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Friday, March 31, 2006
There's a lot of good stuff out there
A question that's been running around my head lately: what is the greatest thing to come out of the comics blogosphere? It could be a blogger, it could be a certain blog post, it could be a trend or anything you want (you can even answer with, get this, a snarky joke).
I like it when a small creative book gets a lot of praise and notice by a group of people on-line. I like to think that people who would have never read a book like Street Angel or Or Else found out about it becuase they figured "if it's good enough for Kevin or Jog it may be worth reading." There are plenty of places for comic fans to share their opinion on-line. It seems that blogs are the only palce where non-professioanl writers take the time to dig a little deeper and look for works that challenege them or offer them a distinct reading experience.
What about you? Why do you read your favorite blogs? Why do you look for new ones? Why do you continue to blog?
Permanent Link: 10:30 AM |
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Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Recommended viewing
As I write this post on the campus of San Francisco State University I wonder who has achieved the most of our esteemed alumni. Is it Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres? Danny "Predator 2" Glover? Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown? Fine choices, but no. I am convinced that the honor of most accomplished SFSU alumni is shared by Vernon Chatman and John Lee. For proof I offer you their television show Wonder Showzen, the first season now released on DVD and the second season premiering this Friday on MTV2.
I've written about the show before but I bring it up again in hopes that some of you will check out the DVD. Wonder Showzen celebrates the uncomfortable mix of the comedic and tragic in everyday life. They go after topics like race, consumerism and war with some of the harshest and best satire that has ever made it on TV. It also pushes the boundaries of what is "comedy" by getting very experimental. The last half of the season finale was just the first half run backwards. Watching the show I think of National Lampoon and SNL writer Michael O'Donoghue's quote: "making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy."
This Salon article has plenty of info on the show and previews the second season, which will have the most cringe-inducing remembrance of 9/11 ever. It's a Salon article so you will have to fight a lion and brave a dark labyrinth to read the article.
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Thursday, March 23, 2006
Say, have you heard of this film?
Following up on the last post, here's an example of an internet sensation dictating the actions of movie studios:
Apparently, the studio got the hint. When Ellis assembled Jackson and others for the recent shoot, the filmmakers added more gore, more death, more nudity, more snakes and more death scenes. And they shot a scene where Jackson does utter the line that fans have demanded.
That's right all you SoaPies, the people at New Line heard your hosannas and is reconfiguring Brilliance on a Movie Screen (otherwise knows as Snakes on a Plane) to your liking. There's the power of this viral form of fandom.
Thanks to Jimmie Robinson for pointing this out.
Permanent Link: 10:58 PM |
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I guess I should post something this week
Front page new of the San Francisco Chronicle was a story about video sites on the internet. YouTube, founded in San Mateo, gets most of the attention but so does Google's video arm and other video sites.
I'm interested to how visual entertainment, television, film and whatever you want to call internet videos, has become more and more personalized thanks to the sites listed above as well downloadable television (mentioned in the article), PVRs like TiVO and the plethora of TV shows on DVD. We can all be our own network programmers and fill our schedules with content from decades back to whatever "digital short" was on SNL last night. While visual information is getting more personalized there is content that manages to really penetrate. Those SNL shorts are one but there are also heralded cancelled television shows like Arrested Development and Firefly. They're popular with the plugged-in population, many who live in the Bay Area but whose number dwindle the farther you get from urban areas and the coast, and yet the old-school thinking of the network executives deem the shows failures. A sign of disconnect between different ways of watching TV? Is there are a certain profile (Hell, why just one?) of the person who is indulging him/herself in this new way of watching TV? And what about the huge issue of copyrights?
The article linked above answers none of these questions (although it does point out that it is mostly, although certainly not all, people in their teens and twenties that make these sites popular). Stories about filmmakers discovered on-line are interesting but I’m more interested in the sociological aspects of this whole phenomenon. It’s something to ponder over the weekend. That is, if you have no life.
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Friday, March 17, 2006
Hawkgirl #50
This is the One Year Later book I've been waiting for and it makes a for a pretty good first issue, if in style and not name.
I didn't like how low-key many of the other DC books felt. Howard Chaykin's art for Hawkgirl makes sure that's not a problem here. This is some of his most open artwork since Power & Glory, with big panels and big heads with big expressions filling every page. Except for the first few pages the title heroine is out of her costume with not much superheroing to be had. There's still a dynamic tone to the book because of Chaykin's exciting, yet still clear, panel structures and pace.
Walt Simonson's story has Hawgirl out of costume because the plot is less of a superhero story than something of the horror/suspense genre. This issue is mostly set-up and it comes compete with a spooky cliff hanger ending. Simonson tells the story quickly but not so he doesn't skip over the ominous mood of Kendra's situation. There are references to "the past year" and the Rann-Thanagar War but nothing that bears on the plot. I noticed that this book doesn't even start with the "One Year Later..." caption other books do.
This is the OYL book to beat and I can't see any others rising to the same level (although the new Aquaman comes close). Hopefully Simonson and Chaykin will stay on this continuing series for a while because it's been too long since either of them have lent their talents to a good long run.
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Apparently on Friday mornings I can only post videos
Courtesy of The Eagles of Death Metal (a Queens of the Stoen Age spin-off group) I give you what is constantly going on inside my head. Guest-starring Jack Black and Dave Grohl! Found via aspecialthing.com, your source of a bunch of a content I recycle here week after week.
Permanent Link: 8:45 AM |
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In the future...
...this is what every movie is going to look like.
EDIT: Looks like YouTube's been beaten by the threat of legal action again. For those of you who didn't see it, I linked to the trailer for what shall surely be known as a cinematic masterpiece: David Richard Ellis's Snakes on a Plane. The trailer depicted many snakes and they were all on a plane. Samuel L. Jackson was kicking some snake ass.
Imagine if Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Kupperman teamed up to make a film and you've got a pretty good idea of what this movie's all about.
More EDIT: Snakes on a Blog has a link to the trailer as well as more S.O.A.P. content!
Permanent Link: 8:21 AM |
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Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Seeing Dan DiDio, Bob Wayne and many DC creators at a DC panel is a fun, almost bewildering experience. They really know how to gear fans up for new developments in the DC superhero universe. The One Year Later jump that most DC Universe books took is meant to create an exciting new status quo for the line. I've read most of what's been published so far and I haven't found anything that's lived up to the hype.
Now that all the crossover chaos has clamed down all the storylines of the books have a chance to start over. In all cases that means run-of-the-mill superhero stories with only superficial changes at best, with one exception. Some books like Birds of Prey and Outsiders change team members but I figure a continuing series, especially a team-centered book, is going to go through changes like this all the time anyway. All these books make references to developments that have happened in the past but if you pick up any superhero comic these days there will be references to all sorts of past events. The only difference is that all the books make sure to mention that all these events happened in the last year. The worst offender is Detective Comics where Commissioner Gordon outright says “Funny, you and I talking like all the events between now and the last time the Bat Signal shone in the night…like none of it even happened” (Emphasis theirs). The only thing’s that changed in most of these books are certain plot elements that will mutate more as the books continue, with even more continuity for readers to keep track of, or will be forgotten as the characters revert to a more “classic version” of themselves. It’s already happened in the Batman books with characters like Gordon and Det. Harvey Bullock returning. I felt that Superman was the best of the books I had read so far but the big event in the issue I read was the introduction of a new Kryptonite Man, complete with the dullest of super villain origins (laboratory accident). The rest of the story, such as Clark Kent not being super, felt like more of the back-story I’d be dealing with anyway with a comic book series that has reached issue #650.
If the changes aren’t anything exciting I hoped that the presentation would feel like something new. Not so. The style of the storytelling hasn’t changed either. Books like Firestorm and JSA aren’t just bland, they’re a type of bland that wouldn’t look out of place in the ‘90s or late-‘80s. I couldn’t see much differences between John Byrne’s Blood of the Demon and anything else Byrne has done in decades. Even the titles with so-called big changes haven’t updated how they read. Making the title character of Green Arrow the Mayor of his city just has the book come off as Ex Machina-lite.
The exception I mentioned before was Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis by Kurt Busiek and Butch Guice. The book felt like it was really starting over the entire Aquaman character as something that’s less of a superhero and more in line with the fantasy genre. There were still plenty of references to the previous incarnation of the character to give me pause, though. Still, it felt like a much better realized work than any of the other books I read, thanks mainly to the excellent artwork by Guice and colorist Laura Martin.
The goal of these comics shouldn’t be about “moving forward,” as if art runs on a linear path. Rather the books should be trying to achieving a new vision for the DC Universe line. I’m awaiting Hawkgirl by Walt Simonson and Howard Chaykin because while they may be of an older generation than many of the creators behind these books, they are much more visionary creators. There are other superhero titles being published now that take the bigger-than-life feel of superheroes to create really exciting work, such as Nextwave, Godland and Grant Morrison’s Seven Solders books. I felt that rush of reading something new and exciting with the excellent final issue of Mr. Miracle. It should have been what I felt reading the One Year Alter books, but I didn’t.
In more “DC Faces the Future” news, I liked my friend Graeme McMillan’s idea of DC creating a blog for its weekly series 52. More than with any other series that’s their chance to create something that feels like a new type of superhero comic but I seriously doubt that’s what will happen. Embracing the pop culture information overload like Graeme suggested would have been one way of actually “moving forward.”
I thought that 52 would actually have been a good way to see if legal downloading of comics could work. Since once you’ve missed an issue you’ve missed it forever, perhaps DC could have offered back issues on-line for a small price. I imagine it being similar to how iTunes offers episodes of Lost or The Office. Oh well, just an idea.
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Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Recommended reading
I get sent a lot of books to review and most don't impress. It's rare that I would finish a book, even a book I would give a favorable review to, and feel that I would purchase that book with my hard-earned cash if it wasn’t sent to me. Rare but not impossible.
After reading ADV's Anne Freaks my first thought wasn't about writing a review. I was wondering when the next volume would come out. The book features tales of murder and other assorted violence that's both very humanistic and nihilistic. It's the kind of thing I've been waiting on for a very long time.
When I read James Cain's Double Indemnity the parts I enjoyed the most was when we got to see Walter Neff's psychology behind his story of an average man turned killer. I loved reading the revulsion he felt when crossed the line into the world of crime. Now imagine if James Cain used all his talents of characterization and sensationalism and used them to write about Japanese school children. Japanese school children who then form an anti-terrorist outfit. That gives you a taste of Anne Freaks. It's weird as Hell but that just makes it all the more fun. It comes out this Wednesday.
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Friday, March 10, 2006
Area Man Drones On and On About Funny Paper He's Nostalgic For
Oh Aspecialthing.com, how I love you. You have given me yet more internet gold, this time on the subject of The Onion.
On a thread dedicated to the production problems of The Onion film, former Onion writer/tech person Jack Szergold describes the changes he sees between The Onion of 1996 and The Onion of 2006. It's a great behind-the-scenes look at the publication.
In my senior year of a very small high school (which was 2000/2001) all the students were captivated by The Onion. We lorded over Our Dumb Century (which some students thought meant that The Onion had actually been around for 100 years), the reprint collections and the Red Meat comic collections. I have fond memories of hanging out at my friend Eli's house late at night laughing myself to death reading of how Man With Complete Mama's Family Video Library Never Going On eBay Drunk Again.
After graduation I got less and less interested in the parody newspaper. The best laugh I got from The Onion was in a MAD parody that said something to the effect of "Area Man Checks The Onion, Only One Headline Sort of Makes Him Chuckle." That was certainly how I felt. Szwergold lists one of the problems as "delusions of grandeur" after 9/11 where the writers thought they were real political commentators. This leads to another problems listed, "not enough wacky."
I still love The A.V. Club and await new editions of that every week. Tasha Robinson and Noel Murray are great writers and the interviews they get are usually insightful. "Commentary Tracks of the Damned" is one of my favorite things to read. But the front page of The Onion is only of passing interest and it's rare that I'll ever read a whole article. Oddly enough, now the physical version of The Onion is useful to me know as a city dweller by informing of so many great arts and entertainment events going on in the Bay Area. Reading the paper on the bus is when I'm most likely to read any of the comedy articles.
Szwergold also praises The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and the work ex-Onion staffers are doing there. I agree with him and feel that America: The Book is better than anything The Onion has done in years.
I suppose every generation needs their publication that was once so great that people praise it to the sky only to see it fall in quality. Older people can tell me how "I should've been there" for National Lampoon and SPY (other publications mentioned in the thread) and now I can tell my little brother and his friends how they "should have been there" for the glory days of picking up a paper at the Thousand Oaks Borders and reading "Dildo Washed" in the blurbs section.
Permanent Link: 10:25 AM |
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Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Thought of the day
All of Tom's movie talk lately has reminded me of one of my favorite films, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. I recommend the snazzy three-disc Criterion Collection version of this film.
I was thinking of how the film portrays an Orwellian government. As a departure from other films and novels inspired by 1984, here the government is hopelessly incompetent. There is no privacy for the people in Brazil and hordes of SWAT Team-like agents can storm into a person’s house when his family is about celebrate Christmas. This is the first scene of the film. What makes it compelling though is that the SWAT Team barges in on the wrong guy. A fly got in one of the computers so the agents capture a Buttle and not a Tuttle like they should. In the same scene government hired repairmen try to fix a hole the agents left in the Buttle's ceiling, only to find that their measurements were off because some people went back to the metric system without telling others.
Brazil is a film worth seeing now because it depicts the type of government we in the U.S.A. live under. The Bush administration sees civil liberties as something to work around as they see what you're checking out of the library. That is, if they didn’t already wiretap you're cell phone. The administration have all these underhanded ways of getting information but once they have it they don't seem to do anything useful with it, not even towards successfully fulfilling their own goals.
When confronted with information, received the old-fashioned way, like "Bin Laden determined to strike within the U.S." or the problems with levees protecting against Hurricane Katrina they don't exactly jump into action. The Bush administration is a strange mix of corruption and incompetence when it comes to respecting American citizen's civil liberties and protecting the American people from harm. Perhaps the two most important responsibilities a government can have and they have a "play it by ear" approach.
I wonder if this is worse or better than a focused, sinister government that has full surveillance over its people and can carry out all their plans with precision. Right now I think that the situation we have now is worse because the blunderings of this administration are made that much scarier when you realize how much power they have over you. What's to say they can't capture a suspected terrorist or close down a charity only to find out later they mixed up a "T" with a "B," but by then it's too late?
Permanent Link: 8:42 AM |
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Monday, March 06, 2006
"They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases."
Gotham City superhero, Batman, is gay, according to Hollywood superstar George Clooney.
The actor who was being interviewed on an American Oscar show, replied to host Barbara Walters’ who asked if he would ever play a gay cowboy. Mr Clooney said he believed he had already played a gay character, "I was in a rubber suit and I had rubber nipples. I could have played Batman straight, but I made him gay."
The picture that goes along with the article is the best thing Bruce Timm never drew. Found via Scans Daily.
Permanent Link: 9:47 AM |
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Friday, March 03, 2006
New Old Python
Those magnificent bastards at The Sound of Young America have done us all a great service. They were able to find footage of Monty Python not seen since 1975. Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Graham Chapman stopped by a Dallas public television station to take questions from fans of the show (which had just started being shown on PBS stations in The United States). It's only about fifteen minutes because sadly the rest got recorded over but what's there is pretty interesting, seeing the Pythons react to their fame when it was relatively new to them. Listening to Terry Gilliam's accent is funny enough. You can download the file from the previous link or watch the video at YouTube. Enjoy!
Permanent Link: 6:56 AM |
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Thursday, March 02, 2006
"I'm going to put you in my pants!"
Remember when I would post about how Marvel and DC being too dependent on supplying life-long readers thrills based on continuity weaving while anyone looking for something new (read: product that will keep the company alive and viable after the Continuity Heads are dead) would feel a bit disenfranchised looking for that superhero thrill? The post on the sidebar about "Young, Snotty and Blogging" is an example of that. Well I'm happy to report that things have changed a little bit. There is a comic being published that is exactly the type of thing I have been pining for. Strangely enough, it's published by Marvel.
Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen's Nextwave doesn't feel like any other superhero book being published. As soon as you see the covers by Stuart Immonen you know there's a lot more creativity and attitude put into this book than the books it will be shelved by.
The most important aspect of all is that the book has a wild sense of humor. Reading bits like the Q&A in issue #2 or Fing Fang Foom's sing-song intro in issue #2 reminded me of all the jokes and asides writers like Stan Lee and Steve Englerhart would throw in their narrations, but now updated for a world flowing with information and jaded irony (there's certainly know reverence for Marvel's past but c'mon, was Stan ever reverent?). That spirit of creative anarchy left Marvel comics for a long time but I know I feel a bit of it coming back. Ellis has re-created that excitement for the age where you can download a comic's theme song from the publisher's website.
This is what modern superhero comics should be striving for. Marvel would rather drown us in Infinite Crisis rip-offs but I can only hope Nextwave is well received enough so that we'll see more than twelve issues of the planned maxi-series. Perhaps other creators unafraid to go a little nuts with Marvel's toys? It's worth a shot.
For more creativity in stand alone imagery why don’t we look towards the fine world of polish movie posters (thanks to Shane for letting me know about this).
Can you imagine advertising Rebel Without a Cause or To Live and Die in L.A. with these images? The Dumbo poster looks like something out of Kramer’s Ergot. This is what I wish would fill the lobbies of American movie theaters.
Permanent Link: 8:44 AM |
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