4.5 Razors

Community – Queer Studies and Advanced Waxing

  • Title: Community – Queer Studies and Advanced Waxing
  • wiki: link

Community - Queer Studies and Advanced Waxing

The Sixth Season of Community hits the trifecta with an episode featuring three storylines you could only expect to find at Greendale Community College. After the school board’s plan of cancelling the gay pride parade backfires, Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) is offered a seat on the board as long as he promotes his homosexuality. Remarking that categorization only characterizes a fraction of his personality, Belton accepts the position leading to fun mock-up news and magazine articles complete with humorous soundtrack about the school’s Gay Dean which is as inappropriate as it is entertaining.

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Usagi Yojimbo #145

Usagi Yojimbo #145Finally my rabbit ronin withdrawal is at an end. Usagi Yojimbo has returned! After three years of the series on hiatus writer/artist Stan Sakai returns to bring us the further adventures of Usagi Yojimbo with with first issue of a new three-issue arc “The Thief and the Kunoichi” which will reunite Usagi with a few familiar faces.

Usagi Yojimbo #145 begins with not one but two different thieves robbing merchant Inoyue’s heavily-guarded compound. The realization that neither is alone in the dead of night creates friction between the two thieves which eventually leads to guards and a nearby wandering ronin getting caught up in the night’s festivities.

Revealing Kitsune to be the less bloodthirsty of the the two thieves, the comic ends with the unmasking of Chizu as the other with Usagi likely being forced to step-in between the two women for the apparently worthless scroll that led to the night’s events unraveling. It’s good to see Usagi back in action, and entangled in another of Kitsune’s messes, once more. Best of the Week.

[Dark Horse, $3.50]

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Astro City #23

Astro City #23In the first half of a two-issue storyline Astro City writer Kurt Busiek and artist Brent Anderson put their own spin on DC’s Gorilla City with the introduction of a talking ape from a hidden city filled with intelligent talking apes who arrives in Astro City with plans on becoming a drummer but quickly learns why that may be problematic and that he may have more potential as a hero.

As a fan of the Silver and Modern age Flash comics I’ve always loved Gorilla City and it’s fun to see Busiek and Anderson come up with their own version of bizarre world set not in the jungles of Africa but in an impossible jungle climate hidden away in the middle of the Antarctic.

As is true with almost all of the comic’s best storylines, Astro City #23 leaves the reader wanting more of the central character’s story and Sticks’ adventures in his new home. Thankfully we will be getting at least one more issue with the simian hero/drummer, but from what we’re given here I’m hoping that won’t be all we see from the character for the foreseeable future. Worth a look.

[DC, $3.99]

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Human Target – Embassy Row

  • Title: Human Target – Embassy Row
  • wiki: link

Human Target - Embassy Row

In an episode that finds our hero poisoned and forced to break into a Russian Embassy to find a cure for both himself and an old friend’s dying brother “Embassy Row” introduces Emmanuelle Vaugier as my favorite recurring character of the entire series: FBI Agent Emma Barnes. The episode begins when Aaron Cooper (Firefly‘s Sean Maher) is given Christopher Chance’s (Mark Valley) number by his dying brother who knows Chance is the one man who may be able to save Aaron from a similar fate.

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The Flash – Fast Enough

  • Title: The Flash – Fast Enough
  • wiki: link

The Flash - Fast Enough

The choice. With the Flash (Grant Gustin) defeating the Reverse-Flash (Tom Cavanagh) in last week’s episode the First Season finale deals with the fall-out of that victory and the chance Barry is offered by his mentor/arch-nemesis to change the past. Given the same opportunity in the comics Barry Allen leapt at the chance to save his mother from the Reverse-Flash without taking into account the consequences of such an action on both his own timeline and all of those whose lives he touched. In the comics Barry’s choice led to Flashpoint and a bizarre alternate reality eventually leading to the birth of DC’s New 52. The finale’s payoff is far more satisfying.

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