All The Things I Did: 14th March 2015

All of the things.  From Worst to Best.  Go.

WORST: WWE Raw episode 1,137: Wrestlemania is two weeks away, and the build-up for it is alarmingly underdone.  The major problem is that for three of the top feuds one of the major stars is missing.  Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar: Lesnar works limited dates, and when he does show up it's usually just to stand in the background and hop from foot to foot menacingly.  Triple H vs. Sting - Sting has appeared maybe twice in the last six months, and otherwise communicates via monitor screen.  Bray Wyatt vs. Undertaker: The Undertaker isn't appearing until Wrestlemania, and the entre build-up consists of Bray desperately calling him out, and Taker sending a mystical lightning bolt to blow up Bray's rocking chair (really).  The only reason I'm excited for 'Mania is that I'm confident that all of those guys will deliver on the night.

The Walking Dead season 5, episode 13: This show has taken a definite upswing since Rick and co. found a safe place to live.  They're telling a different kind of story now, and it's one I'm a bit more interested in than the relentlessly grim survivalist tale that was going on before.

Amazing X-Men (2014) #1-12, writing by Jason Aaron and Chris Yost, art by Ed McGuinness: This run of issues features two stories: one about the return of Nightcrawler from the dead, and the other about an army of Wendigos.  The first is a swashbuckling action romp, as Nightcrawler summons the X-Men into the afterlife to stop pirates from stealing souls from Heaven and Hell.  It's exactly a absurd as it sounds, but it gets away with it through sheer charm and exuberance.  In the second, the Wendigo curse is activated when a human corpse is fed through a grinder in a meat-packing plant; hundreds of Canadians end up eating human flesh, and all of them turn into the mythica Wendigo.  Cue the X-Men, and another story that hits a very similar tone to the Nightcrawler one.  It's a bit throwaway, and not quite as good, but it's in the same ballpark.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle: This is a collection of the first twelve Sherlock Holmes short stories, and it's immediately apparent that the character works better in this format than in his first two novels.  All of the fat is cut, and what is left is a dozen or so lean stories that give every chance for Holmes to display his genius without too much clunky exposition.  Still entertaining over a century later.

Young Americans by David Bowie: Bowie's first post-glam album may be one of his weaker efforts from the 1970s, but that still makes it pretty damn good.  He's in full-on Philly soul mode, and doing it very well.  It's an underlooked album.  The only bad track is his cover of The Beatles' 'Across the Universe', and even that pulls out a surprisingly gutsy outtro.


Uncanny Avengers #1-17, writing by Rick Remender, art by John Cassaday and Daniel Acuna:  In the wake of Avengers vs. X-Men, both teams have formed a squad together to promote mutant/human unity.  It all goes pear-shaped when the Nazi Red Skull shows up wielding the brain of Charles Xavier as a weapon, and it gets even worse when the grand-kids of Apocalypse show up.  Remender is drawing on plot threads from his amazing run on Uncanny X-Force, and weaving them together into a balls-out, high-stakes superhero magnum opus.  It does get a little ham-handed when Remender starts moralising about race-relations and cultural identity, but the rest is solid gold.  Plus, it has Kand the Conqueror, and I am a sucker for a good Kang story.

Station to Station by David Bowie: Right from the middle of Bowie's cocaine-addled peak, this album is masterful.  He's shed the glam by this point, and is working more with funk and soul influences.  There may only be six songs on the album, but every single one is a winner.


BEST: A Night at the Hip-Hopera by The Kleptones: Hip-hop classics meet Queen backing tracks, in what may be the greatest mash-up album of all time.  This is probably my favourite album of the last decade.  Check it out, if only for the amazing combination of the Beastie Boys with 'Radio Gaga/I Want to Break Free'.  It's free if anyone wants to check it out here.