#the subsequent wait for it to charge Just Enough is incredibly humbling

[nighttimenothings]

vibrators dying mid-use has to be somewhere on the Top 5 Worst Things To Ever Happen list

[davidmann95]

You did your top ten Superman Artists before, who are your top ten Superman Writers? (I know you've already given your number one, but I'd still like to see your thoughts on the other 9)

Honorable mentions up front: There are the great creators who worked on him in the Silver and Bronze ages such as Leo Dorfman, Edmond Hamilton, Cary Bates (who would be VERY close to the top in a ranking of the best Luthor writers), and of course Jack Kirby. Mark Millar’s work with the character is consistently among the best of his career, and his nebulously upcoming miniseries has every chance of shooting him into the top ten. Max Landis’s American Alien is easily the best Superman story of the last few years, but given his atrocious previous shot at the character in Adventures of Superman and his frequently inconsistent quality across the board, I’m not certain yet that wasn’t a lightning-in-a-bottle moment. Making better showings in Adventures were Joe Keatinge and Matt Kindt, who blew me away with their respective pieces and I think could make real impacts if properly utilized. And while his work with the character was fundamentally compromised and cut short, Chris Roberson’s vision of him was one that tremendously appealed. Finally, while he’s never ‘officially’ worked on the character, Samuel Hawkins’ all but unknown Tales of Smallville for the site Superman Thru The Ages are absolute top-tier, all-time-great stories.

10. Greg Pak

What an utter goddamn shame; Pak was by all rights destined to be The Definitive 2010s Superman Writer, and DC shit all over him until he finally gave up and vanished back to Marvel. But in between the endless crossover nonsense and making him and poor Aaron Kuder put up with the New 52 suit, his Clark had a visceral sense of humanity and physicality that made him feel true and lived-in in a way few if any other writers have matched over the years, driven by a sense of righteous anger and pained compassion. If, god willing, he ever gets the subsequent shot he deserves (preferably with Kuder) and isn’t constantly compromised and undermined, expect to see him ultimately wind up significantly higher.

9. Joe Casey

Maybe the most frustratingly underrated guy in my top ten. In spite of a few gestures in a more radical direction - he explicitly wrote Superman as a pacifist, which obviously didn’t take - he didn’t particularly reinvent the wheel during his time with the character, especially given it was only for about his last year that he actually got to work solo rather than as a quarter of a complete unit. But that last year’s adventures are some of Superman’s best, with a vivid quirkiness and grand scope grounded in a particularly humble and introspective take on big blue that deserves its due as a cult classic run with the character.

8. Alan Moore

While I hold dearly to my contrarian take of For The Man Who Has Everything being significantly overrated, Moore’s other Superman comics more than make up for it, with both Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? and Jungle Line scratching down to the bloody raw floorboards of his mind and demonstrating his vulnerability in a way that remains unmatched. He is to date the one and only truly great writer of Dark, Grim Superman Comics.

7. Otto Binder

Binder contributed more to the raw depth of Superman’s world in terms of mythology than anyone other than Siegel himself, ranging from Brainiac and Bizarro to Supergirl and Kandor and the Legion of Superheroes, with stories such as The Old Man Of Metropolis! and The Return Of Superman’s Lost Parents! proving he could also hang in there with the best of them in delivering the emotional gut-punches that Superman’s best tales so often rely upon.

6. Jerry Siegel 

I don’t think any reasonable person could seriously contest that Siegel belongs on any list such as this by default. But his position on it comes down not just to creating the dang guy, but the caliber of his material, particularly in his 1960s return where his stories ranged from mournful (Superman’s Return To Krypton!) to blackly comic and gleefully celebratory (Superman’s Day Of Doom!) to relentlessly heartbreaking (The Death Of Superman!) - just as he provided the rolicking adventure and bombast that birthed Superman alongside Joe Shuster, he and the contemporaries that walked in his footsteps found the wistful, melancholy heart that still defines his creation to this day.

5. Garth Ennis

He’s only written him the twice (thrice counting All-Star Section Eight, though he doesn’t pull focus in there in the same way, and it goes in a…different direction), but twice is enough for a lifetime in this case. The one superhero Ennis seems to hold sincere affection for as opposed to liking well enough at the absolute best, his Superman is whip-smart, ethical, self-aware, entirely understanding of how the world really works and the limits of what he can accomplish in it even as he grieves his inability to do more, and in Ennis’s own words “constantly let down by humanity, and never giving up on them”.

4. Mark Waid

The ne plus ultra of Superman fans, that he’s never secured a long-term tenure with his hero surely frustrates him even more than the legion of fans who’ve waited in vain for decades for him to get his deserved shot. What he *has* gotten to do has shown it would be more than worth the wait: while his vision with Alex Ross of an elder Superman in Kingdom Come weighed down by regret and lost in a strange new era resonated with a generation, his take is clearest in the criminally disregarded Birthright, whose alienated and passionate version of a young Clark Kent represented a scale of potential in his early days that has yet to be truly captured.

3. Kurt Busiek

Another underrated writer, Busiek’s time on Superman proper - while never getting to reach its proper culmination as he left to work on Trinity - is easily the best run that main title has ever had, with a warm, clever, classic Superman up against wild new threats that tested both his abilities and his ethics; in other words, the platonic example of Good Superman Comics. What pushes him into this kind of rarified air though is Secret Identity, with the most purely down-to-Earth, vulnerable, and thoughtful ‘Superman’ of all at its heart letting readers attach themselves to the fantasy he represents more acutely than maybe any other story.

2. Elliot S! Maggin

The first Superman writer to not only recognize that he was working with a modern legend but consistently and overtly write his stories with that in mind, it was under his pen that Superman gained a sort of self-awareness, questioning his methods and mindset as he tangled with some of his most astonishing threats. As Siegel provided Superman with his muscle and heart, Maggin was the first to actively map the contours of his mind and place in a larger universe, with a portrait of a truly alien intellect anchored by the most human of concerns and an unshakable ethical base that still resonates, bolstered by an equally well thought-out Luthor and a firehose spray of heady ideas - especially in his essential novels Last Son Of Krypton and Miracle Monday - that set a standard that has rarely if ever been recaptured.

1. Grant Morrison

Whether with a spitfire 20-something charging through the streets of Metropolis in a t-shirt and jeans, an unstoppable champion uniting with his counterparts from throughout the multiverse to rescue the very concept of story, or a relaxed god-man floating through his bittersweet last days among us, Morrison reaches deeper than anyone else into the vague, intangible essence of what Superman is to us - the goodest of guys, the one you can rely on, the one who’ll never fall and never stop believing in you - and grabs hard. With seemingly his every talent and every thematic preoccupation throughout his incredible career tailor-made to suit telling Superman stories, whether in his crushingly foredoomed attempts at redefining him for a new generation in Action Comics or All-Star with its mythic self-image and subtle character work, the very fact of Grant Morrison Doing Something With Superman constitutes an event unto itself. He fits the fundamentals together in the framework of his own unique cosmic approach and love for the material, with a model for Superman that while more flexible than any other always maintains his compassion and cleverness and unyielding spirit, and as it happens, that’s the tack that’s worked the best across all these 79 years and counting.

[cyanoscarlet]

if it ain't broke, don't fix it

(stories on (and off) ice)

Once upon a time, on a sunny afternoon in Bangkok, Phichit Chulanont broke the door of the fridge twice, then broke the fridge down completely.

The big, old, white box had been a wedding gift to his parents, at that time the latest model of its kind. Among all the appliances in their house, it had been the only one that stood the test of time, lasting even longer than the old analog TV set. His mother had been adamant about keeping it around despite the increasingly bad reception it got and the colors bleeding over all the wrong places. She'd changed her mind, however, when she'd won a new flatscreen unit from a company raffle draw.

In any case, this refrigerator was the last thing in the house that dated back to the humble beginnings of the Chulanont family -- given that his older sister was born two years after their marriage, and she's now twenty-four, the fridge must be a little over twenty-six years old.

  .

  "And you're telling us this, why again?" Leo sits across him and Guanghong on the bed, fiddling with his tablet's notifications. Definitely no social media again until after the US Nationals.

Phichit props his feet up the mess of pillows and blankets, putting down his beloved Galaxy Note 7 beside the gold medal. "Just remembered it all of a sudden."

  .

  As with the TV set, Pirawan Chulanont had been even more vocal against replacing the old fridge. "Only the door hinges are rusted. I'm not replacing it while it's completely functional," she argued from the kitchen sink while Siriwan carefully shut the door, a bottle of cold water tucked in her arm.

"Mother, you cannot make us 'support the door with both hands when you open and close it' forever," the eldest of the three siblings countered back, reading verbatim the hastily-scribbled reminder stuck to the door with a Thai Skating Federation commemorative magnet. "You know how Phichit raids this thing almost every day."

"Well, he'll have to learn to 'raid the thing' less, then," their mother said simply. "He's a competitive skater; he has to eat more real food and less sweets."

Siriwan sighed in defeat. As the future doctor of the house, she was inclined to agree.

Just then, Phichit burst into the entryway, a medium-sized package in his arms. "I'm home, everyone! Yuuri sent us some Japanese snacks."

Anchalee, the youngest, squealed from behind him, also having just arrived from high school. "Ahhhhhh yesssss! Is there Pocky?! Is there?! Brother Yuuri knows I love the strawberry-flavored ones!"

The young girl excitedly pushed her brother to the kitchen, where Siriwan opened the package to sort its contents. "I'll put these in the fridge for you guys," she offered, carefully balancing the door on a low makeshift stand, then slowly pushing both implements carefully to open the refrigerator wide enough.

  .

  "No, Brother Yuuri has not heard of that until now." Yuuri emerges from the bathroom, wiping his hands dry with a paper towel. "Is that why Anchalee has been avoiding me back when we visited your place?"

"What can I say? You broke her heart," Phichit mock-accuses his good friend. "She hates anything with matcha the most."

"Speaking of Pocky flavors," Guanghong pipes up, "which flavor does Yuuri like?" Suddenly, the room is quiet as the three young skaters wait for his answer with bated breath.

"... Chocolate, I guess," Yuuri mutters after a couple of minutes.

Phichit immediately wiggles his eyebrows with glee. "I'll make sure to tell Viktor later!"

"PHICHIT, NO."

  .

  As mentioned earlier, it happened one sunny afternoon in Bangkok.

Phichit returned home for lunch, feeling incredibly accomplished after that morning's practice run. Landing his quadruple toe loop perfectly always gave him a euphoric rush, and he was raring to go back to the rink and skate some more until dinner time. The Cup of China is fast approaching; he can't waste a single minute.

But first, food. Some dessert wouldn't hurt. And iced water - lots of it.

He hastily opened the fridge to get the water and a box of matcha Pocky -- and froze in place when he heard a metallic creak and snap. Suddenly, the door felt a lot heavier than usual.

Phichit fearfully peered over the white door. The bottom hinge had completely come off, the holes in which the lone screw was supposed to be rusted away beyond any and all recognition.

Somewhere in his jumbled thoughts, he vaguely remembered his older sister grumbling about having to install a stupid improvised harness for the top hinge because keeping the top screw in place would not be enough to support the door's weight.

He inspected said harness from the periphery of his vision. It had all but snapped upon taking the brunt of the sudden impact earlier.

Siriwan will be so pissed off, he mentally groaned. And if there's anything Phichit doesn't want to deal with at this crucial point in time, it's an angry Siriwan. With a near-exasperated sigh, he carefully sealed the fridge shut again. He had more important things to do than this.

  .

  "I'll never understand why Mother still wanted that thing around, though," Phichit complains to his audience of three. "Even if it was a wedding gift, it doesn't make sense to keep it if it's already broken."

"Sentimental value runs deep, my good man," Leo recites, now leaning onto Guanghong's shoulder. "Besides, if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

"They should still have gotten a new one," Phichit insists. "You gotta listen to reason."

The three laugh in unison. Knowing how the seemingly perpetually happy and cheerful Thai usually takes things like this in stride, they find it amusing how this single incident sticks out like a bad sore thumb, he is actually griping about it.

Still, though... "That's what I told you when you insisted on marrying your phone."

Phichit glares at Yuuri intensely, holding the bright green thing to his chest. "This is entirely different!" More laughter ensues.

  .

  Phichit ran back home halfway through his commute to the rink. How could he have forgotten his phone, of all things? He dashed to his room and unplugged the fully-charged gadget from the dock. He also packed the power bank and some extra hand towels while he was at it.

Exhausted from his run, he made his way to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator to get some water.

This time, the door completely fell off.

"What the fuck?!"

He completely forgot about the broken door -- rather, how he'd just broken it hours earlier.

What the actual fuck.

You had one job, Phichit thought to himself. One. Job.

If it weren't for his quick reflexes, he would have almost dropped the heavy thing. Once he regained his footing, he steadied the door with both hands and leaned it against the wall. Thankfully, none of the foodstuffs in it were damaged. (The eggs, especially. He wouldn't know what to do if those were broken.)

(He'd be dead, for starters. He just refused to admit it. Fortunately, no one was home to witness his blunder.)

Phichit called Celestino to inform that he was going to be late. He had a fridge door to fix.

But first, water -- since the good old box was already wide open and all. Hah.

"What the hell?!" a shrill voice screamed from behind him, causing him to do a sudden spit take and drop the bottle he was drinking from. Phichit didn't have time to be surprised at his ambusher, however, as the iced liquid splashed over the outlet to which the refrigerator was plugged, causing the thing to short-circuit and subsequently explode.

The kitchen was quiet as the machine made weird, whirring sounds before permanently dying down. Phichit found himself hanging on to his older sister, and she gripping tightly onto him, as well. They were frozen on the spot, both momentarily lost for words at what had just happened.

Well, that was underwhelming, was his first thought. Sister looks pretty in her white uniform, was the second.

Siriwan voiced the third for him. "Oh my god."

The lock turned from outside, and their mother announced her return to the house at large. Upon reaching the kitchen, she dropped the groceries onto the floor in shock.

  .

  "So you're buying a new fridge," Yuuri closes the story, using a very unusual deadpan tone that he usually reserves for when he's one-hundred percent done with everything. He even skipped the entire flailing-around-like-a-crazed-chicken part.

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Phichit affirms, nodding away as if nothing had happened. Leo and Guanghong hold on to each other on the bed, both speechless with shock.

Yuuri saunters over to the desk, upon which several printed catalogues of refrigerator models were stacked. "So that's what these are for," he muses, pushing up his glasses as he reads the fine print. "Why are you looking these up, though?"

"I'm paying for part of it because it was me who broke the old one." Phichit flops back onto the bed, tapping away at his phone again. "At least I have a good story to tell the children someday."

Yuuri has nothing to say against that. He wonders how his friend will begin the tale when he does tell it. Knowing him, though, it would be somewhere along, "Once upon a time..."

[armorroofing]

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The post Roof Repairs Near Blue Springs MO appeared first on Armor Roofing Kansas City.