ENDINGS, BEGINNINGS, AND THE LONG MIDDLE

A week ago HBO aired the final episode of The Wire, one of the best TV shows ever produced. While I'm sorry to see it go, I am glad that we got 60 episodes of the series. That's a lot more than many series get, many lesser series even. The finale was 90 minutes long and wrapped things up as much as you could wrap them up. Redemption for some, release for others. We checked in with all of the main players from the start of the series and many since then. It's hard to sum up the show. I do look forward to the day when I can sit down and watch the whole of the series...most likely it will be when I make my wife watch the show. Well done, David Simon and company. Well done.

Today I finished a new novel by a writer who worked on The Wire over the last few seasons, Richard Price. He's someone I've always meant to get around to reading and took advantage of the release of Lush Life to do so. It centers around a robbery-turned-murder and what that does to all the people involved - perpetrators, victims, cops, families, and more. It has a sprawling cast and it told from many viewpoints. It's full of humanity and it feels real. I liked it a lot.

Last Sunday I finished another novel, The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes. Set in the Victorian era, it features a man who lives his life backwards, secret societies, the reanimated corpse of Coleridge, and much more. It's also a lot of fun.

I recently reread Green Lantern: Rebirth (though this time in collected form), a mini-series from 2005 that featured the return of Hal Jordan to the role of Green Lantern. Why now? Well, the current storyline in the ongoing series has been getting high praise and the collected editions of the series are now starting to come out in paperback, so I thought it was time to reacquaint myself. Geoff Johns did a great job creating a reason for what happened to Hal over the years - his fall from grace and murderous nature than was at odds with his previous character - and brought him back in a story full of great moments. Of course, Ethan Van Sciver's art doesn't hurt either. I'm looking forward to getting caught up on the series.

Today I read Powers Vol. 10: Cosmic, another volume in the ongoing series by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming. Its release was delayed for a long time and during delays like that, you can forget what a good comic it is (and by "you" I mean people who read the series only in trade, like me). The most interesting development is that Christian Walker is given powers once again by taking up the mantel of Millennium, a group of intergalactic cops run by aliens (akin to Green Lantern, which made me laugh). His partner, Deena Pilgrim, isn't doing as well. The next trade in the series has been out for a while and will have to move up the to-be-read list (and to-be-bought list).

POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY

The famous tenets of the Spider-Man mythos (with great power comes great responsibility) are in full force in a relatively recent comic book update. Back in 2000, Marvel decided to relaunch some of its core concepts in an effort to have them connect more with a teen readership. The highest profile of those was Ultimate Spider-Man under the team of Brian Michael Bendis (with some story input from Bill Jemas) and Mark Bagley (with inks from Art Thibert and Dan Panosian). I read the first trade when it came out and was lukewarm about it, though I did buy many subsequent trades and eventually came to like the series quite a bit. However, I stopped following it a number of years ago and had given away my copy of the first trade. Well, in the wake of Spider-Man 3, I decided I might be interested in catching up with Ultimate Spider-Man and decided to pick up a new copy of the first trade and read along until I eventually caught up.

Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1: Power and Responsibility collects the first 7 issues of the series and it definitely takes its time in rolling out the basic story. That's not necessarily a bad thing. We get to know Peter and Uncle Ben and Aunt May and even Mary Jane Watson. We see Peter get picked on, get bit by an experimental spider, and see his believable reactions to these events. Norman Osborn is tied up in all of this, as well as Doctor Otto Octavius. It's a good story and this volume does a good job with it. Sure, there are some jarring instances of storytelling - mainly in the cutting between Peter's story and Norman Osborn's story - but you smile when Peter finally shows up in his costume making wisecracks and you're sad when Uncle Ben dies. In fact, the creators did a better job with it than I remember thinking the first time around. I guess we'll see if I think the story still holds up as it goes along.