Tales to Mildly Astonish

Grandpa Emil

2012-01-14T18:13:00.000-05:00

Several years back, I wrote a piece about my late paternal grandfather, Grandpa Martin, to help a friend deal with the loss of his own grandfather. I may have posted it here, I'm not sure. Anyway, writing it helped me come to terms with Grandpa Martin's death, something I hadn't really done fully, even though it had been a few years. I was seventeen when Grandpa Martin died, and your world's a smaller, more selfish place when you're seventeen. It wasn't until I was able to fully appreciate the man he was that I was able to fully mourn him, if that makes any sense.

Well, now I'm thirty, and my other grandfather, Grandpa Emil, died this morning. And I don't have to wait this time to be mature enough to understand how much I'll miss him.

The one thing that will tell you everything about Grandpa Emil was that his middle name was Joe. Not Joseph, just Joe. I guess his parents could only afford the short version of the name. They were a poor family, even before the Great Depression (Grandpa Emil was born in 1922), and afterwards, they became dirt poor. Unlike many other Oklahomans, though, they never left the state; they stayed there and toughed it out. Being only on the edge of the Dust Bowl helped, certainly. But anyway, the great wilderness of the American Midwest is where he grew up, and in many ways, it's where he spent his entire life.

Grandpa Emil was the epitome of the Great Outdoorsman. As a boy, he helped his older brothers hunt game, often performing the all-important task of reaching into a possum burrow to see if it was occupied. That was one of many great stories he had to tell, and would at many opportunities. (The afternoon he and a friend ate their way through a neighbor's entire pea patch, plant by plant, was another). As an adult, after the war, he went to school on the GI bill, and then worked for the Army Corps of Engineers, overseeing a dam and some state land near Kanopolis, Kansas. This was the perfect job for him, essentially an excuse to hunt, fish, and hang out with hunters and fishermen every day of his adult life. He picked up a permanent suntan then, one he had for my entire life, and probably beyond.

He never lost that love for the outdoors. My grandparents' garage in northeast Arkansas when I was a kid had two things in it that no one else I knew had: a boat and a golf cart. These were Grandpa's main sources of pleasure in his retirement (except for the time my mom crashed the golf cart). When my brother and I would visit (and we did every summer, albeit separately, to save their sanity), you can bet we'd go and do one or both of them. I took to fishing better than to golf, barely. Outdoorsmanship takes patience, something I've never had in abundance, and it must have been trying for him, but he never showed it. And I liked spending time with him all the same.

And he did all the things grandfathers do: took me to movies (always "the show"), bought me toys I didn't need, even taught me gin rummy one afternoon. He loved the silly things I loved, or at least pretended to, would listen to me go on about whatever new thing I was obsessed with, and seemed to live to see me smile. I know his eyes always lit up when he saw me, right to when I saw him for the last time, this past Christmas. He loved Christmas; I think he might have been more excited that time of year then we kids were.

He was a joyous man. He loved a joke or a funny story, and, as I've said, had plenty to tell. Around the dinner table, he'd often pass me a quick look and seem to wink, as if we were sharing a joke. He would comically mispronounce words, or just make some up (like "arriven", as in "we have arriven"). He also had a trick with his hearing aid, where if he didn't really feel like tuning in to the conversation, he'd reach up real quick and turn it down a bit at a time. I imagine this made living with Grandma easier at times. To say nothing of watching televised sports.

I think that maybe, after he got back from the war, he'd seen so much human misery, he wanted to spend as much time being joyful as possible. I know he never talked about the war, except for a handful of stories about Basic Training and one of his classics: The story of Christmas dinner, 1944, which he ate while sitting watch in a ditch on a farm somewhere in Belgium. I suppose it would be impossible to find the place now, but a part of me would like to go there and see it, to walk in his steps for a bit.

It's been difficult, these past few years, watching him get smaller and frailer. He was so big, and so strong, when I was a boy. He was never meant to live his life in an easy chair, or a bed. He would have hated that kind of confinement, and he'll be spared that, at least. But I'm going to miss him. He was my grandpa; he taught me joy and patience and what a wonderful world we live in, and I'm going to miss him. Goodbye, Grandpa. And thank you.

My Favorite Comics of 2011

2011-12-31T15:28:00.002-05:00

I'm eschewing the list, now and for always, because I realized, lying awake one cold and lonely night, that I don't really want to spend time compiling a list, writing, scratching and rewriting names, second-guessing myself and wondering how the selections and omissions reflect on me as a person. God, I'm getting tedium-hives just contemplating it. Want I really want to do is gush about the comics that awesomed me this year.

And comics certainly had plenty of opportunities to do so. I know I said this last year, but it's still true: No matter who you are or what you like, there was a comic this year for you. Marvel and DC both put out some stellar work (although you wouldn't know it if you only followed the big event crossovers, but when has that ever not been true?), in their regular lines and their more niche-focused material. (Although their regular lines are also pretty niche-focused, if you step outside the direct market. But again, we already knew that.) And, obviously, they weren't alone; a full list of companies and creators putting out comics of varying levels of awesome would break the post character limit, assuming blogspot has one. So let's just go ahead and say that anyone who's not Mark Millar or Rob Liefeld did a great job this year on something, even the people who also turned in terrible work on something else that may have gotten more press.

As always, there are great books from the year that I won't be mentioning simply because I haven't read them (yet). I'm only one guy, and I didn't really have what you could call a disposable income until July. That being said, I think the stuff I do have to talk to you about is pretty darn special.

One can't discuss the year in comics without mentioning DC. It would be a great disservice, though, to ignore what they were doing before December while doing so. Secret Six, a perennial favorite, ended just about the only way it could, taking the characters to Hell (with a brief stop-over in Skartaris) before wrapping things up with a balls-out last stand that had me rooting against the heroes for maybe the first time in my life. I'm going to miss Gail Simone's rendition of these characters an awful lot, and while I knew they couldn't stay this way forever (I'm looking at you, Bane), I'd always hoped. I'll also miss James Robinson's Justice League of America, I book I felt continued to get stronger as it went along. A particular highlight of this year was the Superman/Batman Annual, which despite the title was pretty much an extra-sized issue of JLA starring Batman and Supergirl. It's a story about two best friends with their backs against the wall, helping each other (and themselves) out of a tight fix. My god, it even managed to do something good with "Dark Supergirl" (namely, expose it for the adolescent silliness it is and put it out to pasture, hopefully for good). And that final issue was three of the coolest Justice League stories I've ever read, in about six pages.

And yeah, there's the new DC stuff, too. Demon Knights, a book I was originally iffy about, has turned out to be the highlight of the launchboot for me. It's the fantasy-superhero mashup I never knew I wanted. A lot of the book's charm, of course, comes from writer Paul Cornell's blend of action and character. Yeah, it's the opening to every D&D campaign ever, but I'm having so much fun watching Madame Xanadu two-time Jason blood with Etrigan and Vandal Savage hit dinosaurs in the face with other dinosaurs that I don't care. Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE pulls a similar trick with the horror-adventure milieu, although the first arc is lighter on the character and heavier on the action. Jeff Lemire has promised a change-up there, though, to keep the book from getting too formula, and that's good enough to keep me going. Plus, I like what they're doing with Ray Palmer so far. I'm also liking the bizarre Hollywood-Existentialism of Resurrection Man. I wouldn't have picked this up if I hadn't read the One Million issue years ago, but I did, I did, and I'm glad.

And since I discussed DC, I guess I have to go to Marvel. There's no question that my favorite Marvel book this year has been Secret Avengers, specifically Warren Ellis's run. I liked the stuff before that, too (Nick Spencer's issues in particular turned out to be interesting meditations on war, politics, and death), but Ellis's stuff is like Miles Davis walking into the jazz club and showing everybody else how it's done. It's a crash course in the done-in-one adventure story from a master of the form, to the point where you wonder why nobody else is doing it, if it's this damn easy. The construction of each story, is a beautiful exercise in craft, each one unique and separate from the others, but all following the same basic theme ("Run the mission. Don't get seen. Save the world.") and philosophy of writing.Wild sci-fi ideas and whip-smart characterization through action and dialogue are the order of the day, which is SOP for Ellis, really. And the fact that Marvel has paired him up with some of the best artists working today hasn't hurt either.

Meanwhile, X-Factor and Thunderbolts continued to be the other best team books on the shelves, both on the strength of their strong casts and character-driven storytelling. Thunderbolts even managed to use the otherwise-pointless Fear Itself to drive its own plots, once again sending the series off in an unexpected, but most welcome, direction. X-Factor got weirdly mystic, but in a way that works for the book, and the trademark twists just kept on coming, to the point where I have no idea where things are going in 2012, but can't wait to find out. The addition of Leonard Kirk to the art team was also most welcome.

And the hits just keep on coming. Invincible, a book that's often fallen just short of making the top 10 list through no fault of its own, ramped things up with the epic "Viltrumite War" storyline before returning to Earth and turning basically everything on its head. A special thumbs-up goes to the general handling of the hero's better half, Atom Eve, who's proven to be one of the best-written, most three-dimensional female characters in superhero comics. Take note, everyone else: This is how you do it. You can also, if you prefer, do it like Peter David's Fallen Angel: Return of the Son, which also took a great concept and cast of characters and sent them shooting off in another direction entirely (one which, thankfully, David has promised will continue in the new year). RASL, my other favorite creator-owned title, continued to delight with its strange blend of sci-fi and mysticism and frustrate with its sporadic shipping schedule. And hey, didn't Mike Mignola do something awesome with Hellboy? That's what I've heard, but I'll have to wait for spring (and the trade) to confirm.

In the wonderful world of webcomics, everyone and their dog has been praising Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant collection to the ends of the earth. I haven't picked it up yet, but you know what? The strip itself this year has been one of the best things on Earth. Beaton has the most idiosyncratic sense of humor I've seen since Gary Larson (and brother, is that idiosyncratic), but it's always delightful to see her share her strange interests with the world in an illuminating, entertaining, and never-serious manner. Kate Beaton is one of the voices of my generation, God help us all, and we're fortunate beyond words to have her.

And let's not leave out The Amazing Charles Christopher, Order of the Stick, and Weapon Brown, either. I can't think of three more different strips, but I can't think of any three I more look forward to reading, either. Their directions this year have been cases in point of staying the course with style and aplomb. Everything I said about them last year, double it. And I've also got to give a shout-out to Captain SNES for finally returning to a regular publishing schedule, and reminding me why I missed it so much in the first place. With the long-awaited debut of the Final Fantasy III cast, all is forgiven.

I read a lot more comics this year. I liked the vast majority of them to some degree or another, but these are the ones that sustained the flame that's been burning in me ever since my mom brought me a pair of four-color wonderments to make that stay in the hospital less scary damn near twenty-five years ago.

So. What's next?

Quick Capsule Review of Thunderbolts 167 (& An Open Letter to Jeff Parker)

2011-12-28T19:49:00.003-05:00

I don't think reframing the Ripper murders as "The women were man-hating monsters who had to die" was the way to go.

Happy Birthday, Mark Twain!

2011-11-30T19:01:00.001-05:00

So Google tells me (through a wonderful drawing that you should really check out) that the official teller of tales for these great United States (if you believe Neil Gaiman, anyway, and why shouldn't you?) is 176 years old today. I'd bake him a cake, but he went out with the comet a while back, so it'd be kind of pointless. (Also, I can't bake a cake.)

Ernest Hemingway said once that Huckleberry Finn is the greatest American novel, and he may still be right. It's certainly one of my favorites; the scene where Huck decides he'd rather go to Hell than see Jim sent back to a life of slavery had a profound effect on me. Since then, I've gone through many of Twain's other works (but not all; I need to pick up The Innocents Abroad one of these days), and he's never failed to delight. Like all great authors, he had a keen awareness of human nature, and like all great humorists, he had an even keener awareness of human failings. Minds like his come along only once in a century (the 20th century's was Kurt Vonnegut), and America is richer for having had him.

One of my favorite quotes of his, incidentally, is "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who does not read them." With that in mind, I exhort my readers to give themselves an advantage and read one of his books at the nearest opportunity. It will be an experience well worth the having.

99% of Punks Harass 1% of Superheroes

2011-11-01T08:25:00.002-04:00

Occupy Yancy Street.

Read A Peter David Short Story For Free

2011-10-31T21:50:00.001-04:00

A few months ago, Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine ran a story by one of my favorite authors, Peter David. It's called "Bronsky's Dates With Death," and it is, in a paraphrasing of David's own words, about an old Jewish man who staves off the Reaper by distracting him with his endless droning about the subject. That's the plot, anyway; the meat of the story is about death and the different ways people deal with it, in the abstract and the concrete. It's also about putting up with your family's crap, which might as well have been the third of Ben Franklin's absolutes.

Anyway, the website Suvudu has a .pdf of the story available, for free, here. It's all above board, done by association with the magazine, so you won't have to worry about DMCA lawyers kicking down your door. And the low, low price of "Free" literally cannot be beat.

So check it out, and if you like it, consider heading on over to Crazy 8 Press and giving a look at David's latest novel, "The Camelot Papers," the untold true story of King Arthur's rise to power (and related events). It's not free, but there is a free preview, so you can try before you buy. It's also nothing like "Bronsky," but it is a heckuva good read.

What are you still doing here? Go!

You're Just Saying That

2011-10-14T12:19:00.002-04:00

Okay, so there’s one thought about the LaunchBoot ™ that I haven’t seen anyone else saying. Or, rather, the reaction to the Launchboot ™. Or rather, the reaction to the reaction. (Still with me? Good.)

In case you’ve walled yourself up in your house and deliberately ignored every bit of DC news for the past month and a half (not a bad idea, all considered), then you’ve probably heard about the controversy surrounding the first issues of Catwoman and Red Hood & the Outlaws, and the treatment of women therein. For the record, I found the first ridiculous, and the second repulsive, but that’s beside the point. Like I said, it’s the reaction to the reaction that’s given my brain a kick-start.

So. Laura Hudson spoke out about this loud and long, as she well should. Responses to her post, and to the controversy in general, have ranged all over the map, from “I agree completely” to “I didn’t really see them as sexist, and here’s why” to “one’s sexist, but the other isn’t, and here’s why” to “typical American, you hate the sex, but not the violence” to “you’re a prude” to “you’re a man-hating feminazi” to “you’re a meany-poopy-head” and all points in between. The usual Internet fare, in other words. My own agreement with those various responses varies on a scale from 10 to “You’re an idiot,” but I can at least understand responders’ state of mind. I can, like Chesterton’s Father Brown, “see myself as the murderer,” and understand what leads someone to think that way and say those words.

But one type of response completely baffles me, and it always has, whenever I’ve encountered it (and I’ve encountered it a lot). In the recent ado, I’ve seen it expressed several different ways, but they all boil down to “You’re just saying that to cut DC down.” Hudson and ComicsAlliance in particular have been accused of hating DC and wanting to destroy it (and Dan Didio) by any means necessary, to the point of engaging in a prolonged campaign of false sexism charges.

This make so little sense to me that I have to invent a new fraction, beyond 1/infinity, to express it. Aside from the obvious violation against Occam’s Razor, I don’t see how a person can twist reality around to such a dismissive thought process and stay sane. It begins with an assumption that denies the truest thing I know about human nature: That the belief a person is expressing is not one that they, or anyone, could legitimately hold to.

Folks, I have observed a lot of human behavior, on and off the Internet, and if there’s one thing I am convinced of down to my bones, it’s that human beings can and will believe any damn thing they want to. I never assume someone is being insincere about their beliefs, because I have seen the human mind at work and play, and there are no limits on where it can go, logic and facts be damned. And I’m not even talking about conspiracy theories; I’m talking about tiny, everyday shit ordinary people think up without even noticing it. Stuff so small it doesn’t even count as superstition. Example: Ever press an elevator button that was already lit? Now you know what I mean.

But back to comics. I’m the kind of guy who gets into a lot of arguments, so, as I said, I’ve seen this one a lot. I don’t remember the first time I ever heard it, but I do remember one of the last. Against my better judgment, I’d followed a friend’s link to a discussion on CBR’s Spider-Man board about the best Spider-Man story of the last decade. The field had been narrowed to two candidates: J. Michael Stracynski and John Romita, Jr.’s “Doomed Affairs,” and Mark Waid and Marcos Martin’s “Unscheduled Stop.” Both good stories, both worthy of the title; my preference lies with “Doomed Affairs,” just because JMS did something I’d never seen in a Spider-Man comic before. The discussion was a robust back-and-forth between both sides, which is to be expected. But what I didn’t expect was that, as the conversation went on, the “Unscheduled Stop” platform increasingly rested, not on the considerable merits of the story itself, but on accusing the “Doomed Affairs” camp of being partisans for the Spider-Marriage who were voting for a pre-One More Day story out of post-Brand New Day spite.

Yes, obviously I’m not an impartial observer. But you can go look for yourself; I’m not misrepresenting the arguments one whit. I had it tossed at me, and I didn’t bring up OMD or BND once. I had to sit down and walk people through how I could honestly like one story better than the other, because they couldn’t believe it for themselves.

I suppose I’m not surprised that it came up, since it’s become the go-to strawman for any criticism of post-BND Spider-Man comics. Nor am I surprised at the board’s moderator being one of the prime offenders; that’s a whole different entry entirely. But I still don’t understand the leap. The human mind may be able to believe anything, but that doesn’t mean I always understand how it arrives at that belief. This kind of intellectual solipsism takes a degree of rhetorical blindness that I just cannot fathom.

Getting back to the general, what always strikes me first is how rude an argument it is. It takes a lot of gall to dismiss someone else’s opinion so entirely that you cast it out of their mind as well as your own. Until we get a real-world Professor X, another person’s thoughts are undiscovered country, and absent obvious signs of psychosis or deception, I think we have to take people at their word when it comes to what’s going on inside their own heads. Just disagreeing with someone isn’t sufficient to conclude that they don’t really believe what they’re saying.

But people do it anyway, and with depressing frequency. If I sit and think hard about it, I see it as an effect of the rising tide of fanaticism in our society. Not that the people levying the “you’re just saying that ‘cause etc.” are fanatics; they may be, but that’s not what I mean. I mean that fanatics have become so prevalent in our society, and fanaticism has so pervaded our conversations about every damn thing, that it’s becoming second nature to assume fanaticism on the part of anyone who disagrees with you. After all, they’ve got plenty of company.

All of which is another argument against fanaticism in all its forms. It’s a vicious, outwardly-directed form of narcissism, and it does no good to anyone. It’s bad enough that fanatics poison any discussion they enter, perpetuating revolting memes and sacrificing the original topic on the altar of their self-serving nonsense; now they’re doing it to discussions they aren’t even in. Nobody can hear anybody else speak over the din of accusations, and conversation, real exchange and consideration of ideas, withers and dies. People talking without speaking; people hearing without listening. That’s how civilizations commit suicide.

But hey, maybe I’m just saying all this because I hate Dan Didio.

Busy, Busy, Busy

2011-10-12T20:54:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed I've been posting even less frequently than usual. That's because I've been doing shit. Aside from the new job (yay for , I've been working hard on Township and my other long-term writing project (which I'll announce when I'm damn good and ready). Got a new computer, for way cheaper than I thought I'd end up paying (thanks, Lynne!). Plus I played my way through Final Fantasy V Advance over the course of the summer. Saving the universe is hard work, dammit.

I don't really have any thoughts about the DC LaunchBoot (TM) that haven't been said elsewhere by other people. Although I am happy they're doing a trade of the old Resurrection Man series, since the new one has tickled my fancy.

New York Comic Con this weekend. That should be fun, and I plan to take pictures. Hopefully they'll be of something interesting.

I turn thirty in exactly one month. That should be thrilling and terrifying.

A Good Day To Die Hard

2011-10-12T20:29:00.002-04:00

That is seriously the title of the fifth Die Hard movie. And let me tell you right now, Hollywood: If Bruce Willis isn't fighting Klingons this time, don't even bother trying to sell me a ticket.

LiveBlogging Irene

2011-08-27T19:55:00.009-04:00

7:47 PM Saturday: So there's this big storm coming, you may have heard about it. Living in more-or-less-central Astoria, I'm in safe territory (i.e., not an evacuation zone), but rain and winds are still expected, eventually. So I figured, what the hey, might as well drive the traffic on this blog back up to 2006 levels for a bit.

I've been making basic preparations, a bit at a time, since Thursday. Non-perishable food is stocked, water is in bottles, the AC is out of the window, that sort of thing. My roommate taped the windows in the living room, kitchen, and bathroom, but I left mine untaped; it doesn't really do much, the experts say. He hasn't actually closed them yet, though; I'm hoping he remembers to sometime before midnight. We're on the sixth floor, so flooding damage is a bit unlikely, and the windows are our most vulnerable point. (My comics and books are all well away from the window in my bedroom, save for the ones in the Strand bag, and I don't care about those by definition.)

It's raining, but so far not any more than the average summer storm. We're not supposed to get the full brunt of this thing until sometime around midnight, though.

I'll probably update on a more-or-less hourly basis, until I go to bed or the power goes out. In the meantime, let's enjoy each other's company.

8:50 PM Saturday: Not much weather change. The guy next door actually has his cats out in the hallway, as he does sometimes. They seem copacetic.

Apparently there's a tornado watch in effect for NYC now. That certainly takes me back; growing up in Oklahoma, I went through a lot of those. I mainly remember being annoyed at the announcements cutting into whatever TV show I was watching. Watches rarely developed into anything; it was the warnings that were serious, as they meant that, if they were in my area, there was a good chance a tornado would touch down somewhere. So we'd bring the dog in, get away from the windows (easier said than done in that house, especially after we added the sunroom), and keep an ear out for the sirens. No dog here, but I am taking as reasonable precautions as I can about the windows. I surreptitiously closed the bathroom and kitchen windows, but the roommate is keeping the living room ones open so far. If he still has them up by ten or so, I'll just go in and do it myself, and fuck what he thinks.

Meanwhile, I've finally cracked open my audio book of World War Z. I figure, what better time? Hopefully the power will last long enough for me to finish it.

9:37 PM Saturday: Just had a false alarm. My computer (an old workhorse laptop) suddenly warned me about going to battery power, and I thought the power had died. Except the lights were still on, so that can't be it. Turns out the adapter cord fell out of the jack.

10:02 PM Saturday: No complaints when I closed the window just now. Poked my head out into the hall to hear the rain on the skylight, since I can't really hear much from my room (and not just because I've got my headphones in). It sounds like it did on our sunroom in Oklahoma. My mom used to love sitting out there listening to the sound. I thought she was crazy; it drove me to distraction if I was just sitting in the kitchen. Anyway, it's picking up a bit. Winds aren't audible.

10:57 PM Saturday: Okay, now I know why he didn't complain when I closed the window; he just went and re-opened the fucking thing. Some people can't be helped.

Meanwhile, Mark Hamill is totally the high point of the World War Z audio book so far.

12:00 AM Sunday: No real weather change yet. It's just about time for the bulk of the storm to arrive, though. I'm actually going to go to bed in a bit. Hopefully, I'll wake up with electricity, but I'm not counting on it.

10:38 AM Sunday: Well, Irene hit us about two hours ago, and I apparently slept right through it. Things seem OK in my neck of the woods; we haven't lost power, all my windows are intact, and there doesn't seem to be any flooding out on the streets. Folks closer to the water haven't fared so well, of course, so I consider myself fortunate. Winds are still pretty gusty, but nothing I haven't experienced walking to the bus stop in Oklahoma. High tide is apparently in a little bit, but we're not close enough for it to matter, I think. Barring any bizarre happenings (always a possibility in this town), I think the storm's pretty much over for me.

Congratulations, Jeff and Jillian!

2011-08-20T09:44:00.000-04:00

Jeff, one of my best friends, tied the knot yesterday with his girlfriend Jillian. They're both awesome people, and I wish them all the best.

Congratulations, guys.

For the Three Or So People Who Care...

2011-08-15T18:15:00.002-04:00

I'm having serious second thoughts about picking up the Blue Beetle relaunch.

Told You So

2011-08-11T18:19:00.000-04:00

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/11/marvel-comics-confirms-fantastic-four-600-in-november-with-five-people-in-it/

Just sayin'.

Good On My Adopted Home State

2011-06-25T10:48:00.000-04:00

So I woke up this morning to find that the gay marriage bill passed the State Senate.

This is great news, and I can't think of better timing for it (this being Pride weekend and all).

The Inevitable "What I'm Buying From DC In September" Post

2011-06-21T15:17:00.000-04:00

It's come to my attention that, as someone who blogs about comics, I'm required by federal law to post about which DC comics I'll be buying once they do their whole launchboot thing in September. So here's that list.

What you may find interesting is that, while I won't be getting the same titles I am now, the actual number of DC titles on my monthly list won't change at all.

At the moment, I'm reading Secret Six, Birds of Prey, and Justice League of America. (That's right; I'm the one.) Six is ending, Birds is morphing into a book I have no interest in, and while the character lineup on Justice League looks all right so far, the combination of Geoff Johns on writing and Jim Lee on art is like a big fat "Do Not Touch" sign right on the cover. That leaves 49 books out of the magical 52, and of those, a scant three have piqued my interest. Since any further delay would be purely masturbatory, here they are:

Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE by Jeff Lemire and Alberto Ponticelli:
Frankenstein was my favorite series out of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers project, and I've been waiting ever since for DC to give it a shot as an ongoing. Granted, this is neither Morrison nor Doug Mahnke, but sources I trust have nothing but good things to say about Jeff Lemire. He seems to be good with weird, and that's the key to making this book work as well as the original miniseries. All I really ask is bizarre adventures roughly in the same vein as "Uglyhead" and "The Water," and I think this team can deliver that.

Resurrection Man by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Fernando Dagnino
I've read exactly one issue of the '90s RM series, the one that was included in the DC One Million trade, but that one issue was so chock full of amazing ideas that it's stuck with me ever since. The series has been on my back issue to-buy list ever since, but with one thing or another, I've never gotten around to it. And now we have this, which offers me a chance to get in on the ground floor of Mitch Shelley's continuing adventures. Abnett and Lanning have wowed me before, especially with their Marvel Cosmic stuff last decade, so I feel confident that this title will please as well.

Blue Beetle by Tony Bedard, Ig Guara, and Ruy Jose
Jaime Reyes's first try at an ongoing series was a bright beacon among the mostly dreary and dull DC Universe of the '00s, and its cancellation made me a very sad panda. DC haven't given up on the character, though, keeping him going in Booster Gold backups and the Justice League: Generation Lost miniseries. None of that, though, was putting him in a book I particularly wanted to read. This, though, sounds like a return to everything I enjoyed about the last series. Bedard is a smart writer who's good at taking existing characters and moving them forward without resorting to "scorched earth" tactics with the status quo, and for a book whose status quo got it right the first time, that's just what's needed.

By now, some of you are staring agog at your screens in shock at the fact that I won't be picking up Grant Morrison's Action Comics. Here's the deal with that: I've been buying his Batman run in hardcover format, and those collections look pretty darn nifty on my bookshelf. So nifty, that the only thing that would make them niftier would be a similar run of Superman hardcovers next to them. So that explains that.

An Open Letter To God

2011-06-08T10:29:00.002-04:00

Whatever I did to piss you off this badly, I'm really, really sorry.

Does anyone else...

2011-05-13T21:00:00.000-04:00

Like to pretend that the Marvel movies and The West Wing take place in the same universe, because Clark Gregg plays a federal agent in both?

It's Banned Books Week

2011-04-12T17:53:00.000-04:00

And once again, the ALA has compiled its list of the most challenged books in libraries across America. This year's winner is perennial favorite "And Tango Makes Three," because God hates gay penguins.

Thumb your nose at fascists and read a challenged or banned book today. Because no matter how much they may want to, they can't control what you think.

I Just Realized

2011-03-30T16:08:00.000-04:00

Okay, so Flash Thompson is the new Venom. Except, in an earlier storyline, he got his legs blown off in Iraq. So the suit gives him legs, but only when he's wearing it.

In other words, Venom is now Annex.

How Very Odd

2011-03-29T22:00:00.000-04:00

Tonight I sat down and read Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night, which I picked up off of one of those wonderful used book tables you see on the street in New York. About halfway through, there's a bit where the protagonist, Howard Campbell, receives letters of support from various American Neo-Nazis after a popular white supremacist rag reports him living in destitute conditions. The odd part, and it's probably only odd to me, is that one of the letters is stated to have come from my hometown:

A man in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, asked me why I didn't get out of Jew York and come live in God's country.

It's not odd to me that someone living in Bartlesville would think that, in 1961 or now. Nothing human beings think surprises me anymore, really. But it is odd that I, a former Bartian (that's really what they call themselves) living in New York City, should find such a sentence in a book written twenty years before I was born. Especially a book that, for all its half-century of existence, is still so relevant to life in America today.

So it goes...

Book No One Cares About Released Without Ending

2011-02-25T20:00:00.001-05:00

I swear, the things you humans come up with.

If you take in any sort of media at all, then you're probably aware that there's a Twilighted-up film version of Little Red Riding Hood coming out, starring Amanda "Why the hell am I a star again?" Seyfried, and directed by Catherine Hardwicke (perpetrator of the first Twilight film). I caught the trailer in front of Harry Potter and Half the Seventh Book, and had myself a good laugh. Aside from making a note to view highlights from the inevitable Rifftrax on Youtube once they're posted, I hadn't given it much thought since.

Then I read this on Bleeding Cool. For the link-impaired among you, the novelization of the film omits the ending, instead including a link that will go live once the film is released.

A number of jokes and observations come to mind (chief among them why the film has a novelization in the first place, since it seems tailor-made for people who couldn't handle the cerebral rigors of reading the Twilight books), but mostly I'm wondering if the thankless author (whose name doesn't appear on the cover, and I can't say as I blame her) was even given the last pages of the script to work with, or if they left her hanging too. Given how far Marvel's gone in recent times to keep their own films' details secret during the novelization process (the Iron Man 2 novelization was written entirely on-site at the Marvel offices), it wouldn't surprise me.

Which leads me to an axiom that, if it isn't in Roger Ebert's Little Movie Glossary, ought to be: The more pre-release hype there is surrounding a film's twist ending, the lamer that ending will be. (Call it Shyamalan's First Law.)

A Quote

2011-02-16T16:51:00.000-05:00

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- Jon Rogers

(And for the record, LotR changed this bookish ten-year-old's life.)

Happy Screw Lonely People Day!

2011-02-14T11:22:00.000-05:00

To paraphrase Charlie Brown: I know no one wants to go out with me; why must we have a Valentine's Day to emphasize it?

This Ought To Be Relevant To Your Interests

2011-01-31T20:13:00.001-05:00

According to the April solicits, DC is coming out with a hardcover version of one of my 10 Favorite Comics of 2001-2010, Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth:

PLANETARY/BATMAN DELUXE EDITION HC
Written by WARREN ELLIS
Art and cover by JOHN CASSADAY
Planetary, the archaeologists of the unknown, cross paths with Batman on the trail of a killer in this new, Deluxe Edition hardcover.
When Planetary — Jakita Wagner, Elijah Snow and the Drummer — travel to Gotham City, they mean business. Wagner, Snow and the Drummer track an amoral killer to Gotham City, prepared for battle.
What they aren’t prepared for is the Dark Knight! Of course, Batman doesn’t exist on the same Earth as Planetary, which means the killer has worked in some very strange ways! Now the killer’s reality-distorting technology is pulling, twisting and shifting the heroes through untold versions of Gotham City – and Batman!
This new hardcover also features Warren Ellis’s script for this story.
On sale JUNE 1 • 96 pg, FC, 7.0625” x 10.875”, $22.99 US

Pricey, but it's worth it.

To Everyone Miffed Off About The FF Relaunch

2011-01-22T16:20:00.002-05:00

587 + 12 is 599.

Just sayin'.

Happy Anniversary, Mom & Dad

2011-01-18T18:29:00.002-05:00

42 years. Sorry about the last 29 of 'em.

10 Favorite Comics For the Decade 2001-2010

2011-01-04T23:15:00.004-05:00

If humanity survives the 21^st century, then the years 2001-2010 will be remembered as a watershed period for comics. I don't have exact figures, but if we were drunk together in a bar, I would totally bet you that the past decade saw more comics produced than any other in history. Hell, even I made one in 2003 (no, you will never see it. Because it's terrible, that's why). But it wasn't just quantity; a whole lot of those comics were good. Damn good, in fact. Some of them were brand new, nothing we'd ever seen before and created by fresh and exciting new talents. Others were renaissance periods for venerable franchises, or favorite creators rising to greater heights than ever before. A few of them were even sprawling, grandiose events where Nothing Would Ever Be The Same. All of them, however, were good enough to make us forget about all the crappy comics that were released alongside them. And there were so many of them, it was a real chore whittling them down to just ten. But it's a psychologically satisfying number, and the fact is, writing 500-1000 words about all the comics I loved over the past ten years would probably take another ten years. And I kind of have this life thing I want to get through. So, here we go: ten comics from the last ten years that filled me with the biggest levels of squee. Honorable mentions number in the jillions, so if a comic you loved isn't on this list, then just imagine it was at number eleven.

As for why I'm doing this for the years 2001-2010, as opposed to 2000-2009? Because I'm right and everyone else is wrong, that's why.

All-Star Superman

It borders on a creative crime that DC Comics seems unable to figure out what to do with Superman. These past couple of years especially, the company seems to have gone out of its way to make the character as un-super as possible. New Krypton was all about Superman not saving anyone, and now Grounded seems to be more of the same. It smacks of incompetence, but maybe they're just trying to make Grant Morrison's work look that much better in comparison. He's done the big blue lug off and on over the years, but All-Star Superman represents the mad, bald Scotsman's defining statement on the character. Together with Frank “I can draw anything” Quitely, Morrison spins twelve practically perfect issues that cover the length and breadth of the Superman mythos, distilling the hero, his supporting cast, and his villains to their essences, and reminding us why we (as in, humanity) fell in love with the character in the first place. That alone would be enough, but the individual stories themselves develop into a grand epic of Superman's Last Days, the great challenges he faces and overcomes, his final sacrifice, and his triumph over death itself. (Why yes, there is some Christ analogy going on here, although Morrison draws on the numerous other death-and-rebirth stories from pre-Christian religion as well). And yet, the amazing, superhuman moments are also incredibly human. Superman answers the Chronosphinx's riddle with a simple, heartfelt admission of his love for Lois, defies time itself to share one last moment with his father, saves a suicidal teenager with the simple declaration, “You're much stronger than you think you are.” Morrison gets it in a fundamental way that much of modern DC seems to miss, but that only makes his work shine brighter, as a beacon of hope to an audience trapped in a cynical, post-modern world not of their making, and starved for a simple reassurance that good can triumph over evil, and that everything really will be all right.

Amazing Spider-Man – The J. Michael Stracynski/John Romita, Jr. Run

You have no idea how much I needed this comic ten years ago. Part of it was that I was younger, and a lot more of my emotional well-being was tied up in whether or not Spider-Man was a good comic. And then there was the material that immediately preceded this run, which would depress anybody. But more, I was a different kind of reader, one who worried too much about the status quo, who was too enamored of comfort, unwilling to follow a writer into whatever blind alley he wanted to take me down. I knew what I wanted, and I was convinced I didn't need anything else. One issue into J. Michael Stracynski's run on Amazing Spider-Man, that reader started to die. JMS wasn't afraid to challenge my conceptions, or Spider-Man's, if it led to a better understanding of the character. People piss and moan about the mysticism inherent in JMS's overplot, but they miss the point. They ignore the forest for the trees. The point of the story was not to change Spider-Man's origin; if you're paying attention, you'll see that Ezekiel's interpretation of events is never treated as anything other than that: an interpretation. And it's one Peter never fully buys into himself, either. Which one of them is right isn't even the point; as it turns out, the important part of Peter's character, of Spider-Man, has nothing to do with where his powers came from, but what he does with them. Over and over again in the run, the story turns on what Peter will choose to do. Hide from Morlun and let him kill others, or confront him and risk death himself? Remain safe and comfortable in Limbo, or re-live all the triumph and tragedy of his lifetime in order to return to the present and stop Dormammu? Continue living under the fallacy that either his responsibility as Spider-Man or his happiness as Peter must go unfulfilled, or break that cycle and refuse to accept any solution other than the preservation of both? In short, do what is easy, or what is right? It's an old theme, but a good one: The choices we make define who we are, not the trappings of our circumstances. It's the center of Peter Parker's character, and that JMS was able to recognize it, and to highlight it in such a novel and enlightening way, that makes his run so special. And John Romita, Jr's art didn't hurt, either. Nor did a host of entertaining new villains and smart subplots, including the Spider-Man story I never knew I was missing, “The Conversation,” which redefined Aunt May and Peter's relationship in ways that opened up all-new avenues for May's character. This run ruined me for other Spider-Man comics; after having my horizons so broadened, I couldn't go back to the Spidey I knew before, and when I was given the opportunity, I didn't want to. It was a tough break, but I don't regret it. Spidey and I are both still going about our lives; maybe they'll intersect one day, maybe they won't. I'm OK with it either way. But I'm glad I had this run to enjoy. JMS's stories continued after Romita left, with mixed success, but the high point, the keystone, is this story. It contains all you will ever need to know about Peter Parker, and why he is a hero. It is a landmark accomplishment in the now-going-on-50-year history of a timeless character. Yes, even the 9/11 issue.

Astro City

To think there was a time when I wasn't sure we'd ever see this series again. Thankfully, that was not the case. Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson's seminal, humanist superhero series may have taken its time in returning to shelves (and in coming out), but it takes time to age a fine spirit, and this is one of comics' finest. The big story this decade was, of course, The Dark Age, and it deserves the spot. Sprawling but never overstretched, running the gamut from cosmic, earth-threatening action to small, human fragments of time, the decade-spanning saga of the Williams brothers contained all it promised (including the long-awaited final fate of the Silver Agent), but also surprised us by being, at its heart, a personal tale of revenge and redemption, and of two estranged brothers re-cementing their relationship and deciding what kind of people they want to be. But The Dark Age is only one part of the splendid Astro City mosaic we were treated to. There was Local Heroes, the down-to-earth miniseries featuring the book's trademark “little people” stories, including one memorable re-examination of the beloved Weisinger-era Superman stories. And, in between the releases of the four Dark Age volumes, we got a series of wonderful character specials, spotlighting Samaritan, Beautie, Astra Furst, and the Silver Agent himself (along with iGod, the Sensational Character Find of 2010). The Samaritan special, in particular, is a wonderful piece of legend, and Beautie's tale is a heartwrenching story of friendship, identity and soul-searching. That's always been the strength of Astro City, Busiek and Anderson's ability to make even the most fantastical characters into real people with a line of dialogue and a subtle expression. Their work this past ten years has continued to refine itself, re-defining perfection with each new issue. The new decade promises another crack at an ongoing series, which I hope we'll see soon, and a possible movie. Whatever's next, though, Astro City as we've known it the past ten years is a comic for the ages, and a jewel in the splendiferous crown of creator-owned work that's made the past decade such a joy.

JLA/Avengers

Or Avengers/JLA, if you prefer. It was a crossover 20 years in the offing, every fanboy's dream since he could form the words “wouldn't it be cool if...”, the crowning achievement in the legendary career of George Perez, and 192 pages of distilled awesome, mostly in the form of punching. Everyhing I could possibly have wanted in a JLA/Avengers crossover happened in this series: Thor hitting Superman in the face with Mjolnir, Hawkeye and Green Arrow challenging each other to an archery contest, Captain Marvel teaming up with Captain Marvel, a gratuitous Squadron Supreme reference... it's like Kurt Busiek strip-mined my brain (which would explain a lot of things). It was the standard superhero team-up (meet, fight, kick the bad guy's ass), but on the grandest scale possible, with everything on the line and everyone answering the call. And it didn't need any “shocking” rapes or deaths to accomplish a feeling of grandeur and import, either, just heroes standing firm against an implacable threat and triumphing against all odds by virtue of their virtue. I return to this comic again and again, always delighted, always enthralled, always grateful for the experience. I don't even care if they do a sequel, now or in a distant, hazy future where Marvel & DC's top execs aren't taking childish potshots at one another over the Internet. It's the greatest possible JLA/Avengers story, in and of itself. What more could we nerds have asked for?

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Ignore the movie. Hell, burn the movie. It's got nothing to do with Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's wonderful mega-mashup of human fiction. Like most of Moore's work, League functions on many levels. On the simplest level, it's a gleeful little Wold Newton exercise, a love letter to thousands of afternoons whiled away in the magical lands of popular entertainment, with delightfully oddball (but still eminently logical) takes on some of the most beloved characters in existence (as well as some you may never have heard of, but will soon think of as old friends). On another, it's an argument on behalf of the human imagination, and the limitless potential it possesses, while also castigating those who would try to usurp its power for nefarious ends (this is a major theme in the Black Casebook). On yet another, it's a peculiar, kind of shamanic ritual, drawing on the spirits of the 19^th and 20^th centuries in an attempt to give birth to the 21^st. However you look at it, though, it's also nothing less than the best its creators can throw at us, full of energy and craft, cleverness and style, big thoughts and little jokes, hours upon hours of material to laugh, cry, gasp, and scream at on a rainy afternoon, or late at night under the covers, when more sensible people are asleep. And the story's not over yet; there's at least two more League adventures coming, and I for one can't wait to see where it all ends up.

Nextwave

Demented. I wanted to start this write-up with a list of adjectives, but that one said it all; others would be redundant. I could go on, explain about the terrorist corporation posing as an anti-terrorist task force testing Unusal Weapons of Mass Destruction on an unsuspecting (but kinda deserving) American populace, the group of duped C-list superheroes who join this Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort and then defect when they discover the truth, the Kirby-created android superhero who's rewired his robot brain to run on beer, the implication that every lame “Captain [Something]” hero in Marvel history were all one belligerent drunk, the omniscient and omnipotent Celestials making the “loser” sign on their foreheads, Mindless Ones doing the dance routine from “West Side Story,” the MODOK baby, the gleeful deconstructive exploitation of everything you ever loved about the Marvel Universe, the constant and depraved violence, the absolute refusal to take itself seriously for even a picosecond... “Demented” says it all. Well, it and “Warren Ellis's idea for the greatest Saturday morning cartoon ever, illustrated by Stuart Immonen, and apologized for by no one.” Seriously, you just read that sentence. What are you still doing here? Why are you not reading Nextwave right now? After all, they are in your room, touching your stuff.

Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth

You wouldn't think that the perfect Batman comic would be a crossover with a genre-bending deconstructionist series written by a filthy-minded Brit, but you'd be wrong. The premise is pretty simple; since the Planetary crew exist on an alternate earth, the story sends them careening through several different realities, Hypertime-style, encountering different versions of Batman as they chase down a perp. Using Elijah and company as our point of view, Warren Ellis shows us Batman from the perspective of an outsider, and sums up the heart of the character while paying tribute to his many incarnations. (Bat-Female Villain Repellent, anyone?) There's something here for every dyed-in-the-wool Batman fan, but also for the reader who's never encountered Batman before (but progressed far enough in his rehabilitation from being raised by wolves to read and understand English). I know I sang this song with Superman already, but a lot of people get Batman wrong in a fundamental way these days. He's not about revenge; he's about justice. It's not the same friendly, primary-colored justice as Superman, but it is justice. Batman, more than anything else, wants to stop what happened to him from happening to anyone else. There's an important element of compassion there, as well as an acknowledgment that his trauma has left him an incomplete person, that gets lost. It's not lost here, is all I can say. I'm kissing the story's ass pretty hard, so I should add that it definitely wouldn't have as much impact without John Cassaday's art. He had to have so much fun doing this, whether it was in homaging the styles of so many different artists, designing so many cityscapes, or drawing the fight scene between Batman and Jakita Wagner. (So awesome.) “Widescreen” is far too reductionist and movie-ish a word to properly describe his unique and incredible style, but until we invent something better, it'll have to do. (Get on that, OED.) The closing pages of this comic are what seals the deal, though; it's the perfect turn, the perfect climax, that makes this what may be the perfect Batman story. It's certainly the best one I've read this decade.

Runaways

The little comic that could. For six years, anyway, which is (sadly) a darn good accomplishment in the modern comics market. Comics starring teen heroes are always a crapshoot when it comes to authenticity, probably because most comics writers are thirty-something and up. Brian K. Vaughan managed it, though, creating (eventually) eight teen characters who act and feel like teens, even the one from another planet. Being not too far away from that period myself when the book debuted, I was thrilled to see what looked like my voice, or a reasonable approximation of it, in print. Of course, my parents aren't secretly supervillains who control all crime within the city of Los Angeles and practice human sacrifice, but that's little picture stuff. (By the way, if I'm wrong about that, then great cover, Mom and Dad.) All the kids (especially Molly Hayes, the sensational character find of 2003) are real enough to be authentic, but also exaggerated enough to belong in the wild-and-wacky Marvel Universe. And since that means tons of angst, then these kids fit right in. The series isn't afraid to be young, or to let its protagonists be young; while their attitudes and actions may at times seem uncomplicated to the older, wiser reader, they're honestly so, and enhance that authenticity I talked about. It's got energy, too, especially when co-creator Adrian Alphona is on the art duties. Watching his style evolve over the years was one of the finest pleasures I've had as a comics reader. Possibly one of the finest additions to Marveldom since Stan Lee hung up his typewriter, Runaways is an incredible comic, bursting with ideas and strong characterization. Plus, it's got a freaking telepathic dinosaur from the future. Beat that with a stick. I miss this comic so much.

Seven Soldiers of Victory

It's exceedingly rare anymore that “event” comic books actually have the sense of grandeur that such a thing ought. Happily, that's not the case here. Grant Morrison, aided and abetted by several of the industry's then-up-and-comingest up-and-comers, conceived and executed a tale that's truly epic in scope while also being about the very human people (and re-animated corpses) it stars. There's everything a Big Comic Story ought to have, from a dastardly alien invasion, to seven heroes chosen by destiny to stop it, to flying horses and giant spiders and lots and lots of punching. Lots of punching. But it's also got clever twists, such as the seven heroes never actually uniting, instead combating the threat from their own diverse perspectives (kinda like the blind men and the elephant), and some heavy existentialist, meta-fictional window dressing that elevates the story to a commentary on superheroic epics even as it becomes a quintessential example of one. It is, in a way, everything for everyone; if Douglas Wolk is to be believed, it's even a blueprint for self-actualization, along the lines of Eastern mysticism and chakras and stuff like that. I don't know about that, but each character does end up in a very different place, physically and emotionally, from where they started out, and each journey is genuinely entertaining to watch. And they commit acts of genuine heroism, even the supposedly selfish or a-humanist ones, like Klarion and Frankenstein. There are wheels turning within wheels as well, as elements from each character's mini-series weave in and out to form the overall tapestry. It's a work that rewards re-reading, both because new information and associations are revealed each time, and because it has so many moments of gosh-darn-wow awesomeness. And the art is superb; each artist is perfectly fitted to each series (with some unfortunate hiccups in Mr. Miracle, but it all works out in the end), and J.H. Williams wraps things up perfectly in the final issue by unifying all of the disparate styles into a bright, shining collage of hyper-heroism, and throws in a big fat Kirby homage to boot. Seven Soldiers is a bigger-than-life smorgasbord of all the things you like about superhero comics, wrapped in transcendentalist philosophy and flavored with 21^st century post-ironic awesome. It's also the only event comic you ever need to read for the rest of your life. In fact, that's your homework. When “Age of X” and “Fear Itself” and “Flashpoint” and “Power Girl Takes Off Her Costume Really Slowly” start up, each time a new issue is released, pull out your Seven Soldiers trades and read one installment of this story instead. Don't have Seven Soldiers trades? Get them. You have your orders.

Superman: Secret Identity

I want to be mad at Brian Cronin for sniping me by doing a write-up of this the other day, but how can I fault the man for good taste? I'll be honest, I didn't expect much from this series when I heard about it; the premise, of a “real-world” kid named Clark Kent who suddenly develops superpowers, seemed too cutesy to me. (No, I didn't know about the old “Superboy Prime” stuff at that point.) Shows what I know, because after everybody and his brother told me what an amazing comic it was, I picked up the whole series at a con, and whaddayaknow, this is indeed an amazing comic. More soft science fiction than straight superheroics, the story follows Clark from adolescence to adulthood to middle and old age, as he copes with his powers, with the world's reaction to them, and with the thousands of little triumphs and defeats that make up an ordinary life (including his inevitable love affair with a woman named Lois). That Stuart Immonen could draw both this and Nextwave in the same decade just goes to show how versatile an artist he is. The story is a very human one (as we ought to expect from Kurt Busiek), and Immonen makes the characters very human in response. (This has the side effect of making one particular scene in issue 2 incredibly horrific, but it's supposed to be, so good on him.) I don't know if I can properly call it a Superman story, when all is done, but it is a very good story, and one that ends up being properly superheroic, as Clark, in the end, strives to do the best he can with what he's been given. Word on the street is that Busiek is working on a thematic sequel called Batman: Creature of the Night, with art by John Paul Leon, so I suspect I'll be writing about that ten years from now.

The first new comic day of the next decade is tomorrow. I can't wait.

10 Favorite Comics For 2010

2010-12-27T15:53:00.003-05:00

After a hiatus last year because, quite frankly, I couldn't be arsed to put it together, my supposedly-annual recognition of the comics that gave me the most warm fuzzies over the past year returns!

As always, this isn't even an attempt at a “10 Best” list. I'm nowhere near qualified to make that judgment. I am, however, fully qualified to judge comics on the basis of whether I read and liked them, which is what I'm doing. So let's get on with that.

The Abominable Charles Christopher

I can offer no higher praise to Karl Kerschl than to say that he makes me want to step up my own game. When I first encountered his work in the delightful Flash strip he did for 2009's Wednesday Comics, I was immediately impressed by how he raised the creative stakes for the entire project, his energy bursting from the page. So when I heard he had a webcomic (Thanks, CSBG's Kelly Thompson!), I knew I had to check it out. And I'm glad I did, as it's quickly become a highlight of my week. The strip is an ensemble number, following the adventures and misadventures of the eponymous Charles (a Yeti-like creature) and the various critters who live in the forest he protects. Kerschl manages tone very well, transitioning effortlessly from the eco-parable A-plot to the tragic backstory of Vivol and Moon Bear to the very silly, and very human, activities of the woodland animals. These little stories (there are at least a dozen) add up to a rich and well-defined world, populated with recognizable personalities and illustrated gorgeously by Kerschl's well-practiced pen. With so many webcomics all but interchangeable, it's a true joy to experience one that could only have come from the fertile and idiosyncratic mind of its creator. Now, if only it updated more than once a week...

Astro City

Speaking of comics that come out all too infrequently, Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson's super-humanist comic had a banner year in 2010, didn't it? The epic saga “The Dark Age” finally concluded, and, as we suspected all along, it was as much about the personal journeys of the brothers, Charles and Royal Williams, as it was about the greater transformations that superhero comics, and even America itself, underwent in the 1970s and '80s. The story comes to a logical, but still exciting and action-packed, conclusion, all the while maintaining the richness and depth of the world Busiek and Anderson have been building since 1995. Each character is truly living his or her own story, even if we only get to see part of it, and that only makes me want to see those stories all the more. As if this achievement weren't enough, the two-part Silver Agent series served as an elegant coda, counting backward in time on the Agent's last mission, even as the Agent himself reflected on his life and choices. A great many comics spend a lot of time and effort telling us that everything in their fictional universes is connected, but few (all right, none) of them show it to us in a way that makes us feel that our world, too, is a rich tapestry that we can only dimly comprehend, a story that we'll never know the beginning or the ending to, but are a part of nonetheless. The end of the Wildstorm imprint has put Astro City in a holding pattern yet again, but we're assured that more is coming, and I for one can't wait to see what streets we go walking down next.

Atlas

Atlas, we hardly knew ye. Well, we knew ye relatively well, I guess; ye've been running in some form or other since 2006, but we haven't half-plumbed the depths of awesome within ye. It's sad that a series so simple and good can't catch the attention of the modern Marvel audience, even with the all-but-compulsory tie-ins to the latest excuse-to-drape-a-banner-on-our-covers “event” storyline, but you know what? It's the modern Marvel audience's loss. Always energetic, always moving forward, and never ashamed to be itself, Atlas drove white-hot needles of awesome into the nerd centers of my brain. Jeff Parker's writing only gets better with age, and the book finally found the artist it had always been looking for in Gabriel Hardman, whose off-kilter style matched the book's tone perfectly. Seeing the characters (including new addition 3-D Man, formerly the Avenger Triathlon) take the next step in their story was a treasure, even if it also turned out to be, for now, their final bow.

The Brave & the Bold

I may stand alone on this, but screw it; I've been the only right person in the room before. It's not surprising that this comic flew under most people's radars this year, since I think there are maybe eight of us picking it up regularly. Scheduling problems didn't help, either, but when it did come out, it was a real treat. The book's greatest strength, especially under J. Michael Straczynski (sp?), has been its ability to be more than one thing from month to month, and that was certainly the case this year. Many of the team-ups might have looked strange on paper, but Straczynski (sp?) always managed to delve into the characters, find unexpected connections, and exploit them in unexpected ways. Who knew that all you needed to make Aquaman awesome was a liberal amount of H.P. Lovecraft? Of course, not all of the team-ups were head-scratchers; surely the Inferior Five and the Legion of Substitute Heroes were made for each other. The art was almost better than this title deserves, featuring such standouts of the current generation as Jesus Saiz and Bernard Chang. There's something wrong about not-ready-for-prime-time players doing the work on Batman and Superman while these guys get assigned to the C-list books, but if it means they're drawing stories I'm actually interested in reading, then I guess I can't complain. With JMS's withdrawal from monthly comics, the book's future in 2011 is uncertain, and probably non-existent. That's a shame; I really do think the world both deserved and needed those Adam Strange/Lois Lane and Lex Luthor/Swamp Thing stories. And sorry, people who think Barbara Gordon is real and your friend, but the Batgirl/Wonder Woman/Zatanna issue was one of the best comics published this year. Period.

The Incredible Hercules/Prince of Power/Chaos War

It's not a cheat, folks; I'm quite confident that, if Marvel hadn't thought it could make much more money by saddling the climax of Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente's dual bildungsroman, starring the world's smartest teenager and oldest frat boy, with marketing banners and gratuitous ancillary minis, this all would have been issues 140-151 of Incredible Hercules. Lord knows I'm treating it as all one series in my longboxes, and since this is my list, my opinion is the only one that matters. So, why is this comic on the list? For maintaining the level of quality it's shown since the first issue (which was 112; compulsive indexers must hate everyone involved). iHerc has always been about the collision of ancient myth and modern sensibilities, enough so that it became this year's actual plot, as Amadeus Cho rose to become the Prince of Power for the modern, techno-cerebral age. Not that Herc was left with nothing to do; he, too, gained a new appreciation of himself and his role in the world as he rose to true godhood, gaining the one heroic trait he always lacked (wisdom) without sacrificing any of the others (strength, courage, the rest of the SHAZAM package). Bit players like Delphine Gorgon, Hebe, Ares, and Athena all found room to grow and surprise us as well, and the lesser-known Marvel pantheons (like, for instance, the Pantheon) came down out of the attic to share the spotlight. All of it's come to a head in the Chaos War storyline (which, to be blunt, doesn't seem to need or want to be a tentpole “event”; everything essential is in the main book), where, as in all good mega-melodrama, the characters are at each others' throats, the sound effects are bombastic, no one and nothing is what we thought it was, and the stakes are nothing less than the universe itself. And while the story has never stopped being a balls-to-the-wall superhero action piece, it's also found room to be, quite unexpectedly, a quiet but firm affirmation of the best of the human condition. You know: a superhero comic.

Secret Avengers

It was, appropriately enough, the post-Siege Avengers title we knew the least about. But, as Brian Cronin's guesses about the team lineup were proven more and more correct (and what the hell is that about?), I grew more and more interested in this superhero/covert ops piece. Ed Brubaker is, of course, right at home in this milieu, having turned Captain America into a cool, high-octane super-spy piece. As you might expect, Steve Rogers has taken the spotlight so far here as well, but Brubaker is also doing strong character work with Ant-Man, Beast, and Valkyrie, among others. And you can't complain about it not being “Avengers-y” enough, with the team fighting elder things on Mars in the first arc and the kung fu furies of [name redacted for copyright reasons] in the second, and a rogue Nick Fury LMD set up as an ongoing antagonist (not an original idea, but I'm of the opinion that you can never have too many rogue Nick Fury LMDs). Brubaker is solidly adding to the Marvel Universe instead of just reshuffling the already-existing players; the Shadow Council definitely has me intrigued, and I'm looking forward to learning more of what they're about. Meanwhile, Mike Deodato is hitting it out of the park on the art, his crisp style thankfully avoiding some of the celebrity likeness-itis that troubled his runs on Thunderbolts and Dark Avengers, while still delivering the goods on the book's numerous action pieces. If Marvel's goal was to produce an Avengers title for every taste, they've definitely succeeded as far as I'm concerned.

Secret Six

People complain, and often rightly, about how violent and depraved certain DC comics have gotten. It's a matter of tone and subject matter, and the clashing of the two. A book like Secret Six, though, that's about some of the more broken personalities in DC's pantheon of super-criminals, can pull violent depravity off in a way that, say, the Justice League can't. Some of that has to do with its adherence to the old storytelling belief that horrible things are most horrible in the imagination of the audience. The worst things the characters do often take place off-panel, and the really worst ones take place inside their minds, where they make the bad choices that somehow endear them to us. But enough philosophy; the strength of Secret Six has always lain in the broken personalities of its protagonists, and that's what was on showcase this year. Catman took the center stage in the book's most engaging storyline, crossing lines that don't necessarily mean a lot to us, the readers (his teammates have perpetrated worse, in terms of numbers and of viciousness), but mean a lot to him, as they broke through a lot of the illusions he'd built up about himself. Oddly enough, it's Black Alice who has found herself cast as the team's conscience, particularly when the team split in two, and (of course) each version went gunning for the other. And it's nice to see Amanda Waller back in action and carving herself a powerful position in the series; it can't last, but it promises a lot of exciting stories in the new year. We miss Nicola Scott, naturally, but Jim Calafiore has stepped up from the fill-in position admirably, and I've always liked him, anyway. Really, the only problem I have with this book is that too many other DC comics are too like it. It ought to be a stark contrast to the tone and direction to the rest of the line, like its stars ought to be for the heroes. But it fits well against the DC Universe I picture in my mind, where Superman and Green Arrow don't act like this, but their enemies do, and are damned interesting for it.

Thunderbolts

Speaking of dark, I was never very fond of the “evil people being evil and loving it” turn this book took in the post-Civil War period, so you can imagine my happiness when Marvel announced that the book would be getting back to its rehabilitative roots. Of course, the interim period hasn't been ignored, nor should it be; Jeff Parker's new “supercriminal work-release program” direction works like a “good parts version” of the past two years, blended with some of the cautious optimism of the book's early period. Kev Walker's art also toes the line, keeping a gritty feel while still evoking a larger-than-life sense from the incredible events taking place. The cast is a combination of old favorites (Songbird, Moonstone, Fixer, and MACH-V), newcomers who make sense (Luke Cage, Ghost, Juggernaut), and a few out-there ideas (Man-Thing, Crossbones). I'll admit I was wary about Crossbones, but his path ended up exactly what it should have been, so I can't really complain. The book's history of surprises is maintained as well, and while one of them was a cheap fake-out and beneath the talents involved, the others have had promising ramifications. The new year promises more of the same, and that's fine with me. But could we have the old logo back now, please?

X-Factor

People who know me well shouldn't be surprised that my favorite X-Book is the one that's least like an X-Book. The insidious tentacles of the greatest granfalloon in comics are all but absent here. Oh, the book's packed full of mutants, but it manages to treat them like characters in their own right, instead of cogs in a franchise. That's largely due to the always character-focused writing of Peter David, but also to the lack of mutant “mythology” running rampant over the plotting. That element was re-emphasized this year, as the mutant-staffed detective agency (“team” has never really applied to this group) moved back to New York City and became the Marvel Universe's go-to troubleshooters for figuring out weird happenings. The Invisible Woman vanished, Hela needed someone to hunt down Pip the Troll, and so on. Even the tangential tie-in to this year's obligatory X-crossover, Second Coming, focused more on the group reuniting after being cast around to three different parts of the globe. (The three running plots, by the way, were juggled with both skill and style.) The art has also taken a bit of a return to the book's semi-noir roots, courtesy of Bing Cansino, Valentine de Landro and Emanuela Lupacchino. One thing that hasn't changed is the aforementioned character-focused writing, which has managed to make even a '90s nincompoop like Shatterstar compelling and human. X-Factor is a simple book, but it's never claimed to be anything else, and when simplicity is done with this much skill and style, well, that's a darn good thing.

Weapon Brown

No, really. I wouldn't have expected it either, but Jason Yungbluth's irreverent, Mad Max-style poke at the funny pages is a hoot and a half, and one of the highlights of my comics-reading week. For those of you who came in late, it's about a cyberneticly-enhanced warrior named “Chuck” traveling through a post-apocalyptic wasteland with his faithful dog “Snoop” and fighting off attacks from the totalitarian “Syndicate” that hunts him relentlessly. If all of this sounds silly, that's because it is, but Yungbluth, tongue planted in cheek, barrels straight through the silliness to come out the other side of awesome. Strip aficionados like me will find a smorgasbord of references in every installment, especially once Chuck hooks up with an underground resistance movement headed up by the afro-ed anarchist “Hughey” and red-headed orphan “Anne.” Action scenes are plentiful and exciting, and there's actually a plot running through the strip as well, as Snoop undergoes emergency surgery, Chuck's cynicism clashes with Anne's idealism and Hughey's radicalism, and the Syndicate prepares an all-out assault on the resistance's compound, led by their newest weapon, Cal-V1N. The pastiche characters are oddly faithful to their originals (even that leather-clad dominatrix, Mary Worth), and the dialogue sings in the same artfully cheesy manner of the best B-movies. If you like explosions and kill shots, if you want to actually laugh at the funny pages again, or if you've always wondered where Shmoo *really* comes from, then you owe it to yourself to give Weapon Brown a read. Just don't call up the December 1^st strip at work.

Top 10 of the decade coming soon.

An Open Letter To Scarlett Johansson

2010-12-15T09:27:00.000-05:00

If you need to talk, or just to cry, I'm here.

Free Advice For Marvel Studios

2010-12-14T23:18:00.000-05:00

Don't let your movies get as hopelessly bogged down in self-indulgent continuity nonsense as the comics have.

In Which I Embarrass My Friend

2010-11-14T00:03:00.000-05:00

As some of you may know, I had a birthday yesterday (the 12th). Today (the 13th), I met my friend Jeff and his girlfriend Jillian down in the Village for dinner (vegetarian) and a movie (Red). Jeff also, quite unexpectedly, presented me with a very thoughtful and wonderful gift: A limited edition copy of Donald Duck: 50 Years of Gentle Frustration. Produced in 1984 and long out-of-print (you can't even find it on the Internet no more), it comes with something incredibly valuable to an old duck-hound like me: A letter and bookplate, both bearing the signature of the inimitable "Good Duck Artist" himself, Carl Barks, along with animator Jack Hannah and voice artist Clarence "Ducky" Nash.

I am honored and humbled to receive such a gift from such a friend. Thanks, Jeff.

I Don't Think I've Ever Actually Done This Publically

2010-10-11T15:34:00.000-04:00

Today's Comic Critics reminded me of something I learned about the Clone Saga a few years back, when I had the chance to chat with one of the people in Spidey editorial at the time: It wasn't supposed to go on for two years, originally. Replacing Peter with Ben certainly wasn't the plan when they started. The idea was to do it for a couple months, and then move on. Unfortunately, right about the time the story started, the bottom dropped out of the direct market. The Spidey titles, however, got a sales boost from the added attention surrounding the clone story, and so the directive came from the higher-ups to keep it going, for God's sake, so we don't get fired.

Well, they all eventually got fired anyway, and a wrong-headed attempt to "fix" the marriage (which, as we all know, never broke anything in the first place) got mixed in, and here we are twenty-five years later, still cursing the name of Bob Harras for some reason. What gets left out, though, is that the reason it all spiraled down into Hell the way it did was because, at least to start, it sold like gangbusters. At least part of the blame lies with the readers who, like me, kept spending their money on it, even as it got worse and worse, week after week.

So, mea culpa. I'll try not to do it again.

An Open Letter To Joe Quesada

2010-08-30T08:21:00.002-04:00

Stop. For the love of God, just stop.

You All Need To Be Following "The Line It Is Drawn" Over At CSBG

2010-08-24T20:19:00.000-04:00

It's some stupendous stuff. For the five people who need an explanation, weekly superhero mash-ups suggested by fans, drawn by semi-professionals. The guys Brian Cronin has lined up are really knocking it out of the park. This week was "superheroes and Saturday morning cartoons," and the results... Well, just see for yourself.

I'll never look at Captain America or Captain Caveman the same way again.

Attention, Everyone In The World

2010-08-02T20:12:00.002-04:00

The accent mark (`) and the apostrophe (') are not interchangeable.

Thank you.

A Pair of Famous Newlyweds

2010-08-01T16:04:00.001-04:00

I guess pretty much everyone in the free world knows about the big wedding going on this weekend. While I'm not personally acquainted with the happy couple, I've followed the young lady with some interest over the years (and I'm also a big fan of her father's), and I wish her and her beau every happiness in the shared life to come.

What, did you think I was talking about someone else?

Gaiman v. McFarlane II: This Time It's For Money

2010-07-31T03:29:00.001-04:00

(I'm quoting "The Simpsons" there, don't get any ideas.)

CBR poster howyadoin linked me to this: a play-by-play account of the latest hearing the dispute between Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman over characters created for Spawn #9, written by fearless Comics Buyer's Guide editrix-in-chief Maggie Thompson, who apparently has the kind of free time to spend a day sitting in a courtroom in Madison, Wisconsin.

The issue of Gaiman's co-ownership of the copyrights to Angela, Medieval Spawn, and Cogliostro was settled back in 2002; what's at issue here is whether certain other characters introduced later are derivative of those characters. In this context, "derivative" means something like "the same Talking Malibu Stacy doll, but with a new hat." And it's all coming up now because McFarlane's company is finally emerging from bankruptcy, and now has to see about paying its creditors, of whom Gaiman is one. If the characters are sufficiently derivative, then a share of their profits must be included in the sum McFarlane owes Gaiman (who, by the way, apparently intends to donate it all to charity).

For me, the most interesting thing is seeing Gaiman's responses on cross-examination. He's thinking like a writer the whole time -- and yes, in my grand egotistic tradition, I do equate that with "thinking like me" -- giving responses that show he's thinking about what the words of the question mean (sometimes more than the defense attorney, which gave me a few billion chuckles), and going from there. For example, when asked if "a knight in armor [character]" would have armor, he responds, quite sensibly, "If he's a knight in armor, he would definitely have armor. If he didn't have armor, he would be a knight not in armor." The attorney probably wanted to kill him. I know my mom gets pissed when I pull that shit on her.

Furthermore, as someone with a small amount of legal experience (and I can't stress "small" enough; to call it an iota would demean iotas), and as a collaborative creative professional, I can't help but be fascinated by the precedents this could set. Right now, Kirby's heirs are looking to revert their share of the copyrights to, well, just about every Silver Age Marvel character. Like the Siegel/Superman case, the most likely ending is a settlement, but in the meantime, they just might have a stake in, not just the Hulk for example, but Hulk 2099. Or Red Hulk. Not a copyright stake, certainly, since Jack never touched those characters, but a royalty stake, via the "derivative characters" argument. So expect any settlement talks to dwell quite a bit on an agreed definition of "derivative," and an agreed percentage of profits from "derivative" characters.

Smarter people than I will work it out, thankfully. In fact, one of them already has worked out part of it; the Gaiman/McFarlane matter, at least, was ruled upon just yesterday. The short version is, Gaiman won. The long version is, read the .pdf.

As for me, I'm going to give this newfangled "sleep" thing a try. I hear all the kids are doing it.

A True Confession No One Cares About

2010-07-28T19:42:00.002-04:00

Before Garfield Minus Garfield got popular, there was another guy doing edits of the strip who would just take out Garfield's thought balloons, so you just had Jon talking to his cat.

I preferred those.

Science!

2010-07-18T16:37:00.001-04:00

Because we can, that's why!

Edit: After posting this, I came to learn that the picture is from an Australian horror/comedy film called Black Sheep, and not meant to be indicative of any actual sheep used in this or any other study. But my heavens, it certainly is effective punctuation, isn't it?

And Now, Unflattering Analogy Theatre

2010-07-12T22:22:00.000-04:00

Hark, a vagrant is like xkcd, except by someone with talent.

An Open Letter To British Petroleum

2010-06-27T19:49:00.002-04:00

Stop running environmentalists trying to save the lives of marine animals out of your oil burning fields.

As Waylon Smithers once said, this crosses the line from ordinary villainy into cartoonish supervillainy. Knock it off.

An Open Letter To Jim Butcher

2010-06-17T01:15:00.001-04:00

You just love torturing us, don't you?

Thought About Eighties Cartoons and My Generation

2010-06-14T01:18:00.000-04:00

We may have watched them, but at least we didn't make them.

On the Final Page of the Serenity: Float Out One-Shot

2010-06-03T20:20:00.003-04:00

That is exactly how I would have started Firefly: Season 2.

Well, that and one other thing.

More Stuff About Dead Superheroes

2010-05-20T22:58:00.001-04:00

Not from me, though. I'm actually going to eat some crow here and link to an excellent piece from Blog@Newsarama. I know, my world feels all Rand McNally too.

Anyway, I'm linking largely because I want as many people as possible to see the following quote, which is the most hilarious thing I've read since the last hilarious thing I read:

Now there’s nothing all that shocking about a super-character getting killed off at the beginning of a new story or series, particularly at DC. It’s happened so often throughout the course of the last decade that, as I’ve mentioned here and elsewhere before, I’ve begun to suspect the process is some sort of profane pagan ritual, in which DC staffers offer the imaginary blood of fictional characters to an extra-dimensional deity they believe in and worship, in exchange for its blessings in the form of monthly sales in excess of 40,000 units a month.

People Ask Me Why I Don't Have A Facebook Account

2010-05-17T20:29:00.002-04:00

This is why.

Idle Thought About Superhero Deaths

2010-05-17T07:11:00.000-04:00

If superheroes are going to die (and I think that horse is well and truly out of the corral by now), they ought to die saving the lives of innocents. Not, y'know, brutally murdered by teams of assassins hired by an archenemy, or as collateral damage in a conflict between two all-but-unrelated groups of superbeings, or after being turned into living weapons by alien invaders posing as their ex-husbands, or anything else where their death doesn't really serve any purpose other than to boost sales or "show we mean business," whatever that means.

Just a thought.

I Will Never, For The Life Of Me...

2010-05-12T14:29:00.002-04:00

Understand the amount of fanboy butthurt directed at The Sentry.

I'll also never understand a single thing Brian Bendis did with him, but that's another topic.

RIP, Frank Frazetta

2010-05-10T15:46:00.000-04:00

Several sources, including CBR, are reporting that fantasy illustration legend Frank Frazetta has passed at the age of 82.

As a fan of sword-and-sorcery fiction (Township fits pretty well into that category, now that I think of it), I owe a great debt of entertainment and inspiration to Mr. Frazetta. And then there's thirteen-year-old me, who owes his illustrations a quite different debt altogether. So it's a sad day for me in a number of ways.

We can, however, take comfort in the fact that, as long as barbarians wrestle lions bare-handed, as long as dark riders loom menacingly from atop their midnight-black stallions, as long as swordswomen wear impractically revealing chain-mail into battle, the spirit of Frank Frazetta will still be with us.

Rest in peace, Frank. Thanks for the memories.

"Mr. Rogers" Has A Whole New Connotation

2010-05-04T14:50:00.000-04:00

Hugo Weaving is the Red Skull.

Pardon me while I dissolve into a puddle of nerd glee.

The Most Awesome Free Comic Book Day 2010 Store?

2010-05-02T16:19:00.001-04:00

The one where Spider-Man, a bunch of Jedi Knights, and The Flash stopped a comic book thief.

IT SOUNDS like a crazy comic book splot: Spider-man foils a robbery as Jedi knights block the would-be thief's escape and the Flash watches on.

This was just what happened on Saturday morning when a business owner dressed as Spider-man stopped a man from stealing a comic book worth $160.

Read all about it here.

Tomorrow Is Free Comic Book Day

2010-04-30T15:17:00.000-04:00

I will be out and about at some of New York's finest comic stores, sampling the wares and being my usual dashing self.

I'm particularly looking forward to the Mouse Guard/Fraggle Rock flip book, Image's Fractured Fables, the usual Bongo Comics anthology book, the reprint of The Tick #1, and, as always, the Atomic Robo and Owly books.

For more information about what comics are available and for participating comic stores near you, see the FCBD website. Have a happy Free Comic Book Day, because being miserable on a day as awesome as this would be just weak.

And Now, A Special Review of X-Force 26 by Awesome-O 4000

2010-04-28T14:28:00.001-04:00

"Weak. Lame."

Make Money, Be On TV By Being Your Pathetic Nerd Self

2010-04-21T13:15:00.001-04:00

Pal Justin D. posted the following over on CBR, and I felt it incumbent upon me to share it here:

COMIC BOOK COLLECTORS & ENTHUSIASTS FOR TV SHOW!

Comer & Gallucio Casting is seeking comic book collectors and enthusiasts for an upcoming episode of the TV show "Bored to Death". This is for background work at a comic book convention scene.

This is a paid position - rate TBD
***

-SEEKING: Males & females, ages 18+, and must be legal to work in the US.

-SHOOT DATES/LOCATION: End of May (no specific dates yet but will probably be within the last week). Shooting in NYC.

-CONTACT: Please email the following info to BOREDTODEATH2010@GMAIL.COM: Full name, phone number, and 2 current & clear snapshot photos (no professional shots). One should be of your face and the other should show your body. If you have costumes that you wear to conventions, please include photo of yourself in this costume, as you might be used with it on the show.

If you're the sort of person with the time and hygiene acumen to be able to do this, it sounds like fun.

Stay Classy, Zatanna

2010-04-15T19:51:00.000-04:00

In the back of this week's issue of Secret Six, there's a preview of the upcoming, soon-to-be-canceled Zatanna series. (Seriously. This thing has no chance. This market is actively hostile to female-led superhero books. Wonder Woman sells around the same level as The Outsiders and Booster Gold. Power Girl is one of DC's worst-selling titles, and it's actually good. DC's solution, of course, is to fire Palmiotti and Connor and bring in Judd Winick and some guy no one's ever heard of. But I digress.)

Now, the art isn't colored, so I could be wrong, but it looks an awful lot like Zatanna has, as part of her stage act, a guy dressed up like Dr. Light.

Really, DC? Really, Paul Dini?

Really?

Chris Sims, You Have The Ability To Inspire Great Envy

2010-04-08T20:15:00.002-04:00

Blackest Night in 60 seconds.

Holy Crap

2010-04-04T21:36:00.001-04:00

Captain Britain & MI13's final arc, "Vampire State," has been nominated for a Hugo.

It's up against Fables and Neil Gaiman's Batman 2-parter, so it probably won't win, but wow. Way to go, Cornell, Kirk, et al. And suck on it, Marvel, for canceling such a great book.

There Ought To Be A Word

2010-03-30T11:54:00.000-04:00

That describes the act of pretension to epicureanism in one's tastes, the self-aggrandizing assumption and attitude that one only partakes of the finest things in life, and in only the most cultured and refined way. When, in fact, one is just as much a plebian as the rest of us.

"Hipster" doesn't cover it, because that's a pretension to disaffected coolness, not taste. Hipsters often pride themselves on having no taste whatsoever, good or bad. I'm talking about the pretension to not just good, but the best, taste.

March Madness

2010-03-21T18:11:00.000-04:00

For bonus fun, imagine that title being spoken in the John K. Ren voice, with reverb.

Anyway, it's as appropriate a title as any for how the novel has gone this month.

Based on some advice I found while googling stuff about manuscript formatting, I switched from a daily time goal to a daily word goal. My trusty, self-defeating brain was using the taking of such a chunk of time out of my day to formulate excuses not to write. Of course, once I switched to the word goal, same brain started calculating the time it would take to do X amount of words, but that's life with OCD.

Even with all that, I've lost about a week's worth of writing, all-told. To add to the fun, it may turn out that this book will be longer than I anticipated by 10,000-15,000 words. So I'm holding as close as I can to my goal of completion in March, while facing the possibility that it won't, or can't, happen.

Still, there's a feeling I get when I write, and it's going well, that I've so far been unable to replicate anywhere else in my life. It's a good feeling. I want more of it. As Kermit said, I think it's what I'm supposed to be.

Some Days

2010-03-20T23:58:00.000-04:00

I really have no idea what I'm doing.

And Hooray For Babies, Too!

2010-03-18T18:24:00.001-04:00

My good friend Whitney gave birth to her second child on Tuesday.

Welcome to the world, kiddo. Don't worry, eventually people stop talking to you in that ridiculous tone of voice.

Hooray, Wedded Bliss!

2010-03-18T14:36:00.001-04:00

In the past two weeks, two couples of my acquaintance have made that big step towards becoming unrelatable and dramatically inert.

So congratulations to Brian, Mer, Gus, and Kristen!

The Only Thing Better Than Getting A Form Rejection Slip

2010-03-13T17:51:00.002-05:00

Is getting a form rejection slip that hasn't been completely filled out.

Oh, If Only

2010-03-13T00:29:00.002-05:00

I did not create this.

Girl Comics #1 (Or, Why Couldn't Helen Keller Drive?)

2010-03-06T20:17:00.005-05:00

I wasn't planning on picking this up, but there was only one book from my usual list out this week (Astro City), so I figured I'd give Marvel's somewhat backhanded tribute to the industry's female talent a look.

I wasn't very impressed.

That's not a knock against any of the creators in particular, just the package. I've seen several of them do great work before, and I'm looking forward to seeing them do it again. This, though, feels like nothing so much as a waste of some very good talent.

You've all seen Amanda Conner's cover by now, which is very well done, as is to be expected. You can get more, and better, from her with the monthly Power Girl comic, though, so let' s move on to the interior.

Colleen Coover gives us a quick two-page intro highlighting some of Marvel's finest heroines. Unfortunately, they all get a panel each, none of them are named, and a reader hoping for further illumination will be disappointed to find that none of them show up in the rest of the comic. So if you were looking for some help in that regard, allow me: In order of appearance, they are Medusa, Dagger, Black Widow, Valkyrie, Nomad, Spider-Woman, Domino, Emma Frost, Tigra, Miss America, Wasp, Storm, and the Invisible Woman.

Moving on, we have our first feature story, a tale of Nightcrawler by G. Willow Wilson and Ming Doyle that, frankly, needed a few rewrites. I question the wisdom of leading off this series with, not just a story about a man, but a story about a man saving a woman from being raped by another man. There's a bit that tries to have it both ways, where the rapist gets the upper hand briefly and the woman knocks him out with her shoe (no, really), but it lacks the punch it ought to have, because Nightcrawler's never really in any danger. I mean, c'mon, he's freaking Nightcrawler. The art is enjoyable, though, reminiscent of Paul Pope in a good way.

Next, Trina Robbins and Stephanie Buscema tell a clever, whimsical 8-page story of Venus. It makes some cutting and welcome comments about being a woman in business, along with the casual misogyny of the fashion industry. And it's appropriate that Venus saves the day without hitting anybody, especially given who the villain of the piece turns out to be. It's great to see Stephanie Buscema following in her grandfather's footsteps, and if this story is any indication of what's to come, she's doing the old man proud.

Follows a two-page text piece on Flo Steinberg. It's meant as a tribute, but it comes off rather condescending, in a "You've Come A Long Way, Baby!" way. I learned some new things about a deserving historical figure, including her important place in the history of independent comics, but that only serves as a strong contrast to her current, inexplicable position as a mere proofreader. Really, Flo Steinberg could run Marvel Comics, and I'm left asking, why isn't she?

The following piece by Valerie D'Orazio and Nikki Cook is basically a Punisher riff on "To Catch A Predator," and I pretty much told you the entire story right there. It's much less clever than it thinks it is, and doesn't tell me anything about the Punisher I didn't already know. Hell, drop the premise on anyone, and this is the exact story they'd write. So let's move on.

Sana Takeda offers a cheesecake-y She-Hulk pin-up that refers back to probably one of the most ridiculous and sexist moments in the character's history (helpfully reprinted in the lower right corner for anyone who doesn't immediately get the joke), so I'm not really sure what the point was there.

Lucy Knisley does a two-page Doc Ock story about the good doctor grocery shopping. It's funny, charming, and just the right length for such a thing.

Another two-page text piece honors Marie Severin's career, both inside and outside of the Marvel Bullpen. Again, while the spirit is honorable, the subtext highlights just how far women haven't come in comics in the last 50 years. Severin's career at Marvel, to the cynical, comes off as a trail of small, niche projects before being shuffled off into the business side of the firm. Which comes off as uncomfortably familiar, when you look at this book as a whole.

Robin Furth, Agnes Garbowska, and Kristyn Ferretti handle the other long piece, Franklin and Valeria Richards in a clockwork remix of Hansel and Gretel. The storytelling borrows quite a bit from the world of children's books, to excellent effect, and the characterizations of Franklin and Val are spot on. I'd love to see more from these collaborators.

Finally, we have Devin Grayson (remember her?) and Emma Rios giving us their spin on the old Cyclops/Jean Grey/Wolverine love triangle. The story is nothing special, especially given the status of these characters in current continuity, but Rios's art is great (especially the ninjas; gotta love ninjas). She belongs in Marvel's top stable. Really, most of the creators here do, which gets me back to the "waste of talent" thing. It's probably unintentional, but doing an anthology comic of women creators in the superhero genre comes off as, you'll pardon the reference, putting Baby in a corner. I mean, we're talking about a niche of a niche of a niche of a niche market here. I keep coming back to the big question of "Why?" Why isn't Emma Rios on X-Men? Why isn't Trina Robbins on whatever she goddamn wants? Why isn't Flo Steinberg running Marvel comics?

For the same reason Helen Keller couldn't drive. And no matter how much this comic tries to dress itself up in a "You go, girl!" aesthetic, the reader is inexorably drawn to that fact. So, in that respect, Girl Comics is a failure. The bright side, if there is one, is that said failure will hopefully inspire a real dialogue about the way things are, and a real change in the way business is done in comics when it comes to the gender gap. Yes, it's a naive and romantic notion, but so are superheroes.

Even Though I Like The Guy

2010-03-05T21:21:00.001-05:00

I still think it'd be hilarious if somebody did a "Boorack Obama" sketch.

He's a chicken, I tell ya, a giant chicken!

An Idle Thought That Will Place Me On Certain Watch Lists

2010-03-02T17:59:00.000-05:00

If terrorists blew up the Oscars, I'd probably give them what they want.

Not out of fear. Out of gratitude.

I'll Be That Guy

2010-03-02T11:21:00.000-05:00

I don't mind the current JLA line-up. I think it's an interesting mix of veteran leaguers, seasoned non-members, and oddballs.

I'd prefer Ryan Choi as Atom over Ray Palmer, but you can't have everything.

Here There Be No Dragons

2010-02-27T21:00:00.001-05:00

So, two months into writing the novel, I've decided I need to make a map.

I didn't plan on doing this. I certainly don't plan on being one of those fantasy authors who has detailed maps padding out the front of his novels. They always strike me as self-indulgent and superfluous. It would be especially superfluous for this novel, given all the action takes place within no more than twenty square miles.

But as I progress, I find myself needing the visual reference. I make a lot of references to geography beyond the borders of my story, especially when I'm visiting the heads of the characters who aren't from there, and I need to keep it all consistent. Hence the maps. I've made two, one of the village that the story in so many ways centers upon, and one of the land it lies within. And since they'll never be published in any other form, my ego compels me to post them here, along with some explanatory text.

Yes, this is a transparent marketing ploy for a book that isn't even done yet. Get over it.

I hope everyone can see that. This is the big, superfluous map. All of the action takes place in Greenswallow, the forest to the west of it, and the hill country to the south. And one early scene set on the High Road, because a few of the characters, willful creatures that they are, couldn't make it to the village in time for the first chapter. There's a lot more to it, more villages and such, but I've included mostly just the places referenced in the novel.

The Orum River Valley is a fecund but sparsely-populated area. The most recent population influx came from the west and the north, within the last few centuries. Other civilizations may have thrived there some time ago -- all right, they did -- but no traces of them remain. The city of Orumen is the de facto political capital of the area, although it only has direct control over the area immediately surrounding it, within a week's ride. The rest of the country is taken up by small, independent feudal postage-stamp landholdings, such as that of Lord Bainbridge, and a handful of independently incorporated villages, such as Greenswallow. The population is mostly human, with the nomadic Wandering Peoples having established their own routes throughout the area. The Arryl Mountains to the south, from which the Orum River flows, are populated by giants. Fort Arryl, nominally an outpost of Orumen, is virtually its own city-state. The lands to the east, beginning with the Wild Hills, are mostly unfertile and contain few valuable minerals, and are left unspoiled, except by those person who, for their own reasons, have a pressing need to be away from civilization. Beyond the hills are the Sunrise Plateau, gateway to an inhospitable waste that few, if any, have ever traversed.

The general geography, and some of the politics, of the Orum Valley have been floating about untethered in my head for a few years now. They were therefore ready to serve when I required a larger context to set my novel in. Almost none of this is directly relevant to the story, but it's nice to have fleshed out to some degree.

The Greenswallow map is obviously of much more immediate use. I drew a great deal of inspiration for this one from my main research source, Life in a Medieval Village, by Frances and Joseph Gies. In particular was the explanation of crop rotation, represented here in a three-field setup that allows for one field to lay fallow each season. X-es represent houses, with tags denoting their principal residents where applicable. The village's name is taken from the inn, the first of its buildings to be built. Ownership has passed from hand to hand, not always along family lines, for one hundred and fifty years. The village as a political entity is about a century old, and exists politically separate from the surrounding holdings, a state few villages in the current era are able to maintain. Surplus crops and other goods are sold at Wainsmarket twice a year by the Chapman family, who hold a permanent seat on the village council, as well as much of the village's material wealth. Religion is a polytheistic polyglot, mostly practiced privately, except at harvest times, weddings and funerals.

The house across and to the left of the inn has no special significance; the marking there is merely an ink smudge.

The novel is at 50,000 words, with I think another 20-30,000 to go. I'll keep you posted.

Look, An Internet Time-Waster!

2010-02-19T08:04:00.003-05:00

You're welcome.

A True, Meaningless Anecdote

2010-02-16T18:07:00.001-05:00

I once saw Lux Aeterna used in a high school production of Joan of Arc.

The Only Thing That Gets Me Through The Day

2010-02-14T09:53:00.001-05:00

Remembering that St. Valentine was beaten to death with clubs and rocks, and then beheaded.

Best. Tramp Stamp. EVER.

2010-02-03T22:11:00.002-05:00

Stay classy, woman on the Internet who has made some terrible life choices.

Ah, Internet

2010-01-28T20:49:00.000-05:00

You never will run out of stupid people for me to hate.

(What color would the Hate Lantern Corps be? Or the Contempt Lantern Corps?)

Second of Two Things: God Didn't Make Little Green Footballs

2010-01-25T20:59:00.004-05:00

CBR poster thespianphryne posted this piece from the New York Times Sunday Magazine today, and I was compelled to print it out for later digestion, something I almost never do. It's bloody fascinating though. The meat of it is about the rise and fall of conservative wonk-blog Little Green Footballs (a site to which I shall not link, now or ever), but it's really about that latter-day Lovecraftian horror we call "Internet culture." The context here is political, but I've seen these events take place just about everywhere you can name. Phrases like "cloud-sourced id" are particularly insightful. Perhaps most illuminating, in an "It's a cookbook!" way, is the realization that the binary polarization of American society has been going on for a lot longer than people think, and in a lot more than just politics. It's ground into the culture at this point, like a coffee stain.

It's also a microcosm of the kind of personality it takes to make an "Internet celebrity" (a true barometer of the zeitgeist's depravity if ever there was one), both in the person, the presentation, and the inevitable cult of personality. I've been to boards where this happens (yes, Jeff, including that one), and the feeding frenzy that can take place when someone steps outside the Magic Circle of Agreement and voices an honest opinion can be horrific. People will treat even their best friends online in a way they never would in real life.

Anyway, smashing good journalism. When the alien archaeologists study the ruins of our culture, they'll be able to sift through the copious amounts of advertising circulars and video-game-inspired porno, point to this, and say, "This is what fucked them. This right here."

First Of Two Things: How To Use A Semicolon

2010-01-25T20:58:00.001-05:00

Now with bears. Thanks to CBR poster Spike-X. The semicolon is probably the most-abused punctuation mark in the English language, with the possible exception of the ellipsis. Please, think of the semicolons.

Slacktivist Sums Up Health Care

2010-01-24T09:17:00.002-05:00

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2010/01/stop-demanding-that-you-get-screwed.html

Anything else I could say on the subject would be superfluous.

Slightly off-subject, his series of commentaries on the Left Behind novels is both amusing and edifying. Highly recommended.

Message For Jay Leno

2010-01-23T00:37:00.000-05:00

May your next guests be Patrick Duffy and Joey Lawrence.

Raccoon From Hell!

2010-01-20T22:05:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things about writing is the ability to come up with the craziest shit possible, as long as you can make it fit within the context of your story.

Raccoon From Hell!

This Has Probably Been Said Before

2010-01-18T10:55:00.001-05:00

But it never fails to amuse me that the American political party that claims to care the most about religious values is also the most spiritually bankrupt. I can usually get a good five minutes' laughter out of that one.

Thought You Might Like To Know

2010-01-11T17:04:00.002-05:00

I've started writing a novel. This wasn't a New Year's Resolution thing, but the calendar fit with my schedule, so there is that nice extra feeling of a new beginning. But the real impetus for it was the fact that I'm 28 years old, my body's about to start cutting corners in the production facilities, and I'm either a writer or I'm not, so it's time to decide which one it's going to be. And there's really only one decision.

I still don't know if this thing will be worth a damn or not, but I'll have proven once and for all that I can do it, and after that, the hope is, the next one won't feel like such a daunting idea. In the meantime, I'm up to 12,000 words already, which officially makes this the longest thing I've ever done.

Working title is Township. You'll know more when I'm ready to tell it. Peace, out.

In Praise Of Amazon.com's Customer Service Department

2010-01-03T13:32:00.003-05:00

Had to make a call to Amazon today about an order I made. To my happy surprise, I discovered that, rather than make you run through a maze of automated menus so obnoxious and interminable that you expect David Bowie and some muppets to show up, they simply automatically put you in the queue to talk to a live human being. In the age of the Lady Hal, to whom I've actually found myself screaming "Open the pod bay doors!" this is a magnificent thing indeed.

So good on you, Amazon.com. And shame on pretty much every other company in the country, if not the world, for not following your lead.

WANT

2010-01-01T12:13:00.001-05:00

MST3K shades.

When All Is Said And Done...

2009-12-31T23:37:00.002-05:00

The most enduring impression of the past ten years may well be that "be safe" is now an acceptable substitute for "goodbye."

Cheery thought, innit? Anyway, all happiness and good fortune to you in the new year, wayward reader, whoever and whatever you are.

No Ten Favorite Comics of 2009

2009-12-23T14:01:00.002-05:00

I'm just too busy. These past weeks, I've had classes to attend, papers and homework to finish, Christmas gifts to buy, a wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Gilder to frame for it. I'm swamped.

I will, however, mention that Peter David's X-Factor has had a banner year, re-invigorating the series and bringing back the sense of anything-can-happen adventure that had slipped away somehow in '08. I mean, any book that can make Shatterstar not suck and Victor Von Doom double-crossing his erstwhile allies a surprise is doing something right. I heartily recommending picking up the two collections, Time And A Half and Overtime, covering this year's stories. And issue 200 just came out last week, a perfect capstone to the year.

There won't be a "Favorite Comics of the Decade" list, either, both for the reasons listed above, and because the decade doesn't end until New Year's 2011. And yes, I know every other comics blogger is doing a "Comics of the Decade" list this year anyway. Every other comics blogger is wrong.

I Honestly Don't Know What's Lamer...

2009-12-16T19:56:00.003-05:00

That DC killed off Kyle Rayner just to get a red ring on Guy Gardner's finger, or that they brought him back, through the cheapest deus ex machina possible, the second that goal was accomplished.

"I Don't Think We Ought To Rule It Out!"

2009-12-01T21:45:00.001-05:00

Okay, yeah, every stand-up comedian has a bit about air travel, and most of them are pretty lame.

But I think this guy has a legitimate beef.

Turkey Volume Guessing Man Wishes You A Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T08:33:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1FwyR0LWVg

Everyone get fat and watch football.

An Open Letter To Blackest Night

2009-11-11T20:29:00.001-05:00

Bite my shiny, metal ass.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

2009-11-09T19:33:00.003-05:00

I'd like to talk a bit about the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I wasn't there, of course, in any sense. The actual fall took place after my bedtime, and truth be told, I didn't even know it was up in the first place. I was seven years old when it happened, and three days away from 8, so obviously my attention was elsewhere. And while I may have been precocious at that age, I wasn't quite socially aware. International communism just didn't register on my list of Big Bads. The villains of my world, the Decepticons, COBRA, and Flintheart Glomgold, were decidedly apolitical. (Okay, Glomgold was clearly a Reagan voter.) By the time I was ready to show up at the Cold War party, it was already over.

And that's the amazing thing about it, really. My parents, after all, grew up in the shadow of the bomb, mutually assured destruction, and the domino theory. It was practically ground into their psyches from the earliest moment they could remember (Dad was born just before the war ended, Mom in the summer of '46). You don't have to be Marshall McLuhan to see the impact in had on the culture of their lives, and the culture their generation produced. The Cold War was everywhere, from Star Trek to the Beatles to Dr. Strangelove to The Twilight Zone to Adam West's Batman. The concept that, for the first time in 100,000 years, the human race was in serious danger of self-inflicted extinction within a single generation was a simple fact of everyday life.

And now, a single generation later, it's not. Even the threat of international terrorism, the new and improved boogeyman of the 21st century, pales when you consider that hey, we actually made it to the 21st century. I, and millions of others, grew up in a decade of lacunar optimism, free from that spectre. The future was ours, to make of it whatever we wanted. The presence of that promise, and the fallout of its retraction in the tumult of this decade, will, I think, define us and our impact on the world, when the historians of the 22nd century sit down to figure out what we were all about.

And the beginning of it all was in the Fall of the Wall. An era that began with a mushroom cloud ended with a gigantic party, a celebration of freedom, perseverance, and the promise of tomorrow. It was probably one of the most important events of my life, even if I did sleep through it.

So that's what I'm thinking about tonight, twenty years later. Hell of a thing, isn't it?

Barack Obama Names Alan Moore Official White House Biographer

2009-11-05T20:59:00.001-05:00

As reported variously throughout the Internet, from The Onion:

WASHINGTON—At a press conference Monday, President Obama announced that he had appointed legendary comic book writer Alan Moore as the official biographer of his time in the White House. "As evidenced by his epic run on Swamp Thing #21–64, Moore's deft hand with both sociopolitical commentary and metaphysical violence makes him an ideal choice to chronicle my time in office," Obama said of the author of Watchmen and From Hell, whom he reportedly chose over others on a short list of potential biographers that included Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, and Bob Woodward. "I look forward to seeing the kinds of subplots he will surely weave throughout the main narrative of my presidency, and how he'll tie them all back together at the end in a way that just elevates the thing to a whole other level. God, that guy is the master." Although Obama has not yet settled on a publisher for his White House biography, he is reportedly leaning toward DC's Vertigo imprint for its creator-friendly ethos, high production values, and willingness to publish content for mature readers.

An Open Letter To The People Of New Jersey

2009-11-01T20:34:00.003-05:00

Dear New Jersey,

In two days, you will be electing your next governor. Congratulations on that. I'm a big supporter of civic involvement, and I hope you all get out there on Tuesday and make your slurry, nasal voices heard.

However, as a resident of New York City who has had to watch your election cycle play out during the Jeopardy! commercial breaks for the last ten freaking months, I must ask that you get it right the first time around. I don't care which candidate you choose: John Corzine, Chris Christie, Tony Soprano, it's really all the same to me. I just don't want to have to put up with a run-off campaign. I never thought I'd say this, but I'd prefer watching that horrifying "Little Bit of Luck" guy dancing and hitting on cougars.

So please, decisively elect a governor on Nov. 3. Or, failing that, stick them in Thunderdome on Nov. 4. In fact, you should probably do that no matter what. Charge $5 admission and you could probably fix your deficit.

Best,

Michael

I May Not Be Smooth With The Ladies...

2009-10-31T00:26:00.001-04:00

But at least I'm not one of those guys who thinks he is, in spite of all available evidence.

My Immediate Reaction to Dark Reign: Young Avengers #5

2009-10-28T22:25:00.003-04:00

How sad is it that (a) it's taken 11 months for someone to finally punch Norman Osborn in his smug, uninteresting, warmed-over-Cheney-stand-in face, and (b) it was freaking Patriot who did it?

Anytime...

2009-10-24T19:26:00.001-04:00

I find myself thinking "Some of the '90s X-Men was all right," someone always brings up Joseph, and I immediately reverse my position.

I Have Weird Dreams

2009-10-22T22:27:00.001-04:00

Here's an example.

I am, from time to time, afflicted with "spirit dreams." These are dreams where I dream myself lying in my bed, and I am accosted by a spirit of some sort. I call them dreams, but I'm always uncertain as to whether they are actually dreams, half-awake hallucinations, or something else altogether. The spirits are occasionally malevolent, but always pushy.

Anyway, I had one of these recently where the spirit was hovering over me. It seemed benign (I always get a strong sense of malice whenever it's an evil one), so I asked it what it was. It responded by inserting an image into my brain of David Boreanaz. I expressed confusion, at which it clarified that this was an identification of itself as an angel.

With that out of the way, I asked what it wanted. It responded with another bit of pop-cultural synesthesia, this time the chorus of Foreigner's "I Want To Know What Love Is." Taking this at face value, I responded to the effect that far wiser people than me have asked that question and come up with a bagel, so what the hell did it expect from me?

While I doubt this answer satisfied the entity, it was content to leave me alone and let me roll over and go back to sleep.

This is what my brain does to me when I give it the keys for a while.

You Ever Notice...

2009-10-16T23:18:00.001-04:00

How people's belief in inane conspiracy theories has grown ever since they started putting fluoride in the water?

Don't Be This Guy

2009-10-13T06:54:00.002-04:00

Blog-reading not being a general part of my obsessive-compulsive disorder, I missed the boat on this one, but nonetheless, I felt it was worth commenting on: Yutz Plagiarizes Stephen King, Gets Caught.

My immediate reaction is one of justified schadenfreude; as someone continually trying to make it as a writer under his own legitimate effort, I hold nothing but contempt for plagiarists.

It also reminds me of an incident in high school. My freshman year, I gave the school paper a whirl. Before I decided that modern "journalism" was definitely not for me and turned my attention to more legitimate pursuits, like juvenile delinquency, we did an exercise where we read school papers from around the district and critiqued their layouts, fonts, and other presentational elements. The particular paper I picked up had come out around the holidays, and imagine my bemusement when I found, nestled in the opinion section, an old Dave Barry column about the difficulty of finding a parking space at the mall. Word-for-word, just as it appeared in my copy of Dave Barry's Greatest Hits, which I dutifully brought in the next day so I could properly narc on this asshole. My advisor said she passed the info (and evidence) along to that school's advisor, but I never heard what happened to the guy. Hopefully something involving corkscrews.

So I guess the moral of the story is: Don't rip people off. And if you're going to rip people off, rip off obscure nobodies instead of national bestsellers.

Oh, and also, if you rip me off, I will beat you.

Jonah, We've Talked About This

2009-10-06T23:06:00.000-04:00

Chris Sims proves that Facebook is good for something after all.

Offered Without Comment

2009-09-30T23:43:00.003-04:00

Other than noting that I didn't make it.