Went to see the 300 yesterday.....and, I was afraid of this, I had a bit of a problem with it.

It was visually stunning; I loved the scenes with the shipwrecks, the charging rhino, the more fantastical, the better. The battle scenes flowed better than any I've ever seen. The movie captured the dynamic art of the graphic novel, and Miller and Varley's beautifully textured colors.

But.

I said a couple of days ago that I thought it was unfair to judge a movie based on its politics. But what I wasn't realizing was, that in order the truly enjoy, or engage, in the emotional core of the movie, I would have to buy into the whole jingoistic mystique.

Oh, I could overlook that fact that the Spartans were slave-holding bastards and the Persians were relatively benevolent rulers. I could over look the pure whiteness of the Spartans vs the swarthy outsiders.

I just couldn't join in on the gung-ho nature of the Spartans, and without joining in I could really partake of the emotional core of the movie.

I think I'm just too old and jaded to go along with that.

I'm glad I saw it, and I'll probably buy it, but there is always going to be part of me that thinks its wrong headed. Not the sacrifice, but the rah rah nature of it.

Read a bunch more comics. Welcome to Tranquility, a town with retired superheroes and villians, and their out of control grandkids, and a murder. Battler Britton, just the first two, I guess not every Garth Ennis is great, boring standard WWII fighter ace story. Red Menace, McCarthism going after superheroes. Zombie, a Marvel comic, where it seems to be the standard new ending that everyone dies. Zombies...a different comic, with a few survivors. Then for a change, Bite Club, a book about vampire gansters in Miami. And then, Impaler, yep, about blood-suckers who are taking over N.Y.