Comics this week

Earth 2 #19- It just gets better and better. I admit I was a little worried when James Robinson left but Tom Taylor has taken to this series like a fish to water. Writer Tom Taylor covered a lot of ground in this issue with evil Superman destroying everything in his wake; Aquawoman, Jimmy Olsen, Red Tornado and Batman trying their best to find a way to beat evil Superman; and even another possible survivor from Krypton. All these plot development with action to boot! The only drawback I have in this issue is the array of artists taking charge here. I’m not certain about the numbers but I think there are at least 4 artists in this issue. Why would you need 4 artists for one regular sized comic? I have no idea but if you can overlook this minor drawback, this is a great issue.  

Green Lantern #27- There’s just something wonderful when a plan comes to fruition, especially when it’s the plan of the bad guys. As the good guys win 9 out 10 times, it’s fun (at least to me) to see the bad guys put together a good plan to get a win off the white hats. In this issue, Hal Jordon and the GLC got it hook, line and stinker. The set-up, the execution, and then the payoff by the Braidman was a thing of beauty. Writer Robert Venditti with artist Gale Eaglesham held nothing back in showing just how screwed Hal was by the end of the issue and I have to say both writer and artist covered themselves in glory in this issue. Venditti even managed to squeeze in a cameo for Simon Baz and B’dg! Superb!

Hinterland #4- After 3 issues of moving people about and showing off the post-apocalyptic world, writer Ian Edginton decide it’s time to turn on the tension and action. He did it well and a lot of the credit has to go to artist Francesco Trifogli. I know his style is not for everyone but I think it suits this series very well. I also like the fact that the throwaway joke of mutants 2 issues ago is coming back to haunt the characters as a bunch of maybe-immortal science mutants really did turn up. Thus far, this series has been an enjoyable ride and there's promise of more of the same. It seem DC and Vertigo has a sleeper here.

The First Step

Deputy Prime and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam announced yesterday that the government will mandate an up-to-20 per cent increment in the entry-level wages for cleaners. Frankly, it’s about time.

Steps like this are what labor activists have been asking for and it seems they are finally getting their wish. The 55,000 cleaners in Singapore earn an average wage of $850 per month. That’s on average, so it’s not unheard of for cleaners to earn just $600 per month.

In Singapore, no one will even bother arguing that this salary is too low to survive. So for all their talk of not having a minimum wage, it seems that the Singapore’s government has finally admitted (without saying so) that salaries in Singapore are just too low.

Yes, I agree that setting a minimum wage of S$1,000 for cleaners should be a no-brainer and that they shouldn’t have taken so long to take what should be a simple decision but hey, this is a step in the right direction. Let’s not take this decision for cleaners to be the endgame but a significant first step for the future.

Hopefully, this minimum wage policy for cleaners will be expanded to all workers in the near future. 

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

With superheroes ruling the movies, there have been more and more superhero books been published nowadays. “Steelheart” by Brandon Sanderson is the latest book in the sub-genre but with a twist. There are no heroic rescues, no saving the planet from villains, or even superheroes. This is a book about the human race and how “with great power, comes great greed”.

The story begins when an event named “Calamity” struck. A burst of light in the sky, “Calamity” gave some ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling these people Epics.

Soon, everything changed. Super-powered people started to rule over normal humans and within ten years, the most powerful of these beings have their own personal fiefdom in the world.

In Newcago, the former Chicago, this super-powered being is called “Steelheart” and he is supposedly invincible. David knows that he’s not because ten years ago, Steelheart killed David’s father and his father injured Steelheart. David want revenge and now has a chance as he had hooked up with a small group of rebels to kill Epics.

Now most people may know Brandon Sanderson as a fantasy writer and they would not be wrong. To my knowledge, this is his first superhero book and the concept is pretty interesting.

Although a superhero book, (almost) all the super-powered beings in the book are bad guys. The main character, David, has no powers outside the fact that he’s a superhero nerd with great knowledge of the various superpowers the Epics has. Personally as a guy who has collected comics for over 20 years, I like to think that this is a cool superpower but…back to the book.

First off, I like the fact that “Steelheart” is an action packed book with intelligence. David and his rebel friends, the Reckoners, are all seemingly normal humans so they need to use their wits to take down even the lowest Epics. In many ways, the backbone of the book is the tactical planning the Reckoners undertake before each hit. I find these “slow” parts of the book to be great.

In fact, most of the characters in the book are great. The members of the Reckoners are distinct, each with his or her specialty but at the same time, each of them is different enough that they do not come across as a stock character. Even the Epics like Steelheart have hints of personalities instead of generic villain characters.

I also enjoy the character of David. A strong young man with a palpable desire for vengeance, he was very relatable. He is determined and courageous but also smart enough to understand that taking down Steelheart may do more harm than good, especially to the people of Newcago. His internal questioning of his need for vengeance was a good touch by Sanderson.

Of course the book is not perfect. I especially dislike the ending when David discovered how the powers they have affect the personalities of the Epics. I think this plot revelation was a mistake by Sanderson. It undercut the book somewhat by giving an out for the Epics, that their mistakes are due to their powers instead of their inability to deal with the responsibility that comes with these powers.

Also some parts of the book are rushed. The attack on the power plant is case in point. Things just fall into place for the Reckoners during the attack even though their plan of attack fell into pieces.

Still, “Steelheart” is a book I would recommend. It’s not great but it is fun well-written book with a good twist on the superhero genre. Read it for a good fun time. 

Laughing About Ice

                                Ice builds up along Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois

You have to hand it to the Americans. Almost the entire eastern seaboard of North America is under ice and there's reports that things are going to get worse with a blast of arctic air heading that way, but what do Americans do? 

They laugh about it! 

With temperatures going dangerously low, New York expect temperature to plummet to -26C (-15F) with wind chill, American media are full of reporters joking about how cold it is. On CNN, the reporters were comparing temperature in cities across the world, with one saying it was colder in the American city of Atlanta than it was in Moscow! Another even compare their temperature to those in Iceland! 

With temperatures expected to go lower in the coming days, humor is a good thing to have. Now if only they can convince their politicians that there really is such a thing as global warming... 

Do Not Rule It Out

The U.S Secretary of State, John Kerry, has publicly said that the U.S will help Iraq fight al-Qaeda-linked militants who had taken over the city of Fallujah, but the Americans are not planning to send troops back into Iraq. Honestly, as war-weary as I know the Americans are, this is a bad decision. 

Although Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has not asked for help and the Iraqi army could very well defeat the militants without American help, ruling out helping the Iraqi outright sent out a bad signal to the rest of the world. Or to be more exact, it sent out a bad signal to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Taliban will see what's happening in Iraq and go, "hey, we can do that here in Afghanistan after the American leave later this year!" And you know what? They would be right. Even if you are not sending any troops back to Iraq, the U.S government should/must not publicly say sending troops back to Iraq is out of the question.

Think about it; The U.S invaded Iraq in 2003; ended combat missions in 2010; left in late 2011; 2 years later, al-Qaeda took over a city; and the Americans confirm to the world they will not sent troops to help the Iraqi government they left behind. That's almost as if you're are leaving a playbook for the Taliban.

Even if it's true, even if the world knows it's true, you still must not say you are not going back to Iraq. That's not just bad policy, that's giving hope to your enemies.

Men & Women Are Different

The U.S Marine Corps is trying to get women into combat roles and as such, there is a change in the physical requirements women need to meet to get into the Marine Corps. Unfortunately, more than half of female Marines in their boot camp can't do three pull-ups, the minimum passing standard under the new rules, so the U.S Marine Corps have to delay (aka ignore) their new rules.

Now as a guy who was in an army myself, I can say the pull-ups are a bitch. I always have problems with them so I can understand why women would have problems with them as well. However I think the blame lies not with the women here but with their commanders. I don't why they are trying to raise the standards of women physical tests. 

I don't get it because men and women are physically different. That's just a simple scientific fact. From what I read so far some idiot in the U.S Marine Corps thought that men and women would be able to have the same physical standards?

I mean if you want to move women into combat roles; do it. Other armies have done so but anyone who think men and women would be able to take the same test and reached the same standards (even the minimum standards) are in dreamland. Even if women passed the tests, they would never reach the maximum standards of men. It's just not physically possible.

I am all for women in combat roles. I don't understand why but if they want to do it, let them do it. However men and women will always be physically different and refusing  to accept that is just going to cause more problems than solving them.  

Comics this week

The Green Team: Teen Trillionaires #7- I admit; I was going to drop Teen Trillionaires but when I heard that DC was cancelling the title, it was a case of "why not finish the whole series"? #7 is a showcase of the good and the bad of the series. The action was kinetic with artist Ig Guara putting in some good clean work while writer Art Baltazar and Franco keep the story quick and fast. At the end of the issue, I still have no idea about the characters that make up the Teen Trillionaires. Commodore, Cecilia, JD and gang are practically interchangeable and this failure of character development is the main problem of the series. At the start of the series, the writers took chances with the characters but halfway it stopped and the series morph into an action series. This change in tone was a problem the series never recovered from.