It’s been a pretty interesting week, despite everything.

First off, as you must know by now, my beloved Tennessee Titans were defeated in their first-round playoff game by my similarly beloved San Diego Chargers.  And look, I know what you’re thinking.  But it’s not true.  I did root—passionately—for the Titans.  I’m not jumping off the bandwagon here.  I’m probably the only man in America who actually thought Vince Young played a decent game against the Chargers, especially considering that two of his top three receivers and his two most veteran offensive linemen were out.  And more to the point, it’s certainly not his fault that the Titans’ secondary broke down, just as it isn’t his fault that RB Chris Brown once again fumbled on the opponent’s 9-yard-line in a critical game.  In fact, I thought VY did a very nice job of taking care of the ball against a very stingy Chargers’ Defense.  His one interception was in garbage time when his team was down by two scores plus a two-point conversion; it happened because he had to take chances trying to make something happen.  The same thing used to happen to Peyton Manning early in his career, if you can remember back that far.  I mean, look, any second year QB is going to be hard-pressed to win a game for a team that’s got both a lot of youth and a lot of injuries, and Young is no exception.  Perhaps Manning or Tom Brady could have handled SD’s blitzing defense in the second half, but both those guys have got significantly more experience and better receivers.  For Young to succeed, he needed his offensive line to give him more time, and he needed his Offensive Coordinator to make some better adjustments to the Chargers’ second half execution.  In fact, the lack of offensive adjustments has been an issue all year.  The Titans have just not been able to find new wrinkles against good teams in the second half of games. 

Yes, it’s frustrating, but at least the Titans made the playoffs.  Granted that looked like a gimme early in the season, but after Young, Haynesworth, and Chris Hope all got injured, the team went on an awful three-game skid, and the playoffs started looking like a kind of a pipe-dream.  Hey, that shit can happen.  Just ask the Detroit Lions.

At any rate, Coach Jeff Fisher has vowed to fix his offense although the Titans have a terrible history of developing wide receivers, but at this point I think we have to take him at his word.  He vowed to fix the Defense last year, and he did it, even in the face of a plague of late-season injuries.  If he says this next year is the year they get the Offense on track, well at least he has the track record to back up his talk.

Meanwhile, my #14 Dan Foutts jersey is clean, pressed, and ready for this weekend’s game against the Colts.  And yeah, I know the Chargers are gonna be underdogs, but QB Philip Rivers actually looked good against the Titans, and I think the Titans have both a better pass rush and a better secondary than do the Colts.  Of course, the Colts’ offense is nothing to sneeze at where the Titans Offense is a joke, but still... if SD can get Ladainian Tomlinson untracked and then get some pressure on Manning… well, it is possible to beat the Colts.  After all, the Bolts forced no less than six turnovers from Manning in the teams’ first meeting.  And they won, too, even if it took a missed chip-shot field goal from the Colt’s kicker to make that happen.

Fortunately, they don’t count “almosts” in the NFL.

 

Zipper #3

Written by: Tom Waltz

Illustrated by: Casey Mahoney

Published by: IDW, 32 pages for $3.99

IDW’s new series Zipper just keeps zipping right along, getting better as it goes.  The third issue is by far the most action-packed and violent, getting at last beyond the story’s initial set-up and into the real meat of the basic plot.  Our hero, Denizen Xeng Ral (aka Zipper) is in a bad way.  Lost in downtown Detroit and wanted by police, a cult-like quasi-religious private army, and his own people’s dreaded Enforcers, the time has come for Xeng either kick ass or run like Hell.  And while that might not be so great for Xeng, it’s pretty cool for us as readers.

In general, I’ve found Zipper to be a well-written, well-dialogued book, but in issue #3 it’s all about Casey Mahoney’s art.  There are any number of gorgeous splash pages and smashing take-downs.  There’s also a fairly large collection of whips, chains, and bloody severed limbs.  All the good stuff.  The whole issue is a big-old eye-popping spectacle of violence of the kind that you can only ever find in comics.  And it’s cool for that, both because it’s energetic and because, being a cartoon, it doesn’t make us want to puke our guts out.  It’s fun, gory stuff with a strong S&M influence on the culture of the work, and I dug it the most. 

Like a lot of the stuff coming out of the Gene Simmons school of comics right now, Zipper has an underlying pain-for-pleasure sexuality that adventurous adult readers shouldn’t fear.  It can’t all be sweetness and light out there, and I say, “Thank God” for that.  Zipper—and a lot of the other Simmons comics—gives us a chance to walk on the wild side and while keeping it really wild.  That’s a good thing.  Science fiction should challenge and this does.  I mean, jeez, it doesn’t ALWAYS have to be a Hero’s Journey, you know?

Once again, I recommend Zipper strongly to sci fi fans looking for something new.  This book isn’t some rehashed boilerplate licensed property.  It’s a thinking, feeling, challenging work, even when it’s mostly action.  After all, the action only works because it’s been set-up with solid storytelling.  And it’s got terrific art.  If that doesn’t sell you, then hey, I don’t know what to say.

 

Stray Voltage

The other interesting thing that happened this week was the beginning of the primary season.  I mean, yeah, the Iowa and Wyoming caucuses were a bit earlier, but though the Iowa contest is often heavily covered, the state itself has a poor track record of picking Presidential nominees.  Still, what happened in Iowa was important, mostly for what didn’t happen.  Which is to say that neither of the acknowledged front-runners won in Iowa.  That left both the Romney and the Clinton campaigns in a bit of a tail-spin.  Both had essentially adopted a strategy predicated on momentum, with the idea being that they’d look like “winners” coming out of the initial nominating contests and therefore appear to be more electable than their rivals.  This would then bring in more voters in the later states while beating down those more likely to vote against them—or not vote at all.  But that strategy was relied on actually winning in Iowa and in New Hampshire, and neither former front-runner did both.  In fact, Romney didn’t win either contest despite the fact that he outspent his rivals by a HUGE margin.  Clinton, meanwhile, pulled what most pundits thought was a shocking upset in NH—not withstanding the fact that she’d been ahead in NH for months before the Obama campaign picked up momentum out of Iowa.  All of which means that for the first time in a long time, we have a real contest for both major party nominations.  And I could hardly be more excited about it.

For the first time in a long time, we’ve actually got a contest where folks are voting for the candidate that they actually WANT to win.  Gone are the days when John Kerry garnered the Democratic nomination because, well, most Dems thought he was the only one from their party with a real shot in the General Election.  Today’s voters are instead voting with their hearts, perhaps because they’re inspired by the message of Barack Obama and perhaps because they’re just so fucking fed up with the bullshit that they can’t stand it anymore.  Whatever the case, the idea of Americans voting with their hearts and not in response to the zillion-and-two opinion polls and bullshit spinners out there is a pretty great thing.  It’s also one of the only things that could reasonably be expected to deliver real, meaningful change to this nation that so sorely needs it.  Is it possible that the cynicism and pork-barrel self-interest of today’s modern “leaders” has actually moved America?

It seems like it might be.

This year’s primary season is coming together as a battle royal for the heart, soul, and future of the two major political parties.  In each party we have major front-running candidates who represent some form of the existing status quo, and in both parties we have a plucky upstart standing up to the traditional party interests and sounding off in real terms about the need for something fucking different.  On the Democratic side, it seems that for Ms. Clinton, it’s finally time to pay the piper for all those confused sounding sound-bytes about how she abhors the war while supporting it and how she wants to bring the troops home but not in any way that’s meaningfully different than what’s already going on with the party in power.

And, you know, I’m with the kids on this one: FUCK THAT! 

It’s not too much to ask for your leaders to take a stand.  I don’t agree with everything that Obama stands for—in fact, I actually agree with fairly little that he stands for—but at least the man stands for SOMETHING.  I can get behind that, whatever it is, a whole Hell of a lot easier than I can get behind another helping of the traditional, help-yourself bullshit.  This country needs another eight years of Clinton Presidency like it needs a hole in the head.  I won’t be voting Democratic this year, but if I was, I’d vote for Obama because the man at least stands up for beliefs consistently.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is a mess, but it’s a mess in a good way.  We have, for once, got one of everything with no duplicates.  We’ve got a real Southern Baptist preacher, a straight-up soul-sucking moneyman, a socially liberal mayor who hates Crime, Commies, and Terror with equal abandon, and a war hero who’s in favor of finally admitting that the country’s economy is actually dependent on cheap immigrant labor.  In other words, there’s something there for every traditional wing of the Party with the choices existing in such a way as to redefine the party itself at the end of the nomination process.  I dig that selection, but more to the point, I dig the fact that the selection process may finally break the back of the evangelical political alliance that hijacked the Republican Party when GW Bush used it to put himself into office.  Because we’ve come a long way from what I was raised to believe “conservative” was, and personally, I’m about ready to get back to the classic definition.  Win or lose, I think this primary season will accomplish that purpose.

Or maybe I’m just happy that McCain seems to have a chance again, long months after I’d given him up for dead.  And I say that as a guy who’s recently come to realize that I shouldn’t ever have abandoned my candidate just because I didn’t think he could win, and I’m sorry that it took a Democrat to convince me of that simple truth.  But at least he, and his supporters, did it.

And so I leave you with my by now obvious prediction for the coming General Election: McCain vs. Obama, easily the best two contenders in the field.  Two totally different candidates who at least seem to stand on their principles.  Hoowah!  Who’d have thought that could happen?

 

And that’s about all I got.  I forgot my coffee this morning, so honestly, you’re lucky you got this much.

Have a great weekend!

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Dan Head is a utilities analyst and occasional freelance writer.  You can learn more about him and his work on his ComicSpace Page or by visiting the Friday Mad Science forum at AwesomeStormJustice.com.  His graphic novel Bronx Angel: Politics By Another Method is now available at WOWIO.com, courtesy of Dakuwaka.

To get your comic reviewed here, email Dan at dan@paperbackreader.com.