Trivial Matters

According to Wiki, there was a comic book for Fringe released around the time the show started. It was supposed to be a 6-issue mini, but they shelved it after the first issue because they wanted to integrate it better into the show’s mythology. It’s supposed to be re-released in January.

I’m so far gone from the comic scene, it’s kinda sad. (Or maybe not, depending on your point of view about comic-book nerds.) Normally, I would have been all over this when it came out, and I’d be bugging Richard (my old dealer) about it every week. Lately, though, I’ve been getting my books from either Fred Meyer (think somewhere between Wal-Mart and and Target) or Barnes & Noble (think somewhere between… nevermind).

I’m sure that I’m missing quite a bit. And once I get back on my feet and back into a routine, I don’t know if I’ll be able to catch back up without putting myself back in serious debt (both time and money-wise).

Back to Fringe… I watched last week’s ep last night and I was a little miffed by the way the “tank” scene turned out. If Olivia and Walter’s intention was to bring John’s memories to her concious mind, why did Olivia stop it at the first “lead” she gets on the current case. Woudn’t it have made more sense to continue and get all of the answers before jumping out of the tank. Yes, I understand that if she gets all of the answers, the show won’t be as interesting, but I can only suspend so much disbelief.

Also, William Bell needs to make an appearance and soon. At this point I’m expecting him to be nothing more than Massive Dynamic’s AI program in the basement. The real Bell, Walter’s lab partner, having died in a freak accident. The AI Bell is using the pattern to find a way into a human body, or some such nonsense.

You would think that a guy with Bill Gates money and power, and 10-times the IQ, would be more of a public figure.

There are a few webcomics that I visit on a regular basis. Every Friday it’s FreakAngels (http://freakangels.com) by Warren Ellis. I’ve been a fan of Ellis’ comic work for years, and am glad that he finds the time to do a weekly series for free. The art by Paul Duffield is very detailed, and the writing is some of Ellis’ best. I also like the fact that he includes a transcript for each page.

On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I read XKCD (http://xkcd.com). If you don’t know what XKCD is, then you probably shouldn’t be on the internet unsupervised. Since returning to school full time, I’ve already heard people trying to quote (or otherwise describe) XKCD in relation to a topic in class. Most recently it was in my Middle East History class. That’s how good it is.

Finally, I visit Ctrl-Alt-Del (http://cad-comic.com) on a daily basis. Tim doesn’t always have a full comic up, but he recently started putting up daily “sillies” which are the size of a newspaper comic (but usually funnier). Ctrl-Alt-Del follows the wacky antics of a couple of gamers and their friends. I enjoy it despite no longer owning a video game console or any computer games. (I can’t begin to imagine how little work I would get done if I was to get ahold of a Wii.)

Since moving to Oregon, my weekly comic book buying has been curbed significantly. (Some day I’ll pull out the boxes in storage, figure out where I left off, and drop a very large list at Things From Another World.) So it is nice to have free comics to read each week.