giantkillermantis

2008-08-21T21:04:00.005-04:00

August 21st, 2008

It was a slow week for me, but i had a hankerin' for comics, so i picked up some things that weren't new or on my list.

Lucky Vol.2 #1 - I read part of an interview with Gabrielle Bell on The Daily Crosshatch, and liked some of the samples i found online. I haven't finished reading this one, partly b/c i read comics until i couldn't stay awake last night, and partly b/c it's got a lot of content. It's all six-panel grids with plenty of text. That's cool by me. So i don't have much to say about this one except so far so good and i like the use of blacks on the page.

New Tales of Old Palomar #2 & 3 - I told Chris that Gilbert Hernandez's stories are more depressing than Jaime's, but that's not the case here. (I'm not sure it's a fair comparison anyway; it's just that the later Palomar stories in the Heartbreak Soup trade i read had some pretty bleak moments.) If you don't know what Palomar is, it's a small town in an unspecified area of Central America (i think of it as a small island nation on the Pacific side of Central America, but can't remember if that's accurate). Moreso, it's the home of the characters who populate Gilbert Hernandez's stories. It has a lot of the familiar aspects of small towns in fiction: everybody knows everybody, eccentric characters, childhood adventures become the stuff of legend, etc. But it has a mystical side, too: ghosts and witches are real, and the ancient stone statues outside town have a magical presence. Mostly it's the sum of its inhabitants, whom Hernandez endows with remarkable humanity. They feel like real people, for good and ill.
Having read the first Palomar stories will help you recognize some characters here, but i don't think it's necessary. Each of the stories here are self-contained. In #2, some of Palomar's boys get kidnapped by some weird people in unitards who speak an unknown language (it's rendered as a bunch of hashes, kind of like Woodstock's word baloons in Peanuts). It falls, as usual, to Sheriff Chelo to rescue the boys, and she gets into quite a scuffle with the weird people. #3 has two stories. In the first, firecracker Tonantzin is haunted by the Blooter Baby. To get rid of it, she consults with the local "witch" (who has cool Ditko-Dr. Strange windows in her house; there's a lot of Ditko influence in los bros Hernandez' work, which is awesome). It works, but the result is a bit different than you'd expect. The second story sees the return of the hash-mark-speaking people, and their rather gruesome revenge on Chelo. These stories emphasize the otherworldly aspects of Palomar. There's more focus on being imaginative than on being dramatic, which is cool by me. I really liked these.
New Tales... is in Fantagraphics' "Ignatz" format, which is oversized. I thought i wouldn't be buying these b/c i think they're kinda pricey, but, well, they're really pretty, and i enjoyed them, so i guess it was a good buy afterall.

Trinity #12 - There's a lot of action in this one, and some character development/clues about Enigma. I'm curious to see what's up with these weird powers John Stewart is manifesting. And hats off to Busiek and Nicieza for packing plenty of story into each half--maybe that's part of what i like about this, that it moves at a pace a bit more akin to the stuff i grew up with. Is Madame Zodiac a new character? It seems like i would have heard about a mystical woman living in Gotham.

Madman #10 - It's the least experimental, but most solid issue of the series. A lot of events of the last several issues are in clearer focus now. I really like Haley and Whelworne. I feel like the Madman story is moving ahead again. I know that Allred will do some more experimental issues, and i'll probably like them (varyingly, of course), but it's really nice to have a more "traditional" issue like this (and hopefully we'll see some of those experimental things woven into, and enhance, "traditional" issues). Also, the first letter on the letters page, from a Kat Roberts, echoes a lot of how i feel about comic art. It's always encouraging and refreshing to know that there are kindred comic souls out there.

2008-08-04T06:01:00.005-04:00

Blue Beetle #29 -- The new writer, Matthew Sturges, starts with this issue. Though the cover credit still says "Rogers", who hasn't been the writer for at least two months. Rogers' run was great, so there's trepidation about a new writer taking over. So far, so good.

There was also trepidation about this issue's subject: illegal immigration.* Politics is the opposite of art and entertainment. If this story falls into politics--i.e., this party's policy is right, the other party is wrong; or the people who support X are good, and their opponents are bad--it will fail as both art and entertainment. The only way this kind of story can succeed is if it addresses the reality that the politicians are trying to manipulate. The reality is complicated, nuanced and contradictory, while the politics is simplistic, arbitrary, and deceitful.

Thankfully, Sturges is steering towards the reality so far. There are characters involved in various aspects of the issue. None of them have been portrayed as saints or devils. Everyone is sympathetic so far. The only cliches or political spin i noticed were delivered by reporters, which is appropriate, since that's what they do in real life. There is a bad guy involved, but he's clearly not meant to represent any element of the real life problem. Jaime, of course, is caught in the middle, and, true to his character, wants to find a solution that does the least harm to everyone. It remains to be seen whether this story will conclude without decending into politics, but so far, so good.

Okay, on to the good stuff. Rafael Albuquerque is still the series' artist, which is great. Pairing him with another writer on this comic highlights how much of the series' "feel" is attributable to his contribution. Plus, i can't imagine any other artist making a flying coyote dude look cool.

The coyote dude figures in a very entertaining sequence in which two wannabe supervillains fight over the right to use the name Hellhound (aparently the last guy to use that name died in Salvation Run--this is a nod to "universe" continuity that doesn't intrude on the main story or make you feel like you're missing something by having not read something else; well done). They're fighting in a cheap wrestling ring, with a small audience (presumably friends or henchmen) egging them on. Blue Beetle busts up the match and, while he's clobbering both would-be Hellhounds, suggests alternate names so they won't have to fight in the first place. This sequence makes me think that Sturges has a decent grasp on the character; it's a good sign--and it's fun and funny.

It'll take a few more issues to form a real impression of Sturges' run on this series, but after the first issue, i'm hopeful. Recommended.

*I call it illegal because, per law, it is. Don't assume that, by recongnizing that it's illegal, i think it, or the people who do it, are automatically bad. I don't. Speeding is illegal, but we all do it all the time and don't consider it or ourselves immoral. There are loads of legal activities that are immoral, and the government that writes the laws often does immoral things. So i'm not making a connection between law and morals here. Identifying it as "illegal immigration" rather than "immigration" clearly identifies the issue that people are arguing about.

Trinity #9 -- See, i knew Busiek was going to bring in the Crime Syndicate, a la his JLA run. Now all we need are the Qwardians. This issue also features some of Wonder Woman's and Batman's supporting casts. The second story features Oracle, Nightwing, and a couple of Bat rogues. McDaniel does another cool two-page spread in this issue. Like the one from last issue, it isn't just a "splash", but does a lot storytelling. This guy really knows how to lay out a page (or two). There are also more new (AFAIK) characters: a flamboyant and highly skilled martial artist called the Swashbuckler, and a bizarre guy called the Trans-Volitional Man--and what he does is even weirder than his name.

I also got Dynamo 5 #15 and Justice Society of America Annual #1. Both are good. Maybe i'll post reviews of them later, but i've felt kind of cruddy this weekend.

2008-08-02T17:26:00.000-04:00

Previews for October 2008

Do i want to dive into this New Krypton thing? It might be fun to follow this thing across the three “super” books. That's almost a weekly series. However: do i want to add another three monthly books to my sublist? Maybe i could drop Green Lantern Corps, then it'd be a net two adds. What i really want is to read more trades, so i'm hesitant to add more monthlies.

Example: check out the Fantagraphics section on pages 288-9. They got some classic collections in Popeye, Dennis the Menace, Zippy, and Mr. Natural. My interest in these varies wildly, but at the least, any of them would show me more of the artform, whereas the Superman stuff, as cool as it might be, is something i'm already well familiar with. The argument is pretty much the same with the newer collections. So, more of the same, or something new? Maybe i should go to the library and see if they've got any of this stuff.

You know what? I'm kinda getting tired of Buffy, too. When Renee died, it was like, so that's what we're doing here: more of the same. Pointless character death? Abruptly halting the progression of Xander's character? Meh, shrug, and phooey to that. And it keeps going in all these different directions. I don't know whether i should just enjoy it as episodic stuff with a season-plot in the background, or if this stuff with Dracula and Fray and whatnot is part of the season-plot. And i like Buffy less as a character. I'm putting it on my maybe-i'll-drop-it list.

Savage Dragon is coming back. At Acme's quarter bin sale, i picked up a couple issues of this series, and i'm intrigued. It's good superhero stuff. And the issue solicited here has a bunch of the Golden Age public domain characters that were in Image's First Issue Project. So i'm probably going to pick this one up.

Image is soliciting a collection of the new Firebreather series, but the only issue i've seen so far is #1. ??? Have the other issues not shipped, or has my local comic shop somehow missed them or been shorted on them? IDK. But i'm thinking of dropping it from my sublist, b/c either the schedule is messed up, or i'm not getting the issues when it comes out.

Stuff from my sublist: Atomic Robo & the Dogs of War #3, Blue Beetle #32, Buffy #19, Comic Book Comics #3, Dynamo 5 #18, Fables #77, Firebreather #6, Jack of Fables #27, JSA #20, Madame Xanadu #5, Noble Causes #39, Secret Six #2, Trinity #18-22, Wonder Woman #25

Other stuff that interests me (my “maybe” list): The Bradleys by Peter Bagge (Fantagraphics), Delayed Replays by Liz Prince (Top Shelf), Tales to Suffice by Kenny Kiel (Amaze Ink/SLG), Kill Your Boyfriend by Grant Morrison, Philip Bond & D'Israeli (DC/Vertigo), Sloth by Gilbert Hernandez (DC/Vertigo), Outlaw Territory by various (Image), Hey Wait... by Jason (Fantagraphics), Savage Dragon #141 by Erik Larsen (Image)

2008-07-14T20:43:00.001-04:00

Cloverfield and Final Crisis

I just watched Cloverfield on DVD. It was fun. Having heard criticisms and letting the hype pass no doubt made it work better for me.

I watched one of the "making of" shorts. It's the one where they discuss designing the creature. [SPOILERS AHEAD] Everything they said made sense, that it's a "baby" and is propelled by fear. That makes sense. I even thought that a few of the cries/roars of the creature sounded a bit scared or defensive, but that's a common trope in monster movies, so maybe i heard that b/c i expected it. Anyway, it all makes sense. It works. But it's not in the movie. There's nothing in the movie to tell you that the monster is newly hatched and acting on frightened instinct.

There's also the bit in the short where J.J. Abrams says he was inspired to make the movie by all the Godzilla toys he saw in Japan. Wouldn't it be cool if America had its own monster? Sure, it would be cool. That's not in the movie, either. The monster is barely seen in the movie, and it certainly does not lend itself to toys. More importantly, the movie isn't about the monster. The audience can't sympathize with it.

The ideas that went into designing the creature are interesting. The designers apparently put a good deal of thought into creating some feasible alternate biology. It's impressive. It's not in the movie, either. In the movie, we see that the monster moves strangely, that its body is oddly put together, that it has weird critters that fall off of it (there's probably a well thought-out explanation behind that, but it's not in the movie), etc. But just seeing glimpses of that stuff on the screen (the dark, shadowy, constantly shifting screen) doesn't convey all the thought and intended coolness of the design.

This makes me think of Final Crisis. When i read an interview with Grant Morrison, the ideas and rationales he gives for FC make sense. They sound cool, even. But they aren't in the comic. (Or at least not #1, which is the only one i've read. From the reviews and message board posts i've read, they aren't in #2, either, or not so as people can spot them.) For example, the idea that the Fourth Worlders are becoming like ancient polytheistic gods, "possessing" people when they dive into whatever concept a particular god embodies? That's a very cool idea. It ain't in the comic.

I've wondered before if there were aspects of Countdown or One Year Later that weren't being conveyed from the creators' brains to the page. Like, if you could sit in on the conference call where the big ideas are hashed out and the broad plot outlined, you'd get a lot more out of the comic than when you just read the end product. Apparently the same is true of Cloverfield: if you know all the stuff that went into designing that weird kaiju, you'd probably have a whole other level of appreciation for the movie. But you can't get that from the movie, b/c it didn't make it from the creators' brains to the screen.

It feels a bit like listening to someone tell stories about cool stuff that happened in their Dungeons and Dragons or WoW campaign. If you're a player in the game, it's fun and exciting to reminisce about all the killer monsters and wicked maneuvers, and barely-made saving throws, etc. But if you weren't a player in the game, and you're just hearing about it after the fact, it's really boring. Sure, you can follow the plot, but the cool factor doesn't translate. You have to be in on it to get the full--or any--effect.

This phenomenon is no big deal when it comes to telling stories about D&D campaigns, or that crazy thing that your friend did in college that only you and your buddies thinks is funny, or in some fanfic for a niche audience, but when it becomes a factor in something intended for a wider audience, it's a problem.

I don't know what you would call this, but maybe it's something that science-fiction-y geek-culture-y things are more prone to?

Note, i'm not saying that either Cloverfield or Final Crisis are bad. I liked Cloverfield, just not as the "Godzilla for America" thing that it was apparently supposed to be (in fact, i doubt that was the actual intent, regardless what Abrams says; maybe it started out that way, but...). I didn't like Final Crisis #1, but maybe i'll like the whole thing when it's done, but i won't be surprised if i like it for something other than the grand re-imagining of Kirby's Fourth World that it's apparently intended to be.

2008-07-07T08:45:00.007-04:00

Water Baby
by Ross Campbell
156 pages, black and white, paperback, $9.99

Ross Campbell has established a very distinctive style, not just in how he renders things, but in tone, themes, and those little elements that make a writer's work recognizable. There are hot girls in tiny, punky outfits (often dirty and ragged), but the hot girls have different body types and do unhot things like pick their noses. There are some really creepy visuals. The settings are always kinda rednecky and lowdown. There's a nihilistic vibe. Some of the same bands are referenced that are referenced in Wet Moon, but i don't know if they're real, or he's just using the same made up bands.

Brody is a teenage (?age not given?) surfer in Florida. She has lots of tattoos and skull-themed swimwear. A shark attacks her and takes her left leg. The rest of the book is obliquely about how she recovers from this. Well, not all of it is oblique. Some of it is directly about the physical recovery. It's the psychological stuff that is appropriately oblique. This takes the form of Brody's relationship with a worthless leech of a guy whom i wouldn't mind to have seen shot named Jake. I'm not sure how well that part of it worked. It performed its narrative task, but it didn't feel significant. Getting shed of this bum didn't feel like an emblem of Brody conquering her injury as much as her finally ceasing to be an embarrassing pushover.

The plot is straightforward, but has a loose flow. The second half of the book is a road trip, and that always lends itself to a jangly, episodic, meditative form or story, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The purpose is to give the characters room to reveal themselves to the reader in a casual, organic way. You know who they are through dialog, mannerisms, and those sorts of character work. There are no info dumps or exposition-disguised-as-dialog. This is how Campbell's series Wet Moon works, too. The best moments in that series are when Cleo obsesses and when Trilby dorks out or gets disproportionately offended by the least significant slights.

Unexpectedly, Water Baby is darker than Wet Moon, even though WM is very gothic (in both the Southern Gothic and Siouxsie Sioux sense), has more drooling rednecks, physical oddities, and decay. But WM does have bright spots like Trilby's manicness and a sense that the characters are moving and having a bit of fun along the way. In Water Baby, there are fewer bright spots. Brody and Louisa are friends, but we don't know how much they really care about each other. Brody is moving forward by the end of the story, but it's slow, and the nature of her moving forward involves getting tougher, harder. She starts off cynical and sarcastic, so getting harder doesn't make her more sympathetic.

Where her vulnerable side comes through, and this is pretty effective the more i think about it, is in the dream sequences where her trauma about the shark attack manifests itself in various bizarre, horrific images. In these scenes, her anxieties play themselves out via dream logic, and in the moments before she falls asleep and after she wakes up, we see the same emotions in her body language.

Campbell is a major talent, IMO. His pages look incredible. He marries beauty and grotesquerie not only in the horror elements, but in the mundane (i.e., hot chicks picking their noses). His shapes are amazing. The balance of detail and expressiveness is just right. His interest in the macabre and in unconventional beauty will likely keep him outside the mainstream of direct market comics, but could easily garner him a sizable following outside of it.

2008-07-06T14:16:00.003-04:00

Short Reviews for the Week of July 2nd 2008

Billy Batson & the Magic of Shazam #1 - If this represents the state of kids' comics, kids are darn lucky. This comic looks great. It's full of color, energy, and movement. There's also a ton of story here. You get about four times the plot of a normal superhero comic. The panels-per-page ratio is high; and it flows well and is never crowded. Who is this Mike Kunkel? Where have he and his serious comiker skills been? Playing tether ball with a wrecking ball? That's superhero brilliance.

Trinity #5 - The fight with Konvikt reminds me of Superman's first fight with Doomsday: the JLA has gotten beaten up by this mysterious, one-dimensional badguy who came out of nowhere, and it's up to Supes (and Wonder Woman and Batman) to take him out. I like when WW is shown to be Supe's equal. If she isn't quite as strong, she's a better fighter.
When Bats is questioning him about his spaceship, Graak says that he isn't a "sciencelizard". Could that refer to the Psions of the Vega system? They're lizardy, and into the kind of superscience that could create and/or contain someone of Konvikt's power level.
Now the Big Three are clued-in that someone else is in on the cosmic stuff from issue one, so maybe that thread will develop further next issue.
In the second half of the book: So, Gangbuster is related to Superman b/c he used to operate in Metropolis, and we can assume that Tarot corresponds to Wonder Woman in this "street level" triad b/c of her connection to the magical/mystical (and her gender), so that leaves the Batman slot open. Who could the third member of this group be? I think this story is happening on the west coast, so maybe someone from Busiek's Power Company series?

Buffy #16 - It's cool to see Fray and her world again. Karl Moline's Buffy is really tall. We get another peek at what Twilight and his crew are up to, but not much. I hope that thread gets some decent development before it comes to a head. It would kinda suck to get an info dump about it just in time for the big fight. I wonder how all these elements will tie together, too. Dawn's changes, time travel, Dracula, the scythe, etc. Maybe they won't. Maybe this series isn't following the TV season model literally, where the season ends with its plot threads wrapped up, or at least repositioned for the next season. Maybe it's more like old serial comics, with subplots that move at their own pace in relation to the major plot.

Fables #74 - I loved this issue, just like the last one. The title, "A Very One-Sided War" is very accurate. The Fabletown forces are p0wning the Empire at every turn. What's best is that they're doing so by being smart--by planning, by innovating, by anticipating. When big scary orcs are getting shot in the face by rabbits, it's not a battle, it's a humiliating rout. The Emperor sums it up when he says "Our real sin was a lack of imagination." It tweaks that part of my brain that loves strategy and tactics. Good stuff. Of course, since things have gone so well for Fabletown so far, you know that there's a huge bucket of shite just waiting to fall on them. I don't know what the Emperor's last ditch plan is, but it's gonna be nasty.

Jack of Fables #23 - Continuing a tale from Jack's past, this issue has Jack in New Mexico in 1883. There's a great two-page spread (pages 2 & 3) of the town, Lilly of the Valley, which i think much have been drawn from reference material (it's convincing in its detail), but doesn't have that annoying photo-referenced look. It looks like a real slap-dash, ramshackle frontier town. Bigby Wolf is tracking Jack. I think this will be their first encounter, so Jack must have 'ported over from the Homelands sometime in the mid 19th century (we saw him in the Civil War in an early Fables issue). Both of these characters work well in an Old West setting, Jack as the greedy bastard, Bigby as the bar-brawling, New World barbarian. Of course we get another funny non-sequitor page of Babe the Blue Ox's daydreams, too.

Dynamo 5 #14 - Jay Faerber's comics are rooted in the superhero comics of the Bronze Age, it seems. (This is a good thing IMO.) That's true for a lot of writers, but where Faerber differs from some contemporaries, is that it never feels like he's trying to deconstruct or recast or re-imagine the superhero genre. He continues the tradition, adding some new elements, but never taking it apart. In Dynamo 5, the team's origin is that their superpowered male genetic contributor, Captain Dynamo (a superman type), had affairs with their mothers, and they each inherited one of his powers. It's easy to imagine that concept being worked into a series the point of which would be the fallibility of heroes, disillusionment, moral ambiguity, etc.; it would drown in self-importance and faux sophistication. Dynamo 5 does touch on some of that more "serious" stuff, but it doesn't dwell on it. It never forgets that it's a superhero comic.
In this issue, the fallout from an attack on the team's headquarters continues. With their leader/mentor/drill sergeant (and Captain Dynamo's widow) Maddie in a coma, the 5 have retreated back to their families. None of these are in Tower City, the city D5 is supposed to defend. Thus, the city is being overrun by supervillains. The only 5ver in Tower City is Myriad, and he's too busy philandering to fight crime (he inherited skirt-chasing as well as shape-changing from Capt. Dynamo). Maddie is under the care of Doc Noble (from Noble Causes), and when Scrap visits her there, she gets some good advice from Zephyr Noble.
Meanwhile, a new hero going by Vigil is trying to fight the invasion of villains in Tower City. At first i thought maybe Vigil was Scrap in a different costume, but that's not the case. From what's in this issue and what i've seen in Previews, it looks like the next few issues will see an alternate Dynamo 5, with Scrap, Vigil, and others yet to be determined. Now, that's an old trope in superhero comics (most often used in Fantastic Four), but somehow i'm still excited about it here. Maybe it's the execution, maybe it's that Dynamo 5 is creator-owned so it's more possible that the status quo could actually change.

Noble Causes #35 - The "pitch" on Noble Causes is that it's superheroes as soap opera. All superhero comics have that element, esp. superhero teams, but here it's really played up. There are moments that are just ridiculous, but at the same time fun, in that soap opera way. The Nobles are a super-hero family. Doc Noble is married to Olympia (his first wife, Gaia, is in prison). The kids include Rusty (in a robot body), Zephyr, Frost, Surge and Minutiae. Celeste and Slate married in.
Here's an example of the super soap opera of Noble Causes. It's a minor spoiler from an early story. Doc's first wife cheated on him with his doppelganger in an alternate universe.
Current plots come to a head in this issue, as the Nobles discover a traitor in their midst, and the adversary who put the traitor there. They don't figure it all out at once, though. Different subsets of the team are discovering different elements, but it's all hitting the fan at once. Surprise follows surprise, building suspense, tension, and the anticipation that next issue will be a knock-down drag-out.
Artist Yildiray Cinar has some strong moments here. There are some well-laid out pages here that do a lot to convey action, and surprise.

Blue Beetle #28 - Pfeifer guest-writes again (new regular writer Matt Sturges beings next issue) with a very entertaining one-shot that incorporates the legacy of the original, Golden Age Blue Beetle and gives a lot of page time to one of this series' strengths: the supporting cast. A supervillain who fought Dan Garret back in the '40s has apparently resurfaced in El Paso. Jaime, along with his friends, Garret's granddaughter, and Peacemaker (a sort of reluctant mentor, and metatextually, a tie to the 2nd Blue Beetle's origins in Charlton Comics) have to figure out why and how an octogenarian supervillain and his monster have become a threat again. The answer is surprising, and fits perfectly with the tone of this series, wherein the hero is always able to find a solution that's better than the obvious one.

Madame Xanadu #1 - There's a very cool world here that's inviting because of its visuals and intricacy. DC fans will find some cool and intriguing takes on the continuity around Kirby's take on the Arthurian mythos. This issue sets up a lot: who Xanadu is, or who she was to start with, her connections to other important characters like Merlin, the Phantom Stranger, and Morganna, and the world around her. Matt Wagner brings the strong script as you'd expect, and young artist Amy Reeder Hadley shows serious chops of her own. Her characters look great, they act well, her backgrounds/environments are convincing and interesting to look at, and her storytelling is smooth. I wonder how it would look with some heavier lines here and there, but that's not a criticism. Big props also go to Guy Major on colors, who contributes greatly to the mood and sense of place.
I'm excited about to see where this one is going. It's full of narrative corners to explore, and characters i want to see more of.

Jonah Hex #33 - The Darwyn Cooke art is what convinced me to pick this up, but i've read a few other issues of this current Hex series, and i've enjoyed all of them. As usual, this is a done-in-one story, and it shows, in the age of (sometimes thinly) drawn out mega-parters, that a great story can still be told in 22 pages. Hex haunts this story, as it's told by someone who was rescued (sort of) as a boy by the devil-eyed bounty hunter. It's got the grit this series is famous for: the unforgiving environment, the heartless villains and perhaps as heartless protagonist. This is a great issue.

2008-06-22T10:29:00.012-04:00

HeoresCon 2008

We had a great time there yesterday. I spent most of the day just being in awe of all the incredibly cool stuff everywhere. I browsed around Indie Island and Artists' Alley, and went to the "conversations" panel with Evan Dorkin and Jaime Hernandez. I met the hosts of Indie Spinner Rack. So many nice, friendly creators! I could have bought a print or a mini comic or sketch from practically every table, but of course didn't have that much dough.

Stuff i got:

Signed: Perhapanauts #1 by writer & artist, Scott Pilgrim Vol.1, The Mourning Star Vol.1, Miranda Mercury #296; never found Roy Thomas to get my All-Star Squadron #1 signed.

Prints: Big cover to Miranda Mercury #297 by Lee Ferguson, and a Daybreak print by Brian Ralph

Comics: Chiggers by Hope Larson, Ayaje's Wives and The Ghosts by Matt Wiegle, You Don't Get There From Here #7 by Carrie McNinch, Black Ghost Apple Factory by Jeremy Tinder, Phaze 7 #13 by Alec Longstreth, Breathers #0 by Justin Madson, The Fart Party #5 by Julia Wertz, Danz Comix Digest by Dan Rhett, Papercutter #5 & 6, Nerd Burglar anthology from Tugboat Press, Daybreak vol. 1 & 2 by Brian Ralph, and I Was a Teenage Comic Nerd and Other Stories by Liz Prince.
Whew! All mini-comics and small or self press, except Chiggers which is Simon & friggin' Shuster (go Ms. Larson).

Sketch: i said i wasn't getting any sketches, but i had nothing for Jaime Hernandez to sign, and he had no books to sell, so i bought a sketchbook and got a great Hopey sketch from him. He's a really nice guy, too.

Cool fabric book mark: from My Brain Hurts auteur Liz Bailie

Best Cosplay: Darwyn Cooke-designed Catwoman, looked inCREDible; runner-up: some kinda victorian alternate of Wonder Woman, maybe from an elseworld?

Panel: Tom Spurgeon from the Comics Reporter hosted an informal panel with Jaime Hernandez (Love & Rockets) and Evan Dorkin (Milk & Cheese, Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast). It was cool to hear Hernandez talk about how he constructs a story (considers the needs of the story then kinda intuits it) and Dorkin snarky/bitter/funny. When asked about new creators following in their wake, Dorkin riffed jealously: "i wish they all had one crotch so i could kick it!" It was a fun panel.

2008-06-15T18:36:00.008-04:00

Short, Sinus-Problem-Impaired, Reviews for Comics of June 11, 2008

Local #12 - Local reaches its destination at
last, as Megan returns to her deceased mother's house in rural Vermont. At first read this issue didn't work as well for me as previous ones, but that might be the bug i've come down with, so i'll read it again later when my head is clearer. Ryan Kelly's art remains awesome.

Wonder Woman #21 - It dawned on me while reading this one that there was a Beowulf series from DC back in the 70s. That explains why he isn't like the real Beowulf. I'm liking this arc, but i'm a sucker for the sword & sorcery, so YMMV. Wonder Woman has a flying clamshell vehicle? She borrowed it from Venus, i reckon? While it's kinda cool to see a new version of Nemesis, i'm not keen on the DEO portion of WW's current status quo.

Madman Atomic Comics #9 - I think i'll enjoy this series more if i stop expecting it to be the adventures of Madman and friends, and instead accept that it's Mike Allred's Experiments In Making Comics featuring Madman and friends. This entire issue consists of two-page spreads that follow a battle as it moves down a street in Snap City. Imagine a movie filmed entirely with one camera on a track rolling from left to right, and that's a close approximation. It's cool that Allred makes it work, but the story isn't very interesting.

Wildguard Insider #2 - The first story stars Lillyhammer, who has a fun punny name, and i don't generally like puns. I don't know the background referred to here, but it' still fun, and Todd Nauck's art is attractive. Btw the deal here is that the team called Wildguard is the result of an American Idol type TV show for superheroes. I got this series b/c i'd wondered about the previous Wildguard comics but never bought them, and this has turned out to be a good primer/introduction to the characters. There are a handful of short stories here, focusing on different characters. Some of these heroes made the final team, others didn't. Astro-Girl is like a younger, female-r version of Adam Strange. Power Temp superheroes part time. (Joey Mason's art on PT's story is great.)

Green Lantern Corps #25 - Less Mongul = better GLC. The origin of the black mercys is cool. Mother Mercy is all lovecraftian-looking, which is more cool. This story explains why the black mercys' powers are different here. Not a bad issue, at all. Gleason's excellent art makes even the grody bunch-a-corpses scenes engaging. Here's hoping next issue begins with Mongul's head exploding, and a new, interesting villain taking his place.

Trinity #1 & 2 - A promising start to a weekly series that apparently will be thankfully free of constraining continuity concerns. Busiek gets the characters right in every scene, and conveys everything clearly to the reader. Bagley's art looks maybe even better that his Ultimate Spidey stuff.

#1 - Cosmic stuff with screaming faces made out of nebulae: could any of this be related to the JLA/Avengers and Busiek's JLA run that followed it? That face doesn't look like Krona, but you never know.

The lunch scene does a good job of defining these characters vis-a-vis each other, and sets up the mystery that will drive at least the first arc of the series.

A ghostly castle is a cool thing. The choices for the anti-trinity aren't what you'd expect, which makes them interesting. Most folks think this Enigma guy is the Riddler, and he may be, but it doesn't fit IMO. Riddler ain't that technological or spooky. Plus, i like his private eye act in Detective, so i don't want that abandoned. Maybe he's Riddler from the future.

Dig that Ragman in the alternate Gotham scene. It's all Joe Kubert-y. Nice.

Is that yahoo on the last page the same as the nebula-face at the beginning? Probably, but looks a bit different.

#2 - A micro-solar system? Cool. Kinda Silver-Age-y. I wonder why it didn't disappear like the other alternate reality stuff? Hopefully there's really cool and weird stuff on those planets, and we'll see some crazy adventures there.

I think these alternate reality scenes are not multiverse-related. I think they're just brief, alternate timeline or imaginary worlds.

Those insectiod giant robots that Wonder Woman's fighting are cool. They remind me of Bagley's work on Thunderbolts.

Tom Derenick is a really good superhero artist. What's going on with John Stewart's powers here? I've never seen anything like that happen to a GL before.

The two-story structure looks like it will work, especially if they're closely linked like in #2.

Okay, i really don't have a lot to say about this, b/c i enjoyed it and it was pretty uncomplicated. So other than saying "i liked it", that's about all i got.

Comparison to Final Crisis (inevitable, right?) - This doesn't seem to be tied into/tied down by continuity concerns. No other series counted down to it, and it doesn't claim to change the universe. So the stakes and expectations are very different. It's easier to read this as just a good superhero yarn, and i'm happy with that.

Good so far.

2008-06-05T22:21:00.003-04:00

Comic Reviews for the Week of June 4th, 2008

Manhunter #31 - This series lands on its feet again. The past is neatly recapped in two pages, then it jumps back into the action with a fight scene, and the rest of the issue gets to the substance of Manhunter's life, her supporting cast, and her newest adventure.

See that scene with Iron Munro? That's how you work DC continuity, even fairly obscure continuity, into a comic. You name the character. Through natural-sounding dialog, you establish that this guy used to be a superhero. Now i know sometimes characters are just dropped in there, without identifying them or giving any context whatsoever, but for my money, this works better. But i guess i'm just lazy b/c i don't want to wait for the "director's cut" reprint to find out who the folks on the page are.

Back to the story, Iron Munro comes off as a jerk here. No, i don't have much sympathy for the guy who wants to "catch up for lost time" after ignoring his family for decades. Go make up your lost time wherever you were for the last thirty years, jerk. You have no right to ask other people to alter their lives just b/c you suddenly decided it might be nice to "connect" with your grandkids. Jerk.

I liked the phone conversation between Dylan and Chase. That was sweet in that "we're too cynical to be sweet" kinda way.

I'm not happy about the possibility of the Joker showing up, though. Unless Manhunter kills him. Somebody needs to kill that character. I hate him.

Between Director Bones and Atomic Skull, there are two skull-headed guys in this issue! That is cool. Does Atomic Skull have invisible skin and stuff, too, or is he just a skeleton powered by atomic energy magic? Manhunter took him down too easily, too. He didn't even try to hit her, seems. He just seemed confused. It was kind of sad.

I'm really dubious about the "real world issues" thing. It's really hard to do justice to real issues in fiction, and even harder when said issues are background for superhero action and soap operatics. Plus, anything that reminds me of politics is a big minus. However, and perhaps paradoxically, i was excited by the idea of a superhero rescuing a "real" person who was in "real" trouble. That line about "we fight aliens, evil geniuses, you name it...why can't i find one missing girl?" was onto something. It would be cool to see a superhero, especially a "street level" one like Manhunter, rescuing people from man's inhumanity to man instead of fighting fantastic threats all the time.

Blue Beetle shows up at the end, and that's good, and it's enough to convince me to pick up the next issue.

Noble Causes #34 - Talk about your superhero soap operatics, hoo boy does this comic have soap operatics to spare. The Nobles are a serious super team. There's a kaiju-sized pharaoh stomping downtown Cairo, and they don't even send the whole team to deal with it, they just send three people. And those three people p0wn the cyclopean menace. It's all the interpersonal drama and emotional machinations that give them real trouble. This is fun.

I like the world Faerber has built. This, along with Dynamo 5, is a good example of how to build a broader continuity for faithful readers without depending on it too much and alienating newer or more casual readers.

I like how Bonechill is freaking out about the Nobles trying to capture him. Plus, he's the third skull-headed guy this week, so bonus.

This world has a prison for supervillains in orbit? Wow.

I'm not sure what that sentence on the last page means. How do you hire someone to do that? Especially someone who was "an accomplished super-hero in her own right" at the time. But i'll go along with it for now.

Buffy #15 - Mixed are my feelings. This has some of the great Buffy action and snarkiness that i love, but also some of the Buffy cliches that have come to annoy me. No one can be happy for long without Tragedy! stepping onto the stage and randomly killing people. Drac shows admirable concern for Xander, but i'm not buying the Drac/Xander friendship...or whatever it is.

Way to go Dawn with the rallying of the troops! The um, Dawnbot, however, was not so cool. But for an uncool thing, its idea of what makes it a teenaged girl was really funny. "I like blue jeans and irony." That cracks me up.

That discussion between Willow and Buffy, where Willow is saying, in a sarcasm-disguising-honesty-jokey way, that it bugs her that Buffy didn't decide to "experiment" with her, was kinda wierd. Can't two people of the same sex just be friends?

Drac's sword is "one of the ancient relics...like your scythe"? That line begs for a future story to explain/explore it. Maybe i've played too much D&D, but that line implies all sorts of epic backstory and +5 vorpal sword enchanting.

Vlad the Impaler stealing Drac's Big Bad vibe was nicely done, as well. He was just as scary as a human as he is as a vampire. (Though if you like your Europe European and not Turkish, you gotta give the guy his due.) This hits one of the major BtVS themes: we are the monsters! It also once again gives the lie to that malarkey about the human soul being removed when a person gets turned into a vampire. That's Watcher poppycock. And it's a badass scene to boot.

I'm not sure what the "kill every single one of them" page is supposed to make us feel. Sometimes it's necessary or justified to obliterate your foes in a kinda genocidal way? Or, this is Buffy going Too Far, or becoming jaded?

Satsu, you are losing my respect. Buffy used you. She was a huge jerk to you, taking advantage of your genuine feelings for her momentary enjoyment. Do not tell her how great it was. Do not give her one for the road. Tell her to go screw herself next time and stay out of your life.

This issue has a beautiful cover.

Justice Society of America #16 - That was an unexpected twist. It was played well, too. Although of course it's going to end badly, for now i almost believe that it won't. Well done.

Gog's tell is that he repeats the phrase "i made them/him good again." I MADE him GOOD. It's that theme of "trying to make the world the way you think it ought to be is bad" thing that Johns uses so much lately. That was Black Adam's sin, and Sinestro's, and probably some other folks' whom i'm forgetting. He's gone to the well a bit too often on that one, especially since he's never clarified the difference between that villanious motivation and the motivation of our admirable heroes--not to my satisfaction, at least.

And speaking of Black Adam, here he is. I'm going to ignore that retconning rubbish about his powers being inherently evil and the apparently futile diversion of said powers to Mary Marvel (i'm also going to ignore the last year of Mary Marvel stuff while i'm dipping into denial). So Isis may be back, huh? That could be cool. The "Black Marvel Family" is a concept worthy of further exploration.

That double page spread of Gog being "cast out" from "paradise" is awesome. What's that beneath his left hand? Ain't it the same eye-in-a-triangle symbol that's on FDR's grandkid's arm? (That, or the Illuminati goes back even further than i thought.) Interesting...

What happened with Damage was cool. I hope it sticks, b/c angry Damage was becoming too one-note.

Another strong issue for JSA. When's the next one?!

2008-06-03T06:48:00.001-04:00

Perhapanauts #2 - This is a pretty packed issue, but it never feels rushed. We get a JLA parody, a good chunck of character background/development for Arisa, Choopie becomes king of some little goat-gremlins, we get a strong hint to Molly's origin, and a surprisingly affecting journal entry from MG about his relationship with Arisa; oh, and the back cover is a funny gag on '50s sci-fi/monster comics. Arisa, the telepath of the group, had been a bit of a cipher up to this point, but this issue gives her new and deeper dimensions. It was a huge leap in character development. If you like adventure comics with good characters, you should read this.

Usagi Yojimbo #112 - Usagi and friends start out helping a young girl escape from a crime boss, and wind up taking out the whole criminal operation in a scene of mad samurai action. UY is a fun, exciting comic. Sakai's cartooning skills are topnotch.

Fables #73 - I was thinking about how epics and Events in comics used to happen in the regular series (i.e., The Great Darkness Saga, the Dark Phoenix Saga, Judas Contract, etc.) and how much better they were back then, b/c they got the proper amount of build-up, the story stayed focused b/c it was in one title and not difused over multiple minis, etc. etc. Well, that's what's happening in Fables right now. Fabletown's attack on the Advesary's empire has been building for the last 72 issues. While telling us lots of entertaining stories over the past six years, Willingham & Buckingham have put everything into place, strategically, emotionally, dramatically, to deliver a truly epic-level action story. This is incredible stuff. This is one of those series that you look back on and realize that you've really been reading something special.
The preview of Madame Xanadu in the back was very cool, and confirmed my decision to add that one to my sublist. :)

Firebreather #1 - A strong first issue. The character and his world are set up, we get a feel for who everybody is and the tone of the series, and we get ominous hints of big doin's to come. I'm intriqued by Firebreather's father. I had assumed he'd be some kind of kaiju, dumb and lumbering but awesome by sheer audacity, but it turns out he's more like a great wyrm of the D&D variety, all ancient and scheming. Kuhn's art is expressive, attractive, and has the storytelling chops. I'm digging this.

Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men - FINALLY. This qualifies as a good epic comic story, too. I like the sections with the other MU heroes, and especially how they were taken out of the fight (though, cool as it was, we don't find out how it was done, do we?). I would say i'd like to see Whedon write more MU characters, but i know it'd take a hundred million years for the stuff to come out, so i'll settle for this. Lots of big action and badassery here. Collossus and Kitty Pryde are the stars, with Spidey ably playing Special Guest Star. I suspected that the giant missle threat might be solved the way it was solved, which was depicted very cool by Cassaday. This series has convinced me that Cassaday isn't just an over-rendering "realist", but is actually a top-tier comic book artist. He tells the story, his characters emote, his characters all have individual faces (even the attractive women), and his tech designs are unusual and cool. Good stuff.

Blue Beetle #27 - It's a testament to the character, supporting cast, and situation that these fill-in issues while waiting for a the next creative team are still more entertaining that your average superhero comic. The last page felt a little arbitrary, but otherwise a solid and fun issue. One of my favorite series.

Shadowpact #25 - If it's gotta end, at least it ends well. And hey, here's another smackdown that gains significance and entertainment value by having been set up over the past 24 issues. The Shadowpact, with help from their time-displaced allies, take on the Sun King and all his nigh-unstoppable power. Blue Devil gets his groove back, and the Phantom Stranger lets his hair down a bit. Blue Devil is the character that gets a real boost out of this series, at least potentially. He faced off an entire eldritch army by himself, faced down the legal department of Hell, and showed his leadership mettle. I'd like to see more of this team, but honestly i don't expect to. It was good while it lasted.

2008-05-29T22:50:00.003-04:00

Final Crisis #1

SPOILERS

I felt very little about this comic. I read it and thought, "I'm not sure what that was about." Then i waited a while, read it a second time, and i still didn't know what it was about.

Anthro (who isn't identified, and neither is his setting) is met by Metron. (It's neat that Morrison combines the image of the burning bush from the Old Testament with the Prometheus story from Greek mythology, but it doesn't add to the story.)

Dan Turpin (who isn't identified, and neither is his history with the New Gods) finds the expiring Orion. We get the hint that the New Gods have been reincarnated somehow (as we've seen in Seven Soldiers and Birds of Prey).

John Stewart investigates. The Black Racer is floating in the background. I guess that's the new Black Racer. The New Gods reconstituted themselves really quickly. They're already online before the last of their old forms has completely croaked.

I like Mirror Master's accent.

Why would those supervillains stage a protest march? Aren't they all wanted for multiple felonies? Shouldn't they be hiding out instead of marching down the street in costume? And why is that lone panel in the middle of the "League of Titans" bit?

It's good to see that Luthor, etc. aren't simply accepting Libra as the new boss. And Libra's dig at Vandal Savage was funny.

The cell phone bit confused me. I thought that maybe the Human Flame was watching something he'd recorded earlier. So i thought maybe he was watching the execution of Martian Manhunter on his phone. Something about that scene didn't flow well for me. That might just be me.

I kind of like the New Gods being in human forms. Of course it will depend on what sort of role they play, but it could be cool. I suspect that Darkseid's machinations have somehow fused the New Gods' essence with humanity, which is fitting since all of his plans seemed to involve Earth anyway, and "New Earth" is the "foundation stone of all existence."

Is it me, or are the Leaguers talking about the New Gods as if they don't know them? As if Orion, Lightray, Big Barda and Mister Miracle weren't members of the League? Has that bit of history been changed, or has the reincarnation of the New Gods somehow caused amnesia?

I don't know what the Monitors are here for. Thematically, they're another level of cosmic power and mythology; they're like another pantheon of gods who may be higher than or in competition with the New Gods. How does their story relate to the others? The other stuff all ties to Darkseid's plans, but i don't see how this one does.

Then Anthro meets Kamandi. Apparently Anthro is either transported to another Earth (if this is the Countdown version of Kamandi) or the distant future (if this is the old school Kamandi). Kamandi is not identified, and neither is his setting. But we do learn that Metron set his own plan into motion before he croaked, and this is the good guys' Last Best Hope.

The monitor who was "exiled" wakes up in his new, human form (more gods becoming men, soon to strive towards godhood again; Morrison's working his literary themes) for i guess the first time.

This issue was set up, as you'd presume a #1 to be, but while it put the pieces into place, it didn't give us any indication of what kind of game is about to be played. Any thread between these various plots has to be deduced by the reader. That's not necessarily bad, but it's not Summer Event Series storytelling. The stakes are unclear.

It was odd.

Readers not already familiar with DC's superhero universe will have a lot of questions. Characters and concepts are not introduced in several instances, as i noted. If you haven't read Seven Soldiers, you might scratch your head about the Dark Side Club. This is a big minus for an Event comic, which is intended (or so i always thought) to sell to a lot of people, not just faithful DC fans who follow their "universe" as a whole. Something as simple as caption boxes, or a couple editorial pages, would have helped.

2008-05-26T07:54:00.009-04:00

Son of Short Comic Reviews

Birds of Prey #118 – So this takes place after Final Crisis, looks like. At least, it has the new version of the New Gods that we saw in Seven Soldiers. Interesting. We've seen this superpeople fight club thing several times recently. Are all the Apokalipsians black? That's not...y'know...kinda racist? To make all the bad guys black? I'm not accusing anybody of being racist, i'm just dumbfounded that the folks at DC wouldn't see the implication, and diversify accordingly. Nicola Scott is really good. I like her style. This issue is mostly about Misfit and Black Alice, both of whom are cool. They both learn something surprising here. It's good to see some fairly new characters getting page time and development.

Dynamo 5 #13 – D5 tries to recover from getting their butts kicked last issue. There's a revelation about one of the characters which was totally unexpected, but works very well. It fits with everything that had already been established. It looks like next issue we'll see a slightly different version of the team, which should be fun. Thumbs up.

JSA #15 – I enjoyed this, but there's not much to say about it. It's all Fighty McPunchkick, in a good way.

Project Superpowers #3 – I got lost reading this. It felt like i'd missed an issue. There were too many indistinct scene changes, too much first-person narrative from too many characters. This ain't a movie. We can't automatically tell that a new person has started talking in the narrative boxes like we can tell when a different voice starts doing a voice-over in film. A different colored bar beside the box doesn't help that much, either. How about a different font, or a differently shaped box, a different manner of speech? Look at pages 8 and 9: Samson and the Scarab are talking. Then half of page 9 cuts to Shangri-La, where the Black Terror is tearing through some bad guys. Why does this bit with Black Terror interrupt the Samson/Scarab scene? Are they supposed to be linked, or somehow comment on one another? I can't see how. It's confusing. And on page 10, what's going on there? Was this thread introduced previously? Is it referring to the FCBD issue? Who is this person 'Devil is talking to? Why put only one page of this in the issue? Where are Pyro and Hydroman? Can't they spare a box saying “Coney Island” or something? This was just confusing.

Wonder Woman #20 – This felt kinda like an episode of Xena, with its use of not-quite-right mythology. (Beowulf died fighting that dragon, and he didn't have to chase Grendel, he killed him in Hrothgar's mead hall, etc.) Xena bit Wonder Woman's style, not the other way around. Never forget that. It's still a fun issue, though, b/c it's really hard for Gail Simone to write a bad comic. There's the unexpected appearance of Stalker, an obscure character from the 70s. (No prior knowledge necessary, however.) I'm not sure if that's actually cool, or just a bit of trivia.

Green Lantern Corps #24 – I loved last issue, i didn't like this one. Mongul is boring. Boring boring boring. What's his deal? Does he have a motivation? Oh, he's psychotic. Yawn. All the dead bodies orbiting that planet was kind of dumb. Why couldn't the lanterns fly around it? Or was it supposed to encase the entire planet? It would take trillions and gajillions of bodies to surround a planet, even a small one. And why did it stink? There's no atmosphere in space, thus no medium for the smell to travel through. If the lantern rings let in smells, wouldn't they let in poison gases? Aren't the black mercies supposed to show you your fondest dreams, thus lulling you into a fantasy world you don't want to leave, while it slowly kills you? Isn't that what makes them cool and memorable? But here, they're showing Ion and Arisa their fears. (And some future stuff, like the multi-colored rings killing Ion?) What gives?

2008-05-04T17:47:00.002-04:00

The Comics of Free Comic Book Day
Brief reviews

I've read most of them by now. With this weekend's nice weather, i've sat in the backyard reading, which is cool. The only ones i haven't read yet are the EC sampler and some of the kid-oriented stuff.

Broken Trinity Prelude - I knew next to nothing about these characters (Witchblade, Darkness, Angelus). The opening story here is an introduction via a story being written by a reporter for an alternative weekly paper. It was informative. Definitely i know more about these characters than i did before. I'm not rushing out to buy the trades, but i'm slightly intrigued.

Amelia Rules - All four of these stories are very good. The first one, "The Things I Cannot Change" really impressed me. It could have been cheesey or maudlin, instead it was emotional and smart. This is good stuff. Obviously it's aimed at kids, but it's intelligent an nuanced enough for grown ups.

Hero By Night/Gunplay - HBN is pretty cool. It's old school superheroics. There seems to be a lot of story potential built into the set-up. The Gunplay half of the book looked kind of cool, but it seems like they pulled pages from various issues, and they didn't flow well at all, so it was hard to tell quite what was going on.

X-Men - This was a good read. It felt a lot like a Buffy episode, including the depiction of the demons as simultaneously very nasty and chuckleheaded. Pixie is cool, even if she's a bit munchkined out (she can fly, teleport, throw pixie dust, detect magic, and has a demon-killing soulknife? c'mon...). What does a Welsh accent sound like? Is this the creative team that will be taking over the regular comic? Is Pixie from the Morrison run?

Shonen Jump Special - Not bad, but these selections are too short to give much of an idea of the series. I can fill in some gaps b/c i know enough of the "shonen" tropes that these things usually follow. I didn't read the one about basketball.

Marvel's Best-Selling Authors - Meh.

Kid Houdini and the Silver-Dollar Misfits - I like some of the art, but the book didn't hold my interest. Why Houdini?

The Moth - The art here is awesome--design, layout, linework, it's all stupid good. The Moth is a likable character, too. I just might pick up the regular series when it starts.

Del Ray & Dabel Brothers 2008 Preview - The Dresden Files bit could have told us a lot more about the main character, but it made me wonder about it, so it did what a preview is supposed to, i reckon. Wild Cards is actually very interesting. Are the novels in print? I haven't seen them, even at Ed McKay's. Frankenstein i didn't read. The monster should not look like Fabio's prettiers, skinnier son. In Odd We Trust might be a good read, but i'm not sold on it.

Avengers/Invaders Sketchbook - It's got some sketches in it. That's it. That "previously unknown" Golden Age team looks kinda cool. But what's up with that guy having a star over his nose?

Ignatz - Some of this stuff is too "heavy" for me--life provides enough problems on its own, thanks. Baobab has a cool setting and strong art, but if it's all as laconic as the pages here, it could be hard to read. Grotesque: i like the art a lot, but i'm not sure what it's about. Interiorae: why do these women want drugs, apparently whatever drugs they can get? i'd like to read this just to see what's going on. Delphine: this looks cool. Remember Sala's cartoons on "Liquid Television"? Those never made sense to me, but this thing looks cool. Reflections: There's no story here, but the character drawings are great. Ganges: I liked this. I'll have to look for it at the store. It's funny. It's accessible. The art is sharp. What makes me hesitant about getting into these Ignatz book is the price. A while back i got the first issue of New Tales from Old Palomar, and it was 7.95. They're bigger and have more pages than a regular comic, but it might make more sense to buy them when they're collected.

Dan Dare/The Stranded - Dan Dare is fun. The Stranded seems complicated. Ramayan 3392 A.D. looks fairly kickass, but that little snippet didn't tell me much.

The Death-Defying 'Devil - Here's some background on 'Devil and superbaddie the Claw. The Claw is crazy pulpy badguy fun. So, are the people in the story calling 'Devil "Devil" or are they calling him "Daredevil" but we just read it as "devil" b/c of copyright issues?

Atomic Robo - This is the best FCBD offering. It's high-octane action with humor, and it stars a robot built by Tesla. It's really good. Neozoic is cool, too. I want to read that trade when it comes out.

Bongo Comics Free-For-All! - This was funny. I dug it. Way funnier than that not funny movie they made.

Drafted - That was really good. The ads and solicits didn't make it look this good. I can see how it might devolve into a shoot-em-up/bad video game type of thing, but it seems smarter than that. Now i want to read this series.

Owly And Friends! - It's very, very cute. Johnny Boo made me laugh. Yam: an enjoyable read.

Comic Book Diner - Nothing here did anything for me, but the character design of Buzzboy is cool, and the colors on Tbyrd Fearlessness are awesome.

Hellboy - Best FCBD offering next to Atomic Robo. "The Mole" is creepy and surreal, and a nice character study. I really need to start reading those B.P.R.D. trades, b/c Guy Davis rocks. "Bishop Olek's Devil" has a great lovecraftian monster.

Jughead - Now i want to visit that museum. But watching "The Wire" has made me afraid to go to Baltimore. Wouldn't it have been crazy if Bubbles had walked in there and tried to con Archie out of some money for smack? Or, is Jughead's food problem a metaphor for drug use? Hmmm...

I volunteered at the local store. I got there a few minutes after they opened at 10:00, and there was a very long line outside the store. That line did not let up for over three hours. That's not b/c we were slow, either. We were stuffing bags with free comics like we had tapped into the Speed Force. We made three types of bags: kid, teen, and adult. It was a lot of work, but worth it.

2008-04-27T08:51:00.002-04:00

Maggie the Mechanic
by Jaime Hernandez

The earlier stories in this collection don't feel very focused, but they are still fun, and by the end of this book the world and characters are in sharp relief. Even secondary characters get fleshed out with backgrounds, complex motivations, etc.

Maggie and Hopey are two young women living in Southern California. In many ways their world reflects the real world of the early/mid eighties, when these stories were created. Mexican-American and punk/hardcore elements are most evident. There are also many invented and fantastic elements, too. There are countries like Zymbodia, there are dinosaurs, rocketships, etc. These elements never take the focus off the characters.

Maggie is a mechanic. Having grown bored with fixing cars and such, she's landed a job fixing rockets and robots. She's the assistant to famed "prosolar mechanic" Rand Race, for whom she quickly falls. (These stories originally appeared in the periodical "Love & Rockets", which Jaime shared with his brothers, and here we've got both love and rockets.) This job takes her to exotic foreign lands and introduces her to many strange and entertaining individuals.

Hopey plays bass in a punk band. Physically she's the "pixie" type, tiny and pretty, but she's the biggest hellraiser of her circle, and the most emotionally jaded/guarded. She'll tell off people several times her size or throw a bottle at a cop, but she keeps most non-violent feelings close to her chest.

Other characters include Hopey's bandmates, their older and disturbed friend Izzy, Daffy the flighty Japanese girl, Izzy's brother and Maggie's crush Speedy, bombshell Penny Century, horned billionaire H.R. Costigan, and many many more. In fact, one of the back pages has a cast of characters with 63 portraits.

The stories range from short, comedic slice-of-life vignettes to adventure yarns to intimate character portraits. Jaime Hernandez does all of these well, and you reading them you understand why this series has remained popular and influential for decades.

Jaime's art style is clean and smooth, though he sometimes uses a lot of fine lines and crosshatching, esp. to convey grittiness. I can see the influence of Ditko and Mobius, which are both good things IMO. He draws a wide variety of people. Most of his women are attractive, but they're different. He also draws places and things very well. You have no problem recognizing Maggie & Hopey's neighborhood as a sunny, urban, aging locale. The level of detail is just right.

2008-04-27T08:48:00.002-04:00

Serenity: Those Left Behind
By Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad, Laura Martin

This story takes place between the TV series and the movie. It feels much like an episode of the show, maybe a two-parter. The dialog and story beats fit. Will Conrad and Laura Martin make the characters look like the actors.

The art is strong. It conveys the same world, the same "look" as the show. Martin's colors are an equal part of the equation with Conrad's pencils/inks. The lighting effects add to the dramatic quality, and some of the space scenes would be hard to follow without the colors to distinguish and shape the objects on the page.

I liked the story, but it wasn't quite like the show. Some film properties translate well to books. (I've enjoyed several Star Wars novels.) I'm not sure that Firefly is one of them. I didn't like the movie b/c i felt it departed too much from the show, thematically and stylistically. This comic matches the show better, but the intangibles added by the cast are missing. A new Firefly comics series has begun recently. I'll try it and see if this trend continues.

The detail and "realism" of the art detracts from the storytelling, IMO. The characters look mostly like the people from the show, the sets look like the sets, etc., but there isn't much sense of movement. I don't know why not b/c i'm not sure what makes static images in panels convey motion in the first place. It happens in lots of comics, but it doesn't happen here, or it doesn't happen often enough that it stood out to me. Or maybe it's just that no drawing of Inara can ever be as gorgeous as the "real" Inara

2008-04-27T08:25:00.009-04:00

Short Reviews for the Week of April 25th, 2008 A.D.

Number of the Beast #2 - It starts with two superheroes having sex in a cheap motel room. Turns out Honeybee has a real stinger, and it freaks Aeronaut out. How very naughty. I am shocked and/or impressed at this comic's flaunting of convention. It would have been funnier if it had turned him on. Basically, the heroes get more of a clue re: they're living in a VR program. Great art and character designs from Chris Sprouse. A "dramatis personae" page or "handbook"-type backup would be appreciated.

Fables #72 - Cinderella can kick all kinds of ass. I love how Willingham makes his characters very capable, without turning them into Mary Sues. Now that they've told us the war has started, the next issue better be about the war, or this book will officially be an annoying tease.

Birds of Prey #117 - I'm just a mark for these characters. I can't explain why. Even for Misfit. All Zinda has to do is show up and i'm like "Zinda is awesome." The bad guys in this issue look goofy (pinstripes? spiky mohawk? lizardman with suspenders?) but they still come off as legit. That's no mean feat. What happened with Superman? This was a fun comic.

The Spirit #16 - It's definitely a different comic now. I'm not sure if i dig it. It's still done-in-ones, which is good, but they're kinda generic. They could happen to just about any superhero; they don't feel particularly Spirit-y. The art is great.

Dynamo 5 #12 - This one picks up directly from #11 and it's all action, baby. It's a freightload of fistacuffs. There's a villain with a skull head here. That is always cool. On the last page we have an unexpected and nicely bizarre twist. I really like this comic.

Shadowpact #24 - Generally i think the "legacy" thing is played out, but sometimes it works, like this issue and JSA. But i could be prejudiced b/c these other Shadowpacts look really cool. There's a 19th century pugilist, complete with twirly mustache, and some dudes who look like they 'ported over from Marvel 2099. Phil Winslade is awesome. The Sun King is a great idea for a villain. He's come off consistently creepy throughout the series. He could work in a D&D campaign. Blue Devil's "brother" looks totally sickass without his scarf-deal. Another good issue.

2008-04-13T13:32:00.007-04:00

Week of April 9th Short Reviews

Wonder Woman #19

Pretty durn good. I'm not familiar with this Bernard Chang, but he's really good. I like how he gets more crosshatchy on the Green Lantern in this issue; tells me this guy is more ragged than your average big-eyed blue alien. Not sure about Wonder Woman's decision at the end re: the Khund princess; a lot of potential bad there. And if i read this right, it's now kinda WW's job to pacify the Khunds?

Green Lantern Corps #23

I said this one was on the bubble for me, and this issue keeps it on my list at least another month. Mongul's monologues are boring, but his machinations are interesting. The assembling of the "team" took a bit too long. Did the Guy Gardner gag need a whole page? I love Stel. There is something about a partially disassembled, sentient, 1950s-looking robot that appeals directly to the little fanboy in me. Nice MST3K reference, too. I like all the characters on this mission. These are the folks i want to see in this book, and the types of adventures. (Kyle Raynor i could take or leave.) Gleason's art is great as always. I like his alien people & tech designs.

Justice Society of America #14

This was superhero slugfest goodness. It was deftly done. It's a simple, classic way to structure a superbrawl: hey reader, here's all these characters you like, here's a bit of interaction to remind you why you like them so much. wait, what's that? oh shit, some big dude's beating them up! they have to rally against this big guy, and several of the good guys get their individual bad-ass moments. Good stuff. My only real criticism is that they spent four pages explaining that Gog ain't the same guy blowing hearts out of folks in Countdown & Pissing on Jack Kirby's Legacy, i mean, Death of the New Gods. saying "that's the only way to kill a god" was a neat and effective way of explaining the coincidence.

This was a DC-heavy week for me; three DCs, one DC imprint, and an Image.

2008-04-13T08:27:00.005-04:00

Week of April 9th Short Reviews

Number of the Beast #1
Usually i'm not one for comics by WildStorm, or comics with Biblical allusions in their titles (especially allusions from Revelations), but all the previews of Chris Sprouse's character designs on newsarama hooked me. Sprouse is awesome.

The story begins at some sort of high-tech gov'mint facility, where a couple of schlubs are wheeling in a vat filled with red stuff. On their sleeves is modified American flag, with a "666" design where the stars ought to be. So right off the bat we know this series will feature Irony and at least oblique Political Commentary. (Personally, i think the altered flag should be an image of a donkey and an elephant, surrounded by bags of money and making out while pissing on the Constitution.)

It turns out this red stuff is actually the remains of a superhero, and the poor bastard is still alive. He's somehow connected to a sort of alternate reality, wherein sits a city, wherein dwell several superheroes.

Presumably all the characters in this artificial world are in virtual representations of people held in the high-tech gov'mint facility from page one. Everyone seems to believe that they are living in the real world, although some cracks are starting to show. The bad guys recur a bit too often, the normal citizens don't elicit real empathy, etc. Still, the only guy who seems truly to suspect that something is fundamentally wrong is a feller called Eidolon (that's Greek for ghost or phantom, with more specific meaning in Theosophy).

This world is called "The City" (if there's another name for it, i missed it). Yup, just like the Tick's hangout. And like the Tick's City, it also has a diner where superheroes hang out. It's a mythical 1950s/early 1960s type of setting. You know, the 1950s that's the subject of parodies and paeans in art, but never existed in reality. It's actually treated kind of neutrally here, it's just a sort of generically idyllic Americana place to keep these heroes virtually busy.

We don't know why these people are being put through this exercise. But since the guys who run the place use "666" as part of their logo, we know it's nefarious.

Our heroes here are the Paladins, a large team of (mostly) veteran superfolk. They all have a retro look and feel (which of course will be contrasted with the modern world before series end). We've got Engine Joe, who's either a cyborg or a guy in armor (he sleeps in his armor); the Trush and Falconette, classic winged adventurers; rocket guy Aeronaut, metal-skinned Black Anvil, etc. They fight such threats as the Saucerlings From Saturn's Moons (who are awesome, btw).

In one sense this is similar to Project Superpowers, where we have a lot of characters who fit various superhero types, and the thrust of the series is what's happening in and to their world more than the heroes themselves. It's the kind of thing you do if you want to write another Kingdom Come or Marvels, but you can't get access to the big marquee characters.

I'm not marked out for this, but it was fun, and i dig these characters. The designs of course are great, as is the art in general. The story is well structured (no mean feat in the 22-page format) and proceeds quickly while still giving us constructive character moments. According to the blurb on the last page, the next issue is only two weeks away, which is a big plus. I'm definitely intrigued enough to pick up the next issue. I wonder if there is a future for any of these characters beyond this series?

2008-04-13T06:59:00.004-04:00

I don't normally do negative reviews, but i had high hopes for this one. My problems with this one are philosophical, really. The skill and craft of the people involved are not in question. They're good.

Aqua Leung
volume one
by Mark Smith and Paul Maybury
published by Image Comics

For this one i've got mixed feelings. It's an imaginative world. I read it straight through without setting it down once, so it drew me in. There are definitely some cool moments. I like the one arrow in the middle of a white page to signify the start of one huge battle. The art--brushwork and colors--are quite good.

What i didn't like was the sense of destiny. I really don't like destiny. It's very unheroic. Aqua, the titular character here, doesn't make any decisions. He's essentially kidnapped and taken to Atlantis, then trained against his will to fulfill a prophecy he knows nothing about. At some point he gives in and goes along with it. He never chooses anything for himself. What's his motivation? Why should i root for this guy?

The narrative is told to us by the Millennium Turtle. But first he needs to introduce himself, and tell us that he knows everything that ever has happened and everything that ever will happen, and nothing can change what will happen. So the dramatic tension is cut out from under us before the story even gets started. Everything is going to work out the way it's supposed to, b/c it has to happen that way. Again, that is entirely unheroic. What's heroic about being a cog in some cosmic machine? If that's how this universe works, then tell me about who/whatever wrote Fate, because they're the only real person in the story.

Apparently Aqua is going to get a series of mentors to help him prepare for each of his successive conquests. So he won't even be learning his own lessons, he'll have them handed to him. Now he's even less heroic.

And we aren't even told why it's a good thing that Aqua will conquer and "unite" all the kingdoms of the sea (that's the prophecy). Are they all ruled by bad guys, but he's gonna be a good guy? We might assume this, but he's told that his growing power will corrupt him (and since we know we're in a deterministic universe here, there's no reason not to believe it). So he'll be a corrupt ruler of all he surveys. Why should i root for that?

One last peeve. Aqua, though scion of Atlantis, is sent, Moses-style, to live in another land (ours), and raised by a kindly couple named Leung. They get killed early on and forgotten about. Later, Aqua kneels at the tomb of his Atlantean father, and says how much he misses him and wishes he had been able to know him. You see, that's his "real" dad, not the guy who raised him. That's malarkey. The one who raises you is your real parent. The other one is just a genetic contributor. Oh wait, this is all about destiny, so i guess that includes genetic destiny. So love and caring aren't important, it's all in the legacy. Gotcha. (We don't see his genetic mom's tomb, so i guess the moms don't matter when you're a predestined conqueror.)

2008-04-09T04:12:00.003-04:00

Another Great Comic by Sfar

Klezmer
by Joann Sfar
published by :01 First Second

These characters--all itinerant musicians--live in a world that is openly hostile to them, yet also offers opportunities and a vagabond type of freedom. It's set in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth (?) century. Our lead characters are four Jews and one Gypsy. Both of those peoples were numerous and well established in the region, but definitely oppressed minorities.

There's something about the tragic religiosity of some Jewish traditions that really appeals to me. It doesn't avoid or whitewash the ugliness of life, nor does it wallow in it and thereby miss the beauty. It is deeply confident because it allows for so much doubt. There's something comforting about the idea that, when your faith is tested, you can say "this makes no sense, and pisses me off, but i still believe." It's more honest than pretending that we always understand everything and don't worry that things won't work out.

Sfar says in the essay at the end of the book that he purposefully made all of the characters un-religious. One of the two main protagonists, Yaacov, claims he's actually rejected God, though i wonder how sincere he is in that. Sfar does this to explore what it is to be Jewish apart from the religious practices. (Read the essay to get his take on this.) But i think it can apply in part to any faith: what is the essence of living life in light of deeply held beliefs? How much is dogma and how much is experience? Anyway, it seems like there's something "deep" here, or maybe i'm just taken in by the mystery of it. I am a sucker for paradoxes.

Sfar's drawing style is looser here than in anything else i've read by him. There are some elements that would be indecipherable without context. Those are rare, though. The watercolors add loads of mood, and give great impressions of light. It's not my favorite of his styles, but i enjoyed it.

Have i mentioned that Joann Sfar is the best comics discovery i've made in years? It's like when i found Paul Pope's THB at that store in Springdale: a whole new world of something different and inventive that clicks with me. That's the fangasm for me.

I guess i'll read The Rabbi's Cat next, and after that more Dungeon, which Sfar does with Lewis Trondheim.

2008-03-25T21:42:00.003-04:00

Splinter of the Mind's Eye
by Alan Dean Foster

I wonder why i didn't read this as a kid? I remember seeing this and the Han Solo books, but didn't read them.

The copy i have says "copyright 1978 by The Star Wars Corporation." That puts it right after "Star Wars". So it's a more raw interpretation, without the further refinements of the later movies and novels.

Luke is a lot smarter here than he is in the movies. At times i wondered if this story wasn't intended for Han Solo at some point in its development. He not only seems more streetwise than his character on screen, but more than any farmboy ought to be. There's a scene in which Luke and Leia are trying to pass for manual laborers, and Luke knows exactly what parts of the Princess' demeanor to criticize. Sure growing up on a farm would give him appropriate mannerisms for such a task (speaking broadly), but it wouldn't make him conscious of those mannerisms, or teach him how to teach those mannerisms to someone else. (This is not a criticism of the book, just an observation.)

This resonates with the pulp sci-fi (space opera, planetary romance, etc.) that inspired the movies. That is very much a strength, IMO. That's where Star Wars gets the bulk of its appeal. That's where the fun and excitement come from. We could use more of that, done with honesty and joy.

On my goodreads pages, i put the Star Wars novels on my "fantasy" shelf b/c i think they're closer to heroic fantasy than science fiction, b/c there's loads of heroic fantasy stuff going on, and practically no science. Maybe instead i should make a shelf for things that use the trappings of sci-fi to tell fantastic stories? The Barsoom books would go there, too (big influence on SW)

2008-03-20T18:23:00.002-04:00

The Things That Are Not There
a novel by C. J. Henderson

I bought this from the author at Stellarcon, in High Point. It combines hardboiled fiction with a horror mythology much like the Cthulhu mythos.

What i liked: The lead character, Theodore London, his sidekick Paul, and his weapons supplier, Pa'cha. I might like reading another story with those guys. Also, Lai Wan was cool. I think she was in a comic from Moonstone?

What i didn't like: I wanted a lot more atmosphere and sense of place. I wasn't sure at first if this story was taking ...more I bought this from the author at Stellarcon, in High Point. It combines hardboiled fiction with a horror mythology much like the Cthulhu mythos.

What i liked: The lead character, Theodore London, his sidekick Paul, and his weapons supplier, Pa'cha. I might like reading another story with those guys. Also, Lai Wan was cool. I think she was in a comic from Moonstone?

What i didn't like: I wanted a lot more atmosphere and sense of place. I wasn't sure at first if this story was taking place in the past or the present. Since both hardboiled and Lovecraftian stories often take place in the 20s/30s, that was the setting i assumed. It becomes clear, however, that the setting is actually the present day. (The weapons and the whole foods restaurant clinched it.) The lovecraftian elements made me expect more mood.

Give this one a try if you're a fan of fantastic horror or modern private detective tales.

2008-03-02T09:54:00.000-05:00

Quick Reviews

Justice Society of America #13
I've got mixed feeling on the series right now. I don't like that it's focused on the KC Superman instead of the JSA, and this issue we have elements that tie into some of DC's meta-arcs, which takes even more time away from the titular characters. So i'm not happy with that. At least the current story is starting to move now. It's not bad, it's just not focused on the characters for which i buy the book. I'm just holding out until this story is over. If the next arc isn't about the JSA, i'll drop it.

Blue Beetle #24
AWESOME. This book is so very good. I can't say much about it without spoiling things, but there are more yahoo moments in this issue than in months and months worth of other comics.

Green Lantern Corps #21
This comic feels very different since SCW. Before that, it felt like it had its own identity: it's own stories, characters, subplots, etc. A lot of that climaxed in SCW (and it was cool to watch things like Ranx work into that story). It now feels like GLC is an annex to [i]Green Lantern[/i]. The only thread left over is the gradual change of the Guardians, and the larger prophecy, which i reckon will culminate in the Black Lantern story. I'm not sure if i like this book anymore.

Project Superpowers #1
I'm intrigued by this series. It's more the exploration of these characters than the story at this point. What i really want out of it is a cool new set of superheroes (new to me anyway), more than another [i]Kingdom Come[/i]/[i]Marvels[/i] -style Epic of Grand Import. There's something very appealing about these Golden Age characters, though whether it's something inherent, or something i'm projecting onto them (thinking maybe they could be as iconic/cool as their more successful GA peers) i'm not sure. The Green Lama has developed further powers over the decades. I like his setting; it's very pulpish in the [i]Lost Horizons[/i] tradition. I guess this Dynamic Man guy was a Superman/Capt. Marvel type of guy in the original comics?

Fables #70
Niko Henrichon provides fantastic fill-in art. There's a lot of great dialog here, as well as smart, fun character moments as the fables at the Farm have to make a decision about their futures. Little Boy Blue and Rose Red have some strong moments, too but i can't talk about them without spoiling them.

Atomic Robo #5
This is the best new series of the past year. It is so much fun, so well done, with sharp writing and very cool, stylized art that perfectly fits the tone. I've loved every issue of this series. This issue features some dungeon delving, and as RPGers know, that always ends in a big fight. In this case, it's a fight with evil combat cyborgs. Highly recommended.

Shadowpact #22
Phil Winslade's art is amazing. It works very well in the fantasy milieu of this issue. Nightmaster's story takes an unexpected turn at the end, but with the knowledge that the series is ending soon, it feels like a proper way of winding things down. I'll miss this book, since it's been fun and featured some characters i really liked.

Perhapanauts Annual #1
There are a handful of "paranormal" comics out there right now that combine various creatures from cryptozoology and weird folklore. This is the one that clicks for me. It feels like a lot of planning and "preproduction" went into it. The characters have multiple dimensions, the setting is fairly deep, and you can hear the gears of a larger story grinding away in the background without distracting from the here and now. This time our team of investigators--MG, a man who can move between worlds; Choopie the chupacabra; Arisa the telepath, Molly the girl ghost, and Big the Buddhist bigfoot--take on the legendary Jersey Devil.

Miranda Mercury #295
This comic manages to be both rollicking and thoughtful, which is a neat trick in and of itself. This does everything a first issue should do (the numbering is kind of a gag). It introduces the lead, her immediate supporting cast/sidekick, the world in which she operates, and the tone of the series. It's also a fun read. Miranda is "the greatest adventurer in this or any other galaxy", who has made a career out of doing the impossible. This time out she's trying to solve the puzzle that will free the legendary hero Rebel Ronin. The story starts in media res on two levels: first, by pretending that this is the 295th issue of an ongoing series, and secondly by starting this issue's story in the middle of a huge fight between Miranda and a gang of thugs. The narrative begins on the cover, in fact. Peaks of the next covers imply that this will continue throughout the series. Recommended.

2008-02-12T01:06:00.000-05:00

What the Hell Con 2008

Friday night and all day Saturday i spent at What The Hell Con '08, hosted by Guilford College's Yachting Club. As those names would suggest, it's a rather wacky con, which is all good.

I spent part of my time there volunteering at my LCS's table in the dealers' room. There was a dad and a couple of small kids who were fun to talk to. The kids were so psyched to recognize characters they'd seen on TV. It's always great to see kids get excited about something that you liked as a kid. I also got to play a game of HeroClix with a guy who's a real enthusiast for the game. That was fun. It had been a long time since i'd played HC.

On Friday night they showed "Night of the Living Dead" on a big screen in the auditorium. A friend and i remarked on how much that movie nailed the zombie genre. They got everything right, and it established so much of what had been developed in later zombie stories. It's not like the movie just set a mood or a few conventions that were later improved. It's more like all the zombie stuff that has come out since that movie has been variations and extensions on the themes it set forth.

Later that night i watched more movies (it had been a long work week) in the Bad Movie Room. "The Patriot" fit that bill too well.

Saturday i worked at the LCS's table and played that game of HeroClix. I also spent some more time in Artists' Alley. More artists had set up, and more friends were there. This is where i spent my con money. (It's ramen noodles for supper this week!) I got a deck of cards from The Devil's Panties artist Jennie Breeden. (Hopefully she'll be at StellarCon too so i can buy one of her comic collections, too.) We plan to use that in our Savage Worlds game. I also got a print from Kel McDonald, the force behind Sorcery 101. I got some other things, which i'll try to review in a reasonable amount of time.

We played a game of Monsters Menance America that afternoon. That's a fun game. The folks at the table next to us were playing Red Neck Life, and that sounded like a hoot. I really want to play that game! Saturday was fun because a lot of friends showed up and i got to talk to them and hang out. We had lunch at Jam's Deli across the street.

That night was the Geek Auction. It wasn't as wild as previous years, but was still rather outre. This is where geek guys auction off their first dance at the shindig that closes out Saturday night. The money goes to charity. The guys try to be funny or sexy, and the girls in the audience really egg them on. The biggest bids went to a guy who was dressed as a gothy/s&m-ish girl and two guys who did a yaoi Harry Potter/Malfoy act.

Unfortunately i had to work some on Sunday so i didn't go back that day. Maybe next year. It was a fun con.

The next con around here is StellarCon in March. It's less wacky, but there's a bigger crowd, more gaming, and some literary guests. That one should be fun, too.

2008-01-26T08:50:00.000-05:00

Two Reviews
I'm kinda grumpy this morning.

Green Lantern Corps #20

Last issue was slow, but that was okay, because it was about how the Corps were recovering from the Sinestro War, and the character vignettes were effective. This issue is also slow, but it doesn't work. Guy and Kyle decide that they're moving to Oa for the foreseeable future. That's pretty much the whole issue. They talk about moving, they move, they make Salaak laugh. Oh, and at the end Mongul talks smack to his dead sister's grody corpse. This was a boring issue.

The Spirit #12

It's a good, complete story, with beautiful art as usual. The subject is kinda depressing, though. It's all about Sand Saref, Denny Colt's real true love, who, after childhood trauma, turned evil and so they can never be together. This is a bum deal for Ellen, Denny's fiance, b/c it puts her in an eternal second place in Denny's heart. Then there are all those femme fatales that the Spirit dallies with...Ellen, your devotion is misplaced. Still, it's a better fate than Batman's love interests. Bruce Wayne can't wink at a girl without her being murdered by one of Gotham's many psychos.

2008-01-07T05:56:00.000-05:00

My Latest Trip to The Comic Shop

I hadn't been to the LCS for a while, so on Friday i picked up three weeks' worth of comics, including a few i hadn't planned on, so it was a lot.

Jonah Hex #27
I got this one because of the gorgeous art by Jordi Bernet and Rob Schwager, which was previewed online. I love the mix of line weights: fine for details, thicker shading and hatching, and chunky inks for deep shadows. It was big in the old Western comics, which of course had far simpler coloring techniques. It works very well with today's colors, too. The scene where this issue's "star man" (no relation to the guy with the cosmic rod) shows off his collection of badges demonstrates how well the techniques can compliment each other. It really looks like those badges are blindingly reflecting the sunlight.

The story was engaging, too. A young man is inspired to take vengeance on corrupt lawmen. I've been in a particularly anti-authoritarian mood lately, probably b/c of all the political news, and a stupid and inaccurate "what's your politics survey" i took that pegged me as slightly authoritarian. (No way!) Hex is kind of along for the ride in this story, but it works. If this issue is the norm for this series, i need to start picking it up.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer #10
The "season" arc is picking up a lot of steam now. We find out a bit of what Buffy and Willow were separately up to between the TV finale and this comic season, and it's scandalous, for different reasons.
The Buffyverse shows its lovecraftian side again as Buffy and Willow seek information from an elder horror demon thing. In the same sequence, another Buffian trope (one i like) returns, as the bad guy forces the good guys to face some uncomfortable truths. (The best instance of this from the TV show was when Spike told Buffy and Angel, in no uncertain terms, that they would never be friends.)

I'm running out of time for this, so i'll do this quickly now and go more in depth later.

Blue Beetle #22 - More cool stuff with the Peacemaker and Jaime's dad (separately); there's some stuff about an underground society that could be completely ridiculous (in a bad way, not the good way) if not for John Rogers' deft writing. Albuquerque's art has such personality; it gives the characters personality, too.

Metal Men #5 - This issue was easier to follow than previous issues. If i had it to do over again, i'd read this one in a collected version. I'm still digging on all the great design work, though.

Dynamo 5 #10 - Lots of good character stuff in this issue, and a little more about the cabal of villains who are plotting to take down D5. Great superteam stuff here.

Birds of Prey #112 - I dropped this series when Gail Simone left, but picked this one up b/c it focuses on Zinda, aka Lady Blackhawk, who is supercool. In this story she moxies and drinks her way across the US while being chased by a pair of super-assassins. Caps off to Tony Bedard (who's one of those writers i like, but isn't on projects that interest me at the moment) for finding just the right tone and characterization.

The End League #1 - Remender's columns on newsarama (i think that's where it is) intrigued me enough to try this one out. The character concepts he posted were especially cool. I'm not sold on this one. The ideas are interesting, but the story didn't really grab me. This one probably needs a real review.

Shadowpact #20 - This one also needs a full review...Blue Devil runs into an old ally while continuing to fight the legions of the homo magi. Ragman, Nightshade, and Nightmaster (they always just call him "Jim", so i always forget his not so good superhero name) trek across the shade dimension, and find out it's also a place with which Jim is familiar. (Yeah, that last sentence was bad...i'm trying to hint without spoiling.)

Jack of Fables #18 - Jack and company finally arrive in Americana, the land of American fables, and it's awesome. I didn't expect some of the stuff that's there, b/c it's more recent than what i tend to think of as fable material, but it's very cool.

2007-12-27T21:25:00.000-05:00

It's been longer than i planned since my last post. I'll blame it on the holidays. I'm planning a long weekend coming up, so hopefully i'll get some sort of reviews up here soon. Until then, here's a few things i've read, watched, or listened to lately.

Vampire Loves by Joann Sfar - This is about the romantic misadventures of a rather nice vampire. He bites with one fang so as not to leave too ugly a mark (and doesn't kill). His ex-girlfriend (a mandrake) blames him for finding out that she was cheating on him. His friend (a tree man) falls for his ex-girlfriend. A crazy vampire girl gloms onto him, but he develops a crush on a mortal girl. Sfar's art really drew me in. It looks like it's all done in pen (before colors), which was how Charles Schultz did it. All the characters are likable, even the ones who do stuff you don't approve of. The colors, while all rather dark (it is about a vampire, after all) are rich. They match and enhance the line art. I'd like to read more of this, and more of Sfar's work in general. You can read an excerpt at the publisher's site.

Escapo, by Paul Pope - This was reviewed on newsarama recently, and that reminded me that i'd had this on my shelf for a long time but hadn't read it. So i read it (but not the review, yet). I love Paul Pope's work. Ever since i found THB at that cool little shop in Springdale (they had CDs, too, and that's where i bought A Love Supreme...which i think i'll listen to now) i've sought it out. This story is set on the same future Mars as the THB comic, although the characters are all different. It's subtitled "a reverse tragedy", and it's refreshing how that aspect plays out in the end. It's in that large "album" format, which compliments Pope's open, expressive style.

An interesting technical thing i noticed, because i read Escapo and Vampire Loves on the same day, is difference in their use of panels. Vampire Loves is 99% six-panel grids throughout. That made it less attractive when i flipped through it in the shop, but when reading it, it worked to convey the downbeat humor and the mundane-yet-strange aspects of the story. Escapo, on the other hand, rarely has more than two panels per page, and the pages are a lot bigger, too. Despite most of Escapo's panels being the same size, you still get the feeling of time passing at different rates. You "get" it automatically (or subconsciously, i suppose), but i had to stop and think about how it worked. I think it happens because of the amount of detail and "movement" in a panel. A panel showing a solitary object, with no indication of movement indicates a slow, contemplative moment. Another panel the same size with lots of characters, and movement, equals a faster scene.

The Call of Cthulhu film also got me thinking of technical storytelling stuff. It's an adaptation of the short story by H.P. Lovecraft. It's done in the style of a 1920s silent movie. Why? Well, a metafictional reason is that Lovecraft wrote in the 1920s. A practical reason is that limiting the production to those tropes removes some of the problems in adapting the story to the screen. Were a modern, big budget film to be made of this story, there'd be questions of how realistic the CGI monster was, or did the actors overplay their growing madness, etc. Placing it in this context, however, you accept that the monster is stop-animated, that the sets of the mysterious island are abstract, and that the actors' madness can be portrayed in a purposefully "stagey" manner.

Not only does it dodge some of those "how *right* is it" problems, i think it also opens the door for some just plain cool creative decisions. When we see the cyclopean ruins of Ryleh, it looks as if the actors are walking through some enormous, three-dimensional cubist panting. It's all strange angles and odd blocky shapes. It throws you off kilter, which is just the effect you want for this story. There's a neat bit of trick photography at one point, too. Some of the props, especially the statues, are very cool looking, and again, because the whole silent film approach is more abstract in itself, it seems the designer(s) had more freedom to be creative with them. Kudos for making the ones that were supposed to be from different eras and cultures actually look different, too. Ah, and the stop-motion animated Cthulhu is really creepy. I suspect that a full-blown CGI version wouldn't be as bizarre or frightening.

Here's the trailer on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHuY2wXTd0o

I finished Gregory Benford's The Sunborn, which was a big concept rollercoaster. It is in the sci-fi school of Idea over Characters, but the ideas were exciting and big, so i was happy. It's not that the characters are poorly drawn, but the story could have happened to other people, and would have played out pretty much the same. It's all about finding life on other planets in our solar system, and how they get stranger and wilder and bigger as you go further out. I dug it.

We went to see American Aquarium at the Garage again, and they put on a great show. They were lit like mad, but still highly entertaining. I hope the fiddle player is with them next time, though. It really adds to some of the songs. After they played i bought the CD, which is the first one i've bought in a long time, and have been listening to it in the car for several days. The crowd was larger than last time, but cool. That's definitely my favorite music venue around here. They book good bands, the atmosphere is great, and it's just loud enough.

New comics have been slow lately, and i spent a bit too much when the local shop had a good sale before Christmas. So i haven't been to pick up new books, and probably won't for another week yet.

2007-12-18T21:21:00.001-05:00

The Engineer #1

By Brian Churilla (writer & penciller) and Jeremy Shepherd (writer & colorist), and Sean Glumace (letters)
Published by Archaia Studio Press

Hannibal Tabu, who writes “The Buy Pile” for comicbookresources.com, gave this comic a “WTF award”. I agree with him, except that i liked it, and he didn't (apparently). There is a lot of crazy stuff going on here.

There is a definite “cosmic” element. The hero, as i mentioned in an earlier post, travels between dimensions/worlds searching for parts of a mystical device. Is it mystical? It looks mechanical. It bestows godlike powers upon whoever wields it. You decide.

Actually, now's a decent time to wander into a discussion of what makes a comic cosmic. Does this subgenre even exist outside of comics? IDK. You know when you watch a documentary about the universe, about how stars are born and die, or the age of the cosmos, or how the best scientific minds can't find a huge chunk of the matter in the universe, or anything about quantum mechanics or string theory, and it starts tripping breakers in your brain that are usually tripped by mythology or ghost stories? That's the area that “cosmic” adventure comics inhabit, with superheroes and spacegods thrown in, natch.

Pages one and two set up the “big concept” backstory for the series. Page three drops us into the middle of the Engineer's latest mission. He's running from a huge, stoney spider-ish monster that wants to crush him. He's also running from the antler-crowned humanoids who worship the big stone spidery thing.

The three sisters appear. These are the mysterious beings who set the Engineer on his quest. They look...kinda like dolphins in long, ghosty cloaks? As all strange mystical beings should, they speak cryptically and never give the kind of help you ask for. They do (kinda) tell him that the piece of the konstrukt he's looking for in this world is inside the giant monster that's trying to crush him.

Once that is resolved*, the sisters do something very extreme to, in their minds, deal with the monster. The Engineer is very upset about this. This is not simply a good-guy-quests-against-evil kind of story. The hero's benefactors, while they are trying to save the universe from a force that would destroy it, are alien and uncaring when it comes to individual people or worlds within said universe. So the Engineer has to struggle with not just his enemies, but his allies as well.

The bizarre concepts don't stop. In that way, this comic is akin to Atomic Robo, but the tone is different. The Engineer is decidedly more melancholy, but that imaginative spark, the reckless creativity, is there. I've criticized a lot of comics for being too self-conscious: whether that meant being “cool” or “adult” or “edgy”. These comics blissfully avoid that. That makes me happy.**

I love that music is what powers the transport from world to world. The music/math or music/science connection is one of those phenomena that, while completely logical, always strike me as not quite right. Yes, i understand how math and music relate, but the experience of each is so disparate. (Especially considering that i love music, but am barely on speaking terms with math.)

The art has touches of Kirby and touches of Mignola, as you'd expect given the tone and cosmic-ness.

It's good. Look for it. Bug your comic shop if the didn't order it, because i think they can still get it. I've added it to my subscription list.

*I'm trying to find a synopsis/spoiler balance here; forgive me if it's awkward.

**This is an attitude i bring to all media, i think. Nothing kills a story, a song, or a film quicker than if i think the creators are trying only to look cool, or, even worse, trying to avoid looking uncool.

2007-12-13T19:27:00.000-05:00

Comics Which I Got on December 12th, 2007 AD

The Engineer #1
Wow...very cool, and very bizarre! There are tons of big ideas mashed into this comic. This is one of the things i love about comics: creators can let their imaginations go wild, and the medium allows it to work. The Engineer has been tasked with recovering the pieces of the Konstrukt, which have been scattered across myriad dimensions. This is the only hope of defeating a malevolent being that is destined to destroy all worlds. That sounds kind of heavy, right? Well parts of the story are heavy, but also wildly inventive, and filled with great action/adventure elements. The imagination and excitement make it fun. I dig the character designs. The "three muses" characters do not look like what i expected. They are strange in a cool way. obviously i liked this one. Recommended!

Green Lantern Corps #19
Clearly the epilogue to "Sinestro Corps War", this issue is filled with strong character moments, as various Lanterns assess where they are after the huge war, and where they're going next. My favorite was the scene of Isamot Kol exulting in the simple joy of being alive. Writer Peter Tomasi knows his craft: he gives us satisfying vignettes of individual characters in single pages. I really thought there were more pages per sequence until i looked at it a second time, paying more attention to structure. I love these characters. No, i haven't read all the other parts of "The Sinestro Corps War". I'm a weird crank. :)

Fables #68
This story really feels epic and fable-ish. It's amazing how Willingham manages to make me believe that a character like Flycatcher can rise to these heights from the lows we'd seen him in for 60-plus issues. Part of it is that Fly hasn't become some kind of badass, he's simply found his particular strength, and gained belief in himself. His accomplishments are very positive, too. He builds a new place for people to flourish. That is awesome. We know there's tragedy coming, but i suspect that there will be long-term, positive gains, rather than that cheap "oh ain't it sad" type of "tragedy".

This was an awesome week for comics!

2007-12-11T23:17:00.000-05:00

Dynamo 5 #9

Jay Faerber (writer), Mahmud Asrar (pencils & inks), Ron Riley (colors), Charles Pritchett (letters)
Published by Image Comics

What's It About? There was this alpha-type hero called Captain Dynamo. He had pretty much Martian Manhunter's power set: telepathy, flight, super strength and endurance, eye beams, and shape-changing. Captain Dynamo was married to Maddie Warner, an agent of government force that dealt with superhumans. Captain Dynamo slept around. A lot. After he died, Maddie found five of his offspring, exposed them to the same radiation that gave Captain Dynamo his powers, and voile: each sibling manifested one of the five powers. Thus was the superteam Dynamo 5 born.

Scatterbrain, the high-school football player, inherited the power of telepathy.
Slingshot, the high achiever, can fly.
Scrap, the dour gothy one, got super strength and toughness.
Visionary, the smart, shy guy gained the eye-beam powers.
Myriad, the playa, can mimic anyone.

In this issue, Scatterbrain is in a coma, due to straining his telepathic powers to the max in a recent battle. In order to maintain his cover, Myriad pretends to be him at home. Scrap and Slingshot investigate a pair of supervillains who have skulked into town.

Scatterbrain believes he's awoken from his coma, but it turns out that he's actually in something akin to astral from: he can perceive the waking world, but can't interact with it. He “travels” to his high school, where he discovers that Myriad's, ah, girl-crazy tendencies are going to make his life more complicated if he ever wakes up.

Then, one of the two new villains (the one with mental powers, called Brains) appears and attacks him! The telepathic smackdown is on!

Meanwhile, Scrap and Slingshot find the other villain, Brawn, who's laying low at a motel. When he apparently kidnaps a pizza delivery girl, they decide to ignore Maggie's orders and engage in battle.

Two concurrent battles ensue, one on a mental plane between Scatterbrain and Brains, another in the motel parking lot between Scrap, Slingshot and Brawn. Scatterbrain learns that his mental powers are much stronger than anyone expected. He defeats Brains, and when he does, they both wake up. Brains had been in the motel room, also comatose. She realizes that 1) the Dynamo 5 kids are tougher than expected, and that 2) their cover is blown, and more authorities are on the way. So Brains and Brawn skedaddle.

Back at D5 HQ, everyone is happy that Scatterbrain has recovered. The mood quickly changes when Myriad walks in and Scatterbrain clocks him for complicating his life back home! The issue ends with a meeting of Brains & Brawn and a couple of other previously vanquished villain: a villainous team in the making.

I hope i haven't done this issue an injustice. I'm tired tonight, but i wanted to get out another post before i turn in. I left out a whole subplot about Visionary's mom finding out that he's a superhero. I think she's gonna sue Maggie.

Here's what i like about Dynamo 5. The characters are likable and are being gradually fleshed out, while their roles in the team remain very clear. The art is strong. Each character is distinctive, and the costume designs are classic superhero stuff. The interpersonal dynamics are fun. The continuing revelation of the ramifications of Captain Dynamo's indiscretions is cool. There are plenty of questions about Maggie's history and motivations, too. I don't know how else to say it except that it's a fun, interesting superhero book with all the elements that make superheroes fun, without a lot of the complications we find in comics from the Big Two.

Good night. :) Comment!

2007-12-10T20:43:00.000-05:00

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #9

"No Future For You" part four
By Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Georges Jeanty (pencils), Andy Owens (inks), Dave Stewart (colors), Richard Starkings (letters), and Joss Whedon (executive producer). Published by Dark Horse Comics.

Here concludes the arc concerned primarily with our favorite troubled slayer, Faith.

Her cover blown in the previous issue, Faith now confronts Genevieve, the rogue slayer whom Giles tasked her to kill.

Before we get to the action, however, we have a flashback, narrated by Faith, that helps to set up this issue's theme of mentorship and growth. The gist of this flashback is the conflicted feelings Faith has for her former mentor/father figure, the Mayor.* She felt loved by the Mayor, despite his evil nature.

This past relationship mirrors the current relationship between Genevieve and her mentor, Roden, a warlock who's a sort of anti-watcher. Roden has filled Genevieve's head with the notion that the slayer powers are her exclusive birthright, and that it is her destiny to slay all the pretenders.

Faith and Genevieve have this much in common, that mentors who supposedly care for them have led them down very bad paths.

While the slayers battle, Giles, with the help of a diminutive fellow named Trafalgar, tries to break the mystical barrier that Roden has erected around Genevieve's estate. They can't do it.

The fight continues. Faith wins, albeit more decisively than she intended. At this point Roden appears, and he's not upset at the loss of his charge. Instead, he asks Faith to take her place and help him get rid of Buffy.

Now, here Faith has brief reaction that implies she'd like to get rid of Buffy. Roden plays on this in his evil-villain-tempts-with-promises-of-power speech. Admittedly i haven't given the final television season of BtVS as much attention as the rest**, but i seem to remember that Faith and Buffy at least made peace with one another. It's been implied earlier in this arc that Faith would still like to kill Buffy, but that doesn't scan. It's a retrofit in her characterization. That said, it isn't dwelt upon, and the character moves past it, so it's not something that really mars the story.

Herein we get a tantalizing bit about the overarching threat for this season. Roden presents Faith with a big black book emblazoned with the "twilight" symbol that's been strewn about since issue one. He calls it "the guidebook" and claims it will show them how to get rid of Buffy. More, he says that, in exchange for helping his superiors achieve this goal, he will be granted "clemency from the coming purge."

Faith cracks the book across Roden's face. Roden starts in with the violent hoodoo. Just when it looks like he's got Faith on the ropes, Giles enters and stabs Roden. He's not down, however. Faith hurls the twilight guidebook to Giles. Somehow, Giles flips immediately to a page with a useful spell. He didn't have to check the index or anything! I won't tell you what happens, except to say that the Ripper aspect of Giles comes to the fore, and Roden is done for.

I need to backtrack a bit here. How did Giles get through the mystical barrier? Willow did it. Also, Buffy is really pissy about the fact that Giles is working with "her" without even telling her. Again, when did Faith and Buffy start hating each other again? Of course Buffy's reaction is over the top. When she storms off, Xander says that maybe she just needs some alone time, to which Buffy responds "what other kind is there?" Yes, Buffy, nobody loves you. Your friends risk their lives for you over and over, they always forgive you when you do something really stupid, and hundreds of slayers idolize you. You're SO ALONE. Why don't you go cry about it to one of the TWO vampires who worship you. And, apparently in all the years she's spent with Giles she hasn't learned to trust him. Even though this part bothers me, it's still very true to the show. This is just one of those moments when i really don't like Buffy.

Epilogue one: Faith and Giles decide to continue to work together. At first it sounds like Faith wants to focus on helping new Slayers who are headed down the wrong path. But then it sounds like she and Giles will also be doing more "black ops" that are too dirty for Buffy and the other Scoobies. It would seem that either goal could be very time-consuming, but hey, this is a world with talking slugs, so it would be silly of me to get nitpicky about time management. The important thing is that these two characters go together very well. More importantly, Faith now has a good mentor at last.

Epilogue two: Tease the season-plot! A woman in military garb exits a helicopter and requests an audience with someone who's floating. She displays the "twilight" symbol on her palm. Here we see the Big Bad directly for the first time. His name is Twilight. His face is covered with a mask, and he has that symbol on his chest. Here's the cool stuff that has got me speculating, trying to figure out where this season is going***. Twilight says that he's trying to end the "age of magic." He doesn't regret losing Genevieve and Roden, because that's two magical elements removed from the world. Since he floats, or flys, it would seem that he uses magic, but it could be advanced technology. Or...maybe he's a supervillain? It would make metafictional sense that the first comic book -based season of Buffy would have a bone fide supervillain as the big bad. He does have a mask and a symbol on his chest. Hrmm. Also, in the Fray comic from a few years back, the future was shown to have been free of most if not all magical elements. Could Twilight be successful in his quest? We should learn more about all this quite soon, since Faith and Giles now have a copy of the "guidebook".

Verdict: Thumbs up!

*Best villain in the history of BtVS, bar none.

**I watched S7 once only, S6 twice (plus a couple more times for the musical episodes), S1-5 i've watched many, many times.

***Which really takes me back to the heyday of the tv show. It's awesome! B5 was that way, too. I just realized that the HBO shows i like are also like that, but since i watch them on DVD, the answers come quicker.

2007-12-07T06:37:00.000-05:00

Random Comics Thought

I wonder if it would be possible to put together a typical shipping list for a week's comics in say, 1945, '55, 65, etc? I'm thinking that those records are long gone, since in the past there were multiple streams of distribution, and far less practice of market research. It would be interesting to see what variety of comics were being produced in various decades. Although with the Golden Age it might be hard to tell from just titles, since there were so many generic titles like Whiz, New, More Fun, etc.

2007-12-06T21:14:00.000-05:00

Quick Reviews for Comics Released December 5th

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #9
"No Future for You" Part 4. This concludes the Faith-centric arc. It lays the groundwork for future roles for both Faith and Giles. There is a Final Confrontation with Genevieve and her anti-Watcher. The characterization of Faith feels like they ignored some of her development in the latter seasons, but they also move her forward, so it's a net gain. There's a bit of Ripper in Giles in this ish, and we see that he can find just the right page in a book faster than the Flash. The best villain in the show's history makes an appearance, and get a look at this season's Big Bad. Overall, quite cool, and a satisfying conclusion to this arc.

Resurrection #1
The premise: A roughly contemporary Earth was at war with advanced aliens for years until shortly before page one. This story is about the world after the invaders are driven away. I like where it's going. I like the lead character of Sara. It's cool that it's set in my neck of the woods. Some of the language is distracting. Some of the art choices are off-putting, in particular several scenes where eyes are shaded completely black. The storytelling aspect of the art is good, though. A good start.

Justice Society of America #11
The art is really strong. Lots of informative detail, good "acting". I didn't like the designs on the Japanese characters, though. What's the real point of this "Kingdom Come" Superman, though? It's probably just setup for Final Crisis, and that irks me. I want to read a story about the JSA, not an advertisement for some series coming out next year. There's also a moment where Starman breaks the fourth wall, and a comment from Citizen Steel that comes off very meta. That stuff bugs me too. It works in comedy, but... I'm cranky b/c there wasn't much JSA in this JSA comic. It does introduce a new Judomaster, who will apparently be part of a group of new JSA members next issue.

Dynamo 5 #9
Cool. We've got developments in Scatterbrain's and Visionary's personal lives, and Scatterbrain learns some neat new tricks with his powers. There are references to Faeber's other Image series, "Nobel Causes", in a way that builds the world but doesn't confuse or complicate the continuity. We a pair of fairly nifty villains, and end on a nice teaser. I look forward to this one. Like Blue Beetle and The Spirit, it's the kind of superhero book that i enjoy.

The Sword #3
Events take some big steps forward, forcing the story into its next phase. End of Act 1, in other words. I'm still intrigued by what's going on, but some choices don't work for me, and the visuals don't convey the tone that the words imply.

Atomic Robo #3
Very entertaining. The ending is abrupt, but the ride is a doosey. The action is brisk, the dialog is enjoyably snarky, and the wildly imaginative ideas are incessant. I really like this. We'll definitely need more after this initial six-issue run concludes. Recommended!

Fuller reviews forthcoming...

2007-12-04T20:27:00.000-05:00

People who searched for the following terms were directed to this blog. Usually when people post these kinds of things, there's a lot of pervy stuff being searched for. Not so here. Am i doing something wrong? ;)

sallust rome blogger
built to spill keep it like a secret blogspot
bryan lee o'malley
allan handleman's theme song
stephen stills blogspot
hbo justin the preacher
kim pine hot
girlfriend matthew sweet
sex bob-omb
scott pilgrim
what happened to dara demi
sword #2 review luna brothers
scott pilgrim 4

Who is Dara Demi???

2007-12-01T09:06:00.000-05:00

Cities of the Underworld

I've been watching this show via Netflix. So far i've seen the first two discs. AFAIK there is only one season on DVD.

My favorite episode so far has been the first one, which was about Edinburgh in Scotland. Some of the large underground spaces there came about when older neighborhoods were built over in an effort to expand the city's usable space. The spaces were then used by all sorts of criminals, some of whom shouldn't have been considered so, like the bootleggers. I always enjoy stories of people flummoxing unjust legal institutions.

The episode about Paris' "catacombs" (they're not primarily burial places, as that term implies) was good, too. I hadn't known that the Romans mined there, or how they did it. The open, trench-style mines wound wherever the veins of ore took them, and these mines became the "catacombs" as the city grew over them. (In its ancient Roman aspect, this links to Gallic War, which is a nice bit of personal cross-media synchronicity.) Now large swaths of it are used as a canvas by more adventurous artists, and there's a subculture of urban spelunkers who explore it all.

The weak points: It feels like it's written with the assumption that people will be tuning in and out over the course of an episode. After each commercial break, lots of information is repeated. I reckon that's not bad, it's just something that becomes more obvious, and less useful, on DVD. Considering how long commercial breaks often are on cable, i can understand why the producers include these recaps.
Also, the banter of the host can get repetitive. You could make a bender-inducing drinking game out of this show. Taking a drink everytime the host said something like "We're 60 feet under the streets of Blahblahville, and the pedestrians above don't even know what's under their feet!" would get you schplitz pretty quick. And sometimes it's obvious that a fair number of people do know it's there, as evidenced by the presence of graffiti or electric lights.

Still, it's a cool show. I dig underground stuff: movies like The Descent, ERB's Pelucidar, Hollow Earth paranormalia, etc.

2007-12-01T08:45:00.001-05:00

Giant Killer Mantises

The cool thing about being a gigantic, kaiju-style preying mantis (colossal monstrous praying mantis, 400d8, chaotic template, increase INT to 30) is that you get to destroy major cities and instill fear in the hearts of humans everywhere. The bad thing is that your giantkillerbride will bite your head off after intercourse. C'est la vie.

2007-12-01T08:20:00.000-05:00

Petty Pop Music Aside
On the way home yesterday i heard a radio story about the band Fallout Boy, specifically about how they play with perceptions of sexuality. They acted like it was a big deal that the lead singer/bass player (that's a cool/unusual combination*) wears mascara. Okay, fine, but, as i shouted at the radio in unhinged fashion: "Robert Smith beat you to it by 20-odd years!" Sheesh. Do some research, lazy radio story producer.

*Other bands fronted by bass players: The Police, The Call. Bands with hot bass players: Smashing Pumpkins, Zwan.

2007-12-01T07:47:00.001-05:00

Cool Deviantart Gallery

While i was looking for pics from Wet Moon, i stumbled upon the gallery of somebody called girltripped. About them i know nothing, but i thought i'd share the link to their gallery b/c they post awesome pictures like these:

http://girltripped.deviantart.com/

2007-11-21T02:37:00.001-05:00

Scott Pilgrim Volume 4
Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
by Bryan Lee O'Malley
Oni Press, 205 pages, b&w (a few color pages at the front), $11.95 and worth every penny

The most anticipated comic of 2007 arrived in stores last week. I went to the comic shop straight after work and it was already sold out. There was a big empty spot on the shelf where it had been. Ah, but my copy was waiting for me in my pullbox! I'm not a boyscout, but occasionally i am prepared.

If you haven't read Scott Pilgrim before, here's the deal. Scott is a lovable slacker who just might be starting to get his act together. He dates the mysterious, oft-hairstyle-changing Ramona. He plays bass guitar in a sorta-good band called Sex Bob-omb. He rooms with (and sponges off of) Wallace. He lives in Toronto, Canada.* His world is full of band practice, not finding a job, hanging with friends, dating Ramona, and fighting Romona's seven evil ex-boyfriends.

Yeah, Scott has to defeat each of Romona's evil exes in video-gamish battles. Luckily, Scott is the best fighter in the province. When i say video-gamish, this is what i mean: there are power-ups, exp. points, and weapon proficiencies.

Scott and Wallace do that "laughing hysterically" gag from Peanuts

Also, Ramona delivers packages through subspace. And sometimes her path takes her through Scott's dreams. This is what, if you're being literary, you'd call the "magical realism" part of the series. Sometimes music is magical. One of my favorite parts from Volume 1 is a band who can render their audience unconscious with a particular song.

As with all great comics, the supporting cast is as interesting/likable as the hero. Here's a run-down of the folks in Scott's world, copied almost verbatim from the inside front cover of Vol.4.

Wallace Wells: (26 years old) the gay roommate; owns everything in the apartment
The apartment has no AC. Scott is too lazy to get up and get water.

Kim Pine: (23 years old) the smart one; has freckles; plays the drums in Sex Bob-omb; dated Scott in high school; dislikes lots of people, possibly everyone [Kim Pine is awesome.]

Knives Chau: (17 years old) the teenager; Chinese-Canadian; breifly dated scott [see Volume 1]; Sex Bob-omb's #1 fangirl
Knives Chau shouldn't be so chipper asking that question

Of course there are more, like Stephen Stills, who's the creative force of Sex Bob-omb, dates Julie, and rooms with Young Neil. I'd love to read stories about any and all of these characters. Once in a blue moon Mr. O'Malley will post a short strip on his webpage that focues on them.

This is why Kim moved from her old apartment.

Volume four opens a few months after the last one. It's summer. Scott and Ramona have been dating for about four months. Everybody keeps asking Scott if he's said the "L word" yet. Sex Bob-omb is not practicing or doing shows because they're recording (mostly Stephen Stills is recording). Scott is actually seriously looking for a job. Kim Pine moves into a different apartment. A mysterious guy with a samurai sword is trying to kill Scott. A girl from Scott's past comes to town to tempt him (she wears lots of short skirts and has flirty lashes). Of course one of Ramona's evil exes (number four, natch) shows up, but maybe to tempt Ramona, as well as fight Scott? Hmm? Maybe? Events are converging that will force Scott to get his shit together and -gasp- grow up a little.

Kim and Hollie chat while Stephen Stills carries a box on moving day.

There are some Zelda-themed dream sequences, too. But honestly i don't know a lot about Zelda, so i think those were lost on me.

Lisa, the girl from Scott's past.

I love this series. When i went to pick up my comics last week, i was in a really bad mood. Reading SPV4 completely changed it. It's that kind of book. It's really funny, it's quirky (in the good way), it's full of characters you automatically like, it has elements you'll recognize from your own life, and fantastic moments that are simply fun.

Bring on Volume Five!

*What province is Toronto in? Confession to Canadians: contrary to what some might have you believe, we Americans do love you, but we have no idea what your provinces are called. But don't feel too bad; we don't know where Delaware is, either. Is there still a Delaware?

2007-11-20T06:21:00.000-05:00

The Sword #2

I wonder how this series would read if the art were more expressive. The characters display emotion, but everything seems restrained. Maybe that adds to a feeling of the bizarre. Or, maybe it limits the emotional impact of the events.

If you're not familiar with the Luna Brothers' style of art, it's been described as pastel painting. To me, it looks like cells from an animated movie. I haven't read about what effect they're trying to achieve. The coloring ads a lot of lighting to the art, but the line work is kind of minimal. The lines are equally weighted, like in the "clear line" style, but there isn't as much detail. I find myself wanting more detail in faces.

The story (spoilers ahead): It picks up right where #1 ended. Three strangers had burst into Dara's house, insisting that her father was somebody named Demetrios, and demanding that he give them "the sword." Her father plead ignorance of all that, so the three strangers, displaying superpowers, killed the family and set the house on fire. The floor gave way under Dara and she fell into an unfinished basement or crawlspace. Since Dara was in a wheelchair, the killers assumed she'd be killed in the fire, and left. However, Dara spotted a shortsword (roman legionaire style) protruding from the dirt. She grabbed it, and her paralysis was instantly cured.

Dara climbs out of the basement. She places the sword in each of her family memebers' hands, hoping that it will restore them to life the way it restored her ability to walk. Though quick thinking, this doesn't work. Dara's shirt catches on fire and she runs to the pond behind the house to put it out.

When the fire department and police show up, Dara decides not to tell them about the sword, or the superpowers of the killers. She had tossed the sword into the pond just as they were arriving. I think her legs are still healed, but she pretends to be paralyzed. The police wonder how she got to and from the pond without her wheelchair, but they don't pursue it much. Dara stays with her friend Julie.

Cut to the three killers. They've seen the reports on TV and know that Dara survived. They figure out that she has the sword. They argue a bit about whether they should go after her themselves, but ultimately decided that the situation is too hot and the sword too dangerous. Apparently the sword is very powerful, but maybe only when wielded by someone of this bloodline? It's too early to tell. They decided to send mercenaries to kidnap Dara and force her to tell them where the sword is. This scene felt a bit long, as it was all dialog, but it showed that these villains are smart and actually think ahead, which is nice. Smart characters are good.

The guy they hire to kidnap Dara is a real sleazeball. He sells drugs for one of the three, and is also involved in prostitution. The second panel he appears in shows him snorting cocaine off a hooker's breast. I'm not sure what the authors were trying to establish with this sequence. Maybe they wanted to show us that this guy is very bad, and therefore scary? But he comes across as merely a sleazy loser, and while he clearly has no regard for other people, he doesn't seem at all competent.

At her family's funeral, Dara learns some interesting stuff about her dad. He was an English professor. Some of his students are at the funeral, and they mention how they loved the stories he told about some ancient warrior called Demetrios, who was four thousand years old. Maybe Dara's father really was the Demetrios that the three killers were looking for, but he had partially lost his memories? So, he didn't know who he really was (thinking he was just a normal person), but the memories of his immortal life were leaking out through fiction? Or, maybe he was just pretending not to know what the killers were talking about, and isn't really dead? That would make him a very despicable villain, since he let his family be murdered rather than give up the sword.

The issue closes with the mercenaries, armed with uzis and such, about to jump out of a van and kidnap Dara.

I'm less sold on this series after this issue than i was after the first. The visuals just don't convey the drama that the script implies. The sleazy villain is a big turn off, too. He's not even an entertaining villain, he's the kind you hope gets killed at the earliest opportunity just to get him out of the story. I'll pick up issue three, and decide whether to continue with the series based on how that one goes.

2007-11-16T11:23:00.000-05:00

Final Crisis

This post was prompted by this thread on my LCS's message board.

At this point (and it's still early) i'm not interested in Final Crisis. It's a "boy who cried wolf" thing. Infinite Crisis was going to change things in a big way, and for the better, yet it didn't. OYL was going to set a new, better status quo, but it didn't. 52 was mostly good, but again, didn't set the new tone, or truly refresh/rejuvinate the DCU. I've been waiting for the new DCU for years now, and all i've gotten is this intentionally mishmashed thing that feels very temporary. So, even though Morrison is involved, i have to assume that Final Crisis will continue the well-established trend. I'll buy whatever individual series appeal to me, but convincing me to follow the "big story" at DC will be a hard sell.

Maybe it's a phase i'm going through, maybe it's more, idk, but i'm less and less concerned with long-term continuity. It's fine by me that Batman and Spiderman exist in timeless worlds where they never age and where elements of their histories just fade away after a while. As long as the core of their characters are consistent (i.e., personality, motivation, etc.) and short-term continuity is consistent, it doesn't bother me that, say, this month's fight between Batman and Ras Al Ghul doesn't jive with the fight they had in 1974.

Since Continuity (and other metatextual issues) is what all the "big stories" have been about lately, that makes them an even tougher sell.

What's more, i think that any comics that will have a wide appeal to a non-specialty market will not be concerned with long-term continuity.

Long-term continuity in comics is kind of like the alignment rules in D&D. It's useful in certain special situations, but most of the time can be ignored, and contributes more to arguments between hardcore afficianadoes than to enjoyable stories.

2007-11-13T23:47:00.000-05:00

Music

Today on the way home from work i was listening to the Alan Handleman Show. Unless you live in central NC, you can't hear the show, AFAIK. He does have a syndicated shown on Sunday nights, but that's more music-oriented than his daily show on 101.1. His topic was a new move by record companies to make radio stations pay a significant fee for every song they play on the air. This could easily put a lot of smaller stations--or stations of any size with a narrow profit margin--out of the music business.

There's one very obvious problem here. Record companies have, for decades, greatly benefited from their product being played on the radio. How else would a mass audience hear it? The first tape (yes, tape) i ever bought with my own allowance/yard-mowin' money was "King of Rock" by Run DMC. I bought it because i'd heard a couple of the songs on the radio. Without 97 Jams wafting westward from Memphis, i never would have heard how the sucka MCs call them sire. Ditto with the Prince and Whodini cassettes that came later. (The Greatest American Hero and Hill Street Blues theme song single records were a different story, of course.) So why would record companies want to essentially run many of their advertisers out of business?

It's because they're scared. Being scared is not a bad thing if you respond to it well. Without fear we'd all get hurt a lot more often. But a poor reaction to fear can cause many more problems.

The way the music companies are responding to their decreased profits is anti-entrepreneurial, maybe anti-capitalist. What does a normal business do when sales are down? They have a sale. They repackage products. They add give-aways. They stay open extra hours. They do something to make their product more appealing or more valuable, so that people will choose to buy it. The record companies are not doing this. They aren't lowering prices on CDs. They aren't adding value to them--like, with more songs, or multimedia features. Instead, they're simply demanding more money from anybody and everybody they do business with. If a store in your town took that approach, how would you respond? That's how we're all going to continue to respond to the record industry.

I assume that they are lobbying Congress to pass laws that will force radio stations to pay these fees. That's even more disgusting. When they can't get people to willing pay prices higher than the market will bear, they lobby (i.e., pay off) the government to use its coercive power to force people to pay them. That's not entrepreneurship. That's not capitalism. That's mercantilism of the colonial and medieval eras, when kings would give the right of trade to whichever party paid the most for it.

There's a weird contrast here. Our current technology enables a vast variety of music to be produced and distributed on a large scale more cheaply than ever before. Yet the traditional channel by which people have heard music for the better part of the last hundred years, radio, has become less diverse than at any point in its history. While the technology brings more possiblities, the radio industry actively shuns them in favor of the narrowest, supposedly safest approach.

But, onto a positive possibility. Let's say this plan becomes reality. Lots of radio stations can no longer afford to play music from the record companies. Here's an awesome idea that a few different callers to Handleman's show suggested: the stations could play local and independent music instead. I would LOVE that. One of my longtime daydream-enterprizes is a radio station that plays just that kind of music, including live performances from local venues and festivals. There is a ton of great music out there that most peole never hear. IMO it would be hugely positive in all kinds of ways if this world of more diverse, more genuine music replaced the tiny, repetitious playlist of revolting garbage that oozes out with banal malevolence from most radio stations.

Here's a musical recommendation. I just listened to a CD by a group called Scythian, whom i heard at the Grassroots Festival at Shakori Hills a few weeks ago. Their music is a mixture of various traditions, from Celtic to Klezmer, with modern elements as well. All of them, i believe, are trained in either classical or jazz, as well. The drummer has definitely studied jazz drumming. They were my favorite band out of many that i heard at Grassroots Fest.

There are other Grassroots Festivals in other parts of the country. I don't know if it's some kind of touring enterprise, or if it's just a common name adopted by similar but independent fests. Anyway, if the others are anything like the one held at Shakori Hills, they are well worth attending. Go out and enjoy some live music!

One more music recommendation: American Aquarium, whom i heard at The Garage in Winston-Salem (a very cool venue, btw). They remind me a bit of the Wallflowers, but i like them more; they feel more focused and less miasmic. Here is their myspace page, which has a few songs.

2007-11-08T10:08:00.000-05:00

Election, NaNoWriMo, Annihilation

Election, NaNoWriMo, Annihilation

We had a local election this past Tuesday. It was a small one for mayor and city council seats. The ballot didn't even fill a whole page. Everybody i voted for lost. Even in the race for the "At Large" council seat, where the top three vote-getters get a seat, i picked all three losers. I think it's kinda funny.

NaNoWriMo is going very slowly right now. The idea i had suddenly got very boring when i started putting it to paper. So now i either retool it extensively or start over with something else.

This week i started reading Annihilation V1, and so far i'm liking it. The first section is the Drax mini. The small-town Alaska setting is cool, but maybe that's b/c i have that sense of Romance for small towns, though i've never chosen to live in one. I don't think i would have liked this story as a monthly comic. It would have felt sparse, plot-wise. But collected, it's a satisfying little prelude/setup to Drax's involvement in the bigger story.

I knew nothing of Drax before reading this. There are a couple of flashbacks that show his old costume, which i recognized from comics i've seen but never read, so i vaguely know he was involved in some of the "cosmic" Avengers stories from the 70s. That's all fine though, b/c this story doesn't depend on any of that. What background you need to know is told here, and the rest is new.

Now i'm at the part where the Annihilation Wave enters the scene, and the action rachets way up. It will be interesting to see how the various minis collected here flow as a unit. Will the pacing be choppy, or balanced? How much will the tone vary? What effect will different creative teams have?

2007-11-03T12:39:00.000-04:00

Funny (Sick) Game

This game reminds me of those days back at G-HellCo when Matt would call my cube and say "Paul, you're skipping a meeting again." And i would say "What? There's a meeting? Since when?" And he'd say "We sent you three reminders." And i'd be all like "Are you sure? I don't think my Messenger program is working right. It's been acting weird all week. Besides, i've...um...got to have my kidney removed this afternoon...so i can't come to the meeting. The doctors said so. They said specifically 'no meetings.'" And then he'd remind me how many jobs had been outsourced to Argentina that week (usually at least 30, in a normal week), and i'd go to the meeting.

Play sick funny game

2007-11-01T08:43:00.000-04:00

Nanowrimo!

I've taken the plunge and signed up for nanowrimo, aka National Novel Writing Month. That might mean a) i don't blog at all, b) i post novel segments here, or c) the nanowrimo writing inspires stuff for me to blog about.

It almost certainly means that i won't be planning any rpg sessions in November. There's not enough time for both, and i think they are different-similar enough that i can't do both effectively. For a while (and this helped me decide to do nanowrimo) i've felt that the kinds of worlds i want to create and the stories i want to tell are suited more for fiction than games. My interest in designing rpg elements has waned while my interest in fiction has increased.

Anyway, i'll at least post updates on my progress during the month here, and encouragement will be appreciated.

Big thanks to the hosts of Secret Identity, without whom i probably would've forgotten all about nanowrimo until February. (On the CGS forums i'm known as blockhead.)

2007-10-30T17:43:00.000-04:00

The Damned
(volume one) Written by Cullen Bunn, Drawn by Brian Hurtt; published by Oni Press

When first i heard about this comic, i wasn't interested. It mixes supernatural horror with pulpy, 1930s crime fiction. These kinds of "cross genre" concepts usually don't work for me, b/c i find the whole "look at these genres crossing!" aspect too distracting. The story usually suffers as a result, too, b/c so much energy goes into mixing and meshing that there's not much room for anything else.

However, such is not the case with The Damned (subtitled "Three Days Dead"). Yes, elements from disparate genres are sewn together here, but the seams are invisible.

Our protagonist is Eddie, and he's dead. He gets better after a few pages. Some time ago, he was cursed with a weird sort of immortality. He can be killed, but when someone touches his corpse, their life-force is removed and Eddie's is restored. Eddie's wounds are transferred to the new victim--i.e., if Eddie had been bludgeoned to death, the lug who touched his corpse will suddenly have all the bludgeoning wounds.

The world is essentially the darker side of gangster pulp, with one important difference: demons walk the Earth, and they run the gangs. If you're a Buffy fan, you can imagine this might be what a town infested with demons could be like without any Slayers, Watchers or other White Hats. I don't remember it ever being stated, but it feels like this all takes place in (an alternate) Chicago. That's where gangster stories belong.

Anyway, the two gangs that run things had been talking peace. A negotiator was brought in to work the deal. The negotiator was nabbed by an unkown party. The boss of the Aligheri gang brings Eddie back (after being three days dead from a slit throat) to find out what happened to the negotiator before the Roarke gang finds out that he's missing. Now, of course there are snitches and duplicitous characters playing all sides against the middle, and these are lowlifes with which Eddie must consort to do his job. And there's a third gang, diminished in power yet still dangerous, called the Verlochin, who happen to be the gang who cursed Eddie.

One of the things i like about crime pulps is how several players, working toward their own ends, try to outsmart and outmanuver each other, with our protagonist struggling against all sides to get to the truth. That's here in The Damned, and it's done well.

This book ain't for the squeamish. There are plenty of grody images, from demi-demon corpses to "the Worm", a former human cursed into a particularly creepy monstrous form. There were scenes that made me cringe, but with horror, is that criticism or praise? Oh, and tons of violence, and no shortage of cuss words.

The very end was iffy for me (i think it's meant as a possible seed for another volume), but overall i enjoyed "Three Days Dead".

Click here for a free preview.

2007-10-29T19:06:00.000-04:00

Incredible Change-Bots
by Jeffrey Brown

Did you ever like Transformers? Do you think, as cool as they were, they were kinda silly, too? Well, if so, you will probably dig "Incredible Change-Bots". It pokes all kinds of fun at the Robots In Disguise while never being truly dismissive. You've got villainous robots that can't hit the broad side of a barn, Big Rig always pausing battles to set up his trailer, robots making out, a Change-Bot who "incredible changes" into a bag of popcorn, and lots of other very funny things.

Note: I think it helps the humor if you read it out loud with the kind of earnest goofiness that the text implies. The lazer beams effects are written as "bew! bew! bdew!" which is the sound you made when playing with Transformers as a kid. Yes, you did. If only i could do a Soundwave voice...

The art is, like the subject matter, superficially child-like, but with some subtlety that you might not notice at first glance. It looks like the coloring is done with markers? I don't know my art tools well enough to say for sure. It's very vibrant and engaging, regardless how it's done.

The story: If you know the "origin story" of Transformers, this is pretty close. The mechanistic planet Electronocybercircuitron is ruled by a two-party system. Just like the USA, both of these parties are populated by self-absorbed jerks who care only about the accumulation of power, and society suffers as a result. They ruin their planet and rocket off to Earth. The battle continues here!

I laughed a whole lot while reading this comic. The characters are great, the action is crazy, and it all moves at a nice clip. I think i read the whole thing in a little over an hour, and have dipped into it a couple times since. It's one i'll definitely share with friends, and i recommend it to anyone who played with Transformers, or who just wants a good laugh.

2007-10-28T17:49:00.001-04:00

Placeholder

This weekend i read Incredible Change-Bots by Jeffrey Brown and The Damned by Cullen Bunn & Brian Hurtt. Both of these were very good comics. I hope to write up some reviews in a couple of days, but my sinuses are bothering me and that makes it harder to think. I also might post about the Grassroots Festival at Shakori Hills that i attended a couple weeks ago.

Quick reviews of new comics:

Metal Men #3: The time-travel elements and a lot of the science-y talk lost me last issue, but not so much this time. T.O. Morrow's rant on the first page about his Death Metal Men was great--over-the-top, mad scientist bravado that was well written and hilarious. I loved it. Duncan Rouleau is going to be a writer/artist i look out for from now on.

Knights of the Old Republic #21: A lot of transition stuff going on here. The cast seems to be getting re-focused, as some people step on stage and others step off. I think they'll have a good mix of main characters that will play well in the next arc. The cover is kinda old school, with dialog and panels set into the image; that feels very "comic book-y", which is cool.

Umbrella Academy: There's a huge "Royal Tennenbaums" vibe going on here, and that's fine by me. The odd superpowered siblings gather for their adoptive father's funeral. One sibling is offered an opportunity to betray the others. This series drops you into this very interesting and layered world, with lots of history and characters going in differing directions, so it feels like a book that been around a while, rather than one that's only on its second issue.

Blue Beetle #20: Read Ami's review. We learn a wee bit more about the Reach--as a worldbuilding buff i really want to know more about them, esp. since they are one of the few groups formidable enough to have a truce with the Guaridans of the Universe.

Green Lantern Corps #17: The "Sinestro War" epic is in "third act big battle" stage right now, so lots and lots of action in this one. It's all cool, but what intrigues me are the parts that will have repurcusions after this arc, like the new receipient of the Ion powers. All the characters get a decent amount of attention. Gibbons is good at handling large casts.

The Sword #1: A very good first issue. We learn who our protagonist is, a little of what she's about, we see her world fleshed out in a satisfying way, and then in the last few pages the supernatural element of the story calmly walks into her life and throws everything into chaos. This was well constructed, and drew me into the world and story very well. I really want to find out what's next, and that's what a good periodical story does.

2007-10-18T07:54:00.000-04:00

"Feel" vs. "Think"

Yesterday at lunch i habitually switched on the radio to check in on the news. As usual, there were no big stories that grabbed my attention. A caller to the Neal Boortz show did say something that i'd like to address, however. He said that liberals don't think, they feel. That's something you hear on more doctrinaire conservative shows like Rush's and Hannity's, as well.

What gets me thinking is that you can hear the same statement in reverse from liberal commentators. We don't get AirAmerica in my town, so i don't hear them. We do get Sean Combs' show, but i think he's just as much a hack as his hacky partner in hackdom, hack Hannity. So, i don't bother listening to either of them. (These days i listen to very little talk radio period, but that's another subject.) Where i have encountered it is on liberal podcasts, where i've heard it said that conservatives don't think, they feel.

What gives?

1. Both assertions are wrong. Both liberals and conservatives think. There are reams and reams of studies, commentaries, analyses, etc. filled with more or less rational arguments for and against all sides. A small number of these are even sincere. The assertion that one group or another doesn't employ their brains is easily refuted.

2. Both assertions are correct. Both conservatives and liberals (and libertarians, and anarchists, etc.) base a lot of their arguments in emotion.* More than a tactic, emotion is often the foundation of our political worldview. We often choose a side based on how we feel, then construct rational arguments to justify our feelings. Assessing things in a truly objective manner is extremely difficult. (Even objectivists have a hard time at it!) Because we're, you know, human beings with emotions, not incorporeal minds floating in an ether of pure rationality.

3. Any commentator who relies on this poor argument ain't to be trusted. It's just an excuse for dismissing the ideas of a broad category of humanity.

*Fear is the favorite emotion of those who wish to rule. With it they can make people afraid of terrorists, corporations, crime, illness, immigrants, racists, democrats, republicans, ad infinitum. And once they've got the people scared, they can get their money, their liberty, and their adoration.

2007-10-15T06:39:00.000-04:00

American Dreamz

This flick stars Mandy More and Hugh Grant. It parodies a handful of current trends, namely President Bush, American Idol, and Middle Eastern Terrorism.

The tone is mixed, or maybe just moderated. Making humor from the subject of terrorism is an edgy idea, but this movie manages to do it in a light manner. Making fun of President Bush is one of those things we pretend is edgy, even though everybody does it. It's one of those modern myths we've all decided to go along with, like the idea that the generation before us was backward, naive and prudish, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

Mandy More plays Kendoo (there are a lot of punny names). She comes from Padookie, Ohio. That's a rif on Paducah, Kentucky, I reckon. Maybe it's dumb, but I'm sensitive about people from the coasts making fun of rural America. Sure, it's supposed to be funny, but I always suspect they mean it. It's not like King of the Hill, which pokes fun at its South Texas characters, but genuinely likes them at the same time. King of the Hill is like when you give your friends a hard time, or tell embarassing stories about family members you love. Conversely, most movies that tap this vein of humor are like the hateful little shits who made fun of you in jr. high for wearing the wrong brand of jeans.

There's a lot of biting satire that could be made on the whole "war on terror", Iraq, freedom vs. security, Bush, and the all sociopolitical malarkey that's been overflowing the septic tank of American life since late in 2001. This movie doesn't make it. It scrapes out a few Bush-is-dumb and Cheney-is-an-evil-puppet-master gags, but it doesn't dive deep for the surprising stuff.

I'm being dismissive, but I enjoyed this movie. What I'm grousing about isn't that it's bad, but that it isn't a biting satire that points out things in our current public life that really piss me off and that I think deserve a good mocking. That, however, is not the movie's fault.

Moore's character has a tragic fate. (Her boyfriend dies, but he's just a plot device, and the Cheney analog is rejected, but he's not sympathetic.) She gets fame and fortune, but it's clear that she isn't happy, and she knows she never will be. Yes, she is fake, and so we might feel she is getting her just desserts, but we also know that she's aware of her fakeness, and that she uses it to ward against a painful world. We can blame her for that, i supose, but we can't get satisfactorily self righteous about it. That's a respectable accomplishment in storytelling.

2007-10-05T20:55:00.000-04:00

I thought some more about the subject of my previous post. You know, racism as we know it can't really exist before say, the Colonial Era. (I'm making some broad strokes here, just humor me for a bit.) It wouldn't make any sense in the ancient world. (Obviously i'm talking relative "sense" here.) In a world where the people across the river or on the other side of the mountains are aliens and barbarians, there's no ground for the modern concept of race to grow.

For example, take the typical white vs. black racism. It only exists because various groups of paler-skinned people think of themselves as this one group, "white". Poles, Danes, Greeks, Welsh, they're all "white". Furthermore, they're all European, and further furthermore, they're all Christian. Only when you've got that whole continent full of relatively similar-looking people thinking of each other as part of the same team can they begin to think of other people--on other continents with a different religion and relatively different features/coloring--as part of a different team.

Until a sufficiently large group of people are linked by strong, common social structures, there is no race. A bunch of Celts, Romans, Slavs, Angles, Jutes, et al vying for control of Europe ain't a race. All those jokers loosely united (conceptually, at least) under a handful of common banners, well that there is a proper race. And when these guys find they need something to justify conquering and enslaving people in other lands, esp. when a lot of their better ideals go entirely against those practices, a sorta-kinda-scientific-sounding idea like race becomes all kinds of useful.

Of course Sallust didn't criticize the Berber race. What would be the point? Why would he think of them in that term to start with? They weren't any less Roman than all the other barbarians out there, and that's what counted. Hell, there were plenty of Italians who weren't Roman. Expecting people of that era to have an opinion about race would be like expecting them to have an opinion about NASCAR. You can speculate about it ("well, they liked chariot racing, so they'd probably like car racing, too") but you can't make any meaningful observations about it.

2007-10-05T10:26:00.000-04:00

I wrote this to send in to a local news radio show. I didn't send it b/c they had moved on by the time i wrote it and i rarely get responses from these shows anyhow. In fact, i rarely get responses to this blog or to posts i make on forums, too. What gives? Anyway, what prompted this was a statement something like "there's always been racism and always will be." I also want to write something about another false "truism" i hear a lot in regards to the Middle East. It's the one that goes "these people have been killing each other for thousands of years." I don't think that's true.

I question the assumption that all societies have always been racist--at least to the extent that ours is or has been in the last few centuries.

If you read ancient books, there is remarkably little attention given to race in the modern sense. I recently read "The Jugurthine War" by Sallust. This is about a war between Rome and a Berber king in North Africa. It is told from the Roman point of view, by a Roman author. Romans and Berbers are distinctly different races. There were no negative statements about Berbers as a race, even though the author had ample incentive to cast them in a bad light.

Also, Roman citizenship was not limited by race. Anyone could become a Roman citizen by serving in the legions. People were not excluded from service because of skin color or place of origin.

The great prosyletizing religions don't seem to have put much stock in race, either. Christianity and Islam accepted Europeans, Arabs, Semites, North Africans, Subsaharan Africans, Persians, etc. Buddhism embraced all the varied races between India and Japan.

Race was of so little concern to ancient writers that we have a hard time pinning down the race of some ancient peoples. What did the average Egyptian look like in the days of the Pharoahs? Ask modern scholars and you'll get a myriad of answers, because modern man is obsessed with race, but his ancestors weren't, and so they didn't bother to record such details.

I'm not saying there wasn't prejudice in the past. Of course there was. The most common being that anyone from outside your own culture was a "barbarian", but this had to do with culture and language, not skin color or perceived genetic inferiority, as with racism.

2007-09-14T10:21:00.000-04:00

Yet Another Meme

I plan to have some reviews up Saturday, but here's a meme that I stole and then altered a bit.

The "4 Things" Lists

4 jobs I've had in life:
1) bookseller at B&N
2) copywriter
3) software QA
4) tutor

4 places I've lived:
1) NE Arkansas
2) SW Arkansas
3) NW Arkansas
4) Piedmont North Carolina

4 favorite foods:
1) Thai
2) Mediteranean
3) Mexican
4) Pizza

4 places I'd rather be:
1) Hanging Rock
2) Outer Banks
3) Downtown Hot Springs, either on Art Hop night, or a summer Saturday Afternoon
4) Peppers Pizza, Franklin St.

4 movies I can watch over and over:
1) Anchorman
2) Rushmore
3) The Apartment
4) Paper Moon

4 t.v. shows I like to watch:
1) Deadwood
2) Newsradio
3) King of the Hill
4) 30 Rock

4 websites I view daily:
1) juno mail
2) newsarama
3) yahoo mail
4) blogs

4 computers I've owned:
1) Current offbrand PC
2) dell PC before that one, now running Linux
3) Packard Bell PC before *that* one, now in attic
4) a word processor, fate unknown

4 podcasts I listen to weekly
1) Secret Identity
2) Jordan Jesse Go!
3) History According To Bob
4) On Point

4 comic books I loved as a child
1) The Brave & The Bold
2) Micronauts
3) Fantastic Four (John Byrne years)
4) All-Star Squadron

4 comic books I love as an adult
1) Fables & Jack of Fables
2) Scott Pilgrim
3) Madman
4) Dynamo 5

4 good books I've read lately
1) The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells
2) The Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek
3) The Jugurthine War, by Sallust
4) Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine, by Anna Reid

4 bands I've seen live
1) Matthew Sweet
2) Juliana Hatfield
3) Sonic Youth
4) Bob Dylan

4 favorite albums
1) Girlfriend, by Matthew Sweet
2) Leave Them All Behind, by Ride
3) Keep It Like A Secret, by Built To Spill
4) Goin' Up, by Freddie Hubbard

4 things to do around here
1) Tate Street Festival
2) Ren Fair
3) Blues Festival
4) Stellarcon

4 funny-sounding place names
1) Possum Grape, AR
2) Pickles Gap, AR
3) Toadsuck, AR
4) Climax, NC

4 'yo momma' jokes
1) what's the difference between yo momma and a washing machine? when i drop a load in the washing machine, it don't follow me around for a week
2) yo momma's so nasty, she'd give sour dough yeast infection
3) yo momma's teeth are so yellow, when she smiles, traffic slows down
4) yo momma's so fat, she plays hopscotch like this: new york, chicago, l.a. ...
#1 stolen from Tina Fey on 30 Rock, #2-4 stolen from In Living Color

4 funny things my mom used to say
1) hard headed henry harris - what you got called when you were stubborn
2) bossy the heifer - what you got called when you were bossy
3) you'd argue with a sign you painted yourself - my retort: if i painted it, it'd be right
4) ___ is slower than Christmas

4 Southern linguistic eccentricities
1) "if it'd been a snake it woulda bit ya" - said when you find something in an obvious place
2) snakedoctors - one of my granpa's name for dragonflies
3) "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise" - expressing assurance that something will happen or get done; self-conciously religious people will respond to this with "if the Lord's willin', it don't matter if the creek rises"
4) "gave him down the road" - yelled at someone over a slight, foul-up, etc. never been sure exactly where this one comes from

2007-09-11T19:25:00.001-04:00

New Ten Characters Meme!

Ami memed me!

Here we go.

First, select your ten fictional characters (from any medium) by whichever method you like best. Then answer the questions below.

1. The Monkey King (American Born Chinese, traditional stories)
2. Bugs Bunny (Looney Toons)
3. John Carter (Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series)
4. Gimli (Lord of the Rings)
5. Rose Tyler (Dr. Who new series)
6. Inara (Firefly)
7. Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
8. Willow (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
9. Gkar (Babylon Five)
10. Metamorpho (DC Comics)

1. Divide the list up by even and odd. Which group of five would make a better Five Man Band (like a Power Rangers team)? Who would you slot in each position: Leader, Lancer (second-in-command), Big Guy, Smart Guy, The Chick? If you think the team would be improved by swapping one character between the even and odd groups, which ones would you switch?

Team A, aka Team Charisma:
Gkar - Leader (this is the Gkar of season 5+, obviously)
Monkey King - Lancer (b/c he could inspire the others)
John Carter - Big Guy
Inara - the Chick
Spike Spiegle - Smart Guy (street smarts mostly)

Team B, aka Beauties and Beasts:
Metamorpho - Leader
Rose - Lancer
Willow - Smart Guy (think BtVS seasons 1-3)
Gimli - Big Guy
Bugs Bunny (cross-dressing version) - the Chick

Swap: Inara & Rose. Rose makes a better Lancer, and Inara a better Chick. (Not that Rose isn't very attractive, but she's far more practical than Inara.)

Inara on Team A makes them the most charismatic group in the universe! Season
5 Gkar: religious leader and diplomat; Monkey King: wild n' crazy guy; John Carter:
swashbuckling Virginan gentleman; Spike: dark, dangerous, mysterious; Inara: beautiful, sensual, cultured. They could charm most enemies into submission!

2. Gender-swap 2, 8 & 10. Which character would have the most change in their story arc? Which the least? Would any of these characters have to have a complete personality change to be believable as the opposite sex?

Bugs, Willow, Metamorpho. None of them would require a complete personality change. Wacky female characters are a lot less common than males like Bugs, but it could work. If Willow were a guy, I think her meek behavior in the earlier seasons would be looked down upon rather than seem endearing. And her sexuality "becoming" gay later on might play differently, too, since the stereotype is that lesbians are hot, and gay men not.

3. Compare the matchups of 1 & 8 and 5 & 9. (Ignore canon sexual preferences for the moment.) Which couple would be more compatible? Which couple would be more plausible to people from either principal's home culture?

Monkey King and Willow - uh...no.

Rose and Gkar - If we're talking the earlier, jackass-y Gkar, no way. Rose would despise him. The older, wiser Gkar, maybe.

4. Your team is 3, 4 & 9. The mission consists of a social challenge, a mental challenge and a physical challenge. Which team member do you assign to each challenge?

Gimli gets the physical challenge (assuming it doesn't involve jumping or sprinting)
John Carter gets the mental challenge; he's a fighter for sure, but he's pretty crafty Gkar, of course, gets the social challenge. At any point in his development, his social skills were formidable.

5. 7 becomes 1's boss for a week in some plausible fashion. How's their working relationship?

Spike Spiegel as the Monkey King's boss? It's disasterous. The Monkey King is a mystical being of remarkable accomplishment, and Spike is a stubborn, strong-willed loner. The fight that ends it would be cool, though.

6. 2 finds him/her/itself inserted into 6's continuity. As far as anyone other than 2 or 6 is concerned, they've always been there. What role would 2 be presumed to have had in 6's story, and could they fit in without going wonky?

Bugs Bunny inserted into the Firefly universe? I'm laughing just thinking of it! Bugs would be either the wackiest member of Serenity's crew, or a recurring antagonist who made their life hilarious hell. His inclusion would violate the more realistic feel of Firefly, but boy would it be fun.

7. 3 and 5 get three wishes. The catch is that they have to agree on all three wishes before they get the benefits of any of them. What three wishes would they make?

John Carter and Rose. Hmm. Well, John would like for Mars to be restored, ecologically, and Rose would go along with that, b/c it would help a lot of people. Rose would want her mom to be safe and happy, and John would be for that. ... I don't know. Aside from Rose being put off by John's militaristic nature, they wouldn't disagree on each others' goals, but they don't share many.

8. 1 and 2 are brainwashed by a one-time artifact that works even on people immune to mind control to attack and kill 4. They keep their normal personality, skills and competence level, except any Code vs. Killing has been turned off. Can 4 survive? How?

Monkey King and Bugs against Gimli. Sorry, Gimli, I love you and you're a great dwarven warrior, but with those two after you, you're dead. The Monkey King has godlike powers, and Bugs is insidiously clever.

9. 6, 7, 9 & 10 must help an orphanage full of small and depressed children have a merry Christmas. Who does what, knowing that at the very least the kids will be expecting a visit from Santa?

Inara, Spike Spiegel, Gkar, and Metamorpho - Metamorpho would be Santa. He could use his chemical and shapeshifting powers to make himself look like Santa, as well as create some toys! Inara has compassion to spare, and can read people well enough to know how to care for each child. Gkar would have lots of stories, and I suspect he knows a few card tricks and silly things that would entertain the kids. Spike would be at a huge loss. Maybe he could show the kids some martial arts moves, which they would like.

10. 3 and 8 are challenged to circumnavigate the Earth in eighty days or less, using only forms of transportation invented before 1900. Can they do it, or will they be fatally distracted by sidequests or their own personality conflicts?

John Carter, Warlord of Mars, and Willow Rosenberg - No. Willow would get too impatient with the slowness of pre-1900 transportation. John Carter's sort of chivalric code of behavior might not meld so well with Willow's modern sensibilities, either. However...they are both strong-willed and rise to a challenge, so maybe they would be successful for that reason, despite the other drawbacks.

Okay, that was cool! At first glance, this meme seemed overly complicated, but it turned out to be fun!

Now, who do I tag? How about Joelle, Joel, and Acme?

2007-09-10T21:45:00.000-04:00

The All New Atom #15
The first page spoils one aspect of The Sinestro Corps War, but if you've been looking at Previews, this aspect has already been spoiled. The first page also consists of a lot of exposition. This is all thanks to this issue being a crossover with Countdown.

But then, thankfully, a giant hand literally reaches out of the sky, plucks Ryan out of this crossover, and back into his own story. Never has such an obvious deus ex machina been so appreciated.

Of course crazy things are happening back in Ivy Town, which is what makes it a fun place! Two giant monsters, somehow brought to life from Z-grade movies, are causing havok. Since Ryan has been away in the microverse, his friends have tried to pick up the slack, to humorous, if still heroic, effect. There is a big twist towards the end which is both hilarious and completely WRONG. You have to read it to appreciate it.

Words: Gail Simone, Pencils: Mike Norton, Inks: Trevor Scott, Colors: Alex Bleyaert

2007-09-09T20:43:00.000-04:00

I found this "shopping list" when cleaning out some old papers.

Shipping May 5, 2004
Negation War #2 - ah, this was near the end for Crossgen. A lot of stories were pushed towards their conclusions early, like this one.
DC 100 Page Super Spectacular World's Greatest Super Heroes - this one was reprints, and good, from what i remember
Detective Comics #794
Firestorm #1 - it was good while it lasted
Soulsearchers #65 - this was one of those series i wanted to try for a long time. i'm not sure if i bought this particular issue or not. when i did finally read it, i didn't like it much
Complete Peanuts Vol. 1, 1950-1952 - i still haven't finished this one.

Shipping May 12
Fables #25 - so "Fables" started in 2002, then. that's five years of being one of the best comics on the stands. the first volume of the collected edition is still a top seller.
JLA #98 - was this the clairmont/byrne story? or the busiek story with qward and the csa?
JSA #61 - this is another one that's been consistently good for years.
Blue Monday Painted Moon #1 - afaik, this is the last 'blue monday' series that has come out. what is chynna clugston doing now?
Aquaman #18 - this was during the sub diego arc, which i liked.
Batman Legends of the Dark Knight #179 - pretty sure i didn't buy this one.
Hero #16 - might not have bought this one
Monolith #4 - didn't buy
Nightwing #93 - probably didn't buy

2007-08-27T22:45:00.000-04:00

Yup, it's been a long time since I last posted. It may be a while before I post again. The mood for blogging just hasn't been with me lately.

Here are a couple of verbal habits that bug me.
1) When people say "yeah, no." People seem to say it on podcasts a lot. It hasn't come up in real life. It's a filler phrase, like "um" or "you know." It just sounds dumb. If you haven't heard it, it goes something like this: "Yeah, no, I totally tivo NCIS every week."
2) The way FOX News always speaks in the present tense, even when talking about things in the past. It's supposed to sound like "you are there!" and "breaking news!" but it just sounds dumb and dishonest. Maybe just dumb. To me it sounds dishonest because I hate the news media and I always think they're lying and not doing real journalism b/c they just read press releases and ask only stupid questions. Here's an example: "Today, the President signing a bill gilding all hamsters under five pounds." The President isn't signing a bill. He signed it earlier in the day. Stupid. Oh, they often leave out the verb to be, too.

Okay, something positive. I finally finished that Metamorpho Showcase, and it was fun. I also finished Motya, which was pretty cool, and made me want to learn more about the Phonecians. They sailed to Britain from the Mediteranean way back in the BCs! They did this regularly, to get tin, which they brought back to the Mediteranean to be made into bronze stuff. It's wild. People in ancient times were doing a lot more than we think. They lived in multi-storey houses and could mass produce boats by making the pieces in one place, and assembling them elsewhere. I shit you not. The pieces were marked to show you which went where and everything. Eat that, Henry Ford. But, they also sacrificed their first born children. So the admiration only goes so far.

Current reading: The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells (1885). It's good, but I'm not far enough into it to say much.
Also, The Jugurthine War, by Sallust.

Currently listening to: The Sound of Young America. I've been listening to Pandora.com at work. That is a great site. My Rock Mix rocks mega hard.

I should be asleep.

This picture is in this week's movie evite. It's by Paul Pope, an awesome comic artist.

2007-07-08T07:23:00.000-04:00

Outsiders #49

I'm continuing this idea from a comment I made on Pretty Fizzy Paradise.

This crossover had been pretty good up to this point. (I should note that I haven't read Outsiders since issue 2 or so, so this story was all about Checkmate for me.) Some significant, serious stuff happened to Sasha. The "Fall of the Wall" story got kick-started. We found out that the Oolong crew is now alligned with North Korea.

Then we get to this last issue, and the whole thing "resolves" in a set-up for the upcoming Batman & the Outsiders. That's anti-climactic, and it follows a trend in DC that has greatly annoyed me of late: that a story, or "event" does not exist for its own sake, but merely to set up the next thing.

Since the mini-series that preceded Infinite Crisis, we've had a chain of these psuedo-stories. None of those minis (Day of Vengeance, Rann/Thanagar War, etc.) ended well; or at all. They just kind of stopped, with the promise that their plots would be resolved in Infinite Crisis. The Rann/Thanagar war was never satisfactorilly resolved. I'm not even sure if it's really over or not. I think it is, but i'm not sure who won or how, or what exactly the new status quo is.

52 is, at least in most of its stories, an exception to this. It did at least take most of its characters through a complete arc. It also set up future stuff, like a Ghost Detectives series with Ralph and Sue (though no word on when that will appear) and the upcoming Infinity Inc. redux. Adam Strange and Starfire were just sort of along for the ride, though. The Black Adam story came to a satisfying closure, but they've ruined that by bringing him back so quickly.

I guess my point is, I'm really bored with "stories" that just serve to set up another "story" which just sets up... You get the idea. I'm not against change. Change is often good. But that change should provide a new space to tell real stories in, not just spin off into further change.

Imagine if, instead of going into Countdown, DC had instead launched new series featuring the stars of 52? They could have done four of them, each coming out during a different week, to sorta-kinda continue the weekly format with these characters. The Question, Infinity Inc., Ghost Detectives, Mystery In Space, Booster Gold, Animal Man -- these are some new titles that could have been launched to build on the momentum of 52. But where has that momentum gone? Where's the Question? Where's Animal Man? Where's Batwoman? We're working on another "lost year" for those characters, because DC editorial can't settle down and just tell stories about the characters we love instead of rushing ahead with some new chaotic, world-altering Event.

2007-07-08T05:43:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks back, i read a review of the new Fantastic Four movie, and in it the reviewer started comparing the success of DC properties in movies versus Marvel properties in movies. IMO the reviewer used some pretty lame reasoning, and so I wrote this response. I haven't posted it earlier b/c I forgot that I wrote it. I just found it while cleaning out my inbox.

The answer may lie in the nature of each company's heroes. When Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko created many of Marvel's iconic heroes in the 1960s, their innovation was to give their characters great humanity along with great power.

"They took superheroes and made them more realistic," says Midtown Comics' Gladstone. "They gave their characters real traits, had them living in real cities - most in New York City. They had tremendous flaws and problems that you and I would face every day: getting to work on time, having a cold or flu, having a sick aunt."

This argument always bugs me. For one, it's stuck in the Silver Age. DC long ago added "realistic" problems to its older heroes, and its newer ones have had them from the get-go. Then there's the whole issue of what "realistic" means in regards to characters who routinely disregard the laws of physics. And, how much "realism" readers really want in them.

And what does basing the characters in fictional depictions of real cities vs. fictional cities have to do with it? As a kid in Arkansas reading Marvel & DC, i can assure you that NYC had no more authenticity in my reality than Gotham or Metropolis. Also, i've always liked how the completely make-believe cities can be crafted to reflect their hero(es). It's a good storytelling device, IMO.

"I do believe that what moviegoing audiences respond to is what the comic-book audience and the Marvel audience has responded to for decades. And that's relatable characters," says Kevin Feige, executive producer of "Fantastic Four" and most of the other Marvel movies. "There's a reason these characters have endured for 20, 30, 40 years. There are emotional elements that people connect with. The Marvel characters are infinitely more than their exterior design. They have an emotional core."

And what's so relatable about the Fantastic Four? Aside from the Thing and his "i'm a monster" dilemma, none of the Four are any kind of everyman character. Reed is a super scientist (whose inventions aren't very "realistic"). Johnny is some kind of thrill-seeking playboy. And Sue is...um...well, she's in love with Reed, and she's really pretty. (Yes, i know that the Storm siblings have been more developed in the comics over the years, but i'm talking here about their appeal to a general, mass audience, not comics afficianados.) Again, only the Thing suffers a real downside to his powers. The others are able to go on with their pursuits, with the superhero gig added on.

IMO, these Marvel v. DC comparisons aren't really about company vs. company or universe vs. universe, but Superman vs. Spiderman. Spidey is all the things people attribute to Marvel generally. Supes is (in large) everything people attribute to DC generally. They are not, however, the sum total of everything each publisher puts out.

The FF could fit quite well into the DCU. (Kirby did a book very similar to early FF--Challengers of the Unknown--at DC before co-creating the FF at Marvel.) Wolfman and Perez's New Teen Titans could fit in the MU. Captain America could be DCU. Batman could be MU. Is there anything about Galactus and his heralds that wouldn't work in the DCU? Or about Darkseid and his minions that wouldn't work in the MU?

Call me a defensive DC fan if you want, but IMO these distinctions are over-generalized, out of date, and assume things about the readership that aren't necessarily so.

2007-06-24T22:35:00.000-04:00

Today i stayed in, painted some minis, watched some movies and finished a book about the Ukraine that i've been reading for a while.

I watched Almost Famous, which i really loved in the theater, but it's not as engaging now. It's still quite good, i'm just not in love with it like when i first saw it. This time i noticed how there are so many significant looks between people--or between people and the camera--and i wondered if some of what Kate Hudson was doing wasn't more modelling than acting. For example, that scene where she smiles into the camera, with a tear rolling down her face, and the sunlight behind her: it's very pretty, but it's kind of indulgent. Eh. I'm sounding very critical, but i like the movie.

I also watched Dirty Harry, which i hadn't seen before. There are some great shots in that movie. In the beginning, when there's all those huge shots of the city from the rooftop, i thought "so this is a movie about striking cinematography; i can dig that." The crazy serial killer thing has been done to death (no idea how fresh or stale it was when this was made), and i hate it when a killer is made out to be interesting b/c hey, they're crazy and ironic.

The book is called Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine, by Anna Reid. I enjoyed it, but parts of it were very depressing. They had pogroms, they got starved to death by the Communists and then there were the Nazis...there aren't a lot of happy stories in this book. But i like to read about other places, and i knew very little about the Ukraine, except that that's where Kiev is, and it's on the Black Sea, etc. This book is an overview. The author lived there, and the history she tells us sort of follows her travels. A rabbi shows her some mass graves, and that leads her to tell us the history of how the Nazis killed all these Jews, and that leads to a wider overview of the Ukraine during WWII, etc. I'd like to read a more systematic history of the country at some point.

2007-06-21T08:21:00.000-04:00

This Blog is So Dangerous

This thing is waaaay too sensitive. This blog gets an "R" b/c "shit" shows up 3 times, "gun" twice, and "shoot" once. Who set this scale--a dainty 90-year old shut-in nun transported here from Elizabethan times?

2007-06-19T05:22:00.000-04:00

DC has released advance solicitations for their comics coming out in September. Some selections and my thoughts on them follow.

COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #1
Written by Steve Gerber and Matt Sturges; Art by Justiniano & Walden Wong and Stephen Segovia
The Helmet of Fate has landed…on Kent Nelson — a man so far down on his luck, he doesn’t know what luck is! The transformative nature of the helmet grants him powers he can’t begin to comprehend…but will they make his life better, or even worse?

I've always liked Dr. Fate. The tie-in to Countdown makes is a minus, especially when i remember how anticlimactic the Infinite Crisis tie-ins were.

COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE #2
Written by Adam Beechen and Justin Gray; Art by Eddy Barrows & Julio Ferrera and Fabrizio Fiorentino
Meet Champ Hazard, the hero of Rann. But what happened to Adam Strange?
And in the backup story, Forerunner travels to Earth-10, the universe where the Nazis won World War II, to recruit superpowers for her master’s cause.

Rann and an alternate Earth with Nazi versions of Bats, Supes and Wonder Woman? I might have to pick this one up. However, again Countdown link is off-putting, and it sounds like Forerunner is going to retrace Harbinger's steps from Crisis on Infinite Earths, and that's boring.

THE ALL-NEW ATOM #15
Written by Gail Simone; Art by Mike Norton & Trevor Scott
The Search for Ray Palmer is interrupted as the Atom is literally plucked from the Nanoverse by the mastermind behind all of the problems in Ivy Town — and the man who may or may not hold some answers for Ryan Choi about his fallen idol Ray Palmer!

I have faith that Simone will incorporate the Event stuff in a non-sucky way. I'm looking forward to whatever craziness she's brewed up to populate the Nanoverse. Is that where the big floating head comes from?

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #13
Written by Dwayne McDuffie; Art by Joe Benitez & Victor Llamas

McDuffie was a big part of the Justice League cartoon, which was very good, so i'll likely give this one a chance. When JLA is good, it's a lot of fun.

THE GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY WEDDING SPECIAL #1
Written by Judd Winick; Art by Amanda Conner & Jimmy Palmiotti

I'm not buying this. I just wanna say i'm agin it. The asshole should not get the girl. Nuff said. Conner is an awesome artist, though.

INFINITY INC. #1
Written by Peter Milligan; Art and cover by Max Fiumara
When Lex Luthor and his Everyman project was taken down by John (Steele) Henry Irons, it appeared the story of Infinity Inc was over. But one year-plus later, it seems that life hasn't been kind to Starlight, Fury, and Nuklon. John suspects the problems may lead back to their experience as on the Everyman Project, opening doors that can never be shut!

Milligan did some crazy, inventive stuff of X-Statix a few years ago. Steel is a cool character. So i'll give this one a shot.

SUICIDE SQUAD: RAISE THE FLAG #1
Written by John Ostrander; Art by Javier Pina & Robin Riggs

Ostrander, Suicide Squad, i'm there.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #16
Written by Dave Gibbons; Art and cover by Pat Gleason & Prentis Rollins
“The Sinestro Corps War” continues as Mogo is attacked by the Sinestro Corps. Can the largest Green Lantern of all defend itself from a squadron of Sinestro Corps members?

GLC is a very good comic. It's got action, several interesting plot threads, and strong characters. Gleason's art is real purty, too!

THE QUESTION: ZEN AND VIOLENCE VOL. 1 TP
Written by Dennis O’Neil; Art by Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar
A new trade paperback collecting the 1980s adventures of The Question, the faceless, morally conflicted avenger based in corrupt Hub City! A martial arts master, The Question delved into Eastern philosophy as he battled crime and the crooked politicians of his hometown.

The Question is a great character, and this series is highly regarded.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: THE GREAT DISASTER FEATURING THE ATOMIC KNIGHTS AND HERCULES VOL. 1 TP
Written by John Broome, Gerry Conway, Jack Kirby and others; Art by Murphy Anderson, Jack Kirby, Walter Simonson and others. This thrilling volume collects futuristic tales from Strange Adventures, First Issue Special, Hercules Unbound, Kamandi, Weird War Tales, House of Mystery, Superman, Amazing World of DC Comics, and House of Secrets! 576 pg, B&W, $16.99 US

There's too much talent in this one to skip it. Kirby and Simonson under the same cover? Awesome. This stuff is a bit obscure, but it's apparently going to be adapted to the current DCU. I expect this to be some of Kirby's more "out there" material, which i find endlessly entertaining.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: METAL MEN VOL. 1 TP
Written by Robert Kanigher; Art and cover by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito
From the 1960s comes this volume collecting BRAVE AND THE BOLD #55, METAL MEN #1-16 and SHOWCASE #37-40, starring one of the strangest super-hero teams ever, now featured in a new miniseries! Created by Dr. Will Magnus, the team includes six robotic heroes: noble Gold, powerful Iron, loyal Lead, hot-headed Mercury, timid Tin and lovely Platinum! 528 pg, B&W, $16.99 US

Okay, i'll admit it, DC: you hooked me on Magnus & the Metal Men with 52. Congrats.

BIRDS OF PREY #110
Written by Tony Bedard; Art by Nicola Scott & Doug Hazlewood
In the aftermath of her new team’s first mission Oracle is reminded of how, sometimes, a smaller task force is needed even on some big assignments.

I think this is Bedard's first issue? The Negation series he wrote for Crossgen was a blast, and i already love the Birds, so this is on my list.

BLUE BEETLE #19
Written by John Rogers & Keith Giffen; Art by Rafael Albuquerque & David Baldeon
The Beetle’s truce with crimelord La Dama is put to the test when someone puts a Giganta-ic price on her head!

Blue Beetle is by far the best thing to come out of OYL. This is one of the most likable new heroes to show up in a long time. The supporting cast that Rogers & Giffen have developed for his is very strong, too. If you like Invincible or early Spiderman, you oughta check it out.

CHECKMATE #18
Written by Greg Rucka; Art by Joe Bennett & Jack Jadson
Amanda Waller’s unauthorized Black Ops game is exposed! “The Fall of the Wall” begins here!

The fact that this solicit makes me think "oh yeah, now this shit is ON" means either this is a great comic, or i need stronger medication.

THE FLASH #232
Written by Mark Waid; Art & cover by Daniel Acuña. What alien menace lies beneath the Flash’s own home? And what’s his dark, dark family secret — the one that’s helping him keep the peace in Keystone?

I'm not digging that cover, but Waid is back on The Flash--thumbs up! And if it's Wally back as the Flash, too, double thumbs up!

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #9
Written by Geoff Johns; Art by Dale Eaglesham & Ruy Jose. Don't miss this important prologue to an event that will rock the world's first and best super-team! In this issue, a fight between Wildcat and Wildcat; a firehouse pancake breakfast; Power Girl's quest to unlock the secret's behind her cousin's death; Citizen Steel's new family and the fate of Starman! And that's just the beginning as we prepare the Justice Society for their newest and most surprising member to date...

It sounds like this series continues to rollick along with several ongoing plots, all of which interest me to varying degrees. Eaglesham is the shit, too.

METAL MEN #2
Written by Duncan Rouleau; Art and cover by Rouleau. Unaware that he is a pawn in a ruthless war that spans both time and space, Magnus attempts to rescue his Metal Men from certain destruction while wondering at the same time if he should even create them. Can the greatest robot-maker of all time discover his true path to the future, or is he doomed to wander “Inside In the Inside Out.”

Like i said above, the Metal Men are cool.

OUTSIDERS #50
Written by Tony Bedard; Art by Matthew Clark. A new era dawns for the Outsiders! Batman makes a stunning last-minute change to the Outsiders’ new roster — but there’s a bigger surprise in store as the team uncovers a worldwide upheaval within the supervillain community! FINAL ISSUE

Here's Bedard again, but this is the final issue? I reckon it gets relaunched next month. I'm not sure i want Batman back in the Outsiders, but oh well.

SHADOWPACT #17
Written by Matt Sturges; Art and cover by Doug Braithwaite. It’s Shadowpact vs. a horde of zombies! Plus, a new villain hits the team at its weakest point! And it’s training day for the Warlock’s daughter; and her tutor is the team member she hates the most!

Huh? It's not written by Willingham? What gives? Shadowpact is another one that i look forward to every month. It's always good.

THE SPIRIT #10
Written by Darwyn Cooke; Art by Cooke & J. Bone. The Spirit becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder case that is at the center of a swirling media feeding frenzy. To make matters worse, the victims are the TV personalities who usually fan the flames of discord! But all is not as it seems…

This is one of the best comic series going right now. Highly recommended.

FABLES #65
Written by Bill Willingham; Art by Mark Buckingham & Steve Leialoha. Flycatcher is in trouble. He hasn’t had food or water for more than a month and the power he’s been drawing from his magic armor is running out. If Flycatcher falls, his army perishes with him.

I don't expect Flycatcher to survive this.

JACK OF FABLES #15
Written by Bill Willingham; Art by Tony Akins & Andrew Pepoy. In the conclusion of “The Bad Prince,” our hard-luck group of crash survivors try to find a way out of the wilderness. And along the way we learn more about Wicked John, and our boy Jack doesn’t like a bit of it. But it does give him an idea of how he might possibly get fabled Excalibur removed from his chest. In the story of the Sword in the Stone, Jack hates playing the stone.

More fun with Jack being a self-absorbed ass, and ocassionally getting horribly mangled.

2007-06-14T21:11:00.000-04:00

HeroesCon

It looks like i'll be going to HeroesCon after all. I might go to the DC panel, but what i'm really interested in is finding some cool stuff on the indie tables, and raiding some quarter boxes. It would be cool to start a sketch book, but a sketch costs like, several comics' worth of money. :)

2007-06-13T12:51:00.000-04:00

The Kaiju Gets Quized!

This is part of the "5 Questions Interview" meme going around some comics blogs right now. Ami asked me these questions. If you would like to participate, just leave a comment saying "interview me".

1. If you had to be a professional colleague of a Superhero's sekrit identity who would it be? (and they have to have a civilian identity, you can't choose Supergirl and be a professional bar hopper XD)

I reckon Clark Kent, b/c the Daily Planet is always hopping, and there are plenty of smart, interesting folks there.

2. If you could change one thing about your comics store what would it be (including moving it closer to your house, etc). :D

It's pretty close to my house already, but could be closer. I've thought about walking over there on a Saturday, but honestly that would be as much about testing my walking endurance as buying comics. It's a good shop, but if i could change something, i'd turn some of the Marvel fans into DC or indie fans, b/c then i could shoot the shit with more of them.

3. Steel or Ironman? :O

Steel, no contest. Ironman was always a secondary hero in my world anyway, but after Civil War i can't stand him. Steel has a lot of strong hero qualities, plus he's an inventor, and has the extra cool factor of being related to an American folk tale that Johnny Cash sang about.

4. Shaquille O'Neal or Robert Downey Jr.? XD

I'm not a fan of either, but once in a while i'll hear some crazy, ridiculous metaphor from Shaq that makes me laugh. It's like he wants to say stuff the way Muhammad Ali used to, but he doesn't quite make it.

5. What do you think is the most attractive thing about you? :D

Aside from my rugged good looks? ;) I think i'm a good listener. When i worked in a small retail store, people would come in just to talk. I don't often have constructive advice, but if you need to just get something off your chest, you could do worse.

2007-06-10T08:38:00.000-04:00

Scott Pilgrim Volume Four

September 19th.

2007-06-10T08:10:00.000-04:00

Comics On Screen

This site (comicsonscreen.com) features a cool way of reading comics online. The comic is displayed on the screen, and you drag the mouse over to the corner of the page and "turn" the page. It looks really cool. You can move it back and forth and it looks real. You can also call up a sort of pop-up window that acts like a magnifying glass.

They're currently building the content of the site. I'm not sure how much is on there yet, but suffice to say you can spend many hours reading what's there already. A lot of it is from Heroic Publishing, who do some nifty superhero books. (There's some historic link with the HERO/Champions RPG.)

There are free samples on the right hand side of the page. A subscription to the site is 5.99 per month, which seems fair.

2007-06-08T04:50:00.000-04:00

The Lone Ranger #6

Brett Matthews, writer; Sergio Cariello, artist; Dean White, colorist
This issue wraps up the origin story/first adventure of the Lone Ranger. He finally confronts the hired gun who killed his father, brother, and the other Texas Rangers. Over the last six issues, we've seen the traditional bits of the Lone Ranger's identity come together: Tonto, the mask, the silver bullets, Silver the horse, and in this issue, the signature six-shooters, "Hi-yo Silver!" and "kemosabe".

The aforementioned hired gun is known as Black Bart. That's a cliched name for an Old West bad guy, and writer Matthews is using it with a wink. This Black Bart is actually black, as in African-American. He is a remorseless, resourcefull, and ready killer. Since taking out the Rangers in issue one, he's been touring the West taking out their families, too. He's one of those talky, self-aware villains, like you'll find in Whedon's stuff. That can easily go too far, but Matthews pulls it off here. Bart's discursiveness also balances well with our heroes' terseness.

The Lone Ranger is very young in this incarnation. This is a departure from the old TV show i grew up watching in re-runs, but it works well. This is, afterall, the beginning of his career as a vigilante lawman. Over the course of this story, his character has been building from grief to rage, and finally in this issue, to an understanding of the larger role he can play in the Old West. Until now it wasn't plain whether this would be a "modern", "gritty" take on the Ranger, or something more traditional. I'm happy to say that the best aspects of the traditional version remain. Though the world he's adventuring in is far harsher than the one his TV self raced through, the Ranger himself is still a character of hope and good.

Tonto is interesting. His character wasn't developed much, IIRC, on TV, but he was always cool. You always knew, just from his demeanor, that he was a bigger bad ass than he let on. You get the same sense here, though he's more fleshed-out. Though we've yet to learn his history, it's clear that he's lived a very hard life. Black Bart recognizes him as a killer. He has a lot of skills he doesn't let on about. He definitely has that strong, silently, and slightly scary vibe going on. It will be cool to learn more about him as the series continues.

The dymanic between Tonto is an inversion of the usual hero/sidekick trope. Tonto, the nominal sidekick, is actually more experienced, older, physically more intimidating, and more worldly than the hero. He also fills the mentor role. In a reversal of the Batman and Robin relationship, here it seems that the younger, more hopeful hero will bring some light and calm to the damaged, relentless sidekick.

Before closing this review, i have to talk about the art. Sergio Cariello's skills are quite formidable. He has an expressive, sketchy (which is not to say illdefined) style that compares favorably to Joe Kubert, or Nick Cardy's work on Western comics. You might call it "European" (which, demographically, Cariello is) except that it is in the tradition of American comics about the Old West. His action scenes are fluid and dynamic. His faces convey emotion and thought, and are admirably varied. His website, which includes a gallery, is linked above.

The colors by Dean White are stunning. A lot of the backgrounds, especially lands and skies, are as much his work as Cariello's. Many of the full-page and two-page images wouldn't have worked as well without White's colors. To whit: i might have been put off by two pages of a 22-page comic being spent on a picturesque image of the Lone Ranger and Silver racing across a barren Western landscape, sans narration or plot-moving action, if not for the stunning colors.

John Cassaday is credited with "Art Direction". I'm not sure what that means, but the page layouts are similar to Cassaday's. He also does the covers.

Available at your local comic shop, or through the publisher's site. I'm not sure if a collection of these six issues has been solicited yet, but no doubt it will be. Note: If you pick these issues up at the shop, be aware that Dynamite produced multiple covers for each issue, so don't do what i did and accidentally buy two copies of the same issue.

2007-06-08T04:38:00.000-04:00

Hilarious Cover

I swiped this from Cover-By-Cover. Go over there and see a bunch of covers, some great, some simply entertaining. They're grouped by theme, like "to the bone", "behind bars", and obviously, "weddings".

2007-06-04T06:30:00.001-04:00

Cheap Post

...just to have a new post, basically. It's a "meme" about comics.

01) Batman or Detective Comics is the first comic book I really got into.
02) Shadowpact is one of the comics I currently collect.
03) Batman is one of my all-time favourite superheroes.
04) Scott Pilgrim is my favourite non-superhero comic.
05) Lobo is a very overrated character
06) -------- is, in my opinion, a very overrated comic artist.
07) Gail Simone is one of my favourite comic book writers.
08) Buying comics from a spinner rack is a happy comic book memory for me.
09) Darwyn Cooke is awesome at drawing female characters.
10) Mike Alred is one of my all-time favourite comic artists.
11) Rags Morales is an artist I’d love to see drawing a monthly series.
12) Wasteland is a comic I’ve meant to read, but haven’t done so yet.
13) Green Lantern Corps is a welcome ’80s comeback.
14) Cable/Deadpool is a comic I’ve never read or paid much attention to.
15) Ghost Rider is a popular character I’ve never really paid attention to.
16) Scott Pilgrim is a title I would recommend to my friends.
17) Darkseid is one of my favourite comic villains.
18) Batman is a comic I’m glad they made into a movie/movie franchise.
19) Catwoman is a comic they totally ruined by making it into a movie.
20) ------- is someone I would really love to meet at a comic convention.
21) ------- is a character I can see myself being for Halloween.
22) Catwoman is a comic I used to love, but now I’m not so hot about.
23) Chyna Cluggston is someone I would love to work on a comic book with.
24) $2.99 is the most I’ll spend on a 22-page (average sized) comic.
25) Crossgen is something/someone they should bring back.

2007-05-31T22:21:00.000-04:00

Caveman Robot

He's a caveman, and a robot. If you don't get what's fun about that, we're probably not going to get along. Look at a free, legal sample story here.

2007-05-25T17:57:00.000-04:00

Video Paper!

You know that video-paper stuff they have on Firefly? Well, it's been invented in real life! Check the link: video paper. Very cool.

2007-05-24T22:44:00.000-04:00

Classic Cover

Here's one of my all-time favorite covers. I fondly remember picking this one up from the magazine rack at the Snak Pak, a convenience store down the road from our house. (They had also had some good baked potatoes there, and that weird Pleiades video game.) The great Walt Simonson drew this one. It blew my elementary-school mind because the logo was incorporated into the scene, and it wasn't even at the top of the page! Notice how Bats' and the Joker's figures, and the logo, make a roughly circular form that always draws your eye to the characters in conflict. And the carved face that's partly covered by Batman's foot has it's mouth open, like it's yelling, "git yer foot outta my eye!"

I was tired tonight, so i just went to the grocery store then vegged out in front of the tv. So You Think You Can Dance is mildly funny, but probably only when you're tired. The other show about wanting to be a director was interesting. Too bad the girl from NC got kicked off, but she shouldn't have trusted that guy to be the director of photography (why isn't it director of filmography?) -- she should have done it herself. And it's amazing that that one guy did all that special effects work basically overnight.

Oh, i also watched the first episode of The Lost Room, which was cool. It didn't seem quite as grrreat as i'd heard, but it was only the first episode. The key that opens doors to anywhere is one of the best ideas ever. As soon as they showed the guy stepping through a door in a hotel room and out of a door in Tahiti, i wanted from the depths of my soul to have that key. As someone who's only real recurring dream is of escaping from various confining places, that is my dream magic item. The show also proves that urban fantasy can work well on tv.

I wish they'd established a better sense of place. IIRC they never mentioned where this was taking place. It was Anytown, USA or English-Speaking-Canada.

2007-05-23T08:50:00.000-04:00

Brainstorming

I had an idea for marketing/branding/structuring DC superhero comics this morning. It consists of three sub-brands. Here they are.

DC Now - The main DCU as it already exists, with all the continuity, crossover, etc. This would be aimed at the specialist/niche market of the more hardcore superhero fan/enthusiast.

DC Timeless - This is where the most iconic versions of the characters would be. Continuity would be light, crossover minimal, and "world changing events" practically non-existant. This would be the Classic version of the DCU, the one "everybody" knows. This line would be for the general audience and the more casual fan. It would be pushed on newstands and bookstores far more than comic shops, and wherever kids are. Personally, i'd place Action Comics and Detective Comics in this line, featuring Supes and Bats, and revive another older title like Adventure Comics or All-Star Comics to feature the iconic Wonder Woman. The page count would be higher, with backups featuring other characters.

DC Boundless - This would be the label for all the non-prime-continuity books. I.e., a new Kamandi book set in its own frame of reference, would go here. Any of the series set on the 52 multiple Earths would go here. Elseworlds, "imaginary stories", whatever, it would go here. This line would probably be mainly a specialty shop thing, but obviously some properties would work well in the general market.

A vigorous, regular trade program--and in some cases, skipping periodical and going straight to long-form/bookshelf--would be a priority. Each sub-brand would have its own, slightly tweaked version of the DC logo and trade dress, so that readers who knew about and cared about the difference could quickly distinquish them.

I imagine ad copy for this set-up going something like this.
DC NOW
DC TIMELESS
DC BOUNDLESS
DC...FOREVER
You could spread that across a one-page ad or multiple pages, and it would work well as a flash-animated ad on websites.

2007-05-22T18:33:00.000-04:00

Scott Pilgrim!

Ah, yes, a preview page from Scott Pilgrim volume four, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together has been posted on Bryan Lee O'Malley's flickr page! Feasteth thine eyes!

2007-05-20T11:14:00.000-04:00

Carnivale

My survey of HBO shows has now brought me around to Carnivale, a good vs. evil allegory that centers around the people who make up a travelling carnival in 1930s America. Often, good vs. evil allegories turn me off. Allegories in general turn me off. They feel dishonest. If somebody wants to tell me a story, they should just tell a story, and not tell a story that pretends to be about A when it's really about B.

That's isn't an issue here, though. At least not so far. I watched the first two episodes this weekend. For one thing, i like the setting. It's very Americana, and i've enjoyed other stories set in that era. Also, the allegory is both blatant (making it more "honest" per my idiosyncracies) and unclear (making it more interesting). How? Well, it's blatant in that it uses real world beliefs. It's unclear in that we don't know which side the series' two foci--the Farmboy and the Preacher--represent. The Preacher is a preacher, so you'd think he's the good guy (unless you know about irony, then you might think he'd be the bad guy, but if the writers of the show know about iron, and suspect that the viewer does too, then maybe they'd be double-ironic and make the obvious good guy the actual good guy, or...), and the Farmboy is an escaped convict, so you'd think he's the bad guy (again, unless the irony...) . However, the Preacher mostly scares the living crap out of people, and the Farmboy can heal people. The preacher does help people, but apparently feels really bad about scaring the crap out of people. The farmboy can heal people, but his mom takes it as a sign of the devil.

The dialog is great. They use a lot of period slang. I love how the English language can be so indirect and yet so evocative at the same time. There's a character named Samson, who's a little person with some undefined role of authority in the carnival. He talks a lot. In one scene, he's trying to convince Ben (the farmboy) to work for the carnival. When he admits that the job pays nothing to start with, Ben sulks off towards a farmhouse, presumbably to find work there. Samson yells a tirade after him, ending with "when John Law shows up, you ask him what kinda wages he's payin' for breakin' rocks!"

The carnivallians include a card-reader in a coma, a giant (that guy from the movie Big Fish), a pair of siamese twins, a couple of "cooch dancers", an ex-baseball player with a bum leg, and the mysterious, unseen "Management".

There are some very creepy scenes, like whenever Justin, the preacher, performs one of his wonders, some instances of telekinesis, and a few surprises that shouldn't be ruined.

The supernatural and mystery aspects are intriguing, but i think i could be just as into this show without that stuff, based just on the setting, characters, and dialog.

Side note: All of HBO's shows have these really complex intros! It's like they're saying, look how much time and money we spent on the title sequence--you know the show is going to be good! Or maybe it's that they don't have real intros on broadcast TV anymore, so producers go nuts when allowed to use them. (Curb Your Enthusiasm is an exception, and i don't remember Entourage's intro.)

2007-05-17T21:45:00.000-04:00

Spider Baby

Why does this creepy gem merit only two stars at Netflix? It would seem that the folks who'd rent it would be likely to appreciate it. I liked it.

Spider Baby (according to IMDB it's subtitled "The Maddest Story Ever"; 1964) is about the Merrye clan, a degenerate family of blithe murderers. The tone is consistent, yet unorthodox. It's a bit funny, a bit horrific, and a bit bitter sweet.

I don't recall the location ever being stated, but the feeling is definitely Southern Gothic. The Merryes live in an delapidated manse not unlike the Radley house, with the occassional deranged shut-in peeping out the front window. Ah, but sadly, there are no scruffily sweet children playing outside to touch the remaining heartstrings of these monsters.

The Merrye clan is: sisters Emily and Virginia, brother Ralph, guardian Bruno, and a couple of aunts and an uncle who are kept in the basement (more a sub-basement, technically; or perhaps simply a pit). They all, except Bruno, who entered the clan as a chauffeur, suffer from an eponymous syndrome which causes their minds to revert to childishness, and on into infanticism and ultimately, inhumanity (marked by cannibalism).

Emily and Virginia are the stars here. They're crazy in a fun way. Virgina is a bit like Wednesday Adams sans self-control. She likes to fancy herself a spider, and unfortunate strangers are her bugs. Emily is highly concerned with good and bad, but you never doubt which way she'll go when the pressure is on. Ralph's condition has progressed to the point that he's essentially a wordless infant in a man's body.

Bruno doesn't have the family's disease, but years of living amongst them has clearly cracked him. He sincerely cares for them, and has a strong (perhaps too strong) loyalty to them. He is played by Lon Chaney, Jr., who gives an affecting performance. One scene in particular stands out. The girls have dispatched with a visitor to the house ("she would have told" afterall), and are afraid that Bruno will be angry with them. "Now you'll hate us," they cry, yet he assures them that no, he will never hate them, never ever. It could have played ridiculous, or arch, or cruelly ironic, but it plays sincere--mad, yes, but heartfelt.

The disc i rented is a Special or Aniversary Edition, and as such, much spiffier than your average b-movie release. The images are crisp, without any obvious (to me, at least) damage to the film. It's even presented in its theatrical aspect ratio. That was a pleasant surprise, since a lot of old movies only exist in the pan-and-scan versions that were made for TV.

It's definitely worth a viewing if you like classic b-movies, horror, or black comedy a la Charles Addams.

2007-05-17T21:06:00.000-04:00

Local #9

I just read Local #9, which came out this week. Wow, that was such a strong issue. I've enjoyed all of them, to varying degrees. This one delves into Megan's history with her mother, and really defines a huge part of what motivates her through the whole series. It ended in a quietly stunning panel that wrapped in conflicting emotions. There was doubt, hope, loss, love--all brought together in one panel by the course of word and visual through the issue. It all felt very real to me, too.

Ryan Kelly's art has been a huge draw for me in this series. While reading #9 the quality that the screentones bring to the images. They add a lot of texture. In the past i thought of them (nearly subconciously) as a fast-and-cheap technique. For the first time i'm thinking they're completely legit, like crosshatching or shading.

Oh yeah, it might be helpful to say a bit about what Local is about! It's about Megan, a young woman who has hard time finding her place in life. This manifests itself most obviously in her moving to a new town every year (more or less), often adopting an entirely new identity at the same time. Each issue takes place in a different town in North America. Kelly uses a lot of photo references (many sent in by fans) to make the locations authentic. That's where the "local" comes in.

So, each issue is a self-contained story, but read together, they make a bigger tapestry. This issue works by itself. If you only ever read this issue, you'd get a whole, satisfying story. In addition, if you've read other issues, #9 illuminates Megan's life in a deeper way. Neat, huh? ;)

2007-04-23T21:56:00.000-04:00

Drive It On

So Fox's new show Drive has been on for a couple of weeks now. I missed last Monday's ep, but (i think) i've seen all the rest. It's cool to see some familiar faces from Angel and Firefly. It's almost fanfic-y to see Nathan Fillion and Amy Acker on screen together. Would Mal and Fred hit it off? No way Fred could compete with Inara. And Serenity already had a resident cute brilliant girl in Kaylee. Hmm...

[Also, there's a guy who talks to Fillion at the beginning of Drive's first episode (maybe he introduces him to the Race, i can't remember) who was played by the guy who played the psychotically stoic bounty hunter in the last episode of Firefly.]

So anyway, it has some players i like, and it has cool stuff like muscle cars, and it has characters from my home state who aren't slack-jawed yokels, and it would be great for producer Tim Minear to get a hit show of his own, but it's not grabbing me enough that i feel the need to watch the show every week. Now, that's maybe because i don't follow any shows on broadcast anymore, so take me with a grain of salt on this point.

Not many of the characters intrigue me. I really didn't like the woman in tonight's episode who was saying that God told her she'd win the race. Or i didn't like that she said that. It's just i would hope God isn't spending precious divine intervention energy on cross-country races (and if He did, of course He'd be fixing things so that the muscle car would win, but then, the muscle car can handle that itself). I've never been able to accept the idea that God rearranges the universe so one person can get one rather meaningless benefit.

But, mysterious ways and all that. And i'm certainly fallible. And maybe i just don't buy it because i don't feel like He's ever rearranged the universe to give me something cool i couldn't get otherwise. Not that i'm saying He should. But you could say that creation itself is sort of like that. Apart from any re-arranging, we wouldn't have anything cool without the original arranging. I guess what really bothers me is that anyone would claim that God rearranged the universe on their behalf, because that's saying that you're more special than everybody else.

To bring this back to TV, one thing i didn't respect about Mal on Firefly was his attitude towards God--or more accurately, why he had that attitude towards God. He was so hurt that nobody came to save the day and make sure that his side won the war. Yet, he had seen people die, he had personally killed many people on the other side, and the fact that those people never got to see their hopes and dreams fulfilled didn't shake his faith. No, it was only when God didn't pull his special ass out of the fire that he started to doubt.

That's not to say i don't like the character, just that i don't respect every aspect of the character. That probably makes them a more realistically-drawn character. So...in conclusion to this ramble, go watch Firefly, and think about how we relate to God, and vice versa--not necessarily in that order, though both at the same time might prove interesting.

2007-04-20T22:13:00.000-04:00

We Have Movie Sign!

The guys over at Comic Review Weekly, who are live in or around Greensboro and also make the comic Gravy Boy, have an interview with Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000! That's one of my favorite shows ever. I haven't listened to it yet, but i figured y'all would want to know. Click the link above for their website, or click here to download the mp3.

2007-04-17T13:23:00.000-04:00

New Music

I heard a couple of cool songs from a band called the Dollyrots on the Plan Nine Rock Show. There are several clips on YouTube. Some of the live clips have pretty cruddy audio, but the music videos sound good (you know, by YT standards). I've only heard a few songs, but they've made a good impression on me. They have an energetic, 3-chord rock sound, with enough bounce to be fun and enough grit not to be silly (in a bad way). And they're on Joan Jett's Blackheart Records, which speaks well of them, dontcha think?

It's been a long time since i really "followed" music, and now that all the record shops are gone, i'm not sure how to find new stuff. Yeah, there's Amazon, but it ain't the same.

Anyway, listen to their songs called "Because I'm Awesome" and tell me if you think they're as cool as I do.

And check out the Plan Nine Rock Show. It's a (weekly?) podcast out of Michigan that plays a lot of straight-ahead, punk-ish rock n roll. There's some cussin', so it ain't safe for work.

2007-04-17T13:08:00.000-04:00

Awesome Silliness

This has been posted all over the place, but maybe you haven't seen it yet. It's called Fist-A-Cuffs. The deal is this: Artists submit drawings of crazy fighters. Said fighters are paired off, and readers vote for the winner via posts. It's one of the funnest uses of a blog i've seen in a long time. The drawings are highly amusing, and often very cool. These guys are getting creative, and a little silly.

2007-04-06T10:02:00.000-04:00

Go check out this preview at Newsarama: http://www.newsarama.com/Flight/v4Mar07/preview/Flightgallery.html

It's 50+ pages from the upcoming Flight volume 4, one of the very best comics anthologies out there. I've got volumes 1 & 2, and if you're wondering what to get me for my birthday, volume 3 would be a great idea. :)

Here are a few pages to whet your appetite.

2007-03-26T19:46:00.000-04:00

America's Next Top Model

The Ones I Like
Renee - As she freely admits, she is a bitch, and she whines a lot, and of course she's too skinny, but she's pretty.
Natasha - Also pretty, not bitchy, not so crazy skinny, and has a cute Russian accent. In this one episode, they were doing photoshoots based on high school stereotypes. Natasha was supposed to be the Teacher's Pet. She was all like, "Vat ees Teacher's Pet?" b/c she doesn't speak English so well, b/c she's like, from Siberia and stuff. The other girls, and the photographer and everybody was like, "she's really struggling with this shoot, b/c she doesn't know what a Teacher's Pet is." Well, you could TELL HER what it is! You could take two minutes and EXPLAIN THE IDEA to her! I'm sure they have them in Russia, too, they just call them something else. Good grief.

The One I Don't Like
There's only one of the potential ANTM that i don't like, and that's Jaslene. Why don't i like her? Well, she's always talking about how much confidence she has and how that's the most important thing, and i can't see what she's got to be so confident about. How about do a good job, then feel good about it, instead of just assuming that you're the shit and expecting everybody else to assume it, too? And the judges are too nice to her. Screw them. She'll probably win.

Here's something from a News Radio episode (one of my favorite shows) that relates to models. It was delivered by the Cute Crazy Redhead of the show.
Pretty means Pretty
Beautiful means Pretty and Tall
Striking means Pretty with a Big Nose
Cute means Pretty and Short or Hyper
Stunning means Pretty with Great Hair
Exotic means Ugly

Search For A Pussycat Doll

This show has a really awful title. That's not it above. The real one is longer and clumsier. I call it Who Wants To Be A Skank? for short. That's not really short, though, just mean. I'm a bad person.

The Ones I Like
Sisely - the Cute Punk Rock Girl; not that she's really all that punky, only in comparison to the rest. She can be whiny and she stresses out and psyches herself out, but at the end of the day she's cute and comes off about 400 times smarter than all the other girls on the show. She said she had a punk or rock band. I wonder if they have free songs for download?

Chelsea - She really can't dance, which is a big minus in this competition, but she can sing and she is pretty. After the makeover, with the Betty Page bangs, she is really hot. Like, crazy hot. I'm not kidding about the hotness.

The Ones I Don't Really Care About
All the rest. One of them will win.

Both of these are trashy "reality" shows that reward bad behavior, and i really should be ashamed to admit that i watch them. In fact, i may delete this post when my overdeveloped sense of guilt kicks in (no idea where it is right now).

2007-03-05T11:31:00.000-05:00

I was gonna just straight up steal Ami's and Joel's ideas and post my version of DC's superheroes, and i may yet do that, but then i decided i'd talk about what i'd do if i was the boss of DC Comics. I'm sure other people have done this before, but i don't know who they are, so i can't tell you from whom i'm stealing. (For the record, my version of the DCU would involve two main parallel worlds, one anchored by Superman, the other by Captain Marvel.)

1. More Than One Continuity - I'd put characters into worlds that suited them. If Plastic Man is too light-hearted to really work in the sme world as the darker Batman, then there's no good reason to force them together. And if there was a good alternate take on Superman or whoever that wouldn't fit into the normal line, i'd go with it anyway. For example, that Wonder Woman project that was proposed a while back, that was drawn in the Japanese "girls' comics" style, that DC turned down: I would have jumped at that opportunity.

2. A Non-Boutique Line of Books - Let's face it. The comics made for the direct market are made for a niche market of connoisseurs. I, and fans like me, dig them, but they don't suit a lot of people in the broader marketplace. If i were the boss of DC, i'd produce a line of comics designed for the casual reader. They'd take the form of magazines--a hundred or so pages on cheaper paper--and collections. I'd do a lot of research into what sells at B&N and Borders and such, and tailor the content to grab that audience. I'd be kind of mercenary about it; what sells is what would get published. The point is to get comics out to a wider audience again, and every other consideration would go by the wayside. The comics produced for the direct market would still cater to the connoisseur, but these comics would cater to the casual reader.

3. Stuff Would Be On-Time - When you solicit a comic as a monthly periodical, it should come out every month. No further explaination should be necessary.

Okay, that's enough for now. I know it's pretty general, but what do you think?

2007-02-27T17:49:00.000-05:00

Whoever out there in Netflix Land who's holding on to The Wire Season 1, Disc 1, send it back already! That's been on the top of my list for months, and it's never available. Why are you hogging The Wire S1D1??? Don't you know that other people want to watch it? C'mon, be a considerate Netflix community member and send it back. Sheesh.

2007-02-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

There have been a few more stories come out of the New York Comicon. This one, again from Newsarama, covers the Dark Horse panel.

>Atkins then asked the audience, “Who likes extreme violence?” When the reaction was not up to his expectations, he deadpanned, “Don’t be so shy; everyone here wanted to raise their hands.” <

Or maybe they didn't want to raise their hands. Maybe the audience isn't as thirsty for violence as publishers assume. Afterall, it's getting old at this point even for fans who once thought it daring.

Also, consider that a lot of people probably came to this panel for news on Star Wars and Buffy comics. Neither of those properties offer much "extreme violence". Yes, they have sword fights and martial arts and monsters, but only a few instances of violence that i'd think of as "extreme". It was a big deal when Vader chopped Luke's hand off b/c all the violence up to that point had been fairly unrealistic. Ditto with the few times that Buffy or one of her friends got significantly injured. Most of the violence on that show resulted in vampires turning to dust, which is very fanciful.

>He then told readers about MPD Psycho, a manga series that is so violent and so extreme that nothing anyone has ever seen will compare. He added that the series is highly requested, but “none of the other publishers would touch it.” It is a compelling story that people need to read, with lots of blood and gore, he concluded.<

Maybe there are readers out there who are excited or intrigued by that, but to me it sounds boring. Whether it's been "highly requested" i can't say, b/c i don't follow Japanese comics that closely.

>Allie announced that Joss Whedon and Bret Matthews are writing, and Will Conrad penciling, a new Serenity comic series. The [snip] series will debut in “probably September or October.” It takes place early in the series, before the movie, so “everyone is still alive.”<

That could be good. Firefly was much stronger as a TV series than a movie. It's biggest appeal was the characters, and character-driven stories are antithetical to Big Action Movies. Comics, however, are well suited to that type of storytelling, since the pacing is very flexible, and the financial pressure to make things big and blockbustery isn't there.

2007-02-25T20:21:00.000-05:00

This week the theme of Movie Night was "Really Bad Movies". I had planned to show Hercules in New York, the first film starring Arnold Schwartzeneger, and Xanadu, a musical starring Olivia Newton John. (Xanadu also has a big element of Greek myth, so it was really a double theme!) However, Herc proved to be as much as we could handle, so we watched Danny Deckchair second.

What can i say? Everything in Hercules in New York is pretty terrible. Yet i can't badmouth it, because it made me laugh harder than anything has in a long time. The scene where Arnold wrestles a guy in a cheap bear suit is the most trancendently goofy thing you'll ever see. I wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone who enjoys a good Bad Movie now and then.

2007-02-25T20:00:00.000-05:00

News from the New York ComiCon

Obviously i didn't go, but i've been reading some of the news online.

DC is going to do a new Captain Carrot & his Amazing Zoo Crew series. This is one i loved as a kid. It was a funny book starring a bunch of "funny animal" style characters (think Looney Toons) that lightly spoofed superhero comics. It's been years since i looked at them (i'm 99% sure the whole run is still in my collection), but i fondly remember them. It was one of the series that i had a subscription to back in the day (1982).

The good news is that the original artist, Scott Shaw! (he always adds the exclamation point), is drawing it. The bad news is...Well, just read this excerpt from Newsarama's story.

>NRAMA: Is the comic going to pick up where that [recent] Teen Titans story left off -- with Little Cheese dead, Alley-Kat-Abra in jail for his murder and the new character American Eagle joining the team?

BM: Well, we don't pick up exactly where that story left off, but we have kept the continuity intact. I was tempted to ignore it though. Scott told me that a lot of fans were outraged at the idea that Alley-Kat-Abra was a murderer. [snip] But I figured if we're updating these characters, why not have stories that deal with contemporary themes like heroes turning bad.

So yes, Alley is still in prison, Little Cheese is still dead, and American Eagle is the newest member of the Zoo Crew. But other developments have occurred that hinder the group's ability to function. President Mallard Fillmore has resigned from office because the press discovered that he bribed Felina Furr (A.K.A. Alley-Kat-Abra) to give up the Zoo Crew's secrets. The new administration is hostile toward capes, so the Zoo Crew is forced to operate more covertly [snip]

There's also a war brewing in the United Species of America between land and sea animals. It's a war of words until a little goldfish girl dies from exposure to toxic waste and amphibian terrorists begin blowing things up.<

WTF?! This is a HUMOR comic! And a fairly silly one, at that! Why would anyone want to put terrorists and all that rot in it? I really hope that this bit of news is some kind of elaborate joke that i just don't get. That is...so...crazy...wrong...i am dumbfounded.

The interview continues.

>NRAMA: Terrorists? This is one intense funny animal comic.

BM: Captain Carrot's world is definitely a darker place than it was in the '80s, but not so dark that we won't be able to have some laughs.

NRAMA: So you would still describe the title as a "humor" comic?

BM: Yes, absolutely, but I hope adult readers won't dismiss it for that reason.<

You hope adult readers won't reject it for being humorous, but you apparently hope adult readers will embrace it for being dark? Well, (if this story is accurate) this adult reader is going to reject it not because it's humorous, but because it's dark. Holy frikkin crap, people--a Captain Carrot book with terrorists!!! Why should i need to explain why that is a bad idea? Could someone please explain to me why DC would think it was a good one? Or why any reader would be turned on by it???

Okay, on to some non-insane news, still from DC.

They claim that 52 will have a definite ending, and not just spill over into their next weekly series. I'm hopeful, but i'll wait for the fat lady to sing on that one.

>Asked about All Star Squadron trades, Bob Wayne seemed to suggest that, based on audience response, they think they can do some large Showcase collections of the material.<

This is one of the other comics to which i had a subscription back in the day. I believe i have all, or nearly all, of the 60 issues in my collection. So, i won't be buying a Showcase collection, but maybe some new folks will read them and see how cool this series was.

>It was then announced by Didio and Simone that Norton will be the regular artist on All-New Atom after signing his exclusive.<

That's awesome. Norton did great work on his recent issues. He has a strong style and can apparently work on a monthly schedule.

Here's a nice bit from a panel on increasing female readership.

>Wendy Pini [writer/artist of the long-running Elfquest series] feels it is really tough to bust the misconception that women shy away from high drama, violence, issues of the day, and confrontation. Women can enjoy that and eat it up. On Elfquest, the worse they put the characters through, the more their female readers seemed to enjoy it. As long as the conflict is meaningful and has a reason for being, women are not just accepting of it, but excited to see how it turns out. "Girls don't just like cotton candy or foo-foo or fluff", as evidenced by the darkness of Sandman that still appeals greatly to women. Audry Taylor chimed in to share that women have the biggest problem with books that show women as doormats, rather than strong female leads.<

More publishers are starting to distribute in electronic format.

>Top Cow VP Filip Sablik revealed that Top Cow is partnering with videogame/entertainment online giant IGN.com to offer online versions of their comic books for full cover price ($2.99). According to Sablik, the issues will be offered online at the same time that they are offered in stores and be in PDF format. Also yesterday, Marvel's Dan Buckley indicated an online initiative is in the plans at the publishing giant as well, although it is apparently not as far along as Top Cow's.<

I question the prudence of charging full price, but i applaud more distribution methods. I've bought some comics in PDF format from DriveThruComics.com, and been happy with them. The comics on that site are usually 1.99 for a standard-length issue. Slave Labor Graphics has been doing this for, oh, a year i guess, and recently launched Eyemelt.com to focus on digital versions of their comics, for as little as 69 cents apiece. There's also PullBoxOnline.com, which is mostly IDW's Devil's Due Publishing's comics, for 99 cents each.

The folks who are really ahead of the curve on digital comic books, though, are FlashBack. Their comics are produced specifically with the digital format in mind. The "pages" are formatted like a computer screen, so you don't need to scroll up or down to read a whole page, as you do with traditional comics ported into PDF or CBR formats. You read a page, hit , and read the next, with each page filling the whole screen. And they're free.

2007-02-16T15:34:00.000-05:00

This post on I Against Comics got me to thinking about the motivations for creating in certain directions. And thinking about that reminds me of a story from my life. Some of us comics fans are unhappy with the level of violence, "grittiness" and angst in modern comics (superhero comics, especially). So we wonder why these elements have become more prevalent, since we don't understand the motivation for putting them in there in the first place, in such large doses. Some folks think that the comic pros include them because that's what they want to see. That may be all or part of it, but i suspect that another motivator is involved, and that motivation is fighting against an assumed negative perception. I'll get into what that assumed negative perception is in a moment, but first i'll tell you that story from my life that helps illustrate why fighting such assumptions is, IMO, pointless and counterproductive.

So, in Junior High, i was a nerd. Pick up your jaws from the floor, folks. It's true; in a big, awkward, embarassing way. For my generation, this was the time that kids became concious of fashion. I understand that now all children are indoctrinated in the ways of couture much earlier, as the brand-conciousness of the fourth graders i tutor testifies. Anyway, I decided to buy some better clothes and make myself a bit less nerdy.

I went out and bought myself a pair of Air Jordans. This was the Old School, red-and-black version; if not the originals, darn close. They were, no doubt about it, very cool shoes. They would, i was sure, garner praise from my classmates. Not so. Instead, what they got me was a new taunt. Rather than being teased about having WalMart shoes, i now had "pretty boy" shoes. You see, being nerdy was bad enough, but being a nerd who tried to transcend his status was pathetic.

The lesson? People who don't like you can't be convinced to like you.

Now, how does this apply to comics, or any creative endeavor? Well, if you're working under the assumption that people look down on your work for element A, you might be tempted to go out of your way to make sure that element A is not in your work. You might even go a bit further and be sure to include element anti-A to drive the point home. While you hope this effort will convince people that your work should be looked up to rather than down on, all you'll end up with is pretty boy shoes.

Here's how i see it working in comics.
It begins with the assumed perception, which is:
- People think that comics are corny and 'just for kids'
Well, we can't have that, so we have to eliminate the stuff that encourages this opinion, so:
- Out with outlandish stories, powers, and such; rewrite your superpowers to be "realistic" and your characters to be more "serious", and make sure all your stories fit neatly into strict continuity
But that's not enough, because people still remember all those old silly things comics did before they got hip, so:
- Go to the opposite extreme. Heroes aren't just serious anymore, they're grim and gritty. They're tortured souls. They cross the line. And the villains! Hey, they mutilate and rape people now, buddy! How's that for corny, ya bastards?!
And that's pretty much where we find the "mainstream" comics industry these days. It's desperately working to prove that it's not corny or silly, or just for kids, so that all those perceived detractors will give in and admit that it's actually cool. And guess what? Comics sell a pathetic fraction of what they did back when they were corny and silly and safe for kids. See personal anecdote above.

So what do you do? Well, there's only one thing that can work in a situation like this. It's tough, and it will never get you universal acceptance and respect, but it gets you more respect than most folks deserve, and peace of mind, and that's honesty. On a personal level, when you're honest about yourself, the people who feel like you do, who share your interests and outlooks, or who simply aren't jerks, can know you, like and respect you. The people who don't sort of fall by the wayside, and don't matter anymore. Similarly, if DC and Marvel would stop worrying so much about proving that they aren't corny, etc. and would be themselves--i.e., use the strengths of the medium and its genres--they might find that more of the people who are attracted to comics would actually buy them.

2007-02-11T19:39:00.000-05:00

What The Hell Con at Guilford College

It was this weekend. I went on Saturday and met some friends there. We mostly played games, which was fun. I got play the Nintendo Wii. That "wii-mote" controller takes some getting used to, but i like it. This girl beat me in the boxing game, twice.

We also played this game called "Horror Mall", which is about trying to survive in a zombie-infested mall. The manual was translated from French, and some of the translation choices were pretty funny. Then we played Puerto Rico, about building colonies in the old colonial times, and it was very cool, too, but they shut down the room before we finished.

We were gonna stay for the Geek Auction, b/c a friend of ours was gonna put himself up for sale, but it turned out he hadn't signed up in time. Too bad, b/c we were gonna heckle the hell out of him.

There was a small dealers' room. Acme Comics had a table in there with quarter books. So i had to buy some, but i did good, only buying four. They were four goods ones, too: Crisis on Infinite Earths #5 (1985); Space Adventures #9 (1978) this one reprints the first appearance of Captain Atom, with art by the great Steve Ditko; and two color reprints of old EC titles, Weird Science-Fantasy #2 & #3.

I also got some comics from the artists' room. Jennie Breeden was there selling the print versions of her webcomic, The Devil's Panties (as her business card says, "It's not Satanic porn, honest!") so i got #8 of that, and #0-3 of Gravy Boy, by locals Marty Blevins and Brian Shearer. Then there was a free one from Lulu.com, with samples from several comics they publish. I'll try to get reviews of all these blogged in the next few days.

All in all it was a fun con. It's small and very casual. It was great having friends plan to meet up there. There are always some folks i at least sort of know at these things, but i don't feel comfortable just glomming onto them. Hopefully we'll all get to go to Stellarcon in High Point next month.

2007-02-08T23:41:00.000-05:00

Equilibrium
Wow this movie was good. It had some things that i personally enjoy in stories: a dystopian future, an evil repressive government against which our hero fights, and some inventive asskickery.

The world was nearly destroyed by the last worldwide war. After such horrible devestation, the remnants of mankind were willing to accept any regime that would prevent war breaking out again. It was determined that man's emotions were the most fundamental cause of all conflict. So a powerful drug was developed to inhibit all emotions. At the cost of love and joy, fear and hatred have been eliminated. Of course not everyone wants to be part of this coldly perfect society, and so the powers that be must seek out and destroy those who resist.

Christian Bale plays John Preston, a sort of special agent, called a "cleric", who hunts down those guilty of "sense-crime". When the clerics find a nest of rebels, a firefight usually erupts. This is where the asskickery comes in. The clerics are trained in the "gun katas", a type of martial art involving guns. By employing this art, one can, statistically, do the most damage to multiple opponents while avoiding being hit oneself. It may sound goofy, but trust me, it's very cool.

The rebels live on the outskirts of civilization, in bombed out buildings where they hoard restricted items like books, music, paintings, even mundane expressions of feeling like colorful lampshades and non-spartan furniture.

Preston's partner is Errol, played by Sean Bean. (Batman and Boromir on the same team!) Errol has stopped taking his meds regularly. He's also started keeping some of the contraband confiscated from raids.

Honestly, if you've read 1984 or Farhenheit 451, and have ever seen an action movie, you can guess where the plot goes from here. The way the movie gets there is very entertaining and satisfying.

I liked the way the writer(s) set up the evil regime. It didn't seem intended to represent any particular party or ruler, but rather the danger inherent in government itself, especially when coupled with a populace so terrified that they will sacrifice anything for supposed safety. It uses religious ideas where necessary--"faith" in the system is the justification used when others won't fly--but treats all emotion as destructive.

There are little hints about its development sprinkled throughout the film. One such bit of exposition I loved was an explanation of how two twentieth century innovations paved the way for its particular brand of tyranny. Emotion-inhibiting drugs provided the technical means to suppress all feeling, while "hate crime" legislation opened the door to criminalizing emotion.

Immediately after watching this, I rewatched several scenes. This is one that I definitely want to own. I highly recommend it.

2007-02-06T21:19:00.000-05:00

Here are some more choice finds from comicspace.com.

The Ghost Robot and the Girl From Space
http://www.comicspace.com/joseg/comics.php?action=gallery&comic_id=62&cl_page=32
This is from the anthology Project Romantic from Ad House. It's sweet, in the romantic sense, and the colors are amazing.

Hawaiian Dick
http://www.comicspace.com/bclaymoore/comics.php?action=read&file_id=8223&cl_page=18
About a private detective in Hawaii in the 50s. Colors ain't bad on this one, either.

Bestiary Alphabet
http://www.comicspace.com/korybing/comics.php?action=gallery&comic_id=1799&cl_page=4
An alphabet of fantastic creatures.

2007-02-01T22:02:00.000-05:00

Comicspace, the "social networking" site for comics fans and pros, has just added a feature by which members can post images of their own comics and art. There is some very cool stuff on there. Here's the link:

http://www.comicspace.com/comlist.php

I recommend just browsing and clicking on anything that looks interesting. There's superheroes, but there's a whole lot more, too. Do non-nerdy people realize how much breadth of variety there is in comics? There's plenty.

I'll point out one story I just read tonight, "Untitled", by Winston Rowntree. The whole short story is here. It starts off as a charming slice-of-life vignette, then has a big turn. The twist is jarring, but it makes sense in the end. It's twelve pages.
http://www.comicspace.com/winstonrowntree/comics.php?action=gallery&comic_id=963

2007-02-01T18:13:00.000-05:00

Go look at the preview pages of these upcoming books from First Second. I really want these. Just check out this one panel from The Professor's Daughter.That's beautiful.

http://www.firstsecondbooks.net/catalog.html

2007-01-26T13:07:00.000-05:00

Weeds
season one, disc one

Weeds is about Nancy, a suburban mom who sells pot. Her husband died suddenly not long before the series begins. She has two sons, one fourteen and the other around ten.

We aren't told what Nancy did before her husband died. I assume she didn't have a job outside the home, or else she'd still be doing it. We also don't know how she hooked up with her suppliers, although a later episode gives us a hint.

About her suppliers. They're a black family: Matron Heylia, her nephew Conrad, and a daughter Vaneeta. From the first episode, these characters bugged me because they're very much stock types, especially the mother. She's all sass and "mm-hmm" and threats to beat people's asses if they don't act right. This series is full of stock character types, but in most cases some individuality is added to them. Not for this family, though. The poor daughter barely gets a line in the six episodes that I saw. She's pregnant, but we don't know anything about the father, when she's due, whether it's a boy or a girl, etc. Conrad gets some development because he has a crush on Nancy, but that's it. It doesn't help that the only black people on the show are ones connected with drugs.

On those other stock types. One of the gags here is that the suburbs, and the people living in them, aren't as squeaky clean as they appear. Is this a revelation to anybody?! This theme has been beaten do death since the 50s, at least. We all know that we're all screwed up, no matter where we live or how we dress. Why some film-makers are still fascinated by this obvious fact is beyond me.

Still, the story of a pretty, fashionable mom dealing dope is rather novel. It's the teen sex, infedelity, snarky housefraus, and secretive homosexuality that are played out. I wish the story had started at an earlier point. It would have been interesting to see how she decided on this course, how she started working with her suppliers, how she built her customer base, etc.

The only character who's really interesting is Shane, Nancy's younger son. He appears to be the most hurt by his father's sudden death. The older son, Silas, doesn't show any signs of grief. But Shane is gets screwier every episode. One moment he's hunting a mountain lion with a BB gun, then he's writing gangsta rap (when he tells his principal not to worry because he's not really going to "cap any muthaf**kas", it provided one of the show's few real laughs), then he's recreating terrorist beheading videos. The kid who plays him is great in the role, too. His giant, unblinking eyes and matter-of-fact delivery of crazy lines is disturbing.

I'm not planning to rent the rest of this show, but I did watch the six half-hour episodes on the first disc. So I'd say it's so-so. Most of the show if done competently enough, but nothing is extraordinary, and it didn't have anything that really grabbed me.

2007-01-22T05:41:00.000-05:00

Chasing Amy
Trivia: This is the 500th disc I've rented through Netflix, since April of 2004.

This is writer/director Kevin Smith's third movie, after Clerks and Mallrats. I'm conflicted about Smith's flicks. On the one hand, he has some major interests that I share, like comics, sci-fi, and slackerhood (more of a lifestyle choice than an interest, i guess). I also really like some of his dialog and humor. On the other hand, I don't share his interest in over-the-top sex jokes, and some of his dialog is too artificial.

I didn't enjoy Chasing Amy much. Part of that may be that I just don't like Ben Affleck, who plays the lead character, Holden, as an actor. But it's mainly two other things. One, it doesn't work as a romance for me. Two, too much of the dialog is labored and fakey.

Here's the gist of the story. Holden and Alyssa are comic book artists, on different comics. They meet at a convention and spend a friendly evening at a bar with other friends. Alyssa is pretty and funny, and Holden falls for her. Well, turns out Alyssa is a lesbian. They can still be friends, though, and they start spending a lot of friendly time together. Holden really falls for her now, and eventually declares his love. Alyssa freaks out, and they have a big argument in the rain. She runs off pissed, but hey, she runs back and kisses him. Turns out she loves him, too. Of course that's not the end of it, as they have plenty of issues to deal with, and a plot twist, but I don't want recap the whole thing.

There are some interesting ideas in there. Why do we love the people we love? The problem is that these ideas are worked out entirely in lengthy declarative statements from the characters. What's more, this dialog sounds like overly sincere livejournal posts, not people talking. The substance of what they're saying is intriguing enough, but if this is how it's going to be said, I'd much rather read it in text than listen to it being read aloud with a little bit of acting thrown in. It never engaged my emotions the way you want a romance to do, maybe because the language center of my brain was taking up all my personal bandwidth to process the dialog.

I wasn't sure how to take some other elements of the movie. Later on, Holden finds out that Alyssa's past was more sexually adventurous than he suspected. We're given this information in a monolog (of course) that's clearly humorous, in an over-the-top gross-out kind of way, but then a few scenes later, it becomes a highly dramatic plot point. This is a hard transition for me to make, to laugh at something because it's so outrageous and unlikely at one moment, and then be distraught over its implications the next.

In comparing this movie to romantic comedies that I've enjoyed (a short list), to try and figure out why parts of this movie didn't work for me, I thought of The Apartment, which starred Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, and was directed by Billy Wilder. How do these relate in my mind? Well, the protagonists of The Apartment are, like those of Chasing Amy, very flawed and atypical as romantic ideals go. MacLaine's character, like Adam's, has an impressive amorous resume. The couple's romance is far from storybook fare. But it all works very well.

Where's the difference? Let me get my reviewer's snarky little insult out of the way first: Compared to Lemmon and MacLaine, Affleck and Adams are like two fourth graders performing in their church's Christmas play. (Imagine I made a similar quip degrading Smith's direction in comparison to Wilder's.)

There are lots of differences in storytelling, too. We aren't told any snickering gross-out stories about MacLaine's past. Instead, we're shown her current bad relationship in a way that both illustrates how unwise she has been and makes us feel sympathy for her at the same time. We know she's good at heart, worthy and of needful of love, not because dialog has told us so, but because we've seen it for ourselves in the progess of the story and the quality of the acting.

You should go out and rent The Apartment. It's a great movie. Or if you know me, come by and we'll watch it, b/c I've got it on DVD.

One last thing about Chasing Amy. I've heard lots of people say that Kevin Smith is a bad director because he doesn't use the camera well. This is something that I didn't notice in his other movies, so I made a point to look out for it in this one. (Normally, I'll notice outstandingly good shots and cinematography, but if it's bad, I guess I subconciously lump it into a movie's generally suckiness.) What I noticed were a lot of single-camera scenes. A scene tends to be shot from only one angle. Both camera and actors often stay in one place for an entire scene. Now, when two or more characters are simply talking to each other (most of this movie), there's no real need to move the camera around, but doing so once in a while would add something.

I also noticed that an awful lot of the locations and sets were drab and boring. If banality is part of the story--like in Clerks, where the plain convenience store worked to set the mood--that's fine, but here it just managed to give the proceedings a pale backdrop.

One thing I dug about the movie was that it featured the work of one of my favorite comics artists, Mike Allred, creator of Madman. When you see the stuff that Affleck's character has drawn, that's actually drawn by Mike Allred. (http://www.aaapop.com/main.php) Allred also has a cameo in the comics convention scene at the beginning. You should read some Madman comics. Or, you can read mine, but they don't leave my house. ;)

2007-01-18T09:52:00.000-05:00

Comments are now enabled. I didn't realize this was set so that only people with blogger.com accounts could comment. So, it's fixed. Comment away!

2007-01-17T13:16:00.000-05:00

Five Short Movie Reviews
Some disks I got from Netflix last week

Die, Monster, Die! / The Dunwich Horror
These flicks came on one double-sided disk. They came from the same production company, and they're both based on short stories by H.P. Lovecraft.

Die, Monster, Die! feels less Lovecraftian of the two. An American goes to Arkham, England (see? in the stories, it's Arkham, Massachusetts; strike one) to hook up with a pretty blond girl he met in college. When he gets to town and asks about her house, peole shun him. They refuse to give him a ride to the house, which is outside town, or even to rent him a bicycle. So much for quaint English hospitality. Well, they're all convinced that the pretty blonde girl's family is crazy and evil, so you can't blame them too much. Instead of asking, "Hey, howcome you folks go all wiggy when I ask about this house?" Mr. American just huffs a bit and walks to the house.

Of course, this girl's family really is crazy and evil. Or at least her dad is. He's got a meteorite that's highly radioactive. It makes plants grow huge, but it also makes people get sick and eventually turn into dust. Mr. American discovers this, rescues the girl, yadda yadda.

I didn't like how they focused on a scientific explanation for the weirdness.

The Dunwich Horror feels more like Lovecraft stories I've read. No meteorites or scientific explanations here. It's all otherworldly elder horrors seeking to wreck their malific vengeance on mankind.

Specifically, it's Al from Quantum Leap who's trying to sacrifice Sandra Dee in a ritual that will bring the Old Ones back to Earth so they can kill everybody. Why Al wants this isn't clear, but you can tell he's crazy from that freakazoid stare he has going on for the entire movie.

Apparently Sandra Dee is a little freaky herself, because she's turned on by Al's unsettling stare. So much so that she lets herself get clumsily manipulated into spending the weekend at Al's old house on the outskirts of Dunwich, MA. Al continues to casually brainwash her over the weekend, to the point that she sort of sleepwalks out to this weird alter setup and politely lies on it to become a vessel for the Old Ones. Why do the sweet girls always fall for the bad boys?

Well, luckily for Sandra, an old professor back at Arkham University gets wise to what's going on. Luckily for mankind, he just happens to know the magic words that will counter Al's evil incantations and block the return of the darned Old Ones. He didn't give any indication before the climactic scene that he knew that stuff, but it turns out he did. You'd think, if he knew that much, he'd be more careful with the unholy Necronomicon and not leave it displayed in the middle of the college library where any old unbalanced occultist can steal it.

Crank
This movie stars that guy from The Transporter. It's not as good as The Transporter.

Mr. Transporter plays an assassin in this one. Some rivals inject him with a drug that will kill him in an hour. So, he calls his sleazy doctor, Dwight Yoakum. Dwight tells him that it's "some Chinese shit" and it really will kill him in an hour unless he keeps his adrenaline way up. Dwight is flying back from overseas, and he'll try to do a blood transfer or something when he gets into town.

So, Mr. Transporter spends the whole movie running around like a madman. He does crazy stunts, he does cocaine, he steals synthetic adrenaline, he has sex with Amy Smart in public, all to keep up his adrenaline and keep the poison at bay.

Here's the problem. All that crazy stuff, one insane thing after another, cut together with highly hectic editing, just wears on you after awhile. It's not fun to watch. It's too much.

Idiocracy
This is Mike Judge's second live action movie. Judge is the guy who brought us Beavis & Butthead, Office Space, and King of the Hill. Idiocracy isn't as good as any of those.

There's potential in there, but it never comes to be. Here's the best illustration of that. In one scene, the narrator of the film describes how the English language has devolved along with every other part of society. He says that it has become a mixture of hillbilly, hip hop, advertising, etc. It's a very evocative description, but we never get to hear people actually speaking that way. What we get instead is more like David Letterman's "Dumb Guy" schtick. People say things like "I like money" and "you sound queer." There could have been some good laughs from mixing together the elements mentioned in the narrator's description, but there aren't.

I can't help thinking that Judge didn't go deep enough into his premise. He just stays at the surface. Everyone is dumb, and sort of zombie-like. It could have been funnier if the dumb people thought they were actually smart, as is the case with so many truly dangerously dumb people. Five hundred years into the future might be a bit too far, too. Obviously a premise like this is designed to comment on today's society, not extrapolate what might really happen in the future. Setting this story a hundred, or even fifty years into the future, where the crassness and stupidity of modern society has simply overwhelmed the better parts, rather than grossly outbreeding them, could have kept the social commentary closer to home.

Insecticidal
I thought this would be a fun B movie with giant bugs. It wasn't. It had some giant bugs, but it wasn't fun. I really only watched about fifteen minutes of it.

2007-01-15T17:27:00.000-05:00

What's up with MILK?! They're charging FOUR DOLLARS for a gallon of milk at Harris Teeter! That's more than GAS! Is Iran holding back their milk production or something? Is the milk cartel jacking up prices? This crap is ridiculous.