Indiana Jones VI is just days away, and quite a few early reviews are out. Of the several reviews that I've read, this line caught, in the review at Newsarama.com caught my attention:

"... [A] number of Indy fans have ... griped about this latest film having to do with aliens. Others were wondering if Ford was just plain too old to sport the fedora and bullwhip. Others were in a tizzy over Indy taking on the Soviets instead of Nazis or Thugs." (emphasis added)

If you needed proof that the comic book crowd tended toward the hard Left, then all you to do is read that last line above.Who, besides the most ardent Left-winger, could be "in a tizzy over Indy taking on the Soviets"? I'm sure these Indy fans would be much happier if Dr. Jones was facing down the 50s version of Halliburton, while an unpopular American president fought a war for oil on Sallah's bones.

It is definitely a solitary existence being a conservative fanboy.

Frank Miller is making his solo-directorial debut with Will Eisner's The Spirit. This looks to be as iconic a film as are the comics on which it is based.

I can't say I'm a big fan of Sin City, either the comics or the movie. I will grant that, in either medium, it is a visually stunning product. Maybe one just has to develop a taste for it. 300 on the other hand is a movie I return to again and again.

I am intrigued to see what Frank Miller will do with The Spirit, given that he has sole responsibility for the film's writing and directing. Something that really intrigues me is Miller's iconoclastic attitude toward Hollywood's political correctness and glorification of the metrosexual. The latest San Diego Comic Con magazine (available for download as Adobe PDF here) includes these comments from Miller:

CCM: "... What convinced you that [Gabriel Macht] was the guy for the role [of the Spirit]?"

FM: "My model, in a way, was Chris Reeve's Superman, meaning some actor I'd never seen before who I got to meet as Superman. I want the audience to meet The Spirit as The Spirit. Gabriel stood out because,first and foremost, Hollywood produces  a great many very goo male actors, but very, very few who are able to portray men as men."

One certainly doesn't one of Hollywood's current crop of sensitive man, playing the role of the tough-guy, lady's man that is The Spirit. This one should be good.

Closed - Sued out of existence: Refused to marry Adam and Steve.

Now that four California Judicial Tyrants have over-ruled the will of the people, what does this mean for Churches, Synagogues and Mosques that refuse to perform a marriage ceremony for two men or two women?

Does this not open them up to civil lawsuits for violating the homosexuals "civil rights"?

A photography business was sued because it refused to photograph a same-sex "marriage" ceremony. Can someone explain to me why  the same cannot now be done to any Church or Synagogue?

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ponders his next policy move.

It strikes me that there has been very little coverage of how the, we now learn, spineless Gubenator twice vetoed bills that would legalize same-sex marriage. Now he supports the California Supreme Court imperial action and will not support the Limit on Marriage amendment to California's State Constitution. He now stands against the more than 61% of voters who passed Proposition 22 in 2000.

What happened? Why the switch? Why is Mr. Schwarzenegger hiding behind the imperial tyrants' black robes when twice he recognized the will of people and would not let the California's radical Left redefine marriage?

Californians voted for a Republican that would stand up to the radical Left-wing Democrats in Sacramento State House. Now it is clear that there is just another Democrat sitting in the Governor's Mansion.

Hints of things to come should Senator McCain win the White House?

The final round of Lord Stanley's Cup has been decided:

Detroit Red Wings vs Pittsburgh Penguins

Does anyone West of the Mississippi care?

Here in Seattle you wouldn't know that the hardest fought trophy in sports is up for grabs.

Congratulations to Detroit and Pittsburgh. I hope it is a series to remember.

How often do publishers not promote their products? Wouldn't some folks think that that's what some might consider bad business practice?

IDW has agreed to publish Charlie Foxtrot Entertainment's new graphic novel, Finding Peace. But don't look for it at IDW's website. It isn't there. They did produce a 46 second "trailer" for the book, but the only way you can find that is if you dig through IDW's forum.

Whether or not the book favor's American action against Islamo-Nazism is unknown to me. I do know that Charlie Foxtrot Entertainment is a company that is four square in favor of the men and women volunteer to serve in the American Armed Forces and who go in harm's way. CFE is also one of the few companies that produced a graphic novel, Children of the Grave, that positively portrayed American soldiers fighting Middle Eastern bad guys.

Maybe it's a case of IDW webmasters not being on the ball and getting Finding Peace on the website. Given that IDW is quick to get almost every other release up, including notices on its prominent "News" page, I believe that something else is at work here. Maybe CFE was just a bit too even-handed in how it dealt with conflict in a Middle Eastern country torn by internal strife.

UPDATE: IDW has allowed Newsarama.com to post a 53 page preview of "Finding Peace". The book looks amazing. The introduction notes how the artwork captures the battlefield sketches from the Civil War, WWI, WWII and elsewhere. I haven't seen much of what is referenced, but the work Nathan St. John did is truly captivating. It draws you into the story like nothing I've seen before.

As far as its politics, the book is here to, as Tom Waltz wrote in his dedication, honor "everyone in uniform fighting the good fight around the world." From what I see in those first 53 pages this is absolutely true. This looks like a great book. If only IDW would put more effort into it. It deserves as wide an audience as it can get.

But only if it involves fighting creatures like this.

If it involves fighting these guys

then Hollywood actually seems to take the side of those in black.

Prince Caspian gives more weight to the argument that, once again, Hollywood is prepared to go to war against Orcs, goblins and other fantasy monsters, but just can't bring itself to recognize the real Islamo-Nazi monsters we face today.

Andrew Klavan wrote, in City Journal,

"The overwhelming impression that reporters with our fighters in the Middle East send back is of professionalism, valor, and continued faith in the mission. These movies, as the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan recently pointed out, simply select modern images that remind them of the old Vietnam-era films and rehash them to support their outmoded political points of view.

"Locked in an echo chamber of fashionable leftism, our filmmakers have lost the ability to question those discredited assumptions. Only in fantasy war films—films like Spielberg’s undervalued War of the Worlds, Michael Bay’s amusing Transformers, or Peter Jackson’s wonderful Lord of the Rings trilogy—does the truth of our present situation emerge. Here, filmmakers don’t have to confront the deathblow that radical Islam deals to the logic of leftist ideology. They can portray evil without giving it a human face and affirm our values without paying too particular a tribute to the nation in which those values become flesh."

I look forward to seeing Prince Caspian this weekend. I also look forward to the release of a modern war epic positively portraying American forces who put themselves in harms way to keep you and me safe from the Orcs flowing out of radical Islam.

Today is National Peace Officers Memorial Day. As I walked from my office to a local Tully's coffee shop I noticed that flags were flying at half-mast. Who, I wondered, died?

It turns out that a lot of good folks have died in the line of duty, serving on that Thin Blue Line.

So take a moment and remember the Peace Officers who gave the last full measure to keep us all safe.

God Bless.

I don't think I can do any better than James M. Kushner on the latest insanity from California:

"Let's just close down our legislatures, burn or toss our voting booths, and swear fealty to the justices of the courts."

At least my new homestate of Washington passed so-called domestic union laws, through the legislative process. I don't like it, but at least it was done honestly.

How much more of this nonsense will folks stomach before the conclusion is reached that now may be the time to take the following words to heart:

"... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government ..."

The thing about the Big Lie is that it needs bits and pieces of fact in order to be convincing. You can clothe all kinds of lunacy in the Big Lie if you sprinkle enough facts into the mix. With enough facts you can get all kinds of otherwise reasonably people to believe anything.

Case in point: Cory Doctorow, his YA book Little Brother and ‘the-government-is-out-to-get-you’ Big Lie. Here is a bit of the Introduction to Little Brother, which he has made available for all to read:

In the Soviet Union, communications tools were being used to bring information and revolution to the farthest flung corners of the largest authoritarian state the Earth had ever seen.

But 17 years later, things are very different. The computers I love are being coopted, used to spy on us, control us, snitch on us. The National Security Agency has illegally wiretapped the entire USA and gotten away with it. Car rental companies and mass transit and traffic authorities are watching where we go, sending us automated tickets, finking us out to busybodies, cops and bad guys who gain illicit access to their databases. The Transport Security Administration maintains a "no fly" list of people who'd never been convicted of any crime, but who are nevertheless considered too dangerous to fly. The list's contents are secret. The rule that makes it enforceable is secret. The criteria for being added to the list are secret. It has four year olds on it. And US senators. And decorated veterans actual war heroes.

This is a near perfect example of the Big Lie, with enough facts to help people disregard its lunacy.

As to the facts, Doctorow tosses in:

Ø      The NSA has “wiretapped” telephone conversations in America

Ø      Some State Law Enforcement agencies use closed circuit TV to monitor public activity

Ø      Some State Law Enforcement agencies use CCTV and camera technology to identify criminals via face recognition software and to catch traffic law violators: speeders, red light runners, etc.

Ø      The TSA does have a “No Fly” list

However, when you examine what wrapped around these facts you see nothing but the paranoid ravings of some pseudo-intellectual and wanna-be high-tech anarchist. A verifiable nut-root who refuses to believe that there are people in this world willing to strap plastic explosive to themselves, walk on a bus, cry “Allahu Akhbar!” and blow every man, woman and child on that bus into tiny bits and pieces.

And what is truly amusing is that the ravings in the paragraph above are so easily blown apart in the final few sentences. Doctorow describes “No Fly” list’s contents as “secret”. He then goes on to describe just who is on this list; a list that includes 4 year old children U.S. Senators, and American military veterans, “actual heroes”.

Uh huh.

I guess the list’s contents are secret to everyone except Cory Doctorow.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, and if so many people didn’t believe ‘the-government-is-out-to-get-you’ Big Lie; people who run major American city’s public libraries and people in charge of major American universities. But these people do believe it, which makes it very likely that your co-workers and neighbors believe it as well.

If Sen. B. Hussein Obama become POTUS on January 20, 2009, what will nut-root, paranoid, loones like Doctorow have to write about? Hmmmm ….?

There are some professors that will do anything to sink American Higher Eduction to new lows. At Dartmouth arguing with a professor's ideas has been publicly described by one professor as "intolerant", "subversive" and, of all things, "anti-intellectual". Asking questions and making arguments in college is "anti-intellectual"? You must live in a world where knowledge is Piled high & Deep to believe that.

Priya Venkatesan is preparing a lawsuit against her former superiors at Dartmouth where she once taught English.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas.""Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." "

What kind of uppity students are we producing when they start arguing with professors ideas. Something tells me the Teachers Unions need to redouble their mind control and indoctrination efforts during the K-12 school years.

HT: Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism blog.

It was a celebration of superheroes, supervillians, vampires, zombies, freaks, femme fatales and just enough soft core adult content to satisfy the biggest geek and make most parents wonder what their kids will become (most parents, that is, outside of Seattle).

The Emerald City Comic Con came and went. A lot of folks had a good time dressing as their favorite pop culture characters. And even more spent money like there was no economic crisis (and there isn't, unless you are a media hack working for B. Hussein Obama).


A shot of the crowd streaming into the Washington State Convention Center. Don't they all look like they're about to lose their homes or be kicked out of Mom & Pop's basement and forced to fend for themselves?


This pleasant looking gentleman is Richard Starkings, the writer of the Elephantmen comics. I started reading this series while living in Orange County. What drew me to the title was a George W. Bush quote, printed on the inside cover of Elephantmen Issue #1,from the 2006 State of the Union Address, which closes with the line, "Human life is a gift from our creator, and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale." This isn't to say that Mr. Starkings is a big Bush fan. I would safely bet that he is not; though I don't know for certain. I do know that he is a Buddhist and a vegetarian.

Mr. Starkings told me he wrote Elephantmen because the sci fi story he wanted to see wasn't being published anywhere. I pressed slightly on the themes and ethical issues the stories raise. His only response was, "Of course the ethical issues are going to come up." As I browsed the website linked above, I don't think the ethical issues I see are the ones Mr. Starkings has in mind, which only means that anyone, right, left or center, can read his books and come away with what they like. There are also issues in which Mr. Starkings quotes the Bible. I probably wouldn't agree with Mr. Starkings on much politically speaking, but he does write some fascinating comics.


On the hand there is Brian Hurtt (the smiling guy on the left). He is an Oni Press artist doing work for the book titled "Damned". Oni Press descriibes this work as:

"a sinister web of murder, kidnapping, betrayal, and damnation, ... [a] ruthless [war among] demon gangs. This [is an] action-packed prohibition-era thriller..."

When Mr. Hurtt described it to me I thought, 'Oh, kind of like Hellboy meets Road to Perdition.'

What caught my eye in Damned - "Prodigal Sons", Issue #1 of 3, was a few panels that prominently display a Cross on story's hero. When I pointed out the images, Hurtt was quick to distance the book from any kind of Judeo-Christian morality in the sense of good versus evil. He backed away saying, "It's a war, so there's no real good guys or bad guys." Wow. Not exactly the brightest of comments. I hope that if he actually gave this a few moments thoughts he would see the idiocy in this sentiment. He seemed like a fairly bright guy, who would be quick to acknowledge the presence of good guys and bad guys in WWII. But, then again ... he does just draws pictures for a living.

One of the most fascinating moments came early on Saturday as I entered the Convention Center floor. ECCC had several "exclusive" offerings for sale at the ECCC booth. The crowds immediately flocked to it, stood some five to six people deep, holding cash over their heads trying to get limited prints or comics. There didn't seem to be any economic crisis among these guys flashing cash likes drunks in Las Vegas. Someone needs to tell these folks that the economy is about to implode. The Seattle P-I and the rest of MSM aren't doing their jobs.

It used be verboten; mentioning it meant you were a knuckle-dragging Islamo-phobic Neanderthal.

Not any more!

Now it is a perfectly legitimate campaign issue according to none other than Sen. B. Hussein Obama, himself:

"It’s conceivable that there are those in the Arab world who say to themselves, “This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein, and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he’s not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush,” and that’s something they’re hopeful about.  I think that’s a perfectly legitimate perception as long as they’re not confused about my unyielding support for Israel’s security."

Now about that "unyielding support for Israel's security" thing.

Comic convention season comes to Seattle with the Emerald City Con. Here's is just one of several "exclusives" that can be picked up at the Washington State Convention Center.



I'll only be there for Saturday. Gotta save my pennies for the big event in San Diego come July.

Imagine walking into your office each day and having your co-workers start up a chant making your personal political beliefs a source of mockery and ridicule. That is what greeted Ron Silver when he walked onto the set of the now defunct West Wing.

"Often when I walked onto the set of the West Wing some of my colleagues would greet me with a chanting of “Ron, Ron, the neo-con.” It was all done in fun but it had an edge."

Now I've worked with plenty of folks, in a variety of businesses, in all parts of the country. Never once was my politics the thing that defined me.

According to Matthew Modine Liberals are

"BROADMINDED. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress & tolerant of the ideas of others."

Mocking someone for holding a political viewpoint that differs from you is not what I would desribe as "broadminded", "free from bigotry", "open ... & tolerant of ideas of others." But then I'm not a Liberal.