"Can we take the tree down?" my wife asks me as I'm pulling myself bleary eyed out of bed and looking for something to wear. "I've already decided to do it, but I thought I should ask you so you can feel included in the decision," she says.
*sigh*
And with that, events were set in motion to officially end the Holiday Season at my house, culminating in the tree, and all the other decorations, coming down and getting shoved into the basement until another Christmas is upon us.
My wife isn't usually this eager to get see the tree and all other telltale signs of Christmas disappear - the tree alone normally stays up until just after New Years. Keeping all the stuff up helps make the house more decorative and cheery as you coast into the great shiny unknown of the new year, not to mention keeping the kids happy until they finally go back to school. I'm sure if they had their way they would wait until April to take the darn thing down - clear it out before the Easter Bunny shows up so as not to confuse him or some such nonsense.
Still, I think there was probably something cathartic in it for her to just end the whole shebang here and now. It's been a long and somewhat difficult year for us, and the constant rush of Christmas has been positively exhausting - especially for her. I seem to recall her saying something to the effect of, "I just want it done," so I don't think I'm too far off in my guesstimation.
Christmas takes its toll...
As for me, I didn't look too different from that after reading what I think was about 600 pages of Daredevil comics last night. I ploughed through about 30-odd issues of the Marvel Knights run covering the Kevin Smith, David Mack, Bob Gale and Brian Michael Bendis penned issues.
With the exception of Smith's 8-issue run and Bob Gale's "Matt Murdock has to sue Daredevil" storyline, I found that I enjoyed a great deal of what has been done on the title - at least up to issue #50, anyways. I know it's heresy not to proclaim the greatness of Kevin Smith from on high, but it's really been a while since I've read a story that seems quite so...forced. Everything from the title - "Guardian Devil" - to the death of Karen Page and Bullseye coming back to kill another of DD's girlfriends, the book seemed to be following a connect-the-dots kind of formula of how to move through a comic book plot.
The series, in general, seems to click best when in the hands of guys like Mack and Bendis, and illustrated by Maleev, Mack and Quesada (on the Mack stuff, not the Smith issues) - althogh Dave Ross did a decent 2-issue fill-in and Terry Dodson rarely makes a fool of himself, with his one issue here being no exception. I may check in on DD again in the future if there's more of the same or better.
'Til next time...
mike
No comments:
Post a Comment