Alright so as usual spoilers ahead, this post concerns the events between Civil War 6 and 7, but mostly just Civil War 7.

First off Speedball buys into the idea that he “caused” the explosion and not Nitro, and becomes Penance vowing to suffer for each and every person “he killed” when Nitro exploded. In the same issue there is a hinted solution of some reporters finding out who/what caused Civil War, or some hidden motive behind it. Hey could it be that little thing Wolverine discovered in Wolverine #46! 47 fucking comics ago! That is followed by some Spiderman and Punisher bullshit that doesn’t matter, even a Blade comic! Then we have Civil War The Return, which was somewhat interesting, but at this point that pretty much blew me away. It explains Captain Marvel‘s return to the future, given the knowledge of his own doom to cancer (his arch nemesis) in the past. There is also a Sentry comic that is basically just ten pages of telling me how powerful he is. Most interestingly though is that both of these characters are on Iron Man’s side, pretty exciting right! With Thor, Captain Marvel, and The Sentry, Captain America has his work cut out for him.

In Fantastic Four we discover that Reed Richards, getting the idea from an Asimov book, has developed some magical future predicting math. In truth Richards doesn’t like the registration act at all, but if it doesn’t happen the world will basically end. He claims to have tried countless scenarios, with only one enabling the survival of the human race. This seems like some pretty important information to me. I mean you could like tell everybody that. That would probably work a lot better. But I guess you could argue that would change the outcome, do you think he plugged in that scenario? But if telling everyone would be a bad idea, then why is he telling this all to the Mad Thinker, a super villain who apparently can nearly match his own intelligence!? That seems like a bad idea to me, actually he probably knows it’s OK cause he already math-predicted the outcome of telling him. Anyway Susan overhears, you would think being married to a person who can turn invisible you would learn, and gets all in his face, saying that they have beaten the odds before. Then he smacker her in the face and yelled “Bitch! I predicted the fucking future with math!” except then he didn’t do that and the comic ended.

Really most of the action happens in Civil War #7 where we finally get the big battle promised from the beginning. And it happens… we see a few punches, an energy beam or two, but really other than one really awesome face stomp it’s a pretty bland fight.

This moment almost made it all worth while!

Oh man, just look at the Captain’s face! He isn’t just stomping Bishop’s face into the ground. He is destroying this man, he is no longer Bishop, he is nothing, he no longer exists, only Captain America, and his disappointment. (pretty sure this is Bishop, right?)

Anyway I am a little confused about this battle because I just finished reading Civil War The Return, in which I was repeatedly told how powerful Sentry is and how he could single-handedly win this battle. But where is he we barely even see him?

Yep that’s it Sentry getting double-handedly punched in the face by Hercules and Hulkling. I didn’t know before this comic but it turns out that Hercules is a total badass. Not only did he apparently beat The Sentry in one punch but he also smashes/kills (robot)Thor by himself.

Also where is Captain Marvel during all of this? I would think he would be someone to watch out for.

Oh! There he is, and he looks pissed. This should get pretty interesting. The fight is on now!

Actually no, I guess he just flies at them angrily and then… I don’t know, flies away? This is the only time you see him in the entire comic! Just flyin into battle.

Anyway the big fight ends when a group of New York civilians tackle Captain America. I cannot express how stupid that is. Some random New Yorkers just jump into the fray and tackle Captain fucking America from behind. Anyway this forces him to see all the destruction they caused while fighting. Captain America starts blubberin and turns himself in, stating how he was wrong. And I guess after that everything is just A-OK! Everyone is happy and its all a success. What about the S.H.I.E.L.D. squads hunting down renegades and KILLING THEM? Or Tony Stark employing known MURDERERS and PSYCHOPATHS? Or the concentration camp in the Negative Zone where there is a possibility of DYING INSTANTLY by just being there? Oh, and why is Captain America in regular old fashioned bars-on-the-walls prison and not the Negative Zone? I am assuming all of these things will be addressed in later issues, but seriously there is no unrest? No one cares?

Well anyway there should only be one more of these left to do, maybe a final thoughts one also.

This is a clone of the Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer compressor that I built a little while ago and just got around to putting in a case. Unfortunately I didn’t do much research before I built this pedal. What I had heard was that it is a little dirty, meaning not particularly transparent, and that people love it. As you can tell by the sticker I put on it, I was hoping for an all out “crush”ing compression. It is actually a pretty subtle pedal, at least compared to what I was looking for, it has a pretty quick attack that “squeezes” your transients, while not really doing much for the sustain. It just doesn’t create the gooey smashing style of compression that I was looking for, though it’s not meant to. What I did find was that it sounds awesome feeding distortion effects, I only tried it feeding the Blue Box I made previously,  Mimi’s Heliotrope (not really a distortion) and the overdrive on her practice amp. It greatly increased the overall sound of the distortion, removing a little mud and adding presence. I really liked it feeding my Blue Box and will probably use them together from now on.

Same as last time I used a tonepad board, however this time I was much smarter about buying parts and fitting them into the box. There is one knob controlling the level out, and an internal trimpot which is a bias control, something you only need to set once.

I also built the red cable connecting the two pedals. I used Canare, probably the best cable in existence, and Switchcraft right angle connectors, the cable was 85 cents a foot, and the connectors were 1.25 dollars each. Making this a deal even compared to bargain store bought cables. I considered getting Neutrik connectors to really make it the best cable it could be, but they are about 5 dollars each so whatever.

Thanks to Tina for the pictures.

So this little section of Civil War is kind of in some awkward in between stage, where things should be wrapping up but not yet. So everything between Civil War #5 and #6 is sort of filler, little extra stories meant to develop character rather than plot.

And boy is there some character development! Like we learn how Iron Man is kind of an asshole, and is pretty upset about the whole Civil War thing, but actually isn’t, but maybe a little, not really though just kidding. And one time one of his old friends gets killed and Tony is really sad, pshh no he hated that guy, he was dumb. Also he is suddenly really good friends with another guy we never met, and then that guy gets beat up by a badguy, and he is sad, but not actually! Oh also did you know that every time Wolverine receives an injury that would normally kill a human being he goes to another plane of existence where he must fight Lazaer or he will die FOR REALSYS! Ya it’s a good thing that I get to read a whole Fantastic 4 comic where The Thing has comedic adventures in France with other superheroes fighting other villains that has nothing to do with anything cause it would be really hard to care about the story, if I didn’t know all this.

Did I mention Tony's dead friend is a hacker!

I was a little excited for this section of Civil War series because it featured a few Punisher comics, a series I never got into. From what I know of the Punisher I was pretty excited for some badass hyper voilence, and some dark story telling. I was excited to see some of the grittier side of the Civil War conflict. And the comic did deliver, sort of. There was shooting, yelling, and fighting, but the whole thing was in this weird cartoony art style, with every color aside from black being some sort of chalky pastel. Skin was pretty much always pink, with exceptionally rosy cheeks for every character. It made everything look silly and childish even with the Punisher’s stupidly gigantic arms.

What has now become a much more interesting sub-plot for Civil War is the Nick Fury/Bucky story. Now I haven’t read all the comics leading up to Civil War, nor am I very up to date on my Captain America, Nick Fury, and especially Bucky. From what I know, in case you don’t, Bucky was Captain America’s young sidekick in Wolrd War II, and was killed in action. I am sure it was very tragic. Anyway, some how he was revived by magic/thawed from ice/was an evil twin/a clone/whatever. His past, the more recent one, is shrouded in mystery and he is doing some sort of covert operations for Nick Fury. As for Nick Fury, he is absent for some reason, probably explained before Civil War, which is why S.H.I.E.L.D. has become the “badguys.” However, android lookalikes of him have been popping up, supposedly being controlled by him, and various heroes from the resistance have been using his secret compounds as hideouts.

Then we have the Iron Man/Captain America Casualties of War issue. In which Iron Man and Captain America meet up, not to discuss current issue, but to reminisce about the good ol’ days, then fight for some reason?

The next section which I was not so excited for, was 4 consecutive issues of Moon Knight. Now, I know absolutely nothing about Moon Knight, but from the covers that I had seen I could tell it was not for me. Knowing nothing about Moon Knight the comics were pretty confusing to jump into. There was an internal monologue/narrator, another person inside his head which was sometimes visible and sometimes not just leaving random text bubbles in the panel, then the character’s dialog. Not only that, but the dialog was very clunky, weird, and always self referential. Knowing nothing about this character or the previous events in the series, it was all but impossible to follow the story. On top of that it was really difficult to tell who was talking, people who weren’t in the panel would have floating text bubbles, which doesn’t sound so bad unless you account for the sheer amount of text, and the guy inside Moon Knight’s head. There was one part that I really liked about a character who could read peoples minds, which added yet another voice into the comic. If you could imagine Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid, but he sort of just embraces all the hate and horrible things in the world and just lets everything go and rolls with it. He is basically just an asshole, using his ability to manipulate people and their feelings. He was in the comic for about 2 pages, and I am sure my own imagined extrapolations made him way more interesting than he actually was. But the best part? This has absolutely nothing to do with Civil War! In one issue, some army guy tells him not to get involved, and then nothing comes of it, he just keeps doing his own thing, fighting his own villains. Civil War does not effect him, and he doesn’t effect the Civil War.

However once I got to Civil War 6, there he is, Moon Knight standing right behind Iron Man! Anyway the events of Civil War 6 basically boils down to 2 events. The Punisher is kicked out of the resistance for straight up killing 2 guys wanting to join, and the resistance sets up to break out all the prisoners in the extra dimensional prison. How are they gonna do it, they already did, that’s how! Then the comic ends with everybody about to fight.

Tina took so many cool pictures, that I couldn’t not post some more

After I finished the DI I couldn’t wait to start another project, building these things is really fun, its like sudoku, but at the same time relaxing like knitting. This is a clone of the MXR Blue Box that I built, a pretty nasty sounding guitar effects pedal.

After all the trouble I had with point to point soldering on the DI, I decided to go with a PCB from tonepad. It cost a little more but worth the time and effort saved.

Unfortunately I made a lot of mistakes on this project, I ended up making multiple purchases from different places which really hiked up the shipping costs. Also I was unable to fit this in a regular sized box, I attribute that to my inexperience, so I had to get another larger box later.

I drilled all the holes in this smaller box before I realized it wasn’t going to fit so I had to do all the drilling over again on the larger box.

After that I had to do all the off board wiring, which was the longest part of the process, other than waiting for paint dry.

Then I put it all together,

and painted it, with a couple passes of white spray paint and stuck on some blue knobs to finish it off.

Unfortunately this project ended up costing me more than it would to have bought a Blue Box reissue, mainly because I had to make multiple online purchases, and buy all the tools necessary. But I built it myself which means more to me than simply owning a guitar pedal.

Thanks again to Tina for these extra classy pictures!

Another school project, this time the assignment was to take a 3 minute video game trailer, remove all of the sound and replace it with your own.

I would recommend listening to this on a system that has a sub woofer. Generally you would mix audio to sound good on any system, or at least try, but I mixed this project with a particular set-up in mind, the one that I would be graded on! So it sounds awesome on that particular system, but on most set-ups without a sub, or particularly weak low end response, it gets pretty muddy and a lot of stuff gets lost in the mix.

This is an Active DI I built for a school project. If you don’t know what a DI is (stands for Direct Injection) it is a device meant to convert an unbalanced high impedance signal into a balanced mic level signal. Basically it allows you to plug a Hi-Z instrument (electric guitar, bass, synths, etc…) into a mic preamp, instead of having to use an amp. This of course gives you a very different tone than what you would be used to, which may be undesirable, however you can see that there are 2 instrument jacks on the left side of the box, these jacks are connected before they hit the circuit, allowing you to plug your instrument into instrument jack 1, send it to a preamp through the XLR jack, and send it to an amp using the second Hi-Z jack, which you can record using a microphone. What this allows you to do is combine your non-amp instrument tone with the amplified tone, and mix them together until you get the perfect balance. This is the industry standard for recording electric bass.

This was my first point to point soldering project (each component is soldered directly to the next) and I had a lot of trouble, I set up the IC backwards three times! Even so it was a pretty cool puzzle trying to figure out how things worked and fitting together, but I might be hesitant to do another project without a PCB.

All the parts except for the metal case were provided by the school, so it cost me about 10 bucks to build something that normally costs around 100 dollars.

Also thanks to Tina for the extremely classy photos above and below.

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It might surprise you to find that I did not write these lyrics. They were actually penned by Travis, when we were discussing the finer points of Power Metal. I haven’t really kept in contact with him but I am sure he would approve of our interpretation of his literary masterpiece.

The writing process itself was also a series of jokes that we mixed and matched. The original idea was that in order to make the most brutal metal imaginable one must have tritones, and lots of them. So we said well why not play all of them, as fast as we possibly can. Surprisingly that sounds like a muddy pile of shit. So we stuck to just a few, but what we lacked in amount we made up for in repetition.

If you are a fan of hardcore music you may recognize some of the guitar rhythms in this song (not the actual riffs mind you, but similar rhythms) the verse, if you can call it that, is very similar to the Gorilla Biscuits classic Start Today which was more of a happy accident than inspiration and the breakdown pattern is supposed to be a super simplified version of Stick To Your Guns’ breakdown in For The Kids By The Kids, but it never really got there.

The drums were probably the most difficult part of this project, the joke was that if you wanted to make it brutal, you needed the floor tom, and what better way to make sure it gets in there than to use it in place of hi-hat, and of course double kick, we both knew that from the beginning. At the time I only had one microphone, we tried playing each drum individually and then matching them up later, a strategy that had marginal success in a previous project, but it was simply too fast and admittedly too brutal for it to feasibly done, so in the end I had to program the drums in Reason. Which has its positives and some serious negatives. Mainly the cymbal crashes that sound like absolute crap.

As for the session notes: Nik played Bass, Guitar, and the Backup Vocals, while I programmed drums, did some of the extra guitar stuff, and lead vocals. We did Nik’s Fender Jazz bass direct, and ran Mimi’s Fender Squier Stratocaster through Nik’s GK Backline 210 amp using its overdrive settings, which sounded really great on the low end of the guitar. For the extra guitar leading into the breakdown I shoved a screwdriver into the fretboard of a First Act practice guitar, which has a little amp and speaker right on the body. I then ran all the guitar and bass tracks through Native Instruments Guitar Rig, and did some minor eq and compression on the drums in Cubase 5. Everything was recorded with my one sm57 into my M-Audio Firewire 410 running Ableton Live.

If you just can’t wait to get this hot new single on your Ipod you can download it from this link Princes! Power! Dragons!

1. Hairy Toes

2. Personality

3. Butt

Alright, so I am about half way through Civil War! As usual this post contains everything between Civil War 4 and 5, and will be spoiler heavy.

So right off the bat we have Wolverine, and he is actually doing something pretty important to the Civil War storyline. It turns out Nitro, the guy who exploded, was suped up on a drug that amplifies powers to the point where they are uncontrollable. He got these from a company who deals in super hero collateral damage insurance and clean up. Because of this the company has been amassing wealth and leftover super hero gadgets and has become an international super power. So how is Wolverine gonna take this corporate super giant. With his claws! That’s right, Wolverine’s strategy is to physically attack all of the companies assets to… cost them money, I guess. He is going to do this without telling anyone what the company has done! No one knows! Why not just tell everyone what the company did? Wouldn’t that prove that registration is unnecessary and put the blame where it belongs? Couldn’t we end Civil War right now? OK well that is a lie he does tell two people (who then in turn tell no one): Cyclops and Emma Frost.

I already harped on the art of this comic a lot in my last post, but seriously lets take a look at Emma Frost for a second. What the dick! This is Emma Frost, not Claire Bennet! She is supposed to be regal, sexy, and intimidating all in one. She is supposed to be super intelligent, dangerous, manipulative, and extremely powerful. Does this picture convey any of that. I am pretty sure I went to high school with a hundred girls that looked exactly like this picture. Why is she wearing these clothes! Jeans, a white tank top, and to top it all off a purple frilly bra poking out. This doesn’t exactly look like one of the most powerful telepaths in the Marvel universe. I guess they got the white right, but what happened to her crazy dress/skinsuit hybrids. And I am sure this is the first time she has every been drawn with a bra, ever. And what is that face? What emotion is that? O wait it says right there, she is “stunned…” Oh OK that looks about right… Remember this is Emma Frost, even if she can’t read Wolverines mind (because he says so?) Does  “stunned” really fits anywhere in the character that is Emma Frost? All this said I do not think that Emma Frost is the pinnacle X-men character design, I actually think the opposite. She sums up almost everything wrong with female characters in comics.

After about a week of “fighting” the company, Wolverine winds up in their main headquarters, and straight up kills the CEO. If that was his master plan why didn’t he just do that first! Why did he need to explode some random buildings? How would this stop an evil corporation? They could just get another CEO. Luckily though it does, and they don’t. The corporation and the drug that makes super heroes more powerful are never mentioned again… ever. This has no effect on the course of the Civil War at all. It changes nothing!

Unfortunately nothing else happens at all, the rest of the comics between Civil War 4 and 5 are like episodes of a bad TV show where they end the same way they began making no impact on anything. However, I did get to read two more issues of hilarious faces from Young Avengers & Runaways:

Fortunately between the two issues I had the artist suddenly realized how to draw faces and the second issue was rather competent, if not uninteresting.

I figured that was the thick of it, Young Avengers & Runaways was by far the most difficult part to read through on my last run. But then in Heroes For Hire I ran into the single worst panel I have ever seen in any comic form. (excluding webcomics of course) Really there is nothing I can say to make this better or worse so just look, because I assure you it looks back.

In case you don’t know left to right: Luke Cage, Captain America, and Misty Knight.

So finally to Civil War 5, which also happens to be the least eventful issue so far. Basically Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman decide to “live separately” and Spider-Man switches sides. Which are two pretty big events I guess, especially because Spider-Man was built up to be the poster child of the Registration Act. Before he goes though, Iron Man tries to reason with him, by beating the living shit out of him. Spider-Man narrowly escapes only to be caught between The Jester and Jack O’Lantern. Because if you remember Iron Man is now hiring Psychopathic villains to hunt down hidden super heroes. Spider-Man is saved by The Punisher who promptly murders The Jester. In the end Captain America lets both Spider-Man and The Punisher join the rebellion. This should basically take care of the whole villain thing, because if you don’t know, The Punisher has no problem killing everyone.