Teach!

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Not much time to post today, but I wanted to put something up, however slight. I’ve got a class in the morning that I’m presenting in (which always cracks me up, putting it that way. Isn’t presenting when monkeys show each other their asses? I can just imagine how well that would go over). Anyways, I’m scrambling trying to get the mass of ideas and observations I have about this book into some sort of logical order, and it’s not going so well.
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I had the final tutorial of the semester today, and possibly the last tutorial I’ll be running during this degree. I was going to say something HIL-arious about the tutorials, but then decided that wouldn’t be professional. Instead, for more on teaching, I direct you towards this. Click on the middle image, the one titled "Lecture Musical."

Well, that was a buzzkill

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I'm sure DC Countdown will be discussed and ranted about ad nauseam in the days and weeks to come. After reading the book, I just wanted to say what a shitty thing to do, to both characters.

So bad it's good

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Just got back from the movies. Last week at the pub I managed to snag a stray preview pass for Sahara. In case you don’t know, this is Sahara:



Yeah, I know. The movie is just what it looks like, so don’t cry for me Argentina, I knew what I was getting into when I went in. In this case you can judge a book by its cover.

I won’t tell you what the story is; needless to say it involves fighting, shooting, and sand. I think the best description of the movie is 'dumb fun.' I’m typically a pretty quiet person at movies, and typically I hate noisy moviegoers, so I’ve got to apologize to the audience at the theatre tonight whose viewing of the movie was periodically interrupted by my incredulous exclamations of “What?!” I couldn’t help it, at least eight or ten times in this movie things happened that made no real world sense at all. The movie just keeps barreling along, though, and after a while I began to appreciate the audacity of it all. It’s like they know it doesn’t all make sense but they don’t care.

A large part of the movie’s charm comes from McConaughey and Zahn. Neither does anything new, instead sticking with the affable characters they do so well. It’s because of their infectious good-naturedness that I can’t bring myself to say that it was a bad movie. However, I can’t tell you that it was a good movie either. I will say this, I never felt insulted by the movie’s impossibilities or leaps of logic. I left this movie in a good mood, and I think I was laughing with it rather than at it. Should you see it? If you’ve got nothing else to do, I can think of worse ways to spend a night. Like I said above, it’s dumb, but fun.
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It was nice enough outside yesterday that I walked home from class without a jacket. Maybe the weather changed after it heard all the terrible things I was saying about it. I’ve been fooled before, though, so I’m not putting the winter stuff away just yet. The locals aren’t convinced either. I was talking to someone today and they said with more than a hint of pleading in their voice, “I hope it doesn’t snow again.”
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And now I’m going to sit down to the best moment of every week, and start reading this week’s comics. Envy me.

Who knew?

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Got this in my email today, and man do I feel like a chump. If only I'd known about this before, I could've done something with the last ten years of my life.

More fun than a cartload of monkeys

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Living in Canada you get used to seeing bilingual labels on everything. You take it as a given that when you turn your can of beans around they’ll be feves. It’s actually kind of odd going to the US or to Britain and seeing labels just in English; they always look fake to me, like movie props or something. Bilingual labels are the law, and everything is in both languages, but sometimes I’m still surprised by how far the policy extends.

Case in point, there’s a chip company that’s got a gimmicky promotion going on right now where they print trivia questions on the chips. I’m a trivia buff and some of the questions are interesting, but I find the promotion completely obnoxious. Before I eat each chip now I look at it to see what’s on it; it’s like adding a speed bump between every chip. It’s a dumb move on the company’s part because I consume their product slower, and it sucks for me because eating these chips is no longer passive. Moreover, while some of the chips look like this:



the other half look like this:



That’s right, the chips are bilingual. Which means not only am I stopping to read every chip, half of them don’t make any sense to me. This is the hell that is my life.
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No, I can’t stop reading them; I learn interesting things. Like, who knew that a group of kangaroos was called a mob? “Uh oh, here comes the mob.” Maybe that’s what people meant when they said that there’s a mob presence in this city, maybe it’s a gang of kangaroos roaming around. “What do you call a group of kangaroos?” Quite frankly I’d call them hell on wheels before I called them anything else.
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That is interesting, though, that a group of kangaroos is called a mob. Neil Gaiman had that story in Sandman where he talked about how a group of crows was called a murder, and that it’s a parliament of rooks, and an unkindness of ravens. I find these sorts of hidden gems in language fascinating. There’s a whole site here that lists all the different names for groups of various animals. I found it last semester when a poet we were reading used the phrase “a nuisance of flies.” I liked the expression and wanted to know if it previously existed or if he’d made it up. Turns out it was his, but I think I’ll keep it for future use anyways.
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And finally, because I’m a masochist, one of the ways I like to torture myself is to wander around the sites selling original comic art and look at all the pieces I can’t afford to buy. Sometimes you run across interesting images, work that you haven’t seen by creators you’re familiar with. Like this one:


(From Fanfare Sports & Entertainment )

A special edition cover, or two covers, by J.G. Jones for Wanted #6. Yours if you want them, for only $2800 US. As usual, anyone who wants to show their appreciation of this blog should feel free to send gifts of original art right this way.

Pa-da pa-pa-paa

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(see more at Flumpie's deviantArt gallery)
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I was thinking today of a TV special I saw years ago on the Ed Sullivan Show. They were talking with people who’d been on, and they had Ray Manzarek talk about the time that he and The Doors played the show. They were going to perform “Light My Fire,” but before they went on, a representative from the show came and asked them to alter the lyric “Girl we couldn’t get much higher” because of the drug connotations. There’s a hilarious scene in The Doors movie where Jim Morrison pretends like he’s agreeing and he starts tossing out suggestions like, “Maybe I could say, ‘Girl you couldn't bite my wire’?” So they said they’d change the lyric, but when they went out Morrison sang the original line.

As Manzarek tells the story, the representative came to them after the show in a rage and said, “You’ll never do the Sullivan Show again.” To which Morrison responded, “Man, we just did the Sullivan Show.”

In high school I was a huge Doors fan, and when I heard this story I loved it. It just made Jim Morrison even cooler in my mind; there he was, sticking it to the squares. (Actually, seeing as I didn’t grow up in the 50s, I probably didn’t use the word “squares”). My enthusiasm for The Doors eventually waned after I read a bunch of Jim Morrison biographies and I realized that he actually wasn’t the electric shaman, and was in fact a destructive alcoholic. (Lesson: don’t learn too much about your heroes, or they might turn out to be human).

I don’t know why, but the Sullivan story recently popped into my head, but this time the possibility occurred to me that maybe Jim Morrison wasn’t thumbing his nose at authority with his actions at the show. Taking into account that Morrison was drunk off his ass much of the time, maybe he had no idea why the rep was yelling at him. What if Morrison’s tone in his reply to the show rep wasn’t defiant, but confused? “Man, we just did the Sullivan Show… Uh, didn’t we?”

It reminds me of the Rick James skit on the Chappelle Show. Charlie Murphy remembers Rick James slapping him across the face at a nightclub one night, but when Charlie hit him back minutes later and said that he was just returning the slap, James replied, “That was weeks ago, motherfucker, I been partying!” Charlie then felt sorry for Rick because Rick was doing so many drugs, he actually thought the incident happened weeks instead of minutes before. Maybe Jim Morrison was similarly confused why someone would be telling him that they couldn’t go on the Ed Sullivan Show when they’d just been on. Maybe he sang the wrong lyric by mistake (or right lyric, depending on how you look at it).

I like Manzarek’s version better, and I suppose I’m just deflating the image one step further, but I’m always going to have that niggling doubt now. I wish I could hold onto the original idea I had of who Jim Morrison was; it was a lot more fun.

Asking for trouble

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Me and Des decided to ring in the day of Christ's resurrection with some old fashioned blaspheming, speculating on a team-up between the king of kings and the king of the seas. Go take a look at our conversation at Des's site. (Your daily bit of common sense: You can pretty much figure out what sort of thing is going to be there, so if it's going to upset you, don't go).
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Last weekend, Tom the Dog's blog turned into an impromptu support group for people, and I count myself among them, who had heard the song, "Since U Been Gone," liked it, and been horrified to find out that it was sung by Kelly Clarkson. In the comments section at Tom's site, Sam Costello is kind enough to point to a really good acoustic version by Ted Leo that's floating around that you can listen to guilt free. Well, with less guilt anyways. It's kind of like going on methadone so you'll stop using the smack.

Anyways, I haven't been able to get either version out of my head all week, and now I want you to go find them so you'll suffer like I am. If it helps, think of the song as a little ode to the saviour. It's Easter-rific!
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I guess you don't need to go to Des's blog for the blasphemy, there's plenty right here.
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After saying all sorts of bad things about Alex Maleev's rendering of action scenes yesterday, I feel I should point out that despite the fact that I find his fight scenes stiff, he did draw one of my favourite Daredevil pages and one of my favourite action shots ever. Admire the beauty of it below:

It's Saturday, these still count as this week's comics!

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Runaways #2 worked better for me than the first issue. The plot isn’t bowling me over, but I’m interested to see where things go. I’m skeptical that the former child hero support group (which is a pretty funny idea) would be so quick to do the bidding of an unnamed benefactor quite so easily. Vaughan tries to rationalize their actions but doesn’t quite win me over with their reasoning.

I’m still getting used to Alphona’s increasingly angular art style, but there are several nice images throughout the book and the storytelling works for the most part. Where this comic excels is in the dialogue. The interaction between the characters is quick and clever, and everyone’s got a unique voice. I love the interaction of personalities in this book, and the pop culture references are played in a way that situates the book in the present but won’t make it outdated in a month. Vaughan also plants Runaways firmly in the broader Marvel Universe with several Easter egg moments that tie the book to Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men and Bendis’s Avengers. I laughed at the bit when Victor talks about the Hawkeye bandwagon, likening Hawkeye to Tupac. Pretty good overall, and I’m in for a few more issues at least.

Oh, and the cover, as always, is an eye catcher by Jo Chen. Go check out her website here for more work.

So I picked up Daredevil #71 because I’m an idiot. I said last month that I wasn’t going to get this issue because I didn’t want to sign on for a storyline that looked like it was going to be entirely a flashback telling us about events that are essentially irrelevant now. But I’m in the store on Wednesday and it looks like I’ve only got Runaways to buy, and unable to face the prospect of going home with just one comic book I grabbed this issue. My rationale was that the rest of the run has been so good, and even when Bendis isn’t completely “on” he’s still pretty good, right?

Well, I got the issue I deserved, I guess. It’s a flashback story- with surprisingly clunky dialogue in places- that tells us nothing new. Maleev’s got a slightly different art style for this book, and it’s nice as always, and as always the caveat is that the action sequences are painfully static. The scene where Daredevil crashes through the window, in particular, is embarrassingly unconvincing. I’m definitely not buying the next one. I mean it this time. Really.

>sigh<

With my lukewarm reaction to several of his books lately, I’ve been wondering recently if the bloom on the Bendis rose is coming off. Colour me surprised then that I liked this week’s Avengers-- sorry New Avengers-- #4 so much. The overall plot, again, is nothing too special, but all the atmospheric details make this an entertaining read. The dialogue is great, and in a way that’s different than Bendis’s previous work; I think there’s been an evolution in his writing. You can tell who Bendis’s favourites are, as Luke Cage and Spider-man get the best moments and the best lines. Spider-man offers plenty of meta-commentary, like the bit about plane crashes, that is funny without pulling the reader out of the story. The best scene in the book is the sort-of confrontation between Cage and Electro, and the interaction between Cage and Spider-man before and after.

A couple of quibbles: though Spider-man is written well here, he’s jarringly out of place. He can’t figure out what he’s doing there and neither can I. I think a lot of the problem comes visually, as we see Spider-man doing things we never see him doing anywhere else. Like sitting on the couch. Or walking place to place. For a character that is normally shown in all sorts of contorted body shapes as he swings around, having him doing normal people things doesn’t work. The other problem I had was that with the serious, semi-militaristic atmosphere of the book, the team’s destination at the end is out of place. It would have worked with the old Avengers, but this group isn’t as super-heroey. Overall, a surprisingly good read, and I’m in for more.

Things were better way back when

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The reason why Ben Affleck was the perfect person to play Daredevil.

And this just isn't right.

Neither is this, but it rocks.

"You can put him in a rocket and fire him into space for all Jor-El cares, baby."

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Stinging ice needles from yesterday aside, it’s pretty nice out today. I didn’t wear a hat or gloves all the way home today and I was fine. With the new snow, it’s almost unnaturally bright outside; the contrast is turned up on everything, with the world falling into blacks or whites and nothing in between. The snow is that white that’s so white it’s almost blue. All in all, the dismay of yesterday has worn off, and I suppose I really can’t complain.
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Actually, the brightness was kind of hurting my eyes.
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Over at the Wildstorm artists’ blog, Gelatometti, Jim Lee posted this scan of the impressive pencils for his last Superman issue:




I’d love to be able to see that image full-sized, just to get the complete effect of it.

And here it is with colours added.


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I went to the doctor yesterday and got the results of a blood test I had done last week, and it turns out my iron is low. The doctor said to me, “You must be feeling run down.” Well, actually, no, I’m not, but now that you brought it up it's got me wondering. What if it’s just been low so long that I’ve gotten used to it?

So now I’m looking at all you normals with suspicion. What advantages do you have that I don’t? If my iron levels were normal, would I be twice the person I am now? Am I having to work extra hard just to keep up? Am I playing with a handicap without even knowing? Is life really not as tough as I’ve been thinking? You’d better hope my iron levels don’t catch up to yours.
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I’ve been meaning to post this for the longest time now. It’s called Superman Origin Comics, it’s hilarious, and there are new instalments still being added. Go take a look. Here’s the first one to get you started.


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Alright, I’m off to class, and then to the pub to punish my liver for some unnamed offence. Rest assured, he has it coming.

The weather outside is frightful

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It...it's snowing again. And it's windy. It's not the nice snow, with big flakes; it's stinging needles of ice in your face. I don't understand, yesterday the sky was more blue than I could remember having seen before. This morning was chilly but dry, and in the past three hours we've gone from random flakes to having three centimeters on the ground. And it's still coming down. I guess the relative warmth of the past few days was just to clear away the old snow and make room for the new, like getting rid of old stock. Unbelievable.

Bing Crosby can shut the hell up.

I'm sure there's bodies thawing out of the snow right now too

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I walked from the house to my car today without a jacket and I didn’t get frostbite anywhere, so I guess spring is here. It’s been sunny the past few days and the accumulated snow of weeks and months is melting. As each layer melts, there’s litter lying everywhere that was frozen in the snow. It makes sense that it was in there, jerks throw their trash on the ground, and it can’t get swept away because it’s in the snow, so it accumulates too. But it’s the sort of thing nobody told me about before I moved here. Like the nuclear reactor we have on campus ("Oops, did we forget to mention that? How embarrassing"). Or the rumours of a mob presence in this city. That wasn’t in the brochures.

Anyways, I figure I must be getting used to living here if I can consider this spring. Back home people are wearing jackets when it's up at 10° Celsius, here when the temperature reaches 0° we’re all dancing in the streets just like Mick Jagger and David Bowie, except without the homosexual experimentation. Exposed skin still starts to hurt like a bastard after a while, but the way things are going I’m guessing it won’t be long now before I’m complaining about the humidity.
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Just to show that superhero comics aren’t the only place that damaging images of women are depicted.



Chris Butcher posted a link to this image a while ago, and I took it to the tutorials I’m running and it got a strong response from the students. It’s an ad from Bell Canada for internet service, saying, more or less, that if you’re a lunatic about what your kids see online, then we’ve got the service for you.

We had a good discussion in class of the violence done to the female body in the image, how the female body is made acceptable here by removing anything sexual, and the fact that she’s been reduced to a collection of parts, much in the way that serial killers do. People even stayed after class to talk about it, and somebody finally asked the most important question, “How the hell did that get put out?”
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And finally, because remixing other kinds of covers is funny too.







There’s many more remixed romance novel covers at this site, be sure to follow the link through at the bottom of that page for even more.

A monkey will make everything okay

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My good friend Kristina, who at a party once broke into a James Bond conversation I was a part of and told us to "Can the geek talk," offered a lukewarm response to the amount of comic stuff on my blog when I told her about it this weekend. As a consolation, however, she offered this image from engrish.com in recognition of my love of monkeys.



I love how sad that monkey is, I find his resignation oddly disturbing.
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Over at CBR they've posted the newly released Batman Begins onesheet poster. I'd post the image here, but they've got the exclusive release, so why not let them have their moment in the sun for today?
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Here's a bunch of random images that came out of the big convention on the weekend.

The first images I've seen from the upcoming Ennis/Crain Ghost Rider, and they look pretty nice.





I don't know if I'll be buying Alex Ross's Justice series, but the promo images so far are eye catching.



An image from the upcoming Loveless series by Azzarello and Marcelo Frusin. I think Frusin is one of the great unrecognized talents working today. He does a lot of Vertigo stuff, which he's suited for, but I'd like to see him on something high profile that gets him noticed.

Monkeys and drawers

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I was just in the kitchen getting myself something to eat and I had to struggle for a second with a crappy drawer we have that doesn’t close properly. Inside, it’s on a sort of rail that’s gotten warped, so it grinds instead of rolling closed. It’s not a big enough problem that I’ll ever get it fixed- I’m renting here and I’m not staying long enough for it to be worth it- but it irks me every time. As I was grinding it closed I thought, “This drawer is the bane of my existence.” And it occurs to me that as far as banes go, that’s a pretty good one to have. The biggest annoyance in my life that I could think of in that moment was a sticking drawer. I figure that’s a better arch enemy to have than, say, a crazy scientist with a death ray (“I call it the Alan Parsons Project”), or a pack of wolves, or hunger, or malaria. So hats off to you sticking drawer, you’re about as worthy an enemy as I need right now.

Anyone else got an arch-enemy plaguing them that they want to share? What's your Lex Luthor?
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Bizarro World, the follow up to Bizarro Comics, is where independent and alternative comic creators get to play with DC characters. It was released last month, and there’s a .pdf file preview up at this link. If this one page doesn’t convince you that you need to buy this book, then you need to seriously reevaluate your priorities.

Speaking of grotesque

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Frank Quitely does some great stuff. This a cover for the upcoming Jonah Hex miniseries just announced. Click it and see it big, this one needs to be seen full-sized to be properly appreciated, I think.

Marvel solicitations and me being a dick

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Over at The Pulse , they’re reporting some stuff that Joe Quesada said at Wizard World LA, and they give this summary of his comments on upcoming Spider-Man:

Reginald Hudlin’s stories are a bit more Peter Parker-centric. J. Michael Straczynski’s flavor is that of a big epic; widescreen stuff. Mark Waid will be showing Spider-Man interacting with more of the Marvel Universe characters – reacting to being an Avenger, and dealing with other heroes on a more regular basis.

Mark Waid’s writing Spider-Man? What? Has this been reported and I missed it, or is this new news?
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Jae Lee does some really interesting things with light and shadow and wiry thin lines. He seems especially suited to dealing with the FF, as demonstrated in the excellent mini-series he and Grant Morrison put out, Fantastic Four: 1234. While his rendition of the Thing doesn’t quite work for me, he understands the other characters. I kept this image because I really like the posing of the Torch down at the bottom.



I wish Joe Quesada would draw more comics. He’s always had an element of the grotesque to his style, kind of like Doug Mahnke, except not like him at all. I’m curious to see where Quesada’s style has evolved to, and where he’s going, and you can’t get much of an idea of that with only the occasional pinup or cover.



This one’s just funny. That’s not the reason I kept it, though. I like drawings of cityscapes and I’m always interested in how artists portray buildings and such. Kolins open, clean style is appealing, and must be hard as hell to do. This is a style that you can’t hide things with. Normally, if you don’t know how to draw something you can just add a whole bunch of lines to disguise it, but with this style any flaws you have are out in the open. Kolins isn’t perfect; you can see it in this drawing with Luke Cage’s feet, or in the fact that both characters’ right legs seem a touch smaller than they should be, but I can respect the effort.

Also, Kolins’s open lines mean that the colourist becomes very important. The colours are as important to making this image as the linework. It's a somewhat European influenced approach to comic art.



And in complete contrast, Adam Warren says, “I need colours about as much as Davinder’s housemate’s cat needs a wino!” (Sorry, I said I’d stop that). This is a striking image that I can’t help but think is just going to be messed up by a logo. Dynamic, dark. I’d love to see the original art for this.
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I thought of an astonishingly perfect comeback for something that someone said three weeks ago, and it kills me that I’ll never get to use it. I tend to replay old conversations in my head. I don’t know why, I’ve just always done it. I look at it as a good thing, because it means that I’m really paying attention to what people are saying and I’m giving their words and ideas thoughtful consideration. What sucks is when I come up with situation specific responses that I can’t give anymore. Sometimes it’s a joke, sometimes it’s a barb. Conversations, I think, are a sort of art form, but they’re situated in time. You can compare it to a live performance by a band or a theatre group or a ballet, where despite the fact that the routine performed every night is the same, subtle differences exist that make every night’s performance unique. A conversation is like that, except there’s only one performance. It’s like writing a poem and then burning it. This leads into all sorts of ideas about postmodernism and how every reading of every text is unique, but that’s a lot deeper than I want to get for the relatively shallow topic I started off with.

In the first Death miniseries, Neil Gaiman wrote about a French phrase, “l’esprit d’escalier,” which, as the dialogue tells us, translates into “the spirit of the stairs” and means ‘all the things you wish you’d said as you walk away from a conversation.’ Every French person I’ve ever asked has never heard the phrase before, but it’s a good idea nonetheless. A few days ago I was thinking about a somewhat jerky comment that a friend of mine made to me about three weeks ago that’d stuck with me since. Replaying the exchange in my head two days ago, a response occurred to me, and this response was a thing of beauty. It would have cut this person to the core, cut right through all their hypocrisy and exposed it so that they themselves would have seen it. At the same, it’s worded in such a way that it comes across as a relatively gentle, friendly poke. The statement wouldn’t have had the same sort of significance to anyone except that person, and they couldn’t have explained it to anyone else without exposing parts of themselves that they keep hidden from others, and themselves.

Kafka wrote, “A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us” and that’s what my words would have done. By this point, you’re very likely thinking that I’m completely overestimating my ability with words or my insight into this person (or you’re thinking “stop breaking people’s frozen seas, asshole”), but I swear, the words were perfect. It was art. And I’ll never get to use it.

Delirium influenced comic reviews at their best!

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Another all nighter last night, so if you’ve come here expecting coherency, you may as well wander away, as I’m liable to at any moment in a daze. The good news is that with today’s proposal out of the way I’ve got about two weeks before anything else is due. This means that I can get back to things like normal sleep patterns. Oh, and grooming. You know how hockey players keep playoff beards? Well, during essay season I keep an essay writing beard until everything’s done and handed in. I know, “essay writing beard” doesn’t have quite the same macho mystique as a “playoff beard,” but whatever, only one of us is working right now, Mario Lemieux, and it’s not you.
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School got in the way of comics again (fucking school), so new reviews are a little later this week than I like them to be. There were only two books for me to buy on Wednesday, which is a good thing for once. This month’s bills are in, and I am broke. The familiar refrain runs through my head: “Comics or lunch, comics or lunch?” But I’m sure everyone does that, right? Right?

Having there be only two books for me to buy was also okay considering that the books were two of my favourites, Ultimates and Brubaker’s Captain America.

Ultimates, I figure, even counts as two or three books for the number of times I’ll reread each issue. That shouldn’t make you think that the title is unreservedly good, however. I’m starting to wonder if I would still be buying this title if anyone else were on art, even if it was someone whose work I really like. Really, I probably wouldn't. Bryan Hitch’s drawing excuses all sorts of problems in the writing. Millar's writing is fine, it's just nothing groundbreaking. As is usual with Millar, I like the overall plotting (Is Thor crazy? He’s got me wondering), but the dialogue leaves something to be desired. I think I’m going to go through the various issues I have here of Millar’s comics and start a running tally of how many times characters ask each other “Can you believe (insert exposition).” I shouldn’t talk, I went back and noticed that my last blog entry had the word “great” appear in it six times. But then, nobody’s paying me, so I’ll be a bad writer if I feel like it, dammit.

The multiple “Captains” in the book is interesting, and I hope there’s some depth given to those characters. I’ve been thinking about the different “Captains” that exist in the Marvel U, and I might post on that someday. With the ones shown to us in this issue, all I can think is that I wish they had different names; Captain Spain, Captain France, etc. don’t sound quite right.



Bryan Hitch might well be my favourite monthly (ha ha) artist right now. Every page, every panel asks to be looked at and examined repeatedly. He could draw cereal boxes and I’d buy them. Witness the deadly dull composition of this cover, which by any other artist would not fly, and see how he turns it into something that just makes you look. The composition is a huge problem here, and his figurework doesn’t overcome it, but you stare regardless. On a side note, I think it’s interesting that Captain Britain plays such a large part in this story considering that for a long time Hitch was so strongly influenced by Alan Davis. His work here shows how far he’s come in establishing his own artistic identity separate and, at the least, equal to Davis.

So, writing, acceptable; art, incredible, and getting better, amazingly enough.

Though I look forward to Captain America less, it is, overall, a much better book. Brubaker is writing the best Captain America I’ve ever read. Epting’s art is solid, and Lark’s flashbacks, though not as interesting artistically this issue as last, are good as well. Though I don’t like Tom Clancy, there’s that sort of vibe to the story; a cloak and dagger, spy novel kind of thing. There’s a tension underlying the events in the book, because even though you don’t know what’s going on, it seems big and serious. Brubaker’s one of the best writers in the industry right now, and I can’t remember the last time I read something by him that wasn’t good. This is one of those books you share with people.

Marvel solicitations are up, so maybe another post later. Right now I think I’ll pass out on my keyboard.

Giant Steps

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If you haven’t heard about it yet, I’m sure you will in the days, weeks, and months to come: Joss Whedon, of Buffy fame, has signed on to direct the Wonder Woman movie. It’s been kicking around for a while as a rumour, but I didn’t think that anything would come of it; it sounded like dream casting.

We watched a documentary last semester that talked about how most of the great movies of the seventies, like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, or Dog Day Afternoon, wouldn’t be made today. Someone interviewed in the documentary talked about pitching an idea he had, and the development executive from the studio agreeing that it was a great idea but saying that the studio wouldn’t buy it. The idea, he explained, would require the right director, the right cast, and a lot of work to make it work properly, and studios won't buy movies that have to be well made in order to be successful. They want a pitch that says “Tom Hanks and a bulldog;” something that’ll fill seats regardless of quality.

I figure people will go to see Wonder Woman no matter what, but having Whedon as director puts it one step closer to being done well. And this is a character that needs some renovation. I’m sure Whedon will bring in the action aspects that belong with the character, but he also brings the potential for something that I don’t readily associate with Wonder Woman, and that’s sharp dialogue and characterization. She tends to be more alien than Superman and Batman, almost like Thor in ways. It’ll be interesting to see that Whedon hipness that all the kids are crazy about these days applied to this character in particular.



There’s even an Adam Hughes promo piece, which is a good start. Having Whedon doesn’t mean for sure that it’ll be great, but at least it won’t be Catwoman.
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I’m also using this as an excuse to post my all-time favourite image of Wonder Woman, this Jim Lee convention sketch:


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Ken Lowry, over at Ringwood Ragefuck, saw a preview of Sin City and he says it’s good. Movie tastes vary and all that, but I’m just glad to hear that it isn’t out and out awful. Looking forward to this very much.
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Furniture Porn went over great. Watching the dawning recognition on the students’ faces as they figured out what the two chairs were doing was a great moment in teaching.

I stank up the joint with the rest of the tutorial though, both times. We were looking at news media this week and there’s really not much that you can say that the modern, cynical university student doesn’t already accept. “You can’t trust the media, blah, blah, blah…” Have you ever been talking and you realize that you’re even boring yourself? Yeah, that was me today.
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Drawn! is an excellent new blog written by a group of professional illustrators, cartoonists, and concept artists. From what I’ve seen so far they have a number of interesting and informative links posted every day, and I expect to pilfer from them frequently.
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Speaking of which, that’s where I found this great little animation set to John Coltrane’s "Giant Steps," done by Michael Levy, and thanks to Drawn! I know that the animation is going through a number of different art styles and aesthetics. And here I just liked the pretty colours.

It sure is, Batman, it sure is

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How come nobody addresses each other as "Baby" anymore? I think I might make it my mission to bring that back.

New DC Solicitations

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Every month the comics companies release their solicitations, and every month I giddily cull my favourite images. This isn't like a Previews review, I'm just posting the images I liked enough I had to save them, and then giving minor commentary why. Joe Rice at Comics Should be Good is doing something similar and he calls it Judging Books by their Covers. I wish I'd thought of that.

After a few dry months, there were lots of images in the DC solicitations this time around. I hope the Marvel ones are as good.



Ross’s past few covers on JSA haven’t done anything for me, but this one jumps out at me. Like I’ve said before, I’m a sucker for Hawkpeople.



I’m glad Carlos Pacheco’s finally doing a project that I’m interested in. I think he’s one of the most innovative and talented artists working today, but he’s always on projects that I don’t care about. I’m even considering picking up the trade for the latest Superman/Batman (shudder) arc just for the art. Putting him on Green Lantern is genius because he excels at superhero action, he conveys scope, he’s great at world building, and he’s got a terrific imagination. I’m really looking forward to this book.

This is a strong, iconic image, and I’m surprised they didn’t use it for the first issue. Minor quibble: I’m weirded out by the new Green Lantern costume design. I know it’s meant to be a step away from the shorts outside the costume look, but now it just looks like he’s got no pants on. There’s got to be a way around that.



Frazier Irving does great stuff with light and dark, and this image is really striking. Each of the big head covers I’ve seen so far for Morrison’s Seven Soldiers line has been eye-catching.



Like this one. Ryan Sook’s no slouch with the shadows either. I like the way she fills out the entire frame, and the classic showman type image. Each of the Seven Soldiers headshots has captured the essence of the characters. Sook did some great work on the Arkham Asylum mini last year. He’s got a weird Kevin Nowlan/ Michael Lark thing going on. I just found his site too, and he’s got a ton of nice looking images up. Go take a look here.



It’s always nice to see John Watkiss’s art; he did my favourite version of the Sandman in Gaiman’s Marco Polo story. I like dry brush/ charcoal thing he’s got going on in the shadow.



A classic Moebius image. I seem to recall seeing this without the big ass logo though, and I think it’d look nicer that way. All around great cover, with the colours conveying serenity and all the pointy stuff conveying the complete opposite. I’m glad this is getting a new printing, maybe I'll finally get to read it twenty years later.



Despite doing so for many years, I can no longer deny that J. Scott Campbell has talent. Not based on this piece, mind you. This is a solid, if unspectacular image that I saved just because of how well he’s done the down-shot. Campbell’s cheese-cakey subject matter often puts me off, but there’s solid drawing going on underneath. He’s got a great understanding of faces and body types, and his characters are all different people. I’m not terribly interested in this book, but I’ll pick up the cheap first issue so I can finally own a little of his art. Here’s another artist that I’m waiting for to work with a writer I’d buy.



I haven’t read anything drawn by Justianino before, so I can’t comment much on his style, but I like the design work going on here. The pointy things on the foreground guy’s back are weird and clinical and technical looking; he’s got a whole Dark City/ Obergeist look to him. The pose, shading, and textures on the background guy are well done too.



A nice looking statue of Brian Bolland’s version of Batman. I wish the jawline was a little narrower, but I’m just being picky. This is the fourth in the collection so far, with renditions of Tim Sale’s, Simon Bisley’s, and Eduardo Risso’s Batman coming before. I liked the Risso, but this one’s my favourite of the four. Does anyone know if there’s more coming? The Risso solicitation only had drawings by the four artists beside it. I’m wondering too why they’re so cheap. This statue is 7” tall and costs $45 US, but the similarly sized Black Canary maquette being released the same month is twice the price.

Purple tights? I'm a grown ass man, dog.

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And tonight the part of the Swordsman will be played by Cedric the Entertainer.

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So it's been exactly a month since I put aside all real work and started blogging. The fact I've been able to stick with it this long must indicate that my ADD is in remission (that's Attention Deficit Disorder and not Alan David Doane). That, or I'm really, really dedicated to procrastinating.

But I remember what it was like back when I started blogging. I worked on a computer the size of a room, and all my posting had to be done through teletype. Reader comments were delivered by the pony express, and you had to surf the internet by tickertape. Flaming involved real fire. But people knew how to hold a grudge in those days; they had to if they were going to walk across state lines with a torch to tell you they took exception to your review of Proof of Concept. Flame wars took out whole neighbourhoods.

Yep, everything's better nowadays.
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My good friend Barb, the one who hates kids, was mentioned in the Toronto Star last week. You see, Barb's got this thing about Farscape. The article's about sci-fi shows and their fan base and what happens when you try and take one off the air. After you get by the bit about Jolene Blalock kicking the corpse of her dead show, there's a good discussion of the success that groups like Save Farscape Canada, of which Barb is identified as being "a prime mover" (is that in the Newtonian sense?). Go take a look at their site, they've got some nice comic style propaganda posters if you decide to join the cult (I'd post one, but the site seems to be down for maintenance at the moment). I'll admit I haven't watched the show yet, despite haranguing from B. But I'm definitely intrigued by anything that inspires this kind of dedication. I'll watch, especially now that I've got it cleared up that this isn't the show with Hercules as the starship captain.
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I'll follow that bit of promotion of a good cause with some shameless self-promotion. I've deliberately kept this site separate from my other site, just because I'm unsure about whether it's good form to criticize someone's art and then tell everyone to go look at mine. But I figure one mention in a month isn't so bad. So take a gander at my deviantArt gallery. I'll be posting more pieces in the next few days too, so keep an eye out.
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I don't mind telling you, I'm a little punchy right now. I slept five hours last night and I've been editing a paper for a ridiculous twelve hour stretch. And I've finished half a tub of dates. I'll tell ya, I'm in a really weird place.
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File this under information you should know but nobody ever tells you. It's how long food is good for before you shouldn't eat it. Don't make fun! This is important, and I'm telling you because sometimes I feel like I've got to look after you.
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And finally, while we're on the topic of wino rimjobs, as we have been for several days (this is the last post on it, I swear), my housemates' cat says who needs a stinking wino? (Even before you click that link you know you're if you're the type of person who should be clicking on it or walking away. Fair warning: there's nothing nice on the other side of that text).

Finally, a book that tells the truth about kids

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This one's for Barb, who knew it all along. Click on the image to learn all about the menace that is Zogg.

"Are you threatening me, Master Jedi?"

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Just watched the new, full length trailer for The Revenge of the Sith, and oh, it's so good it makes me weep. I weep because of the unlikelihood of the movie matching up to the trailer. You'll understand what a tragedy this is when you see how good the trailer is.

I'd like to believe in George Lucas's ability to pull this off, but I've been burned twice, and by movies that were just close enough to the mark that it was that much more painful that they didn't quite work. Chris Rock does a bit where he says, "We love Michael Jackson so much, we let the first kid slide. That's how much we love Michael." Now I'm absolutely not equating child molestation with making bad movies (unless those movies involve child molestation) (>ahem< sorry), but we love George Lucas so much that we gave him 1.5 billion dollars (source: The Numbers, here and here) for relatively substandard movies and are lining up to give him some more. And I'll be there opening weekend, weeping as I hand over a chunk of that week's grocery money and hoping against hope that the movie works.

But at least the trailer's good.
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Two Star Wars posts in a week! That doesn't look too good. I tried to consult the Geek Hierarchy to see if I have a right to condescend, but it's unclear on where I stand.

(courtesy Brunching Shuttlecocks)
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And finally, over at Something Awful, they're doing more cover remixes. Not every one's funny, but there's enough good ones that it's worth a look. I think this is my favourite:



Kevin at Beaucoupkevin remixed and posted this one at his site that I found hilarious:

Move along, nothing to see here

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Hey Paul, if you're reading, don't worry, I'll keep the thing about you and the wino rimjobs to myself. That one's just between me and you buddy.

Snow, sex, spoilers, and Superman

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It’s snowing again. Not that it’s news, it snows every four days here. And I’m not complaining, I quite enjoy the snow. To use my friend Paul’s word, it’s idyllic when everything’s covered with a couple of inches of snow. Everywhere I need to go- school, grocery store, comic shop- is within walking distance, so that’s not a problem either, and the temperature isn’t a concern if you bundle up properly. So aesthetically and functionally, snow is not so bad.

I can’t figure out why then, whenever I look outside and see it snowing I say that first sentence with a sigh. It’s involuntary, “It’s snowing. Again. >sigh<” Before moving east I’d never had to deal with snow more than two or three times a year, if that. I’d never shoveled my walk more than once in a year. This year I’ve done it five times. It’d be more if my housemates weren’t taking turns. This is what my front yard looked like a few weeks ago:



My only consolation was that if I was still in Vancouver it’d be grey and rainy instead of snowy and cold. However, even that has been taken away from me by the unseasonably warm spring they’re having there. I’m not complaining, I just wanted to take the opportunity to send a screw you to everyone back home walking around in their shorts. >sigh<
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In the Visual Culture class I’m TAing I’ve been hammering my students over the head all semester with Scott McCloud’s observation that humans are predisposed to see themselves everywhere. That’s why a smiley face, which has absolutely no resemblance to a real human face is still registered as a face.





Taken a few steps further, this idea leads into our predisposition to identify with the stories we hear and hear. We don't just see ourselves in images, we see ourselves in characters and their narratives. I think I’m going to sit down and write a whole entry about this one day soon, but the gist is that stories are a simulation of life. Every society uses stories to socialize its members and tell them how to behave. There is something about us that makes us inclined to accept and absorb information presented in the narrative format. Alan Moore’s final issue of Promethea gets into these ideas somewhat too.

But all that is a topic for another day. What I wanted to talk about was the bit at the beginning, about how we anthropomorphize objects around us and see ourselves in things that don’t resemble us much at all. Which brings me to Furniture Porn. This bizarre site, which shows chairs and tables having sex, ties into everything I’ve been telling my students all semester. The funny thing is that I was actually going to warn you about clicking on the link, and then I thought to myself, “Warn them of what? That it’s risqué? It’s tables and chairs!” Ah, this started off so highbrow didn’t it? Still, I can’t wait to see the looks on my students’ faces next week when I walk into class and put two chairs on a table, one leaning into the other, and ask them what they see.
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I’m going to have to do a proper review or a discussion of that last issue of Promethea this week, there’s a lot going on in that issue that I wanted to talk about.
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John Layman’s got a look into a day in the life of a professional comics writer up at his blog. I recommend going and taking a look. I can’t say more without wrecking it, just do it. I should mention that my recommendation is tempered by the fact that a couple of entries down he apparently GIVES AWAY THE TWIST ENDING OF THE MOVIE The Village. Now, I hesitate to say this to someone I don’t know personally, but, “Thanks a lot, ass.”
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And finally, I can’t remember where I got this from so I can’t give you credit whoever you are that scanned it. But thanks, it makes me laugh.

In the Mood

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Yesterday’s headline was meant to indicate that things were going well. I just reread the entry and it doesn’t come across, I don’t think, but yesterday was a hell of a good day.
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Last night me and a couple of friends sat down and watched my favourite movie, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood For Love. This isn’t going to be any sort of review, but rather me trying unsuccessfully to tell you what I like so much about this movie. I was pointed towards Wong Kar Wai by my good friend Romain, with whom I have great conversations about cinema (and many other things). Romain described Wong Kar Wai’s movies as what you would imagine a painter would create if he were put in the position of a movie director. That’s what I see when I watch Wong Kar Wai’s movies, singular, sublime images; colours and layers. What I love about In the Mood for Love is that the cinematography captures the poetry of moments, and the camera’s motion seems to simulate your vision as you scan across a beautifully shot photo.



The aesthetic of the film, the second thing I love about it, ties in with the way the movie is shot. The movie is set in Hong Kong during 1963 and Wong Kar Wai captures the period, or he creates it, I don’t know. What we see in the movie may never have existed, and in fact, seems too cool to have existed. The men all wear suits, the women wear slim, form fitting dresses. Everyone looks timelessly stylish. The movie is bathed in warm orangish-yellows, cool blues, deep reds. And Nat King Cole keeps popping in to sing Aquellos Ojos Verdes.



The film has a quiet melancholy about it, partly drawing from the story, partly from the two main characters. Maggie Cheung, who I would gladly cut out a kidney for, is heart-breakingly elegant. I fell in love with her character when I watched this movie, and I know what that sounds like, but there it is. Every girl I get involved with from hereon is going to have to compete with Maggie Cheung.

Tony Leung, the devil in a blue suit, plays a sad man better than anyone else, and that’s what he always is in Wong Kar Wai’s movies. If Tony Leung shows up in a Wong Kar Wai movie, you can bet he’s going to be made miserable. He plays sad with the same level of conviction that Harrison Ford plays beat up.



The two leads are restrained and quiet, but communicate volumes about their characters through a single look or turn of the head. This movie is about meaningful silences and reading into the moments between the dialogue. Also, Tony Leung looks cooler than hell when he’s smoking. Tony Leung is the cigarette companies’ greatest weapon against anti-smoking campaigns; any time I see him smoke it makes me want to run out and buy a pack. There’s a scene in the movie where the camera pans to him in slow motion as he’s sitting in a cloud of smoke, thunder rolls as he exhales, and you realize seconds later that you’ve stopped breathing.

I could go on clumsily trying to explain why I like this movie; but really it’s beyond my words. Watch the movie, I think you’ll like it. If you want to see an example of Wong Kar Wai’s work before you dish out for a rental, you can go to the BMW Films website and in the Season 1 Films download The Follow. You can get by the registration page quite easily with fake information, so don't let that stop you. In The Follow you can see some of what I’m talking about with In the Mood for Love, albeit on a smaller and not nearly as affecting scale.