Last month I marked the tenth anniversary of my first ever blog post. Nostalgia compels me to celebrate, so I thought I’d have a giveaway – completely unrelated to blogging, mind you, but hey, you get free shit! And better yet, FREE BATMAN SHIT from BATMANIA! And just as Batman decided to look outside of Gotham to expand on his horde of Batclones, this giveaway is INTERNATIONAL too! Yes, I will ship anywhere short of Krypton.

It was my worst and toughest academic year yet, but equally just as rewarding (well, at least, I try to remind myself of the rewards, 43 cushions later). It was the year Australia voted in* its first female Prime Minister. It was the year a Queenslander hacker brought too much attention to himself by leaking a heck of a lot of alarming cables. It was the year Bruce Wayne returned as the Batman, and DC Comics went nuts, or rather, Grant Morrison was permitted to go nuts.

All things considered, it was just another tumultuous year. So here’s a summary of what made 2010 for me.

You may have also noticed over the week that I’ve overhauled Evening Hour ‘s layout a lot. I’m slowly converting this blog into a review blog, since it’s all I seem to be doing anyway. It’s still under construction so there may be errors or blank spaces here and there. Watch this space!

* = “voted in” in the truest sense is questionable, as former PM Kevin Rudd was ousted by his own people, rather than the public, therefore we really had no choice…

Mmm, it was that time of the year again on the first Saturday of May. When we celebrate all that is good and nerdy—FREE COMIC BOOK DAY, YAY. I and my good mate Andrew went traipsing around north-west and inner Melbourne devouring any freebie in our wake. Victoria only has 2 participating stores: Trading Cards Australia in Moonee Ponds and Classic Comics in Bourke St, City.

I finally caved and bought a Rorschach action figure—the cheapest I could find was at the Moonee Ponds store. Will photograph close-ups when I next find spare time. They definitely have the action figures and most comics cheaper there… Good grief, why do I keep going to Minotaur (Then again, prices differ for various things. It pays to shop around)? Also got Catwoman #27 and an X-MEN: First Class special issue dirt cheap. Very pleased with my self-restraint. *cough*

Am curious to read more Green Lantern after the reading a good preview of Chuck Dixon’s newest take on the Emerald Guardian. At least, I think it was Chuck Dixon. I can’t remember at top of my head, but it was good! And that’s the most important part! …

I saw The Spirit at the Jam Factory this morning with Sylv. Since we went to the very first session of the day we had the whole theatre to ourselves! That was great. The movie—not so great, but still entertaining albeit on a superficial level. The excitement died down the instant we left the cinema.

Essentially the Spirit (Gabriel Macht) is former rookie cop Denny Colt, brought back into the world to rid Central City of the bad guys, namely the Octopus (Samuel L Jackson). He has the begrudging blessings of the Chief Commisioner Dolan (Clearly Commissioner Gordon and Batman have a far healthier work relationship than Dolan and Spirit ever had…) who doesn’t exactly approve of the Spirit’s methods. Well, shock horror there.

I’ve always thought that Frank Miller is a mad genius but lately his work has been nothing short of confusing, bizarre and way beyond the post-post-post-post-modern. And yes, his misogyny and sexism is duly noted (Selina Kyle the whore much?). But in spite of all this, I still enjoy most of his new stuff since he dares to push his audiences to the limit. The only work of his I simply could not handle was The Dark Knight …

So I’ve been reading up on ye olde CrossGen comics. You know how it is when you get nostalgic. If you’re a continental comic buff, you might recall that CrossGen Entertainment declared itself bankrupt a few years ago, owing to poor sales and financial management.

I loved Meridian, Sojourn, and a bit more recently, Ruse (arguably my favourite of all now) and was crushed when news of the falling out came about. Disney has taken over some of the remaining work, but I just discovered that Checker Book Publishing Group are releasing collected works of some series as well, including Sojourn and Ruse. However, what’s perplexed me is that they’re not entirely “collected” per se, but rather, “selected”. Sojourn is known to have 34 issues, while Ruse has 26. I don’t know why. I’m hoping this will be rectified with a follow up second volume, but nothing’s been said about that just yet. So I’m banking on another book, but I’m not going to be buying a copy any time soon until I know for sure that I am going to fully get what’s “left” or when I’ve read enough of other people’s reviews, hah (and since the Aussie dollar is …