Also, That Frostbite Gag Went a Little Too Far into Gag Territory

I met a writer @ the Barham Gate picket last week who's working on some stuff for "The Red Star" comic book. I had never heard of "The Red Star," but the phrase "industrial magic" had me intrigued.

I got the first volume, issues 1-9, for Christmas, and bought the first half of volume 2 yesterday. And it is very, very good. It's a re-imagining of the 20th century if sorcery had been part of the industrial revolution. (I'm guessing that's the back story. I don't really know.)

It opens with a beautiful young Soviet officer (a Sorceress Major) named Maya, riding the cemetery train out to visit the grave of her husband Marcus, who died nine years ago in the state's crushing defeat in Al'istaan. It's Russia, and Afghanistan, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, only utterly different. And utterly delicious.

If I have one complaint, it's that the first installment opens with one brilliant wow idea, and then fails to really deliver on the promise of that idea. But it's still extremely inventive and awesome. Just not as awesome as the first 10 pages would have you believe.

Speaking of things that are not as awesome as the first 10 pages would have you believe: "Pirates of the Caribbean" is dead to me. I don't watch movies so I can walk out wondering how it will all end up. I watch moves so I KNOW how it all ends up. Suspense and cliffhangers are for television and the second installments of trilogies, dudes.

Boo to that. And also boo to picking Orlando Bloom over Johnny Depp. Although about an hour in, I did think "Orlando Bloom is the Cary Elwes of 2007" and by the third act, he showed up in full on Dread Pirate Roberts gear, down to the black head scarf.

(There are also a handful of dreadful anti-feminist implications in the final half hour of "Pirates of the Caribbean 3," which I will not touch with a ten foot pole. If you manage to write Keira Knightly into some kind of bad ass pirate queen role, and then leave her half naked in a dress on a beach, anything I might say on the subject would be wasted on you.)