Comics Now!

I've been perusing comics of late. The Marvel Now! titles, specifically. Haven't done the single issue thing in a while and it was kind of jarring at first. How the hell does anyone keep track of what's going on in these comics reading them one at a time? Turns out the secret is you read stuff you like, not just everything you can get your hands on. So 5 months or so into Marvel Now! here are the titles that I'm digging, and a short bit about why I like em.

Avengers - big world problems are cool but mostly the New Universe throwback that's popped up. I like that bit better than anything that's being done with the actual Avengers characters.

Superior Spider-Man - watching Doc Octopus try to be a hero, because he knows he can do it better.

Hawkeye - feels kind of like a Daredevil reboot, but the street-level hero, everyman bit is written really well and the characterization is great.

Captain America - crazy alien weirdness and removing Cap's baggage to get a better look at the person he is and how he came to be that way.

Thor - a compelling story spanning three ages of the thunder god has a lot of potential. Not sure they are living up to the potential, or where they'll go after the Godkiller, but I'm digging this story. And the art.

Fantastic Four - yet another 'back to their roots' but a fun ride nevertheless. I'm on board more for the wild science tales than the characters, but I'm still on board.

All New X-Men/Uncanny X-Men - both written by Bendis, so it's no real surprise they're like two sides of the same coin. The coherence of voice is probably one the most attractive things about the pair. Also, very X-Men-y with enough humor to offset the heaviness of the constant moral quandaries.

Wolverine & The X-Men - I want to like this one more. I'm mostly digging it, but not as much as some of the others. Feels like they're not spending enough time at school, which feels like what the book is supposed to be about. But I did come into it late, so...

Others I'm enjoying to a lesser degree, or haven't seen enough of to decide: Journey Into Mystery, Guardians of the Galaxy, Savage Wolverine, Secret Avengers.

Oh, and also there's Age of Ultron, which feels like a What If? book more than anything else. It's fun, though.

On Nerd Parenting

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/01/02/totally-of-the-mearas

The comic that goes with that post is pretty funny. But the overall statement on parenthood, especially of my future dealing with our children, point to some aspects of said dealings being depressing. For me anyway, if not Carrie. Or maybe both of us in slightly different ways. At least Owen shows a measurable appreciation for anything blasting out from the television. For better or worse. Earlier today he told me, "I want to watch Star Wars, real quick," when I told him it was nap time.

In other fatherly nerd news, I moved the board games out of the spare bedroom/office yesterday, and into the garage. This act is fomenting in my nerd hindbrain possibilities of hosting some kind of gameliness out there. Maybe. I'll have to think on the logistics of it a bit more.

Moving On Over

Gaming has changed of late. Over the course of five or six months, after GenCon, I figured we had gotten together for Friday gaming about 8 times. The Saturday Apocalypse World game Ben was running seemed to be meeting more often and had more people playing in it, being a drop-in-drop-out game. With all that, when Ben and Amy decided to start up and open-house style dinner night on Fridays I took the opportunity to shift over to Saturdays instead of Friday. So far it feels like we've been gaming more, but that may just be a short term thing. With Ben looking at putting together a similar casual group on Fridays there could be more opportunity for schedule flexibility, which would be nice.

Schmerk

Friday was my last Friday off on a compressed schedule. The entire office has been moved to a straight-eight schedule. The reasoning, from everything we can tell, appears to be because upper management felt inconvenienced. Putting that aside, my new work schedule looks like it will go some thing like, M&W: 6am-2pm, T&Th: 9am-5pm (10-6 until the newest shift worker gets up to speed.) This morning, the first week of the new schedule and we're already off-schedule, I don't go in till 10. Even sleeping in, this morning has had an abundance of time. That means on mornings like this I need to get up as early as I do on my early days and get out for a job before work.

Little Lady

Mom took Owen for the day, Carrie went shopping, and I had Paige. We did some shopping and went to Wendy's for lunch. Fairly prosaic but it was good to have some time, just the two of us.

D&D History

Just noticed that under the product descriptions for the D&D pdfs, each has a fairly detailed product history. Fantastic.
http://www.dndclassics.com

Dream Games

Had a dream last night that Sage LaTorra, Adam Koebel, and Kazunari Maeda ran Emily DeLisle and I through a Ghost Lines-like Dungeon World game. We wandered around outside a bunch while we played so of course we had to write our character sheets on our faces.