SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS–Static Journey Volume 3: Whale Music (2008).
Whale Music is a fantastic album by the Rheostatics, and this collection of live tracks, interviews and banter is certainly a high point in this box set. The album itself is far more complex than anything they’d done before, and it’s great to hear them play these difficult songs live.
I also found the interviews (which explained the story behind “Queer” and “Dope Fiends and Boozehounds”) to be funny and enlightening. A big highlight of the disc is the “RDA/Blitzkreig Bop” segue. Even though there are many punk elements to the Rheos, one tends to forget that they have punk roots. (A later banter about the Ramones is pretty cool).
I’m sure I’ll say this about the other volumes of this set too, but Volume 3 is completely worth the download!
[READ: December 28, 2009] Armageddon & Son
This is an older Oni comic that I recently picked up. The premise is a pretty good one. An orphaned boy (whose name is “Doonald”) discovers that his father is in fact a notorious evil villain intent on blowing up the world (and he also discovers why his name is Doonald).
Evil mastermind Feeney shows up at Doon’s door to enlist his son’s help for his most diabolical plan yet. Doon, whose credit card was denied and whose rent is overdue, is shocked to learn that his father is an evil genius (but is delighted to see the revenge done to the place that denied his credit card). But Doon is not as shocked as his father is to learn just how useless Doon will be in the evil villain business. What ensues is a black comedy of foolish villains and evil schemes.
For indeed, Feeney’s evil plan to destroy the world has been hijacked by his former evil villain team: C.L.A.W. And, no evil villain wants to see the world blown up by someone else, so he makes it his mission to stop C.L.A.W. from proceeding with his plan to destroy the world. Which makes him something of a good guy.The story line is pretty funny. (The evil plan is called the F-Bomb). There’s a lot of fun spoofs of evil villain movies, although there is some good tension as well. There’s also some fun father-son bonding mockery. I was also delighted with the ending.
However, I was more than a little confused by the epilogue: we see Feeney fighting with minion, but I can’t tell who it is. And this leads to the main complaint about the book.
The artwork is, well, not very good. Or, maybe that’s the deliberate “style” of the artist. But the lines seem tenuous and shaky. And the shading seems melodramatic, often times hiding the action. I understand that this is a melodramatic story, but the art is just not to my liking.
The cover of the book is actually quite nice. It’s like a fine-tuned version of the art in the book. But the actual story art is just ugly. And again, maybe that is deliberate, but when the “hot spy seducer chick” is rather grotesque, it really takes away some of the appeal.
And then there’s that ending. I can’t decide if I’m supposed to know who that minion is. Perhaps he (or she?) is a deformed version of a previous character. I’m just not sure what’s happening.
So, I sort of half recommend the book. The good premise I think outshines the negatives.
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