiet yet still fun time away.  I will be spending time with my family and getting my first look at how much they have transformed what had been my grandparents home.  As of now I have only seen a couple of photos, but I sense that more will be revealed when I get there.

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Even though I am nowhere near the end or even the middle of the book Dark Star Safari, I picked up another book to read when I was at the library last week Saturday.  I had an impulse to read some Philip K. Dick and was happy to find a copy of The Man in the High Castle sitting on the shelf.  Who could not like a story that talks about a world where the Nazis won the war and America was divided between the Germans and the Japanese?

Obviously, I love Paul Theroux having read at least three of his books, but I wanted something more brief.  A mere hundred and ninety three pages will meet that requirement for me quite nicely and once I finish it, I will jump back into the four hundred and eighty five page tome about Africa.

After another night of violent thunderstorms that caused my power to go out twice ever so briefly, I spent the quiet morning watching an excellent German film about Turkish immigrants called Head-On.  I had seen an earlier film from the same director and liked it.  That other film had the actor who was the boyfriend in Run Lola Run.  His presence in the movie was my primary reason for wanting to see it and I was pleased to find out that it was quite good.  In July was a cross country comedy of sorts that started in Germany and ended in Turkey.  Once again with Head-On the story begins in Germany and ends in Turkey, but there is far less comedy in Head-On than in In July.  Instead of comedy, we the viewer are given a tragic romance that trumps anything made by Hollywood.

As to why Turks are drawn to Germany is never fully explained in the movie, but there must be a somewhat large Turkish community there for whatever reason.

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Back in 1998, Kurt Busiek was the man who made me enjoy reading comic books again.  Most of the 1990's had been filled with dull stories and awful art.  The terrible output made it easy for me to stay away from the shops and reading comic books in general.  Then one day I came across an issue of a book called Avengers Forever and I remembered why comic books can be so good.  Kurt's writing and Carlos Pacheco on art created a story that used characters that I not only loved, but used them in a way that was fresh and interesting.  My passion for an abandoned hobby had been rekindled.

Later when I found out that Kurt had created a title with his own characters called Astro City, I knew that I had to read it.  As of today I only own fourteen issues of the series, but each one is a classic on on its own.  Great character insight and homages to other established characters impress me every time.  Astro City: The Dark Age Book One provided a nice way to wind down before I took a nap this morning.

More often than not when people hear the term comic books, the first association that they make with that phrase is super heroes, be it Spider-Man, Superman or Batman.  That is understandable, but that is not the whole truth.  Yes, today super heroes do dominate the comic book market, but even when I started reading them back in the 1970's there was a wide variety of genre choices and super heroes was just one of them.  There were war comics.  There were western comics.  There were even comics that were meant just to be funny such as Archie and Sad Sack.

One of the first titles that I ever read was called Weird Western Tales and introduced a new character called Scalphunter, a white man who as a child had been raised by Native Americans when his family was killed.  Then as a grown man he was never fully accepted by either group.  This man, Brian Savage, had to be one of the most complex fictional characters that I had ever encountered in my early comic book reading.  So with that in mind I was extremely relieved to find when earlier today reading another issue from that era, the stories still rang true and have great emotional impact for me as an adult.  Brian Savage was a man like no other and that made him interesting if not a hero among men.

Oddly enough one of my favorite titles being produced today is Scalped, yet another book centered on Native Americans, except the stories take place today and not in the years after The American Civil War.  In some ways, Dashiell Bad Horse is a worthy successor to Brian Savage.  Both men are caught in violent worlds yet strive for peace of some sort.

Just saying the name of one of the hotels where my wife and I will be staying in Russia this September makes me smile.  Obviously I do not want to rush the summer, but knowing that a new country will be waiting for me later this year has got me excited.  I love going to see new places and experiencing foreign cultures.  Plus I seem to watching anything vaguely Russian related on television.  For example, last night I watched an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on the Travel Channel, because he was going to be in Russia.  To be fair, I usually watch him anyway, but to see him in a place that I will be seeing this fall added something extra to the episode.

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The latest episodes of the anime series Bleach have started a new story arc complete with new foes and I have no idea what to expect next.  What I do know is that I will not be making a forty five minute drive to a movie theater that I have never visited just to see the Bleach movie that will be shown there tonight and tomorrow night only.  I think that purchasing the DVD is probably less expensive and less stressful than making the drive.