A newly circulating rumor potentially sheds new light on that Samsung tablet which was outed earlier this week by Emmanuele Silanesu, National Product and Marketing Manager for Samsung Australia’s IT division. Despite the insinuation by Silanesu that the device will feature an Intel Atom chip with some flavor of Windows on board, this latest rumor turns that whole scenario upside down by claiming the device will be powered by Android. Details are sketchy but the tablet could feature calling via a headset presumably using some implementation of VoIP, 3G and possibly even 4G connectivity, and an ARM-based architecture under the hood. We have a good six months to elucidate all the details on this slate device but this latest rumor paints a picture of a device which is much more desirable than a re-hashed Q1. Cross fingers and hope that this latest rumor is the one that rises to the top when all the wheat is separated from the chaff.

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Newly released for Apple Iphone

Halloween Tap Deluxe 1.0


Category: Games
Price: $1.99 (iTunes)

Description:

Halloween Tap Deluxe now available on AppStore! Be first to try it out!

This simple and addictive game is designed for all fast finger tappers out there.
Try to pop out/tap out as much halloween items as possible. All you need to do is tap them.

Objective of the game is to tap/pop specific number of items in a given time. Each time you pop/tap all the items required, you go to next harder level.

Features:
- 3 difficulty settings
- Cool popping sound
- Eye catching graphics

Be sure to check out our other cool apps in the COOL APPS menu in the game.
Halloween Tap Deluxe



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The cloud, the smartphone, the tablet, the Web itself as a big giant operating system-- what's the fatal flaw in all of these? It's all about feeding content to passive "consumers". Plug me in, baby, I'm not lifting a finger ever again.

Mac only: No longer must Mac users move to the keyboard to open links in a new tab—free, open-source app MiddleClick sits in your menu bar and allows you to use 3 fingers to middle click on Apple's multitouch devices. More »

Mac only: No longer must Mac users move to the keyboard to open links in a new tab—free, open-source app MiddleClick sits in your menu bar and allows you to use 3 fingers to middle click on Apple's multitouch devices. More »

Haven't updated your laptop's trackpad driver lately? Then you may well want to consider doing so, at least if your laptop is equipped with a Synaptics trackpad. As a user on the Hardware Zone forums discovered, the latest Synaptics driver seems to enable multitouch gestures on older laptops that didn't previously support them, including two-finger scrolling, and three-finger click. What's more, while the drivers themselves come from HP, they should work just fine on other laptops with a Synaptics trackpad. Hit up the link below to try it out for yourself.

Synaptics driver enables multitouch gestures on older trackpads originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Patent system supporters regularly point (slightly misleadingly) to the claim that the patent system gives patent holders the right to exclude others from using their inventions. And, thus, most lawsuits we see around patents revolve around cases involving a company manufacturing a product that includes a patented invention. But what about a lawsuit for a company that deliberately chose not to license or use a patented technology, because it was too expensive?

Welcome to today's world.

A few years back, there was a lot of attention paid to videos from a company called SawStop that made a pretty cool product that protected your fingers from a table saw. You may have seen the videos: The company tried to license the invention to various table saw makers, but after evaluating the technology, many were not convinced how well it worked and felt that the cost was way too high (both for themselves, and for consumers). In fact, some appeared to fear that if they did adopt this technology and then someone still got hurt, they were asking for a big lawsuit for promoting this technology as a safety feature.

But what about the other way around? Could someone be so bold as to actually sue for using a table saw that did not have this technology?

ChurchHatesTucker alerts us to the story of a lawsuit in Boston that involved a guy whose hand was damaged in a table saw accident while using a table saw from Ryobi. The guy's complaint was that Ryobi should have included this technology and that it should be required to protect hands. And, amazingly, the jury sided with the guy.

Yes, you read that right. The jury effectively claimed that any table saw maker is liable for injuries if it does not license this technology and build it into its table saws.

That, of course, conflicts with that basic "exclusivity" part of patent law -- and would effectively mean that SawStop has now been given total defacto control over who can be allowed to sell table saws in the US. That clearly is not what the law was intended to do. The government should never require companies to have to purchase a patent license for a technology they don't believe the market wants. And, in this case, the ruling has resulted in numerous other lawsuits against other table saw makers -- and a near guarantee that the price of table saws will go way up. Old saws can't be retrofitted, and table saw makers need to totally change their manufacturing process and greatly increase costs to offer this technology.

This seems blatantly wrong. If the government is going to require companies to use a patented technology, it seems that the only reasonable solution is to remove the patent on it and allow competition in the market place.

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A video clip which shows an office worker opening a Kit Kat chocolate bar and finding an orangutan's finger has been re-posted on video-sharing Web site YouTube, a day after it was removed at the request of food giant Nestlé.

A video clip which shows an office worker opening a Kit Kat chocolate bar and finding an orangutan's finger has been re-posted on video-sharing Web site YouTube, a day after it was removed at the request of food giant Nestlé.

On Monday I had the opportunity to present the MIX 2010 Day 1 Keynote in Las Vegas (you can watch a video of it here).  In the keynote I announced the release of the Silverlight 4 Release Candidate (we’ll ship the final release of it next month) and the VS 2010 RC tools for Silverlight 4.  I also had the chance to talk for the first time about how Silverlight and XNA can now be used to build Windows Phone 7 applications.

During my talk I did two quick Windows Phone 7 coding demos using Silverlight – a quick “Hello World” application and a “Twitter” data-snacking application.  Both applications were easy to build and only took a few minutes to create on stage.  Below are the steps you can follow yourself to build them on your own machines as well.

[Note: In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu]

Building a “Hello World” Windows Phone 7 Application

First make sure you’ve installed the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP – this includes the Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone development tool (which will be free forever and is the only thing you need to develop and build Windows Phone 7 applications) as well as an add-on to the VS 2010 RC that enables phone development within the full VS 2010 as well.

After you’ve downloaded and installed the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP, launch the Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone that it installs or launch the VS 2010 RC (if you have it already installed), and then choose “File”->”New Project.”  Here, you’ll find the usual list of project template types along with a new category: “Silverlight for Windows Phone”. The first CTP offers two application project templates. The first is the “Windows Phone Application” template - this is what we’ll use for this example. The second is the “Windows Phone List Application” template - which provides the basic layout for a master‑details phone application:

After creating a new project, you’ll get a view of the design surface and markup. Notice that the design surface shows the phone UI, letting you easily see how your application will look while you develop. For those familiar with Visual Studio, you’ll also find the familiar ToolBox, Solution Explorer and Properties pane.

For our HelloWorld application, we’ll start out by adding a TextBox and a Button from the Toolbox. Notice that you get the same design experience as you do for Silverlight on the web or desktop. You can easily resize, position and align your controls on the design surface. Changing properties is easy with the Properties pane. We’ll change the name of the TextBox that we added to username and change the page title text to “Hello world.”

We’ll then write some code by double‑clicking on the button and create an event handler in the code-behind file (MainPage.xaml.cs).

We’ll start out by changing the title text of the application. The project template included this title as a TextBlock with the name textBlockListTitle (note that the current name incorrectly includes the word “list”; that will be fixed for the final release.)  As we write code against it we get intellisense showing the members available.  Below we’ll set the Text property of the title TextBlock to “Hello “ + the Text property of the TextBox username:

We now have all the code necessary for a Hello World application.  We have two choices when it comes to deploying and running the application. We can either deploy to an actual device itself or use the built‑in phone emulator:

Because the phone emulator is actually the phone operating system running in a virtual machine, we’ll get the same experience developing in the emulator as on the device. For this sample, we’ll just press F5 to start the application with debugging using the emulator.  Once the phone operating system loads, the emulator will run the new “Hello world” application exactly as it would on the device:

Notice that we can change several settings of the emulator experience with the emulator toolbar – which is a floating toolbar on the top right.  This includes the ability to re-size/zoom the emulator and two rotate buttons.  Zoom lets us zoom into even the smallest detail of the application:

The orientation buttons allow us easily see what the application looks like in landscape mode (orientation change support is just built into the default template):

Note that the emulator can be reused across F5 debug sessions - that means that we don’t have to start the emulator for every deployment. We’ve added a dialog that will help you from accidentally shutting down the emulator if you want to reuse it.  Launching an application on an already running emulator should only take ~3 seconds to deploy and run.

Within our Hello World application we’ll click the “username” textbox to give it focus.  This will cause the software input panel (SIP) to open up automatically.  We can either type a message or – since we are using the emulator – just type in text.  Note that the emulator works with Windows 7 multi-touch so, if you have a touchscreen, you can see how interaction will feel on a device just by pressing the screen.

We’ll enter “MIX 10” in the textbox and then click the button – this will cause the title to update to be “Hello MIX 10”:

We provide the same Visual Studio experience when developing for the phone as other .NET applications. This means that we can set a breakpoint within the button event handler, press the button again and have it break within the debugger:

Building a “Twitter” Windows Phone 7 Application using Silverlight

Rather than just stop with “Hello World” let’s keep going and evolve it to be a basic Twitter client application.

We’ll return to the design surface and add a ListBox, using the snaplines within the designer to fit it to the device screen and make the best use of phone screen real estate.  We’ll also rename the Button “Lookup”:

We’ll then return to the Button event handler in Main.xaml.cs, and remove the original “Hello World” line of code and take advantage of the WebClient networking class to asynchronously download a Twitter feed. This takes three lines of code in total: (1) declaring and creating the WebClient, (2) attaching an event handler and then (3) calling the asynchronous DownloadStringAsync method.

In the DownloadStringAsync call, we’ll pass a Twitter Uri plus a query string which pulls the text from the “username” TextBox. This feed will pull down the respective user’s most frequent posts in an XML format. When the call completes, the DownloadStringCompleted event is fired and our generated event handler twitter_DownloadStringCompleted will be called:

The result returned from the Twitter call will come back in an XML based format.  To parse this we’ll use LINQ to XML. LINQ to XML lets us create simple queries for accessing data in an xml feed. To use this library, we’ll first need to add a reference to the assembly (right click on the References folder in the solution explorer and choose “Add Reference):

We’ll then add a “using System.Xml.Linq” namespace reference at the top of the code-behind file at the top of Main.xaml.cs file:

We’ll then add a simple helper class called TwitterItem to our project. TwitterItem has three string members – UserName, Message and ImageSource:

We’ll then implement the twitter_DownloadStringCompleted event handler and use LINQ to XML to parse the returned XML string from Twitter.  What the query is doing is pulling out the three key pieces of information for each Twitter post from the username we passed as the query string. These are the ImageSource for their profile image, the Message of their tweet and their UserName. For each Tweet in the XML, we are creating a new TwitterItem in the IEnumerable<XElement> returned by the Linq query. 

We then assign the generated TwitterItem sequence to the ListBox’s ItemsSource property:

We’ll then do one more step to complete the application. In the Main.xaml file, we’ll add an ItemTemplate to the ListBox. For the demo, I used a simple template that uses databinding to show the user’s profile image, their tweet and their username.

<ListBox Height="521" HorizonalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,131,0,0" Name="listBox1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="476"> <ListBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Height="132"> <Image Source="{Binding ImageSource}" Height="73" Width="73" VerticalAlignment="Top" Margin="0,10,8,0"/> <StackPanel Width="370"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding UserName}" Foreground="#FFC8AB14" FontSize="28" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Message}" TextWrapping="Wrap" FontSize="24" /> </StackPanel> </StackPanel> </DataTemplate> </ListBox.ItemTemplate> </ListBox>

Now, pressing F5 again, we are able to reuse the emulator and re-run the application. Once the application has launched, we can type in a Twitter username and press the  Button to see the results. Try my Twitter user name (scottgu) and you’ll get back a result of TwitterItems in the Listbox:

Try using the mouse (or if you have a touchscreen device your finger) to scroll the items in the Listbox – you should find that they move very fast within the emulator.  This is because the emulator is hardware accelerated – and so gives you the same fast performance that you get on the actual phone hardware.

Summary

Silverlight and the VS 2010 Tools for Windows Phone (and the corresponding Expression Blend Tools for Windows Phone) make building Windows Phone applications both really easy and fun. 

At MIX this week a number of great partners (including Netflix, FourSquare, Seesmic, Shazaam, Major League Soccer, Graphic.ly, Associated Press, Jackson Fish and more) showed off some killer application prototypes they’ve built over the last few weeks.  You can watch my full day 1 keynote to see them in action. I think they start to show some of the promise and potential of using Silverlight with Windows Phone 7.  I’ll be doing more blog posts in the weeks and months ahead that cover that more.

Hope this helps,

Scott

When we were driving out of town I said, "I hate the corpses of empires, they stink as nothing else. They stink so badly that I cannot believe that even in life they were healthy." "I do not think you can convince mankind," said my husband, "that there is not a certain magnificence about a great empire in being." "Of course there is," I admitted, "but the hideousness outweighs the beauty. You are not, I hope, going to tell me that they impose law on lawless people. Empires live by the violation of law." (Rebecca West, from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon)

Strange week this week. All Marvel and Vertigo. And lots of sex. Weird. And yes, I'm aware the fourth issue of Daytripper came out last week. I didn't get it, for some reason. I should have it this weekend. Dang. Let's move on!

Avengers vs. Atlas #3 (of 4) ("Hulk Smash!"/"Hey, Venus!") by Jeff Parker (writer, "Hulk"), Paul Cornell (writer, "Venus"), Gabriel Hardman (artist, "Hulk"), Leonard Kirk (artist, "Venus"), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colorist, "Hulk"), Brad Anderson (colorist, "Venus"), Tom Orzechowski (letterer, "Hulk"), and Joe Sabino (letterer, "Venus"). $3.99, 30 pgs, FC, Marvel.

Everyone reading this should know what I'm going to rant about. When Thor transports the Avengers and the agents of Atlas to Norway, he says, "But I know of one place on Midgard I can bring us all to!" Sorry, Thor - it's TAKE!!!!! Seriously, poor "take." No one loves it. So sad.

I love how Parker casually makes Hank Pym a dick even when he's not really trying. When the old-school Avengers find out that Bruce Banner is the Hulk (because Venus sang to him and calmed him down, turning him back to Banner), Pym says, "That's Dr. Bruce Banner! He's maybe the top physicist in the world -- well, besides me ..." Ha! And Parker makes Tony Stark a bit of a wuss, too - Marvel Boy telepathically informs Pym about what's happening, and Stark says, "He could have put the knowledge in me ... I would have gotten it." If that's not enough, in the next panel, Stark looks down at himself and says to no one in particular, "I built this suit ..." Whenever a writer is clever enough to drop stuff like that into his fairly standard superhero team-up (which this is), I appreciate it, because it just humanizes them and makes it easier to deal with the wackiness of a team from the 1960s (or a decade ago, according to Pym) joining up with a team from the present thanks to some time anomaly. They all fight the Hulk, Bob figures out what's up, and everything is set up for the final showdown. It's good, clean fun!

In the back-up story, Cornell and Kirk bring us Venus, love advice columnist. It's pretty hilarious (see the panel of awesome below), as she answers questions from Hercules, Deadpool (which is particularly hilarious), I assume Jocasta, the Hulk, Norman Osborn (more hilarity!), Kitty Pryde, and Clint Barton. It's very dependent on knowing Marvel continuity (unsurprisingly), and the only one I didn't get was the letter from Miss Dean. Help me out, more knowledgeable readers! It's a fun little tale.

Sex in this comic? Hoo-boy, you bet. It stars Venus in both stories, for crying out loud! In the first, Venus has to sing to calm Bruce down, and two superheroes get caught in the sound wave. Macking commences! And in the second, well, Deadpool's letter is the highlight, and I won't spoil it.

One panel of awesome:

Oh, Hulk, no one understands you!

Fables #93 ("The Little Murder Part Two of Two") by Bill Willingham (writer), David Lapham (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), and Todd Klein (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, DC/Vertigo.

It's been two months since the last issue of Fables. Strange. Anyway, I always dig the short stories of this series because they seem to contain standalone stories, but Willingham always makes sure that things get tied into the main story later. In other words, I doubt we've seen the last of the some of these characters. The story itself is not great but not bad, as Ambrose needs to figure out a way to deal with the serious transgression from last issue in a way that doesn't rip his kingdom apart. He does it, of course, but there's still some restlessness among the subjects, and that can't be good. I do like the only witness for the defense - at first, I thought it was absolutely idiotic, but once John started expanding on his story, it made better sense. And hey - those people who wish to read political intent into writers' books can kind of have a field day here, as Willingham tackles the death penalty and the idea of culture leading to what some would call crime. I honestly don't care when writers inject their political beliefs into comics (if, indeed, that's what Willingham is doing here), because this issue, while not superb, does show how much difficulty Ambrose is going to have moving forward. That's what makes this such a neat series.

Sex in this comic? Definitely. Off-panel and after the issue ends, but oh yeah, someone's getting lucky!

One panel of awesome:

Won't someone think of the ... squirrel children!

Hercules: Fall of an Avenger #1 (of 2) (Hercules main story/"Greek Tragedy") by Greg Pak (writer, "Hercules"), Fred van Lente (writer, "Hercules"), Paul Tobin (writer, "Tragedy"), Ariel Olivetti (artist, "Hercules"), Reilly Brown (penciler, "Tragedy"), Jason Paz (inker, "Tragedy"), Wil Quintana (colorist, "Tragedy"), Simon Bowland (letterer, "Hercules"), and Joe Sabino (letterer, "Tragedy"). $3.99, 30 pgs, FC, Marvel.

There are a few writers that I simply will not read. I've read their stuff, disliked it enough to know it's kind of a pattern with them and not an anomaly, and won't try it again. There are some writers who I dislike so much that even if they hook up with a fantastic artist, it's not enough to get me to buy it. However, if I like the writer, usually I can take lousy art, because I'm much more interested in the writing in comics than the art. If the art doesn't make my eyes bleed and tells the story serviceably, I can deal with it. Very rarely will the art on a book I want to read by a writer I like keep me from buying it. Let me tell you, I had one of those moments on Wednesday, when I looked at this book and Ariel Olivetti's art.

I can't really put my finger on why I don't like Olivetti's art. I didn't always dislike it. A decade ago, when he was still drawing using heavy lines rather than whatever the hell he's doing now, it wasn't great art but it had a kind of mad energy to it. Then he started doing more and more delicate line work, it appears he's given up on inking, and I don't know what's going on with the coloring (an Irene Y. Lee is credited with "production" on this book; does she do the coloring or does Olivetti?). It's that faux-"realistic" look that, to me, is ridiculously static and, at times, downright creepy. It's kind of the same thing that Salvador Larocca has done in the past five years or so, with color washes that drains everything heavy from the page but makes the art far too ephemeral. It's not a good look. Olivetti is fine telling a story, but the art just repels me. But I bought this anyway, because I knew that Pak and Van Lente wouldn't let me down. And, heck, they didn't. Well, except for one brief exchange. I'll 'splain.

The premise of the book is that Amadues Cho and a bunch of heroes congregate at the Parthenon to honor Hercules. Amadeus is peeved at Athena and wants her to show up, but instead the heroes do. So they all tell stories about how groovy Hercules was. Thor talks about the time he and Herc had to outdrink a bunch of giants, while Namor tells them of the time Herc beat on him to get him out of a funk. (I wonder why Namor is wearing his new, "I'm so cool" outfit in his flashback when he's wearing his old-school, "I'm so cool I can look UNcool" underpants in the original comic. I mean, will people reading this comic be that confused that he ... changed his clothes?!?!?!?) These are not bad stories, and Thor's is quite funny. Then the babes show up, talking about how hot Herc was (it's true - they all say it!). Snowbird says that they all "lay" with him, then continues: "I know there are others in the crowd who should join us ... don't be shy." At which Northstar says, "Is that the time? Gotta go!" while Namor looks on, a question mark above his head. Ha ha, Jean-Paul had sex with Herc and he's embarrassed about it! Now, this bugged me. First of all, Herc is a god. And he's, you know, Greek. I always assumed he was kind of pansexual, so the idea of him having sex with men isn't that strange. Second, Northstar is (wait for it) gay. And everyone knows he's gay! Who cares if he had sex with Herc? It felt, to me, that Van Lente and Pak were saying that a gay man would be embarrassed that he had sex with a man, while the women aren't. This would have, actually, been a perfect opportunity for another Marvel hero to come out of the closet - the joke would have been funnier if Snowbird had said that and someone like Warren or Logan had shrugged and said, "Hey, it weren't no big thing." But it's weird that Northstar is embarrassed about it. This weird feeling continues on the next page, when Alflyse starts talking about her time with Herc (see the panel of awesome below). Wolverine and Fandral looked shocked. After she's done talking, Namor too looks shocked (and Thor looks like he's fondly remembering his own experiences with the Elven Tickler, which isn't too surprising, given that he's, you know, Thor). Logan is older than a century, and he knows how to get with the ladies. Fandral is a freakin' god. Namor, I suppose, is the most stuck-up of them, so him I can forgive. But the idea in mainstream comics, it seems, is that men like the sex as long as it's not too weird, while the women kind of tolerate the sex but certainly don't do anything wacky. Pak and Van Lente are subverting the second assumption, but reinforcing the first. Are you telling me Logan never got really weird with any of the seriously crazy women he hooked up with? Are you saying Fandral never did anything bizarre to mix things up after a thousand years of the missionary position? I've seen this attitude before in Marvel and DC comics, and it's a bit strange. If someone who looks like Alflyse starts talking about how much she enjoyed Herc's mastery of the Elven Tickler, I wouldn't looked shocked, I'd be breaking out the instruction manual to figure it out!

And then Athena shows up and tells Amadeus that he's the new leader of the Olympus group, which leads into next issue. And the back-up story has Venus and Namora going around telling people that Herc is dead. It's a clever idea by Tobin - apparently Herc invested money in stuff and then forgot about it, so he has all sorts of weird holdings all over the world, some of which have done very well for him (he was an early investor in Stark Industries, for instance). It's a nice little story that features a hydra. Which is never a bad thing to see.

Sex in this comic? See above. Plus, Venus get naked in a totally non-sexual situation (one of Herc's holdings was a nudist colony), and all the people who lived in homes that Herc owned happened to be women. I wonder why?

One panel of awesome:

I love Wolverine's expression!

Joe the Barbarian #3 (of ВосемБ) ("The Dying Boy") by Grant "Yes, this is just propaganda to get you to keep rats as pets, why do you ask?" Morrison (writer), Sean Murphy (artist), Dave Stewart (colorist), and Todd Klein (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, DC/Vertigo.

Morrison unveils a few more secrets in this issue, as Joe is shown something that makes his journey through the strange world of more import than it already was, and a new adventurer joins the team. And of course, because it's a Grant Morrison comic, the very odd bad guys (well, I'm just going to assume they're bad guys; they could be kindly monks for all I know) are revealed at the end. There are typical Morrisonisms sprinkled throughout the dialogue, and it all moves along at a nice clip. Murphy remains the absolutely stunning star of the comic, though. The chase at the beginning of the issue is terrifically exciting, and when Joe and Jack arrive in Draka's town, Murphy gives us a full-page drawing that is simply gorgeous. When Joe collapses near the end of the issue, Murphy looks downward through his house, almost giving us vertigo. The book itself continues to get better, writing-wise, but Murphy's art is so staggering you almost don't need to read the text. That's so rare with a Morrison comic that it's almost unbelievable. But there it is!

Sex in this comic? It's about a boy in a fantasy land. Let's hope not!

One panel of awesome:

So portentous!!!!!

Marvel Boy: The Uranian #3 (of 3) ("Man of Two Worlds") by Jeff Parker (writer), Felix Ruiz (artist/letterer), and Val Staples (colorist). $3.99, 22 pgs + 18 pgs of 3 back-up stories, FC, Marvel.

This isn't a bad comic, and it looks great, but it does feel more like Parker is filling in the gaps of the characters from Agents of Atlas (or, I guess, Atlas) than telling a standalone story. He fleshed out some crucial points about Bob's past, namely his connection to Uranus and what his overlords really want (and if I call them "overlords," they can't be too benign, can they?), but this feels a bit trifling, as if it could have been told in a flashback in the regular series over the course of an issue or possibly two. Three issues is a bit much. I mean, we get to see a giant 1950s Marvel monster (see below), some nice parts about Bob's life, and a groovy mad scientist, but it still feels a bit too slight. Oh well. The art is fantastic, Parker's writing is fine as ever (even if the book itself is slight), and we get to see a bunch of reprints drawn by Bill Everett. If you're a fan of Jimmy Woo's team or Parker's writing, it's a fun book. For four bucks a pop, though, it's a bit steep.

Sex in this comic? Bob gets busy in a rocket with Violet. There's nothing better than zero-gravity sex! (Or, you know, so I'm told. By my astronaut friends. Of which I have many.)

One panel of awesome:

Jeff Parker + Felix Ruiz = awesome!

Spider-Woman #7 by Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Alex Maleev (artist), and Cory Petit (letterer). $3.99, 35 pgs, FC, Marvel.

Bendis writes at the end of this book that it's over, because it's way too much work for Maleev to do it, motion-comic style. Why they specifically had to do it motion-comic style isn't addressed, but apparently putting together a motion comic takes a lot more time and effort by the artist, and it was killing Maleev. KILLING HIM!!!!!! So they pulled the plug. Oh well.

I'm not that put out by it, because I was probably going to drop the book anyway after the first arc. I will defend the Bendis/Maleev Daredevil to anyone who tries to put it down (which, to be honest, isn't many people), but this just never got good. It had a nifty hook but Bendis simply didn't do anything with it, and in the end, he had to bring in the Avengers to bail Jessica out. This issue is just a big ol' dumb superhero fight with a few clever Bendisisms, but mostly, it's dumb. And Jessica is a total bitch. She's not a bitch in a charming, fucked-up way that Jessica Jones was in Alias, she's a bitch in a "Gosh, I really hope that Skrull kills her" way. She keeps calling the Asian girl "dumb" because she claims that her Skrull boyfriend is Spider-Man. Now, the way Maleev draws her, it seems like she's blind. Second, the Skrull is, you know, a shape-shifter, so even if she's not blind, he could look like Spider-Man. Jessica points out that Spider-Man "famously" lives in New York, but she's only been dating him three weeks, meaning he could be on vacation or something. So, um, Jessica? Shut the fuck up. As Abigail points out, your track record so far in this comic isn't great in the intelligence department, so if the girl from Madripoor believes she was dating Spider-Man, you're the last person in the world to call her dumb. And then, later, the Skrull tells her that the queen chose her form because "of all the people in the world ... we discovered that no one on this entire planet cares enough about you to notice you at all." Really, Skrull? Okay, from the way Jessica behaves in this comic, I see Skrull dude's point, but that's a bit extreme, isn't it? I mean, she has plenty of friends, after all. It's one of those things that sounds cool the first time you read it but then, once you think about it for more than a second, makes absolutely no sense. And then Wolverine tries to stab a shape-shifter to death. You'd think he'd know better.

So I would have ditched the book anyway, but now I don't have to. If you've been thinking about getting the trade, I'd skip it. Spend it on something, you know, good.

Sex in this comic? Not a bit. Jessica finds the Skrull in a strip club, though.

One panel of "awesome":

Really?

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #6 ("Shock and Awe Chapter 6") by Gregg Hurwitz (writer), Jerome Opeña (penciler), Jay Leisten (inker), Paul Mounts (colorist), and Joe Caramagna (letterer). $2.99, 23 pgs, FC, Marvel.

And now, Moon Knight And Me: A Love Story.

I have never made my love of Moon Knight a secret. I dig him. I love the whole multiple personalities thing, I love the whole weird network of operatives, I love the Doug Moench/Bill Sienkiewicz run with a love that is probably a little unhealthy, I love the Doug Moench/Kevin Nowlan run that followed it, I love the "Fist of Khonshu" series that followed that only lasted six issues and wasn't very good, I liked the 1990s series that also wasn't very good but lasted longer than any Moon Knight series ever, I loved the James Fry issues in the latter part of that run that were really bizarre eye candy, I loved the Stephen Platt issues that ended the run ... okay, that's a lie. I hated those issues. They're AWFUL. I loved the late 1990s mini-series that brought the character back from limbo, with Mark Texeira and then Tommy Lee Edwards on art. I loved the new series that launched a few years ago, which made our hero truly insane for, really, the first time (as much as Moench explored the idea of multiple personalities, you never got the sense that Moonie was all that crazy). And I loved the first few issues of this series, which returned Moon Knight to New York and brought back Bushman (okay, that wasn't too great an idea) and featured out of this world art by Opeña. I bought the first Moon Knight Essential volume because I didn't have the early appearances of the character. I'm going to buy the new hardcover of the Moench/Sienkiewicz collaborations before the first series launched even though I own some of them, because I love the character so much. I think that the first series is wildly underrated, as it was one of the first (if not the first) series to be released through the Direct Market, bypassing newstands and therefore allowing Moench and Sienkiewicz to tell more mature stories than mainstream comics before it. I think the character has a ton of potential that has been tapped a bit, but not enough. But that's just me.

So why am I explaining this? Well, as much as I dug what Hurwitz did in these first few issues (even though I didn't agree with bringing Bushman back and turning him into Bane), I thought this was a terrible way to end this arc and it makes me wonder if I will even buy the next arc. It makes me sad, but that's the way it is. In the first issue, it seemed as if Hurwitz was poking fun at the silliness of superheroes, but doing it subtly. I can deal with Moon Knight as satire, because it's an interesting take, especially as he's a bit, you know, out there. But as we got further into the arc, Hurwitz stopped doing that and this became much more of a straight-forward superhero comic. And I'm just not that interested in that anymore. I mean, Hurwitz brought Bushman back. So what? What happens to him? He ends up in an insane asylum. So what? Bushman's death was interesting because it pushed Moon Knight even further over the brink and set the stage for the previous series, which was excellent. Now he's back, and he's just another boring villain. Even in the mediocre 1990s series, he ruled a country, which added a bit of tension to his dealings with our hero. Now, he's dull. And we get another joke about Crawley getting hit on the head and changing his personality, back to what it was. This wasn't funny when it happened to Guy Gardner twenty years ago, and it's still not funny. I realize that I'm too close to the situation and I should be able to laugh at head injuries just like those uptight [insert ethnic group here] should be able to laugh at jokes at their expense, but it's not the fact that Crawley sustained a head injury and it changed his personality. It's that this book isn't a comedy, so tonally it was all wrong, and it's also that nobody seems to care. That's what bugged me when it happened to Guy - wouldn't someone think, "Hey, maybe we should check him out?" even if they liked his new personality more? Shouldn't Moon Knight have suggested that Crawley ought to get an MRI? It's too fraught with potential pitfalls to make it really funny, and Hurwitz didn't do(...)