Morning Ramble 339: More Plans, Quick Kills, And Decoding Superheroes

Today’s ramble takes a look at my plans for comic book reading in May – I think I’m pretty ambitious; getting through a 5 minute game of SMITE – I got a couple of kills; and watching the start of a Superheroes Decoded documentary that was pretty good.

Comics: Plans for May

I’ve scattered my plans for what I’d like to get accomplished in May across a few posts so far with SMITE gaming and book reading covered in previous posts so I figured I’d cover my thoughts for May Comic Book reading here. I’ve got 2 graphic novels to read this month for my Comic-Con Reading Group – Letter 44 volume 3 and I Hate Fairyland, but as usual, I want to read much more (but usually don’t have the time). For my reading of the Complete Marvel Reading Order, I’ve got 7 issues left to finish off 1962 and I’d like to get through them here in May. Also, with yesterday’s Star Wars day, I took a peek at the Star Wars media timeline and thought it would be nice to learn more about the SW Universe. It turns out while there are a bunch of animation, novels, and of course the movies, there’s also a bunch of comics that tell tales that are included in the canon. I think I might just like to dip my toes into that with a reading of the 5 part Yoda’s Secret War story that’s set during the same year that The Phantom Menace is supposed to have occurred. With all those comics, I think I’ve got more than enough planned for the month.

Gaming: SMITE – A Good 5 Minute Game

This game could have gone better, but it was short and to the point. I ended up at 2–0 having spent only 5 minutes and I’m not sure if I got credited with a loss or a no-contest. It all started in god select where it seemed like a race to call out what role people wanted to play. For my part, I just picked a god I knew – Kukulkan – and was willing to go where ever they needed me. It turned out the Skadi who called mid lane never showed up in the game and Loki just ran around from lane to lane basically leaving mid open. I went to the short lane and faced a Cernunnos who I think was surprised to see me. He was pretty good at hitting minions, but I zoned him outta lane pretty quickly with my Whirlwind and he had to head back to base by minute 3. I cleared, hit the tower a couple times, and then headed back myself having enough gold for my 2nd tier boots. When I got back to lane, Osiris decided to gank me and he and Cernunnos pushed me under my tower. I tried to keep hitting minions to prevent their free shots at my tower but instead of going for the tower, the two of them came after me. It seems at my current level, players focus on trying to get kills rather than attacking objectives – I wonder how long that will last as I level up. In any case, ignoring the tower shots that were hitting him, Osiris dove to take me out. I valiantly tried to dodge and threw down my Whirlwind right on top of myself since I figured that’s where he was gonna be, and the next thing I saw, he was dead. Cernunnos, seeing his buddy dive and die, thought it’d be smart to try the same thing and I got 2 kills (of course with the help of the tower) before the 5 minute mark when we were able to stop the game due to the missing Skadi. I feel pretty good about the game even though I didn’t actually get to finish it.

TV: Superheroes Decoded – The First Hour

I didn’t realize this was a 2 hour episode and I only watched the first half, but I was not disappointed. This documentary follows the history of superheroes from their origins with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman in 1938. The first episode of what I think is a 2 night event, is called American Legends and focuses on comic book superheroes as an American invention. They’re the modern day mythology of a secular nation. The portion of the show I watched highlighted Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Wonder Woman and covered from 1938 to WWII. Superman was equated with wholesome rural ideals while Batman focused on inner city conflicts and took his vigilante justice to the edge of morality. Captain America and Wonder Woman on the other hand, both appearing in 1941, were more focused on America’s discovery of itself as a world power with Cap’s first issue showing him punching Hitler and WW showing how women can kick ass and dole out justice just as well as men. The show was fun to watch and the interviews with comic artists and writers covered the topics really well even though they sometimes threw in current day political opinions where they could have stuck to the actual historical zeitgeist and been more enjoyable. Early film and television footage was great and I saw quite a bit of old superman and batman that I had never seen before. On the whole, it was educational and entertaining and I look forward to finishing the first episode and the series soon.