Godspeed, Wally West

With the recent conclusion of DC's Final Crisis series and the fact that Barry Allen is still alive and kicking despite being on the bad business end of my most favorite death scene in comics over two decades ago, I can no longer delude myself into thinking he is not going to be THE Flash moving forward.

Now lest you think I'm in some sort of fanboy uproar because a character's death was overturned, I assure you I'm not. Yes, I think Barry's death was amazing and probably the coolest thing he did in nearly 30 years of being the Flash, but this is comics, and if a good story can be told by resurrecting anybody, I think Ed Brubaker has proven it's at least worth a shot.

And I've still got two separate editions of Crisis On Infinite Earth on my bookshelf plus the novelization, so I guess he can still be dead to me.

No, my issue is not so much with the return of Barry Allen, it's about what this means for my favorite DC character, THE Flash for those aforementioned past two decades plus (allowing for the occasional pit stop), one Wally West.

Any regular reader of this blog knows that Nova is my favorite Marvel character (and probably favorite comics character period when push comes to shove). I've also mentioned my childhood fondness for the core concepts of the Flash (super speed, rad costume, etc.). But once I was old enough to discern that there was more than one Flash and they were very different, I gravitated to Wally and he rose above the Nightwings and Kyle Rayners of the DC Universe to become my number one good guy.

Why Wally and not Barry (Bart Allen wasn't the Flash when I was making these crucial life decisions and my sole exposure to Jay Garrick was seeing Extant kick his ass during Zero Hour)? Well, the fact that I was a teenager and Wally was closer to my age certainly helped. To me, Barry was the stodgy old conservative dude and Wally was the wisecracking kid.

(Wally is, of course, one of comics' most noted Republicans, but teenage Ben and his gnarly acid-washed jean jacket was not aware of this)

But over time, it became more than just a closer proximity in age that made me appreciate Wally. Here are few of the reasons that stand out and some of the stories that highighted them.

The Man
Wally West's most inherent likable quality to me, the thing most at the heart of my fandom for him, is basically the same thing that makes Rich "Nova" Rider my favorite Marvel character: he's just a dude.

Barry Allen is a forensic scientist, Jay Garrick is some sorta physicist (and was also a football star), but Wally West is just a guy. Clark Kent is a highly successful reporter, Bruce Wayne is a millionaire, Peter Parker is a science nerd, Tony Stark is a millionaire, Hal Jordan is a hotshot pilot, and so on and so on. They've all got these ridiculous jobs or talents that are cool bits of escapism, but I will never be any of those things, so hey, on some level I can't relate to any of those characters.

But Wally West is just a dude.

He's not super smart, but, again same as Nova, he's not an idiot. He's an average fella. He's not a genius or a dummy. He can think on his feet, but he needs Jay to do his science stuff. In other words: I feel like he could be me.

As a corollary, I've also always dug that Wally grew up basically wanting to be a super hero. I'm not sure if that was so much there pre-Crisis (I think it was to some degree), but Mark Waid really hammered it home in one of my all-time favorite stories, Born to Run. As a kid, Wally thought super heroes were cool as all get out and wanted to be one...much like most comic fans. He didn't swear vengeance because his parents were killed, he wasn't caught in a gamma explosion, he was just a guy with a good heart who wanted to make the world a better place (by dressing up in a rad costume and running super fast).

Grant Morrison had a bit in one of the Secret Files around when he first took over JLA about how Wally was the guy every other member of the League felt most comfortable around and who they most enjoyed talking to and hanging out with. Of course they did! He's awesome!

The Legacy
What makes Wally West wholly unique (for the most part...which I guess renders the "wholly unique" thing moot...never mind) among comic book characters is that he is the one and only sidekick/protege who "grew up" and filled the role of his mentor. Yeah, Dick Grayson was Batman for five minutes, and yes, Bucky is currently Captain America, but the former didn't last and the latter is only a year old at the moment. Wally has been THE Flash since 1986. That is a situation there was no precedent for at the time (and there really still isn't). And it made for some great stories.

Wally trying to fill Barry's boots and being told by everybody from his friends to his foes that he can't made for great stories. Wally doubting himself made for great stories. Wally realizing wait, he could do it made for great stories. Wally coming into his own and proving to be arguably the greatest Flash of them all made for great stories.

It was a two decade super story that in many ways can't be rivaled. You won't find a hero's journey that epic anywhere else in comics.

And even as recently as a couple years ago when Wally was firmly entrenched as his own Flash, there was still material to be mined from the fact that he had picked up the baton and was finishing the race for somebody else. Waid's The Return of Barry Allen was the definitive "Wally stepping up and taking his destiny by the horns" story and in many ways put the Barry comparisons to rest, but even in 2004, Geoff Johns found a way to milk the Flash legacy for another fantastic tale in The Secret of Barry Allen.

Because he was a sidekick and because he did grow out of it and fill the role he was meant to fill, there are stories you can tell with Wally West that you can't tell with any other character.

The Powers
Yeah, Barry ran like a bajillion laps around the Anti-Monitor's antimatter cannon (well done, worthy of at least a golf clap), but he totally died in the process, withering away to nothing. Wally would have done that shit and then stopped for cheeseburgers.

As time marched on and theoretical science followed, writers like Waid, Grant Morrison and others were forced to adapt Wally's powers so he always remained on the cutting edge. Whereas we saw Barry run around a lot, make tornados and do other Silver Age-y stuff, Wally learned how to vibrate his molecules and shift through solid surfaces, lend or borrow speed from other objects and race all the way around the planet to build up momentum for his punches (thank you, "Justice League Unlimited").

And he could run to heaven.

No doubt Waid's introduction of the Speed Force concept changed the Flash franchise forever and made Wally even more special. His ability to tap into the source of all speed helped him whip up his own costume, travel through time (without a treadmill) and achieve all other sorts of neat feats. The concept of super speed became much more groundbreaking and wonderfully visual during Wally's tenure as the Flash, and the cool part was that we got to learn along with him.

Plus, that moment when he's in the midst of fighting Savitar and yells out, "You want to see God? I'll drive!" during Dead Heat and then races into the Speed Force, bad guy in tow? Legendary.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention William Messner-Loebs' inestimable contribution of Wally's crazy metabolism and his need to scarf down seven course meals daily to keep his energy up. Jay Garrick would never do that.

The Rogues
Ok, admittedly, Barry's bad guys are leagues better than Wally's. Waid tried his best, but with all due respect to him (and to Rickey, who loves these guys), Cobalt Blue and Savitar were at the least awful names and you can only use Abra Kadabra so many times before he becomes obvious.

However, once Johns hopped on the book and made it his mission to restore Captain Cold and company to prominence with stuff like Rogues and Crossfire, those dudes came out better off than they probably ever had been. Obviously a big part of that can be attributed to Geoff's skill in getting into villains' heads and telling their stories, but I also think the different dynamic they shared with Wally than with Barry brought out the best in them. With Barry, it was always a game and they never fully took their calling as rogues seriously. With Wally, they took some degree of defense that he would dare intrude on the legacy of their archenemy and took him to task for it. Whereas Barry had their full respect, Wally had to earn that through periods of disdain.

The more contentious Rogues-Wally dynamic took goofy Silver Age villains and helped make them multifaceted and fascinating modern portraits of evil tinged with honor.

And Zoom is just so much cooler than Professor Zoom.

No offense to the Prof, but good buddy with a sordid past turned sociopath obsessed with teaching heroics through tragedy trumps whackjob from the future. And Scott Kolins just drew the shit out of him.

The Love
The first Wally West as the Flash story I ever really read was Waid's Terminal Velocity. It was a helluva way to start. I am now gonna spoil the crap out of it, so run out and buy it right the heck now and read it first because it owns.

The most awesome moment in a story full of awesome moments comes in the final chapter.

The entire arc (and even before), Wally has known he's inching closer and closer to disappearing into the Speed Force. Throughout Waid's run to that point, he had been playing up the idea that the more powerful a speedster gets, the closer they get to the Force, and eventually it draws them in because it is essentially nirvana. Outside of Wally's buddy Max Mercury, no other speedster had ever touched the Force and escaped (and him just barely). Wally was getting more and more powerful and had already brushed up against the Force once during Zero Hour, so it was just a matter of time.

At the crucial point of this story, the terrorist Kobra has taken over Keystone City, and Wally, in trying to stop him, expends so much energy that he vanishes, presumably forever. With Keystone sealed off from the rest of the world, a group of Wally's allies, including his non-powered girlfriend Linda Park, go after Kobra in his memory. With more or less her bare hands, Linda is the last one standing and continues to defy the villain. As he has her by the throat, a miraculous bolt of lightning strikes and Wally reappears, composed of pure energy, in one of my favorite splash pages ever. He beats the ever-loving shit out of Kobra, saves the day, and then vanishes once again.

As Max and the rest of the speedsters mourn Wally's passing (again), Linda wanders off over a hill where she is reunited with Wally and they embrace in another of my favorite splash pages ever.

Even though countless other more powerful and more disciplined speedsters had become trapped in the Speed Force over the millenia, Wally West escaped because he had the anchor none of them had: a love so powerful it could defy the laws of nature itself.

Through the ensuing years, Wally and Linda would grow even closer, get married, and time and again their love would reunite them despite Wally getting lost in time, Linda getting erased from existence, and so on and so forth.

I'll go ahead and admit that I once wrote out Wally's speech to Linda from Flash #100 and gave it to a girl I liked. And I'm pretty sure it worked.

Wally West and Linda Park have my favorite relationship in comics ever, bar none. No secrets, no drama, just two people who love one another very much and support each other in all things.


So I'm begging you, DC Comics: don't let your best Flash run off and become deputy commander of the Flash Corps or whatever. Don't waste this amazing character.

His name is Wally West and he's the Flash, the fastest man alive--don't forget it.

Like a Virgin: FABLES

I fancy myself an unusually well-read comics fan.

I own and have read a little of everything. From obscure mini comics by Jeffrey Brown to the entire "Death of Superman" run to Kramers Ergot to all of Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps to the Jim Mahfood Generation X Special to Kamandi to the Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics to Lewis Trondheim to literally thousands of other random things. I've been around.

Even still, there're several books/series/runs referred to as "essentials" that I haven't read before. And it's high time I dove in, don't you think?

So I'm starting this series of articles titled "Like a Virgin" in which I plan on giving my thoughts about my first full readings of these popular books/series/runs and invite you to post your own feelings. Maybe you can read along with me? Or maybe just read what I think and compare it to what you've already thought of the series - I AM coming to the party late, after all, so there's no doubt you're already ahead of me. Also, these will be posted as I make my way through the thick of it, so they WILL feature spoilers. Enter at your own risk.

First up is FABLES vol. 1: Legends in Exile from Vertigo Comics

Written by Bill Willingham
Art by Lan Medina
Inked by Steve Leialoha and Craig Hamilton
Covers by James Jean with a special cover by Alex Maleev

What I knew going in (remember: there will be spoilers!):

• Snow White and Bigby Wolf are going to have babies.
• Gapetto is the Adversary/series creator Bill Willingham intended for the Adversary to be Peter Pan before it was discovered that copyright laws in certain places didn't have Pan in the public domain, which is a criteria Willingham uses in his recruiting for the characters in the series.
  
• James Jean is a dope-ass artist.
• I originally bought and read issues #1-15 of the series as they came out and just stopped one day because I was spending too much money and it landed on the chopping block for no good reason.
  

What I thought as I read:

• When it came out originally, I TOTALLY bought the Alex Maleev cover to issue #1 over the James Jean cover. :)
  
• Original series artist Lan Medina reminds me an awful lot of Dale Eaglesham in terms of their backgrounds, facial features and action scenes. It's fun to watch here as the series clearly tries on artistic shoes to see what fits early on.
  
• It's interesting how the pace of the first arc in the first trade feels so much like a Vertigo miniseries (if that makes any sense) rather than the start of a long-lasting series. The first arcs of books such as The Sandman, Preacher, and Swamp Thing, for instance, seemed much more comfortable with their places as the starts of series with something special to say. This first arc (and from what I remember of the first arc of future "Like a Virgin" series 100 Bullets) felt more like, say, the first Bite Club miniseries. Very definite. Very tidy. Very clear. This Fables story was even a simplly structured "Locked Room" mystery - though very very creative in its use of characters and dialogue. I'm glad the tonal kitty got to stretch more as the book went on.
• I kind of have a crush on Beauty...

• I'm surprised by how...well, dull the first arc's covers by James Jean were considering he's grown into a fierce artist nowadays who's unafraid to juxtapose mediums and images for the best piece possible. But just click here and take a look at what I mean. It was impressive then. But not signature. Which, I guess, speaks volumes for Jean as an artist, that he only got better and better and better...
• If you get the TPB collection, please don't skip the touching prose piece at the end of the volume! I ended up skipping the last few prose pieces in the single issues of the second volume of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and never went back. But if those were as integral as this one was to the story, I missed a pretty large section of the plot. Wanna know how Bigby first met Snow? Then go back and read this!
• The story possibilities set up in this arc are ENDLESS and I forgot how exciting it was to read for the first time. Mashing up all of these fairy tales was a great treat and very promising. And it didn't HIT me til the speech during the Remembrance Day festival later in this collection. As the mayor speaks about the Fables and their fleeing from a bad dude conqueror called The Adversary who stole all their respective kingdoms (thus pushing them to move to the human "Mundy" realm), a flashback reveals scenes featuring characters from a bevy of stories running for their lives alongside each other. Very exciting, indeed.
  
• During the very same speech, we get a glimpse of the Adversary and discover he was "From beyond the farthest shores of Never..." This is obviously the first hint at the Adversary as Peter Pan, and it makes me wonder how many people had Pan pegged as such from here on out.
• A few pages later we get our first appearance of Pinocchio. I haven't gotten far enough yet to know if Pinocchio plays a larger role in Gapetto's being the Adversary, but it's neat to see him and hints at Pan in the same issue. Also, he's horny.

And that does it. All-in-all, I'm excited to get to the next volume as soon as I can...

Pimping HIS Stuff: Justin Aclin's Hero House

Yesterday, Rickey gave you the softer side of New York Comic Con, but he failed to mention the seedy underbelly we both lived through. You see, we both attended the Twisted Toyfare Theater panel (that part he did mention) to support our friends who help produce TTT; fine friends like Zach Oat, Sean T. Collins and TJ "The Slammer" Dietsch. But none of those gentlemen were moderating the panel. This man was:

Yes, it's none other than Toyfare grand poobah and clearly negligent father, Justin Aclin!

(Fortunately his lovely wife Brooke is around to raise their adorable daughter, Roxanne, so no need to call child services on this monster)

But aside from filling his assigned role of MC and usual role of facial hair czar this past Saturday, monsieur Aclin chose to play another part as well: spoiler of my dreams!

As part of the panel, the TTT crew asked trivia questions and crowd members who answere correctly were promised free copies of the collected edition of their work. Who had (and still has) two thumbs and answered a question right? THIS GUY (imagine me pointing to me)! Who was denied his hard-earned prize? Yep, THIS GUY (same deal) again. Aclin just gave away my booty to some chucklehead! And after that he even when so far to mock retaliation on this very blog!

Well, Mr. Aclin, prepare to get yours...

Justin has launched a new blog to promote his forthcoming graphic novel, Hero House. HH takes a comedic look at a college fraternity comprised of the next generation of super heroes. It's coming from Arcana this fall and Justin's going to be posting his process and other cool stuff, like this Ed McGuinness cover over there for the next several months. Justin is a hella creative and funny dude, so I heartily recommend both blog and comic.

And THAT is how you be the bigger man, children! That's TWO you owe me, beardface!

QUICK NYC CON-VERSATION

I totally stole that title from my buddy Jesse Thompson.

Anyways, this past weekend was New York Comic Con, and as I have since the show began, I went to it and had a pretty great time. It's always an odd show because it's the closest one to my home in New Jersey, so unlike the dozens and dozens of shows I've attended over the years in other cities, I had to head home each night after this one, which meant I was a slave to public transportation and needed to trudge back to my bed each day. That meant less straight-up "hanging out" with the wonderfully huge number of friends I saw this year and more just "saying hello." But it was still a great pleasure to see them all and a good way to kick off the con year.

Because this was the first year I worked the show as a DC Comics employee at the DC booth, I had less time to walk the floor (2 hours total for the whole weekend?!) and that meant I didn't buy nearly as much as I did as, say, when I went to SPX in 2008. But I picked up a few things...

Pictured:

• I finally nabbed a copy of Alison Bechdel's MAGNIFICENT graphic memoir Fun Home at the show in hardcover. I'd put off picking up one because I wanted to be snobby and get a first printing, but the farther I got from the book's release in 2006, the less and less likely that seemed. And then BOOM. I stumbled upon one at the show for HALF cover price and snagged it.
• This show was the highly anticipated debut of Scott Pilgrim vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe by Bryan Lee O'Malley and I was among the people slobbering all over myself to get a copy. Mine came with the neat pink, paper "wrapper" you see in the photo above and a few SP bookmarks touting the movie and the neat-o foil cover and a high-five I gave myself after the purchase. I can't wait to dive in.

COULD YOU?!

NEXT PICTURE:

• As I said, I was working, so my good good buddy David Paggi lined up for Cliff Chiang (Dr. 13) and got the artist to knock out a Comedian image for my Watchmen sketchbook (which I have yet to put all of online...). Cliff told David not enough people give love to the fetish-wear. I think not enough people give Cliff love. Check him out.

NEXT:

Because I am pathetic, I bought nothing else and spent the rest of my two hours just walking the floor and looking at things. But It's not just MY fault - lots of publishers actually packed up about an hour and a half before the floor closed at 5 PM on Sunday, which meant I could do little more than nab samplers from their booths. Those included:

• One from NBM who, I regret to admit, I actually never paid much attention to before 2007 and who put out one of my favorite books of 2008 (Little Nothings vol. 1) and are now one of my favorite publishers to watch.
• One from Zuda Comics that appears to be a mini comic some of the Zuda talent put together by themselves, which tickled my mini comic bone (which is somewhere around my hip area).
• One from the book publisher Little, Brown and Company for an upcoming autbio graphic novel from a woman named Laurie Sandell whose work looked a little like Delaine Derry Green to me.
• One from Villard Graphic Novels because it said they're putting out a collection of Syncopated, which I had no idea was happening. I've always flipped through Syncopated whenever I've seen it, but NEVER bought an issue and now here it is at a book publisher. Good on that book.
• And the most heartbreaking of all: one from Fanfare/Ponent Mon. See, this company puts out manga that's more mature (and I don't mean "porny") than, say, Naruto or Dragonball Z that has a focus on storytelling and art technique that transcends the manga format and stretches well on in to just plain great comics. They publish them in English and I've been interested in a LOT of their titles, but their prices are generally so steep that I haven't been able to make myself purchase much of their stuff sight unseen (especially this and this, though I did buy this at the store a few weeks back). So, I especially wanted to see their booth to flip through some of the actual books and maybe drop some cash on them then and there, but when I showed up, they'd boxed up the table and vamoosed on out, leaving behind only a small stack of sampler brochures. You crapped on my heart, Fanfare/Ponent Mon.

Otherwise, thanks to my buddy Matt Keller, at the show I PROUDLY wore these:


Which you can/SHOULD get here. Or here.

PANELS:

As far as panels go, I attended part of a Wizard Magazine panel (seen above) and a Toyfare Magazine panel put on by a gaggle of my close friends.

I also attended a "Hip Hop in Comics" panel featuring (among others) the comic artist Kyle Baker and legendary MCs DMC and Chuck D (seen above) and hosted by my buddy Matt Powell.

Speaking of Matt, he continued filling his cartoon-themed sketchbook while at the show and snagged Nathan Fox (a guy I JUST missed at the con) for the below SICK Casey Jones.

He also got several others including Dean Trippe, Jamal Igle and Dean Haspiel, so go look at his book. My girlfriend Samantha also continued filling her monster-themed sketchbook and got the below piece from Eduardo Risso.

In the "Things I Missed" department, apparently there was a new issue of Pixu out, this image from the new Scott Pilgrim film was shown, and First Second had a preview copy of The Eternal Smile out for browsing! Blah!

But, as I mentioned, the weekend was about seeing my close, great friends in one concentrated timeframe and I loved it and wished we had more time. It was BEYOND great seeing Sean T. Collins and making him let me borrow new books from him, drinking with TJ Dietsch on his birthday at the most expensive TGIFridays in the world, walking the show floor for a bit with Ben Morse, having Kiel Phegley stay on my couch after he brought me an issue of Fugitoid all the way from Chicago, seeing the always-beautiful David Paggi on a panel, and eating a quiet meal with the vegetarian Matt Powell at the Times Square Chevy's Mexican restaurant and feeling terrible as he frantically searched for something he could order.
That's not to say I didn't LOVE finally meeting Josiah Leighton, hugging Alex Kropinak, catching up with Todd Casey, sipping Rachel Molino's apricot beer, learning I was the other half of the new icky twins with Vicki, complementing Ryan Penagos' shirts all weekend, catching by boy Andy Serwin at the bar for a whole second, staring at James Walker's He-Man sword, having a flip-off deathmatch with Jim McCann, hearing how Kevin Mahadeo's day was, seeing Emily at a comic con in a TMNT shirt, seeing HEIDI after something like 5 fucking years, hearing about Justin Aclin's new blog, finally getting to see Jeff Katz again - if only for a second, or being part of the DC Comics convention team.

It was just a pretty dope weekend all around.
Try and go next year if you can make it, but, trust me:

STAY IN THE CITY.

Pimping My Stuff: War of Kings: Warriors

It was a wild and wonderful New York Comic Con weekend filled with good times, great friends, and crowds that were probably good for some part of the economy but bad for my mental stablity, but we all survived (pending last minute casualty reports) and have come out the other side stronger, shinier people.

There were many rad announcements and newsmakers this weekend, and I humbly suggest you check out the New York Comic Con hub at Marvel.com for all that good stuff plus plenty of neat new video features and more on the Marvel side. For the world outside the House of Ideas, surf the web, but make sure you stop by Kiel's newly-up-and-running Four Color Forum as one of your destinations.

Now like I said, a lot of big stuff went down at NYCC '09, but nothing bigger for me personally than the announcement of a project called War of Kings: Warriors.

WoK: Warriors is a four-issue limited series coming exclusively to Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited beginning in May. It started out as a pitch I made to War of Kings editor Bill Rosemann for a spinoff to the main cosmic WoK saga spotlighting certain characters from the project, and ended up becoming my very first assignment as an honest to goodness editor.

I'm gonna toss out some links with all the relevant details of Warriors in a sec, but let me take a moment to say this is obviously a lifelong dream for me and helped make this weekend an extra special one. Not only am I getting to getting to edit a comic book, I'm able to be a part of the Marvel cosmic revival that Andy Schmidt and Keith Giffen kicked off with Annihilation and that guys like Bill, Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and many more have been making magic with over the last few years. Everybody knows that Nova and Marvel's other space-based characters have a special place in my heart and as a fan and even early on as a "pro" I never imagined I'd get to be a part of it.

We made the announcement on the War of Kings panel on Friday, where I had a total blast with Bill as well as my writers, Christos Gage and Jay Faerber, plus C.B. Cebulski, Nick Lowe and Jim McCann. Marvel.com, Comic Book Resources, Newsarama and IGN all had the call. And for the record, Sean McKeever knows I got nothing but love for him, despite never having actually read his Inhumans stuff, but it was too easy a line.

In addition, Newsarama, CBR, Wizard Universe and Marvel.com have assorted interviews with Chris, Jay and myself.

I'm sure I'm gonna have some more NYCC stuff to chat about sooner rather than later and more Warriors stuff to talk on as well, but for now, it's time for me to rest up.

But rather than miss me too much, you can see me on video here and here.

And finally, lest I forget, the art I've been showing throughout this post is courtesy of my extremely talented Warriors cover artist, Paul Renaud. You can see more of his work on his official site.

Developing a Brocabulary: Chilloquialisms

Apologies for the shorter blogs the last few weeks, but myself and my conspirators have been busy getting ready for the first big comics show of the year, New York Comic Con, with KP returning to town for the event and yours truly being involved in a big announcement at Marvel's War of Kings panel on Friday (so check it out!).

I've been working on some longer stuff, like an ode to Wally West and new entries in Earth's Mightiest Sketch Blog as well as my Indy Odyssey, but I don't want to give release dates and then be forced to re-solicit (comic book humor!).

So while we wait, let's de-stress with some Chilloquialisms, aka Colloquialisms specific to the art of chilling, from Brocabulary: The New Man-i-festo of Dude Talk...

carbecue - 1. "Baking" a car by lighting up a joint. 2. Trashing your old car--or someone else's--by dousing it in gasoline and setting it on fire.

chilliards - Billiards, when played for the purposes of chilling with your bros.

chill-tempered - Naturally inclined to chilling. Sometimes you're so chill-natured that you become chillustrious, i.e. renowned for chilling like the Dude in The Big Lebowski.

cigarsenal - Your arsenal of cigars: "I always keep a Cuban in my cigarsenal." Note that this can also include anything you keep in a cigar box, including weed, etc.

teebauchery - Hijinks that occur on the golf links, or around a Golden Tee machine.

Enjoy, ladies and gents, and if you're attending NYCC, I hope to see you for some chilliards and/or teebauchery.

Will the real Justin Timberlake please stand up?

If you haven't already, you should totally scope the comments on this post from the other day, where a debate over which Justin Timberlake album is better, Justified or FutureSex/LoveSounds, has exploded.

On the side of Justified is the dynamic duo of Rickey and TJ (who through the magic of typos linked to some grad school instead of his blog in his response). Standing defiantly in defense of (the vastly superior) FS/LS: yours truly.

Whose side are you on?!