The Week In A Bad Education Towers #35

Hello you! Another Bank Holiday weekend, and one that would have involved a trip to the cinema but then it was the same weekend some dude inherited a magic hat whilst holding a sword covered in jewels and gold so stayed at home and had a buffet instead.

A fine solution to any problem, I think you'll agree.

Don't know if you know, but I enjoy superhero comics. I would probably say one of the earlier things I remember is the UK reprint of Secret Wars, the first issue of which I still have upstairs in my wardrobe of stuff. Its brilliant, but I fell off from buying comics years ago mainly because I have 6 or so longboxes full of themstuffed to the gills. Too many? Very possibly for a house of this size.

So when Comixology came along years ago I got well into that. Well, not necessarily buying new comics on there as they were the same price as a physical copy, but in the sales. They'd have issues for like 60p, or a trade collection for £2 and with the app it was so easy to buy stuff.

And then Amazon came along, then they took away the ability to buy stuff in the app so random comic sale purchases went away. It was too many barriers; before you saw a comic, hit the buy button, hit the Yes I'm Sure button and you were done. Not anymore, you had to go to the Amazon page and sign in and make sure you were buying the same thing and it was just a pain.

Marvel did have their own branded Comixology app, and that kept the in app purchases so that stayed on my radar and then dropped off a bit but then came back recently. Remember me talking about the recent Avengers run from Jason Aaaron?

And then I fired up the app one day and there was a big banner about the app closing and it would be moving to Marvel Unlimited. Now, this was another app but more like a Netflix style deal; pay a monthly fee and get access to loads of comics. I'd used it every now and then, normally when a deal popped up but couldn't really justify another monthly sub just for comics. But now to access my purchased comics I'd could use that, as well as the main Comixology app I think?

Anyways, I did the trial and made sure my comics were moved across and then they went do you fancy paying $5 a month for a year for the app and I went well why not.

So this is a long way of saying I've been reading a lots of comics over the last week or so. Well, Marvel Comics so quite a narrow slice of the medium. But they've been good though!

My first exposure to Frank Castle aka The Punisher was, yet again, a UK reprint of the mid 80s mini-series Circle of Blood. This had the Punisher in prison in Rykers Island then joining up a shadowy group to help in his war on crime. He was never my tip top favourite character but I would dip in and out, especially the early 2000s run on the character by Garth Ennis.

Then came the fashion for the people in the military and police forces to wear the Punisher Skull. I mean, it makes sense, the characters main deal is zero tolerance on criminals at the business end of a gun. But the Punisher represents failure of the justice system and not an ideal to be live dup to. The politics behind the Punisher instead slots in nicely with the second amendment rhetoric of the white supremacist douche bags.

Which is how we get to this series which seems intend on changing the Punisher, not only in changing his skull logo to one that they can more easily trademark to control the use of it, but digs into how The Punisher was always there even when Frank Castle was a kid.

And its good! The art is great, its got ninjas, lots of action. Jason Aaron has had some great runs with Marvel (his Thor run is a true epic, his Avengers is top notch as well) and already had a great run with the Punisher previously with the PunisherMAX series. This one will be wrapping up soon, a lot shorter then his other runs but hopefully will stick the landing.

Also, been reading the recent run on Iron Man from Christopher Cantwell; not read any of his stuff before but I kept hearing this run mentioned in the Tom Brevoort Newsletter that I'd heartily recommend. And sounded interesting; Iron Man off in space on a cosmic adventure against a villain who is trying to re-shape the universe.

And its good! It does a great job of carrying the big daft Marvel Space Stuff whilst also keeping the characters grounded and believable. It helps that the art is stop notch and matches the writing step for step.

This run recently finished and all the issues are up on Marvel Unlimited now, its 25 issues and well worth your time.

I very rarely have live regular TV on these days but I did yesterday as had one of the BBC music shows on in the background as I was going other stuff. And then it finished and an advert came up and it was this:

Well. Didn't realise that this was coming around quite so soon.

Russel T Davies has a lot of supporters and detractors when it comes to Doctor Who, but you can't argue that his reboot series brought The Doctor back to a mainstream significance he hadn't seen for decades, if ever. That first series with Eccleston was a belter, and was then somehow more popular when Tenant came in. Thats when Davies left, and it seemed like a definitive end point for him and the show. But then they said he was coming back!

Now. This isn't one of those "Doctor Who should be played by a man" diatribes. Far from it, I thought she was a brilliant Doctor who was massively let down by a poor choice of a show runner. Whilst there were some high points in her run, too often the writing was muddled and the changes it made didn't really end up making any sense. So the idea of Davies coming back was an inspired choice.

The choice of the next Doctor is brilliant, and having Tenant and Catherine Tate coming back for a special makes a whole let of sense as well. It does feel like a bit of a stunt to bring back some of the lapsed fans but still, their chemistry was brilliant and that series was a high point of the modern run of Doctor Who.

Basically, I'm all for it and want it now.

Put up a new video this week:

Have a few schedule in, still working out the kinks of that Mean Machines series. Which is a daft thing even as I type it; I started that series before my youngest was born nearly 9 years ago so have had plenty of time to work those kinks out. Also have more of The Conquistabores to post on there as well, with it now flagged as a podcast since YouTube made that a thing. Will that work? Who know.

Right, thats enough for today; its sunny so getting some washing done and the machine has just about finished. Will hopefully get the last bit of Lego Optimus done tomorrow or later in the week then I can finally get rid of the massive box and find somewhere to put him. Probably in the wardrobe I expect.

Bye!