Jumping in Headfirst

 Don't worry about what happened to five.  Just roll with it.

Amazing X-Men   People keep wondering how these heroes can still be going after decades of stories about them.  Here's a simple solution that isn't the "it's just comics" one: they aren't strictly "human" anymore.  Their physiologies are so frequently improved, altered, upgraded and/or fucked with, that there's no WAY they experience cellular degeneration the same way we do.    At some point you've bent the human form too far, and either you fall apart altogether (not happening here clearly) or you "fix" whatever it is that makes us age in the first place.

"That contract is set in stone, a beast come out--I'm a Gargoyle!"

"Look at me when I'm killing you!"

Avengers & X-Men: Axis  I'm gonna pop in here for a sec and poke holes in this: So, in Stark's dreams he imagined some giant, adamantium sentinels that would absorb heroes in case they went evil.  But for whatever reason they don't work on actual villains, and also magnetism works on them because apparently Polaris is not a super-hero.    Yeah, no wonder he kept this in his dreams.

Feels like it's been forever since I've done one of these.

Pop Rap Perfection:  Right now this might be my album of the year.  Rittz's Next to Nothing was great and I'm proud of what Lecrae did as a Christian rapper with Anomaly , but I don't think there's a more complete project than People Keep Talking.   Every song is playable, as Hoodie has an amazing talent of writing catchy hooks and using bass-heavy but catchy pop beats to effortlessly display what's actually one of the best flows I've ever heard.  Even the songs I didn't like (Act my Age felt like it belonged on a frat boy film's soundtrack when I first heard it) made sense within the context of the album.  I kept waiting for "that" one song that you hear and kinda want to skip, and found myself wondering when it would come until I realized I was done with the whole album. If I had one complaint it's that most of the songs' subject matter can kinda run together (you're probably not going to get through a song without mention o...

The last grudge match in battle rap...or something. 

Avengers and X-Men: Axis I've never been a Rick Remender fan--his work just skews a little too dark to me for a superhero universe to me.  Avengers and X-Men: Axis does not do him any favors towards fixing that.  To begin with, the very idea of the Red Skull somehow having Professor X's brain is idiotic.   Brains don't work that way.   I'm sure they handwaved it somehow, but it sounds fucking stupid when I'm explaining it to people who don't read comics and I know superhero stuff can be better than this. But even without that, this whole thing is just a mess.  From the "AXISAXISAXISAXIS" lining the top and bottom of several pages, to the way this story just sort of haphazardly tosses everyone together and just expects something interesting to come from it all.   I keep up with 80% of the Marvel Universe and I was still lost at the plot points in this.  That shouldn't have happened.  I'm looking for issue 2 to be much, mu...

 Third week.  Let's see what sort of hijinx we can cover this time.

Shut up, this is exactly when I planned to have this done.

"I would have thought Heartless, would have made you care who you bet your life against." That line Lux spit was one of the few that went over my head when I first watched the Lux vs. Calicoe battle that brought me into battle rap, and it took awhile before I learned what he meant in this.  Calicoe was one of the first battlers in the new era to ever get that "undefeated" tag that pretty much gets passed around like a hot potato now.  You win a few battles, doesn't matter if your opponent sucked or had a wack night, and suddenly you're "unstoppable".   Cal was the first guy to get that...but if you dig a little closer, every undefeated guy has a battle which is "debatable" but edges closer towards an L for them.    This is Calicoe's--a battle in which he let a GT rapper in a bright pink hat from the SONS crew 2-1 him.   It's life; it happens.  He survived this, and he survived the battle with Lux and went on to 3-0 Tsu Surf...

  I know, I'm surprised to be back for a second week too.

Batman Eternal The Bat-Family reunited.

A hometown battle.