Doom Patrol's done, Invisibles and Transmetropolitan getting started

Once again I've got to be quiet, my brother here is sleeping, and here I am wanting to type away. He got a little mad at me last week- not that it takes much to get under this guys skin (at least, from his immediate family)- but it kind of puts me in a spot. On the days when I'm not working, I AM still going to be up late (it's just past 5am now) and I'd rather do a little writing here than nothing.

Oh, actually there's a 24 hour Goodlife Fitness I may end up joining for just such an occasion, but I spent my money on my new glasses, so that's going to have to wait.

When I was purchasing the specs it was at a hakim optical, doing the two for one thing to get my brothers glasses too. Well, the sales guy mentions that my glasses are the better frame/more expensive... I tell you that drove me crazy. I don't want my brother to get a 'worse' pair of glasses- but what is 'worse' here? I should have gotten him to clarify. Are mine the superior label/brand? Because if that's the case I really couldn't care less. However if there's an actual quality/durabilty issue...

I've had my current glasses for at least four years, who knows how long this next pair will be around for, and it's the exact same story for my bro.

Well, anyway.

So a quickish rundown of some of what I've been reading.

I finished the last volume of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol. I understand that the series continued on as a purely Vertigo title under a different writer, but fortunately the ending here was a pretty satisfying end.

I kept hearing Robotman in the voice of a foul mouthed Optimus Prime, which is always awesome (don't believe me? look up Dr Smoov on youtube for any of his Transformers re-dubs and tell me they aren't awesome).

Unfortunately the collection ended with the special "Doom Force" one shot, a book that was Morrison lampooning the, lets say unique, qualities of a Lieifeld/early Jim Lee era X-Force book. There's no question Morrison nailed them, but he did it at the expense of myself and all us readers that would prefer to avoid all that garbage. (Well, usually I'll avoid that garbage.)

So, Doom Patrol ended with a whimper. I tell ya, that Doom Force special was WAY too long. Way too long.

I moved from there to the first volume of Morrison's "Invisibles" series, which I'd heard was something of a spiritual sequel to his Doom Patrol work. I can see the connection, but the sudden freedom, the lack of any genre conventions to play with, really hurt this book for me. That said, considering the story it told, I can see people getting blown away by it- providing the Matrix hadn't come out yet. They cover a lot of the same ground where perception of reality is concerned, and either one is stronger without the other.

That, and, the character of "King Mob" seems like a blatant self aggrandizing self insertion of the author. I'll keep going with the series, we'll see how it goes.

From there I read the first volume of the Warren Ellis book Transmetropolitan. I think I'll be able to keep Warren Ellis apart from Garth Ennis from now on- Ennis wrote the introduction to the book.

Transmetropolitan is dark, it's anarchistic (not that there's anything wrong with that), violent, ALSO has a self aggrandizing self insert protagonist (the day is saved through the hero's real time writing of an article on a riot, where he levels an absurd number of charges against those in power without a shred of evidence or even a single source.).

BUT- it's also really pretty funny. The violence is more cartoonish than anything, and it makes great use of Star Trek speak, that's technobabble gibberish that then gets explained via ridiculous analogy.

I really needed that break from the serious Morrison work. I didn't KNOW I needed that break, but it's just like you don't know you're holding your breath in a tense situation until, well, until you breathe.

Okay, I'll stop typing now.