So my hopes of staying current every single day during our trip was not successful. But for those of you still hanging around and reading we are still alive and well.
We got into Calgary on Monday, signed all of our legal paperwork, got the keys, and then stayed at a hotel. We didn’t have a bed at the condo yet, and had no intention of sleeping on the floor.
Tuesday brought us back to the condo, and our very fast three hour unpack of our shipping container. Said container, was conveniently and “illegally” parked immediately outside the front door of the condo, for ease of use. Thankfully no one cared or complained.
Today saw us continuing to unpack, and we are nearing the bottoms of our piles of boxes. We got two new shelving units set up today, which allowed us to unpack most of the office, and all of my books. We still need to get a computer desk, and should be able to do so soon.
It’s now somewhere between 11:21 pm and 1:21am for my internal clock, so I’m off to bed.

This morning we embarked on Day 2 of our 5 Day journey from Thunder Bay to Calgary. We arrived, safely, in Regina this evening after a couple of slightly more eventful hours on the road.
Today we started with the breakfast of champions, Starbucks and sugar loaded pastries. Thanks Jean.
We then hopped on the road, and promptly made a wrong turn. But never fear, we had Kathy, the voice on my iPhone TomTom app to get us going in the right direction, or so we thought. Kathy seems to have had trouble getting us back onto the ever important Trans Canada Highway, and sent us down a road in the middle of nowhere. Click here to see the route Kathy gave us, which took us down a wonderful rutted dirt road, on which we saw no other living people for 45 minutes. Make sure to try street view to get the full effect of the isolation and terrifying lostness we had. Did I mention it also had started raining heavily at that point? Either way, we lived, and I’m glad Ryan was driving instead of me.
After we got back on the proper road, it was pouring rain about halfway to Brandon Manitoba. We stopped and lunched, texted loved ones of our current life state, and continued with me behind the wheel towards Regina.
For the most part, my leg of the journey was smooth easy driving. Nice divided highways, 110km/h speed limits (The Highways are one good thing about Manitoba and Saskatchewan… or is that only good thing?). THEN the storms rolled in, along with dark skies, blinding rain, and me needing to run windshield wipers on max speed. To those that don’t know, I have a serious problem with high speed wipers, and rain, and driving while in those conditions. So after today, I’ve been told that in I am to stop driving and give control of our beautiful car over to Ryan in those conditions instead. I’m glad I couldn’t see it, but I was apparently quite white knuckled and panicked looking.
Though, as you can tell by now, we safely made it to Regina, checked into our hotel, and went visiting at Sunglass Hut locations, and got some food.
To those planning on visiting Regina, make sure you stop by Brewsters for food, best Brew Pub type restaurant I’ve ever been to. The beer was fantastic, and mostly well thought out home brews. The restaurant was very nice looking, no craploads of junk stapled to the walls. The service was extremely good, the girls there knew everything about all the food and beer, all while getting to wear well fitting outfits, instead of a the black napkin sized outfits people at Moxies are forced to wear.
This more or less wraps things up for me tonight, need to rest for our continued travels tomorrow, which bring us to our next stop Saskatoon. Don’t expect to be hearing anything exciting about that stop.
Though in geeky news I figured I’d pass on the following:
iPad users – Scott Pilgrim comics now available in their own app, $6.99 per 150 page volume, very good stuff. Almost done volume one here.
Readers – The Passage by Justin Cronin is currently top of the pile on my Kindle App, and at 1/5 of the way through I am extremely impressed.
Mom, Dad and Brother
- Deep Fried Butter, and more disgusting food in Indiana
- 180 Square foot Cabin fits 4 people and 1 dog
Just plain cool
- Hand drawn panorama of London in 1845

Surprising I wasn’t on the ball in hearing about this one. I saw people making weird name mash-ups on twitter of Marvel and Disney characters, and just thought it was something stupid like usual. Once I heard about it a second time from my friend Terry I thought to maybe go check out the news. What a surprise I was in for when I found out at Comic Book Resources, that Disney had acquired Marvel Comics.

So what exactly does this mean for Marvel and Disney? Disney has stated they’re taking a hands off policy, but hope to help promote and market Marvel properties, and Marvel now has financial security, and backing of one of the most powerful companies in the world.

This isn’t the first case of acquisition in the comic book industry, considering DC Comics has been owned by Warner Bros. since 1969, and it’s this case that is really the best comparison for Marvel Comics. From a consumer point of view there really doesn’t seem to have been a lot of influence in DC Comics other than from film and television franchising options. Occasionally there is a call from Warners to not kill comic book characters they’d like to use, but honestly when is the last time a comic character stayed dead?
I see Marvel/Disney forming a large film and television franchise that will reach an ever increasing global market. The comic aspect of the company I believe will stay relatively unchanged. Comics are having trouble across the field, and being bought by Disney is not going to help it. Though one major headache will be the large number of existing business relations Marvel has in Film, Video Games, and other aspects of its marketing or distribution. Secretly I’m sure Disney would love to bring all aspects in house to control all flow of money, but that kind of change could take years. Also there is a severe chance of conflicting rights to characters being used in other mediums now that they are all owned by Disney. With any luck they may be able to avoid large scale fiascoes like the fight going on over the Adam West Batman series, which involves no less than Warner Brothers, Fox, all music rights owners from the show, and all celebrities and their likenesses that appeared in the show. As a result the red tape and pride has prevented this show from doing anything other than languish in reruns, and fuel black market DVD sales.

For the sake of Marvel fans I hope this change is for the best. Though I think its going to be much more difficult than everyone really anticipates.

If someone walked up to you on the street and asked you what the secret identities of Superman and Batman were you’d likely be pretty quick to answer, and almost guaranteed to be right. If you were asked that same question today, you’d probably be surprised to hear you got one of your answers wrong.
For 60 years Batman has been in constant publication and has been seen in many movies and TV shows. The one thing in common with all of them was the fact that Batman’s secret identity was always Bruce Wayne. Yesterday that changed with the release of the first issue of “Batman and Robin” written by Grant Morrison with art by Frank Quitely.*
This issue marks the end (finally) of the Batman RIP story-line that left Bruce Wayne apparently dead or missing, and the beginning of a new era for the franchise. Dick Grayson, the first Robin is now Batman, and Bruce’s illegitimate son Damian has taken over as the fourth Robin.
The issue was an awesome change of pace from the RIP story, and fits the dark and campy tone Morrison said he was going for. I was thoroughly impressed, and I really hope they can keep Quitely on as artist as often as possible.
Now I just have to wait for the first issue of Detective Comics to arrive without Bruce Wayne in the lead. Though on this title the lead is instead going to be Batwoman, Kathy Kane. Sadly we’ve seen very little of her since her headline grabbing introduction as a lesbian comic book character. I can only hope that her run on Detective Comics will help her be known for something other than her sexual orientation.

* I am well aware that Azreal and Dick Grayson were both briefly Batman in the 90s, but Bruce was only injured, not dead at that point.

Now that I’ve waited, or forgotten to review Watchmen for nearly three weeks, it has given me time to more accurately reflect on the movie. Hopefully this will eliminate any knee jerk reactions I would have had upon writing when I originally anticipated.
Having read the graphic novel in the fall of 2008, I had a decent idea of what to expect from this movie. My first reaction before seeing it was how misleading the advertising for this film really was. I honestly don’t believe Watchmen to be really action infused story by any means. There are action scenes, but not in the volume that one would be lead to believe. I’ve always viewed the story as a very complex murder mystery, that just so happens to involve Super Heros.
There really isn’t any way to review this movie without comparing it to the source material. But in a vague attempt, it does stand well without having prior knowledge of story, but I can definitely understand where people unfamiliar with it could be easily lost. This may explain the eight people that left the viewing I attended.
Adapting the source material must have been a difficult job, and one that would inevitably fall under very close scrutiny. The writers along with director Zach Snyder did an admirable job, and stayed as true to the original dialogue and progression of the story as they could. Admittedly they extended several scenes far longer than their graphic novel counterpart ran. This in particular hurt the pacing of the film in several places. Then once this pacing became an issue, it seems they tried to hold the scene in place with 80’s pop tunes, that just somehow didn’t quite fit.
The choice of not including a Giant Squid at the end of the film was probably a wise one, though after three hours, I get the feeling even the most casual audience wouldn’t have been too phased by its appearance, but setting up such a set piece would be difficult story wise.
There are several places where I wished material had not been cut and replaced with extensions of weaker scenes, but that was not my choice to make. I hope that there is some room for change as the film progresses from Theaters to Blu-ray and DVD. Next week marks the arrival of The Black Freighter, as a supplement story to the main Watchmen material. Reviews I have read so far indicate that is stands well on its own separate from the main feature, and does help show thematic similarities. The second feature on The Black Freighter is an interesting interpretation of what was a tell all autobiography in the graphic novel. On DVD is becomes a poorly filmed 80s expose all TV interview. This feature helps flesh out some characters that only make real appearances in passing.

I think to truly appreciate what Watchmen has to offer, there is a certain amount of dedication required. You have to want to enjoy this film, and surround yourself in the information that is available to you. Is the film perfect? No it is far from it. Is the film enjoyable? Definitely.

Today, while wondering about on the internet I found a review at one of my local haunts of Batman (1989) on blu-ray. Reading it I realized, I have it written down that that movie doesn’t come out until March 10th in North America. wtf?

So I continue reading, to find out, it’s the UK release, and its Region Free! Now I would have balked back in the DVD days, because just because you can play it here, doesn’t mean it won’t be crap. No longer must I fear, as the stupidity that is NTSC vs PAL is not over. Turns out that there is only 1, yes 1 kind of HD signal in the world, about freaking time. 1080p/24 is the same 1080p/24 EVERYWHERE.

So much to the dismay of my poor little credit card, $54 CAN just went to the monolithic company that is Amazon.co.uk. But the bright side is, these Blu-ray discs come as individual films, so I can own only Batman and Batman Returns, without having to waste money (again) on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.

Technological progress can be a good thing once in a while, and I’m glad to be up on it, most of the time.

Below are the pretty new covers.

As of yet Joe Hill has not quite reached the prolific status of his father. Though with the current output of novels, short stories, comic books and who knows what else waiting in the shadows he is poised to approach such selling power very quickly.

Until that happens and mostly likely even afterward, those of us shopping online with small publishers such as Subterranean Press and PS Publishing will be in for a real treat.

Late in 2008 saw the release of Joe Hill’s latest novella Gunpowder from PS Publishing. This title is available in an extremely limited run. Both the Slip Cased and Jacketed hard cover editions already sold out, and the 500 copies of the regular hardcover are sure to go very fast.

I managed to get my order in on time for the basic hardcover edition, at a price of £12.00, plus shipping to Canada. The wait from ordering this 6 months in advance was excruciating, but Hill has made it more than worthwhile.

After devouring all 22,600 words of this novella in a single evening I could little else than stare amazed at the story laying in my lap. Not only was this one of the most beautifully produced books I’ve read, with astounding cover art by Vincent Chong, but it was one of the most engaging Science Fiction stories I’ve read in years. An unlikely cast of children with psychic power, and their regular human mother Elaine populate this stories small desolate planet so fitting nicknamed Gunpowder. These children, bred with the express purpose of terraforming the planet are maturing before their mother’s eyes, and developing exciting powers along with the understanding of the outside world only a child can acheive.

Hill makes every word count, setting each character perfectly in place to pull every heart string necessary to draw you so far into the story I had difficulty leaving. It is a real art to be able to so fully populate such a short story and have such a deep and engaging plot. I commend the abilities of Hill, and continually look forward everything and anything that he writes.

Until his next novel comes out later this year I’ll be reading and rereading Locke and Key: Head Games, available from IDW at your local Comic Shop. If that proves not to be enough I’ll be rereading Heart Shaped Box and 20th Century Ghosts, as well as the short story Thumbprint (available from Subterranean Press and as part of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19).

Check out Joe Hill at his website joehillfiction

As well you can find Vincent Chong, the master behind the amazing cover to Gunpowder here.

Here for viewing pleasure is the cover.