Victorian Christmas(es)

One of my favorite Christmas stories is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. For me, it’s a story that cements a connection between Victorian England and the holiday forever in my mind. So, for this Christmas Eve, I thought I would write about a couple of Victorian England and Christmas related things that I’ve seen or read recently.

Scary Godmother

Jill Thompson’s Scary Godmother series is something of a Halloween touchstone for us. I’ve been a fan of the graphic novels and comics since she first created the character in 1997. While we took a bit of a break from watching the TV specials every year, we’ve put them back into our Halloween viewing rotation. The stories of Scary Godmother and her friends occupy a pretty unique niche in terms of Halloween stories, and that’s why I love them.

Toys R Me

This week, I wanted to showcase some fun toys I’ve recently received. (Well, some not so recently.) So this will mainly be a short photo gallery while I recover from a frustrating couple of weeks, and prepare for another frustrating week coming up.

Trailer Park: Upcoming TV shows and movies

I’m feeling a little exhausted this week, so I thought I would showcase trailers for some upcoming TV shows and movies that my wife and I are looking forward to, in (mostly) no particular order. Also, after blogging about the Stumptown comics the other week, I must let everyone know that the TV series is great. Check out the scene from the second episode posted above, and I really recommend checking out the show on Wednesdays on ABC. 

Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge Fiction

As someone who enjoys both Star Wars and the Disney Parks, I’m pretty excited about Galaxy’s Edge at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. However, we are currently on a Disney Parks break; we haven’t been to one since last fall, and we probably won’t go to one until next spring. That doesn’t mean I haven’t visited Galaxy’s Edge, even if it’s only in my imagination. Disney and Lucasfilm have published a number of stories set in Black Spire Outpost, on the planet Batuu, which is the setting for Galaxy’s Edge, and I’ve been enjoying them all.

Before I go any further, just a warning that there are spoilers after the jump.. And also, I would remind readers that this isn’t a review of these stories, because this blog doesn’t do reviews.

Edward, the Baby Rhino

Victoria and Edward from http://endextinction.org

It’s been a frustrating couple of weeks, and it’s been a little tougher for me to stay positive. Thanks to social media (which I am pulling further and further away from except for Instagram; feel free to follow me at @RumpleDumple there), it is harder and harder for me to avoid all the bad news in the world. I mean, I don’t want to bury my head in the sand, but I get that the world is currently a literal dumpster fire. but I don’t need to know all the details all the time. Fortunately, in the past month or so, we’ve seen some really good news: the birth of Edward, the first baby rhinoceros born by artificial insemination in North America. Watching the videos from San Diego Zoo Safari Park have filled me with so much joy, I thought this week I would share them with you.

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, AZ

At the end of July, I took a quick trip to Tucson to attend the Botany 2019 conference. Well, to attend just a tiny bit of it: my dad was a prominent botanist, and my family is funding an award to help fund the work of graduate students in his name. That award was announced at the Botanical Society of America’s annual conference this year. My mother and brother weren’t able to attend, so I decided to head out there to represent the family.

I Decorated a Sushi Roll Cake!

Due to traveling out of town for a few days (which I will probably talk about in my next post), I have neither the time nor the energy to write about comics this week. Well, more like I lack the energy to pull together the images for any comics-related posts. Fortunately, this isn’t a comics blog, it’s a “things that make me happy” blog. And my wife and I had an experience recently that was a lot of fun that I want to tell you about: we took a cake decorating class at Freed’s Bakery, where we decorated a sushi roll cake.

Roy of the Rovers

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I am not much of a sports person. I don’t play any, and I don’t really follow any. However, I am obviously a comics person, and a fan of British comics on top of that. Even so, it surprises me a lot that one of my current favorite comics is a series about soccer (or football, in the UK). But that is exactly the case with Roy of the Rovers, the recent revival of the classic British football comic.

Stumptown

I’ve been a fan of Greg Rucka’s writing since his first comic, Whiteout. He was a novelist before that, but I came to his novels after his comics. I loved them, too. He’s done a lot of work for DC, and some for Marvel, but what I love the best are his creator-owned comics. Right now, he’s got two series ongoing: Black Magick, a supernatural thriller about a cop who is also a witch, and Lazarus, a series set in the near future where a handful of ultra-rich families own and control the entire world, with the rest of the world entirely subservient to them. (My joke is that I like Lazarus just fine, but I prefer reading fiction.) Truth is, both those series are fantastic. But I think my favorite Greg Rucka comic may be his Portland-set private eye series Stumptown.

Newbury & Hobbes

As I write about some of my favorite things here, over and over again I find myself feeling as if they were created just for me. I guess I feel lucky that I can find so many comics, books, movies, TV shows, and more to enjoy and talk about, rather than complaining about not being able to find any. (Seeing complaints like that was the impetus for creating this blog, after all.) A favorite book series of mine is Newbury and Hobbes, by George Mann, which feels as if he went into my head, picked out some of my favorite things, and put them altogether into one steampunk-y stew. I don’t talk a lot about books here, because they're not very visual. However, since Titan Comics has just published the collection of Mann’s (hopefully first) Newbury and Hobbes comic book miniseries, so now I can finally showcase it.

Trekker:Darkstar Zephyr

Trekker is back! Ron Randall has launched a Kickstarter for the next book in his science fiction series about bounty hunter Mercy St Clair, so this seems like an opportune time to talk about the most recent volume, The Darkstar Zephyr. I’ve written about the previous stories here and here, so I’m going to focus less on the background and more on the current book. Also, I have a pretty cool personal connection to this one.

Ely, NV Part Two: Dinner at the Cell Block Steakhouse

While in Ely, NV, celebrating my 50th birthday by driving a steam locomotive at the Nevada Northern Railway Museum (more information about that in this post), I also went out with my wife for a birthday dinner. Having done our research, the only restaurant Ely seems to have approaching fine dining is the Cell Block Steakhouse, located in the Jailhouse Casino. I like steak, and it looked like this was going to be our best—perhaps only—option for a celebratory meal at a nicer restaurant.

Ely, NV Part One: In Which I Drive a Train

Last Sunday, we celebrated my 50th birthday. Because it was a bit of a milestone, we did something a little more exciting than usual: we went to Ely, NV to drive a steam locomotive at the Northern Nevada Railway Museum. It was quite the adventure for me, so I wanted to tell you all about it.

(This week’s post may be a little longer than usual, so please bear with me.)

The Twilight Zone

Even though I haven’t seen every episode, I consider myself to be a big fan of the Twilight Zone. I first encountered reruns of the original series as a kid, and then found myself completely won over by the 1980s series. Since then, I have watched a lot more of the original episodes, and watched every new iteration of the series. News that CBS would be producing a new series for their CBS All Access streaming service really excited me. Having seen seven episodes from the first season, I am once again really enjoying the Twilight Zone. 

Doom Patrol on DC Universe

I have a new favorite TV show, and it’s the Doom Patrol. It streams on the DC Universe streaming service, which combines DC’s digital comics library, a large library of TV shows and movies based on their superheroes, and original series, both animated and live action, created specifically for the service. Doom Patrol follows the live action Titans and the animated Young Justice: Outsiders (a revived version of a show which originated on Cartoon Network), and while I’ve really enjoyed those other two, Doom Patrol is the one that has won my heart.

Batman 217

Several years ago, I set out to read the Bronze Age Batman comics (or at least Detective and Batman) straight through in publication order, and blog about my thoughts as I went. I didn’t get too far, and not long after, the external drive I had stored the electronic copies of those comics on pooped out on me. In recent months, DC Comics has been making most of those issues available on Comixology, so I’ve been thinking it’s time to start that read up again. Because I didn’t have much opportunity to write anything else this week, I’m going to start off by reposting those earlier posts. 

I started my Bronze Age Batman reread with Batman 217, written by Johnny Hazard creator Frank Robbins and drawn by Irv Novick and Dick Giordano. The Batcave Companion listed this issue first in their Bronze Age checklist, so that's my guide.

Graham Nolan's Monster Island

It’s been a few weeks since I announced that I was taking a stress-related break from this blog. I’ll give a bit of an update towards the end of this post where things are with that, but the bottom line is, I think I’m ready to come back on a regular basis. And the first book I would like to talk about is an old favorite: Monster Island, by Graham Nolan. Partly because it’s a great comic, and partly to bring attention to the Kickstarter currently running to fund the creation of the next volume.

Taking a Break

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I wrote about rededicating myself to this blog, but I think I need to take a break for a bit. Because it looks like Rumplestilskin is sick.

He might just be a little sick. He might be very sick. Or he might be very, very sick. 

Happy New Year

Three nuts roasting by an open fire on Christmas Day

Happy New Year!

So it’s been about a month since my last post ended with the words, “See you next week!” Clearly, things did not go according to plan. Sadly, later that week, we learned that my wife’s brother had passed away, and the following week we flew out to North Carolina for his funeral. I had to come back home for work, while my wife stayed out with her parents for Christmas. (She had always planned on spending the holiday with her family, but under much less tragic circumstances.)

Between her brother’s passing, the funeral, and my being home alone (well, alone with three cats, a parrot, and a gecko), I wasn’t feeling much like writing anything. It’s been a crappy end to a crappy year that started with needing to put several tens of thousands of dollars into home repair and ended in tragedy, with health issues, work frustrations, and general upset with the state of the world filling in the middle of what turned out to be a misery burrito of a year.

Having said that, we want 2019 to be better, or at least the parts we have control over. So I thought I would talk about some of our plans, and kind of preview what you can expect to see here.