Well I'll be damned

Looking at the CBR boards I've seen a preview of #5 of ultimate Iron Man II.

I thought this finished, was the series really so dull that I forgot it was still running.

Doesn't really bode well for it eh? I suppose its kind of obsolete now I can get my War Machine fix from Initiative, oh and Iron Man, and his own solo title coming soon.

I don't know what went wrong with Ultimate Iron Man. Well actually I do. The Idea was flawed to begin with. Seriously, and this goes for the Iron Man animated series too. I'll map it out.

I don't want to see a kid Tony Stark. I don't want to see him running around with Kid Jim Rhodes and having adventures against Kid Obidiah Stane. It interests me.... Not a jot.

Its a shame because the actual grown up incarnation of Ultimate Iron Man was great, his armour was more of a weapons platform with a 50 strong support team but the partying sarky drunkard was fun to read.

Shame actually because with this and the heap of offensive dung Ultimates has become, the Ultimate line is no longer something you can recommend off the bat to people.

Still, for my Iron Man fix all is not lost. The latest story in the Iron Man: Director of SHIELD title has ended, and was pretty good. Much more on form than the previous stories, although actually getting issues out has helped. And of course the next story is the War Machine arc. How to win over Pie Man in one easy move. In fact both main Iron man titles are good, and I'm hoping that with his current foe in Invincible being Ezekiel Stane we may get an appearance by The Order. Finally we actually got a second issue of Viva Las Vegas, the Faverau penned movie continuity story. Its slow because of the CG art but had some brilliant shameless flirting with Elsa bloodstone.

SO, and it may be a first, if you want to read Iron Man, don't read ultimate.

Cost of travelling

Well, despite widespread protests, huge petitions and generally the public screaming a big fat NO!, road pricing schemes. This is an expensive system that uses GPS and a satellite receiver in every car to track when, where and how long you are using your car. Now we already have a great system of pricing journeys per mile that even rewards fuel efficiency, its called fuel tax, but this won't use oodles of contractable technology (Should be worth a directorship in the company after you leave politics eh?) and of course doesn't allow charging depending on what road you use at what time, so if you use some farm track at 3am, it will be really cheap, on the other hand if you use the M8 at rush hour, boy will the cost rack up. This all goes with the strange opinion that those in power have that we all take to the main roads, and indeed swamp all forms of public transport between around 7-9am and 4-6pm because we like causing congestion.

Now we've also had an announcement from Scotrail that fares are going to rise 6%, the maximum they can. Do we get newer or longer trains, or a more frequent service, well no. But they are allowed to raise fares 6% and unsurprisingly that's what they've done. Some rail firms have also expressed an interest in making peak time fares more expensive in order to "Reduce overcrowding on trains" because when I'm off work I often decide to take the train in with the commuters for the company as opposed to waiting till 10 when its quiet.

No, all these systems are revenue raising in the oldest traditions of capitalism. More people want to use trains in the rush hours, and so as a result you can get more money from them. Indeed our trains are already monumentally overpriced and I would start enforcing fare reductions without service or rolling stock cuts, and if that means no one wants the franchise then you can re-nationalise without too much hassle. Of course if you were a shareholder in First you may complain but we need cheap and efficient public transport and at the moment nationalisation or not for profit companies similar to Network Rail seem to be the way forward.

As for cars, well the government has clearly realised that there is more money to be squeezed from the motorist of we can charge them more for using the roads at rush hour rather than just charging for the fuel they burn. Of course a side effect of this will be the migration of rush hour traffic from the expensive motorways and by-passes to back roads and villages, increasing road deaths, noise problems for residents and pollution from stop/start motoring. Yes its folly in the extreme but as Blair said when he received the petition "We know best"

Secret Invasion, things kick up a notch

And finally things pick up the pace a little, Huzzah.

A better issue, with some real plot movement happening, which is good as this event seemed stalled. There is some annoyance about the revelation that everyone on the ship was a Skrull, but tactically it makes sense, what better way to get the Avengers out of the way than send them on a wild goose chase to the savage land. Whats slightly more surprising is that Ares called it, in #2 he basically tells everyone its a decoy and to return to new york while he dealt with them, could this mean that as a god he was warned about the Skrull invasion or has a 6th sense, or it could simply be that, as he has previously stated, being a god of war doesn't limit him to being good at cleaving things in twain, it also includes tactical thinking. It actually kind of makes me wish we'd had more issues of Mighty Avengers between civil war and secret invasion to get to know some of the more fringe characters a little bit better. Still since Maria Hill is getting some T-Shirts made up, I'll add the first one to the pile, Areas was Right.

Second obviously is Maria Hill, who isn't a skrull and did listen to Nick Fury, yes she got the drop on Skrull Jarvis but it does mean SHIELD is down yet another helicarrier, hope it was insured. T shirt 2, is of course, Nick fury was right.

If rumours are true this may all be Reed Richards' fault, if so I'll tentatively propose a third T-Shirt, Doom was right, it was all the fault of that damnable Richards.

In other corners of the MU, Ms Marvel kills stack loads of skrulls and finds something nasty in the Vault. The runaways Xavin and Young Avengers hulkling argue over who's fault the invasion is and Captain Britain and MI13 has a strong finish where Pete Wisdom gets to do his Scarlet Witch thing and clear Britain of skrulls, sadly one of the selling points of the title is gone as it now no longer contains a Skrull who thinks he's John Lennon. Still, good setup and definitely a keeper as a title, at least while Cornell is writing

Not Secret Invasion

I may choose to comment on Secret Invasion #5 later, or perhaps not, either way once again blogging does change things as bendis has got on with it.

Nope instead I'm going to talk about a couple of good titles that aren't SI tie ins.

First up is Punisher, which comes to the end of Garth Ennis' superlative run. The origins of this story, Valley Forge, Valley Forge, go back to one of his early Max stories, and a permanent minor antagonist, a cadre of US military generals who used the punisher to try and get a Russian bio-weapon. They've been gunning for him ever since and most of the plots (Including the Barracuda arc) stemmed from their actions. Well this story they hire a group of special forces to capture the punisher, knowing he won't kill soldiers, and suffice to say by the end of the story the board is wiped clean and the punisher is left once again free from baggage for another writer to take over. I was impressed with this story using excerpts from a book written by the brother of one of the soldiers killed at firebase Valley Forge (Frank Castles posting in 'nam, as seen in Born) initially it looks like a book about Vietnam which will ultimately blame the punisher for being the only survivor of that base, instead as a twist it becomes a platform for Ennis to take a pop at the reasoning for starting the Vietnam war and causing so much death. Whoever the poor blighter is who will take over Punisher, they have some huge shoes to fill. Good luck.

Second is True Believers, released a couple of weeks ago. Why oh why oh why have marvel decided to launch this quirky little series during a huge event, when event fatigue is guaranteed to limit the number of people who will pick up a wee limited series containing a grand total of no-one well known. Its a shame because its a good idea, the True believers are a group of metahuman bloggers who expose wrongdoing at the highest levels. Issue 1 just introduced us to Payback, the de-facto leader and showed the True believers in action breaking up an illegal all girl fight ring run by some highly placed people. Next issue I believe they're pulling up Reed Richards on a DUI. Its a quirky interesting idea, has solid art and some neat writing, and I'm a sucker for these little nooks in the Marvel universe (Like my earlier enthusiasm for the Damage Control LS and Loners) sadly this one will probably get buried under Secret Invasion, a real shame.

The Jewelry Issue

As always the hypocrisy of the gutter press is only matched by the curious ways the memories of its readers work. Take the recent case of the Sikh schoolgirl now allowed to wear a religiously significant bangle despite her school's "No Jewelry" policy. This strangely caused outrage from some of the more gutter presses editorials harping on about how we "Bend the rules" for foreign religions and treading out the usual "Bet if it was a crucifix this wouldn't have been allowed" all part of the general intention to make the christian parts of the community, particularly the middle englanders, terrified that we are becoming a foreign country.

I am going to step away from the arguments of what constitutes items you have to wear as part of your religion and go straight to the hypocrisy bit.

In 2006 a case made the papers regarding a BA flight attendant Nadia Eweida, supposedly asked to remove her crucifix as it offended other religions. Strangely enough the tabloids were less focused on their "Rules are Rules" high horse then. Of course this flight attendant, plus tabloids and church members strove to make this sound like BA pandering to minority religions while dissing Christians, after all, they do a BA turban you know, I wring my hands in between typing.

Of course, as with many tabloid stories, the truth is far more revealing. The facts are thus. BA has a no visible jewelry policy, a policy that was in place when Eweida joined the company and which she had been happy to conform to for the years up to 2006 when suddenly, it became a problem. BA offered several compromises, initially that if it was that important to her she could wear it under her uniform and also offering a non uniformed, non customer facing position, however this wasn't good enough for her and even though she has lost her racial discrimination tribunal she is apparently continuing to fight. As it transpires she was a very difficult worker, constantly demanding concessions to her religion.

Several things annoyed me about the resolution to this case. First was that BA pandered far too much. I would have been out straight away with "She has been content with this policy for x years, why is this suddenly an issue, this is our uniform policy etc. Instead they relented and their uniform now allows for a lapel pin or cross on a chain. This was not helped because Pope Tony Blair weighed in seeing some outraged middle englanders who might like him if he was on side and suggested BA relent.

of course now the tabloids are going nuts in the opposite direction, demanding concessions are not made, despite the fact that, unlike a crucifix, the Sikh bangle is a necessity. Also the school hasn't ruled out crucifixes.

Now while the school issue in my mind is separate, school being something you have to attend, I now think that employers should be allowed to state the working hours and any terms relating in a contract (For example, shifts covering Sundays, Xmas etc) and dress codes in contracts. roughly as BA have done, but I would like to see these actually enforced in the above situation. The court case should go something like this "Did you sign a contract with a No Jewelry, work on Sundays policy" "Yes" "Case finds in favour of employer" no more of this jumping through religious hoops after the event in the name of tolerance, you accept the conditions or you don't accept the job.

Damn your black heart Peter David

Back when I was a younger man I would go all in to collecting a big summer event. Anything with that event's banner on it was mine, this obviously meant that I often picked up tie-ins with little or no bearing on the event itself (The disassembled tie ins were bad for this, and I still haven't really forgiven anyone for Civil War - X Men.)

Anyway I'm older now and with a baby on the way, is I decided that I would minimise the impact of this event by following these rules

1. Unless you'd have picked up any new titles, don't, aside from the SI main
2. Don't buy every tie in with a Secret invasion banner
3. Don't buy an X book, you know it will barely tie in
4. Double for Wolverine.

Now some would say I violated Rule 1 picking up Captain Britain and MI13, but I disagree, while I am reducing my comics load a Paul Cornell written series featuring British Super heroes is right up my street. However I have been undone, and it was the Jade Giantess She-Hulk that was my undoing, Its always the green chicks isn't it.

The latest run of She-hulk has been pretty good, and since her sidekick Jazinda is a skrull I was looking forward to her tie in (I pick up the title anyway so no harm done) but Peter David also writes X-Factor, and while I hear its pretty good I direct you to rule 3. Only I have had to break it because the SI tie in is spread across 2 issues of X factor and 1 of She-Hulk.

like I said, Damn.

SO, brief impressions based on Parts 1 & 2 of "He Loves you" Story wise, its not too bad, Shulkie and Jazinda are looking for a skrull that tends to precede invasion, X-Factor are looking for a mutant called Darwin, little do they know that the two are hanging out together, wires are crossed and super hero fights ensue. The X-Factor issues suffered in two ways, first, for a crossover it wasn't very noob friendly, I was left a bit confused as to who was who, this wasn't helped by some god awful art. The She-Hulk issue was better, but I will have to sit through more of the terrible art to get a conclusion. Plus I know I failed.

I have a dislike for that sort of tie in, you know, the one where a story is carried across several different and often unassociated titles. Mainly because it causes me to fork out more cash. I'm also suspicious that I am being used to prop up an ailing title (Although with my general taste in comics the title i read is usually the ailing one)

Get On with it Bendis

Well, after all that seriousness and ranting, lets take a moment to talk about really important issues.

It may surprise you to know that we are in fact being invaded by a shape changing race of aliens called Skrulls who believe by prophecy that the earth rightfully belongs to them. Freaky eh? And you know what, I say its a good thing, Skrulls are benevolent and nice and hardly ever kill hundreds of thousands. Lets not dwell on their past attempts at galactic domination and think instead of the good things, like how cool it would be to have a shape shifting girlfriend. Yes, think of that weak minded earthlings.

Ahem

I'm not a Skrull, honest.

I am of course talking about Secret Invasion, Marvels summer event that burst on to our shelves 4 months ago. At the time it was a high octane shocker of an issue, which sadly issues #2-#4 have failed to capitalise on. I am enjoying the event but the story has seriously decompressed where a little compression wouldn't go a miss. Basically these past 3 issues could have been condensed into 2 or 1 issues. All we've had is skrull fights in various locations, I want story progress. We've had scarce few revelations either. Hopefully #5 will pick up the pace a little and start things moving, or at least take us past what still feels like the first act.

However I will credit it with this, for a wide spanning event it has been contained. I read through #1-4 again recently and while they are referenced to varying degrees by the tie ins I'm buying, there is very little you need to know going into the main title. About the only complaint you could level is that the two Avengers titles are telling SI back story, so no adventures of your favorite teams until this event is over.

In some way I am enjoying the few tie-ins more at the moment, specifically Ms Marvel, which has admittedly been pretty much two issues of Ms. Marvel vs Skrulls, but ts been well done and serves as more of a character study and a look at a small battle in the big war. The other enjoyable tie-in has been Avengers: The initiative, with focuses on 3D man, and his Skrull detecting visor, and Crusader, a Skrull who has adopted Earth as his home.

Still hoping for a pickup in pace soon as the main is stalling quite badly at the moment.

Damned Dirty Scroungers

I know this isn't a new story but I have thought long and hard about it before posting, imagine the disaster if I posted without thinking.

A while back the government unveiled plans to make all those dirty dole scroungers work for their benefits. This would include community service and its like. They also want to get as many people off sick leave. This is intended to make them look tough on the generational unemployed, the ones we all know about (And who do indeed exist) who pretty much refuse to work and know how to play the system so they don't have to.

First you should know, I'm a big softy when it comes to unemployment benefit, probably why I'd never get voted in by middle England. I personally would love a foolproof system but since that's impossible I'd much prefer to have 5 false claimants of one genuine case can get benefits easily and without hassle.

I have several concerns with this system. Its goal is to get more people back in work, and also more people off "the Sick". This is obviously aimed at the scroungers who use hard to diagnose illnesses such as back problems and stress to get the increased incapacity benefit without the added requirement of needing to look for work. There are also plans to force unemployed people into work or risk suspension of benefits. Or to have them perform community service, such as litter picking or graffiti removal to "Earn" benefits. It makes the government look tough and panders to the Daily Mail brigade's "Make these slackers earn their dole" mantra

That second part really concerns me as it looks a lot like the US "Welfare to Work" scheme, where large companies were given tax breaks to employ people on benefits to make them earn their money. It didn't of course make concessions for such things as childcare, merely getting people on welfare out to work. It was widely criticised for creating a generation of latch key kids and providing big businesses with cheap labour. SO who will we force into jobs, regardless of suitability. Unemployment offices often roll their eyes at people who "Won't work mornings" but distinction should be made between someone who is too lazy to haul themselves out of bed at 8am and someone who can only afford or obtain care for their child in the afternoon.

However the part that really annoys me is that this will hit the wrong people. Your "Doley scrounger" will usually be claiming incapacity benefit, and know the ins and outs to keep themselves medically signed off as unfit for work. If someone is claiming pack pains as a reason not to work then I doubt they will be able to force these people out to pick up litter either. In short your actual scroungers who know the system inside out, will remain on benefits, as will their children. On the other hand, genuine claimants, who don't know the system as well, or are just honest, are more likely to have benefits stopped when they turn down a job because of injury or illness, or will be forced out to work for a pittance while fighting pain, or leaving their kids at home alone. As always, the first to suffer in any bureaucracy are the honest people.

By-Election and Leadership Kerfuffle

SO, labour lost one of its safest seats, but are trying not to take it personally. Frankly I expected better than this "Running the country, bother me not with your trivia" attitude of Gordon's, they must have known that they were doomed to get nothing good out of this. If they won by a small margin then it would be a serious blow, and if they lost, well we'd be where we are now. No wonder they had to use their 3rd string candidate, no-one normally after a safe seat wants to be the one to loose it.

However a drubbing of some sort was always expected, an unexpected result would be a small change to increase in majority, and indeed all this shows is that some parts of Glasgow have realised that the Labour Party they voted for is not going to snap back to its old socialist ways once it uses all this new labour guff to convince the posh guys in newton mearns. Or alternatively, the "Labour, like my father and his father before him" lot are now to lazy to come out and vote.

Anyway, what actually concerning me is that it may have caused a leadership challenge. That is bad news. See, a career politician doesn't want Gordon brown's job at the moment, all the signs are showing a Tory win next election unless Boris Does something really dumb in London like bans football or sex. so if you take Brown's job now, you get to be PM for two years (I will be mildly surprised if we get an early election rather than desperately clinging to power for as long as possible) then are booted for evermore to the back benches for loosing the election. Since no-one just wants a shot at being PM because it looks good on the CV it is no small leap to assume that those after the job are so criminally deluded that they actually think they can turn things around. Anyone that deluded is going to be one serious liability in the top job. Worse, your should will belong to those you convinced to support you, both in getting a leadership contest called and getting you in power, in short, you'll have to vote for next leader once you've been turfed from the job post election defeat. Worse still, if someone gets the job, Brown can make good mileage in how the party crashing and burning was their fault and perhaps stay in a responsible position in the party.

No, let brown bring the party down around him, then wait until the Tories have been so unspeakable that you look like the better option again, and then nab power, but don't accept any deals about being chancellor, its not a good path.