Mark's Epic Blog of Randomness

 By Mark Rodriguez Miles Morales is back with another new title. This time I decided to hop aboard and see how his solo adventures play out. Let's check it out! "Level 1: Sins of the Father" opens with Miles at college working alongside a Ukranian exchange student named Valentina on a science project. As they discuss nuclear physics, Miles is a bit hungry due to his... other job earlier that morning. We jump back six hours earlier as we see a construction cane collapsing high above the city. The crane operator calls off but Miles swoops in to grab him in time. Miles swings the guy to safety. As the crane continues to come down, Miles uses two webs to propel himself into the air towards it. He creates a large web to catch all the falling crane parts.  Miles makes sure everyone is OK and tell them to run the next time they see huge metal things falling from the sky. He swings off, thinking he's got this Spider-Man thing figured out. Back to the present time, Miles and ...

 By Mark Rodriguez This time around we swung by Third Eye, though it looks like half the store is still empty. Hopefully they can complete the remodeling soon since the store is missing its once-huge manga selection. I was lucky enough to find the missing issue of Psylocke Ninja and I also got some goodies in the mail!   Marvel Rivals The Hood # 1- When I first saw this I was confused and thought 'didn't they already release a Marvel Tokon book this month?' until I realized it was Rivals. Now we got two comics about tie-in videogames. Barbara Gordon Breakout # 4- The story continues! DC X Sonic the Hedgehog Metal Legion # 4- The second Sonic/DCU crossover continues. Batgirl # 22-   Good to see this series continue. With so many books ending at issue 10, Batgirl has gone for twice as many and beyond! Miles Morales Spider-Man # 1- Miles gets another new series. I'll give this one a shot. It looks like this time the bad guys are coming after his dad instead of him. htt...

 By Mark Rodriguez The Penguin has recruited a mute hunchback he found on the road named Harold. It turns out Harold is good with machines and he created a device that can control birds. Penguin uses the machine to cause chaos throughout Gotham. At the same time, he also kidnapped a soap opera actress he has been obsessed with for a while. Meanwhile an ancient evil has been unleashed upon the city!    "The Penguin Affair III- Winged Vengeance" opens in the Bat Cave as Alfred complains about having to sweep up all the dead birds. Tim says he can blame the Penguin for that one. Bruce is studying one of the birds and finds out what is controlling them. He tells Tim that it's some kind of miniaturized wave modulator implanted in the birds' skulls. He explains it works through sonics affecting their brains, but the microwaves he used earlier disrupts the signal.   Tim asks how the Penguin is able to see what the birds are doing. Bruce explains this is due to a fiber-opti...

 By Mark Rodriguez The Penguin has recruited a mute hunchback he found on the side of the road named Harold. It turns out that Harold was a genius with machines and created a device that helps communicate and control birds. Penguin uses this to commit robberies and cause trouble upon traffic and set a power plant on fire. On top of that, he kidnapped a soap opera actress that he's been stalking. Batman chases after the birds carrying off the actress in the Batmobile, but suddenly a swarm of birds attack a nearby jewelry store!   "The Penguin Affair II- Bird of Ill Omen!" opens with the swarm of birds robbing a jewelry store and attacking the owner. Batman runs in and uses his cape to get the birds off him. The man is surprised to meet the Batman himself, and thanks him. He asks him what's going on with the birds going crazy all over the city. Batman says he's not certain, but he knows who's behind it.   The actress Sherry West is sent to Penguin's hideout...

 By Mark Rodriguez This was a three-part story where parts One and Three were in Batman comics while part Two was in Detective comics. Featuring a classic a villain like the Penguin was perfect to me as I was still new to collecting Batman comics and not knowing much of the characters beyond the Adam West show and Micheal Keaton movie. At the time I was collecting both comics, and while I'm sure Batman was featured in others, I'm sure back in the 90's he wasn't in 10 or so books a month the way he is nowadays. Let's check out 'The Penguin Affair'.   "The Penguin Affair Part 1- Pawns" opens with a hunchback man walking along the road. A car drives by and they call him names. Not content with just insults, they decide to stop the car. Another car is nearby and the passenger tells the driver, Lark, so pull over. The passenger says he sees a kindred spirit will soon be in pain. The men start to beat up the hunchback man. Lark asks if they should stop ...

 By Mark Rodriguez The Mad Gear gang has kidnapped the mayor's daughter to try to control the new mayor, Mike Haggar. Just like the original arcade game, Haggar, Cody and Guy fight their way through the gang until they make it to their boss Belger. Also like the arcade, the battle ended with Belger being knocked through his high-rise window. However in this case, not only do we have a whole other issue to go through, Belger also took Haggar along for the ride as now they're both falling out the window! What will happen next?    "Takedown" opens with Belgar and Haggar falling out the sky rise window. Belgar tells Haggar that he managed to save his daughter, but now they're both going to die. Haggar grabs onto Belger and says they're not going to die. Haggar says he spent years professional wrestling, and to survive in the ring, you need to learn how to take a fall. Meanwhile, Bred is still upset about how his car was destroyed earlier. Abigail shows him his mo...