Kosher Delis on OA

Moving house downtime, and I set my next post as a book review -- which I want to do right, so it'll be a while. A few random thoughts to fill the space.

1.) Last night's HEROES was a fine piece of televisioning. Just boom baby, plenty of revelations, all leading to deeper mysteries and re-arrangements of character dynamics. Some nice acting, to boot. Color me impressed.

2.) Paperback edition of Misquoting Jesus is out, and is my favorite book of the week. Regardless of where you fall on the church policy, this is a fascinating, beginner-level guide to how the actual ancient writings that became our Bible are examined and parsed out. Exactly the sort of detail-obsessive work I would have fallen into if I hadn't discovered a career of booze and cash payments, so I dig it.

2.) Blue Beetle #12 is out this Wednesday. The folks who built Jaime's sci fi bug suit show up, and are very angry. Leads into the year long invasion arc, with lots of DC guest stars showing up.

Also, if you're a comic book fan and a Mark Waid fan (which, are of course, synonymous), some notes on his new BRAVE & THE BOLD series:

WIZARD: So now that you are almost done with your first arc, what has been the most surprisingly fun team-up to write?

WAID: I think Batman and Blue Beetle have an amazing relationship as defined by Keith Giffen and John Rogers, mostly John. Their relationship is great. It’s unlike any relationship Batman has with anybody, and it’s so much fun to write because Beetle has the same weird, “creeped out by Batman” fear that everybody does, but Batman actually likes Jamie. He likes the Beetle. He’s not all warm and fuzzy around him, but there’s a nice scene in issue #3 where Beetle is just weirded out because Batman is being pretty forthcoming and not doing the whole creature of the night schtick with Beetle. There’s no need to. They’re on their way somewhere, but Beetle’s freaked out because this is not the Batman he’s heard so much about. So Batman says, “You want to see that? All right.” And we slam cut to an alleyway where Batman’s in full, raging creature of the night mode putting the fear of God into a mugger to get some information. And Beetle’s like, “Okay! That’s the Batman I know!”

There’s something fun about their relationship because they’re not buddies and they don’t banter, but you really get the sense in the dialogue and the actions that Batman has the same relationship to Beetle as he had to Dick Grayson. Unlike the relationship he had with Jason [Todd], unlike the relationship he has with Tim [Drake], this is a lot more reminiscent of him and Dick. That’s been the most fun to write so far.

WIZARD: That seems to fall in line with the idea that came out after Infinite Crisis where you writers kept saying, “Let’s lighten things up a bit and let the characters out of their shells.”

WAID: Yeah! Every issue of Brave & the Bold—despite the fact that the first six are a big arc and that there’s huge stuff going on with a bunch of characters—every issue at its core is based on a relationship between two of the characters. The first one defines the relationship between Batman and Green Lantern. The second one defines the relationship between Green Lantern and Supergirl. The third one is really based on the relationship between Batman and Blue Beetle, and that’s the story. It’s not the plot, but at its heart, that’s the story. I want you to come out of every one of these with an understanding of how these characters relate to each other in this sort of post-Infinite Crisis world.

Come, buy #12 and join the love train for comic's most famous teen Hispanic superhero based in El Paso!

3.) In researching BB #14, I discovered that the Guardians of the Universe, the dudes who run the Green Lanterns -- their appearance is based on Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.

That means, in the DCU, the Jews just don't control the media, they control the UNIVERSE. Discuss.