If you know nothing about Serenity, this is sooooooo not the entry point.

I didn't hate it, just didn't love it as much as the first issue.

I need to remember that just because everything I say is laced with sarcasm, my dripping Jersey cynicism doesn't always come through on the keyboard.

I was really trying to use the 22 page thing as a wake up call to publishers.

I can appreciate that standardizing all books on a particular format will save them production costs.

I just think it's a sad societal state when we start looking for the ROI in an art form.

Is there a limit or a standard to the number of pages in a book?

"They did it again. Ever since everybody saw KNOCKED UP and started pillow farting. Remember the good old days, when everyone just watched HEATHERS and went cow tipping."

"You realize this means war."

"What about Rogen?"

EEEEESSSSSH! I rip apart a styrofoan cup, setting the @$$holes teeth on edge. I take no pity on their hangovers. "You know me,"I say. "I'll find Rogen for ten thousand. And I'll catch him and shave him for twenty."

Research before you open your mouth son: http://alexfiles.com/cannot.sh tml

Don't be so stupid to call out someone who makes their living from writing.

Both II and II were abominations. The only good one was I.

Move on!

II & III were technological marvels, but the heart was gone.

I don't know if it was the five year break between movies or the loss of Crispin Glover, bit something was missing.

In teh first movie you cared about the McFly family it was their story and you ended up becoming emotionally invested in what happened to each charachter.

II & III might as well have been dubbed "Biff Through Time." The whole story became seeing Biff in funny make-up.

Also, the whole addition of the Marty Chicken complex was forced. They needed a plot vehicle and they shoe horned it in.

Look, on some level I appreciate all three films.

I would probably say this is my favorite trilogy of all time and I do sit down once a year to rewatch them in their entirety.

Like my review of Serenity, I didn't hate the second installment of BTTF, but from a story and charachter perspective it was the weakest of all 3 IMHO.

Was it as good as Smith's run, hell no, but it was far from awful.

As a fan of Titans from back in the day though, for shame sir, for shame.

AIDSy is funny though. Hehe.

Agreed on Spidey/Black Cat. I wonder if it would have been better though if each issue didn't come out bi-annually.

The only reason he got away with it is they wanted Kevin Smith's name on a DC book. They tried to get him to write GA for years, and he said the only way he'd do it was if he could bring Ollie back to life; they shoulda just told him to eff off. Several other GA projects were pitched, both with Ollie and with Connor Hawke, and they were all set aside for literally half a decade just to get Kev to do what he wanted--and do it horribly.

Sometimes I like to switch off from reality and be presented with a banal, filthy story.

It's that same part of my brain the responds to ASBAR.

Do I know it's wrong, yeah. Do I like it anyway...well...yeah.

Actually, the only comic work of Smith's that I ever liked was his JAY & SILENT BOB series, which was better than both DOGMA and J&SBSB. I'm sure his CLERKS comics were good, too, but I can't say since I didn't read 'em.

Smith is someone whose work I always have high hopes for, but I've been disappointed in since CHASING AMY, which was actually kinda muddled itself. MALL RATS was a real MOVIE, unpretentious fun which makes it smarter than any of what I call his theme movies. Oddly, though, I'm looking forward to ZACH & MIRI and RED STATE.

Gangs traditionally come from the same neighborhoods.

Having grown up a stones throw from NY and now living outside of Philly, I will say that neighborhoods are ABSOLUTELY diversified by ethnicity.

It would then make sense that most of the gang members share a similar ethnic background.

In an unending effort to be more politically correct as a society we turn a blind eye to reality.

PC is the reason that you can no longer fire an idiot from their job, instead you have to jump through twenty different HR hoops to simply terminate an ineffective employee (at least in corporate environments).

Should we ever cater to stereotypes? No. But on the same token, the reason that most gang members are perceived as ethnic is because that’s the God honest reality.

Should we say that all blacks or Puerto Ricans are gang members? No, because that is racial, narrow minded and untrue. It would be the same as saying all German’s are Nazis. They’re not, but the Nazi party sure as shit had a lot of German’s goose stepping across Europe.

Don’t be a racist, but in your effort to be a friend to all races, intelligence levels or whatever, don’t turn a blind eye to the actual world we live in.

What's the difference? Damned if I know, but there is one. It's like the Supreme Court definition of pornography. "I know it when I see it."

There's a certain emotional truth, a certain resonance that Millar's work lacks. For a writer who is alternately great and terrible in his use of shock value, Millar's writing lacks a certain realism. Not necessarily a bad thing. He often does great work and I consider myself a fan of his. But, cuhmon, his Ultimates and SHIELD honcho talked more like a pack of comic geeks than anything else and it seemed unintentional to me.

It gets down to Millar's work reading like he thinks he understands America but he doesn't. Oddly, Alan Moore, of all the UK writers, seems the most natural with American characters. To me, anyway. And guys like Morrison and Ennis do brilliant jobs of circumventing the whole issue.

The best thing about it is that it's really a minor flaw of Millar's and often doesn't become an issue.

Personally, the gang thing can go either way in a comic for me. Or a movie. I mean, THE WARRIORS is one of my favorite movies and the filmmakers purposely integrated the gangs even though they knew it was rare, to avoid problems. Oddly, the one all-white gang was The Rogues, who were left to the "tender mercies" of the Grammercy Riffs, the one all black gang, at the end. Our heroes, the Warriors, were integrated. They'd been plagued by both the Riffs and the Rogues throughout the movie. The GR problem was settled with a cool line from Swan, but the movie's biggest flaw was that we all wanted to see Swan, Cochise and the boys get some payback on Luther and his buds.