Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Artifacts

Oh man, this has probably been the hardest week so far on Thought Balloons. Artifacts is a Top Cow mega event, and I have read very little in terms of Top Cow universe comics, so this was definitely a challenge for me. In the end, I did what I always do when in doubt: write a crossover with another property. What came out was a script called The Man Behind The Curtain. My favorite part is these couple of lines...

MAN: Ah, Sara, I was just educating all of you. Humanity is nothing without the knowledge we gather, you know? But yes, I think you have earned that much. The thirteenth artifact is what protects all of humanity against this holy war you are all fighting.

Go ahead and check it out. I was reasonably pleased with what came out in the end, considering how much I struggled to come up with something decent. 

Photo: Fallas 2011

Taken during Fallas 2011, here in Valencia, near Plaza del Ayuntamianto. Fallas is a weeks-long celebration that has been growing in popularity for years. The streets, as you can see, are packed with people.

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics Review 03/23/11

Typical. The Friday where I actually decide to go out somewhere with some school friends, the comic companies decided to go all out and upload six free comics for me to review. There were some good ones, and some not so good. Click here to see the reviews, which include:

Captain America: The Chosen #1

Catwoman #1

The Flash #1

Ghost Rider #1

Pray for Death #1

Ultimate Fantastic Four #1

I'm betting that next week I'll only have one or two comics to review. Such is how these things usually work.

Meanwhile at TWC - Batman & Robin Creative Team

I've mentioned it before, but these are my favorite pieces to write. Over at The Weekly Crisis, I put together a piece on the switches and changes that have affected the Batman & Robin title. I don't have any concrete answers, but I do propose several explanations and lay out the whole story as it happened (or at least how the readers saw it unfold). Here's a short excerpt:

Finally, with Batman & Robin #20, the creative team of Tomasi and Gleason started telling their tale. Surely, with months of preparation and hype behind it, it would be a long run by the two of them.

As it turns out, this isn’t the case at all. Issue #22 is going to be their last for at least three other months.

I've mentioned it before, but these are my favorite pieces to write. It's information that is all out in the open, but that must be pieced together to get the full picture.

Photo: Final Day of Class

Taken on the final day of our course, after we had completely finished. We decided to go out to to eat to a restaurant to celebrate that we survived the course. From left to right: Richard, Edna, Me, Seámas (our tutor), Sandi, and Tania.

Never Lived in a War Zone (Fallas Week)

...but if I had to guess, I would say that Fallas week here in Valencia is very similar to what living in a war zone is like.

For those of you that don't know, Fallas is a week-long celebration/holiday of the Valencia region. It actually goes on for longer than that, and people actually prepare for it for the whole year, but there is one key week in March where the whole city grinds to a halt and stops functioning. It culminates on March 19th, when everything ends.

During that week, stores operate under different hours, roads are closed, public transportation barely works, trash accumulates in the street, and there's people literally everywhere. And that's without even mentioning the fireworks. It gets so bad that some long-time residents just up and leave to another city during that week.

You can hear the fireworks throughout the whole day. There are organized ones every day at 2 PM for almost a whole month, and the week before, there's an extra set at 1 AM (yes, AM) every night. And the people participate too. It's nigh-impossible to go to any of the local parks without running into a group of kids throwing fire crackers, or walking down the street without hearing explosions in the distance. At night, sleeping can become a real challenge, with loud booms echoing in the distance. We are actually pretty lucky because we don't live close to a Casal Fallero, which is where people concentrate to celebrate. Around those, the parties and fireworks usually last through the whole night, and sleeping soundly would not be an option at all. 

Despite how horrible I make it sound, it can be entertaining. On Friday, me and my wife went to see the monuments that people build for this celebration. They are wonderful and humonguous sculptures (photos coming soon) that are peppered throughout the city. You just have to be patient if you want to, you know, go outside at all during Fallas week.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Blue Beetle

It was my week to choose a character for Thought Balloons, and I decided to go with Jaime Reyes, the current Blue Beetle.

I was actually quite stumped in what to do with him. I normally pick a character based on a story I already have in mind (just to make things easier), but the character I wanted to choose was a Marvel one, and we had a long string of Marvel characters, so I wanted to break it up a bit. It also came at a time when it seemed like Blue Beetle had died (he got better). However, I still managed to make a short and fun story entitled "The World is Yours?", in which Paco finally gets to play with the armor. Kind of. Read on.

BLUE BEETLE: It says that it can “Provide supplemental temporary armory” for you.

PACO: What does that mean? What kind of weapon?

SCARAB: (unintelligible sounds)

Let me know what you think!

Meanwhile at TWC: Free Comics 02/16/11

Another thing I am proud of is that during my course I managed to stay up to date with my Free Comics Review column, with only some minimum delays in the process. This was partly caused by the fact that companies went all out during those weeks, uploading a LOAD of free comics. 

Now that I have all the time in the world to write these reviews? They go ahead and upload only two free comics for me to review. What the hell?! And on top of that, I had already reviewed one of them. Click here to see them.

Cable #1

Wolverine #50

And to make matters worse, the one comic I had to review was terrible. Let's hope next week is better.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Venom & Moon Knight

I actually managed to stay almost up to date with Thought Balloons. I say almost because I missed one of the entries, for Venom. However, I was determined to make up for it and catch up with the rest of my fellow ThoughtBallooners. I ended up coming up with a script that connected into this week's character, Moon Knight.

Read the first part of The War at Home here, which includes this neat scene...

Description: Venom is jumping out of the airplane, falling through the night sky. An uneasy full moon shines in the background.

VENOM: What’s the deal, control? I normally know who I’m going after way before I’m free-falling off a plane.

CONTROL (through comm): We know, Venom. The general has been...unusually quiet about this whole enterprise. Anyway, target location should be in sight by now.

And the second part here. Which brought it all home.

Description: Moon Knight is now standing over the badly wounded (but still alive) body of Flash Thompson. His missing legs are clearly visible and he is making an effort of staying conscious.

MOON KNIGHT: You had lost everything, your career, your love, your... legs. You accepted an entity into your body that promised to give it all back to you. And it was changing you for the worse.

I am actually quite happy with how this turned out, and I have a full story behind the revelations here.

CV Photo

Now that I've finished the course, it meant that I had to update my CV. I hadn't done this in almost two years, so the photo I had there was outdated, and therefore I needed a new one. I'm not a very photogenic person, and getting a photo of me with both my eyes open is a quest harder than finding a photo Elvis and Bifgoot riding the Loch Ness monster like a surfboard on the outskirts of the city of Atlantis (I'm only slightly exaggerating). The above is as close as it gets, which had to be taken without flash because otherwise I just naturally close my eyes.

Radio Silence is Over

I apologize for the lack of posts here in the past month. If you have been following me on Twitter, you might already know that I was doing an intensive course that ate up just about every bit of my free time. I still somehow managed to do some posts here and there in The Weekly Crisis and for Thoughtballoons, but not much else. With the course now over, posts here in my personal blog should resume as normal. 

On related news, I am now officially a CELTA-Qualified teacher of English as a Second Language. From now on, I shall only be addressed as "Teacher Duarte", "Professor Matt", or "Mr. D". Please keep this in mind whenever you try to contact me.

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics 02/09/11

One day, companies will stop uploading great comics for free on their app, but until then, I get to review them. This week around was another wave of good comics, including on my favorite issues ever. The comics I reviewed were...

Captain America: First Vengeance #1

Devil's Wake #1

Thor: Blood Oath #1

X-Factor #13

So head over there and check them out.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Batgirl

This was one of those weeks where I barely know the character outside of the most superficial sense. Haven't read her current series at all, I think I've read some forgettable appearances of her as Spoiler, and pretty much it. So this week was Stephanie Brown's turn, a.k.a. Batgirl. While doing some research, I came across a story point that interested me, and extrapolated it to an idea I already had (but thought was not good enough). The result? A story called "All in the Family"...

STEPHANIE: How DID you find me anyway? Even *I* didn’t know who you were.
CHARACTER: You have to thank my grandfather for that.

And to be honest, I'm actually pretty happy about. And I only used four panels, which is always a plus, I think.

Pollution

For the past week or, a strange set of climatological circumstances has settled on top of Spain. High humidity with no rain, almost no wind, and clear skies with mild temperatures (and I believe low pressure, but don't quote me on that). However, this has brought about a curious side effect, one that has been on the news quite a lot the last couple of days. 

You see, because of the weather conditions, the pollution caused by cars, factories and all other type of urban sources has NOT been dissipating. Quite the contrary, it has been accumulating for over a week, and in cities like Barcelona and, more importantly, Madrid, the situation has been pretty extreme. Video footage from outside the cities show a clear cover of smog all around and through them. Warnings were issued for people with health conditions, and all that. 

I live in Valencia, which is a much smaller city by comparison (population around 1 and a half million), and I thought it wouldn't affect me much. However, just the other day when I went to walk my dog at night, I started to notice it. There was a very thick fog that wouldn't let you see very far, more so than normal, and a distinctive ashy smell in the air. At least here and in Barcelona, the cities are right next to the sea, which I can imagine plays a role in dissipating all this, but I can imagine it's much worse in Madrid.

In the end, though, this smog cloud has a silver lining. It seems that some of the bigger cities are going to start implementing some restrictions to curb down the pollution. Still too early for any results, but in the long run this is probably going to raise awareness and public perception towards the issue.

Crunch Time!

I have less than I week until my course starts, and that means it's crunch time for me. I am finishing getting ready with my pre-courses studies, which involve reading Learning Teaching, a book on teaching techniques, as well as some self-imposed grammar work. I'm almost done with the grammar book (I predict that I will definitely be finished by Friday) and I finished the other book weeks ago, though now I'm re-reading it some parts of it to give myself a refresher. 

My course starts on Monday, and I honestly don't know what to expect. I decided to prepare myself as much as possible, since I will probably have a handicap compared with everyone else (in the fact that everyone else in the class will probably be native to the United Kingdom). Even then, I will probably have to work twice as hard as everyone else to keep and catch up, but what's life without a few challenges, am I right? (the bravado is probably concealing the fact that inside, I am nervously trembling in fear and/or anticipation)

As if I didn't have enough going on, I'm probably about 80% done with my campaign on Dragon Age: Origins. I want to finish it before I start school, since I know I likely won't be able to play while I'm busy with course and homework. I've tried to limit myself to only a couple of hours per day, so I don't think I'll be finishing before Monday. Damn priorities and acting like a responsible adult...

Photo: Aboard Tour Bus

My wife Janett filming videos from the second floor of a tourist bus in London.

(I bet she is going to say that she doesn't like how she came out in this photo)

Kurt Busiek is a Genius

In other occasions, I had heard about Kurt Busiek's fabled encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel continuity. The other day, I got to experience it first hand. The writer of titles like Avengers, Marvels, and his own Astro City must have the memory of an elephant.

I don't remember how, but I sent Busiek a message via Twitter about Spanish in comics. Earlier that day, I had read an issue of Thor were he passed over Mexico, and there were some funny scenes with the translation being screwed up. Almost instantly, he sent a reply (which is rare in of itself on creators, most of them just ignore you) and not only he knew what I was talking about, he knew specifically what issue and what scene I was referring to! Keep in mind that this was a comic that was released in 1979!

As if that wasn't impressive enough, he even remembered a specific quote from it, and he recited it verbatim. Holy shit! Later, he said he remembered the issue pretty clearly because he had read it for his research when he was writing the Avengers title... in 1998! That is more than 12 years ago, and he still remembered it clearly. I can barely remember what I read 12 minutes ago, let alone 12 months or 12 years ago.

Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that Kurt Busiek must be some kind of genius with photographic memory. Either that, or he went and looked up the issue in question while he was chatting with me. But I am leaning more on the first one.

Photo: Camden Town

Near the entrance of Camden Lock. What a wonderfully strange place!

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics 02/02/11

These Free Comics column are going to be the death of me. I don't know where I got the bright idea to run them on Fridays, but they are a pain to write. I really need to start writing them sooner, or at least write it in parts. In any case, this week I reviewed...

Black Panther #1

Box 13 (Vol. 2) #10

Celadore #1

Thor #283

War Machine #6

Pretty good haul this week, with one exception. See if you can find which one it was! Check out the rest, and as always, I appreciate any comments!

Meanwhile at TWC - Roy Lichtenstein

Over at The Weekly Crisis, I wrote a pretty long piece about Roy Lichtenstein, his contribution to pop art, and his connection with the world of comics. You would be surprised how many people don't realize how much he copied from actual comics, as opposed to just using the style. Check out what I had to say...

The modern equivalent of what Lichtenstein was doing in the 50’s and 60’s would be to run some other artist’s artwork through a Photoshop filter, hang it on a wall, and call it your own art. While there is something to be said for remixing, collages, and other forms of art that incorporate elements from other artists, I think we can all agree that such an argument is thrown out the window when 99% of the artwork is exactly like the original.

It's a personal and passionate piece, and one I'm actually pretty happy about. I wish I could write more like it, to be honest. *sigh*