And since I started out with comic stores, I will whine about the state of one of my favourite comics. After all, constant whining about the vagaries of life and all the so-called nasty people I meet gets on my nerves as well. So what is the difference between whining about ink and paper people rather than real people? I think the answer is pretty obvious. One won�t get hurt and I won�t feel so guilty about bitching about them.

On a side note, someone just set the fire alarm off in my college. I have nothing against the fire alarm right now, because it is morning, but sometimes it really is annoying. I think the residents of the college are starting to feel like the villagers in the tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. The fire alarm goes off because of the weirdest things. Incense smoke, socks smoking because they were drying on the heater, cigarettes, or my favourite, the steam from a shower hit the smoke detector. Bah.

Okay, if I don�t write tomorrow, it was a real fire. I�m not that worried, because the alarm went off in another block.

Does anyone know the comic series, The Darkness published by Topcow? It is created by Marc Silvestri, Garth Ennis and David Wohl. Garth Ennis is the guy who wrote Preacher, another one of those little warped tales I favoured. Anyway, the main character is this deliciously dark, suave, Mafia hit man, Jackie Estacado, who leads a life of death, fast cars and even faster women.

Until he turns twenty-one that is. And that�s where the fun begins. He gets the power of the Darkness, a primogeniture power that amplifies his prowess to kill, being some sort of cool anti-superhero power. The only catch is that if Jackie has sex with a woman and impregnates her, he dies instantly, the power having transferred to its new host to lie dormant until it is twenty-one.

Now I thought that was really uproarious in a twisted way. After all, sex and death is a recurrent theme in the annals of literature and human nature. And here we have a guy who has no conscience, given the power to do what he loves best, kill, but at the cost of his other love, sex. The entire irony. Tsk tsk.

Oh and the exaggerated babes in the series helps too. It was the cover illustration of the Magdalena dressed in black leather and gold trimmings and red roses, sporting a cool black Beretta that drew me to the series actually. She is one of the femmes who keep trying to kill Jackie. I find the whole idea of a sexually repressed male trying hard not to be destroyed by all these mental but drool worthy babes, because he is the spawn of evil, hilarious.

And yes, I suppose if you wish to look it from a feminist perspective, it is degrading to women. Especially since The Darkness triumphs again and again over the female sex. Women are always sex objects or insane villains, and they never win. And the whole idea that a man dies if he succumbs to the woman, dates back to biblical times.

But I like scanning through the brightly inked pictures, although the illustrators change all the time and the work isn�t up to standard all the time. And the earlier issues where Jackie grapples with the fact that he has to stay celibate and the sexual innuendoes littered throughout the comics are amusing. Like the time he has to attend a sex addiction group meeting because he can�t take celibacy anymore. And that's where he has to hear some gorgeous blond rattle about what she would like to do to men.

What I object to is that the comic has changed its plot tangent and with it, its core. The new writers are making Jackie into this villain who has found redemption and is attempting to do penance for his best crimes. And out pops a long lost twin sister who is a sort of vigilante huntress of evil.

Argh. I want the old male chauvinist Jackie and the adolescence humour of a guy with a raging libido with no outlet in sight. And the funny situation of a girl reading a comic series that caters to men, and enjoying the fact that men need to feel good about themselves by reading about the evil woman out to get them.

I think I just like to see men suffer. Or what idiots they are where the fragile male ego is concerned. Bwahahahah.