Rambling about C9, Lucifer, and Southern Bastards

Last night I finished off watching the last NA team get chased out of the League of Legends World Championship and the third episode of Lucifer’s sophmore season, but I think I was most entertained by reading the first issue of Southern Bastards by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour.

C9 failure

20161002-lol-worldsThings started out pretty well for C9 in game 3. They knocked down the bot turret pretty early (6 minutes in), but then Impact was killed for first blood by CuVee and Jensen died to Ambition midlane. Two quick kills in minute 6 and SSG was clearly in control of this game. At this point, I turned off the game yesterday, but I picked it up this morning to see how things played out (I already knew the result).
Cloud 9 opened a small gold lead in minute 7 as they picked up a top lane kill of CuVee after making a quick lane swap and getting a Meteos gank, but then gave up an easily avoidable kill as Sneaky and Smoothie didn’t get back under turret even though they knew Ambition was coming for a gank. Sloppy play like this is what cost C9 games 1 and 2 and it looks like they didn’t shake off those bad habits in game 3. And when you think they might get a solid team fight together, SSG found a way to escape with barely a scratch…I don’t know how he did it, but it seemed like Crown avoided every ult that Jensen threw his way.
C9 kept the gold close though, maintaining their 3 to 7 kill disadvantage through the 21st minute, but then they lost a fight midlane, with Karma and Caitlyn taken down and that was the last they saw of a lead. SSG took dragon and pretty much never looked back. At 25 minutes, it was 14-5 in favor of SSG. There was a little excitement when C9 defended baron and Impact chased down Ambition followed by a slick Jensen escape from CuVee, but at this point these moments were just for the highlight reel, they made no difference to the outcome. I’d give the MVP of this game to CoreJJ on Tahm Ketch who seemed to save teammates all over the place and he picked up 5 kills, he definitely had a good game.

Lucifer

I’ve enjoyed the second season so far of this show even though it’s not as good as I felt the first season was. I think they’ve done a good job, in the first 3 episodes, to keep a good split between “case of the week” and long-term story arc such that I feel Tricia Helfer’s addition to the cast as Lucifer’s mother has been successful. I’m also looking forward to learning more about what’s up with Amenadiel and his deteriorating wings. Let’s hope this sophomore season continues to go well.

Southern Bastards Quick Thoughts on Issue 1

20161014-southernbastardsissue1As much as Lucifer is the devil, he’s certainly a nice guy when compared to most of the characters in Southern Bastards #1. Earlier this year, Southern Bastards won the Eisner Award for best continuing series so I figured it was something to check out and I’m glad I did. This thing is brutal. It’s like George RR Martin wrote episodes of the Dukes of Hazard. I mean, I guess no one died in the issue, but it sure seemed like there is going to be plenty of that in future installations. I’ll put together a more detailed review another time, but the gist of the story is that the son of the old sheriff comes back to small town, Alabama after 40 years to pack up his family’s house and while the date may have changed, the twisted underbelly of the town seems to be as messed up as it ever was. Don’t read this if you get queasy seeing violence, but if you can handle baseball bats and broken bones, I think you’ll enjoy the story. I can’t wait to see where this goes.