Y: The Last Man, Book 1: Unmanned

I've pretty much grown out of super heroes, but I can still appreciate a comic with a good story. Vertigo, which is owned by DC, publishes more mature, unique books, including my favorite, Preacher. I heard about the unique Y: The Last Man, checked out the first issue online which immediately interested me, and got the first trade paperback. It's a bit skimpy for my tastes, including only the first five issues, but it's still the beginning of a truly interesting story.

One day, every male mammal on the planet drops dead, except for two: a guy named Yorick and his pet monkey. Much of the planet is devastated, as the women who are left to struggle to bring order to a world that's seen disaster and is now filled with a lot of crazy people. Just in the first book, Yorick has run-ins with militant Republican wives demanding their husbands' government seats and radical feminist extremists. There are multiple plotlines going on at once as he tries to help figure out what happened and how humanity can be saved while hoping to eventually reunite with his girlfriend who was in Australia at the time of the incident. The art's pretty attractive and it's definitely the beginning of a tale I'm probably going to want to see through to the end.

The Wire - Season 3

The saga continues in the third season, which maintains well the tradition of quality serial television. Stringer Bell is even more prominent as he tries to do things his way and makes some uncharacteristic slip-ups while the police try to pin something on him and his crew. The relationship between him and old friend Avon Barksdale is fleshed out, and comes to a head eventually. There's plenty of new stuff happening too, though. Tommy Carcetti is a white councilman who sees the crime problems in the city and decides to run for mayor in a mostly black city with little chance of winning. While Bell has cut a deal to reduce violence among certain gangs as they share good territory and drugs, violence is still at a high, thanks in large part to the emergence of a new, young dealer who won't agree to play nice, Marlo Stanfield. And an old district chief decides to try a new way to fight violent crime in his streets - restricting dealers to abandoned areas and letting them peddle their drugs their instead of causing problems in more populated neighborhoods. It raises an interesting question - can we allow people to do what we know is wrong if it keeps people safer?

The Wire is still a show about how bad things can be for some people in certain situations. It's very unflinching when it comes to the troubles of ordinary citizens who can't afford to leave their dangerous neighborhoods. But despite being strong with its message, it's still great entertainment. It's really impressive how they manage to balance so many characters. Cutty, the old criminal released from jail who decides to start over and help kids by teaching them boxing. Bunk, the homicide detective who drinks a little too much but is still very good at his job. Omar and Mouzone, two very different kinds of men who still find a common cause. It's just enjoyable to watch, even if you don't care about some of today's real problems in the urban environment.

Halo

Yeah, the first game. In the past I've played and enjoyed bits of the campaign and some multi-player, but I'd never sat down and played it through. I worked through it on a friend's Xbox, and I'm glad I did. I think the series' fans are a little overboard, it's really not that much better than a lot of console shooters. But it's really quite revolutionary and commendable for what it does right. Before Halo, every FPS had a large, unruly inventory of weaponry and a health bar. After Halo, almost all of them limit you to a couple weapons at a time and feature a regenerating health system. Some games are better with the old ways, but it's definitely a good system that changes the way things are played. Instead of getting attached to the best weapon, good players will constantly switch out their armament for whatever's appropriate to the situation and make good use of cover and thinking tactically instead of just rushing into battle, knowing that's not how you're supposed to play. It's facilitated strategy in its players more than any other shooter. The Combat Evolved tagline isn't just a catchy phrase, it's really what the game's about. And you can tell, as the shooting itself is greatly balanced while a lot of the rest of the design is flawed.

I've heard stories before about Halo's level design being really repetitive and boring, and that's mostly true. It actually wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, even the infamous library didn't take too long to slog through. But if the best I can say about the environment is it's not as bad as I expected, that's still a problem. I realize that carbon-copy architecture and revisiting the same areas are well justified by the background and plot of the story, but that doesn't excuse those flaws. Maybe they should have written it a bit differently. The story itself is actually pretty good, at least for a shooter. The atmosphere doesn't approach Bioshock's or Half-Life's, but the actual machinations and characters are pretty interesting. Master Chief's a good protagonist (although I don't see why anyone cares what's under that helmet) and 343 Guilty Spark's a good take on the HAL 9000-type of villain. I always appreciate it when a game or something manages to have foes who aren't all allied with each other, and they actually manage to balance three different factions who fight each other and only have a hit out for the Chief in common. I'll be tackling Halo 2 next, and I look forward to seeing the next leg of the adventure.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Before I talk about the movie, I'll mention I'm a little surprised that this basically bombed after the huge success of every other Apatow flick in recent memory, including two (Superbad and Knocked Up) just this year. I guess the subject matter isn't quite as universal, but there's no reason my dad and I should have been the only people in the theater when we saw it. Granted, it was a 1:50 show on a Wednesday, but most people don't work the day after Christmas. Oh well. Walk Hard's a little sillier, but still quite funny throughout. It's as straight up a parody as we've seen from the The Judd Apatow Sex Comedy Train, but unlike the other truly awful parody movies we see (seriously, anyone who's seen the horrendous trailer for Meet the Spartans knows what I mean), it's a genuinely funny movie in its own right that happens to closely follow the structure of the biopics it mocks instead of lamely copying popular scenes with no production value, idiotic gags, and tons of shitty pop culture references that are devoid of content or point. Jake Kasdan directed and co-wrote, and like Mottola with Superbad, he doesn't seem especially good or bad, and fits right into the groove with everyone Apatow works with.

Walk Hard packs scads of cameos by some very funny people, often playing famous musicians, like Jack White as Elvis or Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman as the Beatles in a truly hilarious scene. John C. Reilly is known as a character actor, but he steps up as the lead very well, carrying the movie with ease and performing ably in the musical segments. There's plenty of mature (or is it really immature?) humor involving sex and drugs, like a great running gag with Tim Meadows trying to keep Dewey away from whatever he's using while at the same time making it sound really enticing. A couple gags from trailers didn't make it to the final cut, leaving me positive the DVD will be packed with some great stuff. Besides just being funny, Walk Hard is a movie about the life of musician, and there's a lot of different kinds of music performed, most of which is actually pretty good and sometimes funny as well, like the Bob Dylan parody. I would have liked to have seen it with a bigger audience, but Walk Hard was still quite an enjoyable experience.