Wednesday, 1 March 2017
“Of the Month” March 2017
Comic Book of the Month:
Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat
A superhero starts a temp agency that matches super-powered people to jobs other than fighting crime. Hi-jinks ensue! Along with Ms. Marvel and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat forms a triumvirate of fun, funny, optimistic, and kick-ass female-led comics from Marvel. Hellcat is seriously a joy to read each month, with Patsy’s searing optimism and amusingly convoluted back-story (she was once the star of teen romance comics about 50 years ago, and at one point she died and went to Hell under the influence of a depressing villain (but she got better), and she has an ex-husband who’s a sorcerer) serving as fodder for great comedy. Writer Kate Leth gives each character an excellently funny voice, and the art is vibrant and cartoony without being un-relatable. These feel like real people. Extreme people in an absurdly extreme world, sure, but real enough that you really do care for them. Seriously, pick up Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl, and Hellcat (and toss Howard the Duck in there while you’re at it) and you’ll have a great time every month.
Restaurant of the Month:
Mizuki Buffet
An inexpensive, all-you can eat buffet with an entire wall of fresh sushi, within walking distance of my work? Uh-oh, that’s trouble! Seriously, the lunch buffet is only $15 bucks, and you can easily eat $40-$50 worth of sushi for that much money. And if (for some unfathomable reason) you get sick of sushi, they have two entire other walls full of other Asian (and some non-Asian) foodstuffs. Bonus: if my team at work meets or exceeds our monthly goals, our manager treats us to lunch here. That’s fantastic motivation.
Tabletop Game of the Month:
Get Bit!
A very fun, small game where you play as a bunch of robots swimming away from a shark, who will devour a limb off of whichever robot is in the back of the line at the end of the turn. The last robot with at least one remaining limb wins! Each player plays a numbered card to determine their place in the line, but if two or more players play the same number they get stuck and have to watch as all the other players swim ahead of them. A great deal of the fun is that the robots and shark are all actual pieces, with movable parts (and removable limbs for the robots). It’s such a simple idea that my three-year-old daughter figured out how to play almost right away. And she giggles quite a bit when she makes the shark eat a robot’s leg. They played this game on Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop a couple of years ago, so you can actually see how it goes here (Get Bit starts at 19:30):
Categories: Of the Month.
