Okay so I am gonna do this is shorter bursts, partly so I can put a lot more detail in shorter posts, but mostly because I have significantly slowed down in my reading. This post covers everything between Civil War 3 and 4. Same deal as as last time: there will be spoilers.

The Civil War storyline got repetitive almost immediately, with every issue featuring different characters constantly arguing the same points. However, Each storyline varies so much from the other it is impossible to tell what is actually going on. Where in Ms Marvel and Amazing Spider-man captured combatants are taken care of and given proper training to become better superheros. And then we have Civil War Frontline and Young Avengers where S.H.I.E.L.D. is the ultimate evil. It goes from Iron Man overseeing the training of teenage Araña in a giant playground gymnasium to a computer determining public sentiment for ripping apart an underage cyborg. Basically some writers want to beat you over the head with how “evil” this registration is, while others show it as a benevolent improvement, all at the cost of any consistency in the story and the already inexplicable character motivation.

One thing that has managed to stay consistent through the comics is the completely emotionless arguments between characters. Iron Man and Captain America constantly argue the same points over and over again. Iron Man says that registration is good because it is the law and we have to follow the law. Captain America says it is bad because Hitler… But really the Captain America side has some good arguments about unfair laws and profiling, while the pro registration side can only say “It’s the law.” This makes the arguments seem really one sided as if Marvel has already decided who is right and who is wrong rather than providing any actual conflict between characters.

Let me tell you about a much better comic called The Boys. The Boys follows a special task force of non-powered agents who keep all the super-hero super-groups in line. The comic constantly discusses very good points that could easily be brought up in Civil War. For example:

1. Most superheroes have no formal military or police training, and thus have no real knowledge of how to deal with combat situations.

2. Super heroes have no one to answer to and thus are not really held accountable for their actions.

3. Generally superheroes do not have a concept of collateral damage

4. Very rarely will any situation be easily solved with brute force alone

These are all very important issues in a literal translation of a world involving superheroes, I think the Marvel writers aren’t really trying very hard to make a gray area. It is pretty obvious at this point that in their view Captain America is right and Iron man is wrong. (Also The Boys isn’t actually that good, but it is better than this!)

The Civil War comics themselves are actually fairly good, the most noticeable difference is the art which isn’t absolutely terrible as in a lot of the other series, but also these issues are much better at telling the story than all the tie-ins, in fact if I hadn’t made this horrible commitment I would probably just read Civil War 1-7 and be done with it. Anyway plot time!

So basically Captain America gets a distress signal that a chemical lab is burning down and he brings his whole team to go stop it. That’s right his whole underground team of superheros on the run go out in full uniform to stop a fire. Oh no! It was a trap Iron Man is there with his whole team, plus the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier for backup. Well gosh that was pretty dumb. Anyway Captain America has got Cable on his team so you know this should really be no contest, and then all the sudden Thor. That’s right Thor is on Iron Man’s team. Well, the end. End of Civil War.

That is how issue 3 ends (probably how the whole series should also.) Now I have to suffer through a gauntlet of bad just to find out how badly Thor destroys everyone. We jump right into X-men, X-factor, and Cable & Deadpool. Which were all actually not bad, except that they had almost nothing to do with Civil War. Each issue kind of mentioned it, I guess, and the characters are doing stuff in reaction to the Civil War, or at least briefly stating their feelings about it. But they don’t really effect it. (I am slowly discovering that pretty much every tie-in issue is like this.) The comics themselves are pretty unreadable because they are constantly referencing past issues, which is more of a Marvel problem overall, but really I have no idea what any of the characters are talking about until one mentions the Civil War, to which all of these characters are ultimately secondary.

Then we jump to New Avengers, and its an issue dedicated to Luke Cage, alright, hey this is actually good awesome. Holy shit! Another good comic! Right after we get Black Panther. Okay this actually isn’t that good of a comic, but how could I deny the awesomeness of a giant floating whale god!

The Wolverine comics seem to completely break every other characters motivation. Wolverine is on a quest to go kill Nitro, and every single person he meets on the way, good or bad. Wouldn’t this seem like a good example for registration? Well actually he is completely supported by Iron Man, who lets him go find Nitro alone! and kill as many people as he wants. That plus these comics look like absolute shit. I mean I understand what they are doing comparing Wolverine to a wild animal and all, but really its been way overdone, we understand. And yet here he is: a shaved gorilla.

This is worse than Liefeld

The absolute worst comics I have read in Civil War are the Young Avengers & Runaways. The majority of the comics I have read so far are just painfully boring and repetitive, these are the first ones that I actually consider bad, terrible, NICKELBACK! That’s kinda harsh, but still it was pretty difficult to read these. Young Avengers & Runaways follows two groups of super-hero teeny boppers trying to make it in a world of adult super-heroes, who are totally unfair and I will never treat my children this way! I am not saying that young super-groups are inherently bad… Teen Titans is pretty good… sometimes… and there is… Anyway reading this comic gives you the same emotions as listening to a twelve year old tell you how hard a life they have had, and if that isn’t enough you have to actually look at the art in the comic. The colors and shapes and shit aren’t that bad, it is all in the facial expressions. These characters make the most ridiculous faces. I don’t think I can accurately describe the horror of the facial expressions in this comic so I made a sweet collage

You can say that these are taken out of context except even in the comic they aren’t really in context, other than the angry faces pretty much all of these faces aren’t at all related to what is going on in the panels.

Yay! Now to Civil War 4! As promised there is an awesome rampage where Thor destroys everyone. And then shocker Thor fucking kills Goliath. Goliath is dead! He probably should have just stuck to making porn with the biggest penis known to man. Anyway the Invisible Woman protects everyone so Captain America has a chance to escape.

Goliath’s death deeply effects everyone except for everyone, and the Invisible Woman joins the anti-registration renegades. The comic ends on Iron Man’s brilliant idea to use psychotic villains to hunt down Captain America and his underground team. There goes any possibility for a two sided battle, It is now Captain America versus evil Iron Man and his army of villains.

There were a few more, but really they were not that interesting, everything was just OK, Thunderbolts was a little above average but I will never be satisfied until I see Joystick’s genitals.

I can see everything!

When I was doing the research for my favorite albums of 2009 I saw that Dinosaur Jr had put out a new album, not only that, but it was actually good! I am a huge fan of Dinosaur Jr but I had always heard to stay away from anything after Bug and I did, happily. But farm is not just good, it’s freakin amazing!

So what if I had been lied to, had Dinosaur Jr been great all along? Or was it a long awaited comeback. So I went through and listened to the whole Dinosaur Jr discography, excluding ep’s and singles and stuff. And I came up with this “interactive” chart.

If the rating system on the flash chart is too arbitrary for you, I  made another chart using complex sound algorithms and advanced mathematics

Included in the flash chart are the current members of Dinosaur Jr for each recording, which I believe to be a contributing factor to the vast changes in quality. Mainly the absence of Lou Barlow, the original and now current bassist. Barlow is a song writing genius, and very much shows it in his solo project Sebadoh. And while J Mascis is also a very strong song writer I believe that it was them working together that truly makes their albums so amazing.

It is always the Barlow song that sticks out in a Dinosaur Jr album. This may have more to do with the fact that he usually only gets one, but also his songs are usually much more emotional and often a little strange, comparatively to the rest. His songs are a great way to break up the album, enough to catch your interest and suck you right back in. I think the placement of “Your Weather” on Farm is perfect, having it right in the middle stops it from petering out like the stereotypical rock album often does.

Probably the biggest surprise to me was the album Dinosaur, the first full length they put out. It is very very different from the rest of Dinosaur Jr’s discography. Like a different band, that is also fucking amazing. It is like a folksier, punkier Dinosaur Jr. The album actually isn’t really that different musically, it is kinda like an acoustic album that isn’t acoustic, or a sort of underdeveloped caveman Dinosaur Jr. Which if you think about it is pretty badass.

Side notes:

Hand It Over had guest vocals from Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher of My Bloody Valentine and I still thought it sucked.

If you are interested in Dinosaur Jr along with buying their records you should read Our Band Could Be Your Life: a very personal look at the bands that shaped the American independent music scene, including a chapter on Dinosaur Jr.

Check out the music video for the song “Over It” off their new album Farm.

I wanted to read the whole thing and write a short post about it but as you can see there is too much to say, so this is part one spanning about a quarter of the series. Also beware of spoilers I am going to read the whole series. So join me as I read Marvel Civil War! A huge Marvel cross-over involving every super hero and villain they have to offer.

Basically the government gets scared and requires all the superheros to “register,” which entails them revealing their secret identities so that they can be held accountable for their mistakes and collateral damage. Some heroes are against it some are for it, the pro registration superheros hunt down and imprison the anti registration superheros. Now this must sound familiar, if it doesn’t it should because it is, it’s fucking X-men!

Anyway this whole things starts when the New Warriors decide to go fight some villains way out of their league including Nitro. Nitro is a completely fucking ridiculous villain, which really isn’t saying much since we are in the Marvel universe, his only power is to explode, then reconstitute himself from a gaseous state. Thats right he explodes! How do you fight that. Punch him till he dies? Normally he is a Captain Marvel villain, which makes sense seeing as how Captain Marvel basically tells you that you lost and you listen because he is fucking Captain Marvel. So anyway the New Warriors fight Nitro and you guessed it he explodes! Which kills a bunch of school children and it is very sad.

Click image for Nitro's response.

Spider-man crashes the entire internet!

I guess the big shocker of the chunk that I read was Spider-man revealing his secret identity (Peter Parker) to the world. Now if your first thought was “that’s pretty stupid seeing as how every villain in the Spider-man comic series is more than willing to kill his whole family to hurt him” Then you are a fairly rational person. Civil War explains this away, with “ya well… Iron Man will help… I guess” Your next thought should be “Iron Man is Iron Man and he won’t do shit”, and thus you can probably predict the whole Spider-man sub-plot for Civil War. After that a total of nothing happens. Everyone spends the rest of the time worrying about the registration act and talking about their feelings. Except for Captain America who immediately punches the shit out of pretty much everyone he sees, and starts to put together a rebel group to fight against the registration guys. So the Marvel heroes become two sides, one led by Iron Man, and most of the superheroes who are already publicly known and Captain America and a few others he manages to scrounge up, which is still happening at the point where I am in the series. It seems kind of silly that neither side really talks about the issues with each other. Don’t get me wrong there is talking, the whole fucking series is people talking about how they feel about registration, but they never talk with the other side. They just immediately start destroying each other

The Civil War comics themselves are OK, but one of the draws to Civil War is the tie ins, which admittedly was slightly exciting for me, because I had an excuse to read some comics that I never really tried before. I was especially excited to read She-Hulk, I had read that she was one of the few powerful, intelligent, non-objectified female super heroines in comics. I was slightly disappointed by her comics, certainly she was portrayed way more respectably than most women in comics, but I had hoped for a little more. However, the big difference was in other comics, that included her as a character, Civil War Frontline really emphasized her as a powerful attorney, and was more what I had expected, but then I read Civil War issue two…

Can you find the independent woman? look closer, to the right, in the butt region

Now this is really only one interpretation of She-hulk, the other comics are much more respectful, but here lies one of the major flaws with Civil War and many cross-overs in general, is that different writers are taking charge of the same characters at the same time, portraying them in different ways. Although they generally get the core of the character, differences between comics feel pretty inconsistent in characterization, tone, and sometimes even the different writing styles clash.

So that is my thoughts on the whole that I have read so far, and here are some of my thoughts on specific series within Civil War. Keep in mind that most of these I am completely new to and my issues may or may not have to do with these specific issues, series, civil war, or anything.

The Civil War Frontline series is kind of like an outsider’s perspective of what is going on, it focuses a lot on news stories and average joe’s perspective. Which is boring at best, and completely bogged down with useless uninteresting text at worse. Each issue has a long “beautiful” narrative comparing what is happening in Civil War to various past events of racism, subjugation, rebellion, etc. etc. OK look I get the metaphor, I got the metaphor the first time someone said it, and the second, and every fucking issue in this whole series! Frontline’s saving grace is the story of Speedball, the last surviving New Warrior, and how the government uses him as a scapegoat for the explosion that started everything. If it were not for this and my dedication to read every comic in Civil War I would be skipping Frontline every time.

FUCK YEAH!

On the other hand Captain America is easily the best part of Civil War, now I have a few old Captain America comics… was he always this badass? I guess his first comic cover ever was him punching Hitler in the face, I guess he got his touch back when I wasn’t looking. Captain America was only in really two civil war issues that I have read so far but in that time he managed to single handedly destroy sixteen super trained “cape killer” marines, leap out of the SHIELD helicarrier and land on a passing jet, punch through the cock pit, and surf/drive it to safety, begin work on a beautiful painting, beat the dick out of another squad of “cape killers,” and start a rebel team to fight Iron Man.

Thunderbolts is really exciting for me mostly because I had never even heard of it, its essentially a team of villains who are actually good, but are actually evil, but are doing good, but may be plotting an evil grandmaster plan. Also they may have a transvestite on their team which is always exciting.

There are other series: Amazing Spider-man, Wolverine, Fantastic Four, X-Factor… but they are all pretty uninteresting, mediocre, and kinda boring, but I am sure as I keep reading everything will pick up pace.

OK so this time around I am going try to be more inclusive. This is not a list of the “best” albums from this past decade, nor is it even my favorite albums from this decade! These are albums that came out in this past decade that I feel everyone should hear, everyone in the whole world. They reach this status for various reason but I really believe everyone should give each of these albums at least one listen.

Andorra – Caribou I don’t understand how Snaith could have ever doubted his voice. The guy can really sing, but not only can he sing, he is an amazingly talented drummer. You really don’t have to focus too hard to hear the energy this guy forces through his complex drum patterns. Despite their complexity they never seem to get bogged down, which is even more impressive by the amount of different instruments and wealth of sounds present at any one time in a song. The mix itself is very impressive with every instrument clearly audible and not a hint of mud anywhere to be found in the whole album. You can buy the album here

The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me – Brand New (or TDAGARIM for short) This album completely caught me off guard. I liked both Your Favorite Weapon and Deja Entendu. So when I put this on I expected more of the same, but I don’t think any amount of warning could really have prepared me for the massive change Brand New Went through between Deja Entendu and this album. For those new to Brand New it is best to consider each album a different band with the same members, for each and every album has a very distinct sound. The album ditches a lot of the pop-punk aesthetic and structure of previous endeavors and really brings out the musical talents of all the members in the band including an increased effort in lyric writing on Lacey’s part. The album has a very epic sound but still keeps Lacey’s heartfelt and often somewhat cheesy crooning. However, his ridiculous amounts of overdubs actually sound right on this album rather than kitschy in previous albums and just plain out of place on Daisy. I would consider it a coming of age album for Brand New but they seem to come of age to a different sound every album. You can buy it and all the other albums mentioned albums here

The Glow Pt. 2 – The Microphones All of Phil Elvrum’s work is amazing but this album is the gateway drug into a swirling addiction. This album has a great variety of different sounding music, but none of it sounds out of place, you could really even listen to Wind’s Poem right after this and not be too shocked by the difference. It has to do with Elvrum’s unique sound. Which he achieves with some combination of analog recording techniques and careful use and manipulation of cheap instruments. “I just have crappy instruments and I find ways to make the ‘crappiness’ so huge and impressive that it sounds more rich and beautiful than “non-crappy” instruments” – Phil Elvrum interview. Not only does this album sound amazing, but it is also beautiful and intelligent lyrically, I consider it some of the best writing of the whole decade. You can buy it and everything else Elvrum is puttin out here

I should let everyone know that all three of these albums really must be heard through headphones, preferably nice ones. Andorra has a lot of little nuances that get lost as background noise, TDAGARIM has a lot of cool panning action going on and some double guitar stuff, and to really get a sense of the size and sound of The Glow Pt. 2..

I had a lot more trouble with this list than I expected it has gone from 20 albums to 2 and every number in between. I will do my best to resist the urge to back track and edit this post, but just know that this is by no means the end all be all.

Alright so this is a list of my favorite albums from this year, it is not a “best” of list counting down to the greatest album of the year, nor do I ascribe arbitrary numbers to show how they “rank” up with all the other music in the world.

Amesoeurs – Amesoeurs Before this year I never really paid much attention to metal, I owned maybe 4 metal albums total. However, over the course of the year I have steadily increased that number, to where 4 of the albums on this list are heavily influenced by some form of metal. Before this album I had never known that black metal and shoegaze could possibly mix. Which admittedly it does have some trouble achieving at times. Rather than listing it as black metal/shoegaze it should probably be post rock, shoegaze, and black metal (although I am clearly above squabbling about genre.) However, the times when the genres are successfully merged are glorious, and even when not the band plays great hybrid post rock/black metal and even better shoegaze, but what would you expect from previous members of Alcest! You can purchase the album here.

Come With Me If You Want To Live – Goblin Cock What can I say? I love music that takes my preconceived notions of genre and throws them in my face (see above and below.) If you go into this album expecting speedy shrieking guitar playing, face melting solos, maybe a break down… please… no! What you get is more like what if Pinback went with a sludgier, grungier sound, but still left their overall melodic concepts the same? Well you get Goblin Cock. So if you can get past it not being “true” metal its a great listen and you can really hear how much fun they are having with this project. Check out their music video.

Lost Ground – Defeater Yes, this is technically an ep, but it is so good there is no way I couldn’t put it on here. When I first heard about this ep I was concerned, I thought there was no way they could possibly follow up the greatness that was Travels. Lost Ground did not disappoint, in fact it is better than Travels! The narrative follows the prophet from the first album and his fall from grace. The writing keeps up with its Steinbeck influences, but changes it up from the first album telling the story from the first person perspective this time, which I think was a wise choice, it gives the story much greater emotional punch (something they didn’t necessarily need) and gets rid of the “he said”s from the first album which served a purpose but were still somewhat awkward. Musically it is also somewhat more advanced than their first album, choosing to venture even further from the safety of the stereotypical Hardcore sound. I am also glad to hear musical themes and motifs are still just as present as they were in Travels. You can buy the album here.

Post-Nothing – Japandroids I don’t know how anyone could possibly pass this album up, just 2 minutes in and I was completely in love. While not very musically complex, and certainly not lyrically, its the energy that really makes this album great. The first thing that will struck me was the guitar tone, which is really nothing special, but I am a fool for fuzz pedals and the mushed together guitar sound of this album. I didn’t listen to anything else for almost a week after I got this album it’s just too fun, I would try to put something else on, and sit through about one song before jumping right back to Post-Nothing. It’s hard not to feel like a little kid when listening to this album, and do you really need anymore incentive than that? You can buy the album here.

Wind’s Poem – Mount Eerie It may be somewhat unfair because ever since I heard The Glow Pt. 2 it really doesn’t matter what it is, if Phil Elvrum is involved I will love it. Which doesn’t mean this album isn’t great. It is. The album sounds characteristically gigantic and small at the same time, but with his new black metal influence many of the songs are much more chaotic, though they are matched with many truly beautiful songs, and Elvrums unique singing carries the album to its finish. Unfortunately, this album may be slightly less accessible than his earlier works, I would recommend checking out The Glow Pt. 2 by the Microphones first and then listening to this album. Both albums can be found here.

Late Additions and Honorable Mentions

Axe To Fall – Converge, Crack The Skye – Mastodon, Daisy – Brand New, Farm – Dinosaur Jr, You Can’t Take It With You – As Tall As Lions

I am sure I missed some great albums this year, and there were a few that I wanted to check out but just didn’t have the time.