Nite Owls

 

From JD McPherson's excellent 2024 album Nite Owls. I gave this one a spin a few times last year, but on the way back from Chicago over the weekend, Mr. Brown threw me a burned copy and I stepped into its sonic beauty early yesterday and just couldn't get out. Fabulous, and one of those that should have made my "Best of" list last year (there are always regrets).

You can snag a copy of Nite Owls from New West Records HERE and it's available on every streaming platform. Especially with the heat we're experiencing in the MidWest/South right now, the guitar on this track is like a cool drink of minty water. Love it!

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NCBD:

This week's Pull has a couple of new number ones I'm absolutely ecstatic about. Let's get into it:

The penultimate issue of Tyler Boss & Adriano Turtulici's You'll Do Bad Things. I LOVE this book. The Giallo description is spot on - there have been a few moments that remind of lesser-known Gialli - and Turtulici's art is perfect for that particular genre-tone. 

Man, after last month's issue 19 of Void Rivals, I am ready for more total expanded Transformers Universe action! This book continues to impress the hell out of me. And now we have Solilia and Darak in opposition again??? This year's Energon Special sets us up for The Quintesson War, starting in issue 25 - that's five issues to go! In the interim, a lot of pieces are moving around Kirkman's cosmic board, and it's nothing short of thrilling watching elements of Cobra-La, the Transformers, the Great Ring, and the Quints make moves on one another. 

I picked up the first issue of Zander Cannon's Sleep last week based on my constant impulse to find the next book that will blow me away. At first glance, I didn't think it was going to be for me, as the art style took a little getting used to. By the end of the issue, however, I recognized Cannon's art as a

A new book from That Texas Blood author Chris Condon, so I am in! I have not read the solicitation and I'm unfamiliar with artist Jeffrey Alan Love, so I'm going in totally blind. Best possible way to experience anything, especially a writer as cinematic as Condon!

Building up to a reread on this one. I love the worlds that Lemire creates and the textures he creates them with when he writes and draws. 

It has been SO Long since Lazarus graced comic shop shelves. Not a complaint, but in the intervening years, I've come to reference this book to anyone I talk politically/socially to, because it's undeniable - the future Rucka and Lark set out in this series is our future. Chilling. 

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Monday night K and I saw Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's 28 Years Later, and today as I'm typing this, I'm not really sure how I feel about it. 

Let me say this up front - 28 Years Later is not a bad film. Anything I didn't like about it is, in my mind at this time, suspect, because it's all due to the unique approach to pretty much everything that Boyle took.

It's already become common knowledge that Boyle used iPhones for some of the filming. In fact, an article I read on Wire discussed how he used specially built rigs that held 20 iPhones, allowing them to film the action from slightly different angles and cut between them. I think the result of this "poor man's bullet time" as he called it created a different and jarring visual experience. It's not bad at all, but it really helped the film usurp pretty much all of my expectations. 

There are a lot of other off-putting textures here as well: old movie footage sewn in periodically as a kind of juxtaposition between the world as they know it and the world as it used to be. A heightened sense of motion that made me wonder if there was a different frame rate involved. All of this combined to make for such a startlingly different cinematic experience than I've ever had before. 

And then there were the track suits. But I'm leaving that out for now, as ultimately, I think 28 Years Later is going to remain slightly uncemented in my mind until I see the sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (or whatever the second in the new trilogy's title ends up being).  

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Playlist:

Pixies - The Night the Zombies Came

Low Cut Connie - Art Dealer

YUNGBLUD - Idols

Dan Le Sac Scroobius Pip - Thou Shalt Always Kill (single)

Ren - Sick Boi

Drug Church - Prude

Deadguy - Near-Death Travel Services

Frank Black and the Catholics - One More Road For the Hit

Childish Gambino - Because the Internet

Cocksure - K.K.E.P.

Cocksure - Corporate_Sting

JD McPherson - Nite Owls

Amigo the Devil - Vol. 1

Willie Nelson - Oh What a Beautiful World Songs of Rodney Crowell

The Reverend Horton Heat - Space Heater

Meat Puppets - Dusty Notes

What's the Furthest Place From Here? 7" Series - Chapter 006

What's the Furthest Place From Here? 7" Series  - Chapter 004

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine - White People and the Damage Done

Primus - Frizzle Fry

The Cult - Electric

Ween - Painting the Town Brown

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• XIX: The Sun

• Six of Cups

• Ace of Cups

Open your eyes!!! Six of Cups indicates speaking directly to the "Godhead," which I'll interpret here as the sub or superconscious. GNOSIS is the breakthrough the Ace of Cups suggests. 

Specifically vague? Yes and no. I, of course, interpret this as having something to do with writing, which I started on full-bore again yesterday. I think there's an inkling here that the story I'm trying to tell is inside my mind, it just keeps getting blocked up on its way out, so that a ton of extra ideas end up bogging it down, i.e. capricious ideas that catch my fancy like the jingle of keys in front of a cat. I've said this here before and never follow up, but I need to begin meditating. No cleaner way to start a conversation with the deeper well inside.

Ren - Money Game Part 3

I don't know much about UK rapper/musician Ren, but K has been listening to him for quite some time. I've liked what she's played me before, but this... I'm just blown away. Listen to the way the piano becomes more complex over the course of the song and how his word flow changes to match it. This reminds of of The Streets, Eminem (a little) and Scroobius Pip. Fantastic stuff.

From the 2023 album Sick Boi, which currently appears to be sold out as physical media, but you can stream anywhere or grab digitally from Ren's Bandcamp HERE.

 

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I've been holding off on posting a trailer for Macon Blair's The Toxic Avenger remake for a while now. Reason? Well, this played at Beyondfest almost two years ago, and based on how long it took to finally surface, I wanted to wait a bit. Also, I wanted to wait it out a bit, because I figured the two years of scarcity had created a certain flavor of mythology for the film, and yeah, that seems to be the case. Which is great. Although I'm not really a fan of the original, I can't wait for this and want it to succeed beyond all expectations. 

 

I only had to watch half of this to get excited. Hitting theatres - hopefully all theatres - on August 29th, I believe this will prove to be one of the funnest films of the summer, so strap in. And the cast! I mean, it's a so stacked I can hardly believe it. 

Hopefully this brings Blair considerably more clout. I'm a HUGE fan of I Don't Feel At Home in This World Anymore, and would love for Blair to be able to hit us with features on a regular basis.

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Playlist:

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

Dum Dum Girls - Too True

Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual

Van Halen - 1984

Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar

Blur - Coffee & TV (single)

Billy Idol - Rebel Yell (single)

Young Widows - Power Sucker

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Black Sabbath - Vol. 4

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Now I Got Worry

Westworld - Movers & Shakers

ten Athlone - Street Trash E.P.

Spoon - Lucifer on the Sofa

Mclusky - The World is Still Here and So Are We

Eythl Meatplow - Happy Days Sweetheart

Anthrax - Among the Living

Willie Nelson - Oh What a Beautiful World Songs of Rodney Crowell

Meat Puppets - Dusty Noes

The Reverend Horton Heat - It's Martini Time

Sofia Isella - I'm camera E.P.
YUNGBLUD - Idols

Ren - Sick Boi

Childish Gambino - The Library/I.Crawl (single)

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• 0: The Fool

• Six of Pentacles

• Six of Swords

So, this Pull was actually supposed to land last Friday, but I ran out of time before we headed out to Chicago for the weekend. I didn't have time to do a new one today, so I thought I'd look at this in hindsight and see how it matches the trip.

The Fool is, of course, the start of a new journey. Six of Pentacles indicates a balance between giving and receiving, and Six of Swords evokes transitioning from a difficult to a calmer period. This seems to be saying that when I punch in for the first time in four days in a few moments, there may be some soma at my workplace. It also perfectly illustrates my relationships back home, where we all kind of look our for one another, swap music and ideas, and just generally try to make each other's lives better. In the storm of the world's current paradigm, that is always a much-needed balm.

Dethroned Under a NCBD Haze

As the wait for the next Perturbator album announcement languishes on into June, I find myself drawing even more inspiration from his previous albums than previously. Which is really saying something because since discovering James Kent's music circa 2015, thanks to Bloody Disgusting, Perturbator and all of his side projects have become integral to my own creative process. 

In particular, 2019's Lustful Sacraments continue to fascinate and inspire me. There's such an amazing evolution here; not content to remain defined by a genre he helped popularize the modern version of, Kent has moved away from the sound of his earlier records and really begun incorporating new elements into his compositions. My two favorites of Kent's records so far remain this one and his 2022 collaboration with Cult of Luna's Johannes Persson (Final Light). Where I'd consider Dangerous Days and The Uncanny Valley to be the two best examples of modern "Synthwave," I'd say Kent's newer work is unlike anything I've heard prior. Oh the places these records take me!

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NCBD:

Here's this week's pull, with a side note that I'll be stopping at my shop in Chicago to grab some stuff as well.

The final issue of the gloriously resurrected EC's Horror Anthology series Epitaphs From the Abyss doesn't sting so much now that I've read Blood Type and realize Oni will be continuing this brand with full-issue mini-series anthologies, as well as the new anthology Catacombs of Torment, out July 16th.

Life is good for Horror fans. It's good for comic fans. And it's especially good for Horror comic fans!!!

The first issue of James Tynion IV and Michael Walsh's Exquisite Corpses was kind of a cross between Rob Zombie's 31 and 

Judging by this cover, one of the plot points of this book that has kind of irked me may finally be resolved with this issue. 

"The Horror Men" has proven a fantastic arc for the overall Phantom Road mythology. I love seeing some of this world's history, especially because it feels like learning about the start of this weird in-between place will carry over to big things when we move back to the current timeline with Dom and Bev.

I should finally be picking up my Z-News backlog this weekend when I'm in Chicago. Can't wait!

Another new book from Oni Press, this one sounds as though it's modeled after Phillip K. Dick's life, so I'm definitely giving it a try. Here's the solicitation from League of Comic Geeks:

"More than just a writer, more than just a science-fiction icon, Benjamin J. Carp was a cultural revolutionary. Across 44 novels and hundreds of short stories-including the counterculture classic The Man They Couldn't Erase-Carp pushed the boundaries of literary respectability for the sci-fi genre and his readers' perception of reality itself . . . until decades of amphetamine abuse and Southern California excess finally ended a mind-bending career that always just escaped mainstream success. He died in 1982. Until 2025 . . . when Benjamin J. Carp awakens, alive, in a burned-out motel on the fringes of Los Angeles. He remembers dying. He knows he shouldn't exist. Is he a dream? A robot? A ghost? A clone? A simulation? In his own time, Carp pondered all of these scenarios intensely through his fiction-and, now, as he treks from Studio City to Venice Beach and onward into the paranoid sprawl of 21st-century Los Angeles, he will be called to investigate his greatest mystery yet: himself. In the tradition of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly and Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice comes a uniquely fascinating and hilariously deranged excursion into the metatextual nexus where existence and oblivion, past and future, genius and madness, and glitter and grim reality all meet just beyond Hollywood Boulevard . . ."

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Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter's new series Hell Motel premiered on Shudder with two episodes yesterday and I have to say, so far, I love it! The setting, lighting and camera work are top-notch, as is the writing. There are some very intriguing plotting mechanisms at work here, and they made for a pretty thrilling two-episode premiere. We're going to be covering this weekly on The Horror Vision - first episode will drop next Monday, then every Wednesday thereafter (the show airs on Tuesdays). 

From what I've seen of the two creators' other series, the anthology Slasher, it appears to be a bit of a mixed bag. That said, I've only watched Flesh & Blood and two episodes of Ripper. I loved the former but did not care for the latter. I dig these guys' style overall, though; there's something of a Channel Zero-meets-AHS, with the influence of AHS being more dominant but little flourishes here and there that make me think of Zero. 

Top all this off with the fact that Adam MacDonald looks to be the series Director (he did the first two episodes but is listed as "Director" on the series' main IMDB page) and you've got a great schematic. And they deliver, big time. I watched episodes one and two TWICE today and found I liked it more the second time around. 

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Playlist:

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

Various - Learn to Relax: A Tribute to Jehu

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands 

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

John Harrison - Day of the Dead OST

Tangerine Dream - Sorceror OST

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

Hangman's Chair - Saddiction

Young Widows - Power Sucker

NIN - Pretty Hate Machine

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Nine of Swords

• Ace of Pentacles

• Eight of Cups

The Nine of Cups can denote Cruelty, Bad Dreams and/or Violence. Ace of Pentacles is a breakthrough in Earthly concerns, nad Eight of Cups is poison. Sounds to me like the Earthly breakthrough - i.e. success - may be arrived at through violence or poison. That's a scary sentiment; I've long held people who use violence or hurtful machinations as a way to get what they want are the definition of evil. I realize while typing this that this Pull is a reminder to tread lightly with certain people at work, as I deal with a lot of "Corporate People" and those are often the people who operate in this capacity.

Clean Up that Street Trash on Planet Death!

 

I rewatched Ryan Kruger's Street Trash sequel this weekend, and it put ten Althone back on my radar. LOVE this track. You can support the band at any of the links on their Link Tree HERE.

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I'd been waiting for Writer/Director Joshua Erkman's debut, A Desert, since March. Co-written with Bossi Baker, these two gentlemen have indeed delivered what will no doubt be one of my favorite films of the year. Subtle, creepy, emotional and WEIRD in all the best ways. 

Plus, pretty sure this is the biggest role The Jesus Lizard's frontman David Yow has had in a film, and he NAILS it. A Desert is currently a $6.99 rental on Prime, and it is worth every penny.

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Read:

Another book I picked up last week at the comic shop* was something I stumbled across on the racks from a while ago - April 30th, to be exact. Planet Death issue 0:

When I found this, the cover and interior art immediately made me think of 80s-era Dark Horse Comics. Don't let this pristine jpg I grabbed online fool you - Planet Death 0 was printed on a wonderfully sturdy newsprint stock. One that, according to the afterward by the publisher, they actually had to seek out and purchase the entire stock to procure it. This is a wonderfully tactile reading experience.

Seeing the "Bad Idea" imprint name, I assumed I was supporting a local or super-indie book, and while this is indie, it's not 100% indie. The creator is Derek Kolstad, the screenwriter behind John Wick. So yeah, there's some inertia here. Apparently, this was the largest order for an indie comic since Image's fabled launch, with this issue bringing in 655,000 copies ordered. So much for helping the underdog!

Seriously though, I'd still consider this an underdog. Everything that isn't the Big 2 kind of is, and if you want to expand that definition's net a bit further, Bad Idea and Planet Death are still largely unknown and have no name recognition beyond the John Wick DNA. Still, as popular as the Wick movies are, there are very few Screenwriters who achieve the kind of recognition that can help carry a small comic company into the black. 

But Planet Death is cool, super cool, and while a lot of why I feel that way may be linked to nostalgia, I still think its gritty Cyber-Punk space marine feel will appeal to a lot of comic fans. The first issue lands July 9th, and I'll definitely be grabbing that. From there, the afterward makes it clear the subsequent issues will be released when they are complete and perfect, and that sounds great to me. I'm looking forward to this, but I don't necessarily want another monthly book, nor do I feel like this will require a regular schedule. The story seems like it will work on it's own terms. Here's the solicitation from League of Comic Geeks

"Millions of miles from home, hundreds of ships descend into the stormy atmosphere of a hostile frozen world. On board, an army of resolute men and women brace for the coming assault. They are an invasion force, on an impossible mission — destroy the devastating enemy weapon garrisoned below. Corporal Scott and his battalion are in the vanguard but the human forces are no match for their brutal alien adversaries. Scott’s battalion is dead within moments. He is its lone survivor. The landing force annihilated, the battle is lost. Against overwhelming odds, Scott dares the unthinkable — cross behind enemy lines, survive the lethal landscape, evade capture by ruthless enemies, resist natural predators, face human deserters and finish the mission singlehandedly. Locked in his suit of full combat battle armor, sustained only by what he can carry, and driven by Earth’s wrath, Scott must do by himself what an entire army could not. Destroy the weapon. Return home."

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* See? All that and I still ended up needed two days to talk about it all. 

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Playlist:

Faith No More - Angel Dust

Mr. Bungle - Eponymous

Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power

GBH - City Baby Attacked By Rats

LARD - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Mothers of Invention - Freak Out!

ten Athlone - Street Trash E.P.

ten Athlone - Travelator

Amigo the Devil - Born Against

The Cops - Free Electricity

Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue

The Jeff Healey Band - Road House (The Lost Soundtrack)

Anthrax - Worship Music

Billy Idol - Rebel Yell

Judas Priest - Painkiller

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• I: The Magician

• Ace of Swords

• Three of Cups

The Spark of Essence. A Breakthrough of Intellect. Solid Emotional Outcome.

Sounds a lot like a three-step plan to get my ass back in gear. I've been slowly dipping my toe back into Shadow Play, but I've had a lot of distractions. This coming weekend is a trip to Chicago, after that, I'm calling it now: Full Immersion!!!

New Music from Ganser!

From Ganser's new album, Animal Hospital, out August 29th on the always wonderful Felte Records. Pre-order HERE.

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NCBD:

I've kind of unofficially switched to a M-W-F posting schedule here for the time being, and I'm still getting used to that. I'll use this as the reason I somehow forgot to feature my NCBD pulls in Wednesday's post - when I'm working on these a day or two out, it's easy to forget what day you're aiming for. Anyway, This week's pull ended up being considerable, so in this case, hindsight helps condense what otherwise would have been two consecutive posts.

Turns out, Batman: Dark Patterns is going even longer than I originally thought. This is the most consecutive months I've read a Batman book since Grant Morrison's run ended!

Already read this one - dark times for the Autobots, man. And more Bruticus! In fact, we have an all-out combiner battle with Bruticus and Devastator versus Superion! I can't even believe how this book taps into all my childhood play fantasies about the Transformers. 

More dark times for heroes. It's definitely in the air - I mean, art reflects life and looks at the world we live in. Some really interesting developments in this issue, and the bi-monthly release schedule is still really working for me, partly as a respite for the old wallet and partly as a suspense builder. 

This issue of SIKTC features some of the best trademark James Tyion IV dialogue. From the two clerks talking about mustache-shaving daydreams to the Jaws discussion, this one's all set, but holy cow - things are going to go off next issue!

The first issue was so-so for me, but I'm looking forward to sticking around and seeing where this pretty deft send-up of Black Metal culture goes. 

Once again - Oni for the win! A new Horror Anthology featuring Andrea Sorrentino? You don't need to say another word. 

But wait - there's MORE!!!

Earlier in the week, my good friend and frequent collaborator Grimm pointed me to the fact that Titan Books has been publishing a new Savage Sword of Conan magazine-sized book for eight issues now. I'm not a card-carrying Conan fan, per se, but back shortly after I discovered H.P. Lovecraft, I picked up a mass-market paperback copy of Howard's Tales from the Cthulhu Mythos and have long thought it one of the best I cut my Robert E. Howard 

Looks more like "Savage Sword of Danzig" to me!

This issue of The Savage Sword of Conan features six tales that all revolve around Howard's The Black Stone. THIS is my REH wheelhouse - The Black Stone is probably the short story that left the deepest impression on me from that Mythos paperback, and I think it's fantastic that writer Jim Zub is using it as a jumping-off point to weave the Black Stone through a myriad of Howard's characters - from the Cimmerian to El Borak to Soloman Kane. Granted, these stories just made me spring for a set of the spin-off Black Stone series on eBay, but that's fine. Just like so many other power-mad sorcerers, I'm willing to pay for more exposure to the titular monument. 

Issue eight was really what sparked my interest, as Grimm sent his joyous accolades for this series along with a picture from issue 8's The Wuthering:

'Nuff said! Seriously though, this entire book is gorgeous, and it was a real treat to discover the first story herein was drawn by Jason "Nameless" Burnham!

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Playlist:

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Marilyn Manson - One Assassination Under God - Chapter 1

Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power

Melvins - (A) Senile Animal

Thou - Summit

Deee-Lite - Dewdrops in the Garden

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Big Black - The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape

Rapeman - Two Nuns and a Pack Mule/Budd E.P.

Killdozer - God Hears the Pleas of the Innocent

The High Confessions - Turning Lead Into Gold with the High Confessions

Metallica - Ride the Lightning

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Page of Wands

• Two of Pentacles

• Three of Pentacles

Decisions about Earthly matters should be made from a place of strong support. What the hell does that mean, exactly? I'm far too tired to figure this out at the time of typing this, so I'll be staring at these cards all day on my desk. 

I hate when the pull interpretation comes out sounding like an exaggerated fortune cookie!!!

Hulk Smash Brand X

 

A friend recently turned me on to 70s fusion group Brand X, by way of their 1977 album Morrocan Roll. This is some intense stuff; I hear influences either given or received from Goblin (Morrocan Roll and the Suspiria OST were released two months apart in the spring of 1977), Genesis (according to my friend, Phil Collins was apparently Brand X's drummer for one album), and they definitely influenced one Les Claypool. The album starts a bit slow for my taste, but once we get to this, the fourth track, things really flip out, and it's pretty awesome to behold. 

Man, there was so much interesting music happening on the fringes of Jazz and Prog at this time. Not all of it is to my liking, but it's definitely worth exploring. 

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That time on Lettermen when Iggy Pop told the story of how he met David Bowie!

I've really been enjoying having the ability to comb through classic NBC Lettermen clips on the Lettermen YouTube channel. This is just another example of the treasure available there. Props to the historians who curate, clean up and catalogue this stuff. 

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Re-reading Imperial #1, I find I'm not quite done pontificating on "Cosmic Marvel,' because my connections to it actually go further back than I realized when I wrote Monday's entry. 

While it's true that 1992's Infinity Gauntlet was my direct entry point to anything outside street-level Marvel,* I did get a more narrow taste of Cosmic Marvel with The Incredible Hulk.

I grew up as a big fan of Peter David's run on Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk. However, prior to David's run, series writer Bill Mantlo played considerably more with Cosmic stories for Marvel's green brute, and as a kid, I had a disparate number of these and they fascinated me to no end. 

In fact, I've come to realize that, just as Imperial begins with Hulk as our entry into the larger Cosmic conspiracy, the character has long been associated with intergalactic elements of Marvel's continuity and often had a hand in piquing my interest in that direction. 

These random issues from Mantlo's run did not make it out of my early childhood but were something I sought out in back issues later in life, so strong was the memory of them for me even into my adult comic book reading. And they hold up, especially the "Crossroads" stories from the late 290s-early300s of Incredible. They hold up so well, in fact, that Peter David returned to this era a few years ago with a Symbiote Spider-Man story that set Spidey in the Crossroads era with Hulk. A good time was had by all, I can tell you!

All that aside, there is one other Cosmic Hulk era I began to latch onto (well after the fact) and never finished but have gone back to now. That is none other than Grep Pak's Planet Hulk.

I bought the collected Planet Hulk back around five or six years ago, started it, but somehow ended up getting pulled away before getting very far. When the series was being published weekly, I was in an anti-Marvel/indie books-only turn, so I barely paid attention to it, despite the residual hype that coated the walls of the burgeoning online comic book community at the time. I'm not sure what prompted me to pick up the collection on Kindle when I did, but now that Imperial has captured me and spins somewhat directly out of the events of Planet Hulk, it's time.

This is total throwback, 70s Sci-Fi, and I think Bill Mantlo would be a super fan of this storyline. There are definite similarities, what with Hulk finding camaraderie with alien outsiders, similar to the Puffball Collective in Crossroads. The planet Sakaar serves as a melting pot for a number of alien races due to its proximity to the wormhole above it, and that adds a nice 70s Sci-Fi aesthetic, that kind of tribalism that is then mashed up with the rule of an evil Emperor. You can really see how Greg Pak designed this to be a timeless tale, and it does wonders for Hulk. This isn't the savage Hulk, or Joe Fixit, or Banner in a green body, but it sort of splits the difference between those first two iterations I mention and gives us a savage but brooding Hulk that can think as much as he can bash. This, too, is fun for everyone involved. 

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• Even Claremont's X-Men run stayed largely Earth-bound for most of my infatuation with it. I started Uncanny X-Men with the Mutant Massacre and from that point on, I don't think there were any Intergalactic stories until Lila Cheney showed up in issue 272 to pull the team into space to save Chuck. Hell, even the Brood made the trip to Earth (232-234)!

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Playlist:

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu

The Clash - Sandinista!

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Pink Floyd - Ummagumma (Disc 2)

Brand X - Morrocan Roll

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

SQÜRL - Live at Third Man Records

Turnstile - NEVER ENOUGH

Explode Into Color - Eyes Hands Mouth (single)

Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere

Ganser - Black Sand (pre-release single)

High on Fire - Live from the Relapse Contamination Festival

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Ace of Swords

• King of Wands

• XV: The Devil

A breakthrough in intellect leads to a strong alternate philosophy on how to achieve a goal. 

Rebel Waltz Meet Imperial Predator

It occurred to me while watching Tony Hawk's "What's In My Bag" on the Amoeba music YouTube channel that it's been quite some time since I gave The Clash's Sandinista! a fair shake.

I had this on vinyl in a former life, and while I LOVE some of the songs on it, a double-double album or whatever it is just seems inherently ridiculous. Granted, London Calling is possibly the best double album ever (The Wall is better conceptually, but not necessarily when taken song-by-song), so if anyone was going to pull off an exponential attempt on the concept, The Clash was smart money.

However, Sandinista! always felt a bit too long, the 'sides' and even tracks often a bit too disparate. I mean, "The Magnificent Seven" to "Hitsville UK" to the idle reggae of "Junco Partner"? And that happens a couple of times, this kind of "reggae segue" that feels a bit forced. There are obviously reggae elements on London Calling, but it's all mixed into the songwriting in a way that those moments feel elegant and natural. They've always felt a bit ostentatious to me on Sandinista!.

My point here is it's been quite some time since I've actually listened to the record, and people change. So that's one of my current musical missions for the foreseeable future.

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Watch:

I had successfully avoided the trailer for Predator: Killer of Killers before its release this weekend,  so going into it blind the other night was a super treat! I'm pretty hard on animation - unless it's Cowboy Bebop or Transformers '86 I don't generally take to it. This, however, blew me away.

I will say, I preferred the animation in the first two segments, but the third one had HEART, so I was still completely "in." I love that we've had to travel almost 40 years to finally get good entries into the cinematic Predator universe. Sure, there are things about several of the other movies I dig, but overall, every movie after the original film has always been a disappointment. Maybe that's just because the original was so damn good, or maybe it's because, as a sequel, Dark Horse's Concrete Jungle has always reigned supreme in my mind. 

This four-issue mini-series is a perfect follow-up to the original film, and while it's clear it was a kind of road map for the eventual Predator 2, the film leaves out many of the best parts. Regardless of all this now-ancient history, Dan Trachtenberg has really proved to be the savior the franchise needed, and I can't wait for Predator: Badlands, due out later this year.

I think the best thing that ever happened to Predator was moving to different timelines and now, even different worlds like the Dark Horse comics did long ago.

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Read:

I ended up picking up more than I was planning to at the comic shop last Wednesday, but when I saw Jonathan Hickman had turned his attention to the cosmic end of the Marvel Universe, I was instantly intrigued.

I am well aware this is a case of me still pining for Krakoa-era X-Men, but that's okay. The cosmic end of Marvel has never really been my forte. 

Like a lot of 80s comics readers, I read The Infinity Gauntlet as it came out and fell instantly under its sway. This led to dabbling with The Silver Surfer around the same time (I remember the 50th issue being a big deal, but I no longer have that or really remember why). However, trying to keep up with 1992's Gauntlet follow-up Operation Galactic Storm* - a weekly event that ran through pretty much all the Marvel titles I didn't read at the time kind of broke me on the cosmic end of Marvel. I think at the time, my 16-year-old self thought this series was going to be my road into the bigger Universe, only I really didn't connect with any of the titles or the event in general, and I largely stayed away from 'cosmic Marvel' ever since.

Until...

Part of Hickman's Krakoa-era was Al Ewing's S.W.O.R.D. - a cosmic X-Men title that I adored and led directly into the events of Planet-sized X-Men and X-Men: Red, still probably the best Marvel series I've read in decades, and which definitely played with the cosmic end of things. 

It's the little I picked up in these titles that has me most interested in modern cosmic Marvel continuity and the first issue of Imperial delivered. There's no shortage on political intrigue here, but played across the stars, Hickman makes the old 'game-of-thrones' concept feel fresh and thrilling. The story encompasses a myriad of cosmic empires I know (Sh'iar; Kree-Skrull) as well as many more I don't (who are those Horse-people???). We also get some familiar faces for a newbie like me; Hulk mourning a son I didn't know he had, Nova and Starlord trying to head whatever is happening off at the pass, as well as a lot of folks I'm completely unacquainted with. So many agendas, so many allegiances - secret or otherwise - and two mysterious chess players who are (apparently) controlling everything. Oh yeah, and Wakanda involved in a nefarious plot to derail peace in the universe?

It's a lot, and I'm really only treading water with the continuity, but it's Hickman and it has a certain charge to it and I'm in.

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* Cringe at that title!

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Playlist:

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Black Sabbath - Technical Ecstasy

Ozzie Osbourne - Patient No. 9

Turnstile - NEVER ENOUGH

Damone - From the Attic

Turnstile - GLOW ON

The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Television - Marquee Moon

Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers - L.A.M.F.: The Lost '77 Mixes

The Clash - Sandinista!

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Page of Wands

• VI: The Lovers

• Queen of Cups

Inexperience can be overcome with partnership.