Top Five Part 3- Comics/Comic Events

The following are my top five comics (monthlies or minis) or events (crossovers, etc.) from ‘07.

5. The Order, Marvel

Superheroes meet celebrity. It was a tough call between this and Avengers: the Initiative, but in the end The Order’s cast of newly minted superheroes wins out. A good team book that in many ways mirrors reality television, it uses the unique (to comics) device of the “confessional”/interview to both flesh out the characters and set the tone/theme of individual issues. Drama, action, excitement, and fantastic writing make this book the best thing to come out of Civil War.

4.  Messiah Complex(X-books), Marvel

With several strong X-titles “in” continuity and at least one outside (Astonishing X-men) the multi-book Messiah Complex brings the X-men back to the basics and the X-books back up to the standard of quality they deserve. Hated, hunted, backs to the wall Marvel’s merry mutants are doing things old school: fighting overwhelming odds, time-traveling, and playing catch-up with the bad guys. Old faces return. Heroes rise and fall. This is an X-men crossover done right.

3.  World War Hulk(Incredible Hulk, various one-shots and tie-ins), Marvel

A bunch of jerkwads sent Hulk into space to be at peace except they screwed up and sent him to a hostile world where Hulk had to fight his way to the top. Achieving peace, of a sort, Hulk had it snatched away when the shuttle that carried him exploded killing his wife and their unborn child. Enter World War Hulk with a supremely pissed Green Guy out for revenge. Carnage, destruction, and a boiling down of who and what the Hulk is. Look for the trade soon.

2. The Sinestro War (Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, various one-shots and tie-ins), DC Comics

Sinestro, the pink man with the plan, is back this time with an army of yellow ring toting psychopaths. Amongst which are Superboy Prime (not called such thanks to pending legal issues), the Cyborg Superman (Hank Henshaw), and the Anti-Monitor (of Crisis fame). All out war waged over the center of the universe (not where it used to be, nuts to you Guardians) with deaths all over the place. New laws are written for the GLC and hints of conflict to come thrown left and right.  An exciting read in the old school space opera fashion.

1. Starlord (Annihilation: Conquest), Marvel, 4-issue mini

The dirty dozen in space. A squad of misfits led by former Starlord Peter Quill face off against the technology devouring Phalanx. Great team interaction, gritty action, and refreshingly unique characters and settings set this book apart from other Marvel titles. If you haven’t already check out any of the “cosmic” Marvel titles for some great reads.

Music Top 5- Addendum

2007 was a long year and while shuffling through a stack of CDs I stumbled across one I forgot to mention.

Neil Young Live at Masey Hall 1971-  I was never a big Neil Young fan.  I appreciate his songwriting, and his presence at the forefront of the folk/rock scene of the late 60s and 70s is hard to ignore (nor do I mean to marginalize his impact on folk/rock/country music scene), but I was never a fan.  That is until I bought this album.  Released in March of this year with phenomenal sound recording beautifully remastered it’s easy to forget this wasn’t recorded in ‘07.  Featuring a number of “new” (in 1971, now classic, some unknown) Young tunes the album presents an  intimate portrait of Young and his audience revealing a man both confident and excited in the work he was doing.  I found it easy to listen to this album with my eyes closed and see myself as part of the audience for what, to me, is a extraordinary performance.

A Note: Firefox 3 Beta 2

I had beta 1 installed previously but didn’t say anything much about it.  Beta 2 added a feature that I felt necessitated some comments.  The address bar.  Our old standard friend.  Every browser has one with some slight variation on implementation.  To date Opera, with its address bar search was king (enter “g” in the address bar followed by your query and it posts it to google, enter “z” and it searches amazon) FF3B2 added an interesting and wholly useful enhancement to standard auto-complete that gives Opera’s search a run for it’s money. In fact, the feature is so simple and obvious that you’ll wonder why no one (as far as my limited knowledge extends) has done it before.  Rather than simply auto-completing a URL FF3B2 auto-completes website titles as well.  Simple, effective, and more useful than you might expect.  Can’t remember the URL of that article you were reading (that you forgot to bookmark, shame on you!)?  Simply start typing the title and it shows up in the address bar!  Simple.  Effective.  Damned useful.

To give the beta whirl head on over here.  Don’t forget to check out the release notes.  For more detailed impressions check out the Wired blog or the mozillalinks blog.