Friends, Followers, Fellow-Travellers:

NOTE

There is a winter storm bearing down on me right now, but the weather hasn’t turned yet and people are making jokes about it. If I don’t lose power, we are going to have a lot of fun here tomorrow. But I have to prepare for the possibility that I might lose power, so I am going into my workshop, and since I have not mastered the art of bilocation yet, that means I am going dark. Here is what I am doing in my workshop, just in case you are interested.

1. Writing a message to everyone who is interested in working together to keep this conversation we’re having about mass surveillance going.
2. Editing stuff and finding shareable art for a really cool Batman post from Jeremy on Wednesday, and possibly a Game of Thrones post as well.
3. Thinking about what I can do to wrap up Zero to Hero (it’s almost over, and it has been worth it.)
4. Isildur, dammit.
5. Finishing all this stuff up, storing it on WordPress servers, and programming my robot minions to post it in my absence, just in case my power goes out.
6. Other things I’ve left out.

Don’t be concerned about my person. I have plenty of crackers and blankets, and a lovely wife who will eventually be joining us here. I will be fine. I just want you to know that there are only two reasons this blog is going silent for more than 12 hours: hardware failure, or an act of god.

Surprise Post!

I’m just going to put this here, because you need to see it, and so does everyone else. The Monster will be participating in this event, and I hope others of you will join in.

5 Classic Marvel runs since 2000

By Jeremy DeFatta

(These are in No Particular Order)

Daredevil – Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, and various other artists

I have to say, I love it when the perfect character, writer, and penciler are united on a title. A great example of that is the Bendis/Maleev run on Daredevil. Say what you will about Bendis’s recent work; this may have actually been his prime. This also has some wonderful thematic crossovers with the other titles he was working on for Marvel at the time, namely New Avengers, Alias, and The Pulse. If you’re a big Matt Murdock fan like me, this is a must-read period in the character’s history. While I love Waid and Samnee’s current run on the character, this is a much darker and grittier version of Daredevil whose darkness and grittiness won’t make you roll your eyes in disgust.

Astonishing X-Men – Joss Whedon and John Cassaday

Not long after the idiotic cancellation of Firefly but years before Marvel entrusted the fate of their entire Cinematic Universe to him, Whedon had a roughly four year run on an X-Men title. I have to say, if you haven’t read it, you should. It is a work of genius with great character moments, the usual smattering of witty Whedon dialog, and great casting choices. With a team including Cyclops, Wolverine, Beast, Emma Frost, Kitty Pride, and Colossus, how can you go wrong? This is definitely worth a read and will make you wonder what else Whedon could do with the characters Marvel no longer has movie rights to.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the #NSA (#privacyisaright #stopthensa #wordpress)

Something happened to me over the weekend. I came home Friday with the idea of editing some posts about comics and movies, writing one of my own called “Isildur’s Bane,” scheduling a few videos, and taking most of the weekend off.

Ten minutes after I arrived home, The Pirate Org derailed that plan.

I found this in my Twitter feed:

Oh, look what's coming! This is going to be interesting. pic.twitter.com/GrcJRlTNRp

— The Pirate Org (@PirateOrg) January 24, 2014

Of course I had to look into it. Despite my best efforts to stick to books and videos, I have strong political views. I care about the human rights and civil liberties of real, actual people. I quickly decided this was something I couldn’t pass up. I debated whether to support The Day We Fight Back personally on Facebook and Twitter, or whether to blog about it here.

To make a long story short, I did some research. I posted about the Feb. 11 event and proposed a Thunderclap (if you don’t know what that is, see this page ). I didn’t get the support I needed to set up the Thunderclap, but I had some good conversations.