NERDS AROUND TOWN
Nerds Around Town: Youngblood, Donating Blood and ELeague
Aug 5, 2019, 6:37 am
ART BY JESUS RODRIGUEZ
Born with a comic book in one hand and a remote control in the other, Cory DLG is the talent of Conroe's very own Nerd Thug Radio and Sports. Check out the podcast replay of the FM radio show at www.nerdthugradio.com!
It's now officially August, let's get this month going strong as we start to wind the year down.
GOOD DEED OF THE DAY
As a reaction to this traumatic and crazy weekend, I'm asking people to give blood and give the gift of life. Find your local blood donation center and donate. Check in with the Regional Gulf Coast Blood Center, and donate blood if you can and are able, and apparently its free ice cream month thanks to Blue Bell Ice Cream. So that's nice.
ELEAGUE?
Friday night, TBS aired another episode their ELEAGUE series. Consistently they've been covering most of the big tournaments. Covering things like Injustice 2 and Street Fighter as well as the bigger Counterstrike tourneys amongst other coverage. This week they were airing Gears of War 5 preview event, the game is now out yet and this event was meant to be an attention getting, big time event. Well through the first 45 minutes of the episode there has been almost NO game footage. Tons of snippets but they haven't aired a single match at all. This show has been a consistently good watch for competitive gaming, but this episode I'm not sure if Microsoft has asked them to withhold game footage until the game release or something, but it's disappointing how little of the actual matches they're airing. It's a far step down from the Overwatch coverage ESPN/Disney XD has been doing.
SUPPORT INDY STUFF
This guy Brian reached out to me and bought my comic book so I checked out his independent comic brand, Dojo Kun Comics. It's a combined universe of heroes and characters with some great art and some awesome covers. One cool thing about Dojo that you need to check out is he's figured out how to get on Amazon. You can order his book from Amazon Prime and get it in two days delivered, that's flipping awesome! Amazon is obviously the big daddy of distribution and one of the big troubles with comic books is there is only one national distributor in the industry, and they aren't the easiest to work with, so people who can change the formula and figure out a better way to handle the issue of distribution are definitely ahead of the game. Amazon might be a killer of many industries but in the comics industry, I think they may be a savior if used properly.
YOUNGBLOOD
One of the architects of the rise of Image Comics, Rob Liefeld has recently come forward and announced that he has lost control of one of his debut properties, Youngblood. Youngblood is one of those books that came out during the birth of Image Comics and sold millions of issues over the rich beginnings of the young publisher. The situation he got himself into, was that basically he brought in the wrong guy, and eventually he lost total control of his property. It isn't just Youngblood though, of the roughly twenty-one properties he created during his time at Image and later at Awesome, he now only controls some of them and the others he has partial control. Essentially the sins of his youth have come back and hurt his long-term future. It's ultimately a story every young entrepreneur and creative should learn from.
NOT THAT YOU ASKED
I was going to write something political here but honestly, I'm done. I'm done talking about politics with people because I think people have already made up their mind. They don't care what happens or what's said or who does what, I think people on both sides have already decided how they feel, what should happen and what's important. It's disappointing to see and it's upsetting that we can't have an evolving conversation about things as they happen and change. Marco Rubio (who isn't one of my favorite people) changed his position on magazine size regulations after he learned about the shooting in his home state and that if the magazines had been shorter there were times were fewer people may have been shot or died because of reloading. I think it's fair for people to change their minds, I think if something happens that makes them feel differently we should be allowed to say so, and at some point I think these shootings have to reach a point where we as a country can agree that there are several factors and some of them may involve looking at how easy it is to buy a gun. There are other factors of course, but one of them might be the ease with which certain people get a gun.
Feel free to check out my brand new comic book Another Day at the Office or buy a shirt from Side Hustle Ts where some proceeds help people struggling with cancer or listen to Nerd Thug Radio. Thoughts, complaints, events and comments can be sent to corydlg@gmail.com.
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Through 20 games, the Houston Astros have managed just six wins and are in last place in the AL West.
Their pitching staff trails only Colorado with a 5.24 ERA and big-money new closer Josh Hader has given up the same number of earned runs in 10 games as he did in 61 last year.
Despite this, these veteran Astros, who have reached the AL Championship Series seven consecutive times, have no doubt they’ll turn things around.
“If there’s a team that can do it, it’s this team,” shortstop Jeremy Peña said.
First-year manager Joe Espada, who was hired in January to replace the retired Dusty Baker, discussed his team’s early struggles.
“It’s not ideal,” he said. “It’s not what we expected, to come out of the shoot playing this type of baseball. But you know what, this is where we’re at and we’ve got to pick it up and play better. That’s just the bottom line.”
Many of Houston’s problems have stemmed from a poor performance by a rotation that has been decimated by injuries. Ace Justin Verlander and fellow starter José Urquidy haven’t pitched this season because of injuries and lefty Framber Valdez made just two starts before landing on the injured list with a sore elbow.
Ronel Blanco, who threw a no-hitter in his season debut April 1, has pitched well and is 2-0 with a 0.86 ERA in three starts this season. Cristian Javier is also off to a good start, going 2-0 with a 1.54 ERA in four starts, but the team has won just two games not started by those two pitchers.
However, Espada wouldn’t blame the rotation for Houston’s current position.
“It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster how we've played overall,” he said. “One day we get good starting pitching, some days we don’t. The middle relief has been better and sometimes it hasn’t been. So, we’ve just got to put it all together and then play more as a team. And once we start doing that, we’ll be in good shape.”
The good news for the Astros is that Verlander will make his season debut Friday night when they open a series at Washington and Valdez should return soon after him.
“Framber and Justin have been a great part of our success in the last few years,” second baseman Jose Altuve said. “So, it’s always good to have those two guys back helping the team. We trust them and I think it’s going to be good.”
Hader signed a five-year, $95 million contract this offseason to give the Astros a shutdown 7-8-9 combination at the back end of their bullpen with Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressly. But the five-time All-Star is off to a bumpy start.
He allowed four runs in the ninth inning of a 6-1 loss to the Braves on Monday night and has yielded eight earned runs this season after giving up the same number in 56 1/3 innings for San Diego last year.
He was much better Wednesday when he struck out the side in the ninth before the Astros fell to Atlanta in 10 innings for their third straight loss.
Houston’s offense, led by Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker, ranks third in the majors with a .268 batting average and is tied for third with 24 homers this season. But the Astros have struggled with runners in scoring position and often failed to get a big hit in close games.
While many of Houston’s hitters have thrived this season, one notable exception is first baseman José Abreu. The 37-year-old, who is in the second year of a three-year, $58.5 million contract, is hitting 0.78 with just one extra-base hit in 16 games, raising questions about why he remains in the lineup every day.
To make matters worse, his error on a routine ground ball in the eighth inning Wednesday helped the Braves tie the game before they won in extra innings.
Espada brushed off criticism of Abreu and said he knows the 2020 AL MVP can break out of his early slump.
“Because (of) history,” Espada said. “The back of his baseball card. He can do it.”
Though things haven’t gone well for the Astros so far, everyone insists there’s no panic in this team which won its second World Series in 2022.
Altuve added that he doesn’t have to say anything to his teammates during this tough time.
“I think they’ve played enough baseball to know how to control themselves and how to come back to the plan we have, which is winning games,” he said.
The clubhouse was quiet and somber Wednesday after the Astros suffered their third series sweep of the season and second at home. While not panicking about the slow start, this team, which has won at least 90 games in each of the last three seasons, is certainly not happy with its record.
“We need to do everything better,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “I feel like we’re in a lot of games, but we just haven’t found a way to win them. And good teams find a way to win games. So we need to find a way to win games.”