The Best of What's Around (This Week)

I'd like to do something a little bit different today. I've covered some heavy stuff in the first week of this blog. Today I thought I’d just focus on some of the things I’ve seen, heard, or read this week that I liked a lot. I’ll probably do this every now and then (maybe weekly) for a change of pace. I think about this kind of stuff more than I probably should, and I like having a space where I can write about it a little more now.

Anyway, here’s what I’m liking this week:

Strange Adventures

Tom King, Mitch Gerads, and Evan Shaner are two issues into their 12-issue Strange Adventures series, and it’s off to a great start. King’s writing has become a little bit divisive in the comics world the last couple years. Some people have hated some of his recent mainstream DC work (including his high-profile run on Batman), but the books he made with Gerads (Vision and Mister Miracle) are two of the best comic book series I’ve read in the last 10 years. Just phenomenal books that still haunt me and make me stop and think and feel.

Strange Adventures focuses on a superhero named Adam Strange, whose origin is incredibly pulp-y and Silver Age-ish. Rising to prominence in the 1960s DC Comics series Mystery in Space, Adam Strange is an archaeologist who gets zapped away from Earth to the distant planet Rann by a nonsensical sci-fi device called a Zeta Beam. On Rann, Adam meets and falls in love with a woman named Alanna. He then helps Alanna, her scientist father, and their people fight a planetary war against invading, marauding creatures. Pretty ridiculous, right? But that’s ‘60s comics for you, and that glorious absurdity is part of why King's choice of Adam Strange as a focal point works so well for Strange Adventures.

Strange Adventures is split into two alternating worlds: life on Earth (which is illustrated in Gerads’ modern semi-realistic style) and life on Rann (which is illustrated in Shaner’s pulp fantasy style). The core of the book is a mystery about a series of events that occurred on Rann. The planetary war on that planet has ended, and Adam and Alanna have returned to Earth. Adam has written a best-selling memoir about his battles and adventures on Rann, but there’s a lot he seems to have left out.

For one thing, Adam and Alanna’s daughter is missing when they return to Earth, and we don’t know why yet. People are starting to accuse Adam of being a war criminal, and there’s some evidence that that seems to support this. There’s a murder in the first issue, and people are starting to pin it on the Strange camp. Adam asks Batman to look into the murder and clear him, but Batman instead asks Mr. Terrific to investigate. Thus far, the series is about finding the truth behind what happened on Rann.

What King does best in all his books is dig into the heart of what makes humans function. And after two amazing series about the humanity of an android (Vision) and a New God (Mister Miracle), Strange Adventures is his first miniseries that tackles the humanity of an actual human. So far, we’re seeing a lot of that. This is a book about different perceptions of reality (underscored by the contrast of art styles), loss and trauma, the nature of heroism, and the unreliability of memory. The story is going to change a lot as we go along, but it’s a fascinating (at times troubling) read so far. When it’s all over next year, it’s a book I’m going to want to revisit here in full.

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The Beths – Jump Rope Gazers

I have no idea what the title of this album means, but I do know I love the music on it. The Beths' 2018 debut album Future Me Hates Me made my Top 10 of that year (and not just because the title was basically perfect). This band is great at creating catchy rock hooks and building strong melodies with wry, clever lyrics around them. If their distinctive sound has a category, it might be “ironic garage-band power pop indie rock.” (That’s either an obscure section of your local record store or pretty much the entire record store, right?)

As much as I enjoyed Future Me Hates Me, Jump Rope Gazers is a huge step forward for the band. There’s such a wide range of musical styles on this album that it’s getting harder to pin down the band’s genre (which is a good thing). The lyrics are a lot smarter and more reflective/introspective this time around, too. I’ve been looking forward to this collection, but I didn’t expect to see this type of versatility and growth. I’ve listened to it at least four times since it was dropped Friday morning, and I keep finding something new to dig into every time.

Give this one a listen, and try to make it a few songs in before you decide if you like it. I’m honestly not a fan of album opener “I’m Not Getting Excited.” But the second track pulled me in, and the album stayed great through the end. It’s a collection of songs about distance, isolation, loss, and being inside your head, but it’s not morose or mopey at all. It sounds like a group of musicians trying to make the best of the exact moment we’re all living through, and I’m here for that.

Standout tracks are “Dying to Believe,” “Do You Want Me Now,” and “Out of Sight.” You can listen to the album here:

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HasLab Marvel Legends Sentinel

I’m a big fan (and long-time collector) of Hasbro’s Marvel Legends action figure line, and this week brought pretty BIG news. (God…I just did that, didn’t I?)

On Friday, Hasbro held a live event to announce a new oversized X-Men Sentinel project. “HasLab” is Hasbro’s big-ticket-item initiative that lets the company imagine huge projects and pitch them to the collector world using a Kickstarter-style pledge model. Some of HasLab’s projects have been funded (Star Wars Jabba’s Sail Barge, Transformers Unicron) and some haven’t been funded (a full-sized Sesame Street Cookie Monster), but they’re always ambitious.

The Sentinel is the company’s first Marvel-related item. The price tag, as expected, is huge: $349.99. This type of toy/collectible is something I refer to as “Plastic Divorce.” But it is pretty impressive. And it’s popular. The Sentinel needed to reach 6,000 backers to make it into production, and it reached that goal in its first 24 hours. Now Haslab is at the point where they’re unlocking new add-on items for every 1,000 additional backers. It’s hard to believe how successful this project has been in the middle of an economic contraction, but here we are.

I won’t be buying this thing. The price is a non-starter. But I do love looking at it. Hasbro seems to have caught lightning in a bottle (or a box or a blister card) this time around, and it’s fun to watch. If you’re interested, you can read more about it here.

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I Am Skeletor! Little Golden Book

I ordered this book a while back to read with Grant, and it arrived this week. I’m going to be honest here: If you’re looking for an interesting, engaging new Skeletor story, you’re going to be sorely disappointed in this book. But if you’re looking for an introduction to the character that has some nice original art and cool splash pages with lots of Masters of the Universe characters and brief henchman bios, this will work fine.

Skeletor is one of my absolute favorite pop culture icons, so I was predisposed to like this book and I’m not particularly unbiased in my approach to it. Is it worth $5? Probably not. But I still enjoyed it, and I expect I’ll read it with Grant enough to justify buying it.

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This, That, and The Other

Here are some of the things I’ve picked up recently. They make me smile, so I’ll close out a happy blog post with some happy pics. Thanks for taking a quick pop culture brain break with me. (Except for Strange Adventures. That takes some brainpower. But it's worth it.)