When you have a free hour listen to RadioLab's show about Orson Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast. It's a story you've probably heard of before, certainly I have, but this pretty thorough. The show puts everything in an historic context. Best of all is the fact that the show spends a lot of time on night a radio station in South America that tried the same stunt, with far grimmer results.
It's amazing that in the earliest days of mass media Welles was there to manipulate it and expose the danger of it all. He wanted to tell people not to believe everything they hear. Instead we found out people will believe everything they hear, some people at least. What's funny is how those who were fooled just applied their own fears on the program. Many thought it was the Germans bombing New Jersey, disregarding that they were being told it was Martians. No matter what the dominant medium is, be it radio, TV or Internet, people will take slivers of fact and fill in the rest of the blanks with their own neuroses. Permanent Link: 11:36 AM |
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Whenever I'm in Mike's store I pick up a few copies of MAD from way back. Jaffe always strikes me as the MAD cartoonist with the sharpest political edge. All his stuff with Hawk and Dove or writing about the generation gap is so real, it's hard to believe this is a humor magazine. It's humor dark as night in Jaffe's hands. The fold-in's are this weird mix of a childhood activity and the problems of adulthood. You do the fold-in correctly (and I never really could) and you're rewarded with the horrors of Vietnam or how corrupt Johnson/Nixon/Bush/Clinton/Bush/Whoever is. It's a mindfuck but one I love. Permanent Link: 4:05 PM |
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Strong criticsms of the greatest threat to our national character
Well, maybe not. I enjoy reading the threads on aspecialthing.com. They can be a bit testy like message boards can be but that's outweighed by the smart thinking going on. For the thread dedicated to Superhero Movie, pretty much every comedy film gets its own thread, two good points are made.
Tracy Morgan was on Conan and he showed a clip from this movie. It started out as a scene set at "Professor Xavier's School for the Non-Asian Gifted". When they showed that sign, I laughed; that's a pretty funny, Zucker Brothers-style joke. But then the scene progressed and it became about Professor Xavier cheating on his wife with Invisible Girl (played by Pamela Anderson), and then a catfight breaks out between the two of them...sigh. It's like you can tell there's an internal struggle going on with these movies between the creative people working on them who are clearly capable of writing funny jokes, and some kind of studio pressure to dumb them down to as LCD a level as possible. Who decided that parody movies have to only appeal to 13-year-olds? Back in the days of "The Naked Gun" and "Hot Shots", "silly" didn't have to automatically mean "stupid".
This is the same thing that bothered me with Scary Movies 3 and 4; you would have reasonably funny jokes like "We'll build our own tripods....ours will be better; they'll have four legs", immediately followed by an appearance by Chingy or someone. It just depresses me because these used to be my favorite kinds of movies, and I know they could be a lot better without too much effort.
Below that comment Isos a.k.a. Matt Belknap, co-host of Never Not Funny and AST founder, spells out why these movies make money:
These movies are made because they're successful, and they're only successful because a good percentage of people haven't found YouTube yet. Once they do, they won't need to pay $11 to see a bad parody of Tom Cruise's Scientology video -- there are more than enough of them online.
Whenever I see ads for this film, Epic Movie or any of that easily made crap I just get depressed. I realize these are not noble targets (the headline's a bit of a joke, see) but I hate how references can pass for humor. They might as well be honest and release Hey Remember That One Thing: The Movie. Permanent Link: 7:05 PM |
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This is your God
After reading Entertainment Weekly's preview of Secret Invasion as well as the Bendis interview I'm somewhat interested in the book. Then I remember that I was really excited for Civil War after the first two issues but that story spiraled out of control like nobody's business. We'll see what happens here.
This is a headline I will never get tired of. There's a short documentary on Jeffery Brown on SexTV. He's talking about his work and relationships so it's...kind of about sex. People have sex in the books. However it happened we can now write the greatest sentence known to man.
John Siuntres always puts on a good show with Word Balloon and his chat with Richard Starkings is no exception. Near the end of the two hour interview Starkings says that the main difference he sees in genre comics now as opposed to when he grew up is how much slower the story telling is. I heard that and I thought "sheesh, he's right on the money."
I know that Starkings is doing what a lot of comic book fans do which is compare what's coming out now to what he was reading when he was 11-years-old. No matter what's actually happening in comics it all makes a perfect kind of sense in your brain at that age that everything afterwards can't compare. But the man behind Comicraft is making some good points. He grew up with British reprints of '60s Marvel comics and 2000AD. Creators would have these long soap operas serialized in the story but within the confines of a ten page Judge Dredd or 22 page Spider-Man story you got a good chunk. That really is the term I think is best to describe what I read in these older comics. I'm going through the Essential X-Men volumes. That book started out with 17 pages a month but Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum filled every panel with multiple ideas. Certainly Claremont's prone to verbiage but at that point in the run it isn't bothersome. There's real content to back up the posing.
Mentioning Claremont (I'm writing this as I go along, nothing's planned on the blog!) made me realize that how in terms of story pace writers were really fighting against the form. Writing about Steve Gerber a few weeks ago I realize that, even though I know this didn't make creators very happy, I like the tension that comes from writers and artists trying to fit in an expansive consciousness about the medium when the conventional wisdom had such a minuscule view on what comics could be. Trying to tell a story with a rigid page count and firm expectations as to what will happen by the end puts demands on the creators that can be a catalyst for creativity. How do they fit in what they need to when they know 22 pages have to be filled every month? I'm not a fan of number crunchers telling artists how something has to be done. But I do believe that great art comes from having clear limitations and doing everything you can to work around them. It creates problems that your brain has to stretch itself to solve. More and more I've found that's what storytelling is. You have a concept in mind and then you're on way to solve various problems getting in your way of you telling the story in any effective manner.
Someone doing superhero books now doesn't have to push against the boundaries as much as those who came before him or her did. Believe me, when I heard that Marvel's editors let Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker let the last issue in their Seven Cities of Heaven arc be double-sized I was happy. The story's great and I want them to tell it how they want to. But time and time again, especially with writers coming from mediums beyond comics, I see stories that have as much content as what would have been two issues of a book in 1968 but is now told in six issues. I imagining the writers working with editors on story beats, realizing that six issues you have a three act structure that works very well, especially if you follow the Act 2A and Act 2B rules. But I think it's taking advantage of the medium better if you cram as much content into a small container. Some stories need to take their time. But if your aspirations are a modest hero vs. villain idea you can add some psychic weight to it by compressing everything. The reader will be in such a dizzy from getting so much information so fast there's an added feeling of urgency to the proceedings. Of course there's also the danger that the story could be a confusing mess.
It's a bit bizarre of me to do a rambling, unplanned post hailing the economic story craft. I didn't even get to the good examples of writers telling a story in 144 page books. Hey, I think Brain Bendis and Alex Maleev's Daredevil books are some of the best superhero comics in recent memory. I hope to add to and refine my point as opposed to, well, contradicting it.
First, a few clips from the film Jesus Christ Superstar:
And now, Jeepers Creepers, Semi-Star:
What I love about this parody is that the point isn't to lampoon Superstar or the pomposity of Broadway/movie musicals. Instead Mr. Show used Superstar as a way of making points about Generation X malaise. Seeing how a few of the people at Mr. Show were from The Ben Stiller Show, a celebration of the spirit of Generation X, I think that's a big deal.
Does that still make this parody of Superstar? I like to think so. Reading the Mr. Show book I know how much those guys worked to make their sketches look just right. Here it's obvious they paid close attention to the film. I love how the introduction to David Cross's character is the same as Carl Anderson's, with the multiple cameras zooms. Superstar itself was a critique of baby boomer culture, Mr. Show just updated it. Such a great understanding of the original material is what it means to make a great parody. It show the satirists know just what to tweak.
Jack Black would actually play King Herod in a production of Superstar in L.A. that included Ted Neely, Yvonne Elliman and Ben Vereen. You can see video of the curtain call on YouTube but not his performance. Permanent Link: 2:47 PM |
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Thursday, March 20, 2008
Your intense desire for Bob Harras video has been satisfied
In the early '90s when The X-Men cartoon was a big hit for FOX Pizza Hut had VHS tapes that included episodes and bonus materials. What kind of bonus material? How about a round table of Stan Lee, Bob Harras, Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza. Thanks to YouTube we can all enjoy the discussion for posterity. I just wish they didn't have that music under the video the entire time.
I didn't know a part of my grand awakening was that my impetus for blogging would take a downturn. I'm not obsessed with certain ideas that I feel have to tackle with on a public forum. That and I've been busy with other work. But I still buy comics and damn it, what's stopping me from blabbing about them here?
At WonderCon I sat in on a conference of fans talking about their memories of the medium. Many fans talked about the reason why they follow comics is because they've been reading certain characters month in and month out. They stick with the stories when they're real bad because they know it's going to be worth it when the stories get good again.
I could not relate to this. I never followed series for any amount of time as a kid. I didn't have any subscriptions. It was rare that I would have more than three consecutive issues of any title. There's no nostalgic kick in following a series month in and month out. But now I have Ed Brubaker to thank for showing me what all the fuss is about.
Reading Captain America #36 this week honestly feels like the first time I've gotten that rush from reading a monthly comic. I've been following the story but I haven't read or thought about it in 30 days. As soon as I open up the book there's the in media res opening and I'm back into it. The book ends on a cliff hanger, as good serial fiction is known to do. This current "Death of a Dream" arc is in three arcs but reading it feels like reading one giant epic that hits every point a great Captain America song does, all with Steve Rogers being dead. Captain America can truly be an icon here without also having to be down-to-Earth. It's Bucky, Falcon, Tony Stark and Sharon Carter that have to grapple with both the man and the legend. That's the human drama in the book.
In my adult life reading comics has always been a game of "what's getting canceled next?" For some reason I latch on to ideas that are doomed from the start. My longboxes are full of series that last twenty, ten or even six issues. That combined with the fact that a lot of creators basically see long running books as series of mini-series I've basically been trained to expect stories in six issue chunks. With Captain America I finally feel like I'm reading this never-ending string of stories. It feels like a return to what I dig about '60s and '70s superhero comics without any retro feel. It's a return in spirit I suppose. Thanks again to The Brube.
I've heard that you cannot claim to any wisdom unless you've lived at least 25 years on this planet. Well, I'm more than three months away from that milestone but something hit me that I thought could perhaps count as wisdom. It might change the way I live life, including how I look at comics.
I use to think it was self-evident that the more you analyzed something the close you were to getting to "The Truth" about something. I would value the discussion about a piece of work as much as if not more than the work itself. When I got back into comics earlier this decade there were plenty of people on the Internet excited enough by the output of Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis a "graphic novel intelligentsia" cropped up. The departed website Ninth Art is an example. Sequart carries on the tradition. Most of all it was the wave of blogs appearing that impressed me. I loved the idea that the experience of reading New X-Men would continue after I've finished an issue. Digesting the rhetoric inspired by the book was as important to me as the book itself.
While I still enjoy reading good criticism I didn't realize at the time was that this need for analysis of comics was a benign symptom of an otherwise serious problem I had (or have, even if I'm fighting it). I couldn't appreciate something unless I've given it intense thought for days or weeks on end. If I've written my review for New X-Men and read everyone else's then I haven't really read the book at all. Then on Tuesday, while I was at work doing nothing specular at all, it hit me. Running something around in your mind isn't necessarily going to help you understand it better. In fact, it could severely distort the object.
Constant analysis can lead me to misunderstanding, not understanding.
Perhaps that should be "constant bad analysis." I didn't know it at the time but I was dooming myself to a life of Solipism. Everything around me wouldn't be real if it doesn't correspond to the narrative in my mind. I bring this up because if I didn't stop the series you would have seen a new chapter in Razbliuto. I thought that series would become some kind of therapy. Now I'm glad I aborted it because it would have most likely continued the harmful mindset. To take these people and put them in a story, which means leaving some facts out and placing emphasis on others, was the nadir of shutting out any objectivity. I wasn't doing myself any favors.
Now I wonder how much of current existence is due to succumbing to overactive thinking. I've earned a B.A. in English Literature from a curriculum that was based around analyzing and reviewing. I regret not challenging myself and trying something different instead of just continuing what I was already doing. I really have lived a life where I could get anything I wanted. I grew up in an upper middle class suburb in America. I'm a white male (half-Jewish, but let's be honest that's not a major barrier to success). I have supportive parents. I chose of all the options in front of me to live a life based around pop culture. I don't want to change that but I have to admit to myself that one of the reasons why I made the choice was it because I wanted something easy. I thought since it felt easy it must be right. But without any challenges you can't really accomplish anything.
I still like reviewing comics, books and film but my desire to create comics, books and films is greater. I can probably depend on a life where I manage to wake myself out of an obsessive stupor ever so slightly to churn out a movie review for some local publication. The rest of the time I can spend cataloging the contents of my long boxes or adjusting my Netflix queue. But what feels right is creating something new. That's what I want but I have to push myself towards it. I have to be be brave enough to be uncomfortable. Staring down at a blank page is not comforting. For too long I've done it for a few minutes and then said "maybe later..." I have to stop thinking about it and just do it. For too long consciousness has been like a dark cave I can hide away in. But that has to end.
Yeesh, that was kind of heavy. Here's Bat-Mite to cheer everyone up:
Watching The Rocketeer many times when I was young made a big impression on me. It exposed me to a whole different world of pop culture. There was the influence of pulps, Betty Page and RKO serials. The idea that a deliberate aesthetic can fuel a story was a big idea for me. Not that I was thinking that way when I was eight. I was probably thinking "jet packs are cool!" For that I have to thank Dave Stevens. Permanent Link: 2:20 PM |
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Monday, March 10, 2008
"We'll hunt down televisions sets and kill them for their skins"
You'll probably see a Random Monday/Tuesday/Whenever sometime this week. For right now let's enjoy the sound of Detroit's own The Dirtbombs and their song "Leopardman at C&A" from their new album We Have You Surrounded. Lyrics by none other than Alan Moore.
Hey, it's back. I ripped off the A.V. Club and set my iPod on random to create a feature on this blog. The mp3 hyperlinks won't appear on the RSS feed but they will on the blog. They also won't appear when the blogger behind this whole mess is a lazy bum. That's a whole other issue, though.
I sometimes feel like Ted Leo is the last person doing real live rock & roll. I know that's not true but I wonder why there aren't millions of kids inspired by Leo to pick up a guitar, learn three chords (maybe two and a half) and pour their hearts out. Leo is in the mold of someone like Springsteen or Elvis Costello. All three try to combine the might of rock with the heart of a working-class poet.
Here is best song from Living With the Living and for the life of me I can't figure out how the verses and chorus work together. For the verse Leo is telling the story of a neighborhood kid and his community: "My father works from 6 to 8/And he ain't given up his faith/And so I haven't given up myself/Though I sure could use a little help." The chorus is simply "C.I.A. only you know what you've done." I know Leo is a very political songwriter but given the context of which its used I have to assume C.I.A. stands for something other than Central Intelligence Agency. It doesn't seem to fit. There's nothing about spying or toppling world leaders in this song. Maybe that confusion is why I dig the song so much.
The Staple Singers, "You've Got to Earn It" from The Best of The Staple SingersBuy here!Listen here!
I'm always impressed by how positive The Staple Singers are. Over the course of pop music in the last of the 20th Century it seems pessimism and negativity gets the most acclaim. It's like how The Beatles didn't get respect until Rubber Soul and Revolver came out and they got a little darker (that's a bit of a broad statement, huh?). But to write genuinely positive, inspiring music and focus on the good things about life is truly a feat. The Staple family was right there during the Civil Rights Movement, seeing man's inhumanity to man right in front of their face. Throughout they stayed hopeful, offering up words of wisdom such as this song. I wonder if you could do that today?
I'm always impressed by how positive Elliot Smith is...oh wait. I listen to Smith a ton on my iPod (one of the other popular artist for me is The Smiths, funny enough). I'll admit to being occasionally morose and Smith's songs are a certain type of medicine for that feeling. But more than that I'm impressed with the songcraft of one dude with an acoustic guitar. The way he plays that scale riff relentlessly through the song matches the obsessiveness of the narrator is intense. A full band comes in at the end but it's only for a few seconds. It's a neat little trick, giving the song just a few moments of grandeur. Permanent Link: 12:15 PM |
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Monday, March 03, 2008
The battle of various centuries
Time is slipping from my fingers. A lot of it is that I need to organize myself better. I will have a Random...er...Tuesday that's pretty good. But I can't leave you with nothing. Here is Batman vs. Abe Lincoln, the latter apparently in "I Make Stabby" mode (remember when that catchphrase was big amongst us comic nerds?). It will do until someone digs up the infamous "Green Lantern vs. a tax-cheating James K. Polk" cover that DC was set to publish in 1972 until it was squashed for "unexplained circumstances."
Bill Reed of Comics Should Be Good! and Sean T Collins (Sean, fix that link!) both take issue with my statement in my review of Kick Ass #1that by and large high school kids don't read superhero comics. They both use themselves as examples. Like I said in the review if it was just one kid following superhero comics I'd believe it. But I just have to go on my anecdotal information here. If a group of high school age boys are going to bond over some geeky interest it's far more likely that it's going to be some on-line video game over something that requires you to flip through pages and read words.
Again, it feels like I'm just go on and on about what makes 3% of the actual book. It really speaks to Millar's talent as a writer that reviewers such as myself and others do this. Millar's stories run so smooth, a talent that's easy not to notice but you miss it when it's gone, that these odd little statements character make are the only bumps in the road. I'm still interested in Millar writing about a psychotic lunatic who thinks he can be a force of good. I'm sure with further issues I won't be distracted by the mentioning of comic books. The book will be beyond that but I just know we'll be in the middle of a good action scene when Millar will, who knows, probably make some childish joke about disabled people. Then two days later I'll still be thinking "seriously, did we need that?"
Daredevil #105 is the first superhero comic book I've read in a real long where the villain just straight out won. When it comes to chronicling a character's inner turmoil Ed Brubaker cannot be touched and him writing Matt Murdock is like giving Michaelangelo the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In Mr. Fear Brubaker has a character who can just torture Murdock's mind, appropriate given that physical torture has also been addressed during this storyline.
Reading this month by month I felt it didn't live up to the past two storylines, both very good. Reading it all together I realize that since the story requires Murdock/Daredevil to be passive so much of the time there's a momentum in the action that's not going to be there. Now I see how there's a parallel to how Murdock must suffer in silence while his wife loses her mind with the fact that Daredevil must take a back seat as Mr. Fear and The Hood's soldiers tear up his first love, Hell's Kitchen. For a character who releases his feelings by conducting acts of superheroism this just kills him. Near the end of the story he has the thug Ox tied up and just releases all that has built up inside of him in the cruelest form his ethics allow him. But with the issue that came out last week we see Mr. Fear exploit the contradiction central to Daredevil's life. If he's going to be The Man Without Fear then how can he truly care for those around him? Living a life of law and a life of vigilantism is the external version of Murdock's duality. Brubaker just showed us how deep that duality can reside internally, where all superheroes have their weaknesses.
Think of the last few scenes of #105. Murdock, once one of the biggest ladykillers in the Marvel U, sees his wife being committed to a mental hospital. Lance Cranston a.k.a. Mr. Fear has this hottie in his jail cell that's under the same mind control as everyone else in his path. He's about fuck, really a sci-fi version of rape but it's not like this character cares, while Murdock walks away from the woman he loves. She is rendered powerless because she fell for the that famous New York attorney, the one with all the rumors about him. Permanent Link: 11:38 AM |
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