I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love giant squids. Or octopi. Whatever.

Seriously, bigger than the St. Augustine octopus? It's entirely appropriate to say that this discovery is HUGE.

Gosh, but Andrew Sullivan sure is good when he tears into the Taliban wing of the GOP. Check out this excoriation of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's deeply creepy comments made in the wake of Canada's gay-marriage decision and the Supreme Court's overturning of Texas's anti-sodomy laws. It really is frightening how huge chunks of a major political party in the United States of America openly advocate the kind of all-pervasive, all-intrusive theocracy against which we currently are waging a massive unconvential war. The more Republicans like Frist and Santorum are allowed to take center stage, the bigger threat an openly social-liberal candidate like Howard Dean will pose to Team Bush in 2004.

I'm on vacation! In beautiful Colorado, to be exact, hence the lack of updates. I may be posting sporadically throughout the remainder of the week, though, so stick around.

As a reward for your loyalty, here's a link to Amanda Collins's MoCCA recap, and a bit of how she feels about Craig Thompson's soon-to-be-smash-hit graphic novel Blankets. Enjoy!

Daredevil was a better movie than Spider-Man.

Yeah, I said it!

Since that's not the kind of thing you can just blurt out in polite company, I'll be elaborating at some point. Watch this space.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

I'm proud to see U.S. troops deployed to countries that need them, particularly in neglected, impoverished, war-torn Africa (prouder still when I get the impression that the man sending them won't shit his pants and pull them out after one rough firefight, unlike some presidents I could mention). But I can't help but feel that the "invitation" extended to the U.S. by the UN to commit troops to Liberia wasn't an almost solely politically motivated attempt to embarass the administration. Sending a small contingent of troops (too small to be tactically effective in any real way) to help keep the peace in a country that doesn't have peace to keep and in which the U.S. has no economic, political, or security-based interests isn't exactly a recipe for an auspicious military action. It looks like Bush is going to give it the OK, which like I said is actually pretty great. But the UN is well aware of its track record in "peace keeping" (please see Rwanda, Korea, and any nation ever discussed by Joe Sacco)--second in ignominy only to France's--so this reads like a ploy to sucker the States into committing troops in a place where little palpable progress will be made (that is, if it's the UN and not the U.S. that's running the show) in order to prevent them from doing things elsewhere, 2,000 troops at a time.

(So naturally, Howard Dean's all for it!)

I was out shopping today and I saw a postcard of that famous picture of the sailor kissing some woman on the street after the end of World War II. I thought for a moment about everything that picture said about the situation those two people found themselves in. Years of indescribable horror, violence, sacrifice, and tragedy, and then, victory. Of course, things weren't really over--decades of reconstruction and occupation would follow (and the latter bit still continues today)--but the joy these people felt at the successful completion of this horrific but necessary endeavor so moved them that they just started grabbin' strangers and makin' out. (Free love, two decades early?)

The sheer scope of atrocity that was World War II kind of helped put the endless stream of awfulness coming out of Iraq in perspective for me. Having been away from the Internet for a while I was getting all my news from the local paper and TV stations here in Colorado, and it's all talk of "slipping into open revolt" and the like. And of course in the anti-war blogosphere (heck, even in its comics-related subsection--hi, Franklin! hi, Jim!) there's barely restrained glee, not at the deaths of soldiers and Iraqi civilians, of course, but at the political ramifications of same for the Bush administration. There, it's "the beginnings of a full-fledged guerilla campaign."

But war is difficult. Actually, war is horrendously, mind-bogglingly awful. And compared to the horrendous, mind-boggling wars we've fought in the past, we're actually still ahead of the game. The casualty level, both for American troops and Iraqi civilians, remains astonishingly low given the immensity of the action we've undertaken. The erosion of civil liberties in Ashcroft's America (TM) during the So-Called War On "Terror" (c) is troubling, but also trifling compared to that under Presidents Nixon, Johnson, Roosevelt, Wilson, and Lincoln (to say nothing of the old-school from the early 18th century). Americans may be growing aware of the difficulty of the task at hand, but they're not giving up on it, and neither is the military, and neither is the government--and neither, for that matter, are the majority of Iraqis. It's not a civil war, it's not massive daily uncontrollable rioting, it's not the Tet Offensive--it's the same kind of pointless vengeful bullshit that history's losers perpetually engage in on their way down the chute.

What I'm saying is not that in a matter of months we'll see sailors grabbing girls in front of the TRL studio in Times Square and getting their smooch on. This war is not World War II. But nor, in countless important ways, is it Vietnam. The bad news is still bad, and the deaths are still awful. But they are not in vain.

3) Read this elegantly and angrily written overview of the situation in Iraq by Victor Davis Hanson. (I still can't get over the fact that I link to National Review Online, but Hanson's a very different animal than, say, John Derbyshire. I also saw him talking about the Battle of Thermopylae (of Frank Miller's 300 fame) on the Discovery Channel the other night, so that's neat.)

4) Buy the stunning anthology of Christopher Hitchens's Slate columns on Iraq, A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq. He gets into the highest dudgeon I've ever seen him get into in the book's conclusion, aiming a furious j'accuse at Saddam enablers everywhere, from the first Bush administration to the current "peace" movement:

QUOTE: "Those twelve years [between Gulf Wars I & II] were eaten by the locusts. The trunk of the tree of Iraq as allowed to rot, and its branches to wither. And all the time, a huge and voracious maggot lay at the heart of the state. Trade turned into a racket, the market was monopolized by the Mafiosi, the sanctions screwed the poor and fattened the rich, and palaces with gold shit-houses were constructed to mock the slum dwellers and the conscripts. A class of lumpen, uneducated, resentful losers was bred. When the Great Leader wanted to be popular, as on the grand occasion of his last referendum, he declared amnesty of the thieves, rapists and murderers who were his natural constituency. (The political detainees stayed where they were, or are: It will take years for us to find and number all their graves.) To his very last day, the Maggot continued to divide and rule: to pump gangrene and pus into the society, disseminating lies and fear and junky religious propaganda. And there his bastard children were, when the opportunity for hectic destruction and saturnalia presented itself. If it is truly possible to be wise after the event, then I associate myself again with those who believe that the Saddam Hussein regime should have been deposed in 1991. There would have been some severe moments, but Iraq would now be twelve years into the process of nation-building (or rebuilding) and many unlived or blighted lives could have been lived in the risky atmosphere of self-determination.

"I stress the element of risk because it so often seemed to me, before the battle was joined, that many of its critics were demanding the impossible. Assure us of a painless victory, they said, and we might consider lending our support. Assure us, also, of an immaculate conception of the project, unspotted by any previous compromises and betrayals. Assure us above all that oil is an unmentionalbe bodily secretion, unfit for discussion in polite company. I grew impatient with this. As Frederick Douglass once phrased it, those who want liberty without a fight are asking for the beauty of the ocean without the roar of the storm. (It's been put more terseley more recently: 'No Justice--No Peace.')"

This guy hates totalitarianism, and I mean hates it. And he has nothing but contempt for excuses for its perpetuation. Is there really any other way to live?

Happy Fourth, once again!

Apologies for the incredibly lame entry title, but the purpose of this post is to encourage you to do two things:

1) Go read this Pulse interview with Phoebe Gloeckner, the amazing writer and cartoonist behind The Diary of a Teenage Girl and an all-around awesome person.

2) Have a happy Fourth of July!

In the "I Love It When Assholes Are Hoist By Their Own Petard" Department, professional bigot Michael Savage has been fired from MSNBC (courtesy of Instapundit--the link, not the firing). The best part of it is that the meltdown for which he was fired was the result of internecine shock-jock warfare: He began shouting viciously homophobic obscenities at a fan of the sub-Opie-and-Anthony "Don & Mike Show." Now if only we can get a caller to start repeating the word "Bababooey" the next time Ann Coulter is on Hannity & Colmes.

I really, really miss Barry White.

He was much more than a roly-poly punchline, you know. As anyone who's really listened to his music can tell you, he truly earned the honorific of The Maestro, just as much as he deserved to be called The Walrus of Love. (God, what a great nickname. I wish I was The Walrus of Love, goo goo gajoob, baby.)

Of course, there's that voice. It's not just that it's low, or sexy--he sings with such conviction and control that you could almost swear (as in "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Baby") that he's singing harmony with himself like some sort of sexed-up Tibetan monk. And those spoken-word sections--when he says "Now that I'm a man I've put away childish things," you believe him.

His amazing ear for orchestral ambience helped bring gorgeous, complicated string sections out of the opera house and into the on-the-one funk arena. He had a compatriot in this regard with funk's other great low-register loverman, Isaac Hayes, but where Ike conveyed turmoil and torment, Barry exuded confidence, warmth, and world-in-your-eyes (or thighs) passion. Funk's later users of sexy strings, like P-Funk and Rick James, owe Barry a huge debt, as do every DJ and producer who've based hip-hop tracks around violins.

Barry also made the most persuasive case for disco I've ever heard. I vividly remember reading the liner notes to a friend's copy of Barry's greatest hits my sophomore year in college, in which Barry offered an eloquent apologia for the much-maligned dance genre. Disco, he argued, was not about the trendy fashion atrocities we've come to associate with it, but about people looking beautiful, feeling beautiful, listening to music that made them feel beautiful. After reading White's words I felt instantly able to appreciate the genre for the fun-loving (and fun, and loving) music it's bequeathed us, from K.C. and the Sunshine Band to Giorgio Moroder's collaborations with Donna Summer to Chic to (I couldn't believe it myself) the BeeGee's disco stuff to, of course, Barry's tunes themselves.

And what tunes they were! The titles alone speak volumes: "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Babe" (with the unforgettable "feels so good" opening), "Love's Theme" (we used it as the entrance music for the wedding party at our reception), "It's Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me" (featured in a seriously sexy scene in Spike Lee's compelling, underrated Summer of Sam, it may be my favorite Barry jam). But beyond the greatest hits, there's the proto-trip-hop epic "Your Love (So Good I Can Taste It)" the 12-minute bedroom-funk equivalent of "Stairway to Heaven" from Barry's awesome record Is This Whatcha Wont? (Yes, that's how he spells it--how cool is that?) Folks, words simply cannot describe how good this song is, as it transitions from an anticipatory string-laden opening to a downbeat foreplay-in-music-form spacey relentless groove to a full-throated climax (in every sense of the word). It's a full-fledged journey deep into the cosmic groove. Please, please go buy this album at Amazon, and discover the joys of White's art beyond the best-of comps and radio staples.

Man, he was good. In the Missus's words, the world is a much less sexy place with him gone.

I'm pretty much back to full-speed posting.

I'm not the only one who's uncomfortable with certain commercials.

Amy's been updating her blogs like mad. Go here and here.

The rest of the All Too Flat team pulled off an unbelievably impressive prank last week. It involves the Astor Place Cube and '80s nostalgia. It's brilliant. Check it out!

Big Sunny D is really good.

Hey everyone--don't forget to thank Al Jazeera for wishing us all a Happy Fourth of July!

(Actually, heaven forbid that I suggest Al Jazeera may have released this Saddam Hussein tape on the 4th of July in order to irritate the United States. Just because the tape was made on June 14th doesn't mean they sat on it until it would be maximally embarassing to America, heavens no. It probably just happened to take them exactly that long to determine that it was newsworthy. They're just another unbiased regular-old news network, after all.)

Daredevil: Liked it better than Spider-Man. There was just something kind of clunky and arbitrary about the way Spider-Man's plot moved forward. Daredevil, on the other hand, had this weird emotional-turmoil operatic logic for its structure, and damn if it didn't work like a charm. Like an opera, you don't see a movie like Daredevil for the realism--you see it for the spectacle, for the emotional immediacy, for the out-of-their-heads-with-anger-and-grief characters, and for the singing, or in this case the fight scenes. The fight scenes serve the same purpose as the singing, of course--as a grandiose, artistic metaphor for the heightened emotional states of the characters. This was something that Daredevil understood quite well, as did Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (I think I stole that notion from someone, so my apologies to that person) and the Daredevil comic storylines from which the film borrowed the most heavily, Frank Miller's Elektra saga and (with John Romita Jr.) The Man Without Fear, and (especially) David Mack's Parts of a Hole. (Mack's femme fatale, Echo, basically had her backstory grafted onto Elektra's for the film's version of the latter character.)

Three final thoughts:
1) Wasn't nuts about the decision to make Daredevil a killer at first, but they made this decision with an eventual redemption in mind, and (again, to my surprise) it worked.

2) Someone somewhere (once again) pointed out that DD's alter ego, lawyer Matt Murdock, magically switches from some sort of bizarre private criminal prosecutor (it seems clear we're not in civil court) to a defense attorney. Arrgh. Didn't anyone read that part of the script?

3) Did Jon Favreau write his own lines?


The Hulk: God, what a strange, strange, strange film. I think it was a failure, but a noble failure. In a way, what with the expressionistic comics-influenced framing techniques and the emphasis on extradiegetic colors and imagery (all those desert shrubs and rocks and all those cell cultures and microbes), it was like Ang Lee doing King Kong by way of Douglas Sirk. But it was slow, so very slow, and none of the characters were three-dimensional or likeable enough to warrant taking that slow ride with them. Eric Bana, the lead, has soulful eyes that generate sympathy, at least, but he's so underwritten that it never graduates to empathy. The bulk of The Hulk (nyuk nyuk) seems dedicated to conversations between different pairs of people about how impotent they are to fix whatever it is they're talking about--this does not a riveting drama make. But when Bana Hulks out, the film comes alive. The big fight scenes were uniformly tremendous, and if you don't laugh out loud when the Hulk beats one tank with another tank's gun turret, Mister, you're a glummer man than I. If as much time had been spent on developing the characters into likeable people as was devoted to creating beautiful imagery, innovatively using comics-style panels as shot-to-shot transitions, and making kick-ass CGI sequences, you'd have had a hell of a film.

Two final thoughts:

1) I didn't like director Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the first time I saw it either, so maybe this film will grow on me as that one did.

2) Whoever thought this difficult, difficult movie was going to make Spider-Man style bank was probably literally on crack.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Certainly the best of the series thus far. Rowling does "unfair" better than anyone else I can think of. I think the success of the series directly stems from the way she is able to convey the capricious, arbitrary, vindictive exercise of power by adults and bullies over children, something to which all children can relate. And I think what makes the books so quickly-readable is that readers want to plow through the unfairness until they get to the point where the unfairness is exposed and Harry is vindicated.

Two minor gripes about the ending (SPOILER ALERT!!! gosh, that was fun to write):

1) Gee, you mean Harry and Voldemort's destinies are inextricably linked, and one day they'll have a duel to the death? Get out of here! I had no idea!!! Seriously, that was the big secret? Talk about a lousy payoff.

2) The last chapter, as I noticed when I first read the Table of Contents, is called "The Second War Begins." Uh, really? Looked to me like Harry got on a train and went home, just like he did in the last four books. If you're going to title a chapter "The Second War Begins," how 'bout, I dunno, beginning the Second War in it?

I see from Rich Johnston's latest, interminable column (scroll waaaaaay down) that Alan Moore, one of the best goddamn writers in comics history, has joined the moonbat brigade.

QUOTE: "Any previously unthinkable political action can be instantly validated by the magic words 9-11...."

Seriously, America--the rest of the world has realized that nothing important really happened that day, so all countries should go on behaving in exactly the same way, since that's the safe thing to do. What was the big deal? Get over it already!

Did I mention that oil's not really worth fighting for? A crazy guy sitting on 9% of the world's supplies with a full 25% within striking distance? No big whoop. After all, it's only rich SUV-driving top-hatted Monopoly Men like Ken Lay who use oil. The economy of poor people in the third world runs on Segways and magic beans.

Did you know that Prescott Bush sold stuff to Hitler? So obviously his grandson can never, ever be right about anything.

In addition, the war was all about helping the oil industry, which explains why the government of Saudi Arabia, oil magnates one and all, virulently opposed it. Or maybe it doesn't, I'm not sure. At any rate, the oil companies wanted us to invade the country rather than simply lift the sanctions and begin making sweetheart deals, because a full-scale invasion against a man who's lit oil fields on fire by the hundreds and dumped crude into the sea willy-nilly is the less risky option. I think.

Also, any attack on a Muslim country sends thousands more rage-filled jihadists over to the terrorists, who otherwise are suffering from a shortage of volunteers and an insufficient level of free-floating anger at the West. If we were to stop fighting they'd leave us alone. Isn't that obvious to everyone? I mean, just prior to 9/11 we invaded Syria, didn't we? And after we pulled out of Somalia they said "whoops, sorry, thanks for crying uncle, we won't pick on you anymore," didn't they? Cause and effect, people!

RIPPING UP THE CONSTITUTION! OIL!! 1984!!! COWBOY!!!! HITLER!!!!!

Phew, I feel much better.

Did you know that Latina Pop Sensation (TM) Thalia (aka the latest singer who knows her bread is buttered somewhere in the vicinity of Tommy Motolla's BVDs) is a Superstar!!!? Looks like I missed that memo too.

I was just using LimeWire to hunt for Jobriath songs, and I came across a "song" with the title "Nick Drake with Soft Machine (UNRELEASED 1974) - JOBRIATH." Someone went through a lot of trouble to convince pop obscurists like yours truly to download a dummy file.

So I'm sitting down here at the computer to check my email and I see this little note with what looks like a funny quote from a commercial or infomercial written in my wife's handwriting.

"Amy, what's [blah blah blah] about?"

"I saw it on TV today and I'm going to write something about it for my site. It's mine! It's mine! And you can't blog about it!"

What a world!

Nothing to say here, really--I just want to get onto the Google page for people searching for the phrase "How's your Donkey Kong?" Or indeed, "How's your Donkey Kong, baby?"

I like Don Imus, basically.

How much better does Beyonce Knowles look now that she's gained some weight? She went from "eh" to "damn!" in pretty short order. And as though in response to her sudden Amazon fabulousness, her music is better now too. (Seriously, one more Destiny's Child song mentioning cell phones and I'd have carcjacked someone.) Uh-oh indeed!

One thing, though: I don't seem to have gotten the memo in which we were asked to lend our approval to her dropping "Knowles" from her name. Let me see here... memo about Beyonce Knowles joining the mononym club... nope, don't see it. Must have gotten filed with that "from her very first English-language single Shakira will be an American Superstar" fax that somehow didn't reach my desk.

Go, Captain, go

Go, Captain, go

Go, Captain Feathersword, Ahoy!

Please email me at sean AT alltooflat DOT COM if that made a lick of sense to you. Thank you.

I've long said that Pat Buchanan, presidential candidate and respected talk show host, is batshit insane, and this article, in which he defends the motherfucking Confederacy, proves it. (Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan: Scourge of the Taliban Wing of American Conservatism! He's been going after Buchanan, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Antonin Scalia, John Derbyshire, Rick Santorum, Bill Frist et al with all the manic glee of a hungry Leatherface handed a chainsaw and pointed in the direction of a three-legged race at a fat camp.)

While we're on the subject, could there be a pair of talking heads more irrelevant to the current political climate than isolationst bigot Pat Buchanan and Phil Donawannabe Bill Press? I can't imagine a less compelling set of viewpoints, and with any luck MSNBC will stick their show on the chopping block next.

...umbrageumbrageumbrage...

It's only been a day or two since I wrote the review, but I'm already reconsidering my just-on-this-side-of-negative review of The Hulk. I think it's a mistake to completely overlook the film's weaknesses (it's got plenty), but the strong stuff from it has really stuck with me. The film's visuals are by far the best part of the whole, and they're indelible--Hulk vs. the tanks, the explosion that kills the heel scientist in a freeze-frame, the ever-shifting comics panels, the close-ups of the rocks and moss and plants, the bizarre moment-in-time fight through the clouds at the end... it's haunting.

This is pretty much the exact same thing that happened to me after seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I love long takes, sparse dialogue, and slow-burning plot development as much as the next guy--actually, a whole lot more than the next guy--but something about that movie just didn't click for me. But before two weeks went by I'd undergone a critical about-face and found myself enthralled by the balletic fight scenes, the passionate desert interlude, the gorgeous music, the intense love... not triangle... pentagon?

But I've got more issues with The Hulk than I ever had with CTHD. Just by way of a for instance, nothing remotely resembling the incredible love scene between Ziyi Zhang and Chen Chang in the latter actor's character's desert hideout was present in the big guy's movie. Though Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly are both likeable actors who did fine work with what they had, Ang Lee never took the time to convince us of their feelings for one another the way he did in CTHD, which was an absolutely necessary thing to do given how those feelings are supposed to drive the Hulk's actions in the entire final half of the film. Plus, unlike the crazy parent figure in CTHD, the Nurse-esque character who's secretly the Jade Scorpion, Nick Nolte's Daddy Banner is infuriatingly unjustified and unexplained in his madness. He goes from a loving but too-driven father in flashbacks to a cold-blooded scenery-chewing bastard in the present day. Again, given the heft his relationship to his son the Hulk is given in the film's final act, he badly needed to be better developed.

But my mental momentum is heading towards the positive. And at any rate, I wholeheartedly agree with Franklin Harris's assessment that a good deal of the negative hype originates from people who don't really know what they're talking about. Much of the hysterical opprobriation heaped upon the movie comes from fanboys who, despite proclaiming for years that superhero stories can be Art, were completely flummoxed when this film proved them right.

According to Little Green Footballs, Ted Rall is still writing things every now and then. But, but, shouldn't he have been disappeared by The Bushite Junta (TM) by now? Perhaps he's on the lam--or broadcasting from beneath the giant gladitorial complex in which The Bushite Junta forces criminals to compete against colorfully named professional hunter-killers, just like Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa in The Running Man! Go, Ted, Go!

Here's a nice long interview with writer/artist Erik Larsen about his odds-defying comic book series, Savage Dragon. This exciting, smart, completely unpredictable book has been turning superhero-story conventions and cliches on their ears for about 110 issues at this point. I haven't been crazy about the last few (a lot of anti-New Marvel injokes--alright, Erik, we get it: You don't like Brian Bendis!), but the series has given me some of my all-time favorite comics moments, and (along with the sporadic output of Frank Miller) kept my interest in comics alive (if on life support) during several years away from the racks. Do yourself a favor and pick up an issue. It's delightful!

Hey!

I'm starting to get a handle on fellow comics/politics blogger Franklin Harris--he's an, I dunno, supralibertarian. I'll admit that this is something of an... odd concept to me. I'll plead I.L.I. (Ivy League Ignorance) on this one: At Yale, political belief systems tended towards old-money Republicanism (veering off into advocacy of a reinstated monarchy) or white-guilt liberalism (veering off into People's Republic of Berkeley communism). Libertarians were few and far between, and though most everyone had libertarian leanings, they tended to be along the lines of "end the drug war, legalize the weed, no censorship, no Big Brother surveillance" etc. That's certainly my viewpoint at any rate.

Point is, Franklin mildly took me to task over my ripping of Pat Buchanan's pro-Confederacy stand. Franklin argues that putting the issue of slavery aside, the Confederate states had every right to secede from the Union, and Lincoln's victory in the Civil War was some sort of might-makes-right blow to the Constitution.

I can see where the argument comes from, but to be honest, it just sounds like so much legalistic nonsense to me. It seems nuts to put "state's rights," i.e. the rights of a concept involving boundaries and official birds and flowers and whatnot called a State, before the rights of the people living in them--in this case, the slaves. I know, I know, the Civil War wasn't started because of slavery, it was because the economy of the North would tank without the South and because advocates of a strong federal government didn't want to set a precedent for secession, yeah yeah yeah. But in the end, if the South had succeeded in securing its "rights" from the North, you'd have ended up with some creepy militaristic apartheid state occupying the lower half of North America. Blecch. I'm simply not going to get too exercised about the unconstitutionality of an action that freed millions and millions of people and put an end to one of the most appalling practices in human history, particularly when that unconstiutionality only adversely affected the "rights" of an invisible picket fence.

This argument reminds me of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke's comments in Spin about the war in Iraq. Regardless of "this particular maniac," said Thom in reference to Saddam Hussein, the laws and rules of the UN must not be thwarted by the U.S. & the U.K. Putting aside Thom's ridiculously rose-colored view of the UN (when has it ever solved a conflict? when did it ever operate independently of the vested interests of its member states, in particular the US and the USSR?), he was apparently putting the "rights" of the imaginary entity known as "Iraq" ahead of those of the real live people living inside Iraq. This just seems like a tremendous abdication of responsibility to me--to say nothing of the fact that, from a libertarian perspective, Iraq (and for that matter the Confederacy) was one of the governments most intrusive into the lives of the human beings living therein.

What you're left with, it seems to me, is the view that everyone else on Earth can go scratch, because my libertarian ideals prevent me from allowing my government to ever do anything to help them in any way. Again, blecch!

I myself believe that the ultimate arbiter of moral AND political rightness or wrongness is the degree to which people are allowed to choose, for themselves, how they want to live. This stems pretty directly from the occult teachings of Aleister Crowley and the pseudophilosophical prank religion of Discordianism, but I'm not as mean-spirited as the former nor as irresponsibly goofy as the latter: I believe that every man and woman was put on this Earth to achieve something, that it's up to them to puzzle out, and that any time you do something that impedes people from figuring out what to do on their own (from lying and cheating all the way up to murder and totalitarianism) you're doing something you morally oughtn't. That's where my libertarian streak comes from--it isn't up to the government to decide what God you should worship, for instance--but it's limited by the fact that, stemming from this belief, I try to take every issue on a case-by-case basis, so I never get hamstrung, as I believe Franklin has, by the kind of thinking that has you arguing for the Confederacy on a technicality.

It's good to find out, every now and then, that I'm still a liberal at heart.

So, here it is: Blog About Iran Day, and I find myself with little to say. Except this:

If you run a country, and you put gigantic portraits and statues of yourself throughout that country, YOU WILL FALL.

If you run a country, and your political platform invokes the terms "hate" or "death," YOU WILL FALL.

If you run a country, and you treat women like cattle, YOU WILL FALL.

If you run a country, and you operate under the assumption that God wants you to kill civilians, YOU WILL FALL.

If you run a country, and you believe you are in possession of The Truth, and that that Truth is so important that you are allowed to imprison, torture, and murder those who don't share belief in that Truth, YOU WILL FALL.

If you run a country, and your main goal is to fight like hell to keep that country from having anything remotely resembling a healthy, happy, free future, YOU WILL FALL.

This I believe.

For more information on Iran, including the threatened Tiannemen Square-style massacre of studetns that the government has promised in order to quash planned demonstrations today, please visit Jeff Jarvis.

If things have been slow for you here in the realm of All Too Flat, it's because my compatriots have been garnering attention from some pretty high-falutin' sources lately. The Astor Cube prank was noticed by the illustrious Gawker, and the Crossing Man prank received kudos from none other than Dave Barry!

(And, uh, a site called Sensible Erection lent a hand. So to speak.)

Anyway, the Cube prank is now #18 on Blogdex. Huge!

Brief li'l comics roundup:

Bill Sherman reviews Trouble, the teen-romance series written by Mark Millar as an attempt to break into the teen-girl manga/Sweet Valley High market. I myself will just say that a story in which Millar can't throw around words like "adamantium" and "black ops" and "I'd suit up and take out those terrorists myself, but I've got a date with Shannon Elizabeth" reveals a certain weakness in the dialogue department, and that a comic that ends with a line that's basically a thirty-year-old in-joke is an unlikely candidate for jumpstarting a new audience. But it was a good idea to try, and the art by Mr. & Mrs. Terry Dodson is suitably sexy.

Jess Lemon at the Pulse reviews Alias, Brian Bendis's bleak and evocative mature-readers ex-superheroine private-detective series. It's somewhat controversial whether "Jess" is actually the complete comics newbie that "she" claims to be, but regardless, the review neatly summarizes how to make a comic new-reader-friendly. Bendis (with the help of the incredible artist Michael Gaydos) knows how it's done.

NeilAlien ought to be pleased that Vikings, the upcoming grand-guignol Thor tale by Garth Ennis and Glenn Fabry, will apparently guest-star Dr. Strange. They may not be the hoary hosts of Hoggoth, but they come from the land of the ice and snow...


Also at the Pulse, there's a nice little article about Battle Royale, the genuinely fucked-up manga about a dystopian future Japan in which classes of 9th graders are forced to kill each other gladiator-style in a Running Man-esque TV program. This is the first manga I've really ever read, and I'm enjoying it, even more so because it was printed right-to-left which makes it this weird head-trip to read.


Finally, yesterday Dirk Deppey gave his most well-reasoned argument yet against superhero comics and movies. Conceding that the genre is capable of greatness, he simply argues that this means there's all the more reason to call superhero crap "crap." He's right, of course, even if he's being way too hard on the really cool X2 movie. It's also important to remember that the superhero crap chokes out EVERYTHING good, superhero and non-superhero alike. I think we all realize we're at the point where when you try to tell your in-laws, for example, about a comic like Blankets, for example, the first thing out of their mouths is, "Wait, it's a comic, but not about superheroes?" People are hardly aware such comics even exist. That ain't good for anyone.

Do you think things are shaping up so that this whole Nigerian uranium mess is just a roundabout way of giving George Tenet his long-overdue pink slip?

(Now updated, with 20% fewer potentially offensive overly broad generalizations! You'll see what I mean.)

Okay, folks, here's the deal. It'd be too damn tough to talk about what needs to be talked about when discussing this film while avoiding certain give-away'd plot points, so I'm not going to bother. If you've already seen the movie, or you don't care about having stuff spoiled for you, knock yourself out, okay? Okay. (I will say that I don't QUITE fully give away any of the big surprises, except one of them, and that's at the veeeerrry end of the review. But still, caveat lector. Or in other words, SPOILER ALERT!!! (And to those who were here when I had the whole post hidden except if you highlighted it, it was just too damn irritating for me myself to read. Sorry.))

I'm a big fan of director Danny Boyle's first two films, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. The former is a supertaut thriller, the kind of thing Hitchock might do if he had the sensibilities of a 90s filmmaker. With little more to work with than three characters and their own paranoia, Boyle built a sense of mounting madness and violence that demonstrated he'd have a deft hand if he were to try his hand at horror proper. Trainspotting showed more of the same, with its nightmarish moments (the heroin-withdrawl scene, particularly) giving lie to the "salute" to the junkie techno lifestyle that a lot of hipsters I went to college with seemed to think the movie offered. Though I skipped seeing A Life Less Ordinary and The Beach, following rules I have about the proper response to movies involving Cameron Diaz or Leo DiCaprio, I was certainly excited to find out that Boyle was going to be doing a post-apocalyptic zombie movie, because folks, I don't know if you know this about me, but if there's one thing I love it's a post-apocalyptic zombie movie.

Like most good recent horror films, 28 Days Later is as memorable for its allusions to past genre masterpieces as it is for what it achieves on its own. There's a scene in an abandoned supermarket that's straight out of George Romero's anti-consumerist zombie fable Dawn of the Dead, there's a military-dinner-amid-the-savages scene straight out of Apocalypse Now Redux, a hand-to-hand combat murder straight out of Midnight Express; moreover the overall feel of the film, from its grainy appearance (courtesy of digital video, as opposed to, say, the 16mm on which genre classics like Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre were shot, or the beat-up rented videocasette copies we grew up watching them on) to the characters' haircuts to the fact that it's set in Great Britain (a country that for all intents and purposes is perpetually reliving 1977), is a throwback to the bleak horror films of three decades ago.

But then there's the innovations. If 28 Days Later's only claim to fame was the fact that it had zombies that moved fast, it would still go down in zombie-flick history as a true pioneer. MAN, those fast-moving zombies! Technically, though, they aren't zombies at all, but zombified living humans who've been infected with a nebulously defined chimpanzee disease that turns them into mindless red-irised killing machines so fixated on slaughter that they don't even bother to stop and eat their victims. (That's right, it's a zombie movie with no real cannibalism--innovation number 2!) Boyle films the lightning-fast zombies at odd angles and with choppy editing that only enhances their mercurial menace. The result is the kind of fast pace that modern audiences require, meaning that 28 Days Later isn't just a valuable addition to the horror canon, but perhaps a vital one.

And there's the stunning use of soundtrack. It just wouldn't be a British Post-Apocalypse without Brian Eno, and his "An Ending (Ascent)," used with devastating emotional effect at the end of Stephen Soderbergh's Traffic, is employed with equal aplomb here. There's also a memorably haunting "Ave Maria," a bit of rambly Britpop in the shopping-cart scene, and tons and tons of Godspeed You Black Emperor*, which in terms of eeriness is a good thing indeed.


None of this would matter, of course, if you didn't care about the characters, but the foursome that comprise the film's band of protagonists (tough survivor Selena, ectomorphic bike messenger Jim (What is it with all these malnourished British actors, anyway? Damn, Danny, hire a freaking craft services department already!), good-humored cab driver Frank and quiet, thoughtful teenager Hannah) are almost instantly (and non-manipulatively) likeable. I found myself favorably comparing the bunch to the four characters at the center of Ang Lee's Hulk film, who despite about two hours of in-depth psychological investigation and backstory muster hardly a whiff of empathy from the audience. (Would you have cared for a second if the Hulk had wiped out the entire remainder of the cast?)

Basically, I loved this movie. This is not to say, however, that many aspects of it, particularly in the film's final third, weren't actually kind of easy to predict, provided you had an extensive enough background in the Post-Apocalyptic Arts. Some lessons, if I may be so bold:

1) In terms of faint military radio broadcasts audible on your hand-wound AM receiver, repeated use in the broadcast of the word "salvation" is roughly equivalent to saying "we have gone Colonel Kurtz and are setting up rape camps and impaling heads on sticks as we speak."

2) In the world of post-apocalyptic fiction, anyone who knew how to use a gun before the apocalypse is going to be a bad guy after the apocalypse. The bad-guy quotient increases geometrically if said individual learned to use guns while in some form of uniformed service. (Exceptions to the bad-guy gun rule are made for quiet, steely loners from rural areas who learned to shoot by picking rusty cans off a tree stump.) Please see Kathy Bates's last stand in the TV minseries version of The Stand for more information.

3) Strangelove's Law: Any time you're in a group of people in which females are greatly outnumbered by males, things are going to get unpleasant. Likelihood of unpleasantness increases proportinately to the amount of males in said group to whom the Bad-Guy Gun rule is applicable.

4) Bad things will always happen in churches in the post-apocalypse, because zombies, much like filmmakers, can't resist symbolism.

5) Strider's Axiom: When attempting to hide from relentless undead killing machines, do not light fires.

6) If you are one half of an attractive mixed-sex pair making your way through the post-apocalyptic world, you will fall in love and fuck. Ridiculing the notion that, as one half of an attractive mixed-sex pair making your way through the post-apocalyptic world, you will fall in love and fuck, does not prevent this from occurring.

7) A virus with a window of "10-20 seconds" between exposure and mindless raving zombiehood greatly reduces the likelihood of said virus spreading off the island of Great Britain and to "Paris and New York." If a zombie got on a plane, that plane'd be a debris slick inside of two minutes, and it also seems safe to assume that a boat full of zombies would be fairly easy to see coming. Really the only way the virus could spread would be through the Chunnel, and do you honestly think that France would be welcoming fleeing Britons with open arms? Please. Chirac would be manning the barricades himself to keep them out if he had to, swinging a baguette and waving a TotalFinaElf flag.

7) This isn't a Post-Apocalyptic Arts lesson so much as it's a Film Stuides Lesson: Anyone who refers to any movie of any genre as "a genre-busting vision" is an asshole who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. If a movie of a particular genre is good, it hasn't "busted" the genre or "transcended" the genre or any other dopey pseudoeducated cliche--it IS the genre, insofar as it's the best the genre has to offer. So please, horror film snobs, sick that in your pipe made out of a severed human head and smoke it.

(I'm a little defensive about horror films, in case you hadn't noticed.)

That said, our foursome's protracted run-in with the military hits the usual notes of "it's not the zombies who are the worst thing imaginable, it's selfish greedy establishment types." Not a bad lesson, even if it's one taught (with a great deal of last-minute expectation-reversing panache) by Night of the Living Dead and countless other horror films. Still, they do it well here, throwing in a Deliverance-esque transformation from mild-mannered "this can't be happening" type to stone-cold killer to boot. Also, when was the last time you saw a zombie movie in which the main characters' survival hinged on one of them breaking into someplace, as opposed to keeping the zombie out? (Innovation #3!) And it's also worth noting that, particularly during the final chase through the military's compound, it appears that the zombies have no heightened sense of hearing, smell, or miscellaneous ability to "sense" living humans nearby--they've got to find them the old-fashioned human way, i.e. with the five senses the good Lord gave 'em. Innovation #4!

Back to the military aspect: Much of the success of this final section of the film owes to the strength of actor Christopher Eccleston's performance. It's one of the strongest in the film (along with the almost painfully sympathetic Frank, played by Brendan Gleeson). Eccleston, who portrays the ranking officer in the military unit that takes our heroes in, was the pivotal character in Boyle's Shallow Grave. His performance in that film was rivetingly Gollum-esque, a chillingly grotesque demonstration of the outcome of keeping secrets. Here, though, he's a model of reserve and polish. Far from "going native," Eccleston's Major acts as officers are supposed to act--sacrificing everything, even, perhaps, his own morality, for what he honestly believes to be the good of his men. It's knowing that the Major, at heart, just might not be such a bad person that makes him so effective as a villain.

It should also be added that what might seem like yet another throwback to the liberal 1970s horror cycle--making the military the ultimate bad guys--has much of its P.C. aura deflated by the fact that the plague was unleashed by a bunch of do-gooding animal rights activists, who free a test chimp despite being told by one of the project's scientists, repeatedly and in no uncertain terms, that the monkey is infected with a lethal disease. In all fairness to the PETA goon squad, though, I think I too might be a bit skeptical if told that a chimp was infected with "rage."

Actually, calling the chimp's disease "rage," as opposed to inventing some wonky faux-scientific explanation, made the film that much more effective for me. Citing emotion instead of bacteria as the source of apocalypse heightens our awareness that a moral law has been breached, not just some E.U. testing ban. And the film's opening section, in which a chimp is forced, a la Axl Rose in the video for "Welcome to the Jungle," to watch countless looped clips of horrific mob violence the world over added a chilling tone to the proceedings that folks of all political leanings could appreciate.

And speaking of politics, though it's kind of sad that that's what this is reduced to at this point, there's a scen towards the beginning of the film in which Jim finds a kiosk covered with xeroxed "missing" posters made by families trying desperately to find lost loved ones in a country increasingly ravaged by the zombie infection. It spoke more directly to the chaos of confusion, pain, and loss in New York City after 9/11 than just about any work of art I've seen since the attacks occurred.

There are a few little plot flaws I'll note briefly:

1) I understand that the army guys waited as long as they did to make their presence known to our foursome in order to establish that said foursome was harmless, and in so doing inadvertantly ensured that said foursome was reduced to a threesome. But given what we later learn of their motives, why not cut said foursome down to the appropriate twosome and be done with it?

2) C'mon--surely SOME radio and TV signals are still floating around Great Britain post-apocalypse, especially given what we come to learn about the worldwide situation by film's end?

3) If the British government and/or military were faced with the kind of the decision the rest of the world apparently made about the UK, wouldn't nuclear blackmail start looking like a good idea?

Aaaaallllll that being said, I'm concerned that my relatively flippant tone indicates that I thought this movie was "a roller-coaster ride" or "a popcorn-guzzling theme park attraction" or something else that people say about 2 Fast 2 Furious. It isn't. It's dark, dark, dark--it's one of those movies that grabs the audience around the neck and forces them to watch unpleasant, horrible things happen to good, decent people. It's a nastiness that the dopier aspects of the action-packed climax, or even the happy ending (for which I was unspeakably grateful, especially after the filmmakers naughtily teased us with several possible bad-ending red herrings, including one that was once again awfully close to Night of the Living Dead), can offset. It's the kind of nastiness that makes for great horror.

Oh yeah, that's right--it's a zombie movie with a happy ending. Innovation Number Five!



* Political digression that might irritate you so please stop reading if you think it will because I want you to like this review of this movie, honest I do: Godspeed You Black Emperor and I have sort of had a falling out, after they titled the first huge song on their latest album, Yanqui U.X.O., "9-15-00," in "honor" of the start date for the most recent (and most appallingly, senselessly violent) Palestinian intifada. To me, this is a bit like there being a group of people in the world of the film who are militantly pro-zombie. (Update: No, I don't mean that all Palestinians are zombielike. Just the suicide belt brigade and the "not one Jew left" crew. I'm not an asshole, honestly!) It was a weird bit of cognitive dissonance only enhanced by the fact that once I left the Union Square theatre in which I saw the film, there was a "Free Palestine" demonstration going on in Union Square, in which folks played hackey-sack and danced around and waved signs and did other things that, of course, they'd never be able to do if they lived in a country run by Islamic Jihad. But hey, back to the light-hearted stuff, like killer zombie movies!

(I'm trying to think of a good title to stick with for these little round-up posts I do from time to time. I really like "Comix-and-match," but what if, as in this current case, it's not all about comics? Oh, who am I kidding--it's always all about comics for me.)

Due to rising controversy, Princess Diana will no longer be appearing in an upcoming arc of X-Statix, the superhero/pop-culture satire by Pete Milligan and Mike Allred. Oh well. I thought it was a funny idea, but then I've never felt particularly attached to the princess, and have learned the hard way (during a disastrous "musical tribute" sketch I was a part of back in college) that the people who liked her will fucking tear you to pieces if they think you're insulting her in some way.

Speaking of things that matter more if you live in Great Britain, Big Sunny D doesn't like the new Blur single, "Crazy Beat." I'll up the ante by saying their entire new album just plain sucks. Granted, their last, heretofore most difficult album, 13, was an acquired taste that I managed to acquire, but I can't see that happening with Think Tank, a self-indulgent aimless mess with a couple of tossed-off pop-chart sops thrown in to drive sales. The current single's an example of the latter. Anyway, may I reiterate how good Big Sunny D is?

Bill Sherman notes that The Big Shocking Ending Of The Current Arc In Mark Waid's Brilliant But Tragically Cancelled Run On The Fantastic Four (TM) stands no chance of actually lasting. Indeed, it'd stand not chance of actually lasting even if Waid hadn't been booted from the book. Without giving things away too much, let's just say major changes to a main character's appearance do not last in comics, ever. It's a lazy way to "make an impact," and ultimately, who cares?

Gary Groth is back, with an excerpt from an upcoming essay tearing into the lack of critical standards in comics and the world in general. As always, he's worth reading, because like any grumpy old socialist, he wants the best for the masses, even though they don't deserve it, the morons. Seriously, it's a pretty smart piece. I'm sure I'll talk about it some more when I read the full version.

(One funny little note: Mainstream superhero comics actually do have a vociferous contingent of critics who aren't afraid to say negative things--creators themselves! Peter David, Erik Larsen, Micah Wright, Bill Jemas, etc. etc., savage so many creators and books so often that it's actually pretty unbelievable. Of course, sending rambling grammatically poor emails to news sites about why the Epic editors didn't treat you with the respect a star of your magnitude should be afforded is probably not what Gary had in mind. Basically, all those guys, like them or not, talk shit about business decisions they don't like and have no real critical background or standards to speak of. I guess it's better than unchallenged boosterism, though.)

NeilAlien has some brief snarky things to say about Dirk Deppey's latest anti-superhero rant, which I sort of had an opposing take on here. NeilAlien fights the good fight, man.

Finally, James Lileks (in the middle of a pretty long Bleat) says something I and several other people I know have been saying for a while: Stephen King is the late 20th century's Charles Dickens. Yes, I like Stephen King. I consider rreading The Stand the equivalent of getting a doctorate in Post-Apocalyptic Arts. Which will lead me to my next post... (stay tuned...)

Another trip to the local Borders, another glimpse into the future of comics. As Amy and I looked through the one bookshelf dedicated to, well, every comic in America that isn't manga--Boulevard of Broken Dreams next to Hellboy next to The Big Book of the Unexplained next to The Invisibles next to a Bendis Daredevil next to Dark Knight Strikes Again next to Blood Song next to a Mad collection next to The Totally Awesome Guide to Spider-Man or whatever--a teenage girl (and not one o' them pink-haired Hello Kitty backpack-sporting teenage girls, but an Abercrombie & Fitch wearing POPULAR GIRL--drags over a guy friend and starts handing him book after book of manga series that she likes, which are found all neatly shelved on three bookshelves devoted entirely to Japanese comics. They were joking and laughing and getting all into it--"oh my God, no wonder you like this, it's like porn!" or "Hey, don't show me anything, I'm not up to that one yet!"--like it was a good movie or TV show they were into. It was just another form of entertainment that perfectly normal teenagers are into.

This is the future of comics. Why the big American companies are still letting, essentially, the fanboy culture of retailers and readers dictate business decisions like format and trade dress is completely beyond me. If you were DC, wouldn't you just take volumes one through 15 or whatever it is of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, reprint them at manga size, give them nice uniform trade dress, ship 'em to Borders and B&N, and watch the money just roll in? This is such a no-brainer it's absurd. And actually, it gives that (probably spurious) Felicia doomsday theory, in which Bill Jemas is said to be conspiring to fire all the big-name creators and replace them with talented nobodies, an element of common sense, if said firings were done in tandem with a wholesale switchover to the smaller, more readable manga format. This girl doesn't know who Mark Waid is, and couldn't care less. She DOES read comics, and lots of them. This is the market. If it takes a legion of new blood willing to cut ties to the industry's past and tap into this audience of rabid, enthusiastic fans, then so be it.

Well, just to prove it ain't all gloom and doom here at ADDTF, here's a really cool article about creator Jai Nitz from CNN.com. I'm not familiar with Nitz's work, but what's great about this article is that it makes comics seem like a perfectly legitimate, perfectly respectable, perfectly interesting form of art and entertainment to be involved in. Go ye and read, and think about the future.

Is it me, or are the commercials for NBC's fall shows actually designed to make you not want to watch them?

Between For Love or Money, Will & Grace and every conceivable iteration of Law & Order, the Missus and I watch a decent amount of NBC. (Helps that we only get 23 channels--minus the two of which that are home shopping, the two that are public access, the one that's the guide to all the other channels and the four that are in Spanish--so there's no specials about UFOs or sharks or serial killers or 80s nostalgia to watch.) This means that I've seen the almost infomercial-length commercials for Las Vegas and Miss Match approximately seven hundred thousand times each. Jesus Harold Christ in a bright yellow Hummer are they annoying.

First of all, let's take Las Vegas. "They caaaaall... you laaaaa... dy luck." No, they call you the goddamn commercial that has actually ruined Guys and Dolls for me for the rest of my goddamn life. And then there's what goes on in the commercial. Basically they've concocted some vile blend of Martin Scorsese's Casino (an excellent film, by the way, which means that this show is going to be great too!!!! Oh wait, NO IT DOESN'T) and Aaron Spelling's Melrose Place, and thrown in a very, very tired looking Jimmy Caan because, I guess, he played a mafioso once, and that's supposed to have generated enough goodwill for us to watch him in this piece-of-shit show, or at least its countless interminable piece-of-shit commercials (actually, it didn't). So at some point we see Molly Simms (who, surprisingly, actually DID generate a fair amount of goodwill from those Old Navy commercials she did) fuckin' some guy, and then she turns around and faces the camera (a Caan's-eye-view) and says, "Oh, hi, Daddy." Damn, people, but is there anything sexier than seeing a woman with a man's erect and throbbing penis in her well-lubricated vagina turn around and say hello to her father as he walks in on her copulation? Yes, actually, because THAT'S FUCKING VILE AND DISGUSTING. Meanwhile poor Jimmy gets to say shit that nobody on Earth would ever actually say like yelling "Nobody cheats in my casino!" haughtily to a room full of gamers who are probably like "this guy watches too many Mafia movies." And it all ends with the voice-over guy saying "and the city of Las Vegas as itself," as if Vegas had been handed a script and said to its agent "you gotta get me in on this, Bruce." Bullshit. If its lucky Vegas will be dropped after the pilot like the original captain in Star Trek and move on with its life.

And then there's Miss Match, a show starring Alee-see-ah Silverstone (oh, I'm sorry, did you think it was pronounced "Aleeshia"? Not now that she's a member of the NBC Family--that's the motherfucking Peacock Network, motherfuckers!). Miss Match is about the fact that she's not just a pretty face. I know this because about seven thousand fucking times per commercial they play the same fucking line from some stupid fucking song, which goes "Sheeee's... noooot... just a pretty faaaace..." I don't know, was there a legion of people arguing the contrary? Was America saying to itself, "Remember that girl from Clueless who in a dangerous marathon operation had her career donated to Reese Witherspoon? She was just a pretty face!" Maybe I missed that. Anyway some guy says something stupid about some girl's hair, and the guy who created Sex & the City was involved somehow, which means maybe there'll be some character who can eat pussy real good involved. Or not, I don't know, it's broadcast.

The only show whose commercials are actually a little intriguing is that new Rob Lowe thing The Lyon's Den, because they're making it sound like there's going to be some big season-long murder mystery a la Laura Palmer, only it's in Washington D.C. so it's going to talk about The Important Issues and explore whether Justice Really Is Blind and whatnot. I guess that's interesting. Rob Lowe was really good in The Stand, but I think leaving The Howard Dean Show might have been a mistake. (That's what it was called, right?)

I would like to say, in case anyone from GE is reading this, that NBC isn't the only network with godawful commercials for its fall shows. I was a big fan of America's Next Top Model (go Adrienne! go people who wear nine inch nails and Pink Floyd t-shirts in general!), which meant that I had to sit through ads for an abortion in sitcom form called Rock Me Baby, starring Dan Corteezy (Oh, I'm sorry, did you think it was Dan Cortezz? Then you a asshole) formerly of MTV Runs Around Screaming A Lot About Sports. A baby urinates on him in the commercial, which is funny! Ha! Ha! Ha! Look, people, people urinating on other people is now funny, and we're all going to have to get used to the idea, so quit your goddamn crying and be a fucking man about this. BE A GODDAMN MAN FOR ONCE IN YOUR FUCKING LIFE.

I think I understand what went through Elvis Presley's head, shortly before he'd shoot his television.

Big Sunny D, in a repost of a conversation he had with a fellow comix fan, inadvertently but correctly notes that the maddeningly infrequent output of most alt-comix titans makes the alternative/indy scene a lousy candidate for "saving the medium/industry" despite its inarguable superiority content-wise. How often does Black Hole or Eightball or Acme Novelty Library or Weasel come out these days? Twice a year at the absolute most often. People like Crumb and Spiegelman publish actual comics even less often. And even though I happen to dig the cartoony low-key Highwater/Fort Thunder/used-to-do-minicomics style (into which, I suppose, one could lump Kochalka and Hart and various other 3rd Wave luminaries), most of them lack the financial security, the grand ambition, or (in some cases) the talent to regularly publish the kinds of comix that take the biz by storm.

Instead, the alt-comix world revolves around one-time-only "event" books like Blankets or Diary of a Teenage Girl or Safe Area Gorazde or Persepolis which, by definition, cannot come out with any sort of regularity, or on "event" collections like Jimmy Corrigan or David Boring or Boulevard of Broken Dreams which are wholly dependent on the completion of the infrequently published series from which they draw.

As an alternative to this feast-or-famine publishing model (one which nearly bankrupted Fantagraphics due to their inability to accurately predict which one it'd be), alt-publishers might try the Japanese manga model: publish big fat compendia of work by all their top creators for cheap, so that people can get a wide sampling of what's available, then go seek out the individual issues or collections of the creators they most enjoy. The problem here might be the wide variety of formats and sizes that alt-comix folks work in. It'd be pretty damn difficult to figure out how to publish a book that contained a full issue of both Eightball and Acme Novelty Library.

The incredibly illustrious (and tenured!) Stanford scholar Scott Bukatman points out on this Comics Journal messboard thread that the New York Times has gone completely apeshit over superheroes lately.

First there's this article by Douglas Wolk, arguing that the comic-book version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is superior to the film version in virtually every respect. Having not seen the film yet, it's tough to comment, but from everything I've heard I'd suspect that even at its best the movie is probably the same kind of streamlined (or dumbed-down--your call) version of the Alan Moore original that From Hell was a year or two back. League was actually one of the only two comics from Moore's America's Best line that actually succeeded in being compelling and involving as well as clever (the other being Top Ten), so it's tough to imagine how it can be brought to the screen with all its good qualities intact. (I must say, however, that Moore's kvetching about the addition of Dorian Grey and Tom Sawyer is extremely unbecoming. What makes them any more or less appropriate or multi-dimensional than, say, using Fu Manchu as the bad guy?)

Then there's this article by A.O. Scott, complaining (or is it? it's that kind of high-falutin' pop-cult critique that's apparently too smart to actually bother coming down on one side or another of the issue it's talking about) that the genre of "term paper blockbusters" like Ang Lee's Hulk or The Matrix Reloaded is sucking the fun out of big movies. (Again, that's what I think he's saying--if you write pop culture commentary for the NYT, refusing to enter a value judgement is apparently in the style sheet.) I myself sorta see where he's coming from--The Hulk, The Matrix Reloaded, and before them Spielberg's A.I. and Minority Report (or even the two Star Wars prequels, with their emphasis on Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda and their op-ed tie-ins to real-life cloning and digital-media debates) could all be reasonably argued to have, shall we say, overplayed the intellectual hand that God gave their makers. (I happened to like them all, if you're interested.) Still, I can't help but be appalled at Scott's apparent belief that dopey, dopey movies like the Charlie's Angels and The Fast and the Furious franchises are in some way preferable to movies that are at least trying to say something interesting, regardless of whether or not they succeed. (This "it's just harmless fun" viewpoint is one of the cultural bugbears Gary Groth's attempting to slay in his latest essay, and good luck to him.) Scott's also wrong to put any sort of "blame" for this "pretentious superhero" genre on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films, whose blend of whimsy, awe, emotion, action, and intellect is virtually unsurpassed and the excellence of which is all but unquestioned. It may have a brainy bent, but blaming it for less successful combinations of CGI and PhD strikes me as being as unfair and silly as "blaming" Star Wars for Independence Day or Seinfeld for Suddenly Susan.

Only six months till Economas! Start shopping, people!

The big-media onslaught begins: Here's Time.comix's review of Craig Thompson's masterful Blankets. Go Craig! I'll be interviewing Craig for the A&F Quarterly during the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con, so I'll be doing my part as well. And as soon as this comic comes out in wide distribution, I'll let you all know. I don't care who you are--there's almost no reason you shouldn't enjoy this book.

(And I endorse this review, despite the fact that Time.comix's main man, Andrew Arnold, was so goddamn wrong about the work of genius that was Frank Miller & Lynn Varley's Dark Knight Strikes Again that it makes my hair hurt. That book was "corporatized," Andrew? What the hell kind of corporation says "this has Big Bucks written all over it" of a book in which Superman and Wonder Woman destroy a mountain while fucking?)

Over at Markisan Naso's column (scroll down for the pertinent item), Epic editor Stephanie Moore lays the smack down on some the conspiracy theories advanced by "Felicia," Marvel's ersatz Deep Throat. Go Stephanie! (I'm just speaking for myself here, but having had some contact with several of the parties involved in Epic, I can say that while there are some snags being hit, and with some regularity, it's not some giant con job, and Stephanie herself is a smart, dedicated, talented, devoted editor who wouldn't let it become a con job even if that's where it was heading.)

Bill Sherman sez that the old strip Pogo is applicable to today's self-righteous warbloggers. Hey, Bill, I resemble that remark!

Franklin Harris, unlike Sandman impresario (and Friend Of Tori) Neil Gaiman, seems to have gone unnoticed in lists of antiwarbloggers. Hey, Franklin, I noticed you!

"ELVIS PRESLEY EYE COLOR AND PENIS SIZE"

When have I ever talked about Elvis Presley, or eye color, or penis size on this blog, let alone all three in tandem? Ah, the vagaries of Google.

While we're on the subject, if Google's being a bit slow, may I suggest All Too Flat's Google mirror?

In other odd news, I'm going to visit a psychic tonight. This will mark the second time this week that a member of the Collins household has visited a psychic, but only the first that a member of the Collins household has visited a psychic who isn't also Tori Amos's psychic. This is the world I live in, folks.

(I know, I know, this blog has been very heavy on comics lately, but Comic-Con is coming, and I got comics on the brain.)

When most people think of comic books they think of the thin, staple-bound, flimsy things you used to see on racks in drug stores. In comics-biz parlance they're called pamphlets. A Comics Journal messboard thread about the slow demise of this format led me to post the following:

The problem with pamphlet-format comic books as I see it is that they denote throwawayability to the average Joe. Most people aren't in the habit of saving and rereading magazines or newspapers, two periodical forms that comic books most closely resemble. If people still think that "comics are for kids" (and not in a good, Harry Potter kind of way, but in an annoying, Double Dare and Garbage Pail Kids kind of way), I think we can blame the association in grown-ups minds between comics and the easily beat-up and torn-up and soaked-through and discarded pamphlet format they may remember leaving strewn around their bedrooms as children.

Now, even superhero creators are writing and drawing with an eye toward a lasting legacy: improving paper quality and cover stock and coloring techniques; writing in multi-issue arcs geared toward collection in more durable paperback and even hardcover formats; and in some cases a rise in the overall quality of the art and writing itself (though that, of course, is a more controversial position to hold). In light of these developments, to say nothing of the obvious qualitative and aesthetic reasons the superheroes' alt-comix counterparts have for appearing in graphic-novel form, clinging to a transitory, far less durable format like pamphlets seems especially anachronistic. The need to get away from pamphlets only increases now that the huge up-and-coming comics-reading audience--teen girls and guys who read manga--have been weaned on book-sized, book-shaped, and book-bound collections.

Yes, there are practical reasons (both in terms of economics and of critical feedback) for the pamphlet, even in alt-comix land, as detailed by many of the posters in this thread. But much of the childlike joy it engenders in comics fans (both of the superhero and alt-comix varieties) is offset by the aversion it apparently produces in the general populace. As Dr. Frank N. Furter might put it, pamphlets have "a certain naive charm--but no muscle."

Assuming the submissive role, as once can conclude is his wont, Jim Treacher follows my suggestion and blogs about his favorite band. Well, technically, he blogs about song-poems, but good enough.

In addition, he brings it to our attention that somewhere there exists a mash-up of Gary Numan's "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and the Sugababes' cover of Adina Howard's legendary ode to the congress of the cow, "Freak Like Me." Holy shit, people. For the record, I hated the infamous "Smells Like Teen Spirit"/"Bootylicious" mash-up just as much as Amanda did, but Numan and a paean to doing it doggystyle? Please tell me if you think that's anything but two great tastes tastin' great together.

Hey guys. I know this comics stuff is boring you to death. But hey, you might find out something neat, so do read it, won't you? I'm telling you all, that Blankets book is fantastic.

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled comix news and views roundup:

First of all, the Pulse offers a overview of tomorrow's San Diego Comic-Con, to which Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat will be sending a representative or two. It's really, really big, if you want the nutshell version.

While we're on the SDCC tip, the best summary of the experience that is this enormous comic-book convention comes from Scott Tipton of Movie Poop Shoot. (Amy, I'll bet you like that website name.) It's an excellent piece--go and read (after you finish reading this whole post, of course).

Speaking of Blankets, Newsarama has an interview with Craig Thompson on his soon-to-be-released magnum opus. It's interesting to see how, a la Phoebe Gloeckner, he's almost hesitant to call it "autobiography" due to the liberties he takes with the facts of his life for the sake of the story. (He has a sister?) It's also an interesting glimpse into how an altcomix creator pays the bills.

Jess Lemon, Pulse's designated fly in the fanboy ointment, takes on Mark Millar's Epic teen book Trouble. Ouch. As I said, when there's not adamantium skeletons and black ops and pop-culture references to kick around, Millar's a bit, shall we say, limited in the dialogue department.

Bill Sherman reviews Iron Wagon, the new murder mystery by Norway's mononymed master of incredibly sad cute-animal comics, Jason. This is Bill's first Jason comic, and it's an odd one to start with, as it was adapted from a turn-of-the-century Norwegian novel by Stein Riverton, and as such is unrepresentative of Jason's usual musings on life, death, and loneliness. But Jason's thematic preoccupations show through to a surprising degree, particularly his effortlessly chilling depiction of the haunting power of death over the living. The ending, also, is more powerful than it perhaps has a right to be. Excellent work.

In a long roundup of his own, Alan David Doane scoffs at fans' objections to the way Darick Robertson draws fan-fave character Wolverine (namely, like a knee-breaker for the Teamsters). Why? What's the objection to making this dangerous, mysterious character a sexy one as well, instead of depicting him the way an eight-year-old might? ADD's gloating about the uproar seems like kneejerk contrarianism rather than a thought-out response to a controversial aesthetic decision.

Johnny Bacardi ("always interesting"? aw! right back atcha!) has some thoughts on my pamphlet post of yesterday, and points out that many long-form collections of initially serialized books seem to drag on after a certain point. I'd argue that that's a strength of collections, not a weakness--separate the wheat from the chaff and all that.

Eve Tushnet (who probably doesn't remember that I lived next door to some of her friends at Yale freshman year) offers a non-fangirl take on some comics she bought on a whim. She has good things to say about Grant Morrison's and Pete Milligan's X-books, unsurprisingly. (Link courtesy of Jim Henley, who shouldn't worry about ever coming off my blogroll. I second his recommendation of books by Brian Bendis, by the way.)

When I post some hype for my day job at the Comics Journal Message Board, this is the kind of thing that happens. It's actually a lot more civil than I thought it'd be, and is slowly turning into a fairly interesting discussion of pop-culture philosopher Slavoj Zizek. All this because of a clothing catalog, folks!

Finally, I was surprised to see copies of the Comics Journal issue with Gary Groth's pro-criticism essay in it. Having read it in its entirety, I'll say that while I still agree with it generally, it's a flawed call to arms for a couple of reasons.

First of all, Gary never really develops his theory of why criticism (by which he means negative criticism, as well as simply well-written and well-informed positive criticism, which is also in short supply these days) is a dying breed. There's a lot of complaints about corporate this and corporate that, and a few potshots about invading Third World countries thrown in for good measure, but ultimately the death of criticism indicates that critics anywhere, not just at corporate-owned publications, are in short supply. Why does no one want to grow up to be a critic? Are schools or the academy simply not preparing people to be critics? Has the corporate boosterism mindset (or, on the other side of the coin, the po-mo aversion to value judgements) infected writers' mindsets during their educations? These interesting and vital questions go unexplored in favor of windmill-tilting heated rhetoric--admittedly Gary's forte, but still, I was looking for something I could sink my teeth into.

Second, Gary appears to conflate rah-rah'ing critics with the infamous Team Comix mentality of artists. It seems ungenerous to me to demand that artists become critics themselves. While there are certainly cases where luminaries in one dabble in the other, and in some cases even thrive in both, it's really not one artist's job to pick apart the failings (or to praise the strengths) of another. Much of what Gary interprets as an appalling lack of critical faculties (or of backbone) on the part of today's alt-comix in-crowd may simply be seen as a desire to avoid talking shit about people when that's not what they're being paid to do. Historically, Gary Groth has had an admirable immunity to fear of being seen as an asshole. Not all artists were born with this sort of bulletproof willingness to tell otherwise nice people that their comics are for shit, and not all artists should be expected to do so. If they set themselves up as "critics," have at 'em, Gary, but don't fault people for not wanting to pick fights at parties over whether James Kochalka's Sketchbook Diaries were any good.

Well, folks, that's probably the last round-up for a while, as the Con is almost upon me. Don't know what the computer-access situation will be in sunny San Diego, but I guess we'll find out together, you and I. Let us join hands and walk into that future together!

I'm back from San Diego. Expect some postings soon.

I'd like to return the praise of the excellent popculture/comics blogger Big Sunny D. He's a tremendously effective critic and reviewer with great taste in pretty much everything. If I weren't writing this blog, I'd want to be writing his.

Please read this article from Time magazine, detailing some of the practices and policies of the late Uday and Qusay Hussein. How does it affect your perception of the phrase "blood for oil"?

Nyuk, nyuk.

Well, I've returned--physically, at least; mentally I'm in the kind of ADD nirvana that only a huge honking pile of unread comic books can provide--from the San Diego Comic-Con, basically the biggest pop-cultural convention of any kind anywhere in the United States. This is my third year in attendance, and each year it appears to have doubled in size. (This go-round the con expanded to occupy the entirety of the San Diego Convetion Center, which at the height of traffic on Saturday felt like a small city unto itself.) Each year I buy an ungodly amount of comics of every type imaginable. Each year I'm indescribably tickled by the collision of mainstream comics, art comics, video games, toys, movies, and Klingons. Each year I rub elbows with some pretty ridiculously luminous luminaries. Each year I miss The Missus. Next year I'll definitely be bringing her, because SDCC is something that everyone should experience at least once.

For those who aren't quite sure what I'm talking about, SDCC is the biggest trade event in a field that has lots of them. There are panels in which different comics-related issues are discussed, announcements are made by the big companies involving their upcoming plans, pros come to sign books and meet and greet the fans, parties are held for mingling purposes, comics-related and genre-based movies are previewed, and tons and tons of stuff are sold on the enormous convention floor. It's one of the rare places where a person dressed as Frodo Baggins could meet the actor who played Frodo Baggins. It's also one of the rare places where Los Bros Hernandez sign autographs not five feet away from Rob Liefeld doing the same. Metaphorically, SDCC is the sublime and the ridiculous getting hammered and screwing on a pool table with a Halloween party full of people watching. (Hat tip to Kevin Smith--who was there, actually--for the imagery.)

Highlights for me were many, and since this is a blog, I can just list them and leave all that structure malarkey for the New Yorker. Here we go:

** Upon arriving at the hotel booked for myself and my companion, one of the A&F Quarterly's illustrators, we found that both of our rooms had hot tubs in them. At a con where some of the best cartoonists in the world sleep three in a bed, we were basically pimped out.

** Meeting Dirk Deppey, the mastermind behind Journalista, live and in person. He's just as delightful in the flesh as he is online. Be sure to ask him about anti-Scientology hip-hop bands, and tell him Sean sent ya!

** SDCC is one place where you are allowed, if not encouraged or even mandated, to talk about comics for hours and hours on end. One night myself, Josiah (the illustrator) and Fantagraphics intern extraordinaire Sebastian spent probably four hours drinking beer and talking about every comic we could think of. In the real world it's next to impossible to find someone smart who's smart about comics. If you know where to look at SDCC, you practically swim in them.

** Among other insights that such conversations yielded was Josiah's assertion that the character of Jack the Ripper in Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell's From Hell was, in fact, a superhero--he's got extraordinary powers, he receives a mission from a supernatural authority, he's part of a secretive order dedicated to the betterment of mankind, and he takes action to change the world. I'm pretty much ready to re-read the comic because of this simple recontextualization. That's the kind of good stuff that comes out when you put smart comics fans together.

** Conversation between myself, Sebastian, and Kim Thompson re: David B's Epileptic:

SEBASTIAN: How is that, Kim?

KIM: It's a masterpiece. Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, Epileptic.

SEBASTIAN: Is that the whole thing, or is there more?

KIM: He's working on the second half. It'll be called Epileptic 2.

SEAN: ...Electric Boogaloo? (Too easy, right?)

KIM: No. Epileptic Boogaloo.

Those krazy kut-ups at Fantagraphics!

** Speaking of which, Gary Groth is a really nice guy. He seems truly pleased to talk with you if you're interested in Fanta books, and the fact that if you wrote something he didn't like he'd tear you a new asshole in print actually enhances his likeability. He's honest, even if you disagree with him half the time, and I like that a lot.

** I had a fantastic conversation about Roxy Music and design with The Filth artist Chris Weston and Vertigo Group Editor Shelly Bond. Getting a group of Roxy Music fans in one place is even rarer than getting a group of smart comics fans in one place.

** Just to stake my claim, I was part of the conversation in which Ron Rege & Marc Bell devised a plot to encourage Teratoid Heights creator and master of funny monster one-liners Mat Brinkman to do a weekly gag strip. If it ever happens, you heard it here first.

** Interviewing Blankets author and almost impossibly friendly guy Craig Thompson. He said his next book will be a fantasy of sorts involving drought, adding another intimidating natural feature to his repertoire (the ocean and snowy winters have already been tackled). He also posed for a picture with my wife's stuffed wombat and went skinny dipping, but not at the same time, much to my wife's chagrin. But the sketch he did in the hardcover copy I bought for my wife was just phenomenally beautiful, meaning that it suited its recipient, basically.

** The second-best Kim Thompson quote of the con: Chris Ware's next graphic novel, Rusty Brown, "will make Jimmy Corrigan look like a minicomic."

** Met some PEFBs. Survived. (Click that link for further details about the PseudoEducated FanBoy.)

** Met Colleen Doran. Was delighted. Not only is she friendly and funny (and, as seems to be the case with most really good comic-book creators, cool-looking), but she brooks no bullshit. Amidst a long debate during the "25 Years of the Graphic Novel" panel, in response to the question of whether changing the terminology would help the form gain respectability, she said, "Sometimes I just think, 'You won't read somethin' because it's called a 'comic book'? What an elitist loser! Why the hell would I want you to read my book?' I wouldn't treat a ditch-digger the way some people treated me when I told them what I did. Who needs them?" Testify!

** Doran really held her own at the "25 Years of Graphic Novels" panel, and in so doing revealed a pretty big knowledge gap about the real world even amongst really great comix creators. Click here for details.


** Say what you will about Kevin Smith, but the guy is funny. During his very popular panel he told a story about getting walked in on by his daughter while having sex with his wife that was just a scream. Probably not so much for him at the time.

** In the regret column: On separate occasions, being seconds away from talking with Dave Cooper and Frank Miller when they suddenly get up and leave. The ones that got away, if you will.

** Chatting with Grant Morrison about the X2 premiere party in London at Sir Ian McKellen's house, to which I was invited but stayed home to interview Phoebe Gloeckner instead:

SEAN: How was it?

GRANT: It got so gay so fast!

As is the wont of parties in which Sir Ian and Alan Cumming are in attendance, I'd imagine.

** Also in the regret column: Looking at someone in a costume consisting of a thong and fishnet stockings from behind, then realizing that someone was a man.

** Watching a woman whose "shirt" consisted simply of two strips of electrical tape pose for pictures outside the Highwater Comics booth. Word is sales of Kramer's Ergot 4 improved dramatically at the time, displaying an unpredicted crossover appeal for Vampirella fans.

** Because it bears repeating, Los Bros Hernandez (Love & Rockets) did a signing about five feet away from Rob Liefeld (Youngblood) doing the same. This is roughly akin to Stanley Kubrick doing a joint appearance with the makers of 2 Fast 2 Furious.

** Blind item: Which prominent Vertigo creator tore me a new asshole not two minutes after first meeting me for the crime of interviewing and liking TV psychic John Edward?

** Josiah swiped Frank Miller's pint of Guiness at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund party. (Frank had already left, but still.)

** Met Brian Michael Bendis in person. He's one of my favorite writers, and I was a little bummed that my interview with him was just a phoner. He's funny and friendly in person, and told me that before he realized I'd sent him a comp copy of the A&F issue he was in, he went to the store to buy it and got screamed at by the teenage clerk for flipping through the book without buying it first. And he gave me a freebee copy of Total Sell Out. Huge!

** I had a long conversation about Fossil watches with one of the women working at Dave McKean's booth. I walked away with new enthusiasm for my timepiece. (Those flashing colors really bug people out!)

** Erik Larsen (of Savage Dragon fame) told Josiah he could "draw the hell out of" stuff. Damn.

** I discovered that there actually ARE laugh-out-loud funny comics out there. Marc Bell's Shrimpy & Paul, Johnny Ryan's Portajohnny and Jason's Meow Baby were freaking funny. Now if only I could discover a horror comic that was actually scary...

** Got to see almost half the cast of The Lord of the Rings at a panel presented by New Line. Sean Astin is adorable, Elijah Wood is good looking, Dominic Monaghan (Merry) is surprisingly good looking as well, and Andy Serkis (Gollum, pre-CGI), besides seeming like a genuine badass, appears to be quite blessed in the Li'l Smeagol department, if his tight trousers are any indication. Also, the few clips they showed of Return of the King revealed a scale that simply dwarfs the imagination. The big battle in RoTK features an enemy horde twenty times the size of the one in The Two Towers. Holy moses.

** Further regret: Josiah lost his ATM card, leaving it at the Fanta booth after using it. That's the kind of thing that would have drove me NUTS if I had done it. He handled it with aplomb, I must say, as it didn't interfere with him walking across a beach for an hour or so later that night. (Stay tuned for explanation.)

** Went to a fabulous art-gallery show of original comic art by a ton of altcomix heavyweights. There's something awe-inspiring, in a cult-of-the-object sort of way, about seeing the original drawings from great comics. I was particularly wowed by the two-page spread from Dan Clowes's David Boring and the comic (my favorite one, actually) from Phoebe Gloeckner's Diary of a Teenage Girl. I also bought the show's catalog, which as an added bonus came with a baggie full of authentic trash from a cartoonist featured in the show. Mine had Phoebe's--I recognized the Long Island Rail Road ticket!

** Another item in the regret column: Taking cabs. Almost without exception, every single cab driver we encountered was an incompetent moron. One just couldn't figure out how to get to 420 G Street, despite getting onto G Street and driving in the direction of the number 420. He actually rolled down his window and yelled for help to other cabbies, who, surprisingly enough, were no help at all. Another couldn't figure out how to get to 530 Broadway, again despite getting onto Broadway and driving in the direction of the number 530. This winner blew past the hotel, took us five blocks out of the way to get back (he seemed genuinely surprised that the streets in the area were one-way, and who can blame him? he's only a goddamn cab driver), overcharged us once he got us close enough to drop us off, and then nearly tore the arm off the girl trying to get in the cab after we got out as he drove off with the door open in an effort not to pick her up. (Keep in mind both of the above incidents took place in the tourist-heavy downtown area, where, one would think, a cab driver might be familiar with the locations of major hotels, as well as the existence of one-way streets and the fact that numbers proceed up or down the street in a fairly orderly, not at all mysterious fashion.) But the one who took the taco was the miserable bastard who, when told to take us to Ocean Beach, then after saying "Pacific Beach?" and being told "no, Ocean Beach," proceeded to take us to Pacific Beach anyway, without telling us he was doing so. He drove us about 15-20 minutes out of our way, dropped us off on the wrong land mass, let alone the wrong beach, and made a killing because it cost so much damn money to get that far away. Since we were looking for a party on the beach, we actually ended up walking the entire length of the shore, about five miles, before we realized we weren't just dropped off at the wrong place on the beach, but at the wrong beach entirely. We had to get back in another cab (the one good driver we encountered, thank Christ), cross a bridge, and drive for about ten minutes before we were back to where we should have been. Mizzable bastards. I did not handle this well, no sir.

** Beach party fun: Aside from the aforementioned glimpse of Craig Thompson's bare ass, there was the added spectacle of watching an incredibly inebriated lone party crasher plop down on the sand and drunkenly warble along to her acoustic guitar, while an also-drunk artcomics fan tried to shout her down.

** More beach party fun: Tom Devlin offered his most direct take on EC Comics yet: "Oh, they suck."

** Doing our good deed for the weekend, we offered two very nice women who were in town to support altcomix luminary Dame Darcy one of our hotel rooms so they wouldn't have to sleep in their van. No word on whether they took advantage of the hot tub.

** I bought a lot, and I mean a lot, of comics.

Teratoid Heights by Mat Brinkman

Yeast Hoist by Ron Rege Jr.

Only a Movie by Jordan Crane

Shrimpy & Paul and Friends by Marc Bell

The TCJ Library: Frank Miller from the Comics Journal

Meow Baby by Jason

Ripple by Dave Cooper

Quimby the Mouse by Chris Ware

Cages by Dave McKean

Alec: How to Be an Artist by Eddie Campbell

A Distant Soil Volume 1 by Colleen Doran

The Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot by Frank Miller & Geof Darrow

The complete Martha Washington series by Frank Miller & Dave Gibbons

The Buenaventura Gallery Show Catalog by various and sundry awesome cartoonists

I also bought copies of Craig Thompson's Blankets, Phoebe Gloeckner's Diary of a Teenage Girl and Jim Woodring's The Frank Book for friends. Yes, I'm a giving sort.

** Finally, a veritable orgy of namedropping, as much to indulge my ADD-derived love of listing things as to brag (though believe me, I'm bragging). Huge thanks to all the comics pros who talked with us, drank with us, gave us freebies, signed our books, invited us to parties, or otherwise made our lives enjoyable at the Con: Mark Alessi, Axel Alonso, Brandon Badeaux, Marc Bell, Brian Bendis, Shelly Bond, Charles Brownstein, Peggy Burns, CB Cebulski, Jordan Crane, Dirk Deppey, Tom Devlin, Marshall Dillon, Colleen Doran, Shawna Ervin-Gore, Tim Ervin-Gore, Gary Groth, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Jason, Erik Larsen, John Layman, David Mack, Grant Morrison, Dan Nado, Mike Norton, Mike Oeming, Ron Rege Jr., Jamie Rich, James Robinson, Johnny Ryan, Gareb Shamus, Craig Thompson, Kim Thompson, Brett Warnock, Chris Weston, and everyone else we hung out with.

Thank you also to The Missus, for being patient with her husband the geek.

Stay tuned for reviews of the books that I got. Maybe even reviews of all of them. I'm feelin' productive!

The most dangerous threat to comics is not the unreconstructed fanboy (i.e. the people who keep writing Pete Milligan and asking him to bring back the original X-Force cast), but the pseudoeducated fanboy, or PEFB. I spoke with one or two in San Diego, and it was a chilling experience, all the more so because they honestly mean well. These are the people who think Udon Studios is manga, that Alex Ross is the best artist in comics history ("I mean, they look like real people!)"), and that Liberty Meadows is an alternative comic. These people are aware enough to understand the "Team Comics" concept of getting comics out to the world at large, but not aware enough to realize that what passes for "different, out of the mainstream" works in their comics cosmology is insipid manipulative middle-of-the-road crapola. People who watch Martin Scorsese and read Kurt Vonnegut will be handed a Chuck Dixon CrossGen book as an example of something similarly great and groundbreaking by the PEFB. I think it's difficult to underestimate the kind of damage such egregiously bad standards can do if their proponents remain such a vocal part of the comics-proselytizing movement.

That's why Gary Groth's recent jeremiad in favor of much more rigorous critical standards is so important. As he and others like him have long argued, it's impossible to justify holding up, say, the Speedy-does-heroin storyline from the old Green Lantern/Green Arrow book (regardless of how forward-looking it may or may not have been in the context of the superhero comics of the time) as some sort of masterpiece of the form when Robert Crumb was working at the same time. Similarly, I've been hard on Mark Millar's teen-geared Trouble at least in part because, as a professional writer, he should know better than to hold it up as some sort of instant classic in a medium that also produced genuine teenage-oriented masterpieces like Ghost World, I Never Liked You, The Diary of a Teenage Girl and Blankets.

There's just no excuse for mediocrity in a medium capable of greatness. And there's even less of an excuse for confusing the former with the latter.

At a panel celebrating 25 years of the graphic novel (the fat book-like format that's become the preferred way to package "good" comic books), I saw an interesting glimpse into how damn difficult it's going to be to get comics into the genuine mainstream--i.e. libraries. Colleen Doran (the incredibly cool cartoonist with the splendid Southern accent who writes and draws the immensely readable fantasy series A Distant Soil) spoke of her (pretty selfless) attempts to get comic books into the hands of librarians and library-system buyers at Book Expo, the regular-book publishing industry's big convention. Speaking of the obstacles to this process, she said the one complaint she hears most often from librarians is that simply not enough information is given to them about a comic book or graphic novel for them to be able to make a decision about buying or shelving it. Often times the publisher just hands them whatever they wrote up for the comic-shop guide Previews, and in the real world, "Corsair makes a startling revelation to Cyclops, but can the Starjammers save either of them from Omega Red?" isn't very helpful. Also, they don't put age levels or grade levels or the other standard things that go on books headed for young-adult sections in libraries.

Well, this last bit caused quite a row amongst the participants of the panel. Graphic designer to the stars Chip Kidd angrily snapped "Why don't they just read the books and decide for themselves what their about and who should read them?" The obvious reply, one which was shouted out by librarians in the audience, was that believe it or not, librarians do not have the time to read every single comic book in the world. They want to stock graphic novels, but without some help from the publishers in terms of explaining what they're about and who they're geared toward, it's hopeless. But Kidd and some of the other panelists, namely Craig Thompson and Will Eisner, continued taking umbrage at the suggestion that age-levels be placed even in the catalog listing or promotional copy let alone on the back of the book (as is done with, oh I don't know, every young-adult book in the world).

I don't necessarily fault these important creators for having their positions, at least from some standpoints. They come from a world in which they're constantly doing battle against a two-headed dragon: One head being the notion that comics are for kids, the other being that we must institute codes and censors and guidelines to make sure that all comics remain for kids, under the threat of hauling people off to jail for selling adult comics to adults. But this simply isn't the reason why librarians want these things--it's so they know where to put the books on the shelves, so they know who to recommend it to, and so they know (believe it or not, this isn't such a bad thing) not to hand an eight year old a copy of The Filth.

My point is not to find fault with Kidd et al, but to point out this enormous blindspot in their ability to accurately and effectively market their books to libraries. A simple difference in trade-dress culture literally prevents comics from getting into libraries.

Comics are climbing, but let there be no doubt that even at their best (i.e. Kidd, Thompson, & Eisner) they're still climbing uphill.

Still playing catch-up with work and email. But you can expect recaps, reviews, reminiscences, revelations, and reprimands of the events of the San Diego Comic-Con all coming in the next few days. I'll probably even talk about some non-comics stuff at some point. ADDTF Fever--catch it!

Note to Jim Henley: Yes, Brian Bendis will be creating "a whole new cast of supervillains." In his Marvel panel at San Diego he said this will happen after he comes back on the book following David Mack's fill-in arc (issues 51-56). So get psyched!

Note to Bill Sherman: No, Brian Bendis won't be ditching comicsville for Hollywood. In that same panel (and, actually, in the interview I conducted with him some months ago for the A&F Quarterly), he said that after writing the pilot for MTV's Spider-Man series (doing which got his name on every single episode), he hasn't spent a single second working on the skein since. He's instead chosen to work on a project closer to his heart, namely his newborn kid. So he's still all ours!

More like this coming soon...

Before I get to the San Diego goodness, here's another comics-related post.

Recently I was asked by All Too Flat extended family member Dov to recommend comics to him. He's a complete newbie who got hooked on Bruce Jones's current (excellent) Incredible Hulk run due to the 25-cent promotional issue Marvel offered during the release of the film, and wanted to know what else he might dig. I wrote him a long message, just recommending a whole bunch of my favorites, and it occurred to me that this is the sort of thing I should put up on the old blog, too. Hopefully the choices will illustrate that there really is something for everyone in comics today. And I'm not doing this as Team Comix boosterism, honestly--I just feel like otherwise media-savvy people who don't read comics are driving down the art highway on only three wheels.

Here, then, are some of my favorites, all of which should be available at Amazon. Any one of them is a great way to start your comics-reading career.

We'll begin with some of the current crop of ongoing superhero monthlies:

NEW X-MEN w: Grant Morrison a: various--This is the best ongoing superhero series around, and maybe even ever. The hardcover collection of the first 12 issues or so is fantastic, but it's also available in smaller softcover editions (the first of which is called E is for Extinction). Morrison is a real visionary, very Burroughs or Pynchon or Dick. His ideas are just huge.

DAREDEVIL w: Brian Bendis a: Alex Maleev--another fantastic superhero comic, close in spirit and execution to the current Hulk series. Very pulp stories, with beautiful art; Bendis probably has the best ear for dialogue in comics today. Lots of collections of this creative team's run are available; the first is called Underboss.

ALIAS w: Brian Bendis a: Michael Gaydos--Bendis also writes this very dark look at the underbelly of the Marvel superheroes. It's a mature-readers book that's actually mature, which is saying something. Gaydos's art hooks you like nobody's business. It's about a private detective who used to be a superhero before some unnamed incident traumatized her. Again, you can find collections of this, the first one of which is I think just called Alias Volume 1.

THE ULTIMATES w: Mark Millar a: Bryan Hitch--an ultra-modern take on the superteam that consists of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk, this has probably the best art of any superhero book out there and is really unpredictable and large in scope. There's only one collection to date, but it's a killer.

Now moving on to altcomix and classic graphic novels:

JIMMY CORRIGAN w/a: Chris Ware--This is the best comic ever made, bar none. It's about this sad middle-aged man's journey to meet his father, which runs parallel to his grandfather's recounting of his own trouble childhood. The art, especially the incredibly complex layouts, is just unbelievable. The Citizen Kane of comics.

DAVID BORING w/a: Dan Clowes--Close in tone to the Coen Bros' darker movies, or David Lynch's less over-the-top, this is a strange noir tale about a man's sexual obsession with a woman during a tense period of terrorist attacks. Clowes's art has this creepy 1950s feel that works perfectly for the story.

WATCHMEN w: Alan Moore a: Dave Gibbons--Supercomplex, realistic, and incredibly involving story of a group of superheroes whose time is almost at an end. Conspiracies, mysteries, politics, sex--it's the highwater mark of the genre in many, many ways. Probably my third-favorite comic ever (after Jimmy Corrigan and...)

THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS w/a: Frank Miller--My favorite comic. Batman returns from retirement to a world that doesn't want him anymore but needs him more than ever. Incredible art, searing satire, heroism on the grandest scale. This book is a juggernaut. The old saw is that if Watchmen performed the autopsy on the superhero genre, Dark Knight is its brass-band funeral. It's awesome.

FROM HELL w: Alan Moore a: Eddie Campbell--The movie version was okay, but it was the equivalent of making a movie of Hamlet that consisted of Hamlet and Laertes training for the duel at the end. The book, on the other hand, is this hugely complex examination of the Jack the Ripper killings, Victorian England, Freemasonry, patriarchy vs. feminism, the occult, and god knows what else. This will really challenge you.

SIN CITY w/a: Frank Miller--beautiful black-and-white comic noir about a huge loser's quest to avenge his lost love. Miller's art is rarely better than it is in this, and the story's got an almost primal momentum. Another favorite.

ARKHAM ASYLUM w: Grant Morrison a: Dave McKean--another genuinely beautiful book, this one is painted and uses remarkable collage techniques. It's a psychological horror story about Batman entering into the insane asylum where most of his big villains are kept. A really chilling examination of abnormal psychology, again rife with the kind of huge occult-influenced symbolism that Morrison specializes in.

HEY, WAIT... w/a: Jason--Translated from Norwegian, this book uses cute-animal characters to tell a really painful story about loss, grief, and regret. This guy's one of the best on the scene, and this story will haunt you.

THE FRANK BOOK w/a: Jim Woodring--Essentially they're the creepiest, scariest cute-animal stories ever. Frank is this sort of cross between a cat and a beaver and a mouse and a bear, who wanders around this hallucinogenic dreamscape getting into adventures and being pursued by various miscreants. If you like twisted children's stuff like Willy Wonka, this will appeal to you. Woodring's a hell of a cartoonist and has imagined his whole own cosmology with this book. Some of the material is available in much cheaper (but smaller) softcover editions.

BLANKETS w/a: Craig Thompson--I talk about this all the time on the blog, but to recap, it's a coming-of-age autobiography involving the parallel finding and losing of first love and religious faith. Elegantly illustrated and stirringly told. Damn, it's good. And sweet.

DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL w/a: Phoebe Gloeckner--Another one I talk about a lot. This is a combination thinly-veiled autobiography written in journal form with autobio comix and illustrations, telling the story of the brilliant but deeply troubled teenager Minnie Goetze as she navigates the free-wheeling San Franciscan 70's. I challenge you not to be deeply moved by this book.

Each gets my full recommendation. Happy reading!

Wouldn't "The Widowmaker" be a great name for a really huge bong?

In other news, Amy has been posting a lot. You should go read it.

The BBC seems almost as upset about the deaths of Uday & Qusay Hussein as, one would imagine, Uday & Qusay Hussein were. LGF has a rundown of how the Beeb has carpet-bombed the story with scare quotes. Or the "story," as they'd want you to believe.

Maybe it's the comics equivalent of feeling ashamed of yourself (and also a bit chafed) after a four-day orgy, but it seems like there's a lot of gloom going around today.

Dirk Deppey (perennial gloom purveyor that he is) offers the latest in his Movie Doomsday Theory series, insisting that a downturn in the comic-book-movie blockbuster market could actually spell the downfall of the entire Direct Market if it causes Marvel to go under. I think what we're seeing this summer (i.e. movie after movie fails to live up to its blockbuster potential--gee, do you think maybe that's because a new "blockbuster" is released every week?) is as much a Movie Movie Doomsday Theory as it is a Marvel Movie Doomsday Theory. Hollywood's in trouble just as Marvel is if they're relying on this obviously faulty business model.

Joey Manley, founder of various and sundry online comics sites, has a pretty depressing take on this year's Con. I think he's altogether too hard on pop-culture geeks--guys in stormtrooper outfits are harmless at worst and hella entertaining at best; it was certainly heartening to watch the snobs get smacked down on this Comics Journal messboard thread on the subject--but I've often wondered myself about the health of a medium in which such a large percentage of its consumers are "hardcore" fans, if not would-be creators themselves. (Guilty on both counts!)

Me? It's tough to be pessimisstic about an industry that yielded Blankets, Diary of a Teenage Girl, The Frank Book, Quimby the Mouse, and The Dark Knight Strikes Again in the last year.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Virtual Dog Shit Creator.

Maybe this makes me sound regionalist or sexist, but when you're calling technical or customer support and you get a woman with a Southern or Midwestern accent on the line, don't you just say "Thank you, God"? They are invariably the friendliest, most helpful, most knowledgeable people working in any given support department. Men, people who sound like they're from a big city or the East Coast, and people with foreign accents--you might as well hang the hell up. But talk to some woman who sounds like she might have been in a Wal-Mart commercial and not only will your problem get fixed, but you'll probably end up paying less money for more service and maybe even get a free hat or something. It's uncanny. It's to the point where if I get through, I'm just going to ask to be transferred to the person who sounds the most like Dolly Parton.

Speaking of accents, my in-laws are from West Virginia. This means that very early on in my relationship with The Missus, a lot of inbreeding & redneck jokes were employed. This also means that only slightly less early on in my relationship with The Missus, I spent some time in the local hospital traction unit. I'm glad I learned that lesson the hard way, though, because (though maybe the last paragraph runs counter to this, but what the hell! I contain multitudes) nothing makes you sound like more of an asshole than making fun of someone because they sound different--particularly if they sound Southern or country or Noo Yawk/Noo Jurzey. Time and time again my somewhat unreconstructed "liberal" coworkers say things to the effect that they hate Bush because they don't like listening to him talk, and they were absolutely merciless to Jessica Lynch (Private First Class Lynch to them, thank you very much) basically because she's an Appalachian who never took a course on public speaking. All those much-vaunted egalitarian ideals of so much of the Left seem to disappear when confronted with a voice that twangs (or, on the flip side, says things like "whaddayagon'do").

Every night I try to watch the news, and the only news channel I get at this point is MSNBC. Normally this isn't so bad, but Chris Matthews is in his own freaking world at this point, spending hour after hour after hour saying things like "what did the president know, and when did he know it?" about the goddamn Nigerian uranium story. I know many people have said what I'm about to say many times in ways far more eloquent and persuasive than I'm about to, but for the love of fucking Mike, Democrats, give the goddamn uranium story a rest. Nobody else cares. Nobody. You may think this is the worst thing that any government has ever done ever, but you are in the goddamn minority, and the more you shreik about it, the more you start to look like the Republicans who kept the equally idiotic Lewinsky blood-feud going long past its sell-by date. I know, I know, war is more serious than blowjobs, blah blah blah, but Clinton lied under oath, and Bush read a line that had been vetted by several dozen other people and is still supported by the British intelligence to whom he attributed the claim right there in the speech. I know you hate Bush. I know the sound of his voice and the sight of his face makes you want to vomit. But Democrats, here's a news flash: most people don't feel this way. Most people don't believe he's lying to them every time he opens his mouth, most people didn't make up their mind on the war over the Nigerian uranium claim and therefore feel bamboozled, and most people are not going to all of a sudden reverse their support for a popular war that we already won. And win it we did, despite all the "quagmire" and "the Iraqi people want us out" nonsense that anyone who's honestly paying attention and has ever done some research into military history can see right through. You may want all the above to be true, but most people don't. Whether or not you're in the right, change your goddamn tactics and change them now, because they're appealing only to people who enjoy saying things like "Bush stole the election" and "it's all about oil," or to German kids who think the CIA flew the planes into the World Trade Center, or to British leftists who think that Tony and Me by Georg Bush book is funny, and that's not enough to get you into the White House. So please, please, please, please, please, shut up about the stupid Nigerian uranium story. Even if you're 100% in the right about it, shutting up about it will actually give you much more of a chance to fix the underlying problems of which it is symptomatic than continuously screeching about it night after night will. Consider dropping the story to be, as you believe Saddam Hussein was compared to Dubya, the lesser of two evils.

Another glimpse into Matthews's psyche was afforded by a comment he made in an earlier segment of the show about Saudi complicity in the 9/11 attacks. As you might now, in a move roughly tantamount to tipping over the coffins of 9/11 victims (the ones of whom enough pieces were found to put in coffins, of course) and giving the bodies the finger, the government has kept sealed 27 pages of the 9/11 report, and it's believed those 27 pages are a damning indictment of the Saudi government's role in failing to thwart, if not tacitly or not-so-tacitly encouraging or even directly funding, the attacks. Matthews's guests, including relentless terrorism expert Stephen Emerson, denounced the Saudi government over and over again, and denounced the administration for seemingly bending over backward to avoid any unpleasantness with these murderous douchebags, who use their fluke-of-geography oil money to spread their poisonous death-cult ideology, Wahabbism, into mosques and schools all over the world. Matthews, who agreed with the guests, closed the segment by saying "This is something we'll be talking about for the rest of our lives."

Not if the hawks can help it.

If you actually read what the policymakers behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are on record as saying, the wars are more than just an effort at direct punitive retaliation for 9/11, or to enforce scads of UN resolutions and regulations on Iraq, or (heaven help us) to acquire more oil. It's an ideological campaign against the sexist nationalist luddite homophobic Jew-hating war-crime-committing murder-suicide pact known as radical Islam, which as practiced by thousands and supported by millions is the root cause of this war just as the radical Christianity embraced by millions in medieval Europe was the root cause of that society's ills. Among the many purposes for the Iraq War was the fact that it'd enable us to pull our troops out of Saudi bases and put them into Iraqi ones (at least for the time being), to modernize and open up an enormous amount of oil fields that would be operated by a friendly democratic government and whose revenue would go to the country's people, not some UN-sanctioned grift that fed Baathist apparatchiks and their miserable genocidal writing-Korans-in-his-own-blood boss. In other words, as many hawk policymakers and thinkers would gladly tell you, it was a war to divorce ourselves from our odious gender-apartheid suicide-murder-exporting client regime, the House of Saud. The antiwar people yelling "What about the Saudis?" seem to have failed en masse to do any research on the subject, as the road to Riyadh runs through Baghdad.

And if this policy continues, which I sincerely hope it will, by the time I get old I won't have to talk about Saudi support of terrorism, except in the past tense.

I've never read J.M DeMatteis's for-grown-ups comics, like the Moonshadow book I always hear about; nor am I part of the DeMatteis/Giffen Justice League cult. But I'll always have a soft spot for the guy, because his Kraven's Last Hunt is the best Spider-Man story I've ever read. (With the possible exception of Brian Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man series, of course. But until that book came along Kraven was my favorite webhead tale by a very, very substantial margin, and at any rate I prefer Mike Zeck's art on Kraven to Mike Bagley's on Ultimate (even though Bagley has improved as the series has gone on, and it has a weird vibrant energy to it that's much greater than the sum of its seemingly pedestrian parts), and at any rate I don't think Bendis has yet told his definitive Ultimate Spider-Man story. Phew.)

So I was intrigued when I heard that DeMatteis will be writing a children's/young-adult fantasy title for CrossGen's creator-owned imprint called Abadazad. The concept, and especially the title, sound a lot closer to Clive Barker's kid-fantasy epic Abarat than they do to the classics DeMatteis cites as influences; the fact that Abadazad will be a comic and Barker's book is prodigiously illustrated only enhances the comparison. But even if we dock points for originality, I'll be excited to see artist Mike Ploog back in action. Ploog worked on the early years of Marvel's Ghost Rider, and his art had this freaky sloppy melty pop vibe that was an undeniable joy to look at. I'm very interested to see where he's at today.

Actually, I do--I just couldn't resist paraphrasing John Lennon.

A post on this Comics Journal messboard thread praising Craig Thompson's book Blankets for exposing the "pap" and "hypocrisy" of modern-day American Christianity led me to post the following:

I think the book is far less judgemental than Juliette's making it sound. I myself am a thoroughly lapsed Catholic who has a hard time believing in a personafied God with an active will at all, yet I always find the vitriol heaped on Christians by artsy-fartsy types--"Those goddamn Christians are so judgemental! Fucking assholes, I hope they burn in hell!"--to be extremely off-putting. I thought Craig did a tremendous job of showing exactly what he found unpleasant and stultifying about his fundamentalist upbringing and the Christians he came in contact with while growing up without leaping to broad generalizations about "pap" or "hypocrisy." After speaking about it with Craig personally, I came away with the feeling that his big problem with Christianity as an organized religion was the judgement passed on non-Christians and the overemphasis on heaven as opposed to the divine within everyone, not that he thought Jesus was bullshit or that he felt that everyone was molesting children the second they got home from Bible camp. (I'm pretty sure that not once does he show a Christian preaching against something, then doing it himself--so so much for exposing hypocrisy or whatever.)

Anyone could write a book full of ad hominems and stereotypes about the big bad Christians, but Craig took the time to throughly explore the doctrine that caused him to reexamine his faith and come to a new belief on his own. Good for him for not taking the easy way out.

Via Instapundit, here's an article on a disturbingly egregious violation of journalistic ethics in which the Reuters news agency substantially rewrote a bylined reporter's article in order to insert thoroughly biased and roundly discredited accusations about the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch. The article is written by the reporter herself, who finds herself wrongfully accused of the offending and baseless slant of the article. Gosh, I sure am grateful the news media is impartial--could you imagine what it'd be like if they weren't?

To paraphrase the Fresh Prince's mother, if they think your government murdered 3,000 of its own citizens and destroyed a major hub of its own economy in downtown Manhattan, you don't need 'em, 'cause they're not your real friends.

Just came across this fascinating round-table discussion featuring Rutgers professor James Turner Johnson, reporter/activist (and Seanieblog favorite) Christopher Hitchens, and about a dozen other prominent columnists and journalists about just war theory, jihad, the UN, terrorism, international law, Catholic pacifism, Iraq, and the difference between acquiring information on a topic and becoming educated about it. Long, but well worth your time.

Hey, he said it, not me! According to Newsarama, Marvel has announced that it's gotten over its reservations about having next year's Free Comic Book Day take place in May, as it has the past two years, despite the lack of a comic-themed movie to coincide with the event.

For those who don't know, Free Comic Book Day is an industry-wide attempt to drum up new readership by giving away free copies of (ostensibly) their most new-reader-friendly or mainstream-appealing comic books on a particular Saturday in comic shops nationwide. No one seems to be certain whether or not this has actually been effective: Usually there's anecdotal evidence of new faces, particularly children's, in the shops on FCBD, but as far as I know there's little proof that this has created repeat business aside from the general rise in direct-market comics sales over the past few years, which could be attributable to any number of things.

Personally, I think Quesada is right to want to hold out until a comic-book movie can do most of the event's publicity for it. Actually, I'm not sure he was even wrong about this year's FCBD, which he wanted to be held in June to coincide with the release of The Hulk, rather than in May to go along with the release of X-Men 2. In retrospect everyone's mocking the idea, since X2 did much better in its own terms than Hulk did, but I think it's important to remember several things:

1) Everyone knows that the Hulk is a comic-book character. The amount of people aware of the funnybook versions of the X-Men is much smaller. In terms of comic-book awareness, the Hulk wins.

2) More kids have off school in June than in May. I know the event's held on a Saturday, but I think that "summer fever" that kids and teens feel is more likely to get them wanting to experiment with the funnybooks than a mere weekend off might do.

2) The Hulk may have been a disappointment in the long run, but the hype for it that first weekend was completely inescapable, and people forget that the initial reviews from many big critics were laudatory. It wouldn't have been like attaching a Free Comic Book Day to Howard the Duck by any means.

3) The same weekend Hulk came out, Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix was released. I guess there's an argument to be made that families with kids and teens already earmarked their entertainment dollars for that big huge hardcover that weekend (indeed, some said the Harry Potter hysteria adversely affected The Hulk's box office), but I think it's just as persuasive to argue that the Hulk movie plus the Harry Potter book plus free comic books could have equalled a huge pop-culture bonanza. At any rate, it was Free Comic Book Day, so it's not like people would have to blow a lot more cash at the event if they didn't want to. Moreover, most comic shops also sold the Harry Potter book. Had they advertised that fact in addition to hyping FCBD while simultaneously riding the Hulk-hype coattails, they might have had a real blowout on their hands.

In the end, I hope FCBD3 goes well, and that publishers avoid Nick "Call to Arms" Barucci's advice to limit their free offerings to the big-name superheroes. Even though he encourages the big companies to release three or four free books apiece, he wants them all to be the big name-brand spandex books! People, everyone on Earth knows that if they want, they can go get a Spider-Man, Batman, Hulk, or Superman comic book in a comic book store. Why not take this opportunity to show them what the hell else is available?

Bill Sherman offers another thoughtful take on Gary Groth's call for more rigorous comics criticism, emphasizing the actual need for service-journalism style "reviews" as opposed to criticism proper. He also points out that the comics blogosphere is more willing to dole out negatives, and do so fairly eloquently, than perhaps Gary gives us credit for. Although in fairness to Gary, comics blogs are still a relatively rarer content model than webzines, news sites, fan sites, and message boards, all of which seem to be more of what Gary was talking about in his "they're sometimes good, but" dismissal of online criticism. (Also, even the non-"fannish" sites Bill lists, this one included, take superhero comics seriously, so in Gary-Land, how good could we be? ;) )

Mark my words, Bill: Next year's San Diego Comic Con will have a panel on comics blogging.

President Bush met today with Abu Mazen Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Prime Minister and Holocaust expert. Why "Holocaust expert"? Because anyone who asserts, as Mazen Abbas does, that the Jewish body count was exaggerated, and indeed that Jewish Zionists encouraged and covertly aided what "Holocaust" there was so as to shore up sympathy for the creation of a Jewish state upon the war's end, is obviously privy to information I've never come across. (Link courtesy of LGF.)

I certainly support the cessation and dismantling of Israeli settelements on Palestinian land--the settlers seem like precisely the kind of religious fanatics we'd all be better off without. I wouldn't mind seeing Ariel Sharon get the boot, as he seems to be a clumsy idiot unable to formulate any kind of coherent policy towards the Palestinians. And I also support the eventual creation of a sovereign Palestinian state, provided the society living in said state emerges from its current nightmarish murderous anti-Semitic death-cult theocratic fascist configuration. And I wholeheartedly support putting the kibosh on the loathsome, ineffectual, corrupt liar and murderer Yassir Arafat. But just because Abbas isn't quite as bad as Arafat doesn't mean he isn't also a scumbag of the first order. The fact that he has yet to renounce his ludicrous attempt to blame Jews for the Holocaust (I'm sorry, "Holocaust") shows that maybe he isn't quite the Partner In Peace we're all hoping for.

So Amy's out of town, and in order to entertain myself I'm watching movies with the two V's (violence and vomit) that I couldn't otherwise watch. So far I've gone through Femme Fatale, Road to Perdition and Near Dark (very good, pretty good, disappointing), with Gangs of New York and a revisit of Body Double (Clive Barker's personal Brian DePalma Film Recommendation to me!) on the way.

A good session of snuggles'd blow 'em all away at this point.

* At any rate

* Ostensibly

* By a fairly substantial margin

* At this point

* Dovetails nicely (haven't used that in ages, but it's ripe for a comeback)

* As is his wont

* Death-cult

* more blah than perhaps blah blah blah

* "scare quotes"

* stupid goddamn

* Team Comics

* Blogosphere

* Altcomix luminaries

* Blah blah blah--blah blah blah--blah blah.

* Blah blah blah (blah blah blah (blah blah) blah blah) blah.

* The Missus

The almost comically eloquent writer Victor Davis Hanson fires another diamond bullet to the brain of the Chris Matthewses of the world with this tremendous essay on Iraq. In it, he points out (among other things) that much of the money, materiel and personnel committed to Iraq for the immediate future are simply being moved from one place (Saudi Arabia and other loathsome Middle Eastern kleptocracies) to another; that we've lost fewer troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined than died in the Beruit Marine barracks terrorist attack back in the 80s; and that despite repeated statements to the contrary by this very administration, there still hasn't been another major terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. In other words, we're doing something right. Please go and read this fantastic piece. (Link courtesy of LGF.)

It's been quite a Roxy Music roundtable in the semi-comics blogosphere lately, as the Roxy conversation mentioned in this piece by me begat this post by Johnny Bacardi begat this post by Bill Sherman begat another post by Johnny Bacardi. So it's time for me to throw my hat back in the ring re: Bryan, Brian & Co.

I discovered Roxy Music thanks to the film Velvet Goldmine, which I've often and accurately said changed my life a few years back. Bowie's definitely my primary VG-inspired obsession, but Roxy runs a very close second. And I'm one of those guys who enjoys every stage of Roxy's career: the early, weird, Eno-driven glam; the more elegant glam of Stranded and Country Life, the transitional albums like Siren and Manifesto, and the yuppie pop of Flesh and Blood and Avalon. The thing that amazes me about this band, aside from the raw experimental zeal of the early albums and the seemingly effortless pop perfection and glamour of the later ones, is the utter confidence with which lead singer Bryan Ferry offers his paeans to romance, handed down from sources as diverse as Rudolph Valentino, Bob Dylan, Kurt Weill, Elvis Presley, Edith Piaf, Christopher Isherwood, Marilyn Monroe, Fritz Lang, Andy Warhol, and Humphrey Bogart yet somehow made not only new but completely convincing and moving by the sheer ability and versitility of the guy's voice and the clever simplicity of his lyrics.

If I were forced at gunpoint to pick a favorite, I'd probably have to go with Avalon, surprisingly enough. I know it's less adventurous, etc., but the instant I hear those first few notes of "More Than This" it's like I'm off to another world. And the hits just keep on coming: "Avalon," "Take a Chance with Me," "To Turn You On," and (especially) "True to Life" straddle the line between luxury and gloom, romance and loss, richness and emptiness better than any other line-up of tunes I can think of. And the production is simply gorgeous.

But I really do love almost all the other records, too. Aside from Avalon (and possibly For Your Pleasure), Stranded is, I think, the most solid, best-structured Roxy record. There's simply no denying the juxtaposition of the exuberant "Mother of Pearl" and the quietly tragic "Sunset," that's for damn sure. And besides being Johnny & Bill's favorite Roxy disc, it's Brian Eno's as well, despite the fact that he'd left the band (on somewhat acrimonious terms, at least as far as Bryan Ferry was concerned) just prior to its recording. It's companion disc, Country Life, besides having one of the best album covers ever, also has the epochal "Bitter Sweet," the super-urgent "The Thrill of It All," and the swirling violin woodwind and string vortices of "Out of the Blue" (which in its live version on Viva! is just unbelievable). My only quibble: CL should have ended, as Roxy albums at their best tend to do, on a quiet (if not down) note with "A Really Good Time," rather than in a musical salute to Jerry Hall with "Prairie Rose." But hey--that's what iPod playlists are for!

The first two Roxy records are like Bjork 25 years before the fact. Like the Icelandic maverick at her best, there's simply not a boundary or a rule that Roxy accepted back then. Song structure, vocal techniques, instrumentation--they'd simply try anything, and goddammit, they got it to work, whether it's "growing potatoes by the score" in "If There Is Something," unleashing a prog-rock explosion in "In Every Dream Home a Heartache," watching Brian Eno walk away in "For Your Pleasure," "flying down to Riooooooo" in "Virginia Plain," watching LaGoulue and Nijinsky do the Strandsky in "Do the Strand," or crooning an impossibly romantic salute to Humphrey Bogart in "2HB" (my favorite Roxy tune). This music must have just blown people's brains out their ears when they first heard it.

Though the mid-career trifecta of Siren, Manifesto and Flesh and Blood are not my favorites, the highs are still ridiculously high. "Love Is the Drug," for all its association with Roxy's abandonment of glam, is a seriously propulsive dance track with an undeniable syncopated rhythm and those killer "ohhhhh"s from Mr. Ferry. Manifesto's title track, with its ever-ascending list of what Bryan Ferry, at that point the living embodiment of all things luxe, stands for is both a great song and a great idea for a song. Flesh and Blood's "Oh Yeah" is an overwhelmingly affective evocation of whatever happened to the teenage dream, and "Over You" perfectly blends post-disco New Wave-isms with, get this, the Byrds.

And then of course there are the non-album singles "Pyjamarama" (with a Pete Townshend opening and yet another ridiculously romantic lyric) and "Jealous Guy" (a John Lennon cover released at a time when, after the legend's death, everyone was indeed dreaming of the past).

Basically, this band was a killer. Their entire catalog never leaves my iPod.

I've now watched The Fellowship of the Ring so many times it's like a form of comfort food for me. Having a three-and-a-half hour version of your favorite movie comes in handy when your wife is out of town and you only get about 15 channels that aren't Spanish or Home Shopping. Today I was watching it with the director & writer commentary track playing, and it's still a tremendously entertaining film, in part because of the incredible level of detail and love (they wouldn't have bothered with the former if they hadn't had the latter) invested into every shot by the production team. A few brief musings three of my favorite moments in the film:

1) The post-Moria mourning scene. If I had to guess, I'd say it was this sequence that made moviegoers realize they weren't just watching a great action film, but a great film, period. Most action movies gloss over the death of even the most important characters, content with someone shouting "Noooo!", then having someone else pat them on the back, toss them a cold one, say "He was a good soldier," and then it's back to ass-kicking. Here we emerge from the incredibly intense and dark underground realm of Moria into an otherworldly, blindingly white hill, the sun blazing down. The diegetic sound is removed, leaving us instead with a single mournful boy-soprano voice singing a song of grief. The individual reactions to the fall of Gandalf by each member of the Fellowship are catalogued in uncomfortably intimite close-ups: Gimli the Dwarf enraged, struggling to return to the mines and slay the orcs who brought them to this sorry pass; Boromir of Gondor, holding Gimli back, his face showing that he knows only too well how futile the seeking of vengeance would be; Sam the Hobbit, collapsing to the ground in sorrow; Merry & Pippin, clinging to each other, seeming to wonder just how culpable their silly antics were in their friend's death; Legolas the Elf, a look of stunned surprise on his face, one totally unaccustomed to seeing the death of a friend up close; Frodo, who in the words of director Peter Jackson has a look of grief on his face "so powerful that it should frighten the audience"; Aragorn the ranger, who allows himself only a moment of pure sorrow before reluctantly assuming the mantle of leadership placed upon him by his fallen friend. Boromir says of the hobbits, "Give them a moment, for pity's sake," but Aragorn insists on spurring them on, knowing that the orcs on their heels will show no pity should they catch up to the greiving fellowship. The performances are amazing, but the imagery alone--the white light, the barren hill--say almost all that needs to be said. This was when everything clicked for me, sitting there in the theater: "This isn't just great--it's a masterpiece."

2) I first saw the Moria mines sequence in a press screening several months before the release of the film. That 15-20 minute chunk was released and shown at Cannes, and then at select locations for members of the media. I saw it in New York with a friend, and when we left--completely floored, of course--he said "This is the first movie that captures the sheer scale of good fantasy. Moria was exactly as big on the screen as it was in my head." For me, the shot that established this scale once and for all was not the big reveal of the Great Hall, but the arrow's-eye-view shot of the orc archer as he gets killed by Legolas. At this point, you've had some more or less vertical overhead shots that simply show the space immediately surrounding where our heroes are running down the ancient staircase in the Mines, or shots taken from right among them. Suddenly you're strapped onto an arrow, flung hundreds of yards over an enormous chasm, and ram right into an orc's forehead. We then switch to a shot from right behind the orc--or where he used to be, because he's plummeting deep in to the chasm the arc of the arrow just described. Using strictly intrafilmic means--the arrow, the body of the orc--Jackson defines the space of the Mines breathtakingly. This shot sequence didn't receive nearly the level of attention of the equally brilliant Orthanc "helicopter" shot, in which the camera panned over the gates of Isengard, past the fiery pits in which Saruman's orcs were working, up the tower of Orthanc on the wings of Gandalf's friend the moth, then rocketed back down the tower deep underground and stopped at an orc swordsmith's anvil. It may not have been nearly as showy, but it was just as effective, and for me, perhaps even more impressive.

3) Another smart bit of film wonkery came at the very end of the scene on the snowy mountainside in which Boromir reluctantly returns the Ring to Frodo after the hobbit drops it. As Boromir turns his back from Frodo after handing it off and mussing his hair, his shield clanks against his back with a THUD. That simple foley-art sound effect force the audience to notice Boromir's distinctive round shield--which we next notice near the very end of the film, when its simple presence near the base of a tree is used to indicate ominously that Boromir has gone off from the Fellowship to track down Frodo. One split-second sound effect does the work of probably thirty seconds exposition. Fantastic.

He might not even know we exist, but Gary Groth's getting quite a lot of attention from the comics blogosphere over his recent critical call to arms. Alan David Doane (whose writing is always sharp, even when it's 180-degrees from my own POV, and who moreover has yet to give me a hard time about having the initials ADD in my blogbreviation) offers a brief take on Groth's return to the pages of The Comics Journal. At this point, there seems to be something of a consensus forming about the piece: We all wanted to like it, and we all did, sorta. His heart and mind were both in the right place, but something about the essay seems to have left us all a little let down. I'd liken it to an opened bottle of soda you left in the fridge while you were on vacation. You made sure to screw the cap on extra tight, and the fridge was extra cold, and when you get back from the airport you're all dehydrated from the recycled air on the plane and you pour a glass and take a big gulp and ahhhh! Delightfully chilly refreshment... except that it's a little... flat. Alan, Bill Sherman, and I all applauded Gary's sentiment, but each of us seemed to be looking for a little something more. I think we all also agree that the additional essays on criticism by Greg Cwiklik and Rich Kreiner that flanked Groth's piece (not to mention actual good criticism in action, in the form of by Darcy Sullivan and Daniel Holloway, as well as the hugely rewarding interview with Mad-man Will Elder conducted by Groth himself) provided just such a little something.

Also worthy of note in Doane's piece is his lament that the Journal is "not entirely holding the moral high ground when it comes to providing critical analysis of worthwhile, groundbreaking works." It turns out that Journal editor Milo George is well aware of this fact--indeed, it's part of his plan! This thread on the Journal's message board indicates that timely reviews of even major works are not a priority at George's Journal. As someone who believes that (for better, in most cases; for worse, in some) the Journal is the magazine of record for the comics medium, it upsets me to see that a premium is not placed on documenting the works that define the state-of-the-art-form as they come out. Important books can wait months or even more than a year before being discussed in the Journal's pages, and though I may be simply back-seat editing at this point (it's just the editor in me; I happen to think the Journal's as good now as it's been since I've been reading it), I think the comics-reading public's the poorer for this--to say nothing of the creators of the work in question, who surely feel the dearth of good print criticism as dearly as we do, or of the Journal itself, which I believe would be more of a living, breathing thing if it were an up-to-date chronicle of the medium's best (and worst).

Read this story about how the seige on the Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dum Hussein's final hideout has led to a bonanza of intelligence and tips, including one that enabled the capture of Saddam's bodyguards. Then read the last two paragraphs of the main section, brought to you by Reuters. I'll paraphrase: "While this may seem like good news, EVERYTHING ACTUALLY JUST SUCKS." The overall opinion of Iraqis is asserted with no corroboration, no justification, no documentation; a completely unrelated story is tacked on just for shits and giggles at the Americans' expense. Both are 100% pure spin. It'd almost be breathtaking, if it weren't so insulting.

Newsblogging is the future, baby. When I spin stuff, I link to the source so you can spin it right back at me.

...but holy crap, is this adorable or what?

...for proving to me that The Money Pit is almost as funny in Spanish as it is in English. God, what a funny movie. The part where Tom Hanks laughs at the bathtub that fell through the floor may be my favorite scene in any comedy ever.

According to the Comics Continuum (link courtesy of Markisan Naso), Marvel's Hollywood head honcho, Avi Arad, said plans continue apace for Elektra, Iron Man, Deathlok, The Fantastic Four, Blade 3, The Punisher, Spider-Man 2, and (dum dum DUM!) Hulk 2. In other words, the kinda sorta disappointing showing of Hulk 1 (again, I'll just say that I don't know how anyone in their right mind expected this weird, weird film to make Spider-Man box) was not a deathblow to the Marvel Movie Money Machine, as some are beginning to theorize (love how that link is subtitled "freefall," Dirk!). 'Course, it remains to be seen how well each of these projects will do, but the gravy train's still rollin'. Moreover, as Jim Henley points out, you don't need movie tie-ins to make big bank off superhero licensing--just ask DC Comics! (On the other hand, you may not need them--but it helps.)

My take? I don't see "superhero-comic-book movies" as a trend, because unlike other recently deceased Hollywood fads (teen movies, self-reflexive pop-culture-reference-laden horror films), the superhero flicks produced so far are sufficiently differentiated from one another to offer distinct moviegoing experiences for the audience, even if only because the biggest of the characters (Spider-Man, the Hulk) are already familiar enough with the audience to qualify as individual experiences simply by virtue of their lead characters alone. Aside from that, Spider-Man was a rollicking adventure for kids and young teenagers that captured the retro vibe grown-up fans were looking for; Daredevil was a dark, operatic take on a pulp hero that most viewers weren't already familiar with as a comic-book superperson; the Blade movies were action-horror that few people associate with the superhero genre anyway; Hulk was a weird "term-paper blockbuster," and moreover was more King Kong than Superman; the X-Men movies were sci-fi action with enough queer theory thrown in to keep things interesting for the hipsters and, again, less awareness of the franchise's comic-book roots; The Punisher could go one of two ways: a supergrim Death Wish kind of movie or a live-action Road Runner cartoon a la Garth Ennis's early issues on the comic series; Fantastic Four is rumored to be either sci-fi adventure or a sci-fi tinged suburban dramedy--either way, not too Super; Elektra is a hot-chick-kicks-ass movie waiting to happen; Deathlok will most likely be a black Terminator; Iron Man I've heard they'll be selling as James Bond with more gadgets; I know it's not Marvel, but even the relatively bomb-y League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would have been number one at the box office its opening weekend had its studio not made the dumbass decision to release it against another period quasi-fantasy swashbuckler--one with the full might of Disney behind it--The Pirates of the Carribean, and again, civilians have no clue that League was a comic book first.

These differences may look superficial to people heavily invested in the theory that you can't mine anything worthwhile out of the spandex-wearing set, but the average person (as I've said time and again) does not share this anti-superhero bias, and if a superhero movie is unique and interesting enough, they'll go see it.

'Nevertheless, "hating" Casablanca doesn’t prove you have superior taste any more than disliking chocolate ice cream makes you some kind of serious gourmet. And saying you like Carl Barks stories because they have some sort of political or sociological significance is like saying you like chocolate ice cream because it has lots of vitamins and minerals.'

--R. Fiore, critic for the Comics Journal, counterracting the usual elitist stupidity on the TCJ.com messageboard. I loved this quote so much I just had to put it up here.

Erik Braunn, guitarist for Iron Butterfly and riff-wielder for "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," is dead.

Let us pause for 17 minutes of quiet reflection.

Rich Johnston's rumor column is a real bonanza of Marvel & DC gossip this week. Things seem to have reached a tipping point in the battle between the two companies.

For the past three years or so, Marvel, under the direction of Editor in Chief Joe Quesada (with assists from former DC/Vertigo editors Axel Alonso and, up until a year or so ago, Stuart Moore), have done their damndest to become the "cool" publisher, wooing some of the biggest (and occasionally best) mainstream writers and artists, putting them on the big-name superhero's books, and letting them run wild. Though fanboy reaction has been decidedly mixed ("How dare they screw with my favorite tights-wearing do-gooder!"), New Marvel has generated more sales, publicity, critical acclaim, and (most importantly) damn good books than any superhero-company regime in recent memory. (Brian Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man and Daredevil, Bruce Jones's Hulk, Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates, Pete Milligan's X-Statix (nee X-Force), (to a lesser extent) J. Michael Straczynski's Amazing Spider-Man, and (to an enormous extent) Grant Morrison's New X-Men are seen as having led the charge.) Comparatively conservative AOLTW division DC responded largely by playing dead, occasionally growing a star in their Vertigo or Wildstorm subdivisions only (usually) to see those stars snatched up by Marvel's creator-friendly editorial regime.

Recently, things have changed. Marvel President Bill Jemas, never one to shirk from rubbing fans or retailers the wrong way if he thought it was good for the company, is now thought to be doing the same with creators through his increasingly intrusive editorial hand. Jemas himself is probably caught in the crossfire between the more money-minded Hollywood side of Marvel (where the real cash is harvested anyway) and the comparatively ars gratia artis publishing wing. Meanwhile, DC's new Editorial VP, Dan DiDio, has made it his goal to ape the old Joe Q. business model, fighting to get big creators, give them big money, assign them to big characters, and tell the bigwigs at DC and AOL to leave them the hell alone. This has paid off with a slew of big-name superhero guys signing "exclusive" contracts with DC in recent months and, especially, the past couple of weeks. In the crazy world of comics publishing, exclusives don't mean as much as you'd think they might--allowances are usually made for work already promised to other publishers; occasionally work is allowed to be done for indie companies, the main point being "Don't work for The Other Big Company"; sometimes creators work so slowly that despite being "exclusive" with a company, said company may go months or even over a year without actually publishing any of their work--but still, they're a barometer of which way the mainstream's superstars think the wind is blowing. Lately, it's been blowing in DC's direction, with tons of high-profile projects either announced or rumored to be in the works. All told, DC has either gotten or is said to be gunning for Art Adams, Chuck Austen, Brian Azzarello, Chris Bachalo, Mark Bagley, Brian Bendis, Bryan Hitch, Bruce Jones, Adam Kubert, Jeph Loeb, Alex Maleev, Mark Millar, Grant Morrison, Eduardo Risso, Greg Rucka, Tim Sale, Mark Waid, and Bill Willingham, just to name some--a far cry from the company's previous don't-rock-the-boat approach to its big characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern et al).

Momentum began gathering in earnest at the San Diego Comic-Con, where DC took advantage of Marvel's reduced presence by announcing exclusive contracts with Rucka, Sale, Loeb, and (the big shocker) Morrison. Things promise to reach critical mass in two weeks at Chicago's WizardWorld convention, where both companies (Marvel will have a pretty big contingent on hand this time) promise huge announcements. ADDTF just might have a couple of representatives on hand, and they're waiting with bated breath for the fireworks to start.

In his column, Johnston points out that even the most thorough poaching of Marvel by DC could turn out good for the former company, freeing up room on the big books for the up-and-comers currently working with smaller characters in the Tsunami and Epic lines. If such a promotion comes hand-in-hand with less interference from corporate or editorial, this might all well be a blessing in disguise.

Steven Den Beste has an excellent post today, in which he tries to explain the almost inexplicable failure of the anti-war left to affect the implementation of their preferred policies in any way.

Money quote:

"I think that there may have been some sort of deep feeling that if only those demonstrating against the war could somehow adequately communicate how strongly they opposed the war, that this would be enough to convince the rest of us to give up the entire enterprise. If the validity of a point of view is entirely a function of the sincerity with which it is held, then if enough people are emphatic enough about their sincerity, they should prevail for that reason alone."

This quote from Flirting with Disaster was brought to you today by anti-war doctrinaire libertarian comicsblogger Jim Henley, who blows a motherloving gasket over the admittedly unpleasant capture of an Iraqi general's family by US forces in order to prompt that general to turn himself in. Jim starts bandying about words like "taking hostages" and "abominaton" and "evil," without pausing for breath long enough to consider that a) The family, since they in all likelihood had information about a suspect's whereabouts, would have been appropriate to bring downtown and question during a criminal investigation in America, let alone in a war zone; b) the family was never in any real danger since American forces don't execute, torture, or indefinitely imprison non-combatants, unlike certain other forces we could mention; c) the note left for the general--"If you want your family released, turn yourself in"--was a lie: the family would have been released eventually, the implied threat was just that--implied--and again, even in criminal investigations in America, authorities are allowed to lie to suspects, and again, this is a war zone. Sorry, Jim, but saying "this isn't moral equivalence, it's simple fact!" don't make it so.

So much anti-war thought is myopically focused on the metaphorical letter of the law when it's the spirit that matters, only to turn around and attribute the purest of motives to our enemies when all their actions and words say otherwise.

One of the toughest aspects of writing in college is treading that fine line between listening to advice from better writers with a lot more experience than you and doing whatever the hell your professor tells you to do in order to get a good grade no matter what it does to the story you want to tell. It's very difficult to find your own voice, be true to that voice, listen to and incorporate the criticism and advice that instructors offer, ignore the bits of it that don't work for you or your story, AND try to grow as an artist all at the same time. In the end, you've got to trust your muse.

This is why I agree with Stuart Moore (not, surprisingly enough, all that frequent an occurrence) when he says that Robert McKee's much-ballyhooed how-to guide for screenwriters (and now comics writers) Story is a crock of shit. I'm sure there's good points in there--just like there's plenty of good points in the Bill Jemas comics-writing rules mentioned below--but the notion that it would behoove every writer on Earth to follow the same road-map into Storytelling Nirvana is almost too ludicrous to be taken seriously. Just to give one example (one I may go into at some length one day), the fourth season of The Sopranos was torn to shreds by critics who ostensibly are looking for something unique-different-personal-passionate, yet freaked out because it didn't follow some boring three-act formula where everything happened for a reason and everything tied together at the end. Eff that, my friends. Rules are important sometimes--we don't want writers running around thinking they can put any damn thing on the page and that it's instant gold, and this includes myself--but rules are made not just to be broken, but to be ignored entirely. Half the problem of superhero comics to begin with is following rules that should have been tossed out decades ago. McKee's Story cult isn't going to help that process by any stretch of the imagination.

More on the Marvel rumor front: President Bill Jemas is rumored to have been taken out to the woodshed by Marvel head honcho Ike Perlmutter recently. According to this thread at Comicon.com (courtesy of Franklin Harris), an angry letter from retailer Matt Hawes was the reason for this.

I'm not necessarily nuts about everything Jemas has done with the company--lately he seems to have convinced himself that his formula for writing comics, as spelled out in the Epic submission guidelines and a special issue of his vanity comic Marville, is pure storytelling gold; I'm sorry, but anyone who wants to base the structure of every single comic they publish on the ghastly, overrated, good-idea-but-gutbustingly-stupid-execution Wolverine story Origin is just plain goofy--but he at least had the balls to stand up to the wretched contingent of die-hard fanboys (and their creepy uncles, the fanboy retailers) that would enjoy any shit served to them so long as no one changed Captain Mar-Vell's haircut. Of course it's up for debate how many of these long-overdue and 90% successful changes in content and creators were due to Jemas and how many were due to editors like Joe Quesada, Axel Alonso, and Stuart Moore (my money's on the latter three), but Jemas had the mouth and the muscle to see that they could do their job, and for that we should be grateful.

Unfortunately, since many of the policy and publishing decisions made under Jemas's watch have been unsuccessful either creatively (overhyped, often pretentious series like The Rawhide Kid, Namor, Captain America, 411, The Call of Duty, not to mention countless godawful ugly T&A covers, and the recent increase in top-down micromanagement-style editing), financially (woefully underrated series like The Truth, Soldier X, and even X-Statix to an extent), or retailer-relations wise (the constant "fuck yous" in Jemas's press releases, the no-overprint, no-reprint policy), people who have some valid complaints but otherwise have no goddamn business dictating what makes for good comics are going to be listened to now that Jemas's golden-boy image seems to have been tarnished with his superiors. This retailer, for example, seems to think that Axel Alonso, the best editor at the entire company (X-Statix, Hulk, Amazing Spider-Man) has no business working with superheroes. In other words, this retailer is on fucking crack. This is the same type of person who really, really wants to see the X-Men back in spandex uniforms, who wants the Hulk to yell "Hulk SMASH!" and fight the Bi-Beast in every issue, who thinks the Ultimate line is merely a pointless rehash of great superhero stories gone by ("give me something forward-thinking--like Earth X!"), who doesn't want "The Homosexual Agenda" "promoted" or even talked about in the pages of, well, anything. It's a shame that Jemas's occasional screw-ups have left all the good that he and his team have done open to revision or destruction by nitwits like this.

Basically, Dirk Deppey is right, as usual. In a semi-rant (scroll down) the point of which is mainly that retailers are insane if they don't start stocking manga in a big way and advertising that fact in an even bigger one, Dirk points out the following:

QUOTE: "..where the Direct Market is concerned, the customer is in fact fatally wrong. I have long maintained that the biggest problem facing the comic-book industry is its idiotic status as a network of one-genre shops, as retailers chase after the hardcore superhero readers to the contemptuous exclusion of everyone else."

Marvel has not been perfect in this regard--witness their recent scuttling of creator-owned books in their new Epic line and their insistence that what books remain be, at most, superhero books in genre drag, just for instance--but Jemas, Quesada, Alonso et al have at least tried to move superhero comics beyond what they'd been for God knows how fucking long, using them in a far more creative fashion than normal (i.e they're doing a little more than answering questions like "If Storm was, like, really mad, could she out-lightning Thor? And, uh, do you think, um, that her top might come off if she did?"). Or as Jemas put it in one of the sharper moments in his Marville storytelling guidelines (I'm paraphrasing here:"'Wouldn't it be cool if Dr. Octopus's tentacles were made of adamantium? Wouldn't it be cool if the Hulk turned small and smart and gray?' No, that wouldn't be cool--that would be stupid. That's a comic about other comics. If you're going to use superpowers, use them to say something about the character, about life, not about other comic books."

Unfortunately, rather than reigning in Jemas's excesses, the current "Lynch Bill" movement aims at least as much, if not more so, to curtail the good things he's done, from employing Axel Alonso to putting the X-Men in clothing reasonable people might actually wear. A huge chunk of the anti-Bill contingent wants their comic books about comic books back, and they don't care if in getting them they shoot the industry in the face.

I think one of the reasons that, sadly, this incredibly stupid Team Stupid Fanboy Comics initiative might work is the current Jeph Loeb/Jim Lee story arc on Batman. Loeb and Lee are both good-but-not-great fan-favorite creators, and they've teamed up to produce a storyline that's basically the comics equivalent of a big old Vanilla Coke--flavorful, sure, but it's all calories and no nutrition. No new ground is being broken, no interesting exploration of the characters' lives and psyches is being undertaken. It's basically Batman running around encountering every single villain and supporting character he's ever known, while visions of twelve billion rendering lines per page dance in his head. In other words, it's a continuity-wonk splash-page-junkie fanboy's wet dream come true. And this dopily entertaining thing is the number one comic book month after month after month. It's exactly what the fanboys want--the appearance of a shakeup ("They got Loeb! They got Lee! Those are big-name creators! It's got to be good!") with none of the unpleasant aftertaste (i.e. no reality, no satire, no politics, no change in tone, no symbolism, no depth, no real character work, no advancement of the characters' lives--no shakeup at all, in other words).

For the last few years, Grant Morrison's complex, subversive pop masterpiece New X-Men has been the model for success. Now it's Batman, a Jerry Bruckheimer movie in comics form.

There couldn't be a worse time for Bill Jemas's feet to turn to clay.

Actual intra-Collins conversation about a test my doctor wants me to undergo:

SEAN: So now I have to smear some stool on this little sample card.

THE MISSUS: "Have to," or "get to"?

Following up on my "Don't throw out the New X-Men with the Namor" take on the current anti-Bill Jemas scuttlebut, Bill Sherman succinctly sums up The Trouble With New Marvel, and also puts it into some historical perspective.

Speaking of the recent flare-up in the Marvel/DC cold war, DC is continuing to slowly leak out announcements about the high-profile creators it’s putting on its high-profile books. Giving Superman to Brian Azzarello was not a move I saw coming, but as for putting Greg Rucka and Chuck Austen on a couple of other Supes titles—eh. Judging from the big-character output I’ve already seen from these two fellows, they’re not, shall we say, the most adventurous or imaginative of choices. It’s a far cry from when Joe Quesada, in giving franchise books to the likes of Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Garth Ennis, Brian Bendis, Pete Milligan, and Bruce Jones, essentially handed the inmates the keys to the asylum.

NeilAlien tears a recent bit of anti-superhero snobbery to pieces, as is his wont. Neil, I know you're having a bit of a blogging-identity crisis in terms of what your blog should be like, but you've got to do more of this kind of writing.

As part of a Blogathon, Dave Hill of Dave Does the Blog offered his list of "The Top Twelve Comics Everyone Should Own." (I think he relies too heavily on nostalgic supercomics, myself. Sure, I liked Marvels, and I really liked Astro City and Kingdom Come, but they all rely very, very heavily on familiarity with at least the conventions and tone of old comics; Marvels and KC actually require that you understand the continuity, too. Books like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns (also on his list), despite their involvment with convention, cliche, and continuity, manage to stand on their own, not just comment on what has gone before--a fact all too often lost on people who write about these books.) Still and all, Dave's list is good for getting some discussion going; it's broken up into several posts, but the first one is here. Compare and contrast to my "Comics 101" list for extra credit!

Rick Veitch, comics writer/artist/sometime-journalist, has a bone to pick with the Comics Journal’s coverage of the recent financial woes of its parent company, Fantagraphics. On the TCJ.com thread where he brings this up, he’s basically mocked for doing so by Journal regular R. Fiore, whose argument (in fairness, it’s more a tossed-off one-liner than an argument) is basically "At least we’re not Wizard." Though I’m ambivalent about his output as a critic, Fiore is a tenacious guardian against stupidity of all stripes (witness this other message-board thread I mentioned earlier, in which he demolishes TCJ.com’s foremost advocate of militant elitism), so it’s all the more disheartening to hear him utter this mealy-mouthed defense-through-relativity of the medium’s preeminent magazine. Having criticized certain Journal policies myself several times in the past, only to receive similarly erudite variations on the theme of "up your nose with a rubber hose" in response, I’ve almost come to despair of the notion that the Journal will ever really open itself up to criticism. It’ll get involved in huge long-running public feuds with cranks, sure, but will it ever, say, take another look at reviewing more books, and doing it faster upon those books’ release? having a regular engagement with the current output of the mainstream companies (as opposed to their output from five years ago, or interviewing Silver-Age creators, or interviewing indie types who are slumming it with the occasional superbook)? shortening some of those twenty-page interviews with creators who can’t really remember doing their best work? Instead, you get a lot of statements from editors and former editors about how any flaws, mistakes, bias, prejudice, or lapses of judgement or taste or grammar or logic anything else should be blamed on the individual contributor—and even then, chill out, it’s just his opinion, if you don’t like it offer your own—and even then, don’t come crying to the Journal, it’s their fault, not ours. It’s as though the Journal’s head honchos are bus drivers who don’t control who gets on, who gets off, or what they yell out the window at passers-by when they're on board. That’s silly. And like I always say, it’s not that I don’t think the Journal writers and editors I’ve spoken with are nice guys and smart guys and lovers of comics—I actually do think everyone at TCJ and Fanta that I’ve spoken with are good people. But if you’re going to take credit for running the best magazine in comics, you’ve also got to take responsibility for making it better.

In their ongoing effort to destroy all that is good in the world, the folks at the BBC bring you this story (link courtesy of James Taranto) of how scientists have determined that there is no Loch Ness Monster.

I've been a fan of Nessie since I was very young (I was one of those people who had a not-so-temporary flirtation with the idea of growing up to be a cryptozoologist), so these reports are always pretty depressing for me to read. But nothing really tops the let-down I felt after actually visiting the Loch, during a travel-story assignment for A&F. The Loch and its surroundings are unbelievably gorgeous, the people are ridiculously friendly, and while in Scotland everyone subsists on the three food groups of meat, beer, and cream--that all goes in the plus column. But then you go to the Official Loch Ness Monster Museum. Don't get me wrong, the museum's great too; unfortunately it makes plesiosaur promises (in the form of every possible iteration of plesiosaur-themed merchandise imaginable), but then takes you on a voice-over'd tour of the history of the Nessie phenomenon that ends with the assertion that whatever legit sightings of large animals in the loch may have occurred were in all likelihood sightings of large sturgeons that wandered into the lake from the sea. There's just an extra helping of disillusionment to be had when you're told that the local myth-cum-tourist-attraction is just a big fish by an institution dedicated to perpetuating the attractiveness of said local myth-cum-tourist-attraction.

Oh well. Aleister Crowley and Jimmy Page believed in the damn thing enough to move there. Good enough for me, right?

Johnny Bacardi offers up his own take on the music of Roxy Music. I think the fact that a couple of sentences about Roxy in an unrelated post of mine led to a big multi-site Roxy extravaganza is a fantastic argument in the blogosphere's favor, don't you?

I know I've been uncharacteristically harsh on fanboys lately, seeing as how I'm pretty much a fanboy myself, at least insofar as I still read and enjoy a good many superhero comics. But I think that just as I'll argue passionately that superhero comics are not automatically junk--or automatically junk provided no one named Kirby, Ditko, Cole, or Moore was involved with them--I think it's equally important to lambaste, mock, excoriate, ridicule, and otherwise make life unpleasant for people who read only superhero comics, or comics from superhero publishers, and have the audacity to claim they "like comics." Besides the fact that you're doing yourself a tremendous disservice if you're not reading more of the brilliant material that's out there, you're also doing actual comics fans a disservice by making us look stupid by association--by, I don't know, saying that Outsiders #2 was the best comic to come out in a given week (thanks to ADD for pointing that out), or by trying to get your wife into comics by giving her a copy of Trouble as an example of comics with multi-dimensional characters. These are examples of either appalling ignorance or abyssmal taste, and I don't think we (all comics readers, and this goes double for comics readers with blogs) should brook either of them. No, I'm not expecting everyone with JLA/Avengers on their pull list to run out and buy copies of Teratoid Heights, but going a little further afield than an Eye of the Storm book (or, for those truly radical types, Strangers in Paradise) is the least we should expect out of comics "journalists."



What's funny about my increasingly opinionated takes on comics is that a) I make my living, at least in part, dealing with comics companies and creators for A&F; b) I'm working pretty hard at becoming a comics creator myself. A while back I decided that I wasn't going to ever put any of my comics opinions up for public consumption, because hey, if I were an accountant, I couldn't go around talking about how much the partners at my firm suck in the pages of the CPA Journal. But at a certain point I realized I care too damn much about comics, and about my own artistic/creative/critical integrity, to soft-pedal this stuff. I'd like to think that most comics pros would appreciate a little tough love, since it shows you respect them enough to tell them the truth about their books; if Marvel's drive to recruit comics journalists as writers for their Epic line is any indication, they might even believe you really do know what you're talking about when it comes to what makes a good comic. Let's hope this really is the case, for comics' sake.

Whoops! The other day I wrote something about a Bill Sherman article but forgot to link to it. Here 'tis, correctly hyperlinked and everything:

Following up on my "Don't throw out the New X-Men with the Namor" take on the current anti-Bill Jemas scuttlebut, Bill Sherman succinctly sums up The Trouble With New Marvel, and also puts it into some historical perspective.

I wonder what Whitney would say about the kids of Palestine, then, who are being groomed into Jew-hating killbots at an alarmingly young age, as this heartrending slideshow by Charles Johnson makes clear. Even though I'm more sympathetic than many people towards the idea of a Palestinian state, it seems ludicrous to me to think that everything can be solved if Israel just makes enough concessions, when this is the kind of appalling child-abusing parallel universe so many Palestinians apparently live in. I guess the hope is that if by some miracle Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah and Al Aqsa Martyrs and their ilk are weakend politically, other, less insane Palestinians won't be afraid to say, "You know what? I don't think my three-year-old needs to hold an actual AK-47 and chant 'Death to Israel.' He's got a birthday party to go to."