First, everyone passed the pop quiz! Among the acceptable answers submitted: 4chan, YouTube, Wikipedia, IMDB, and TEH INTERNETS in general. A geeky gold star goes to gchick  for 'APIs', and executrix  gets the Marshall McLuhan Memorial Award for 'the Marconi telegraph'. I also would have accepted 'art school', 'beauty pageants', 'that camp my parents sent me to when I was ten', and of course 'fandom'.

And apparently some of you think like the U.S. Marine Corps, who used the description that I quoted to justify banning Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other unspecified "social networking sites."

It just goes to show that even the self-proclaimed "world's premier expeditionary fighting force" is helpless in the face of the sinister new threat of user-generated content. Protect yourself before it's too late -- delete, log off, unplug!


Also it's Wednesday, which means new comics day, so I have a rendezvous with The Invicible Iron Man #16 after work. After seeing an intriguing favorable mention from Steven 'Doom Patrols' Shaviro on Twitter recently (shh! don't tell the marines!), I picked up the last few issues, and they were really good! I've never particularly been a big Iron Man fan -- the last time I read his comic regularly was umpteen years ago, before and during the classic "Demon in a Bottle" arc. But I really like the current storyline, and it's weaving in some great characters like Madame Masque and the Black Widow.

Sadly, I figured I should check out Iron Man writer Matt Fraction's other main title, The Uncanny X-Men, and it was terrible. I haven't read any of the X-books since Grant Morrison's run, but the original Chris Claremont Uncanny X-Men was a formative part of my childhood & adolescence.

So for any superhero comics fans out there -- anything else I should pick up at the comic book store? Marvel or DC is fine; I can catch up on the continuity later. Basically, any recs for current/recent comic books, superhero or otherwise, welcome!