K-Squared Ramblings

Dawn and the Key

The synopsis for JLA #124 (due in January) includes the phrase, “he loses focus on stopping The Key and saving Dawn, and turns his energies on an even deadlier foe.”

Now, I know these are separate DC characters, but my first thought was “But Dawn is the Key!”

Once you start down the Buffy path…

Looking for Spike (in all the wrong places)

My regular comic store, Comic Quest, didn’t get any copies of Peter David’s Spike: Old Times. Yesterday I checked at Comics Toons and Toys. They were also sold out. Today I started looking around more of the Orange County area.

First step: Mile High Comics. I figured it was a long shot, since they’re the most well-known comic store on the internet, but I wasn’t in a hurry to read it, and it would save me the trouble of driving around the county. Naturally, they didn’t have it.

So I started calling stores I knew. As I was about to start, I noticed an email on SuperHeroNews saying, “Mile High Comics in LA, burned down last night, more information as we get it.” The first store on my list was Netherworld Comics, which used to be a Mile High store, but is in Garden Grove, not Los Angeles. Their phone isn’t picking up. And they’re still listed as an affiliate on Mile High’s website. And there aren’t any other Mile High stores in southern California. This doesn’t look good for Netherworld. Edit Sep. 7: Yes, it was them [archive.org]. Figures. I’d only been in there a couple of times, but it was a nice store.

Okaaay… Next step: Diamond’s Comic Shop Locator. Unfortunately it only lets you search by ZIP code, and only shows the nearest three. Since I’d already been to two of the stores, I only got one phone number out of it. No luck there.

Time to do it the old-fashioned way: the phone book. (Katie remarked, “There’s nothing wrong with being old-fashioned, especially about a book called Old Times.”) There are surprisingly few comic stores in central Orange County. I only got three more numbers out of it, and one of them specializes in vintage comics. Not surprisingly, none of them had any copies either. (One offered to order it for me, but I simply declined rather than pointing out that it was already sold out at both the publisher and distributor.)

Next stop: eBay…

Wee Little Puppet Man

OK, I have officially changed my mind about the four covers for Angel: The Curse #1.

If they weren’t publishing alternate covers, there’s no way they would have used a fully-painted picture of the puppet Angel. Update: Scan added.

The guy at the comic store said, “of all the people who had it on their pull list, I figured you’d appreciate this one the most.” Good call!

Dark Angels

Two bits of news on some of the less conventional “Angels” of comics.

Writer Jeff Mariotte reports that Joss Whedon and Fox have approved a second Angel comic book miniseries to come out late this year, which may interest fans of the show who want to know what happened after the final episode:

While The Curse is strictly an Angel solo story with the other characters just showing up in flashback, this one will include most of the gang (those who survived NFA, anyway)—although some of them in unexpected ways. More than that I will not say. It’s the only approved, official continuation of the TV series, though

Meanwhile, Peter David has confirmed that the new artist on Fallen Angel is J.K. Woodward, and posted this sample of his art style. This isn’t just a cover—this is what the interior art will look like!

Spike and (Fallen) Angel

You know, I should have made the connection when Fallen Angel moved to IDW that it’s the same publisher that picked up the Angel (as in the vampire with a soul™ from the Buffy-verse) license. And I should have remembered that Peter David is writing a Spike one-shot comic book that should be out soon (August, apparently).

So it really shouldn’t surprise me that Spike: Old Times will feature a full-page ad for the new Fallen Angel series.

Excess Coverage

A new Angel comic book mini-series (from IDW, rather than Dark Horse), Angel: The Curse, picks up after the end of the TV series.

In this first issue of a new Angel tale, Angel has survived the conclusion of his TV show and finds himself in a mysterious Romanian forest. There, his search for the Gypsy tribe that cursed him years ago takes a turn for the worse.

I suspect we’ll get a “once out of the pit…” explanation (i.e. no explanation at all) and the cliffhanger’s resolution will remain open for Joss to deal with in a movie-of-the-week or something.

But what galls me is that the book is supposed to have four covers. OK, one variant every once in a while is nice, and I can even go for Dark Horse’s early efforts to have one drawn cover and one photo cover to get the newsstand audience (is there such a thing anymore?)… but the only reason to do four covers for one book is to get collectors to buy four copies. It was an insulting gimmick in the early 1990s, and it annoys me that the practice never quite went away. Worse, TV Guide took it mainstream. I guess we’ll know we’re in trouble when Time or National Geographic starts doing multiple collectors’ covers.

*grumble*

OK, that was weird

I’m listening to Evanescence’s Fallen and skimming this week’s link-checker report. Apparently the Taco Belle Amy Acker fan site was unreachable at the time it was checked, but it’s up now. So I started reading some of the interviews on the site, noticing they were all pre-Illyria…. at which point the album gets to “My Immortal.”

Cancellations

When it comes to serial entertainment, everything will end at some point. I’m sure even Superman and Spider-Man comics will cease someday. A show can end before or after it’s run out of things to say, but it’s worst when it hasn’t finished speaking.

We’ve all seen shows that kept going long after, by any rights, they should have been cancelled. Is there any doubt that Voyager only lasted 7 years because it was Star Trek, on a studio-owned network, and the previous two Treks had also run that long? “The Far Side” and “Calvin and Hobbes” ended while the artists were at the top of their form. Compare that to “Peanuts,” whose last 20 years were hardly worth reading, or the new “Opus” from Berkeley Breathed (although it does have its moments.) Read the rest of this entry »

Learning the hard way

Advice to the world at large: do not watch “A Hole in the World” one night, “Shells” the next, and then go listen to the Evanescence album. You will not like what it does to you. Trust me on this.

More when I’m coherent again. *snivel*whimper*

Well, that sucks.

Miss two weeks and they pull the rug out from under you:

…the cast, crew, writers and producers of Angel deserve to be able to wrap up the series in a way befitting a classic television series and that is why we went to Joss to let him know that this would be the last year of the series on The WB

At least the WB had the decency to let them know in time to do some sort of wrap-up, unlike the way certain other shows were treated by channels that shall not be named.

Unfortunately we live in a world where the offbeat has to make way for the mainstream. I don’t care if the WB puts up some new “reality” show, as long as I can find the kind of shows I like to watch. With so many hundreds of cable and satellite stations available, you’d think there’d be room for shows like VR.5 and Crusade.

Still, Angel managed five years, which is pretty damn respectable - especially in the modern era of cancelling shows without even airing half a season.

Joss Whedon sums up the perils of producing anything that strays too far from the beaten path:

“Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I took the road less traveled by
and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN’ SHOW.
I totally shoulda took the road
that had all those people on it.
Damn.”

Even interdimensional law firms need comp coverage

It’s the law: all employers in California have to provide work comp coverage for all their employees. Even Wolfram & Hart.

Normal law firms probably don’t have much of a premium. Evil law firms, however, might see a big increase. For this reason, I think they’re probably self-insured. That, and they can keep all medical treatment and administration entirely in-house (especially given that their “house” has locations on several worlds and lots of unofficial ties in this one), along with as much defense litigation as possible. I’d imagine they don’t incur many penalties either, since it’s likely they can turn back time to avoid late payments. And if an employee wants to argue that anything they’ve gotten is less than they deserve, I’d imagine the second phase of their employment isn’t long in starting.

Sample injured worker: Lindsey. Definitely injured on the job, so the injury is fully compensable. According to the California permanent disability rating guidelines, loss of the dominant hand between wrist and elbow, inclusive, where a prosthesis is possible, has a standard PD rating of 60%, meaning 60% of the jobs available wouldn’t hire you with that disability. When you adjust for age (assuming he’s just shy of 30) and occupation, both of which lower the rating, it ends up at 53%. This is, of course, not counting in psychiatric effects, which would probably raise the rating. So, if he settled his claim, which W&H would probably “encourage” him to do, he’d be entitled to at least $49,342.50 in compensation. And they’d have been in something of a bind later if he did settle, since he’d have ended up with minimal PD and they couldn’t legally recoup their money.

Way too much time on my (evil) hands.

The perfect title for a Buffy spinoff

Unfortunately the name Slayers is already taken.

I can just see the Sunnydale news reports

(Spoilers for last night’s Buffy finale)

EARTHQUAKE DESTROYS CALIFORNIA TOWN

By Kelson Vibber, staff writer

A 5.9 earthquake struck the Central California town of Sunnydale Tuesday morning, rattling windows as far away as Los Angeles and San Francisco and triggering a massive sinkhole which appears to have buried the entire town. In an amazing twist of luck, however, the death toll may turn out to be zero.

Emergency workers dispatched from neighboring communities have reported the scene is one of eerie silence - largely because many of the town’s residents had left over the past few weeks.

A rising crime wave over the last several weeks may actually have saved thousands of lives. An atmosphere of hysteria had descended on the town, causing many residents to pack up and leave. “It was just getting crazy,” resident Joe Sweden told reporters. “Gangs were killing people at night, there was an honest-to-God riot at the high school… We’ve lived here for years, but it just got to the point where it wasn’t safe anymore. My wife and I took all our vacation time and took the kids to visit my brother in Cleveland. Let me tell you, I’m sure glad we left when we did!”

Mr. Sweden’s story was repeated over and over. Reporters covering the exodus, which caused traffic jams for three days the likes of which the city had never seen, found Sunnydale to be a virtual ghost town just a few days ago.

Search-and-rescue helicopter teams have begun combing the wreckage searching for survivors - or casualties. At present, it is not known how many residents were still in town at the time of the earthquake, although the scope of the destruction does not paint a promising picture for anyone who remained in the area.

Geologists at the California Institute of Technology, who measured the trembler at 5.9 on the Richter scale, are still trying to pinpoint the fault along which the quake occurred, as well as the cause of the sinkhole. Very little groundwater is used in Sunnydale, making it unlikely to be the result of over-pumping. The most popular theory at the moment is that a previously unknown cave system may have lain in wait below the city. If this cave structure were damaged in the quake, it could well have caused the city to collapse into the space below.

City employees have cut short their vacations in order to begin tracking down Sunnydale residents. The task could take months, as the city’s records were all kept locally - and many of those records that are recovered are unlikely to yield out-of-town contact information.

Representatives of the University of California were “stunned” by the unprecedented loss of one of their campuses. “We’re still in shock,” a spokesman for the University said. “We’ve been here since 1960, and suddenly the entire school is gone.

“What are we going to do with the students? Now that’s the million-dollar question. We literally haven’t had time to think about it. We lost everything: classrooms, offices, equipment. The best part is that we think everyone got out okay. The worst part is that we have to start from scratch. Do we open Merced early? Do we try to spread the students and faculty around to the other campuses? We just don’t know yet.” A new UC campus is already under construction in the San Joaquin Valley, and is scheduled to open in 2004. The “other UCSD” was best known for its nationally-recognized psychology program.

Sunnydale was founded in in 1899 by businessman Richard Wilkins. In fact, three generations of Wilkinses served as mayor of Sunnydale over the course of the century. The founder’s grandson, Richard Wilkins III, was killed in the 1999 gas explosion that destroyed Sunnydale High School during graduation ceremonies. Despite the presence of a military base (Camp Brendon, one of many bases closed in the late 1990s) and light industry, the city remained primarily suburban to the end.

Big finale….

How did we get to here?
How did this plot appear?
The show’s all done
It was really fun
But I just can’t raise that cheer
Tell me
How did we get to here?

(You better know the tune.)

“Touched”: Getting into the Fray

The first thought I had when I saw the Weapon of Doom was, “A sundial?” Then I looked again and thought, “A gigantic jar opener?” Then Kelson said, “Hey, that’s Fray’s weapon!” and I noticed the blade. (Finally.)

So, if it’s there, and findable pretty fast (since I assume Caleb could shove, if not toss, those barrels aside pretty handily in a minute or less), why hasn’t Caleb gone down and gotten it? Why hasn’t he at least tried to wield it, even if the prophecy says he isn’t supposed to? One explanation: it has the power to hurt evil. (Yes, Great Axe of Hurt Evil (+15, +18). Moving on.) He can’t touch it without getting his First-endowed power weakened, and the First, far from being able to wield it, can’t even go near it without getting seriously damaged. More to the point, if this is the case, this thing can beat Caleb (to a bloody pulp–please!), and insofar as the First can be injured, the axe can do it. All that needs to be done is to disperse the First or break its projection mechanism.

Day 45. Would like to see Jasmine and Caleb on Celebrity Deathmatch. Apocalypse update: still coming along.

Still no Slayer army.