Hawkeye, Another Callup, and Plans

Daily Ramble 203: Hawkeye, Another Callup, and Plans

A bit of a ramble about comics, baseball, and plans for Neverwinter.

I finally got back around to reading the Kelly Thompson Hawkeye and I’m glad I did. I had forgotten how well put together this comic is and how well the art creates a good pacing for this story. And speaking about good pacing, it’s about time the Angel’s pitchers settled down to get their rhythm into the flow of things. Nick Tropeano will hopefully be a part of that flow as he started out well on Thursday night. Finally, I take a look at what I need to do in Neverwinter to be considered an upstanding account and not a gold-spammer.

Elevated Pitcher

The Angels pitching staff has had it’s share of injuries so far this season and Thursday was the second game in a row where the team had to call up a minor league starter to take the mound in the bigs. In contrast to Barria who notched the victory in Wednesday’s game, Nick Tropeano had pitched for the major league team in the past, but he did so 2 years ago. Way back in 2016, Tropeano had to have Tommy John surgery and Thursday was his first start back for the Angels.

And what a start it was…6 hits scattered over 6 2/3 innings and no runs given up. This was exactly the type of outing the relief corps needed to get a break. While the relievers have been great this season they needed a few games where they didn’t have to start pitching in the 5th inning or earlier and Tropeano helped with that. His 6 strike outs were icing on the cake and I’m happy to give him my Player of the Game even with Trout notching a 3 for 4 night with a home run and Kinsler coming back from the DL to hit his first homer of the season.

Each night it seems someone else on the offense is performing well and carrying the team so it’s been real fun to watch. Now that the pitching seems to be settling down, I’d look out if I had to face this team. I hope they keep it up.

Hawkeye #2

Hawkeye #2 by Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero. Published by Marvel Comics 2016.
Beside the fact that I really hate it when a comic doesn’t have a title (as this one does), I really enjoyed the second issue of this Kate Bishop Hawkeye series. It’s actually been over a year since I read the first issue and at the time I was looking forward to reading the series…I guess things just came up and I never got back to the story till now.

Issue 2 continues where the first left off and both Thompson and Romero are firing on all cylinders. Supporting characters are introduced and the simple case of cyber harassment that seemed to be closed in the first issue turns out to be a bit more complicated than thought. There’s good interplay among the new cast and even Larry, perp who was initially thought to be stalking Bishop’s client, has a decent background defined.

Though it’s only 22 pages (one more than the first issue), the story seems to go on and on but I was engaged the whole time. In the end, the cult that seems to be after Kate’s client looks pretty formidable and now that they’re targeting Hawkeye, she better be careful.

My first impression of this issue is a solid B.

I read this issue based on my desire to catch up on some more current comics and with the release of Hawkeye #11 on Marvel Unlimited I figured it was time to go back and start reading this series.

This comic can be found on Marvel Unlimited, Comixology, or at your local comic book shop.

Weekend Opening of the Auction House

I’ve playing around in Neverwinter for over 2 months now and I still am technically on a limited account. Sure, I’ve made it to level 60 and there are no leveling, combat, or ability restrictions, that I’m aware of, but I can not participate in the full game. For some reason the game developers decided that an account has to complete certain quest lines in order to qualify for “non gold-spammer” status. Until a character on the account meets the requirements, they can’t chat in the “Say” window, they can’t use zone chat, they can’t use the auction house fully, they can’t use the AD exchange and more.

Of course I haven’t completed all the missions to meet this requirement so I suppose the game still consideres me a gold-spammer. This weekend, I intend on correcting that issue by completing the required quests to open up the full game to me.

From what I can tell, I need to have completed 5 of these quest chains:

Return of the Crown
The Tower District
The Plague District
Blackdagger Ruins
Neverdeath
Helm’s Hold

5 outta 6…I might as well finish them all.

I’m sure they will be pretty easy since I’m running around at level 60 but I just need to get ‘em done.