I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE VIOLET ARCHERS-Victoria, BC (October 2005).

I have reviewed this show already, but with some context of other shows, it seemed worth revisiting.  The opening act was Scribbled Out Man (their bio on the CBC Music site says that they are friends of the Rheos).

I suspect this dates from 2004, as Tim says the album is coming out late spring or early summer and might be called The End of Part One (it was released in 2005).

The opening track is a soundcheck.  It sounds fine, although the “real” version later is better.  They play 12 songs at this show (compared to 8 in the previous show).  They cover all of the songs from their debut except “Outrovox” which is a short instrumental and “Fools Gold Rope” which is sung by Ida.

The opening two tracks are just Tim on guitar, singing the lovely simple song, “Simple” and the slightly darker, minor chord “All the Good.”  They sound good, but it’s more fun when the full band comes out.

Yawd on guitar and keyboard, Steve Pitkin on drums and Bass on bass.  “The End of Part One” sounds great, but Tim has some major guitar problems playing “Life and Then” a normally great song.  The rest of the set goes off without a hitch.  It’s true that the band sounds better when Ida sings with them, but in this original incarnation, they’re quite good.

For the final song “Here Comes the Feelings,” Tim asks, should we do the false start?  That’s become part of the song.  Steve counts to 5 and then we go–but we’re gonna get it wrong.  And they do.  But once they get past that, it’s a great set closer.

The band is still looking for a name, Tim suggests “The Gay Apparel.”

[READ: May 27, 2015] Powers Bureau

I hadn’t heard of Powers Bureau before (this book collects issues 7-12).  My initial thought was “do we need yet another superhero book?” But this book is different in a fun way.  Also I love the artwork–it is blocky and bold and reminds me of the Bryan Lee O’Malley style.

So this book is about Federal Agents Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim.  They used to be homicide detectives who worked solely on (super) powers-realted cases.  But there was a disaster of some kind (presumably in book 1) and now all powers-related cases are Federal cases.

The two arrive at a crime scene in which a woman is tied up naked in the bathtub (way to open, huh?).  The boyfriend is the suspect, but he says that the woman (whom he did tie up for sex purposes) suddenly appeared next to herself, killed “herself” then fled.  It sounds preposterous, until they realize that the woman is Matzuii, who can split her self into multiple parts.  So essentially she killed herself.

In other crucial details, Pilgrim was impregnated by a man with powers.  But she lost the baby in an accident with Matzuii.

Meanwhile in California, The Extreme returns to his lair to find six dead superheroes known as The Circle.  He calls it in and is an immediate suspect.  He insists that he was their mentor. But he sucked at it, they were willful and powerful (more powerful than him) and had no regard for rules.

They were involved in a situation in which they stopped a bad guy.  But when some military robots came to investigate, the kids battled them too. It turned out that both the teens and the robots are different parts of the same governmental agency and this was major screw up.

Walker and Pilgrim are taken to L.A. where they are meant to help with the case but are actually taken into custody (the origin story of the police who brought them in is cool too).  As the scene draws to an end, Claista, a girl whom Walker once helped out has been converted to the dark side and tries to kill Walker.

Without reading the first book, I’m a little lost on what’s going on, but I’m still really hooked into the series.  I loved the art style and the way the fights were drawn (something I usually think is not so good).  And I like the various twists on people with superpowers.   It’s not unlike COWL in some regard, but I found this series far more enjoyable.