I'm back for a bit

Just thought you'd like to know that I'm free until the evening of June 6th.

If you're wondering were I was, I was teaching English as a second language on the STU campus. Basically, the students (and the teachers) are only allowed to speak English for the duration of the programme, so they have to learn without shortcuts. I was teaching section one (lowest proficiency) which was, for the most part, a pretty good class. They were quite friendly and eager to learn (in most cases), but there were a few problems. One was with a Quebecois student who was a good student, but was really hyper. Like 13-year old on a sugar bender hyper. Hyper like a grown 19 year-old man shouldn't be. Nice guy, but very irksome.

The biggest problem, however, was with a young Mexican who just seemed like he wasn't interested in learning. It reminded me of the South Park episode in which they see the wax museum of stereotypes including the greedy jew and the studious Chinese. Randy, pointing at a brown skinned janitor leaning on his mop sleeping then says "look what we have here. The lazy Mexican stereotype." "oh, no" says the Mexican, "I was just cleaning and then I feel asleep. Oh, I'm so sleepy." Hey was not a bad person, but easily one of the worst students in class in that every time I asked him to read a sentence he'd go, "aaaah, come on," then sigh heavily. Come on what? "ah, come on, I already showed up here and take up physical space and now you expect me to participate in an activity? You're crazy!" Still, he definitely learned a few things before the end.

All-in-all it was a really enjoyable experience and most of the people were nice. There were a few jerk students, but luckily there were also a lot of good people. Also, I realize that I like middle aged French ladies. I don't mean I'm physically attracted to them, but their a lot of fun to hang around with and have a better (and raunchier) sense of humour than anglophones of the same age. So for every irritating Frenchman I hate, I'm comforted in knowing that when they become middle aged French women, they'll be much more tolerable to be around.

Things I read while away:

Batman: The Long Halloween & Dark Victory: These two books detail two of the Earliest years of Batman's career and depict Gotham's transformation from a mob-run town to a town besieged by madmen (the Joker, Two-Face, Scarecrow, etc.). The first story is certainly good and the second ain't bad either. Both are murder mysteries (the first involving the Holiday murders and the second involving the Hangman murders, which are a copycat of the former, except the weapon of choice is different) and the ending to both are rather disappointing. I don't know, I like not being able to solve the mystery until the last second, and when I get to the end, it should feel like the killer is the only one that makes sense in terms of the story. Still, here the answers aren't entirely satisfactory. Still, watching the transformation of Gotham is pretty cool, the character development works and the expressionistic style of Tim Sale's art makes Jeph Loeb's merely decent script come alive.

Fell #1-5: This may be the best new comic to come along in a good while. Written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Ben Templesmith (who is now sick of drawing vampires), the series focuses on Detective Richard Fell who finds himself working in a strange and feral city called snowtown. The city is covered in sigils (the sigil looks like an S with a diagonal line through it) that are supposed protect the city from dark forces. So far there is no actual supernatural elements in the story, and if the writer does decide to go in that direction (which seems unlikely at this point) it looks like it will be extremely subtle.

Each issue is extremely well plotted, but what I love is that the writer gives you some bang for you buck. Ellis created this series with the intent to give readers a good cheap comic for those working class blokes who may not have the cash to spend on the casual comic. Fell contains only one ad (on the back cover) and 16 pages of story (as opposed to the usual 24 pages) and costs one-two dollars less than the average comic book. He makes up for the page count by cramming a lot of story in each page without giving it the feeling that the story is rushed. Each story is clever, simple and surprising and manages to fit a great deal of tension and character. Plus, there are four pages of fan letters, script samples and commentary by the writers on were the ideas for each story came from.

And though there are no supernatural tales, the ideas are taken from real life facts and ideas like the true tale of a wife murdering her husband with a rum enema, Cambodian smoke children, the validity of "the Anarchist's Cookbook", floating corpses and the idea that schizophrenic people smell wrong. Plus Ben Templesmith evolves as an artist (and stops drawing vampires) to deliver an art style that I know longer get tired of looking at (he was a good artist before but after a while it would all look and feel the same). This might be the only comic around where I don't want to wait for the trade.

Sandman Vol. 9-10: The books that end the series are really very good, but the climatic ninth book, while great, was a little disappointing. I really preferred the final volume (which is really more of an epilogue which really gives the series a sense of finality. The ending of volume nine makes sense in terms of story and I'd hate to call it anti-climatic, but I still have a few problems with it, which I won't go into here (I may lend it to Aiden and it would spoil a lot for him). there are a lot of loose ends, but that's intentional considering the point of the story and the ideas it plays with (mortality, responsibility and change).

My one desire, however, is for Gaiman to one day give Delirium (the embodiment of crazy) her own series. The dialogue for her character is always good, but it is even better when you can imagine the attitude in which she says her lines. Plus, she's so sweet. It isn't easy to sell the line, "I am walking with a fish" but Gaiman makes it gold! But to be fair, it is rare (or intentional) that Gaiman doesn't come up with an important character who isn't likeable or interesting within this series. Death, Fiddler's Green, Mervyn Pumpkinhead, Cain and Abel (they were in comics before, but Gaiman really made them his own), and Lucifer to name a few manage to remind me why it is such a shame to say goodbye.

Books of Faerie: This one is disappointing. A spin-off from both Sandman and Books of Magic, this series is essentially the life story of Queen Titania (dat fairy queen what shows up in A Midsummer Night's Dream). The writing and art are both pretty forgettable, which is a shame because there was a lot of potential in the story and I never get the idea that Titania is a particularly charismatic, righteous or clever queen and I never get the feeling she's grown from her human roots to the strong queen she appears to be in Sandman. A lot of potential, but no results.

Cable Vol. 1-2: Cable's a character I really really hate. Not just because he was created by Rob Liefeld (though that doesn't help) but more because there wasn't much about him that was interesting. He's a cyborg from the future with an extremely militaristic attitude and wearing nothing but a scowl. There just wasn't any soul in the character. On David Tischman and Igor Kordey's run on the book, they manage to respect Cable's convoluted history and use it to their advantage.

Cable's main goal in life was to kill Apocalypse, who was to ruin the future he came from. But with Apocalypse dead, Cable is without a role to play in the Marvel universe. He soon gains a new motivation: make the future better by fighting in hot spots that no other hero goes to fight: he faces the Shining Path (who are now using mutants) in Peru, ethnic cleansing in Albania (where some ethnic Albanians' solution involves cloning) and facing other threats that are "ripped from the headlines" as they say, and are given a sci-fi touch. It's never as easy as good versus bad. Frankly, most characters in the series are rather unsavoury. Cable knows that he alone can't end these conflicts or save the world but he can save a few lives and stop the conflicts from getting worse. Cable was interesting and different, and it's a shame it was cancelled so quickly.

Avengers: celestial Madonna: Wow, this was... bad. Collecting a supposedly classic Avengers arc from the mid-70's, it follows the story of the Avengers newest member, Mantis, as it turns out she's both the Celestial Madonna (and with birth the universe's messiah) and extremely annoying. She talks in the second person (instead of saying "I want cheese", she would say "this one wants cheese"), which I guess the way Vietnamese martial art monks turned bar girls turned superheroines talk. The art isn't bad for it's time and there are fun ideas bandied about, but the story is terrible. I wondered if it was "good for it's time" but I decided no last night after comparing it to some Avengers issues from the later sixties. It's just bad. Luckily it was on sale in the shop, but if I could go back in time I'd not by this book... and save JFK... and Phil Hartman.

Avengers: World Trust: I was really expecting this book to be good. It's written by Geoff Johns, one of the most prolific and critically acclaimed writers today, and has a nifty premise, but the pacing is weak and it really falls apart at the climax. The premise is that all of the world capitals disappear from the Earth, each replaced with a strange void, and the Avengers are called upon to take over the world until they can solve the Crisis. This feels, simultaneously, too long and too short. It takes a while for the threat to show up and though the villain is supposed to be heralding a greater threat, he's beaten to quick and the huge threat is dispatched too quickly. On the plus side it is fun seeing who superheroes would deal with political problems and Iron Man solving the budget crisis for many nations.

There's is also a great story after the titular one entitled "Heart Broken" in which the radioactive hero Jack-of-Hearts has to spend 14 hours a day siphoning off his dangerous radioactivity in a blank room with nothing to pass the time (any book or game he would bring with him would just disintegrate anyway) and the knowlegde that one day his powers will kill him... and many others. Still, despite that it is pretty disappointing.

That's pretty much what I've read over the Summer, not counting some Sci-fi short stories. But I didn't mention them because none of them sprung to mind as being really great (with the exception of Harlan Ellison's Jeffty is Five, William Sanders' The Undiscovered, Nicholas DiChario's the Winterberry and Bruce Sterling's Mozart in Mirrorshades) I also have already bought 4 more comics (because Strange was having a thirty percent off everything sale and I found a sweet deal at a flea market) so I'll definitely have something to read over the break. Lucky me.