“yami baito,” Pokémon edition

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via SoraNews24:

Card shops are having to incorporate security systems on par with jewelry and antique shops to keep ahead of increasingly aggressive burglars with eyes on a mint-condition Charizard. Just this week one caper that spanned most of the country was thwarted by the Tokyo police, who arrested 35-year-old Masaki Omori of Okinawa for stealing some 1,500 cards...

It all began when Omori applied for a "yami baito" or "dark part-time job" which is a one-time, high-pay, and high-risk criminal endeavor at the request of someone, often made over social media.

The suspect flew to Ibaraki on 11 April using his own money and rented a car from there to travel to Akihabara. At about 5:00 a.m. on 12 April, Omori smashed through a window of the unoccupied store and proceeded to take about 1,500 cards worth approximately 1.15 million yen (US$8,240)...

The whole article is an insane must-read.

DAREDEVIL Vol. 2, No. 99 (Brubaker / Lark; Marvel, 2007)

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Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-) read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review/memory/whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box07): Finally, a trip off the DC track and on to the Marvel one for a spell, relief that it's a good one – not that I'm partial to DD or anything, this particular issue being part of a set I repurchased (DD Vol. 2 1-106) after my entire Bendis / Brubaker DD set, the last runs that I picked up in single issues, vanished at some point in the last ten years (though I swear I've seen them around) but anyhow the comic itself.

Another reminder of why DD is one of my holy trinity, Stan’s best (co)-creation, the truest blank slate in the Marvel Universe, in some hands a swashbuckling do-gooder, in others, like the team here, a crime book / legal drama with a blind ninja martyr in red tights trying to do the best he can and, thanks to his own not-inconsiderable issues, screwing it all up (and getting the shit kicked out of him) before turning the same somewhat around, leaving broken people (especially Milla, good god, Milla – Bendis and Brubaker were just brutal with her), physically and emotionally, in his wake – and feeling crap about it but still doing the same thing night after night after night.

VERY cool to see Mr. Fear and The Enforcers (the latter having debuted way back in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 10) as the main antagonists: nothing like a little turning of comics lore into something new and exciting and terrifying through a stark noir palette. Speaking of: can't get enough of Michael Lark's work here – much as I love the Brubaker/Phillips team, there's something about the Brubaker/Lark pairing that grabs me in ways the former doesn't (or, rather, hasn't in awhile). Maybe it's the fondness I hold for their work (along with Rucka) on GOTHAM CENTRAL (which I want to complete in single issues) that clouds my judgement here, but jesusfuck look at the panel quartet pictured above, the tiny changes from panel to panel, especially Chico's expressions – that's just perfection.

Such an excellent issue of such an excellent series which makes me want to revisit all of Bendis and Brubaker's work on the title (Bendis, especially, has never again reached the heights he reached during his time on DAREDEVIL) – but I've got a few of the issues in the shortboxes, so I'm sure they'll turn up in this space...

Tatjana Wood color guide

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Among my most prized pieces in The Collection is this original color guide for page four of Denny O'Neil's second of two Bats / Shadow encounters from the 70s, BATMAN Vol. 1, No. 259, hand-colored by the unsung hero of that era, colorist extraordinaire Tatjana Wood. First picture is the original color guide, second is the page in the printed comic itself.

SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY (Nintendo, 2017)

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The forced wedding is stopped; the bunny wedding planners are crushed; Bowser is, like The Joker after battle after battle, unconscious, somewhere; Cappy and Mario are, at present, hunting for Princess Peach who has once again gone missing from the just-unlocked Mushroom Kingdom – though it seems of her own volition this time; and my first completion of a MARIO game in over 30 years (SUPER MARIO WORLD is still the best) is in the bag.

Why that long? Other than ignoring most of the post MARIO WORLD games on the SNES – CASTLEVANIA and LINK TO THE PAST were my jams – I had a seizure while playing MARIO 64 on the Nintendo 64 (right combo of lights and images at the right time, I guess) and, rightly or wrongly (seems to be the latter) avoided the series out of fear of it happening again until the gateway drug of MARIO KART 8 and the desire to end my niece's reign of terror (read: beating me every race) but the longer version of that particular saga – the seizure, not my niece's reign of MARIO KART terror – is another story for another time.

But ODYSSEY itself.

One of the things that's been asked in the accolades for TEARS OF THE KINGDOM is how did Nintendo make that game – as in "how did they fit all of that and do all of that in a system that came out in 2017?": the answer's simple: Nintendo knows how to make great games without requiring a bevy of onerous cutscenes and/or shallow open worlds with no point beyond window-dressing – narrative or otherwise. They focus solely on simple stories (rescue the Princess / save the kingdom / stop the aliens) delivered in strange, surreal celebrations of the medium – the "flatland" 2D, pixel sidescrolling sections in ODYSSEY being the most wonderful celebration of video games and video game history in recent memory; I cheered every time I got to stuff myself into a pipe and go 8-bit – with an unfiltered creativity and passion devoid of irony and apology; they are and remain the Disney-under-Walt / early Pixar of games.

While I did miss the block-smashing power-up mushrooms – how long have they been gone? – and, though I loved Cappy and his Black-Lodge / Man From Another Place speaking style, found myself rescuing him from that bird only to shut him up (and get on with the game) there's not a lot I can add other than ODYSSEY is pure, unfiltered fun and that I question your humanity if you don't find yourself charmed by it more than once a gaming session. A must-play.

Cromwell’s prayer book

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via artnet:

Curators at Hever Castle were conducting research ahead of an exhibition comparing Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn when they realized Cromwell owned a version of the same Christian prayer book as Henry VIII’s two wives. The link? A portrait of the political giant by Hans Holbein the Younger.

In the portrait, which dates from 1532–33 and is part of the Frick Collection in New York, an austere-faced Cromwell gazes pensively away from the viewer. The painting celebrates Cromwell’s appointment as Master of the Jewel House (hence the prominence of the book’s jewel) and the tools of his statecraft rest on the table before him: a legal document, a quill, scissors, and his Book of Hours, printed in 1527.

The Hever Castle curators took their hunch to Trinity College and experts now believe its identification makes it the sole remaining object from any 16th-century portrait surviving today.


complete

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With today's addition of DICK TRACY AND THE FROZEN BULLET MURDERS (online searches for which returned many a blender), my collection of Dell's 1936-41 Dick Tracy "Fast Action Story" (one of many Big Little Book competitors) series joins this hallowed tag – though I would, at some point, like to track down a better copy of CHAIN OF EVIDENCE…