And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

”Rasl” Issues 1-13 by Jeff Smith

“Rasl” is the latest comic book series from “Bone” cartoonist Jeff Smith. The first issue came out back in 2008 and I read the first few issues back then but then missed a couple along the way and though I still bought each issue as it came out didn’t read them until I recently managed to track down the missing ones. Now with all thirteen issues in hand I got to read them all in a row.

Rasl is the name of the lead character. He looks a little beat up and unkempt but as the story unfolds we learn he once was a clean cut scientist. I remember reading the first three issues and my main memory of them was Rasl using some sort of weird dimension traveling technology to become an art thief. Turns out that is just the beginning of the story and a little misleading.

Through flashbacks we are eventually told the story of his scientific career gone wrong and him trying to save the world, and other worlds, from the consequences of his and his partners actions. That’s what the story is basically about. Rasl trying to set things right. Except he really doesn’t know how. He’s on the run from the government agency who was funding his work and he doesn’t know how to escape them or how to put the genie of his work back into the bottle.

Smith’s artwork here is different than the classic Disney-esque bigfoot style of his work in “Bone”. Not that it isn’t “Cartoony” but there is a more realistic edge to it. He establishes that this story takes place in the real world rather than a fantasy setting. He does a nice job of it. His drawing isn’t always spectacular but his storytelling is. He can keep things flowing nicely.

I enjoyed this big chunk of “Rasl” better then when I just read the first few issues of it. Smith takes his time to tell the story and lays out the big picture well all the while throwing in lots of little picture action. Nikola Tesla, the famous scientist, plays a role in the back story as Rasl was working on some ideas that Tesla played around with a hundred years ago. Tesla is an interesting historical figure so I’m always on board with him.

Science, chase scenes, dimension hoping, art thievery, love, betray, death, faked deaths, cover-ups, and fist fights this comic has a lot happening in it. Check it out for yourself.

For absolutely no reason I’m going to write down the things I regularly eat. For no reason except I don’t think I ever have before. We all have regular things we eat and though we may note the special meals who pays attention to the everyday ones? I think I will for just a moment. After all, I like noting the everyday stuff that gets forgotten with time.

I’m a cereal person for breakfast. For the past couple of years my cereals have been Cheerios and Corn Flakes. For a decade and a half before that it was Wheaties instead of Corn Flakes but the quality of Wheaties declined to the point that I switched to the less expensive Corn Flakes. Why pay an extra two bucks a box if I liked the Corn Flakes just a well as the now lesser Wheaties? I buy the store brand Corn Flakes but the General Mills Cheerios. They still make the best Cheerios. The store brand Cheerios are not as good but the original Cheerios are as good as ever. I put 2% milk on my cereal.

For my after cycling snack I have a banana or a pear followed by a little chocolate. I used to have apples in the mix but I’ve gotten too many bad out-of-season apples. That and I’ve read too many times that apples are loaded with wax and pesticides. I haven’t read such things about pears so I’ll stick with them. I like pears ripened so I wait a few days after I get them home to eat them. I have to time it out right and buy pears before I’m out of them. I also like my bananas ripe. A few brown spots is better than green. Timing is everything.

My chocolate of choice is bags of Ghirardelli chocolate chips. I have one bag of milk chocolate chips and one bag of 60% cocoa chocolate chips. I get my chocolate in chip form because it’s the cheapest way to get it and I can eat a little bit of it at a time. Often I just want a taste of chocolate and a candy bar would be way too much. A dozen chips hits the spot just as well. Sometimes I end up eating more chips than I planned to but it’s still less than a Snickers bar.

My lunches and diners can be fairly interchangeable. I often have the same meal for both. I sometimes make a lot of something in the crock pot and then reheat it for the next week’s worth of lunches or diners. I make chili, stew, a sort of pasta casserole, or a beans and rice dish all in the crock pot. Lately it’s been beans and rice. I go through crock pot phases. Sometimes it sits idle for a month and sometimes it gets used every week for a month.

Yogurt in another thing I go through phases with. I can have it almost every day for months at a time and then lay off it for a month. I’ve put different things in my yogurt over the years but the main thing I always put in it is Grape Nuts cereal. That almost always goes in becasue I like the crunchiness it adds but there is often a third ingredient. I used to put cashews in but they’re a bit too expensive. Recently I started adding various flavors of a shredded wheat type cereal. I’ve bought different brands but recently I’ve been having Kashi Island Vanilla and Kashi Cinnamon. The first goes well with peach yogurt and the second with apple. They really go well with any flavor yogurt but I have my habits.

Sandwiches are on my menu too but I usually have small sandwiches. Some are just chicken on a biscuit. I buy some store baked biscuits slice one in half and put a chicken finger on it. That’s a small sandwich and sometimes I even have cheese instead of chicken. A sandwich that small sometimes calls for a cereal chaser. A little bowl of shredded wheat does the trick. Not a breakfast size bowl.

Another sandwich I eat is chicken on a Ciabatta roll. A local super market sells some really good Ciabatta rolls and they’re a favorite of mine. That sandwich is a little bigger than the biscuit one and I put mustard, lettuce, and cheese on it as well as some chicken. The rolls are usually toasted because they go stale within a couple of days and I don’t eat them that fast but they still make great toast. And the cheese is a sharp cheddar.

My third type of regular sandwich is the classic egg sandwich. I’ve been having them on toasted Portuguese rolls lately. I season the pan with a little butter, oregano, thyme, basil, and garlic powder and then drop the eggs in. I cook the eggs over hard. That means I break the yokes so things don’t get all runny when I bite into my sandwich. I throw some cheddar cheese on top of the eggs too. I put a little hot sauce on the toasted roll to give the thing some zing. I use mild hot sauce because I’m not a “The hotter the better” guy.

For an afternoon snack I’ve been getting back into granola bars lately. I used to always have them but then kinda gave them up for a couple of years. I stay away from the really sweet ones but, annoyingly, the more natural ones tend to be the more expensive ones. I’m not a coffee fan but a few weeks ago I decided to try a chocolate mocha granola bar. I actually liked it and so bought a couple of boxes and ate them over a few weeks time. Now for some reason I don’t like them as much. I have a box that’s been sitting on my shelf for over a week. I just can’t hang with that coffee flavor.

I sometimes get chips to satisfy that craving for something salty and crunchy but I stay away from potato chips and the more fattening types. I’ve had rice and popcorn chips lately. I like them but I don’t love them. Of course it’s a good thing that I don’t love them. I love potato chips and therefor would over-indulge in them if I actually bought them. I’ll stick to the ones that are a little more like cardboard, thank you. They do the job.

The last thing to make it into my current rotation are cookies. I’m a huge cookie fan. Mostly types of chocolate chip cookies but I’ve stayed away from them for a long while because I usually just want one cookie and you can’t buy just one. I like to buy the store baked cookies but you have to buy them in packs of twenty and either they’ll go stale if I don’t eat them or I’ll eat too many of them just because they’re hanging around. A few weeks ago I bought some of my old favorite Pepperidge Farm cookies. I put them on a high shelf and forget about them until I felt like having a cookie. Since they don’t go stale so fast there is no ticking clock making me eat them and I don’t over-indulge.

So those are my current eating habits. They’ve changed over the years but I’m not exactly sure in what way. Less pasta is definite but probably in other ways too. If only I wrote a blog about it ten years ago. Oh well, I can look back on this one ten years from now.

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

”Thunderbolts: Cage” by Jeff Parker and Kev Walker

Here I go with the second Thunderbolts trade I’ve read lately. This one is by the same writer, Jeff Parker, with a new artist on board, Kev Walker. I’ve been enjoying Parker’s writing as of late and that’s what prompted me to buy four trades of Thunderbolts. That and they were cheap.

This volume is a new start in the Thunderbolts story. A new team is formed withe some new faces and some old ones. The Thunderbolts are a super team made up of incarcerated super villains who are looking for a chance to turn their lives around. Or maybe just get out of prison for a few hours. In the last volume the team were lead by Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, who is a super villain but had gained legitimate political power. Now he’s been taken down and a new man is running the Thunderbolts. Luke Cage.

Cage is an ex-con (he was framed) and a genuine hero so he’s a good choice to lead this group of super prisoners. We get a look at how the prison runs, how Cage runs the team, and the missions they go on. There is not much more to it than that. It was fun escapist entertainment and I enjoyed it.

The art was nicer than in the previous volume. It’s that modern illustrative style that we’re all familiar with theses days. Lots of modeling in the color and lots of little “Detail” that doesn’t really add up to much. I’m not much of a fan of that style but here it’s well drawn and the storytelling is solid so there is not much to complain about. Kev Walker is talented even is his work here is not totally to my taste.

Overall this was a solid super hero comic. Well crafted but not ground breaking. It you too can get it for cheap it’s worth a read.