And Love Is the Province Of the Brave.

Lucky for Marvel Comics, Wednesday was a slow news day. As a result, there was plenty of mainstream media coverage for the "Death of Captain America". This led to a stampede to the comic stores and a swift selling out of, in many cases, the under ordered Captain America #25. If you look at Marvel's side of the story, you can understand that they didn't want to spoil the impact of the issue, and hinted as strongly as possible to the comic retailers to order high. At the same time, the comic retailers are cautious anytime one of the comic companies hypes up their product, and are now angry that Marvel didn't clue them in on the contents of the book. So, this left Marvel in a "damn if you do, damn if you don't" situation. They did overprint the book and plan a second printing, but the direct market is set up in such a way that the earliest stores will get new copies will be Wednesday. By that time, the buzz may have cooled off considerably.

My favorite bit of media exposure was on the Colbert Report. The man (and/or his writers) must love comics because he dropped all sorts of geeky tidbit during "The WØrd". A couple of episodes later, Marvel's Editor-in-Chief, Joe Quesada, sent Cap's shield as a gift. Hopefully, it will find a proud place on Steve's Wall of Democracy.


I didn't bother picking up Captain America #25. I buy comics to read, not to collect and resell on ebay. I'm going to wait for when the story is collected in the trade. Besides, he'll be back in a couple years, anyway. It's how these things tend to work out in the world of comics.

Friday evening, Allison and I went to the Brown Theater and caught a truly excellent performance by TV on the Radio. They ratcheted up some of their songs to give them that big rock show vibe. I loved their first album but only liked their second one. But, seeing those songs live made me appreciate Return to Cookie Mountain more.

On Saturday, we made a return trip to Lexington to visit my new niece. It's amazing how much babies grow in such a short time. She was also a lot more alert and squirmy. This time, my mother was in town, so it was pretty neat to see her as a proud grandmother. My other sister was there as well, so it was good to see her, too.

And finally, Monday evening my band, Old Man, moved into our new practice space. Talk about a workout! A bunch of amps, a set of drums, and a P.A. system gets kind of heavy after a while, but it was all worth it. The rooms that we are sharing with our friends Lucifigous Prick, are clean, well lit and climate controlled. Now, we've just have to schedule practices around the two bands, but I don't think that it'll be too much of a problem.

Snowflake

As Paul mentioned, we planned a short trip to Lexington on Saturday to meet our new neice. She's remarkably gorgeous for someone who just spent nine months all smooshed up in a uterus. Some photos:

She slept for all but about five minutes of our visit, but I suppose it's tough to be a good hostess when you're only four days old. We're planning on making the trip again next weekend, as Paul's mom will be in town as well.

I finally had the chance to give Beth and Rod the baby blanket I finished a couple of months ago:

I don't have a good full-size image of it, but it's made of Bernat Cottontots, has a garter stitch edge, and is about the size of, well, a baby blanket.

In other knitting news, I'm working on a couple of Harry Potter Gryffindor scarves for people in my lab. I'm following this pattern in the interest of authenticity, which unfortunately means that it's taking forever and is relatively mindless knitting (thousands upon thousands of basic knit stitches with a color change every now and again). I'm also not a big fan of the yarn I'm using (some Bernat acrylic something-or-other), but it was cheap and the people I'm knitting for aren't that picky. It'll be nice to work with something soft after this... I'm thinking it may be sock season.

Of Babies and Old Men

I'm officially an uncle now. My sister Beth has given birth to her and her husband Rod's first child. Little Illiana was born Tuesday evening around 7:00. Allison and I are planning to travel down to Lexington Saturday to visit. My parents are now grandparents. That's pretty weird.

My band, Old Man, may have snagged a swanky practice space. The best part is that it's free. That, combined with a couple shows in the near future will hopefully motivate us to get cracking, again. I really want to get our record out within the next few months.