RIP Sal Buscema

Just read the news that comics artist Sal Buscema passed away last week at the age of 89. I might not have remarked on it, if I hadn't been revisiting some of his work in the last few weeks - I just wrapped up a long-awaited read-through of Walter Simonson's run on Thor from the 80s, the last half of which Buscema drew. Reading it, I was reminded of Buscema's classic style, which I recall from reading books like Spectacular Spider-Man back in the 90s.

As some of the posts I saw noted, Buscema was one of the last remaining creators who were present in the early years of what we now know as Marvel comics. In addition to his long run on Spectacular Spider-Man, he also drew the Incredible Hulk for ten years, and I'm sure I've come across his work elsewhere. He was also the younger brother of John Buscema, who's associated with formative runs of so many Marvel characters - but ironically, I feel like I've encountered more of Sal's work over the years.

The timing is sadly ironic, because his work on Thor reminded me what a good artist he was, and I found myself considering reading Spectacular Spider-Man just to see his run on the book - I'd even looked him up on Wikipedia a week or two ago to find out what else he'd done. I'll definitely read Spectacular Spidey now - and looking again at his body of work, it looks like I have extensive runs on Daredevil and the Avengers, among others, to look forward to.

My condolences to his family and coworkers, and all the fans - it's sad to see one of the old pros go.

Blue Lights May Be My New Favorite Brit-Cop Show

I just finished Series 3 of Blue Lights, and wow, wow, wow.

It wasn't even on my radar until fairly recently. I'd watched the first series of Line of Duty a couple of years ago on Hulu, and then wasn't able to get back to it until last year, when I knocked out Series 2 through 4 in short order and Series 5 when I got to the UK last July. When I discovered that Hulu here didn't have Series 6, I started considering taking a subscription to BritBox, reasoning that paying $11 to watch a full season of a show is completely fair.

Then at some point I read about Blue Lights, and was intrigued. So when I finally found the time to subscribe to BritBox (back in November, when it was offering two months for $6 rather than the usual $11), I finished Line of Duty and then went looking for Blue Lights. And I was hooked from the start.

The best I can say about it is that it's like the UK's version of the Wire, which is my absolute favorite TV show ever. It starts with following the cops, but expands to spend more time following the criminals as well, with investigations that expand from the first series through to the third. However, like the Wire, it's as much a profile of a city as it is a police procedural.

Series 2 expands from Series 1's investigation of a former Republican turned gang leader to look not only at the loyalist gangs of Belfast, but also the effects that the post-pandemic cost-of-living crisis, plus a decade and a half of Tory austerity, have had on the city's neighborhoods. The first image of Series 2 has two of the protagonists answering a call about a homeless man's overdose death - and it soon becomes clear that he was killed both by the drugs sold by the ongoing antagonists and by society's indifference and powerlessness in response to the ongoing and overlapping crises.

Series 3 is a little weaker in some ways, but still compelling TV. It's meant to look at how criminality has infected the higher levels of society, but I didn't feel like it delved into those characters' inner worlds as well as the first two seasons did with the Republican and Loyalist neighborhoods. In part that's because they're engaged in varying levels of child exploitation and abuse, which makes it pretty impossible to make them someone you want to watch, let alone root for. But none of the villains in Series 3 are as good as Series 2's main antagonist Lee Thompson, who's at once clearly a criminal but also disposed to see himself as a key part of his community.

That said, the final episode has a nice sting in the tail when Series 1's Tina McIntyre faces the Dublin gangsters she's been propping up since her husband and son went to prison. I don't know if it sets anything up for Series 4, but it was a satisfying ending to the show so far.

All of this means that I'll now have two reasons to subscribe to BritBox again down the line - the BBC has commissioned Series 4 of Blue Lights and Series 7 of Line of Duty, so I'll be keeping an eye out for those. I've cancelled my subscription in the meantime to save a bit of cash and not feel like I have to watch yet another streamer regularly, but again, paying $11 for a month in which to watch a full season of either show, plus whatever other Brit-delights I can fit in (the Responder! Silent Witness! Wire in the Blood! Rebus! The New Statesman!), is completely worth it.

The bottom line, though, is that I can't recommend Blue Lights highly enough - even if you might need subtitles to cope with all the Belfast accents.

10 Years of This Shit

Funnily enough, the title of this post isn't precisely, or only, referring to the political stuff. 2016 was the first in this current sequence of terrible, terrible years, and it started off with a bang when I logged into the AV Club and learned that David Bowie had died. I was reminded of that when I started seeing think pieces, on Facebook and on the Guardian, among other places, marking that anniversary. And these have been followed by 10-year tributes for Alan Rickman, which means we're going to get to relive the Great Celebrity Die-Off of 2016.

So I wanted to get out ahead of all that, and just note, in among all the horrible shit going on in Minneapolis and Alligator Alcatraz and Greenland and Ukraine and Venezuela, that we're going to be reminded of how awful that felt back in 2016. And the worst part is, that all began in January 2016 and went through the whole year, until we got treated to Brexit and Donald Trump's first election win.

I was also thinking about the good things from that year, of which there were few, but a couple did spring to mind. One was, of course, Leicester City's Premier League title, which remains one of the greatest sporting fairy tales I've witnessed. They had a good few years after that, even though they sacked Claudio Ranieri as manager the following season, but then they had an ever worse set of seasons until they were relegated a couple of times. Sic transit gloria.

The other good things that I remember from 2016 are in the dating realm, where I went on four dates with someone and even smooched her a couple of times, the first since I'd moved back from London. I also got a mini-raise that year, also my first since London, although the following year I learned just how grossly I was being underpaid by my company.

Anyway, this post isn't about me. It's more about solidarity: we're going to be seeing a lot of commemorations of ten years of All This Shit, even as All This Shit burns down even more intensely around us than it did then. Take a break from social media and the news as needed, and set boundaries so that people don't bring that kind of thing up as a way of making small talk (I have people in my family who do this). As shit as it all is, and as shit as it's all likely to remain for a while, we'll get through it as long as we take care of ourselves and of each other.

Thoughts on Pluribus

It's been a while since I finished Pluribus, about a week or so, but I wanted to set down some thoughts on it while the show was still relatively fresh in mind. The TLDR is that I really liked it, more than Breaking Bad and more than what I've seen so far of Better Call Saul, although I've still only seen one season of Saul. I'm looking forward to seeing where Pluribus goes next, but to discuss that, I'll have to engage in some SPOILERS, so proceed with caution after the jump.