Violent Aggression #1 is a podcast full of high energy, high octane stories, rants, humour and a dash of music that probably violates a few copyright laws.  Check this shit out:

• A brief discussion as to exactly which drugs Shredder (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) was likely addicted to.
• Liam’s disastrous attempts to hold some type of on-air intervention regarding Cliff’s anger
• Our opening story just has to be heard to be believed.  The story is certainly out there, but it’s more like “are this guys actually talking about this?”
• And a guy sews his hand to a bag

There’s much much more! It’s certainly been a blast developing 30 minutes of audio I genuinely believe you will find entertaining.  But with friends Cliff, Vlad and Liam I think we’ve done just that.  I shall stop typing, because at this point you’re supposed to click on this link and listen to an auditory deviousness the likes of which will be repeated as soon as we can.

Fun Fact: Contrary to what you might expect, all of us were actually sober while recording.

Lost in Thought, Wibbly Wobby Timey Wimey Narratives

For the last eighteen weeks, I have looked forward to Wednesdays with delirious anticipation.  Only two were disappointments (when Lost didn’t air new episodes).  Lost has brought nothing but teh awesomeness this fifth season.  It’s explaining some of the mysteries introduced during the last four seasons in such a cool way: Time Travel.  When Benjamin “Benry” Linus turned the Frozen Donkey Wheel (end of season four) it set events in motion that scattered our friendly neighbourhood Lostaways into the past.  We’ve received first-hand accounts accounts of how our heroes were involved in events leading to The Hatch, maybe The Purge and most definitely The Incident (what the heck did that mean? I don’t know but it was cool.  Why isn’t season six already done?!).  By first-hand, I mean non-flashback… can we call them flashbacks or is it just a semi-linear story?  It’s awesome stuff, sprinkled with the usual kick-ass Lost characters and twisty turns but I want to spend a moment and salute the brilliance of how they built to this and how we’ve been unwittingly educated on how one watches this show…

---

Last year TV/Media blog South Dakota Dark undertook a massive effort to rank well, all U.S. television series, ever.  Todd, the author, scares me a little; dude’s watched a shitload of television.  But scary in a good way, because he’s able to speak intelligently about that huge morass of content and give the history of television some context.  He states you have to decide if you’re going to rate based on favoritism, sheer greatness or level of influence. I decided to throw all of that out and rate everything by some weird combination of the three.  With that as a starting point, he’s written an entertaining and verbose treatise on well, all the television shows, ever.

You can certainly jump to number one and see who “won.”  But the point of it all is really his discussion of these landmark television shows, why they worked, why some failed, and why they mattered.  It’s about how one show influenced many others and shaped the entire medium of television.  I actually liked the bulk of the list more than the top, because there’s not many surprises or overlooked gems at those lofty heights.

I’ve head of the Dick Van Dyke Show, but I’ve never seen it.  Todd’s explanation on how it was structured, and why that lead to so many story possibilities is the first time I’ve actually given a shit.  Lists like this so often devolve into “blah blah blah, I liked it.”  Like any critic, Todd’s giving his personal opinion, but he can back it up with why it worked from a critical point of view.  He talks intelligently about how SportCenter (a show I’ve never watched) contributed to the style of The Daily Show.  Naturally, The Muppet Show was a variety show, but I’d never realized it had a bit of sitcom mixed in until he was pointed out.

And lots of behind the scenes stuff too.  Northern Exposure had David Chase as a show runner?  Rod Sterling almost wasn’t the host of Twilight Zone? Early Sesame Street now comes with a not safe for children sticker?

Also: Each series is also accompanied by a youtube clip of the series in question, doubling or tripling the time-wasting potential of this blog series. (note: I didn’t watch many clips, can’t comment on quality).  Like losing days of my life to reading much of this wasn’t enough, I’ve now got a whole bunch more television shows on my never ending to-watch list.

The supplemental lists are also worth perusing.  I especially enjoyed the discussion of Cable Networks.  It’s a bit more than “HBO make good drama”.

If there was one thing lacking from this all it was a clear entry point into the massive text.  Thus was born this article.  We’ve spent enough time reading the forward, let’s get to the list:

100 - 90 - 80 - 70 - 60 - 50 - 40 - 30 - 20 - 10 - 1

Once upon a time there was this amazing little show called Battlestar Galactica.  I’m guessing you’ve already heard of it long before finding your way to this corner of the internet.  But if you aren’t familiar with the specifics, let me fill you in:  Battlestar Galactica changed the way many people viewed science fiction, in fact it got more people to view science fiction than ever before.  It dealt with issues of the day like religious persecution, torture and how we treat those we consider to be outside the bounds of our tribe.  The show transposed our many foibles, both individual and societal, and put them onto imperfect characters that are memorable as hell.   These ordinary _{(and sometimes extra-ordinary)} characters find themselves on the run after a genocidal attack and they eventually become caught up in a story of mythic proportions.  Plus lots of hot sexy guys and gals and more explosions and fireballs than you can shake a stick at.

When I first heard they were remaking Galactica I groaned They'll remake anything these days won't they? And then I watched the mini-series and learned my preconceptions were very very wrong. Turns out, this show was awesome.

I started writing my ^{Battlestar Galactica Commentaries} at the beginning of the fourth and final season, so if you’ve never watched an episode, may I humbly suggest you have three seasons of homework before you’ll appreciate any of this.  They’re designed to be read after watching the episode because the discussions will roam over anything that might have happened thus far but I always keep it spoiler-free (naturally you’ll catch me speculating occasionally).  You’ll find a mixture of insights, analysis, some behind the scenes information and many links to other bsg related content like podcasts, interviews, relevant wiki entries and a fraktacular amount of wise-cracking.  Sometimes these things get a bit fangasmy and I believe you will find that just as entertaining as the rest of it.

My Cartoon! Their talking points get somewhat muddled and the slimiest of political mud slinging ensues
Cast & crew of bsg share an extended joke that they’ve never heard of “The Bear” McCreary

Through the creation of these commentaries I certainly developed a lot as a writer.  I’d always including screen-caps but towards the later entries (around episode 10 or 12) you’ll find the pictures morphed into the occasional hand-drawn cartoons. I soon found myself loosing many many hours of sleep over the course of many weekends trying to get it all shipped out the door.  The artistic endeavour that is Feelings
of White   grew a little bit during this period and I’m proud of it all.  Also, if I’d known how much effort was involved I may just have stayed in bed and drank tea instead. 

But instead of drinking tea, I did all this.  Enough with the forward, on with the show.  Read along as you watch the series or if you’ve already seen it, dig into your favourite episode.

_{(You’ll find the table of contents about two paragraphs back)}

I first discovered Jammer by way of his excellent and insightful Deep Space Nine recaps & reviews. I’ve read them repeatedly over the years and his site was actually a big inspiration for me to do my own commentaries. While my own bsg commentaries have leaned heavily toward fangasm, you’ll find Jammers’ to contain a more coherent recap as well as being proper reviews with ratings assigned. His discussions also containing a lot of deeper analysis of the show; he’s bound to make you think of something new about the episode you thought you understood. For those of you about to embark on a re-watch, or just refreshing your memory about all that has been, check out Jammer’s Battlestar Galactica reviews!
[jump to season 1, 2, 3, 4]

I know that you don’t let yourself be guided by what you think the fan reaction might be, and you do what you feel is right for the show, but the ending of Kara - her just disappearing like that. That’ll certainly be a starting point for debate. (Read Maureen Ryan’s full interview)

Oh yeah, it’ll be controversial. There will be people who will absolutely hate it and think that we failed in our mission. We debated it in the [writers] room, I thought about it a long time, and I had sort of the same answer. And the more I struggled to give definition to it, the less satisfying it became. There various avenues we went down, discussions, saying she’s specifically this or that. And every time it felt uninteresting and kind of pedestrian. It felt like, if she’s truly connected to the Eternal, if she’s connected to this other power, this other thing in the universe, as long as you know she’s connected to it and she’s fulfilled her destiny, brought us to this place, brought us to two Earths, really, that’s enough. That should just be left to your imagination, left to your inquiry, left you to try to fill in the blanks we leave. That was my answer and I’m sure -- I know - people will debate it.

I think the one that maybe tugged at the ol’ heartstrings a bit, for me at least, was the Adama Family Goodbye. For years, Lee and pappy didn’t really get along...then they finally start to form some kind of relationship, and dad hops in to a Raptor and leaves. I can definitely empathize with at least the first part of that, and I can imagine the pure suckage of finally forming that bond only to have him leave. And, seriously, did the writers secretly HATE Lee Adama? I mean, he lost EVERYONE this season. Did his character rape a nun in a deleted scene or something? Karma was a BITCH. (Read Cliff’s full comments)

Read the fucktastically hillarious comic I wrote during the bsg commentaries What begins as an attempt to differentiate themselves ends in verbal fisticufs. And this time, it’s personal.

I don’t want to spend too much time on Daniel, but did you realize that you were giving Kara’s father this name that was so similar to Daniel? (Read Alan Sepinwall’s full interview)

That I had no idea. I only found that out online. I went, “Is that true? I guess it is.” It’s one of those things where you’re inside the show and doing it, you don’t realize that people are going to seize on this detail and it gets a life of its own. When I saw that stuff spreading online, I was really astonished. “Really? Daniel? They’re obsessed with Daniel.” So I started telling every interviewer, “Please tell people not to focus on Daniel, because they’re really going to be disappointed.”

If all of current humanity descends from Hera that means one thing: Most of the Galactica fleet did not contribute, biologically-speaking, to the new race. i.e. most everyone else and their offspring died off after settlement. I’m sure a few random children mixed in with some of Hera’s descendants, probably the ones setting around Africa. But those poor saps sent to Australia, Scotland or North America? Yeah... they all died. I know I'm over-thinking things a bit; the equivalent of civilian contractors on the Death Star. I doubt that’s the message we’re supposed to leave the finale with but these kind of thoughts occur to me after blogging about nothing but bsg for three months.
	(On the history of “All Along the Watchtower” in the “Galactica” universe)
	The notion is that the music, the lyrics, the composition is something divine, it’s eternal. It’s something that lives in the collective unconscious of the show, it’s a musical theme that repeats itself. It crops up in unexpected places, and people hear it, or pluck it out of the ether. It’s sort of a connection of the divine and the mortal - music is something that people literally catch out of the air... Here is a song that transcends many different aeons and cultures across the star, and was reinvented by one Mr. Bob Dylan.

It was a simple way to communicate the idea clearly that this is not the future. This is the story of a culture that gave birth to ours. There was an episode in season one in which Helo and Sharon are running for their lives and they hole up in a diner, and there’s a Cylon centurion cornering them, and for the longest time we planned to have an old jukebox in the diner that would play, “Yesterday,” or whatever we could afford.

Probably not “Yesterday.”

Check out rdm’s podcasts. They’re like dvd commentaries, featuring behind-the-scenes dish on every episode. Grab a scotch, a smoke and dig into your favorite episode(s).

4x01 He That Believeth in Me
4x02 Six of One
4x03 The Ties That Bind
4x04 Escape Velocity
4x05 The Road Less Traveled
4x06 Faith
4x09 The Hub
4x10 Revelations
4x11 Sometimes A Great Notion
4x12 A Disquiet Follows My Soul
4x13 The Oath
4x14 Blood on the Scales
4x15 No Exit
4x16 Deadlock
4x17 Someone to Watch Over Me
4x18 Islanded in a Stream of Stars
4x19&20 Daybreak _{[Parts 1-3]}

All I know is now I’m really scared of my Roomba (That’s all Morpheus had to say on the matter)

Okay, something from The Guess Who. I think we felt it was too soon, and would confuse things. It would be so non-specific that people would just be thrown by it. But we were thinking about it that far back, that music would be a great way to tell the audience about the cyclical theme... All the colloquialisms and slang that you hear, and how people interrelate... we get that from them, not the other way around.

Our next dose of bsg related content will be the Caprica spin-off, which drops in 1 month April 26, 2009. Trailer:

Our next dose of 100% bsg will be The Plan, expected to be released fall of 2009. It may not be the last as it’s rumored up to three tv movies may be be produced. Trailer:

Noting that simplicity depends on a reasoner’s perspective throws the subjectivity monkey wrench at Occam’s Razor. Extending the insight, that it depends also on the laws governing your local space-time area which informs your perspective, is a masterstroke — of death!

The history of physics, from Earth-centric perfect sphere within sphere heavens to M-theory, is but the continual redefinition of what simple means. It contains long and irrelevant detours, often lured by the siren of elegance, beauty and other singularities. Detours visible only in hindsight, driven ultimately by variations of “I like the way this idea sounds.” The real world is infinitely inconceivably complex; we’re forced to settle for sound bites.

Simplicity is not some indivisible thing, Mr. Occam, but depends on flawed chains of reasoning, based on centuries of imperfect observation and a half-baked, and constantly evolving understanding, performed radically differently depending on who you talk to. As understanding grows ideas of simple grow more complex. It is subjective and relative and malleable. And screw meagre understanding: it may be that the fundamentals of reality are not even immutable. From the big bang’s rule bending to the ideas of a multiverse viewed likely by some string theorists, somewhere π is 3.

Oh sure, trust your our own judgment if you like, but the shifting sands of assumptions they’re based on already changed yesterday. Every time you think you know something, consider it another Nigerian penis-enlargement phishing scam you fell for. Planck’s constant and Heisenberg’s principle are offshore sending you mental spam.

Simple now looks like this:

     ...good luck incorporating that next time you’re trying to decide between McDonalds, Burger King or a goat. What does this mean? The new priesthood cannot explain it to me without years of detailed lessons to understand the principles on which it’s based.

We used to believe things fell down when dropped until outer space showed up and curb-stomped that idea. A few years back evolution took the assumption that nature’s forms are unchanging and shived it 17 times. The underlying principles of 52 years of cognitive dissidence recently dropped the soap in front of some dude capable of using an abacus. We’re all trapped in the same snow globe, inventing theorems explaining why it snows when an unperceivable child gives us a good shake. The next person who tells you he’s got answers, you punch him right on the nose and spit on his dog.

Swim instead in uncertainty. And of that simple platitude, I am cert... Aw Crap. 
                                      David Deutsch, _{you wily bastard,} you!
                    Curse me and my collapsed waveform!

In case you missed it, that first line is Adama’s actual dialog from the show

I hate to say it, but I’m starting to come around to liking this episode.  The friends I watching it with can attend to my bitter disappointment, along with my high level of stone-age after it was all over.  I was hoping for more.  I wanted God to actually step in and for Starbuck and her shiny Viper to to oh, I dunno, be explained.  I wanted a bit more grandeur at the end of this soap opera I’ve come to love.  I want someone to step up and say “Yeah, the reason a super nova was caused was this, and the explanation for The♫Watchtower♫ is this.” Perhaps we shouldn’t delve too deeply for the answers to these questions. Perhaps there lies the way of mitachlorians... Bah!  Fuckdamnit!   What the hell was this? _Phah!

Then I watched it again, to make some notes for this article.   The second time ’round I knew what to expect.  Some things made a little bit more sense (I had been soothing a crying 3 month old when the fleet decided to become nomadic farmers.  I came back into the room and was all like So... why are they flying the Galactica into the Sun?).  The finale had a supersized helping of action, but story-wise they went out relatively quietly instead of a boombastic flourish.  There weren’t any surprise twist endings; more like things just clicked into place.  Character’s fates followed mostly logical courses based on where they had been going; after all this craziness our extended bsg family will just keep on keepin’ on.  The supernatural elements like the mysterious Starbuck or the Head/Angels are left clearly mysterious and supernatural but without any further explanation given. 

Perhaps it’s better left at that.  HeadSix has claimed from her very first appearance that she was an Angel.  We’ve seen HeadSix literally lift Gaius into the air from an external point of view and the show simply leaves it at: Yeah, they’re real Angels.  They work for God, although he doesn’t like to be called that.  They do really exist in this world and have exerted a force over our protagonists and antagonists.  But like real life, the master string puller will not be making an on-screen appearance (unless you count Ron Moore’s brief turn as an extra, reading a magazine about Hera as the Mitochondrial Eve)

In the end some of the religious ramblings, like the one about a dying leader not making it to the promised land, well, that prophesy turned out not to be true, didn’t it?  It was never a promise.  Starbuck’s father was probably Daniel, but I can accept that we don’t need to explain everything about her, do we?  She’s very clearly a mystical reborn character too.  We’re watching a show where this shit just happens; it’s a weird bloody show and we’ve been watching it so did we hope it would turn into every other show by explaining away everything at the very last minute?  Well, I did, yes.  At least just a little bit more.  But I guess that’s not the show I was watching. 

I’m definitely okay with the final five minutes; the reveal that we are descended from Hera.  We’ve collectively spent a lot of time the last four seasons pointing at the characters and saying That’s us.  Seeing bits of ourselves as flawed and fraked up and isn’t this show fantastic because of how it puts us foibles-and-all up on the screen.  It’s interesting that in its final moment the show briefly turned its gaze to our actual society and briefly asked the question

Is this your fate? How closely does our humanity have to follow in their foot-steps and mistakes?  Are we predetermined to be a motley group of petty individuals, or can we rise to something greater?  It didn’t need to end with them being the origin of our species.  It could have been Plant Crouton for all the difference it would’ve made to the characters.  But by linking their world to ours, it allows the question to be more directly asked: Are we going to frak ourselves up just like they did?  What the hell, it fits.  And I’m starting to like it all.

At the end of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and others, along with the rejected dregs of the Golgafrinchan civilization crash land on Earth in the far distant past. Arthur realizes that these phone sanitizers _{(2nd degree)} and the like will overtake our monkey ancestors. The Golgafrinchan rejects are destined to be the forebearers of our modern world. (It’s around here the bbc TV series ends)

The bsg finale bears more than a passing resemblance to the second Hitchhiker’s book. I’m certain Ronald D. Moore owes Douglas Adams a post-humous beer.

In Adams’ version planet Earth was in fact a giant organic super-computer intelligently designed millions of years ago by pan-dimensional mice to calculate the great question of the universe (Answer: Forty Two). The evolutionary upset effectively ruins any value Earth supposedly had.

(Thanks to Chuck from Galactic[a]? Water Cooler for mentioning this book every other podcast. It never would have occurred to me otherwise)

A full page scan is available [704 KB]

Last night, Janine, Nathan and I went to a cool bonfire-fire / Native American drum circle / weird dancing fire jugglers on stilts / odd Victorian all-white mimes / mysterious all-black dancer kinda ceremony thing at City Hall. Thanks to our friends Lisa and Debbie for inviting us :)

I love Edmonton’s festivals, it’s a great things about living here.  I suppose I was very photogenic, with Nathan’s head peeking out of my jacket.  I had quite a few photo requests, including one from The Edmonton Journal.

I know some of you have just been stopping by the website for ^{Battlestar Galactica} updates, and that’s totally cool. But if you’re wondering what else Feelings
of White plans to offer, here’s what you can expect over the coming months:

• There’ll be ^{more bsg content}. I plan to do at least one follow-up post after the finalé, perhaps two. I’m certain there’ll be lots to talk about and not enough time to do it in a single weekend.
• Y'all best get ready for ^{David Deutsch}, my latest masterpiece. That'll be here Monday, so just wait and see.
• I’d hoped to get my first proper ^{Furburger and Stumpy} cartoon up before bsg was over. Y’know, so it’d be somewhat relevant, but c'est la vie. It’s my longest-yet (6 panel) hand-drawn cartoon.
• The beginnings of another ^{Really Dumb Story} have started to form, but I ain’t promising any dates.
• I’ve been itching to delve into ^{Deep Space Nine}, and the Ronald D. Moore connection (he was an Executive Producer on both shows).
  • It will mostly be about one of my favourite shows, but I’ll touch on how many of bsg’s story techniques were learned on that earlier show. And there’ll be lots of YouTube®.
• More discussion of popular art. In particular, the ^Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman. It’s likely that _Lost and _Terminator and other such television will feature in there.
• There’s a few more things percolating, sometimes my creations defy easy description so let’s just say:
         I ain’t going anywhere.
  There’s plenty more where this all came from.
  • No promises on sticking to any schedule though ;) I'm a little bagged after what feels like a marathon.

BSG passes too close to Lost island and crash lands in Voyager’s unused plot bin (but it’s a good thing)

I never know what to expect from Galactica, I think that’s a big reason I tune in.  Never in a million years did I figure on a finale containing ⅓rd slow-burn flashback.  The device isn’t new to Galactica, but its rare and it was hard not to feel like I was watching a Lost episode.  After getting into it, I came to enjoy the chance to look back at who these characters were; how far they’ve come; how they’ve changed; how recognizably us they all were.  These were just some people who happened to be on this ship this one time when the apocalypse happened.  If God or fate pre-ordained any of it there were no indications.  Executive Producer Ronald D. Moore has said he feels it’s important to the show to continually re-establish those connections to their old lives.  After four years of television watching it’s easy to forget these people haven’t always lived like this.  They were irrevocably altered that way.  And it turns out their lives were a bit fraked up before any of this happened too.  Oh Galactica, you’re going to give me some respite aren’t you?  Some kind of faint light at the end of this very dark path you’ve led me down?

I’ll be retroactively hating on a lot of this season if the finale fails to deliver.  The many slow building plots can be frustrating.  I liken it to the suspenseful build-up in a horror movie where the longer you watch the heroine bumbling around the more you dread when the killer’s knife will plunge in a swift downward stroke.  It makes things suspenseful and keeps you on the edge of your seat and Galactica has us all on the edge of our seats, waiting to throw our popcorn up in the air.  We’re all waiting to discover how Moore will finish his tale and its a rare delight to see a showrunner get to finish something so wholly original on his own terms.  The differences between season four, this last half especially, and earlier seasons of Galactica are sometimes pronounced.  It’s changed and grown and wants to challenge some our expectations about how it should entertain us.  Importantly, it has remained compelling watchable drama throughout its transformation.  No matter how much I might desire a space battle, that’s not what happened on Ron Moore’s show.  And it is his show, we’re all just watching it.

Aside from Obama vs. Adama, I do bsg episode commentaries every Monday morning.  I’ve thrown up some links to the fourth season

If you want to check out some non-bsg stuff, might I suggest any of the following:

funny nonsense Perhaps its just me, but it seems like its all the rage this century to start your own religion. The badly drawn artwork is enough of a draw to ensure you’ll want to click the link. But wait until you hear the benefits that await you! Act now! Supplies are limited!	comics A ringing endorsement of Watchmen, the seminal comic by Alan Moore. Included is over five pages of excerpts from the graphic novel as well as some custom created fake-ads for Dr. Manhattan’s discrete male escort agency. This is really a great comic and completely worth reading.    (the film was very faithful, by the way)
funny nonsense It’s 4.30a Monday; I haven’t slept since Saturday and buses don’t run for another hour. I’m pretty certain I wrote it coming down from a magic mushroom trip. A weird meandering tale taking inspiration from an old-school text-based adventure. It switches styles at least three times and is delightfully random.	crazy tales My 1978 Chevy power-to-the-max offroading adventurous little go-machine was a camperized wonder of the “how didn’t it break down” kind. And with Betty as my trusty rusty sidekick did I engage in many many fine adventures. Including time travel.

If The Ack Attack! hadn’t already pointed out today’s video, this post wouldn’t even exist. Contemplate that, my undead friends.

I must advise you to peruse Ack’s weekly Lost Recaps. And this isn’t the first time I’ve called attention to Ack’s fine fine work screen-capping & and re-captioning the latest Lost episodes. Drenching them as she does in delicious hilariousness.

I am really enjoying Lost this season — It’s Fraking Dharmarfic. After getting my weekly hit of mind-blowing island hijinks, the Lost Recaps are what I look forward to. (and they seem to be finished by the following Sunday)

Follow Galactica composer Bear McCreary as he exposes the seedy underbelly of BSG’s music making process.  The running gag is that no one knows who the hell he is and he spends most of his time $$paying$$ people to call him a creative genius and trying to get himself invited to the wrap party.

Highlights Include: Edward James Olmos mimicking a circus bear and James Callis forcing a reluctant McCreary to compose his _♫^{Baltar is the} _{Motherfucking Shit}!!^♫ opus which he insists Ron Moore already loves and listens to every morning before jogging. It’s little to do with the music and more an excuse to hear things like Katee Sachoff bemoan this isn’t fair, none of us even know who the fuck this guy is and features an impressive number of familiar and behind the screen BSG talent.

Before we begin today’s regularly scheduled blogcast, I’d like to pause for a moment for the following announcement: I called it.  I called it I called it I totally called it! Two episodes ago, when they started spreading goop all over the ship I was all like  “I’m so waiting for the Galactica to come alive, mack on the basestar and be all like We Must Obtain The Allspark!”  Now, while we have yet to see coital relations between Battlestar
Anderstica and his Basestarian counterpart, I feel confident in predicting the next episode will be a solid hour of hard-core pornography featuring exactly that.  Well, perhaps the jubilation of discovering my latent psychic power has gone to my head.

Watchmen is a landmark comic book that is the only graphic novel to sit in Time Magazine’s 100 best English-language novels [1923 to 2005]. It has a very realistic feel with dialog that belongs to the characters. Its highly cinematic approach to to storytelling lends a verisimilitude to it all. There are no action POW! effects or thought bubbles. Even the embedded narration is presented as an artifact, a journal . The story is thus composed only of elements of its own universe.

Although published by DC, the characters are unique to the Watchmen story. When you start reading you may find yourself wondering who all these characters are, and what their shared history is. It’s important to realize that those questions and answers will all be addressed within the self-contained graphic novel (original published as 12 separate comics). Thank God there’s no long running sixty years of haphazard continuity that you have to study before you can figure any of it out. (*cough* Final Crisis *cough*).

There’s a movie adaptation coming out and I’ll get to that and more. Let’s jump right into the comic art and examine the first three pages of the story. I’ll be back afterwards to talk a bit more.