VDT VIEW

Here’s a run-down of what some local night spots are offering in entertainment for now and in the coming weeks.

306 North
Where: 306 N. Patterson St.
FRIDAYS. Nephtali Santiago.

Antoine’s Flavor of New Orleans
Where: 205 N. Ashley St.
THURSDAYS, FRIDAYS, SATURDAYS: Live jazz music.

With “Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil,” “Bone” creator Jeff Smith brought his ability to create a comics story that appeals to both children and adults appropriately to the superhero who is both a child and an adult: DC’s Captain Marvel. Billy Batson is a young boy who says the magic word Shazam and is granted the powers of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury. With that one word, little Billy is transformed into the mighty Captain Marvel. As Alex Ross noted in the foreword of the hardcover compilation for “The Monster Society of Evil,” a kid can have fun imagining being Superman but Captain Marvel is the ultimate in wish-fulfillment: The kid becomes the superhero.

2008 has been a good year for Marie Digby. There’s been the release of her debut CD “Unfold.” She enjoyed a successful 21-city tour in May and June, and plays Six Flags Over Georgia on July 31. Her video for the single “Say It Again” has been playing on MTV’s TRL and has pushed into the Top 40 and was part of the season-finale soundtrack for “ER” this past spring. Her YouTube views are more 32 million. And her next single, “Stupid For You,” will be released soon. A good year.

“The Dark Knight” (Action: 2 hours, 32 minutes); Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman; Director: Christopher Nolan; Rated: PG-13 (Extreme violence, strong language and gore)

QUITMAN — Big things are happening for Ninja Gun. The Brooks County-based band recently returned from two months of playing its second West Coast tour. This past week has seen the release of Ninja Gun’s second album, “Restless Rubes,” on the Suburban Home Records label. And if fortune smiles further, who knows, maybe the royalty check has finally arrived for the television show “Friday Night Lights” using two Ninja Gun songs last season. Back home for a while in Brooks County, Ninja Gun frontman-vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Johnathan Coody is glad to have the break but is anxious to return to the road to promote the album. It is a dichotomy that fuels Ninja Gun. “I love the South and South Georgia,” Coody says, “but it can be confining. It is interesting to me to see different places and see a different mentality, see a different culture. … It’s gratifying to see people connect to what you do, especially from another area.” That conflict of ideas and impulses plays out in Coody’s bio. As he relates in a few short sentences: He grew up on a Brooks County pig farm, earned a degree in psychology, and now plays in a punk-rock band. “We’re redneck country kids who want to get out,” Coody says. “We have an appetite to see other things. I never felt like I could be satisfied working with Georgia Power.” That’s the spirit of the band and the theme of the songs on “Restless Rubes.” The satisfaction found in not being too satisfied with the status quo. About the “stigma of being a musician and maintaining a sense of security,” Coody says. These tracks show a growth of maturity in the songwriting as well as the band’s musicianship, while still maintaining a sound that is, as former area music critic Matt Walker described it, something akin to Johnny Cash meets the Ramones. Ninja Gun maintains the country punk of the band’s debut album, “Smooth Transitions,” while finding a new direction.