Combat Queer Online

Two Roads Converge

Well Dear Reader, I remain quite busy.  I think you often, but have had deeply limited internet access as of late. That said, I will try to do better.

 

Apology aside, I'm currently reading "The Language Of God" by Francis Collins and it is absolutely wonderful.  Admittedly, I am pretty awful at science.  The worst grades I got in any courses in college with in biology and chemistry classes. All the memorization, the lab works, etc, there was nothing about those classes I was skilled in.  In fact, science nearly endangered my college enrollment before things got turned around.

 

Despite all of that, the implications of science are fascinating to me. That we poor humans can learn the truth about the workings of the universe, a truth that doesn't depend on a certain way of thinking, a certain set of ideas or ideals just amazes and delights me.

 

Collins is a person who finds the hope of God in the great complexity and reality science describes.  He shows a faith that is big and strong enough to survive contact with reality.  He's able to maintain a faith without denying the basic truths about the world we live in.

It's awesome.

I'm also reading a book, Luke Timothy Johnson's "Living Jesus," that, true to its title, discusses the reality of the living Jesus.  Not just the dude who lived 2,000 years ago, but the person who is alive today and still working in the world.  The book's point is that when Christians move from celebrating the Holy Mysteries of the Resurrection to treating these miracles as problems to be solved, we miss the point. Somehow I think the views of these two books work together.

 

Now hear me out.  I think that figuring out the mechanics of God's Magic is crap game that misses the point.  Christ's message is how to treat each other like human beings.  To read it looking for esoteric clues seems to me a rejection of His message.  It's saying to Christ, "What you were telling us, that whole 'do unto others' and 'don't judge,' and 'love each other,' that's not good enough. We need strange teachings to make us better than other people."

 

But I seem to be rambling.

 

More later.  Affectionately yours,

 

CombatQueer

Blackest Night: Five Reasons It Might Be Great

So, tomorrow the first of issue of DC Comics' Blackest Night series comes out. They have been building up to this story for something like three years now, ever since the current Green Lantern  series began. Now, BN promises to be a big summer comic book crossover, and that almost always promises dull story telling, tired plot devices, and pointless carnage which gets reversed two months later. The most recent two big cross overs, Marvel's Secret Invasion and DC's Final Crisis, were both pretty big disappointments. Secret Invasion was at best deeply confused, and at worst boring. That's as great a sin as a comic book can commit. Final Crisis was deeply, deeply weird, and while I really liked something things about it, even  am forced to admit that the story made no damn sense after the first two issues. Also, spoilers, it killed Batman in the stupidest way possible. What was that, I ask you, what was that?

So why am I excitedly looking forward to running over to the PX tomorrow and picking up my copy of the first issue of Blackest Night? Well, I'll give you five reasons:

1) The Sinestro Corps War was very well done. SCW was the big Green Lantern based crossover before this one, and it was great. It managed to incorporate swaths of DC mythology and back story while at the same time telling a story that made sense, developed characters in interesting and compelling ways, had tension, and was a whole lot of fun. 

The cast of villains was just amazing: Superboy Prime(the psychotic child from another dimension who wanted every to think he was a hero), the Anti-Monitor(the evil god from Crisis On Infinite Earths), Parallax(the cosmic monster who killed all the Green Lanterns that one time), and Sinestro himself. It took come commitment to awesomeness to use all these villains an give each of them their due. The Superboy Prime bits alone are worth the price of reading.

2) The whole "Seven Different Lantern Corps" thing hasn't been a total cop-out.

At the end of SCW the main character are shown a prophecy of the Darkest Night. In that prophecy they and we learn that instead of there being just two lantern corps, the Green Lanterns, powered by will, and the Sinestro Corps, powered by fear, there will soon be seven, each powered by a different part of the emotion spectrum. 

As neat an idea as that might be, I was totally grimacing when I heard it. See, the Green Lanterns and the Sinestros really weren't that different. They both used power rings to make constructs and hammered on each other with them. The story worked more by making you care about the characters than by doing neat things with the ring powers. The rings were basically a known quantity.

Well, that's all fine and good when you only have two groups, the good guys and the bad guys, but I worried that with seven such groups the repetition would get old fast. I mean, really, how different were the Red Lanterns, powered by anger, going to be from the guys powered by fear?

Shockingly enough, Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons have done an amazing job making each corps different from the other six. The powers not only work differently, but each speaks to the ideas of different moral conundrums. It's great.

3) Marvel Zombies rocked real hard. As a lot of folks have pointed out, the idea of having the DC Universe menaced by an army of super-powered zombies seems a damn lot like Marvel Zombies.

Now, I understand that for many folks it might seem a little lame to take an idea whole cloth from another source, but you know what? I'll allow it. In fact, if they can managed to do something clever with the idea, I'll celebrate it. One good thing about zombie stories is that there's no standard narrative there. Instead the zombie elements of the story are fairly well defined, allowing everything else in the story to spin off in any direction you might like it to.

Marvel Zombies was a whole lot of fun, so I see no reason by Blackest Night shouldn't be even more fun.

4) The horror elements in the recent build up to Darkest Night have been very well done. 

A few mini-spoilers here, but the Green Lantern who can hear the dead? The Orange Lantern who adds to his corps by killing and eating the identities of the new members? The Red Lanterns using their blood as a weapon> The growing amorality and willingness to spill blood of the Guardians of the Universe? There have been some creepy, shocking moments over the last year of Green Lantern comics. The writers know how to transgress, but how to do is so in a way that doesn't get all narm-y. I'm excited to see how they'll handle the raising of the dead thing.

5) And finally, I think it'll be neat to see DC address the matter of why so many of its main characters have come back from the dead in-continuity. It happens all the freaking time, but still, you'd think it would be a bigger deal. The fact that is barely raises an eyebrow except to have some light joke made about it, well, I feel that that has been eating away at the universe's underpinnings for a while. 

I really think that this series might go a long way towards fixing some of the damage done by the overuse of the main character resurrection.

----

So, I'm looking forward to getting the first issue tomorrow. It very well might be good. Beat the odds and all that.

Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk #6 - Bad Ass Finale

I managed to find a comic store right off post this afternoon. It was not, sadly, the best comic book I've ever seen. It had a certain ambiance, one much life a cave. And not a good cave. No, I'm talking about the sort of cave where it only goes back fifteen feet and the floor is covered with used pornography and skoal cans. There going to be a soiled mattress and crude drawings of female genitalia done in permanent marker in that cave. It smells like old urine and desperation.

And that was the off-post comic book store.

But the important thing about it is that I was able to buy the final two issues of Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk. I've said it before, but I really think that Marvel's Ultimate Universe had a big drop off in quality after the second run of Ultimates. The UU went from being a place where big stories were told in fascinating, hip ways, to little more than a collection of fan-fiction(I exclude Ultimate Spiderman from this description because those stories continued to pop all the way up until the end, and hey, there's a trans-superhero. That's freaking badass, and it makes me want spider-powers again.)

Seriously thought, later Ultimate Marvel books had a bad habit of expecting the readers to put up with a lot of seriously bad story telling for sake of the emotional pay-offs that simply made zero sense. For instance, remember when Prof. X died and came back two issues later? Or when Nightcrawler turned out to have always been evil, then kidnapped Dazzler 'cause he loved her a bunch, or anything from Ultimates 3? No? That's because the story telling was awful, and no one cared.

But Ultimate Wolverine Vs Hulk is really an artifact from the early stages of the Ultimate Marvel Universe, and it shows. In issue five, there is a genuinely fun plot twist that plays with the differences between the standard Marvel world and the Ultimate one. The story plays with one of the central problems with Hulk stories, basically that for all the whining Bruce Banner does about being the green Goliath, it looks like it might be pretty awesome to me and the rest of the audience. The story moves on without trying to pick up a load of emotional baggage, and in doing so we actually get a look at the characters. 

What I really what to talk about, though, is the final issue, which is very cool. We follow Wolverine as he tracks down the two Hulks. Wolverine has two unbreakable collars, and if he can trap them on either of the Hulk while they're in human form, it'll kill them if they Hulk out. The collars are a nice little plot device, and I'm glad that(spoiler alert) the story doesn't cheat and have the Hulk break the unbreakable collar. As much as I like the Hulk to smash everything in his path, I really think the stories suffer when the Hulk doesn't have any rules to play by

But I think the real jewel of the issue is the conversation on the airplane between Wolverine and Banner. It's  quality banter, and it does a good job showing off the facets of Wolverines character. Fun stuff to read. Also, Banner's willingness to put his life in danger, forcing Wolverine into a decision, it's a good swing for the fences. Sure, the situation mirrors one from an earlier book, but the setup is inventive enough that I'll give them credit for it.

That this series has managed to keep it's focus on the question of whether or not the Hulk and Wolverine are good people, it entertains me that that question even needs to be asked. Marvel sometimes forgets that it does its best work when it has its heroes unsure of their place in the world, unsure of their purpose and mission, but this series had done a very good job of playing with those question.

It ain't Watchmen, it ain't Fun Home, and it ain't Persepolis but I loved it. 

Shane Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution

So, I've been reading Shane Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution.  It's a really interesting book, one of the finest examples of Evangelical writing I've ever read.  Here's a guy who is definitely advocating a form of fundamentalism, but one why I'm not diametrically opposed to.

Claiborne is obsessed with the idea of radical love for all people, nonviolence, and fighting for justice for those in poverty.  Not so shockingly, that old book the Bible has an incredible amount of support for a faith like Claiborne's, you know, what with the thrust of the prophets and the Gospels being largely about the need for humanity to “walk humbly, love justice, and do mercy.”

He, like me, is a failed protestant in a lot of ways.  Reading his story about how he became disenchanted with the self-righteous, in-looking, materialist bullshit of American Christianity, well, it all rings true.  Far too often American Christianity is about becoming the greatest, the best, the strongest. American Christianity loves to jump in bed with the ideas and ideals of the Military-Industrial Complex.  American Christianity loves to worship our nation and the power of our nation as a god instead of that homeless rabbi, the one who got lynched for speaking the truth in love so much that it pissed the whole world off.

American Christianity's got some problems, and Claiborne sees those.  What I really like about this book, though, is that it isn't simple a critique of the problems.  Dude actually takes the time to suggest alternatives to the current system, alternatives based on the teachings of Christ and the prophets.

But now, before we go too crazy talking about how awesome this book is, I want to talk to you for a minute about the reasons that it really scares me.  Dear reader, I am afraid of Evangelicals.  There, I've said it.

Evangelicals, not all of them certainly, not Fred Clark, not Jim Wallis, not my dear friend who introduced me to this, but many, maybe most, legitimized the politics that lead to the deaths of a million innocent Iraqis.  Many Evangelicals work every to reinforce systems of oppression that lead to the rape of murder of folks like me.  Many Evangelicals spend their time trying to rebuild all those chains that Christ broke that day up on the cross.

They scare the shit out of me.

And I know, I know that it is probably a sin that I have not yet been able to forgive that body of American Evangelicals for what they've done, what they continue to do.  I know that in some ways I let them continue to do harm in the world, do harm to me by not find forgiveness for them.  But friends, I'm sorry.  The things I've seen, the ways in which I've seen people treated.  It has hurt me, it has hurt my family, it's hurt this world.

I want to find more love and forgiveness for them, but it's hard.  There are so many American Evangelicals who I do love, who fine and wonderful people.  They give me so much hope, but when I think about that wider group, all those folks who fought for Prop 8, who spread rumors about Obama being a Muslim, who put out letters accusing trans folks of wanting nothing more than to get into women's bathrooms for the purpose of rape, sometimes I don't know how I can love and forgive all of them, the idea of all of them.

I keep trying to love and forgive Evangelicals one at a time, but I don't know if that's enough.

So when I read a book like this, no matter how smart and cool it seems, I don't entirely trust it.  That's just the truth.  I keep looking for the razor blade in the apple.  I keep waiting for Claiborne to admit that despite his ideas about radical love, radical welcome, the God of losers (Man, I really like that term), I keep wait for him to say, “But you know what? Gays and queers? God still hates them.  I'm not talking about God being the Lord of those kind of losers.  I meant the other ones, the ones who are just too righteous for this terrible materialist, queer-infested planet.”

But now, Claiborne never comes out and attacks queers.  He attacks the rich, the powerful.  That's fine and good, and I'm down with that.  He had beautiful, wise things to say to about poverty, the ways in which society separates people so that systems of oppression can continue without burdening the consciences of the powerful.  His talk about the One Church, the Universal Church is moving and lovely.  I share many of the same dreams of over coming the silly, petty barriers that separate us.  He has many, many good ideas and ideals.

But, it scares me.  He mentions transsexuals once in this book.  He uses us as an extreme example of how everyone from transsexuals to SUV drivers are welcome in the body of Christ.  It's a positive welcome, but at the same time, I don't know how I feel about being used as an end marker for the bottom side of the scale of weird.

I don't know.  This book really is about the love God has for people on the bottom, and transsexuals tend to find our way there are some time or another.  Like I talked about in an earlier post, I know that being trans knocks me out of, or at least down in, the game of the world, the constant ratty mission to become the greatest or the best.  I think that that, for me at least, can be a blessing.  And I think that from what is written here, Claiborne might seem to go along with it, but...

Look, I just wish he had come out clearly and voiced his support for queers.  I know that this book was aimed at the Evangelical establishment, that the idea here was to offer all those bright beautiful young Evangelical kids a chance to follow God in ways that weren't just worshiping their own power or the power of their country, and I know that if this book took too much time to support queers those young Evangelicals would far, far too scared to read it, but...

Still, I wish Claiborne would say that he didn't hate me.  It's hard to listen to someone talk about the love of God, but know that no matter how fine their words about forgiveness and welcome are, that they might still be willing to turn on you.  I just wish he was clearer on that point.

So, Battlestar Galactica Ended

It's always a little hard on me when a long running, somewhat tightly plotted science fiction series comes to an end. All too often, a smart, beautiful story gets summed up in the stupidest, tritest way possible. The story just feels like it ran out of gas, ran out of ideas. It can be a real scar on the story. You just know that no matter how good the work was to begin with, well, it's not leading anywhere pretty. 

So lets look at a couple of examples of scifi stories that ended well and poorly.

The Dark Tower- For me, there is no more perfect instantiation of the "bad ending" form that The Dark Tower. I mean, there is some platonic shit going on with this one. The first book of the series, The Gun Slinger is one of the finest American novels, smart, dense, lovely in its strangeness, but by the seventh book, well, Dear Reader by the end the story is nothing more than a giant quivering mass of plot tumors.

The last books are just packed full of robots, teleporters, psychics, Very Special Appearances by the author himself, commentary on what it means to write a book like The Dark Tower, it just, it just wasn't about a lone hero setting out across the wilderness on a quest of questionable meaning. No, it was something else, something stupider. 

And then the author ended the series in a way that provided as little resolution as possible. 

<Spoiler Alert> 

Infinite Time Loop. It just keeps happening. It never ends. Boo Stephen King, Boo. That's not a proper ending. And yes, I know that the situation was ever so slightly changed on the next rotation, and that leaves open the possibility of some real conclusion in the distant reaches of time, but seriously, that's not an ending. That's a cop out.

Y: The Last Man-  Now, YTLM does it better. A lot better. Some how the series remained largely free of ridiculous late stage plot points. It even took the time to make fun of the ridiculous late stage plot point. Remember when those assassins tried to convince action girl 355 that the whole "death of all men" thing was really the Greek gods retribution for the Trojan War? Yeah, I liked 355 yelling at them about what a silly, asinine idea it was. Good stuff.  

But the end, it really worked for me. All those little plot lines, ideas, and tensions that had been with the series in the beginning got tried up in pleasingly messy ways. We got to see the world that women had built after the deaths of almost all men. We got to see the ways that they continued the species. We got to see where the main character's relationships took them. 

It wasn't just that we got to see cloning growing to meet the needs of civilization as a means of procreation, it was also that we got to see Yorick's daughter still being a little sad and angry with him. It was that we got to see old Yorick complaining about how all the monkey's were too well behaved. It was that Yorick never stopped trying to escape.

Just what the book deserved.

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy- So Douglas Adams' masterpiece, the five part trilogy. Those books go around and around and around, and well, the fifth book gets the story to a place where the story can't easily go for another spin. 

The characters have gone out, done their things over and over, trivia's been provided, ideas have been tossed around, the story doesn't have much else to do. The last book, Mostly Harmless, it's a surprisingly sad book. Arthur, the main character, has lost the person he loved, the person who made the universe make a little much-needed sense. 

The book is grinding down to nothing. There's nothing left for the characters. It feels like the end. It's over.

But here's the thing. Like the much-loved FireFly, the story wasn't really over. Before his death, Douglas Adams began the process of writing a sixth book. I don't know much about that next book, you can't call it last because there might have been a seventh, an eighth, but it was almost real, a fish in the sea of possibility. 

Knowing that that sixth book almost existed, I can't accept that Hitchhiker's Guide is really over. The world ended the series, not Adams. But, I don't know, we have a hope is resurrection. Death has been defeated. Maybe one day in the celestial future, maybe there I'll get to find out what happens to Arthur Dent next. 

Hitchhiker's Guide is different from Dark Tower in that it does have a real ending, a good one, but then it still may go on. It's good.

But I haven't talked about the ending to BSG yet.

I'll get to it next time.

Author's Note: It looks like I accidently posted this blank before I had the chance to write it. Sorry about that.

Old Man Logan, Part 6

Old Man Logan might seem like kind of a hopeless story. Anytime that anyone is pinning all of her or his dreams on something, well, that one thing tends to go pretty badly. The story shows this in little ways and big. 

You get the failure of the crops on Logan's family farm. You get the daughter of heros, Spiderman's granddaughter, turning out to be a power hungry criminal. You get crowds of downtrodden people praying for the return of Thor that will never happen. 

But it isn't just the good guys whose plans don't work out. Spider-bitch, Spiderman's granddaughter, the first time she sends her army out, that army is wiped out. The Kingpin is unable to hold onto his territory. Giant Loki got crushed under a falling building. The giant Venom T-Rex? Well, you'll have to see for yourself.

The centre cannot hold, things fall apart. 

What's interesting about the comic, though, is that no one stops hoping. For such a deeply pessimistic story, there are an awful lot of characters who seem to think that salvation is right around the corner. Logan keeps going Hawkeye keeps going, people keep making plans and trying them out.

Old Man Logan is really built on the idea of expectation, the idea that things will get better, that our best days haven't quite gotten here yet, not matter what the world looks like. Despite the beatdown of every single character, the idea that it'll all work out is still central.

The characters who have given up, Spider-Bitch's mother, Emma Frost in this issue, Logan himself, they are still shown in a negative light for their inability to keep the faith.

It's quite beautiful, and a little sad.

We finally find out what the package is in this Wolverine #71. Not to spoil anything, but it comes right on back to the idea of hope, of expectation. 

X-Factor #41

Man, I sure do love this comic.

I've only read half the issue so far, but I wanted to start writing the post. What's amazing is that thirty seconds ago I was totally ready to type up a description of how Peter David had let the readers down, and had slumped into mediocrity after a really strong run. 

Then it all came together. And it was awesome.

See, in so many comics the same things happen again and again. They move the story along, they can even go original places, but those little things, well, they don't change too often.

The last place I was so regularly surprised by a story was Firefly. It wasn't that I didn't think I knew what was happening, what was going to happen, but rather that I thought I did, and was delighted to be wrong.

It's like, it can be cheap and easy to use these things, and it's more difficult not to. The thing most people miss, though, is that the most difficult thing is to use common, well known tropes, but to use them in new ways, to make them fresh without becoming ridiculous.

And X-Factor is very good at that.

Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk #3

So we've finally, finally gotten a new issue of Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk. It's been a while. The last time a new issue came out, it was early 2006. It has been a while. 

If you're into fights between, say, Hulk and Wolverine, this is probably the comic for you. It's written by Damon Lindelof(yeah, the LOST guy), and the first two issues were pretty cool. It's a story from the brief golden age of the Ultimate Marvel Universe. This was back when Ultimates was still in it's first fun and rocking it inventively. This was back before Ultimate X-Men collapsed into nothing more than a running update and "Ultimafy-ing" 616 characters and stories. This was a good time to be interested in the Ultimate universe.

And hows this issue? Well, the Hulk's talky, and Wolverine is trying to piss him off. We get a couple of flashbacks to Wolvy getting torn in two, a good character moment involving leg eating, and, sadly, the Ultimafy-ing of an old 616 character.

I'm a little bit let down.

But maybe, maybe we'll eventually get to see a good knock down, drag out fight between the two prime brawlers of Marvel.

Or maybe with just get to see what Ultimate Skaar looks like. Ug

Buffy Season 8, Issue 23

I haven't really talk about it much here, but I really like Joss Whedon. Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dr. Horrible, that's all really great story telling. Those works have strong characters, sometimes so strong that you don't really notice the big story growing in the back ground until it's too late.

And yes, Dollhouse is pretty awful, but they say it'll get better, and maybe it will. 

But I'm not talk talking about that today. Today I'm talking about the new issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, and I'm going to try to do it spoiler-free. This is another great on going comic. It world-builds, there a cool over arching story that doesn't cut into smaller stories, and hey, it's a neat idea with which inventive things are done. Who can ask for more than that?

I can, of course. One of my big problems with a lot of comics is that they are absolutely unable to tell a good story in a single issue. At fewest, most comics need three issues to get the job done. With Season 8, there's something amazing. Occasionally you get a good story all in one issue.

That's how this month's issue is. In fact, the last two or three have been like that also. 

In this issue we get the story of Buffy and Andrew, the sorta kinda villain, actual loser of Season 6, setting off to capture a rouge Slayer. Andrew had been the young woman's Watcher and blames himself for her going off the deep end.

There are some great character moments between Buffy and Andrew, although one or two of them feel a little forced. I really did enjoy Andrew's long, long nerd/travel monolog. 

Aside from the fun Buffy/Andrew dynamic, we also got some good ideas about what it means that there's now at least two Slayer armies for the rouge slayer. It'll be interesting to see where this all goes.

Man, I hope we get to see some more Fray.

Nick Fury: Agent Of Nothing

So, I picked up the first issue of the new Nick Fury comic this week. It's actually called SECRET WARRIORS: Nick Fury: Agent of Nothing. Yeah, Brian Michael Bendis is rocking not just one subtitle, but two. Personally, I think the "Agent of Nothing" title is the best bit, but eh, who am I to say? I wasn't really sure what to expect. It's just that I've never really been the biggest fan of the character. I mean, I get it, he chomps cigars, he's a super-spy, he's somehow been about the same age since the end of World War II. He's a fine character.

But... I don't know. Maybe it's my distrust of unbridled patriotism, but I've never really gotten what the dude's motivation was. Normally he's basically a background concept, you know, "Where'd this secret base come from? Oh, Nick Fury left it for us." And that works. It's cool to have this big, powerful, basically good overwatch guy taking care of things, but as main character, I don't know if he really works very well.

This issue is pretty good though. Nothing spectacular, but good. It stars off your standard "ensemble cast learning to be a team" bit. They don't get along perfectly, and make some mistakes. It's nothing new, but it's done capably. There were one or two good little character moments, like Quake showing off the dude tooth stuck in her stick, and maybe this will improve in future issues.

Oh, and it was nice to see the Sentry working in his "government tool" role. It's strongly reminiscent of Superman in The Dark Knight Returns, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Marvel does with it. 

The real meat of the issue, though, is a noticeably older looking Nick Fury(all of a sudden he had gray hair!) looking spooked and uncharacteristically unsure of himself. And what does Fury do when he faced with an uncertain world? He turns to the man all good Americans know we can trust.

That's right, Barack Obama. 

Fury's visit with Obama was a little odd. Obama stands in the shadows for some reason. Is Marvel suddenly shy about showing our beloved Commander-In-Chief? Are they afraid to characterize him, afraid that he'd be the start of the scene? I don't know. 

Also, I noticed that Bendis felt the need to point out that Obama actually *reads* his daily security briefings. 

But whatevs.

The issue ends with the (SPOILER ALERT) revelation that Shield has always been a front for the ancient and evil organization Hydra, and that for all Fury's super-spy wits, he was dupe all along. We all so get several pages of Watchmen-style counterfeit primary source documents, which I love. It neat to be about to figure out what's happening without broad exposition.

But... I still don't know how I feel about the series. It seems like Bendis really wants to focus of Nick Fury more than the team of Secret Warriors, and that might be a good idea. It's always fun to watch a True Believer like Fury learn that everything he's built his life on is a lie. Also, now that the long arc of Secret Invasion is over, maybe Bendis will be able to recover some of his charm, and inject that into the writing. Who knows? This series might turn out good.

We get another conversation, then my favorite part of the issue,