If a man goes into business with only the idea of making money, the chances are he won’t

That evil and despicable mega-corp Disney has gone and done it again. The day before yesterday it was announced that Disney is buying Marvel. Let me repeat that. Disney, as in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, is buying Marvel.

Now, this may not mean a whole lot to most of you. In fact, most of you probably don't care. To me, though, and to othr comic book nerds around my age this is a pretty big deal.

Marvel comics were an integral part of my teens. X-Men, Spider-Man, The Hulk and, above all, Daredevil, were like friends to me. The Marvel universe is the first that I found escape in, and regardless of the ups and downs Marvel and it's titles have gone through over the years, I will always look back at all that stuff I read in the early to mid 90s with a smile on my face.

My favorites are X-Men circa 1991-1995, Frank Miller's Daredevil and some Punisher stuff. Oh, and Marshal Law, but that's not really Marvel Marvel.

So now Disney is swooping in, assuming control of a Marvel Comics once again on the top of their game. This is a company that filed for bankruptcy in 1996, after being the most visible comic book company for a long time. The recovery they've gone through since then is nothing short of remarkable. And much of this is due to the success of the movies based on Marvel characters. This began in 1998 with Blade, and continues to this day with blockbuster hits like Iron Man.

Let's take a moment to ponder all them Marvel films. Being a fan of many of the original comics, I have watched these movies with a mix of fascination and utter dread. There have been disasters and there have been surprising highlights.

The surprise was Iron Man. I was never a die-hard fan of the character itself, but as soon as that first trailer surfaced and I saw Robert Downey Jr's crooked smile, I knew it would be a wild ride. And it was, and still is. I await Iron Man 2 with a not so crooked smile.

The disaster? Daredevil. A train wreck, of epic proportions. I know the word may seem inappropriate here, but it was a downright rape of one of my favorite characters. Horrendous.

Daredevil, which is sort of Marvel's equivalent to Batman, is one of the reasons why I view the acquisition of Marvel by Disney with a great deal of horror. Sure, they had the good sense not to mess with Pixar's recipe for success after they bought them, but that's not really the same thing, to me. Marvel has a darker side that I imagine may be hard to swallow for some Disney execs. This dark side is rarely more evident than in Daredevil. And there has been talk of a reboot of the Daredevil franchise, a la Batman Begins. Darker, edgier, without Ben Affleck and Colin Farrell. Oh the possibilities.

Now though, Scrooge McDuck has opened his vault of infinite dollar bills and let them rain over Marvel's shareholders. An astonishing 4 billion dollars is the price for my childhood nostalgia. Time will tell if anything good comes out of it. I expect disappointment. My gut feeling is that Disney is after the possibilities to sell toys, video games and all that jazz, and will focus on churning out blockbuster movies based on Marvel characters. Not in itself a bad thing, but like I said, I doubt they will embrace the darker side of Marvel.

If there are any comic book fans reading this (and yes, the question is to you too, Steelwheels, oh mighty Marvel geek), please share your Marvel memories and tell me your fave Marvel movie. If anyone says Daredevil, I will disown you.

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It should come as a surprise to no one that I am a geek... Hello? Anyone? Surprised? No? Damn.

I spent (misspent?) large parts of my youth with my nose in comic books, rolling oddly shaped dice to determine whether my elf would be able to bash in the skull of an orc/troll/dragon/duck/whatever, and playing with Star Wars miniatures. My mother, the Swedish/English teacher, must have been dismayed to have one son with no interest in serious literature (me) and one with no interest in literature whatsoever (my brother). In the end, I think we turned out alright. Ish.

Nowadays I read the occasional graphic novel (comic books with more pages) and roll oddly shaped dice to...eehm...determine whether my elf will be able to bash in the skull of an orc/troll/dragon/duck/whatever. But with more story. And more pages. As for the miniatures, I don't play with them anymore (only when alone on a Friday night, really really drunk), but I still buy them. Not specifically Star Wars, but there are toys all over the place at home. Stewie. Ralph Wiggum. Pinhead. The Sarge.

Frank Kozik's The Sarge

And I spend a lot of time around other geeks. Music geeks, gaming geeks, tech geeks... I've come to the realization that you can be a geek about just about anything.

Back in the day a geek was a computer wiz with glasses with thick rims and questionable hygiene. I can safely say that I fall into none of those categories. I might be more tech savvy than the average Joe, but don't expect me to fix your PC.

By spending time with geeks, I get exposed to a lot of interesting and downright weird phenomena, special interests, sub-cultures, etc.

SETI is one of those phenomena. I have been aware of SETI through various books, movies, TV shows, articles, etc, for quite some time, but I had no idea I could contribute. Readers, meet SETI at home (Wiki, official site). Now go do your part, to help us all find our benevolent friends in the sky (I choose to ignore Alien, War of the Worlds, Predator, Independence Day, Footfall, Martians, the Inhibitors, etc. Real aliens are cuddly-wuddly).

Batman AND a ninja-ish assassin. That's almost too much...

And to continue the geek theme. I walked past a comic book store on Sunday and was unable to resist. The title above and a Lobo trade paperback now sit on my shelves. Mmmm...geeky.

Here is a simple but powerful rule - always give people more than what they expect to get

“Greetings from Amazon.co.uk,
We thought you would like to know that the following items have been sent to: …”

Now that’s customer service. I ordered yesterday, and part of the order is shipped today. Amazon are always fast and reliable, but this…phew. Me likey!

So what was shipped today?
Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore (graphic novel)
Batman: Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrisson (graphic novel)
Absolute Sandman: Volume 3 by Neil Gaiman (collects a number of Sandman graphic novels)
The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made by David Hughes (non-fiction)
Forensics and Fiction: Clever, Intriguing, and Downright Odd Questions from Crime Writers by Douglas P Lyle (non-fiction)

Hooray! Hooray!

Oh how far the mighty have fallen

On many occasions, I have been able to look beyond certain aspects of an artist’s personality or opinions and just enjoy what they’re good at.

Alice In Chains vocalist Layne Staley was very pro-drugs and let it show in his lyrics:

You can't understand a user's mind
But try, with your books and degrees
If you let yourself go and opened your mind
I'll bet you'd be doing like me
And it ain't so bad

I still worship that band. “Dirt” remains one of my favorite albums.

Woven Hand prophet David Eugene Edwards is very religious, though he has a somewhat damaged relationship with his god, and lets it show in his lyrics as well. Somehow that’s an even bigger problem for me at times than the drugs, but there’s no denying the power or feeling in his music and words.

David Eugene Edwards at Peace and Love. Pic by Mah Girl

But then someone goes and does something that I can’t ignore or get around. “Just don’t let it bother you”, some people say. Impossible. Choosing to be bothered by such things is what I do. It’s part of my bearded charm.

So. Orson Scott Card has some opinions about gay marriage. He seems to be the kind of religious nut that needs a good talking to. In a dark alley. With a Louisville Slugger. Yeah, sure, a lot of science fiction writers find inspiration in religion and as such a lot of them are probably religious, but this takes the cake. And that’s just insulting to cake.

And the idiot parade continues. Frank Miller is, without a doubt, one of the most influential comic artists and creators of the past 30 years. He reinvented Daredevil, which I read over and over in my teens (watch the POS movie at your peril – it’s one of the first signs of the Apocalypse), wrote and drew what is undeniably the greatest Batman story ever, and created the Sin City series (also made into a movie, which while not as eye-gougingly horrible as Daredevil still is flawed in many ways).

Violent Marv silhouetted in a Sin City alley, in "The Hard Goodbye"

Then a friend told me about this. Batman vs Al-Qaeda? Come on. That’s so stupid I don’t even know where to begin. And the realization just hit me that the worst thing about it isn’t even his dumbass opinions about the war, but the fact that he will tarnish the memory of “The Dark Knight Returns”. I won’t be able to even look at that graphic novel for quite some time, let alone read it. I hope DC Comics see some sense and don’t even publish the new one.

Dream and Death

I had horrible nightmares last night. Some of the worst I have ever had. All around me, friends dying or dead. Friends burning, friends down wells, friends crawling through glass, friends reaching out to me with blood running from ruptured eyes. Through and through, horrible.

I had to text or email them this morning, to make sure they were ok. I don’t really believe in the precognitive powers of dreams, but this was so powerful I just had to. All of them were fine. Quite a relief.

Death is not something I’m accustomed to dealing with. In all my life, I’ve been to three funerals. Not sure if that’s a lot or few. My grandmother on my mother’s side passed away in 1995, after a long period of decline, and somehow that was a release. My cousin died of an overdose of really bad moonshine, which was a tragedy, but I didn’t really know him. Then my friend Henrik died. He hanged himself in November of 2006. No one knows why. That still haunts me. I might get into why some other time.

Malin wrote about fearing death, about death anxiety, which sort of inspired this entry. I think everyone fears death, on some level, at some point. I know I have. It’s not something I face on any kind of daily basis, but it has happened. It has nothing to do with turning 30, which is two and a half years in the past, but rather a part of being human, I think. Yes, I’m sure age can accelerate that kind of thinking, spiraling one down even further into musings on death, but it hasn’t happened to me. Yet.

It’s been a hot day. My brain feels scrambled. Not really sure what I want to say with this, but I do know that death is natural, and unless you subscribe to the notion of a life after this one, then the years you get here is it. Make the most of them. Live, laugh, love, lust, and a whole host of other l-words. Don’t spend too much thinking about things you can’t change (says Mr. Over analytical). Enjoy. And fight those routines.

The pic is of Morpheus from The Sandman, the only comic ever to be on the New York Times Bestseller List. I intend to enjoy part 2 and 3 of “Absolute Sandman” as soon as the paycheck drops on Friday. Wohoo!