Always expect the unexpected…

Look!

A new post by Cinlach, and his last one was simply a picture of his old desk at his old job and he was standing on the cusp of embarking on a new career. That means his next post will be about his new job and all that. Right?

Wrong.

Who wants to be predictable? “Not I”, said the Cinlach.

So instead, here’s a list of my weekly comic purchases…

Nova #14

I bought the first issue and really loved it, unfortunately the next couple of issues sold out due to being underprinted, which is a common occurance in the comics world. As I was kicking around HeroesCon in Charlotte last weekend I happened upon some issues for $1 each and bought them. The series was only up to #14 and so I finally finished up my missing issues and read the whole run last night…it’s pretty fucking good. I’ve always loved Nova…he’s had three other series before this one…so seeing him basically be one of the baddest motherfuckers in the Galaxy is geek bliss for me.

Thor: Reign of Blood #1

Holy shit. I’m digging this Matt Fraction dude quite a bit. This isn’t really the Thor we know and love due to a story convention that’d just take WAY to long to explain here. Essentially this is a story about how much shit the Asgardians don’t take from anyone. The queen of the Frost Giants comes to Odin and demands Odin grant her a gift as part of reparations for an affront Odin did to her. The Asgardian smiths present a broadsword second only to Thor’s enchated hammer. So Odin takes the sword and chops the bitch in half when she shows up to collect her “gift”. So the lesson here is don’t fuck with Odin, he doesn’t like it.

1985 #2

I don’t even know where to begin. It’s awesome. The Marvel Universe invades the real world as a young boy named Toby discovers that the new owner of an old mansion near his house appears to be Doctor Doom. Other “fictional” Marvel characters start popping up all over the place and it’s all capped by Toby happening up on a Hulk/Juggernaut fight in the forest near the mansion. This is the second coming of Marvels…mark my words.

Mighty Avengers #15

So we finally find out how those dirty shape-shifting Skrull fuckers are taking over by assuming the identities of the Marvel heroes. More importantly, we know how long it’s been going on. So guys like Hank Pym and Jessica Drew have only been Skrulls for a couple of years and not decades like we were all dreading. John Romita Jr. guests on this issue so you know it’s gotta rock hard.

New Avengers #42

See description above only the art on this issue is by the amazing Jim Cheung. This guy should be a fucking superstar…why isn’t he?

Invicible #49, 50, Universe Primer #1

At HeroesCon I was fortunate enough to score essentially the entire Invincible run thanks to the amazing generosity of the writer, Robert Kirkman. He gave me the Invincible trades #1-4, and 6 along with Walking Dead #3 and 5 (which are collected editions of the original books for those of you not in the know) and I’m completely hooked. I worked my way through the trades over the last week and I know I’m buying this book even though I’ve not read up to the point where #49 picks up.

Also, speaking of HeroesCon, I’m going to list the issues I picked up out of 3 for $1 bins just so you’ll all know exactly how big a loser I really am…

• Amazing Spider-Man #183, 189, 190
• Avengers #227, 230, 236, 237, 241, 243, 245, 247, 249, 250, 251, 263, 270, 271, 272, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 319
• Captain Marvel #32, 48, 49, 59, 60, 61
• The Comet #2, 5, 6, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16
• Crucible #5, 6
• The Defenders #40, 44, 47, 48, 56, 57, 59, 68, 71, 72, 93, 94, 97, 98
• The Fly #2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 13, 14, 16
• The Jaguar #1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14
• Legend of the Shield #2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16
• Marvel Premiere #33 (Solomon Kane bitches!!)
• Marvel Universe I #7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
• The Micronauts I #31
• The Micronauts II #4
• Moon Knight II #3
• Nexus #22
• Nova I #19
• Scout #3, 5, 6
• Scout: War Shaman #5
• Squadron Supreme #1, 2, 5
• War Dancer #4, 6
• Uncanny X-Men #176, 281, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 291
• X-Men & Alpha Flight #1
• X-Men & The Micronauts #2

And finally…my proudest acquistion of the day

• DC Special Series #27…Batman vs. The Hulk…$8

One Picture, Two Words…

Something I’m NOT going to miss about my old job…

I’m not going to miss the fact that working in this office in the summertime is like spending 9 hours slaving away in the Devil’s nutsack.

I shit you not, I fully expect to see Kathy Lee Gifford any day now, bringing in a load of 10 year old Indonesian children and forcing them to make tennis shoes for 17 cents an hour for Nike and Adidas.

For me to sit here and say that the air-conditioner units in that office “don’t work” would be tantamount to me saying that Communism “might have a couple of problems”.

I feel safe in assuming that whoever it was responsible for the installation of the HVAC units was not Bob Villa, nor was it Norm Abrhams. I suspect that it could’ve possibly been people who weren’t even HVAC technicians in any sense of the concept at all.

See it’s like this…unless someone drains the excess water out of the catch pans almost daily, the units will either shut off or freeze up to such an extent that they cease to work at all. Whichever one the units choose to do, it’s not producing what anyone would be able to call pleasant working environment.

So when it’s 100 degrees outside, and the fucking air conditioners stop working at 8am, it kinda makes things pretty fucking uncomfortable right about 2pm through until the end of the day.

Luckily for us (??) that means we’ll be here until 5:30 or 6pm tonight because God knows we need to push and work as hard as possible for virtually no reason whatsoever. I wish I was kidding, but sadly I’m not.

As of this writing, I’m literally teetering on the edge of just clocking the fuck out and sitting in the only cool place left in the building (and by cool I mean sub-80 degrees) which is the break room.

Of course the only problem with that is that I’ve still got about another 3 and a half hours until Sappy Chick gets done, and since our office is run like a kindergarten, the excessively large and unnecessary 42 inch Plasma HDTVs that our former President just had to have installed, are now sitting completely unused because no one was willing to simply say what was and wasn’t acceptable to watch on them. So instead of adding those guidelines, the decision was made to turn them off entirely.

So yeah, there’s nothing quite as humorous as watching a company spend 6 to 8 grand on TV’s only to decide that they can’t be bothered with monitoring them and deciding what’s kosher to view and what isn’t.

I mean, just turning them off entirely and wasting that significant investment is an infinitely wiser decision…right?

So if I do decide to finally just say, “Fuck it.” and head for the safety of the break room then I won’t have anything to do except sit there and look at those ridiculously expensive TV’s that I can’t turn on.

So anyway, while I sit here and sweat like some San Salvadorian sweat shop worker, I dream of the day when I’ll have a climate controlled work environment.

I may be nervous about my new vocation, but I’m anything but dreading getting to it already.

Surely my new office will have air-conditioners that weren’t salvaged from a junkyard and hobbled together like they belonged more in a Mad Max post-apocalyptic feature then a “professional” corporate environment.

Because if they don’t then I think I’m going to grow my hair and beard and disappear into the woods to live as a hermit. Because if I’m going to be hot and uncomfortable all day long then I damn sure don’t plan on putting up with the amount of bullshit I do on a regular basis.

I’ve seen Grizzly Adams on TV…I can totally make it work.