I, The Juror!

You know what was weird?  Jury duty.

absolutely nothing this good happened today at Austin's Municipal Courtroom 2A

From the fact that the parking directions sucked, to the sheer number of people called to fill a six person jury for what seemed to be a minor issue (and one, frankly, the defendant should have just taken the ticket on), today was a bit odd.

Making justice, I suppose, is a bit like making sausage.  I have a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-level of naive faith in the system.  I really, really believe in trials of juries by peers, that we have a system that is much, much better than local bureaucrats determining your fate by whether or not they like the cut of your jib...  but today was also a bit eye-opening.

I don't know why there were more than 3 dozen of us called in to fill 6 seats.  I don't know why we were summoned at 9:00, dismissed at 9:45 and then told to come back at 1:45.  And why there were more of us at 1:45 than 9:00.

I did like voir dire, which was interesting to see everybody taking their part in the process with the utmost sincerity.  But I also realized that my idea of what is "reasonable" is going to get me bounced from jury selection every time on these sorts of minor criminal tickets.  But I also had never really thought too much about the fact that if its just a ticket in Texas, you aren't assigned a public defender.  And, frankly, I'm not sure from what little our defendant said and did today that he was competent enough to make decisions for himself like "I should go to trial" instead of "I'll just pay the ticket".

That's not to say the guy was guilty, but I'm a bit soft hearted when it comes to watching people getting in over their heads, and this fellow seemed to be tanking just having to listen to voir dire.  And clearly I wasn't the only one pretty sure nobody had counseled this fellow at all.

Sitting there, I began to wonder about whether I really could impartially review evidence.  I can do this at work to make decisions, but that's something I'm practiced at.  How well can I look at a ticket, impartially hear a witness description of an incident, and divorce myself from my mixed feelings about police, about what got this guy to the point he's in the courtroom, and what will happen to him should he wind up losing the trial?

I tend to think I could have made the distinction between "reasonable doubt" and "all possible doubt", an issue that took up, I think, a pretty good amount of time in our courtroom (and somehow nobody brought up CSI), and I like to think you can rely on witness testimony.  Mostly.

Lady Justice looks different to everyone, and so I think I could have done it.  Of course, at the end of the day they basically picked jurors 1-6 and sent the rest of us home after all that (I was juror 20.  The Rural Juror, I like to think).

What I liked best was the fact that despite my misgivings, my ego was a bit shattered that they didn't look upon me and see my innate sense of pure justice, just rolling off me in waves.  Also, I think I got bounced from consideration anyway because I said I thought a $500 fine for having marijuana paraphernalia seemed a bit steep.

JimD's Daredevil Deposition of Mark Waid!

JimD, the original Signal Corpsman, and one of the contributors at the always fine Abnormal Use law blog, has landed an interview with comics scribe Mark Waid (one of my personal heroes).

As you may know, Mark Waid is currently writing (Here Comes) Daredevil, and like everything else the man has touched the past decade, its just another darn fine comic.  Our protagonist, Daredevil, is, by day, attorney Matt Murdock.  And thus: our connection.

Don't take our word for it - read JimD's post and then go to your local comic shop this week and find Daredevil #4.  And then buy the previous issues if they're on the shelf.

You have to like it.  Cap AND Daredevil.

Books, Comics, Personal and Movies - Come read a round-up, won't you?

I'm not really feeling like doing some big, hefty posts at the moment.  Perhaps all the DCNu has worn me down.

Books:  On my quest to get to books I haven't read yet that you're supposed to read, I'm currently listening to The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.  It's read by actor Dylan Baker, who I've always thought to be really good, no matter the project he's in.  And he's doing an awesome job thus far with this book.

Comics:  I just read Fogtown by Andersen Gabrych and Brad Rader from Vertigo Comics' Vertigo Crime line (my first dip in).  Its a pretty good detective story in the classic vein, but with a lot of modern sensibility despite its 1953 time-setting.  The protagonist/ narrator is very deeply in the closet, but its really the post-Chinatown content that keeps the 50's a setting rather than being truly evocative of the period.  Still, a good, brisk read.  And now that these books are in paperback and the price dropped, a lot better deal.  Feels a lot more like the dimestore novel this book emulates in spirit.

Personal:  My folks are off the Las Vegas for the first time.  It cracks me up.  They've been all over the planet, but I wasn't sure how to prepare them for the most ridiculous place I've ever been.  "Go to the Bellagio!" I said, unsure of what else to tell them.  What am I supposed to do?  Recommend The Gun Store to The Karebear?

Movies:  For some reason the 1984 film Streets of Fire kept coming up, so this evening I made Jamie watch the Michael Pare vehicle.  The entire movie makes so much more sense when you realize Jim Steinman, the brains behind Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II wrote some of the movie's music, and no matter what they tell you, this should have been a Meatloaf musical.  It also stars all kinds of folks you know from other projects from Rick Moranis to Robert Townsend to Willem DaFoe and a very, very young Diane Lane.

Dude, I can only wish that "what it meant to be young" for me had included shotguns, cool cars and Diane Lane.

The dialog is pretty goofy in that way tough-guy dialog from the 1980's just absolutely doesn't work at all anymore (and not because of dated slang, etc...  It was like they were just learning how to use swears back then).  And frankly, I'm not sure anybody is very good in this movie, but its absolutely interesting.

round-up Monday post

You're on your own for a day or three.

In the meantime:

I recommend going to see the movie Drive at better cinemas everywhere.  It features Christina Hendricks.

Hendricks ponders the likelihood that bed bugs have invaded the Motel 6.

I didn't watch the Emmy's.

in a lot of ways, personally and professionally, I strive for Swanson-ness

I hear Mad Men won for best show without a laughtrack or whatever.  That's good, I guess.  Peter Dinklage was great in Game of Thrones, so good on him for winning.  Kyle Chandler won for Best Actor for Friday Night Lights, which is correct, but how he can win and Connie Britton did not demonstrates that this was a pity vote for a show everyone heard was great, but that nobody had actually seen (Chandler and Britton were Voltron, people.  Alone, you could take them, but together, they were awesomely powerful).

And Jim "Hey, I went to high school with that guy" Parsons won an Emmy, too.  So, there you go.

I guess that's all I care about there.

Saturday my Longhorns surprised the living heck out of me by not just beating UCLA, but beating them at home by 29 points, or about four touchdowns.  I had said in the week leading up to the game "if we come within 7, I guess I'll be happy."  But, man, The Horns actually looked shockingly solid out there.  Maybe not as solid as Baylor (or even TAMU), but they looked like a team for the first time since the National Championship about a year and a half back.

We have this crazy-good tail back, Brown, who is my favorite new Longhorn.  And, of course, we've got Marquis Goodwin, Fozzy and DJ Grant.  And, man, its a nice storybook angle that its Case McCoy and Jaxon Shipley out there (and I'll mention Ash, too, because he certainly contributed).

Just a total surprise.  What a fun game.

The Longhorns have a lot of luck in this stadium, it seems

Signal Watch Watches: Drive

By this time you've likely read a good review or two of the recently released Drive.  Don't expect me to contradict those reviews.  Of our party, I believe four out of four participants (all of varying movie tastes) seemed to agree that Drive was a pretty darn good film.

I make jokes about certain movies being to my taste, and, yes, I am more likely to go see movies about superheroes, etc...  But I also like well thought-out, taught crime movies, and Drive is most certainly one of these.  

The movie doesn't just know exactly what it is, its hyper-aware of its roots both narratively and stylistically in the late-70's, early-80's and works both within and marginally outside the framework of those movies.  Perhaps suggesting there are no new stories, it also reaches back to certain elements that those 70's and 80's movies could trace back to Noir, and crime movies like The Big Heat or 1947's Kiss of Death (edit:  upon reflection, I'd be remiss to not mention This Gun for Hire as a sort of primordial influence), wherein the manipulations of criminals and the needs of those outside their worlds get crossed.

Yeah, the driving in the movie is pretty great, but I think its the storyline and performances that sell it.  Its an oddly understated movie for the first half, actually giving you a reason to care - something movies like Too Fast, Too Furious couldn't begin to wrap their mutton heads around, or that the average Jason Statham vehicle misses by a country mile.  

When the violence does erupt, director Nicolas Winding Refn doesn't shy away from the brutality of what's happening.  There's no romanticized "ballet of violence" as we've become accustomed to in most American movies over the last 15 years (nor the "kids playing guns" approach of the Schwarzenegger era).  It could be said to play for shock value if every act of violence didn't just up the stakes of the story and push our lead, played by Gosling, further and further into a corner.

Refn's vision is complete in a way I don't see out of many younger directors these days, with everything from the color of traffic lights telling part of the story to the choice of titles and musical selections winding throughout the film.

The movie clearly cost nowhere near what a Transformers film or even a Fast & Furious franchise installment would set back the studio.  I'm not naive enough to think studios will take note of the narrative success of the film, or to think the marketers have done enough to get the word out that this isn't a standard actioner.  It likely won't kill at the box office.  But you can hope for the best.

The cast is very good, of course.  Ron Perlman, Albert Brooks, Christina Hendricks, Oscar Isaac, and both Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling (whom I'd never seen) were pretty great.

Anyhow, I'm recommending those of you who can deal with some blood in your movies check this one out while its still at the theater. 

Signal Watch Reads: Superboy #1 (DC ReLaunch)

Superboy #1
The Clone
writer - Scott Lobdell
penciller - R.B. Silva
inker - Rob Lean
colorists - The Hories
letterer - Carlos M. Managual
editor - Chris Conroy
cover - Eric Canete with Guy Major
this review is of the print edition, standard cover

Right out of the gate I'll be clear, I quite liked this issue of Superboy.  Its got its faults, and its got its problems, but of what I picked up this week, this is the book that actually surpassed my expectations the most.

I don't follow Scott Lobdell, and knew mostly of his association with Marvel from back in the 1990's (and I think its worth noting that DC's current Editor-in-Chief is Bob Harras, who had the job at Marvel back in the 90's).  Here, he manages to de-couple Superboy's origin from the more familiar Death of Superman/ Reign of the Supermen storyline from the early 90's, and instead cleans up the story a bit, and keeping the focus on the fact that from the first panel, we're talking about a clone.

SW Reads DC's New 52, Week 2 - Part 1

Another week of wandering into Austin Books and finding not just a larger-than-usual crowd, but that demand for these New 52 books is pretty darn high.

I picked up a handful of books this week, including non-DC material, including Mark Waid's Daredevil, which I may talk about separately, because, gosh, the first two issues were pretty good.

I also finally brought home a comic I've had on lay-away at Austin Books, an original printing of Superman vs. Muhammad Ali.   Its one of my Holy Grail comics, so its a little weird to have it in the house after looking for it for about 7 or 8 years.

But, The New 52...

Mr. Terrific #1

Written by Eric Wallace, a regular writer for TV's Eureka, and art by Gianluca Gugliotta (someone I'd never heard of), this was a book I'd been looking forward to based almost entirely upon my love for the character during the previous run on JSA under guys like Geoff Johns.  Terrific's role in Rucka's tragically under-read Checkmate really reinforced what a great character Michael Holt can be mixed in with the usual fisticuffs of comics.  I liked that Terrific was a science-guy, but one that seemed to stand at the back of fights to sort them out rather than building a suit of armor and charging in (we've got that in a lot of other tech-savvy characters).  Sure, Terrific is some brawn, but a lot of brains.

if only the art inside were half this cool...

The comic retains some of the basics of Michael Holt's origin, that he's a genius along the lines of Bruce Wayne or Lex Luthor, but without the (same) baggage.  He lost his wife to a random accident and emerged seeking to make the world better with SCIENCE.  In this version he still likes to build cool gadgets, mostly into his T-spheres. 

Wallace adds several new ideas to the technology and origin that takes Terrific in a slightly different direction (stuff I can support), and gives him a technology company under his belt, which makes sense, but it seems the DCNu is comprised of the Steve Jobs, Larry Pages and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world dressing up in weird outfits and punching each other.

We3 Deluxe Edition Arrived in August (Morrison and Quitely)

I get nervous when I come home and Lucy, Scout and Jeff are all sitting around in their armor.

If you were to tell me that I would one day read a very Rated-R comic book about cyborg house pets armed to the teeth and on the run, written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Frank Quitely (the team behind All Star Superman and Flex Mentallo), I would start wondering exactly how long you'd been scanning my brain while I slept to learns all my hopes and dreams.

But after Morrison fled Marvel back in the mid-00's, he returned to DC/ Vertigo where he went into a creative tornado, spinning out stuff I absolutely loved like Vimanamara.  But more importantly, he and Quitely created We3, likely one of my top ten or so favorite comics.  

August saw the release of a new, Deluxe Edition of We3, which I recently read.  It has more pages than the original collection or issues, fills in a bit more of the story, and it made me cry a little bit again, even if this is at least the 12th time I've read that comic.

Not only is the story terribly heartbreaking, but to me, Quitely is one of the brilliant artists working in any medium right now.  We're just lucky to get him working in comics.  I don't know who designs these pages, but... man.

For such a great package, the We3 book is very reasonably priced.

 U R a Gud Dog

Our Own Nathan C interviews Michael Uslan! Uber-Batman Fan and Bat-Film Producer

Longtime Pal and Signal Corps Founding Member NathanC is at Texas Public Radio in San Antonio. In addition to his regular duties making radio happen, he covers cinema and programs the Summer Cinema series for TPR.

He also does a lot of interviews with film-related folk.  Now Nathan has landed an interview with Michael Uslan!

Uslan is a former comics writer, and is now a producer of Batman movies going back to the 1980's and running up to the upcoming Dark Knight Rises.  Uslan's memoir, The Boy Who Loved Batman, has just arrived, and I'd heard about it via the buzz its gotten on the comics interwebs (people were pretty happy Uslan, who is such a champion for comics and Batman, was chatting a bit).

Its a great interview!  Listen here.

Guest Post: CanadianSimon Takes on The New 52 - Week 2

Its week TWO of DC Comics' relaunch, and CanadianSimon is back with another round-up of reviews!

Simon and I picked up some of the same books, and I'll be talking about some of my goods later this week, but I thought it'd be fun to start off with Simon's $0.02.

I won't bother re-introducing our reviewer, but I would point you to his reviews as offered up last week for more official Trusted Signal Corps Opinions.*

Take it away, Simon!

I'm back again picking up another three of the thirteen books available in the DCnU.


Batwoman #1
written by J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman
pencils by J.H. Williams III

Easily the most beautiful book I've read in awhile. This shows that J.H. Williams has lost none of the magic he showed when he and Greg Rucka worked on the Elegy storyline on Detective Comics. I'm always impressed by how J.H. can shift so effortlessly between art styles using one approach for Batwoman scenes and another for her alter ego Kate Kante. Many of the action scenes have the inspired layouts and panel border designs that you would expect from a J.H. book. As well the colorist Dave Stewart continues his stellar efforts on this title.

Hmmm...looking back on what I just typed "on this title" hits upon my only nitpick of this book. It really reads like the next issue of that aforementioned Detective Comics run. The follow up to that seminal run had been oft delayed until finally they had it line up with the release of DC's New 52. For me, it's not a big deal as I've read what comes before so I wasn't lost but I wonder what it is like for new readers. That's not to say that there aren't a few wonderfully designed info dump pages that try and catch the reader up on things.

Anyway, this is a gorgeous book and a good story and I'll be back again to pick this up next month. Although at some point I might just stop getting this titles as I'll want to own art this beautiful in hard cover format and I don't have the budget to start double dipping.

Demon Knights #1
written by Paul Cornell
pencils by Oclair Albert

I will confess, I'm a sucker for Arthurian mythology. One of the first grown up books I read was Le Morte d'Arthur that my Aunt picked up for me at her job as a university librarian. I've been hooked on Arthur ever since. That said Cornell's Demon Knights is right up my alley and it doesn't disappoint.

The first issue is very much a team assembling piece. We get to see the origin of The Demon/Jason Blood shortly after the death of King Arthur and not long after that we see that Madam Xanadu/Nimue are travelling together. At this point I have to mention the amazing Vertigo series Madame Xanadu by Matt Wagner and Amy Reeder Hadley. 

They stop in a small village which, unknown to them, is about to be over-run by a horde of marauders. At the village they run into the immortal barbarian Vandal Savage and the Shining Knight. One doesn't need to know anything else about these characters but for long time readers it's a neat nod to past continuity. As well we meet 3 other characters, although we only get to see two of their faces.

This is all pointing towards the team having seven members which is not only a magic number but is the right number to draw an analogy to The Seven Soldiers teams of yore of which the Shining Knight was a part of. Again, go get the four volume Seven Soldiers trades written by Grant Morrison.

Anyway, the heroes(?) are assembling and the villains are amassing and I just want to know what happens next!

Frankenstein Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1
written by Jeff Lemire
pencils by Alberto Ponticelli

Once again Jeff Lemire shows that he knows how to write a first issue. There's enough information in here to introduce you to the main and supporting characters but not too much to get in the way of the action. Personally I love the one off reference to a vacation on Mars that Frankenstein talks about which in itself is an oblique reference to the Frankenstein Seven Soldiers stories written by Grant Morrison that I've already mentioned.

But I have a problem with this issue and it's the art. After being treated to a great cover by JG Jones we get interiors by Alberto Ponticelli. I'm not at all familiar with Mr. Ponticelli's previous comic work but I find these pencils to be rough, too rough in fact. I keep thinking that maybe a different inker could have cleaned them up a bit more but what do I know. I mostly read comics for the stories these days but bad art can take me out of my happy place and while I wouldn't want to call this bad it certainly knocked me out of the zone.

I've checked the solicits and Ponticelli is down as penciller for issues 2 and 3. That's going to make my decision very difficult if I keep up with this book as I love Lemire and I love this concept but I just don't love this art.

*If you're interested in offering up your own reviews, don't hesitate to contact us and let us know!