So, watcha been doin'?

I listen and read...here's what...

I've mentioned - earlier this week - my respect for Bob Seger, and it came up because I'd checked out Bob Seger's Greatest Hits. I've never considered buying a full Seger album, but there are enough Seger songs on classic rock radio that I enjoy, so I gave a run through his best of.

I was surprised to find that a half dozen songs - "Mainstreet", "Old Time Rock & Roll", "Hollywood Nights", "Turn the Page", and "Night Moves" - all made their way into the iTunes roster.

The rest of the collection is decent enough - with the lone exception of a disconcerting cover of "C'est La Vie" which is just different enough from the one on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack to be bothersome - and it's a quality best of - hitting the high points for casual fans like me - from a Hall of Very Gooder.

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I had some cash sitting in my PayPal account - thanks to payments from the fantasy baseball leaguers - and blew it on a few things at Barnes & Noble online. The first thing I popped into the DVD player was the straight-to-DVD Justice League: New Frontier, based on the two-volume collection from a half dozen years back.

The movie is a fairly true-to-the-tale adaptation of the mini-series, and that's both blessing and curse. The art style is impressive but largely a carbon-copy of the graphic novel. The storyline begins imaginatively, telling a tale of the silver-age DC heroes getting together for the first time - Martian Manhunter coming to Earth, Hal Jordan finding the power ring, Wally West stepping up from local hero to world savior - in the era of JFK's 'new frontier' speech.

But the story doesn't turn out to be anything more interesting than any of a dozen other justice-league-saves-the-world tales, and much of the nostalgic feel of the print version seemed lost in the translation to big screen in spite of the amazing voice talent assembled for the project.

The mini series began interestingly and finished in the crapper.

The movie started out spectacularly - the opening credits are a triumph of wordless storytelling - but the rest of the film (official website here but beware of automatically playing sound) stunk after that.

Check this review for more spot-on details.

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The most enjoyable of the One Year Later storylines - or at least the most enjoyable of the ones that my library carries - continues here as Selina has to deal with the consequences of her choice to return to the heroing life while trying to take care of a baby. Apparently every one of Selina's foes can figure out where the baby lives because they all seem to show up at her apartment and threaten the bonny wee bairn.

The first half of the Catwoman Dies trade deals with the seemingly-final dispensation of replacement Catwoman Holly something-or-other. She's clearly a second-rate hero - or at best rookie, and Selina comes to realize that she has to be the one to step off the rooftop and take the heat if any good is going to be accomplished in the East End of Gotham. In the process, Selina has to look at the danger that she is putting her daughter in.

The second half is a tie-in to Amazons Attack that actually does a nice job of continuing the theme of threatened Catwoman-spawn as Selina goes undercover to fight the Amazons at Batman's request. By the end of the volume, Selina finds herself making a pretty emotional decision and just avoiding a different one.

The majority of the volume is action-packed and well written. The last issue, however, is entirely emotion and soul-searching and even more well-written as Selina calls on Zatana to help her in time of need.

Will Pfeiffer's run on Catwoman is standing up more and more strongly against the rest of the DC Universe, and this is a run to be read.

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I'm four volumes into Runaways in Marvel's Tsunami/Marvel Age imprint aimed at teens, and I'm devouring each successive volume with more and more gusto.

Telling the tale of a half dozen teen and pre-teen children who - in the first issue - find out that they're the children of a clandestine super villian cabal, Runaways is a perfect read for the teen crowd (check the librarian recommendations) and is engaging enough that I'm enjoying the heck out of it, too.

The kids spend the first volume figuring out what to do with their powers and just how to become the titular Runaways from their parents. In the process, they find that they're a lot more competent with those new-found powers than they thought they might be.

From there, main writer Brian K Vaughn (yeah, Ex Machina, Pride of Baghdad, and Y - which I've barely begun - I think we may have a new king of the four-color) manages to tell both an excellent teen tale - with the requisite alienation, flirtatious romance, mood swings, and goofy moments - and an excellent rookie super hero tale as the un-officially-named groups figures out whether to go with costumes or not, to fight crime or just call in the authorities, and even make connections with the rest of the Marvel Universe proper - the Avengers and Cloak and Dagger make appearances.

This - along with the aforementioned Superman: Secret Identity - are the best gateway drugs to get folks hooked on the comic world.

Amazing stories, great characters, wonderfully rounded moments...this series feels too small and human to be any sort of comic book classic, but it's worthy of being called one.

Pick it up with all reasonable haste.

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I hadn't read any of the unweidlyly-titled Tales of the Multiverse: Batman - Vampire in their original three collections - Red Rain, Crimson Mist, or Bloodstorm, so I went into this one entirely fresh and virginal in the ways of vampire Batman.

And now I just feel dirty.

The book sucks.

The first one sucks a little. The second one ups the ante with art that's less realistic, more cartoon-horrofic, and generally stupider. The third one is the worst of the lot - loads of Batvampire exposition and killing of pretty much everybody that Batmampire sort of dementedly cares for.

And the reading of the three volumes together, instead of making for a richer experience, makes it that much more obvious of how much the second two volumes are just lame repeats of the not-so-good first volume.

Put a stake through the heart of this one and cut off its head, folks, lest it return from the dead.

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Bleh to Superman: 3-2-1 Action.

Blech to Jimmy Olsen getting superpowers (amazingly similar to those in the old Silver Age volumes) and to him learning who Superman really is ('cause it won't last and somehow Supes will have to use his Superman Mind Wipe ear wax to clear it up).

Bleh to the lead ins to the Final Crisis and the New Gods returning to the forefront of the DCU.

Bleh to the artwork in this collection - actually, that's too good.

Blech to the artwork.

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Yeah to finally owning Orlando, a film that I saw twice a dozen and a half years ago but hadn't been able to track down since then.

The movie holds up, to me, at least, upon rewatching after a lengthy hiatus, however, and that's good news.

The film is a perfect vehicle for Tilda Swinton as she gets to play an androgynous person who - on the cursing of a queen - lives for hundreds of years, switching genders once and seeing the entire world change before him/her in those years.

The soundtrack is one of my favorites of all time, perfectly echoing the action as well as being sung by Jimmy Sommerville in a high falsetto voice that make him, again, echo the theme of androgyny throughout the film.

Excellent, underrated gem...

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And then there was Ironman...but this post is long enough as is...