Blog of Inanity

If I were going to review Toy Story 3 in just one word, that word would be “familiar”. Now, this isn’t a one word review, so I get to expand on that a bit. To my mind there are essentially two types of “familiar” as pertains to mass media: the first is the kind of show that is a blatant retread of previous — and often better — shows in an attempt to capture some of the original’s audience and go from there; the second is like a sequel or related book by a favorite author that you know exactly what you’re getting before you even open it, but that’s okay because that’s what you want. Toy Story 3 is a little from column A, and a lot from column B.

I’ll start with the column A in a second, but first a brief history lesson. In 2004 Pixar and Disney were in a contract dispute which would eventually see the two split for a period until a new contract could be hammered out. While that was (not) happening Disney retained the rights to Toy Story, which had already spawned the very successful sequel, Toy Story 2 in 1999. Being absolutely desperate for cash (and bankrupt of ideas) at the time they decided that they would produce a 3rd Toy Story against the wishes of Pixar, despite the sequel having pretty much wrapped up the series. A few years later Pixar was back at the House of Mouse, and they reclaimed control of the Toy Story tre-quel.

What follows is speculation on my part, but it seems to me that they were faced with the quandary of making a sequel to a movie that had effectively been the final say on the series. Their ultimate solution? Remake Toy Story 2… so they did. Because that’s really what Toy Story 3 is: Toy Story 2 with a new skin. The story follows almost the exact same formula down to the letter, and explores pretty much the exact same themes as the second movie, with the only major difference being that the toys’ place in Andy’s life is pretty much at an end, whereas it was just a future problem in Toy Story 2. There’s a very strong sense of deja vu in Toy Story 3, getting to the point where, half-way through the movie, you can predict with pretty solid accuracy based on what was happening in Toy Story 2 at that point.

But, in the end, there’s nothing really wrong with that. The story is as solid as it was the first time around and the new toys have interesting and unique personalities — with some solid voice talent backing them up — that it doesn’t really matter that they’re treading the same ground again. In addition all the core cast members that we’ve been following since the first Toy Story each get their moments to shine, especially in the requisite Great Escape sequences (one of the main highlights of the movie). Even the pizza planet aliens are given some much deserved star time towards the latter half of the movie.

Of course it would not be Toy Story if it didn’t dig into the nostalgia bin, and a number of the new toys reflect that. The setting of the majority of the tale, a pre-school filled with hand-me-down toys, provides a rich field for Pixar to play with. For adults going to see this movie expect to play some quick games of “I remember that toy!” in your head. When the classic Fisher Price Chatter Telephone rolled on screen I couldn’t help but smile. I wonder how many kids even know what a rotary phone is these days…?

Toy Story 3 hits the right emotional tones at the right times, and walks that fine line between comedy and somber melodrama quite well (as it should, given all the practice Pixar has had over the years). It actually provides better closure for the series than Toy Story 2 did, thank largely to the immediacy of the toy’s problem throughout the movie. At the end of the second movie, although there was a sense of optimism and happiness, there always loomed that dreaded “later”, but the third movie does manage to tie that up and secure the toys in a safe, friendly environment for several more years. As an ending to the Toy Story saga it provides closure and optimism in equal measure, and that’s how it should be.

The Finals
Chicago take home the Stanley Cup after 6 brutal games with the Philadelphia Flyers. It was a hard fought, brutal affair that should have made all hockey fans squeal with delight. Every game in the series, except for five, could have gone either way and with just a few bounces going a different way this series could easily have seen the Flyers hoisting the cup. Game one, in particular, was an amazing game of back-and-forth hockey that was easily the best of the entire 2010 Playoffs. The game changed leaders 3 times, and was tied up 5 times. Neither team held the lead for longer than five minutes until the end of the game when Chicago held off Philly for eleven and a half grueling minutes to close out the game. That was one of those games that should go down in playoff history.

My WAG for the series, based on ear-splitting goal music, was that Chicago would pop the Flyer’s ear drums and send their ugly, ugly orange jerseys back to the locker rooms. And while it wasn’t anywhere near a trounce (which is a good thing), that’s pretty much what happened. The home team won every game until the last one, so the goal music helped out the Blackhawks, and the hideous orange Flyers jerseys sufficiently distracted the Hawks. That’s the home ice advantage for you.

The only people who should be disappointed by this series are Flyers fans, but I’m hoping that even they can appreciate the amazing display of pure hockey prowess we witnessed throughout this excellent series.

In Memoriam
Back on April 13th, just before the Stanley Cup playoffs were set to begin, I posted my first preview of the upcoming games. As a sports fan I tend to have a rather strong disdain for sports analysts (actually just analysts in general, but that’s a bit for another time) and sports pundits like you see on ESPN and NBC talking about sports as if they are the most important thing ever invented in the history of man. Let’s have a little perspective, please. They get paid to talk, at length, about grown men (and occasionally women) playing with sticks and vulcanized rubber.

You have to admit it is a rather cushy job, though. If you’re wrong it’s not your fault (“they just didn’t bring their ‘A’ game today”), and if you’re right you get to lord it over everyone else. It’s like being the complete opposite of being a goalie. I really wouldn’t have any issue with it if these guys (and so many fans) didn’t take it so damn seriously.

So with that in mind I went into the whole “punditry” process with an eye towards being as absurd as possible. Calling up obscure (and as marginally useful as possible) facts, but ultimately ignoring them when it came time to actually make a prediction.

How did I make my predictions, then? Simple: I picked exclusively based on which team’s logo I liked more. No outside factors, no personal bias… just the logo. Absurd? Yes. But it did give me a 60% (9/15) success rating. Not bad, all things considered.

Incidentally, if everything had gone as I wanted it to the Phoenix Coyotes would have won the Cup (what can I say, I really like their logo… not fond of the jersey color scheme, though)

Finding facts to support either team in the write-up sections wasn’t particularly hard since, with enough digging on google, you can find any stat in the world to back-up your point of view. Which, of course, was the secondary purpose of this little exercise.

Let’s be clear on one thing: I LOVE statistics. I love finding absurd little facts like since 1990 the #1 seeded team in the league has only gone on to win the Stanley Cup 5 times (25% of the time). The stat goes up quite a bit if you add in the 80s — when Gretzky and the Oilers dominated, and the Islanders dynasty was in full swing — and even more when you add in the 70s, when the Canadians were virtually unstoppable with 3 back-to-back #1 seed Cup wins. It’s a fun fact, but what does it actually tell us that’s useful? Not much of anything. It’s just kind of nifty, and it might win you a couple bucks in Sports Jeopardy.

And that’s the point, statistics are fun, but they’re still just trivia at the end of the day. The only statistic that counts, as far as I’m concerned, is what the score is at this very moment. Because how much did it really help the Vancouver Canucks that Henrik Sedin led the league in points in the regular season? Or the Capitals that Alexander Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom were the 3rd and 4th top points scorers, respectively? Not a bit, because none of the aforementioned players even made it past the second round and thus didn’t earn any post season trophies. In fact you have to go all the way down to the ninth best in points — Patrick Kane — to find anyone on the list who made it to the finals, and all the way down to 49th — Mike Richards, with just over half the points of Henrik Sedin — for a Flyer to appear on the list. Look how that worked out for them, though.

But to show another angle on it, two Flyers — Jeff Carter and Mike Richards — both appear higher on the top goal scorers list than Patrick Kane, and none of them are in the top 10. We now have two separate, but related, pieces of information that completely contradict each other… the facts I choose to use are going to depend on my argument. It’s like being back in basic composition again.

This could, of course, lead in to a question of what stats are “more important” in the scheme of things, but again you can put up arguments either way. Points show a more rounded player — they can score AND assist — but goals show you who the clutch players are and who is more dangerous when they have the puck. Plus-minus can be used to show who is more reliable in the long term (Chicago wins this one), but then Power-Play goals shows who you don’t want to take penalties against (Philadelphia)… and the ‘hawks took a lot of penalties.

Statistics are fun, but all they do is show a trend of how things have progressed, not how they will proceed. It is no different at all than playing poker and holding on to a card because “it’s always paired up before”. People tend to forget that there are two sides to every set of odds, and it doesn’t matter how big the numbers are on one side if you happen to find yourself on the side with the small number. Any percentage above zero means that somebody is going to end up screwed, or wildly lucky. That’s part of why we exalt people who do manage to bowl a 300, or pitch a perfect game of baseball… because we do understand that preventing 26 people from getting on base doesn’t mean that #27 is a guaranteed “out”. And pitching a perfect game definitely doesn’t mean that you should expect a perfect game the next time that pitcher is on the mound (a feat I am fairly confident in saying has never happened at a professional level).

I’m more convinced than ever that statistics are fun trivia, and little more, and that those talking heads on the sports analysis shows are little more than overpaid hot-air bags… but I had fun in the process of this little experiment, and I look forward to going again next year (though I’ll use another arbitrary method for predicting winners)

Imagine, if you will for a moment, a reimagining of Homer’s great Iliad.

Gionta, arrogant youth of Montreal, is besotted by the young woman Helen, daughter of Kane of Chicago and wife of Pronger of Philadelphia, and absconds with her to elope (despite her previous, and still lawful, marriage). Gionta returns to Montreal after some rather long detours in Washington and Pittsburgh (and an apparent lack of directional sense), wife in tow, and begs the aid of his brother, Markeau of San Jose (don’t ask how they’re brothers of two different cities, it’s much too complex for the abridged version), who readily agrees and heads home to prepare for the inevitable conflict.

Pronger rallies his fellow warriors around him and leads them to the gates of Montreal to bring his wife back to him, safe and sound. Many perils await them in their (rather wayward) journey through New Jersey and Boston. Kane, in support of his son-in-law, marches on San Jose by way of Nashville and Vancouver (this was in the days before GPS, and there may or may not have been some sirens involved). They suffer many setbacks for all the armies involved, but in the end they reach the gates of their respective cities relatively intact.

Pronger strides to the nigh-impenetrable Halakian gates of Montreal and knocks but once. He waits patiently for several minutes while Gionta is called forth to meet the man he has wronged. The door creaks open a sliver and Gionta peeks out to face the army arrayed against him. In that moment he knows that stories will be written about this encounter for generations upon generations to come, his tale will join the hallowed ranks of his forefathers like Lafleur, Richard and Beliveau, sung forever in the barhalls and sporting establishments of Montreal. This is his moment, he has but to reach out and claim it!

And then he takes another peek, staring out at the monstrous forces of the Philadelphian army bolstered by the likes Carter, Richards and Gagne, and he is broken. Tentatively he opens the door farther to speak face-to-face with his accuser.

“Well, uh, you see,” he stammers as heroically as possible, “I think there’s been something of a misunderstanding. You see I think I might have been a bit drunk and done something a bit rash. But look! Here she is, fine and whole!” Helen appears from behind the door and goes gracefully to stand beside her true husband. “So, as you can tell, no harm, no foul. Right-o, then? Behold, we have even lit our own buildings on fire so there is no need for you to come in or anything of that nature. We can see to ourselves. Yes, well, right, hmmm… good day, sir! I hope your voyage home goes smoothly and all.”

The armed forces of Philadelphia stared at the now closed door for a long time before turning to leave, scratching their heads as they went. “Now that’s an odd fellow,” Pronger was heard muttering.

In San Jose word reached Hector that his brother had surrendered, and with nothing left to fight for he decided to call it a day and go to sleep. The Chicagonians, with no one willing to fight them, decided to head back for home themselves.

But, wait… maybe they should go take a look at this Helen woman that had got them all out of bed in the first place…

And thus history was written.

The End

Yeah, seriously, imagine if that was how the Iliad had turned out. Paris capitulates and the Trojan War never occurs. “Whoops, my bad guys, sorry!” I don’t think we’d still be reading it today if that’s how it went down.

In many ways that’s how I felt about this last round of playoff hockey. It was such a promising round, too. The Cinderella teams of the East and the best the West in showdowns to the death for the right to represent their conference in the Stanley Cup finals.

And. They. Blew. It.

Montreal, usurpers of the goliaths of the East, were shut out three times in five games. San Jose, numero uno team in the West, didn’t manage to win a single game against Kane and Niemi.

Worst of all almost none of the games were even remotely entertaining. I can forgive a series lopsided win-loss numbers if they were at least hard fought, tooth and nail affairs that could have gone any which way… but that was not the case. Over in Montreal/Philadelphia no game ended with a margin smaller than two, and only in game 5 was there even the slightest bit of doubt of who would win the game. Things were a little better in San Jose/Chicago, but aside from an overtime in game 3 most of the games were decided well before the third period really got going.

Now I’m not saying the league should create artificial tension in the series – the entire point is that this is true reality television where anything can happen – but to have not one but two very promising series turn out to be dreadfully boring duds is just depressing. It takes all the momentum and enjoyment out of the playoff atmosphere (at least for me, I’m sure Philadelphia and Chicago fans are just fine with how things turned out).

I find it hard to get motivated for the finals when the previous round was so pathetic. Bring on the drama, I say, and let there be all out warfare. That is what we’re paying for, after all. Menelaus didn’t mobilize a fleet of a thousand ships for no reason.

The worst part of it, in my opinion, is that it’s not so much that Chicago and Philadelphia won, but that Montreal and San Jose lost. What I mean is this: in some games and series you can look at a team and see that they won the series, fair and square, and in other series you look at it and all you can see is that they were handed victory on a silver platter, with margaritas with little umbrellas in them on the side. The latter is what happened here. Does that mean that Philly and Chicago don’t deserve to be in the finals? No, it doesn’t. But it does mean that the credit for victory is diminished and we’ll always be left to wonder “what if they went up against a team that didn’t roll over and die?”

It’s all very hard to get motivated about the finals after this idiocy, but I feel obligated to finish what I started, so here are the results of last round.

Western Conference
Sharks vs Blackhawks
I predicted that the Sharks would chew through some Chicago deep-dish and come out the other side hungry for more…

In reality the Sharks ate some Bat-Shark Repellent and went belly up as the Blackhawks feasted on some shark-fin soup. Kane’s mouthguard remains safe for chewing for another day, and cabbies in San Jose were left wondering where that strange whirlwind came from.
0-1 (8-13)

Eastern Conference
Canadiens vs Flyers
I WAGed that the Canadiens would be so afraid of being lynched by their fans if they lost they’d have to win.

In reality, well, they’re getting lynched. And they deserve to be. I don’t know if playing two back-to-back game 7 series against arguably the two best teams in the league had anything to do with it (though I suspect it factors in pretty strongly), but to go that far and then have a performance like that is just thoroughly disappointing on just about every level.

In 1980 Herb Brooks, coach of Team USA hockey in the Winter Olympics faced one more game after his boys took down the Russians in the so-called miracle game. A victory meant gold, a loss meant possibly not getting a medal at all, but more than that it meant taking down the top team in the world and then losing to a “nobody” like Finland (I use the term relatively). He walked into the locker room and simply said, “If you lose this game, you’ll take it to your ****ing graves.” Team USA won that game (in a come from behind effort), so they don’t have to look back on their victory over the Russians with regret. The Montreal Canadiens lost their variation of that game, and you can bet they’ll be taking that one to their graves.

On the plus side, maybe they can swap stories with the 2007 New England Patriots.

0-2 (8-14)

And on to the big show itself.
Stanley Cup Finals
Philadelphia Flyers vs Chicago Blackhawks
Let’s get a couple of things out of the way upfront. I have some beefs with both teams in this little matchup. The Flyers, for their part, are already being declared a team of destiny. Now, when words like “destiny” start getting tossed around my hackles start to rise, and my hackles, well, they’re sufficiently risen.

Destiny, as pertains to sports, is an odious little concept that I dislike down to its very core. Destiny implies something that is not earned, but given. No top tier award, like the Stanley Cup or World Series, is ever given… it is earned in blood, sweat and broken bones. Which is not to say that the Flyers haven’t worked their bums off in the post-season to get to where they are, because they very definitely have. No, my issue is that once something becomes destined it takes the burden of winning off the Flyers (or whoever) and it, ironically, both diminished the award and the struggle to earn it. It also invariably casts those who stand against them, the Blackhawks in this case, as the nominal villains in the story. In real sports there aren’t villains (except Pedobear Crosby), just opponents, and the struggle between the two to prove who is better is the story, not a variation of David and Goliath.

Ask the Capitals how well that destiny thing worked out for them this year.

On the Chicago side of things they have Kane, who I increasingly find myself disliking as these series progress, and some of the most mind-numbingly irritating goal music in the industry. Seriously, their goal music drives me up the wall, and I want to break my speakers whenever they play it — which is fairly frequently. It’s so awful that my own mind will not even allow me to conjure it up and anytime anyone asks me what the music is I draw a total blank. My brain is protecting me from the idiocy of it.

Thank you, brain.

There’s a lot at stake here this year. For the Flyers there’s the glory of being the underdogs who earned their spot in the playoffs on the last day of the regular season, in a shootout. For the Blackhawks there is a legacy dating back to the 1920s, and the Original Six years of the 40s and 50s. In 1938 they found themselves on the Flyers side of the coin going into the Stanley Cup finals after barely squeaking into the playoffs, and then toppling the giants (they won the Cup that year). For Patrick Kane there is the spectre of redemption, the chance to win the NHL’s highest honor after coming up second in the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The fighting will be vicious, the games intense, and the checks heavy. At least, they better be, or I may find myself in jail for various forms of manslaughter.

My WAG for the Stanley Cup finals is the Blackhawks, because their goal music will cause the Flyers’ ears to explode. And orange is such an ugly color for a jersey. But, to be quite blunt, in the Stanley Cup finals anything can, and will, happen making any degree of actual prediction to be useless, at best.

Anything can happen. That’s why it’s so exciting… in theory.

We’ve made it! The Stanley Cup finals, the greatest thing in sports! Who would’ve guessed that the Presidents Trophey winning Capitals would’ve been one and done? Who would’ve guessed that the same eight seed that beat the Caps would also beat the defending Cup champions? Who would’ve then guessed that Cinderella would get the crap beat out of them by the number 7 seed? That’s just in the eastern conference! Out west we had the cursed Sharks apparently shake their troubles only to be disassembled and swept in the conference finals… and probably more, but those game are on late at night for an east coaster!

So…
Blackhawks versus Fliers
The Fliers are red hot having just slayed the giant slayer! While the Blackhawks just defeated a habitually cursed team, defeated? Ney, destroyed! So Fliers, right? I don’t think so. The Habs were not an offensive team and the Blackhawks are. Leightonen played great with 3 shutouts against the Habs you can really say that he Halaked them… I just think that the Fliers have come up agains teams that haven’t had that scoring flare. Now, they’ve also go some big d-men that can shut down superstars. I can see a huge offense versus defense battle, but I can also see the Hawks running over the Fliers. Either way, I think the Hawks come out on top. Besides their drought has been longer.

If you haven’t seen the last episode of Lost don’t continue reading!!!

Let’s start at the end. I didn’t care for it to put it mildly, it
was crap. I thought the commercials for Target were excellent though. To be honest, I haven’t really watched attentitively since season 2 or 3, but when I was watching it I was a huge fan. What I didn’t like about the end was that it gave up on answeing questions and instead went for a happy happy, feel good, hugs and smiles ending. If that had been it I suppose that would’ve been fine. However, I love life and the concept of just letting life go so you can die and be happy happy… it’s crap.

Now what I got out of the final episode was sort of a “the Island and sideflashes are a metaphor for life and no matter how crazy and weird it all is the people you journeyed with will be there for you with hugs and smiles and cake.” It’s a fine message, a nice heart warming story, but I wanted was answers.

Now, I’ve read over and over that Lost wasn’t about the island mythos, it was about the people. Well, the people didn’t evolve enough to have character development and story to be the driving force of the show. The biggest and really only character changes I noticed since the end of season 2 is that Jack had more faith and Hurley was more of a leader. It took 4 seasons to make those changes?

Yes because their was another character that was constantly developed and changed and drove the entire series, the Island. The Island was the best character in Lost and what do we really know about it? Nothing! Apparently it’s a cork that stops evil from coming into the world.

I feel like I’m rambling a bit so I’ll try to wrap it up. Even the last scene for Lost didn’t make sense to me. Why was Penny in the church? She wasn’t a part of their jouney. Why was Aaron a baby? Does he die as a baby? Does he not really exsist? Why was Jack’s dad there? He set up the lovefest scene, but he was dead before the Island and so like Penny didn’t share that experience. I’m sure there are more questions because that was what Lost was great at, bringing up questions, but not answering them.

It’s that time of month again, the time when the comic companies are out in force to pimp their upcoming lineups and inadvertently spoil the next month’s stories! Yes, it’s solicitations time again! And here’s my personal picks from the Marvel and DC lineups.

We’ll start with DC this month since they post theirs a day before Marvel, and because it makes more sense alphabetically. Also, I don’t read much DC so it’s over quickly.

This month in DC there are no new books that strike my fancy, but it’s the first time I’m officially adding Red Robin to the mix, so I’ll talk about that book a little bit. The official list is:

Batgirl #13
Birds of Prey #4
Red Robin #15

Now Red Robin is a bit of an interesting title for me since I initially wrote it off as a typical Chris Yost comic which presumes that killing off every character in sight is “edgy” and “mature” (hint: it’s not). He actually keeps it a bit in check on this title, which makes it infinitely more readable than his run on X-Force — though not having Clayton Crain on art also certainly helps. Still, the habits are style there and they glimmer through every now and again, though in fairness a lot of the series is about the League of Assassins so it does kind of go with the territory. On the other hand he does introduce yet another shadow ninja/assassin group, which neither DC nor Marvel really need at this point. My interest in the series, however, is a product of Fabian Nicezia taking over on writing as of issue 13 (due out next week, I believe). Nicezia was the writer of the excellent Cable & Deadpool run, as well as my favorite Thunderbolts storyarcs and, on top of all that, was the only reason Liefeld’s New Mutants and X-Force were even remotely readable. He was also the writer of the first comic I ever read, X-Men #28, so I may also be a bit biased.

Now Nicezia has quirks of his own, such as overly complicated macguffins and a fondness for those despicable nanites that I hate so much. To balance that, however, he’s very good at layering in surprises and doing the unexpected. He does live his continuity minutia, though, and that can be both a plus and a minus depending on how generous he’s feeling with explaining the continuity to people unfamiliar with it. In a Marvel book this isn’t a problem for me since I generally know all the continuity he references, but in DC there’s a fair chance that I’ll just be completely baffled. We’ll see if he can keep that in check on Red Robin. In the meantime I’m pretty excited to see what he’s got in store.

And now on to Marvel. Just like DC there’s nothing new coming that looks interesting (in fact I don’t think I saw anything new at all), and none of the current stuff is starting a new arc or anything like that, so there’s nothing really to comment on. I did add Iron Man to the list in deference to the movie, but since I haven’t actually read any of it yet I can’t really comment. I’m going to grab the start of the current arc and the second issue tomorrow, along with the Rescue one-shot, so maybe I’ll have more to say after that. So I’ll just cut this month’s look at the solicits short and end it there.

Avengers Academy #3
Black Widow #5
Hawkeye & Mockingbird #3
Invincible Iron Man #29
Secret Avengers #4
Thanos Imperative #3
Thunderbolts #147
X-Factor #208
Young Allies #3

It is as unfair to The Pacific as it is unavoidable to compare it to its spiritual successor, Band of Brothers. It’s certainly a comparison that begs to be made: they have the same core creative team, occur in the same war (kind of) and follow the same format, but the similarities really end there. A large part of the problem really isn’t the fault of the creators or the series itself, but rather the lack of a good, cohesive narrative to lay the foundation upon. The plight of most major war movies and television series is to be able to tell a singular story around a consistent set of characters while still covering the major — and recognizable — bases of the war. Band of Brothers, in this regard, was rather blessed. It had at the forefront a man who was both extremely easy to like and an amazing field commander in Major Winters, the soldiers under his command were generally likable, and at the very least easy to empathize with, and they legitimately visited just about every major battlefield in the Western European theater from D-Day onwards, and even discovered one of the concentration camps. From a writer’s perspective that is pure gold.

The Pacific on the other hand is saddled with the unenviable prospect of having to recreate that magic in a theater of war that is not nearly as well documented as the European conflict and which doesn’t have any single standout unit that covers most of the major battlefields (not least because many of those conflicts were simultaneous, whereas the European campaign was fairly linear). The writers decided to stick with the 1st Marine Division as a whole, which managed to be at enough of the major engagements to qualify. Unfortunately they weren’t able to follow a particular unit within the division and instead cherry-picked three individuals to follow. Although there is some overlap in early episodes most of it is tangential at best and the three characters are largely autonomous from each other, which is quite a shift from Brothers’ interweaving story. Beyond that not much effort is put into making the secondary characters particularly memorable, except for Snafu. I think what is most telling about the series is that, after displaying the roll call in the final episode and showing where everybody ended up in later years, I was left scratching my head as to who the vast majority of the people were (I could identify less than half with certainty).

The series does implement one style shift to set it apart from Band of Brothers, which is to include some stories on the homefront side of the war, but I personally found these to be the most tedious part of the series. They play a role in contrasting the life at home to the life in the Pacific theater — which is much more important here than in Europe since the war in the Pacific was basically a practice run for the brutality of Vietnam — but it feels like a disconnect with the rest of the series. And that’s ultimately the main problem with The Pacific, it never feels like there is a particular story to the events and that it’s a pretty random combination of war footage and people sitting around inbetween battles just generally being pretty nasty. Which, yes, is a large part of the point: the war in the Pacific was a brutal, bloody, inch-by-inch affair of pure, unadulterated brutality punctuated by absurd moments of calm. The psychological impact on the soldiers was horrific, which is a large part of the reason why we don’t have as good records of the Pacific as we do in the extremely well documented European war.

It’s important, though, to remember that the point of The Pacific differs greatly from that of Band of Brothers. The latter is about the bonds formed in the fields of battle and the connections that last a life time, the former, however, is the psychological damage that wars inflict on those who fight them, and those close to them. The only real problem with this is that there really wasn’t enough source material out there to fill out a full 10 episodes, so a lot of time that could have been spent getting to know the characters — to make the impacts of the changes that much stronger — is wasted with odd digressions and side-tracks. My personal opinion is that a six-issue format may have been more ideal for telling this kind of story. The other alternative would have been to actually spread the story out a bit more and get some other lead characters — I may be a bit biased on this one, but I think exploring some of the other branches of the Marines, like the aviators, would have been an interesting move.

At the end of the day The Pacific is not a bad series, its main fault is that it just isn’t in the same league as its fore-bearer, Band of Brothers. It’s not really anyone’s fault since there wasn’t an incredible amount for the creators to do with the material they had. I think that if they had done more to distance The Pacific from its brother it might have been better accepted, but setting it up for direct comparison to Band of Brothers is, frankly, asking for failure.

For all its fault The Pacific is a series you should see, if only to promote awareness for the trials fought on the other side of the world in World War 2, and to see the psychological effects of all warfare. What soldiers fought and died for in the Pacific is worth remembering, and it’s worth learning from — a lesson that, if learned properly the first time, might have made Vietnam a completely different experience. If you’re looking for something a bit shorter than a ten-hour tromp, The Thin Red Line is also an excellent Pacific War movie that is well worth taking a look at. This is not an excellent series, but it is still a very good one, just remember to view it outside of the shadow of Band of Brothers, if you can.

Watch and learn. No blood, no screaming, just an excellent message.

It’s time once more to take a look at a few more comics. This time around we’ll take a look at the finale for Avengers: Initiative and the launching of the new Birds of Prey series by Benes and Simone, and lastly the one-shot Firestar which oddly hearkens back to her 1986 mini-series. On with the show.

Avengers: Initiative #35
Writer: Christos Gage
Pencils: Jorge Molina
Inks: Various
Colors: Will Murray

35 solid issues out of a series that was originally supposed to be cute little mini-series to flesh out the 50-state initiative… that’s not a bad record. Of course it’s not really over since it will relaunch as Avengers Academy in the nearish future with at least some of the cast intact. It does remain to be seen if the New Warriors team will continue on into that series, but at least Tigra and Justice will be continuing on. But that’s all yet to come, what about issue 35?

Well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, really, since a lot of the issue is tied up with the Siege storyline, which is all unfortunately off-screen action taking place in the final episode of that series. As a result a lot of this issue is rather disconnected with some rather largish time jumps unceremoniously tossed around. I can only hope when they release the tradepaperback that the relevant bits of Siege are included in it, but I’m not holding my breath (and since I refuse to put money down for Bendis’ work I doubt I’ll ever read it elsewhere). When it is coherent, though, it is on form and generally wraps up rather well and closes out all the major storylines so that Academy can start relatively fresh. It is also good to see that Taskmaster got out relatively unscathed, but the Diamondback/Constrictor ending was a bit unsatisfying, so hopefully we’ll see that crop up a bit in Academy. The one-panel sum ups for some of the more bit-players like Butterball are a bit underwhelming, but on the whole there’s a good sense of closure to the series.

Overall it’s not exactly the best issue in the series, but it does provide a solid capstone and fans of the series won’t be disappointed. If you are following the Siege storyline you will probably get a bit more out of this issue than I did, though.

Birds of Prey #1
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Ed Benes
Colors: Nei Ruffino

The Birds reunite with a few new cast members and a brand new story from the Simone/Benes team. Simone’s prior run didn’t really engage me all that much and Benes’ penchant for T&A posing was always a bit of a put-off, but both of them seem to have reigned in some of their more eccentric ideas this time around (though not entirely) — a fact no doubt helped by Simone’s pet villain, the Calculator, being tied up in the current Batgirl plotline. The idea this time around is that some unnamed villain has a grudge against the Birds and has threatened people they love unless they stop him. Really, that’s his only demand, “stop me”. Ah well, hopefully there’s a few more layers to it than that down the road.

Unfortunately a lot of this issue falls into the common DC trap of assuming that I’m already up to speed on every bit of minutia in the DC universe, so large parts of it make very little sense overall. In fairness Simone and company probably assume that a lot of their readers are flocking back from their previous run, but a quick heads up on who the heck “Sin” is would certainly not hurt them, would it? On the other hand the new characters, Hawk and Dove, get introduced rather well so I can at least fill in the blanks about them without having to resort to wikipedia. That said, Hawk is a completely uninteresting character in pretty much the same way Savant was in the previous run, so I don’t have much faith in him. Dove has a lot more potential, but we’ll see where Simone’s going with this first.

The majority of the issue is simply dedicated to bringing the Birds back together again and for that purpose it works just fine. It’s hard to buy into yet another super-tech opponent who may as well just be the Calculator, especially if this turns out to be a new character, but whatever, we don’t know who it is yet so I’ll reserve judgment. I’ll also hold back on judging the villain we do meet at the end of the issue until we know more in the next issue.

There’s a whole of judgment getting reserved with this issue, and that’s almost never a good sign, but I’ll give it at least the first four issue arc before I write it off completely.

Firestar #1
Writer: Sean McKeever
Artist: Emma Rios
Colors: Matthew Wilson

This one-shot is largely dedicated to establishing Firestar’s status quo post-cancer and acts as a throwback to an ooooold bullying plotline from Firestar’s mini-series back in 1986. The cancer storyline is, I gather, a pickup from the Marvel Divas series from a year back. I don’t much beyond the fact that she had breast cancer, and now she doesn’t thanks to a sacrifice from a friend. As for the rest, back in ’86 Firestar was just finding out she was a mutant and, as a bit of a nerdy girl back then, was frequently bullied, in particular by a girl named Cassie. Jumping forward to today (and bearing in mind we’re talking comic-time here, so this was only a few years of time passed) Cassie re-enters Firestar’s life as the daughter of her father’s girlfriend. Cassie is, apparently, still quite the bitch and rejects Firestar’s attempts to play nice. Of course, this being a one-shot about redemption and all that Cassie isn’t really a bitch, she’s just had a hard life and made bad-choices so she’s taking it out on the world and Firestar shows her that not everyone is out to get her, happy ending, roll credits.

There’s nothing really wrong with it — it’s a perfectly compatent variation of that old story — it’s just a bit too Saturday-morning-cartoony and never feels like it has anything in particular to say about Firestar as opposed to any other person who’s been bullied and discovers that the bully is just misunderstood. The art is also a bit odd since we’re supposedly dealing with adults, probably in their early to mid 20s, but they look very much like high schoolers. Of course at least one of them is acting like a high schooler, so maybe that’s intentional. And Firestar is still asking her dad’s permission to go out and be a superhero, soooo, yeah, bit of an odd tone to that one. She was an Avenger, I think she’s past the “asking permission” stage… but I digress.

As a comic it’s pretty missable, unless you were desperate to know how she turned out in the world after Marvel Divas (and judging by sales numbers, I’d imagine not many are). McKeever seems to have a solid grasp on the character — aside from the whole asking permission thing — so that does at least bode well for Young Allies in the coming months.

In the coming weeks we’ve got a few new one-shots and series launching so we’ll see what I actually get around to. Some notables include the Rescue one-shot, the Secret Avengers will likely test my patience, the Thanos Imperative starts the cosmic ball rolling, and Avengers Academy, Young Allies and Hawkeye & Mockingbird all will hopefully defy the odds and sell better than I expect they will. All that plus solicitations next week and Fabian Nicezia takes over Red Robin, so it’ll be a busy few weeks of comics for me.

Hey readers, I just wanted to draw your attention to a few changes here at the Blog of Inanity. First, and most obvious, is I changed the theme of the blog so it’s a bit more linear and straightforward. Additionally it makes it much easier for me to update and add new posts since I no longer have to worry about creating header images, which is often a major pain the bum and is a leading cause for why I post sporadically. So, hopefully you’ll see more posts in the future since I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

The other change is that my friend Bill Brooks has been invited to join me on the blog and will be posting off and on as he feels fit. You may have already seen a few posts by him about the NHL playoffs, and his recent experience with the excellent video game “Portal”. Welcome to the team Mr. Brooks.