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Monday, January 30, 2006
Stuff that's been going through my head lately
Like most of the world I enjoy the music of Outkast. When they announced they're making a HBO TV movie I had to be a bit skeptical. Wasn't that taking the success of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below a little too far?
Now that the movie has been upgraded to a theatrical release (the same thing happened to American Splendor) and I've seen the trailer for the film I'm a lot more positive on how this project's going to work out for Big Boi and Andre 3000. It looks like a well done period musical. The choice of "Bowtie" as the song for the first half of the trailer leads me to think they want the music to sound like hip-hop with a real jazz influence, to go along with the setting of the film. One of the big strengths of Outkast is how they make their music interesting by doing hip-hop that's not afraid to reference older music. Not just jazz, Andre seems to have a real Jimi Hendrix jones. It'll be interesting to see how this film turns out.
I'm also hoping that Ben Vereen and Big Boi get into a real battle over who has the best rhyme skills.
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Alternative comedy! When regular comedy is just not nerdy enough for you.
But it's not just indie rock fans and comic book nerds who dig those Comedians of Comedy. The bear community loves them, too! Hell, they really like Zach Galifinakis who describes himself in his Comedy Central Presents as looking like "Fat Jesus, not Phat Jesus."
What does one Patton Oswalt think about this? He's remembering his fame in another lifestyle subculture: "I'm a semi-celeb on the 'Shaved Baby Bridge Troll' fetish sites."
All the above links come from A Special Thing.
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You thought those three asterisks meant the subject was going to change didn't you? Sorry, I'm not done blogging on Patton and his good buddy Brain Posehn. Found via the NYC Mech board is the 2000 pilot the comedians did entitled Super Nerds.
Brain and Patton are funny, right? Comic book geeks are funny, if not on purpose, right? Then this show would be funny, right? Nope. This is an uncomfortable 21 minutes of Brain and Patton playing two comic book store employees so broadly that they're just monstrous, not really funny. John Ennis's character is funny and has all the good lines. Sarah Silverman's also in it, but not given much to do. The Eltingville Club one-shot that was on Adult Swim was way better.
There's a good show to be made about life in a comic book store, as Mike's blog tells us. Make the characters interesting and three-dimensional instead of just crazy nerds and you've got something (I think this is what they accomplished in Steve Carell's character in The 40 Year Old Virgin).
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M.R.E.A.M.
Memes Rule Everything Around Me
Of all the "Always Remember..." posts that Dorian started I would have to say that Pickytarian created my favorites. It put me in the mood for some Wu and Gravediggaz demos, which were also found through the NYC Mech board.
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1988:
Public Enemy rails against television (with a slightly misogynist vibe) in "She Watch Channel Zero!?" Flava Flav denounces the "garbage, nothing but garbage" that makes up television programming.
2006:
Flava Flav is on his third reality TV show for VH1, Flava of Love.
The one thing all these reality shows with Flav are missing is that Chuck D needs to be in the background the whole time, face in his hands and sobbing over what has become of his friend. Occasionally he'll be interviewed so we can see him rationalize over how this works in relation to PE's radical take on politics and hip-hop.
While putting politically-heavy music stars in reality shows may disillusion many the young rock 'n' roll fan, whose to say there isn't more entertainment in store for us? In fifteen years we might be seeing Survivor: System of a Down Edition and Zach De La Rocha as The Bachelor. Maybe Billy Bragg will balloon up and we can put him on Celebrity Fit Club 24.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2006
In stores today: Ganges #1
One of the perks of my job is that I get to read some comics before they are released to the public. When one of those comics was the first issue of Kevin Huizenga's Ganges for the Ignatz line I had to think to myself "I have the best job in the world." I have to echo the sentiments of Tom Spurgeon here. Everyone who is reading this post and loves a stimulating comic book reading experience please, buy this book today!
Not only is it the best Ignatz book since David B.'s Babel #1 it also continues the quality you'll find in Huizenga's Or Else series (a link to a review of the second issue is at my sidebar). All the stories feature Glenn Ganges and his wife Wendy so you can witness Huizenga's mastery of subtle characterization. Huizenga's innovate use of the comics form is also there, such as how the first story deals with the passage of time in a comic book story. Maybe the best of all is that the issue is about three times bigger than any issue of Or Else. Just go buy it.
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Friday, January 20, 2006
Morrison Comes Alive!
On Feb. 25th and 26th Arthur Magazine will be throwing Arthur Ball, which will be happening all around Los Angeles's Echo Park area. Besides the neat-o keen Ron Rege Jr. artwork used to publicize the ball you've got Grant Morrison attending at Jensen's Rec Center on the 26th. I can't quite tell you what he'll be doing there but if it's anything like his appearance at Meltdown Comics (see the two-part "Grant Morrison Speaks" at the sidebar) it'll be worth going.
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Happy birthday Mr. Lynch
Yesterday I watched Eraserhead for the first time. I couldn't tell you for sure but perhaps my subconscious knew that I was screening it that day in preparation for this David Lynch birthday post. That would make sense considering that this is a director who creates while tuned in to the subconscious mind, where rational thinking has no home.
Not only did I see Eraserhead (the DVD, before only available at Lynch's website, can now be found through traditional retailers) but I also saw the documentary Mysterious Love about the creation of Blue Velvet including on that film's Special Edition DVD. In the that doc Dennis Hopper describes Lynch's films as "American Surrealism." After attending all three nights of the David Lynch Film Festival at The Castro Theatre (every major Lynch feature but Eraserhead and The Straight Story played) I have to concur with Frank Booth there. Lynch's greatest films exist in a dream world where all kinds of dark images rule. Even his films that stick with a fairly solid narrative make use of the montage of unrelated (or so it seems!) images. There is the flickering candle in Blue Velvet and the stylized opening and closing of The Elephant Man. I must admit to my shame that the only part of Twin Peaks I have ever seen is the brilliant and disturbing Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Watching at first it I felt that The Black Lodge was this surreal world that is invading the townspeople's minds. It was when the film was over that I wondered if Bob, The Man From Another Place and the rest of the lodge's inhabitant weren't the realization of the people of Twin Peaks' secret fears and desires. Eraserhead and Mullholland Dr. (not just my favorite Lynch film but my favorite film, hence the picture above) can only be understood if you accept them as dream/nightmares of the characters. If Lost Highway isn't a dream then it might be a story told from the very subjective viewpoint of schizophrenic.
While Lynch's films share a lot in common with what Luis Buñuel and Jean Cocteau did what separates Lynch's work from other surreal artists is that Lynch is quintessentially American. He shapes his visions from American life. Lynch's personal life started in small Western towns of the 1950's, where he became an Eagle Scout, and then moved to the urban worlds that was Philadelphia in the late-'60s and Los Angeles in the '70s. The contrast between those different sides of the country are explored in Blue Vlevet, Eraserhead and Lynch's unproduced film Ronnie Rocket. Twin Peaks and Eraserhead can be seen as opposite sides of the same coin. The former deals with the anxieties of living in a suburban world and the latter deals the anxieties of living in an urban sprawl, with factories billowing smoke through the heavens.
More elements of Americana can be found in Lynch's film. Wild at Heart is a road trip through the South that includes the songs of Elvis Preseley and New Orleans jazz. Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet, Mullholland Dr. and Lost Highway all feature that defining vision of the dark side of America: the endless highway at night, illuminated only by a few feet with a car's headlights. The film noir of Lost Highway, Mullholland Dr. and Blue Velvet is especially important in that Lynch takes a very American genre, although interpreted by European critics, and uses the moral ambiguity and sinister feel of noir to extend his own creative ideas and visions of the surreal.
It's a point of debate, certainly with Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, whether Lynch is condescending to these aspects of American life or if he isn't celebrating them in his own weird way. I think that since Lynch approaches most of his work without the analytic side of his mind for others to try to come up with concrete explanations of what his work means is something of a fool hardy enterprise. When the subject comes up I always go back to The Elephant Man where Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Frederick Treves wonders whether he isn't exploiting John Merrick's condition the same way those at the carnival used to ("Am I a good man? Or a bad man?"). The film seems to come up with a solid enough answer that Merrick leads a far more dignified life with Treves in his life than before, after all he is an artist now!, but when the entire crowd of a British theatre house stands up and cheers Merrick it is hard to dismiss for sure that none of them no longer see Merrick as a "freak." There is no easy answer but that's because there never is with Lynch.
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Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Because you can never get enough Adam West
Ladies and gentlemen, I now present to you what can only be described as the greatest triumph of human civilization. Feast your eyes on the Batusi!
You can find that and plenty more at Dial B for Blog!'s excellent coverage of the Batman TV show. It starts with issue 204 and keeps going. There's a lot of show history and comparisons between the show and the comic that makes me want to read some of the Broome/Infantino years of the comic book. It's good reading for any Batfan. Found via Tom Peyer's fine blog.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Crisis on Infinte Plugs
Get ready folks because today there's not just one story on DC’s plans for Infinite Crisis and beyond but two! One is an article about DC's plans in general for their superehero comics after the One Year Later jump and the other is an interview with Marv Wolfman about continuing the story he wrote in 1986.
I used to write about the direction DC was going a lot on this blog. Looking back I don’t think I needed to write so many posts on the subject but I do think the one found on the sidebar (entitled "Young, Snotty and Blogging") is pretty good. Because I had so many questions about what DC was doing I was glad to speak to VP-Executive Editor Dan DiDio about his editorial reign.
What I found the most interesting is that while many publishers in the comic book world are looking towards collected editions and bookstores for successes, DiDio has set his sights on the Direct Market. He talked about wanting fans to be excited when they get their comics on Wednesday and he praised the periodical nature of comic books. It's a specific type of reader DC is targeting here but it seems to have paid off. It's a reader who would have had an interest in DC Comics anyway but by creating all this high drama in the books that dependable superhero comic book reader has been energized by these comics beyond the books past administrations at DC have published.
Many comic creators and publishers are thinking of different ways to get their books out either with working with the system that Diamond Distributors owns or by going through different routes. On the opposite end we have DC, a company that doesn't face many challenges in the Direct Market, taking advantage of the position the position they have and fanbase they have built. What will this mean as things calm down in the DC Universe (DiDio has said that there aren't any plans for more big crossovers after the OYL)? What happens when DC reaches out to a different audience, such as with the Identity Crisis hardcover that has Brad Melzter's name on the cover be as big as the title and is being pushed hard in bookstores? I don't know but it might be fun to find out.
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Thursday, January 12, 2006
Holy Having a Headline Contain the Word "Holy" In It, Batman!
Mike reminds me that today is the 40th Anniversary of the Willaim Dozier version of the Batman television show, starring Adam West and Burt Ward as the Dynamic Duo. Mike's written a lot of posts on the subject that you can find through the link I just gave you and they are all worth reading. He's even linked to some other great places on the web to get your fill of The Biff Bam Pow.
Scipio's post inspired by the anniversary is good reading. He contemplates the idea of a mythic hero's transformation throughout time. The Internet is often used for people to vent their outrage at the latest changes to their favorite characters in a fury of insults and bad grammar but Scipio take a thoughtful look at both sides the idea.
For some real Adam West fun you can now watch the pilot for Lookwell the show written by Robert Smigel and Conan O'Brien that's got West as a washed-up actor who solves mysteries. So funny no network dared pick it up.
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Thanks for everyone who responded to this post about returning to comics. If you haven't already don't be afraid to contribute. Since Haloscan doesn't keep comments I think I might archive them somewhere and come up with a post on what people wrote. We'll see.
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Wednesday, January 11, 2006
A question for you all
There are comic book fans who got hooked on the stuff when they were kids and then never quit. There are comic book fans who never gave comics a second thought when they were young but when they became adults they got turned on to what the medium has to offer. Then there are the people in between, of which I am one.
I read X-Men and Batman comics as a kid and then got a bit more discriminating with my tastes by moving onto "ground-level" works like Frank Miller and Mike Allred's Dark Horse books but by the time I entered high school I had given up comics all together for guitars and girls (I go into greater detail in this post).
Then I was brought back when I started to get more analytical about what I read (for my senior year of high school I went to an experimental school where a lot of our class time was spent in roundtable discussions about books like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Herman Hesse's Siddhartha). I read an article in my Mom's copy of Time magazine about Chris Ware, seeked out his work and from there found there were comics that rewarded the more intellectual bent I took to reading. From there I found some interesting superhero comics in Grant Morrison's New X-Men (the idea of a creator dissecting specific characters and stories I read growing up me really excited me). I got more and more interested and look at me now. Spending most of my professional life devoted to comics.
I present that little piece of autobiography because I want to ask fans who are like me this: after you gave up comics in some point of your life (it doesn't have to be adolescence) what brought back? If you want to say why you left that's okay, too. I feel they are probably a lot of fans like me and I want to hear your stories.
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Wednesday, January 04, 2006
City mouse, comics mouse
Monday Johanna wrote a post in response to Chris Butcher’s response to Andrew Arnold’s 2005 best of list. In that post she wrote something that goes along with a notion I’ve been having since August.
She wrote “This is a bookstore list, a list that plays best in ‘cultural capitals’ like New York or Butcher’s Toronto or San Francisco.” In August I moved to the third cultural capital listed and have found that the experience of being a comic book fan way different that of being a fan in the "bedroom community” of Los Angeles of which I was living in before.
In SF I can feel the new heights comics are reaching, from all aspects of the industry. Simply in regards to Arnold’s list I have been able to catch readings and signings from Charles Burns and Chris Ware. They both appeared at the popular bookstore Booksmith on Haight St. and I later saw Ware do a comics/audio showcase with This American Life host Ira Glass at UC Berkeley. The bookstore for my school has a graphic novel section that is primarily represented by independent books from Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly with another section of the store stocking a variety of popular manga titles. Hell, I’ll be working at a place that has a mural by Ware atop it.
I’m spoiled with three great stores relatively close to me that offer three individual ways of taking the Direct Market and making it an interesting and useful shopping and reading experience. When it comes to buying manga there’s the Kinokuniya Bookstore in Japantown, which I haven’t been to yet but it’s something Lyle says is good which is good enough for me.
I shopped at an awesome store that Mike runs when I lived in Ventura County but that was my only exposure to a comic book culture. The only thing that came close to something more was when I would go to the Los Angeles Times Book Fair at UCLA for the artist signings at the Golden Apple and Hi De Ho booths. I’d read about all coverage cartoonists would get in The New York Times and The Guardian but none of that would ever hit home, no matter how many times I would visit the Graphic Novels section of the Barnes & Nobles in Westlake Village. It wasn’t until I moved to an urban era, on a college campus no less, that I saw the real acceptance as a medium comics had reached.
This leads me to wonder if this type of phenomenon is something that will be restricted to urban areas. Will comics fan looking for an all-encompassing reading and social experience have to live in cities to find what they want? There are many cultural aspects that one, for the most part, can only get living in an urban area such as large and multi-faceted museums and seeing independent films in their first (and sometimes only) opening weeks. Will an intellectual and democratic bent on comics be something like that? Perhaps. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so.
It also raises the question of who is perpetuating this new comics consciousness. I don’t have any census figures handy but city-dwellers tend to be younger, without families and wealthier (except the college students, I can assure you of that). I think a lot of the new comics consciousness is an outgrowth of the literary cultures that already existed in many major cities. Personally, I’m loving the Hell out of it but it can make the trips back home a lot more boring. Well, except when New Comics Day rolls around.
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Monday, January 02, 2006
Good way to kill a few hours
Jim Roeg letting another sprawling, intelligent post loose on the public is reason enough for celebration. But this one has got something that is useful for fans of people getting all smart about the work of Grant Morrison.
Under the headline "Blogscholars: The Seven Soldiers Syllabus" you can find a list of bloggers' posts on Seven Sodliers books. Reading through them will certainly give you a better understanding of one of the most interesting projects a major comic book company and creator have pulled off in recent memory (yes, I do realize that one of my posts made it but every litter needs a runt).
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