INKSTAND

Well. there was a long rant here that I wrote while I was drunk and because I control this space, I made it go away.
5-13-06

There are two reasons that this is the best pot pie you can get anywhere.
First of all, when you get a pot pie they some either with the crust lining the inside of the bowl, or just with a layer of crust on top. I’ve found that if you get a pot pie at a decent restaraunt where they cook all the food from scratch, you just get the layer on top. Even if you get one from KFC, you just get the layer on top. Most frozen pies, however, have the crust throughout, and Marie Callendar’s is no exception. I love the crust, I guess I should’ve mentioned that, but the other thing that makes this the best pot pie is the thing that separates it from all the other frozen, fully-crusted pies.
When you put, oh, say a Banquet pot pie in the microwave the crust becomes a soggy gooey mess and chances are that it’s still frozen in the middle. Marie Callendar’s stand out in that when you cook it in the microwave, not only do you shave about 45 minutes off of the oven cooking time, but you can’t even tell it was nuked. If you put it in for about twelve minutes the crust is perfectly cooked and the inside is hot. So hot I always have to let it cool off.
These pot pies can be kind of expensive, but it has been my experience that they usually go on sale for a decent price. They’re usually $3.99 at the QFC, but I got mine tonight for $2. Not bad.

We are living in a post-post-crisis world. Back in the 1980’s, The DC Universe went through some monumental changes in the Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries, which actually re-wrote the history of these heroes. This was a little before my time, comic-ly speaking, so I was brought up in the post-crisis world that only had one color of kryptonite(green, duh), and no supergirl until 1988, who turned out to be a shapeshifting clone-bot or something. The real supergirl showed up just last year, i think, as supermans cousin, just as she had in the 1950’s pre-crisis world. Anyway, the last couple of years have been immersed in Dc’s Identity crisis and Infinite Crisis mini serises which both led to changes of the same monumental porportions.
It all starts when Dr. Light, a second string Villan , rapes the wife of Elongated Man, a second-string hero…It all unravels from there…Even if I wanted to go into it, there are plenty of other resources, I’m sure, that could break it down for you even better. In a nutshell, the multiverse, which is an infinite number of alternate reality earths, is re-created and in the end, one earth remains: New Earth.
Now at the end of all this, Superman has somehow lost his powers. After that all the core titles jump ahead one year. In this time Clark and Lois Kent have been adjusting to being a normal married couple and both have been quite happy with it. Superman #652 is part 5 of this “1 year later” storyline, and at the end of part four in Action comics #whateverthehell Clark is attacked by super-gangsters for an expose he wrote. Then he gets hit by a train…and survives. looks like his powers are returning.
Discovering that Superman is back, Intergang, those super-gangsters, send five nutty villains after him, including Silver Banshee and Livewire. I’m glad to see Livewire still around. I only ever saw one episode of the Superman cartoon on the WB, and it was the one with her, and last year they introduced her into regular continuity. I kind of like her; a radio shock jock with a grudge against Supes who gets super electrical powers…and shes blue. Now Supermans powers are coming back slowly, so he’s not at his peak performance, but still easily takes out three of the would-be assassins. Then Bloodsport decides to shoot Jimmy Olsen in the head. This is the jump that Superman needs to get all his power back as he lives up to one of his tag lines and is faster than the speeding bullet, plucking it from the air just in time. If you’re into it as much as you can tell I am, which I bet you’re not, it’s pretty cool.

Ever since Jim Lee and Scott Williams did four different covers for the first issue of the new X-Men series in 1991, variant covers seem to be a gimmick that won’t die, like foil and chromium covers eventually did by the end of the 90’s. The most outlandish display of this, I think, was the first issue of Image’s Gen 13 ongoing series wich sported THIRTEEN different covers! This kind of gimmic only appeals to collectors who believe that these issues will be worth more than the initial investment sometime in the future. It is my opinion that efforts to sell so many copies of a comic book that wont even be read is the work of noneother than Satan himself.
There are a couple of other reasons for variants that aren’t nearly as malicious. One is to show what printing a book is, and that’s what spurred this review in the first place, but I’ll get to that later. The other one is when a book is offered at a comic book convention. This is completley ok in my view because it is a souvenier from a once-in-a-lifetime event. There SHOULD be more value assigned to is both monetarily and sentimentaly.
The last reason for variants is to show what printing a book is. When a comic sells out and there is still a demand for it, they print a second run which is usually less valuable than the first. It’s not uncommon for a book to have three runs of a single issue. Something happend to me today that pissed me off a bit. Back when Superman “died”, DC had a lot of runs of those issues, and they were noted by a small roman numeral by the issue number. For instance the second printing of the issue when superman dies would have said 75 where the issue number was and a “II” next to it. Fast forward to today. When a second printing comes out now, the cover is some variant of the original. For instance the superman covers from the One year Later storyline are replaced by pencil sketch versions of the original printing.
Then theres Batman. An issue of Detective comics came out last month with Harvey “two-face” Dent’s human half of the face on the cover. The next moth was going to have the warped, monster half of his face on it. I saw an issue in the store today with both of those pictures together, basically just showing an image of two-face. So I bought it thinking it was the one I wanted, but in reality it was just the second printing of the issue with harvey’s human face. I got all mad. That’s why I wrote this. Why didn’t I just look at the issue number? It was issue # 818. I kind of stop looking at the numbers when they get that out of hand. Silly me.

This sandwich was not worth the $4.99 it costs, but I still had no problem eating the whole thing. Feeling somewhat dejected after going to my dental appointment ( I broke a tooth last thursday and want to get it taken care of) and finding out that my insurance only covers medical and not dental, I strolled home and stopped by that Quality Food Center to get something to eat. I had had chicken salad in a croissant before at my own job, so i thought I’d give it a go. This one wasn’t that great, though. It was all smashed flat, and there was a hell of a lot of some herb in the salad that just seemed like too much. Still I scarffed it down, angry that I’d have to talk to someone at work about my dental insurance. I hate talking to people.
Note: Photo is not actual sandwich, although this one doesnt look very good either.

You may not always be in range of a signal, but when you are, it’s really nice. Needless to say it is especially hard when you have a desktop.