Today’s as good a day as any for a little catch up post, right? Right.
So the site’s officially back, glad to have you all here. One of my goals for the year is to keep to a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday update schedule for HIVE OF SCUM. I’m going to try and go for a nice mix of actual content and just brief funny stuff (How are you guys liking OBSCURE BATMAN CHARACTER OF THE WEEK? Or THE BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS SCHOOL OF DIALOGUE, for that matter?). Spider-Man Challenge will return, but probably in a monthly or biweekly form.
In the interim I’ve spent a good chunk of time looking at other comic blogs. Seeing what works, what doesn’t. My biggest inspirations in this regard have been Mike Sterling over at www.progressiveruin.com and Siskoid. Both of these guys post really engaging regular content (Siskoid’s WHAT IF write ups are pretty much a more polished take on what I’d like to be doing with The Spider-Man Challenge , Sterling has some great insight on recent industry news in addition to looking at dumb toys or PREVIEWS items). So, The Hive is a work in progress right now, but we’re off on the right foot, I think.
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Stuff I’ve been looking at lately instead of writing:
TV: I’m JUST NOW getting into Dr. Who, mostly at the suggestion of my good friend Mike who more or less worships the stuff. I’m starting with the modern stuff, I’m about 3/4ths of the way through Season 2 at the moment. It’s quality Sci-Fi and the really strong, creepy episodes (“Dalek”, “The Impossible Planet”) make up for the stuff that doesn’t do too much for me (The two part farting alien story springs to mind). I’m definitely into it and having the entirety of the show on Netflix Instant is a godsend.
Film: Last few movies I watched were:
*The Howling Part 3: The Marsupials (What an exquisitely bad movie. Pretty quotable too, apparently)
*Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans (Watched as a part of myself and my friend Keith’s ongoing interest in Nicholas Cage’s filmography. It is definitely a Werner Herzog flick where dude’s spirit breakdances. Quality Cage.)
*The Dark Knight (A friend hadn’t seen it before so a bunch of us watched it last night. After, what, two years? Still the best super-hero flick there is. I love that Nolan tries to stick to practical special effects instead of using CGI as an easy out. The chase sequence that serves as the main action piece of the film is all the better because of it.)
Books:
I’ve been trying to work my way through Stephen King’s Duma Key, but, to be honest, it’s been a slog. I like it, but it’s not what you’d call fast-paced. I admire that King is basically writing a horror story about a rich guy who lives in an expensive beach house, but it’s also a story about rich guy who lives in an expensive beach house. I’ve put it aside for alittle while.
In the meantime, I’ve been reading Machine of Death, which is a pretty neat anthology. The quality in any anthology, especially one made up of largely unknown writers, has the potential to be all over the place, but by and large the selections have been pretty interesting and unique.
I picked up Garth Ennis’ first Punisher collection (“Welcome Back, Frank”) with some Borders cash just after Christmas. I’m a huge Ennis fan and I haven’t ready any of his Punisher stuff, so this’ll be a good in-between-novels read.
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That’s about it. What do you, the reader, have to say?
HIVE OF SCUM. HOW ARE WE DRIVING? YOU TELL US.
-Max
HIVE OF SCUM 