This and that

Here’s just another general blog update that I at least hope will be worth your time. I’ll be talking a little bit about what’s coming up on the blog in the next few days as well as offer some of my comments on what we might have to look forward to in the next issues due out on Christmas Eve, December 24. If you haven’t read the previews for #114 or if you are following the book in trades, you may want to stay away from the last couple of paragraphs. Everything up until then should be safe though.

General stuff

1. On the whole, I’m very happy with how the Daredevil feed is working out (and feel free to add the custom made icon and code found in the sidebar by copying the code in the original post). As Francesco pointed out (and I’ve noticed this myself as well), some non-Daredevil items are slipping through the filter. This is not a general problem, but restricted to certain RSS feeds and I hope to be able to take care of this problem some time tomorrow. But I do know about it, and I’m trying to fix it. As a general rule, though, I recommend all of you to make regular stops at ManWithoutFear.com since esteemed webmaster (did my calling him that make him blush? LOL) Kuljit Mithra is insanely good at keeping track of a bunch of stuff I wouldn’t even consider looking for.
2. Thanks to some of you people out there (see comments and HERE) for pointing out the phallic appearance of my chocolate billy club. I aim to entice. 😉
3. For some reason, the billy club video didn’t kill my questionable desire to make a complete ass of myself on camera, so tomorrow I will post my video review of the Daredevil movie novel adaptation by Greg Cox. I actually own all three of the (non-graphic) Daredevil novels that have been released to date so I will review all of them sooner or later, but I re-read this book a few days ago for this specific purpose. From now on, I will try to actually get things to upload to YouTube so it will be less of a hassle for people to watch.
4. I actually have tons of time off for Christmas and New Year’s so at least some of it will be spent on blogging. Before Christmas, I will post the “eye candy special,” aimed at all the girls (and gay guys) out there who get a kick out of smokin’ hot panels of Daredevil, whether scantily clad or in costume. After talking this over with fellow fan girl Alice, I’ve decided that Alex Maleev drew enough hot panels of Matt to warrant his own post, so I’ll get to that one first. I’m drooling already. Over a comic character. Boy, am I pathetic…
5. With Daredevil #114 coming out in time for Christmas, you can expect that review to be up as soon as I get the time, provided I can still get back home after my mother’s Christmas cooking. And, speaking of Daredevil #114, here are some of my thoughts on the preview. Stop reading if you don’t want spoilers…

Daredevil #114 discussion (or just me thinking out loud)

… So, as many of you may have noticed, CBR and IGN both posted previews that contain an extra page beyond those that were featured in the Comics Bulletin preview I linked to earlier. This extra page has Matt thinking many of the same things we were all thinking after reading #113 and looking at the earlier #114 preview pages.

We learn that Milla’s “disappearance” has at least the appearance of legitimacy. Milla’s parents did, in fact, get temporary custody of their daughter, and whether the Hand have a hand in this or not (pun not intended), she is probably not currently being held by them, though they may be in control of the situation.

One of the lawyers representing the Donovans is a Japanese woman and many of us started wondering whether this might be Lady Bullseye herself. Matt seems to be wondering the same thing, and I’m sort of liking his paranoia here. But, as some people put it, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re not being followed.” I don’t think this character is Lady Bullseye, and I have to give a lot of credit to Michael Lark for 1) drawing characters that are distinct in appearance and 2) actually managing to draw an Asian character properly (check out the page-wide middle panel of preview page nine. Lots of artists don’t strike me as being very good at drawing non-white characters, but I think Lark does a very good job.

We’ve been discussing a lot of this on the ManWithoutFear message board, so I won’t do it again here, but I did start thinking about whether this particular law firm, while “legit,” might be controlled by the hand through the business side of their operations. This came to mind when I remembered the latest Brubaker interview on Newsarama that was posted a few days ago. It sure gets you thinking, doesn’t it? On the other hand, I would personally prefer it if Milla’s disappearance is unrelated to the rest of the events of this arc. We’ll see if I’m right.

And, I just have to congratulate myself for guessing (correctly) that Master Izo was Stick’s sensei, even before #113 hit the stands. Yeah, I know that didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out, but just let me feel smart for two seconds, will ya?

Another though that came to mind (and kudos to Michael Lark for this one too), I like how Milla’s mother is drawn to be similar to her in appearance. They really look like mother and daughter, which is undoubtedly hard to pull off.

I think I’ll stop there, and I hope to see you guys around tomorrow!