Friday, November 17, 2006
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short appreciations of poetry and pop culture
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Jason Powell has taken on the yeoman's job of doing an issue by issue analysis of Chris Claremont's 17 year Uncanny X-Men run in an effort to make me feel bad for saying Morrison invented all kinds of things he did not in his New X-Men run, and for spelling Claremont "Clairmont" in my superhero book.
Scott McDarmont (Scott91777) is an Instructor Of English at Radford University, Radford VA, an avid reader of books by guys named Chuck, he usually “waits for the trade” on comics unless Frank Miller is somehow involved. He owns more Def Leppard CDs than Bob Dylan CDs and he is ‘Ok’ with this and, while he may answer different publicly, he secretly feels that The Empire Strikes Back is the best movie ever made. He also feels that there are two kinds of people in the world: Indiana Jones people and John McClane people. He considers himself an Indiana Jones person
Jill Duffy, girl reporter, is a professional writer and editor in New York. She spent five years covering video game development in both San Francisco and London, examining the art, science, and business of the industry, and in 2006 was named one of the top 100 most influential women in the game industry. Her work has appeared in The Examiner newspaper in San Francisco, where she was the food section editor, as well as Game Developer, Gamasutra.com, Intelligent Enterprise, DigitalTrends.com, and several other publications. She holds a BA in English from the University at Buffalo. Indeed, she is on the Twitter and also keeps a blog about food.
Andy Bentley is a graphic designer in upstate New York. The first series of Batman movies got him in a comic book store and the DC animated series made him a life long fan. His senior thesis was a short film on the culture of comic books. Animal Man, Starman, and Preacher are among his favorite comic runs. He is an avid toy collector and enjoys playing basketball, mash-ups, karaoke and dark beers. He will be sequestered most of September with The Beatles: Rock Band.
Would you like to write for this blog?
Scott McDarmont (Scott91777) is an Instructor Of English at Radford University, Radford VA, an avid reader of books by guys named Chuck, he usually “waits for the trade” on comics unless Frank Miller is somehow involved. He owns more Def Leppard CDs than Bob Dylan CDs and he is ‘Ok’ with this and, while he may answer different publicly, he secretly feels that The Empire Strikes Back is the best movie ever made. He also feels that there are two kinds of people in the world: Indiana Jones people and John McClane people. He considers himself an Indiana Jones person
Jill Duffy, girl reporter, is a professional writer and editor in New York. She spent five years covering video game development in both San Francisco and London, examining the art, science, and business of the industry, and in 2006 was named one of the top 100 most influential women in the game industry. Her work has appeared in The Examiner newspaper in San Francisco, where she was the food section editor, as well as Game Developer, Gamasutra.com, Intelligent Enterprise, DigitalTrends.com, and several other publications. She holds a BA in English from the University at Buffalo. Indeed, she is on the Twitter and also keeps a blog about food.
Andy Bentley is a graphic designer in upstate New York. The first series of Batman movies got him in a comic book store and the DC animated series made him a life long fan. His senior thesis was a short film on the culture of comic books. Animal Man, Starman, and Preacher are among his favorite comic runs. He is an avid toy collector and enjoys playing basketball, mash-ups, karaoke and dark beers. He will be sequestered most of September with The Beatles: Rock Band.
Would you like to write for this blog?
The Best of the Blog
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- Open Letter to Anthony Lane
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- MORRISON'S NEW X-MEN: THE ISSUE BY ISSUE ANALYSIS
- Whedon's Astonishing X-Men: The Issue By Issue Analysis
- The Maxx
- Russell Edson's "The Fall"
- John Ashbery's "This Room"
- The Heresy of Paraphrase
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- Beowulf, David Lynch and Evil
- In Defense of Ally McBeal
- The Surprising Will and GraceSeries Finale
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- Jill Duffy, Girl Reporter
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Is your copy of How to Read Superhero Comics and Why missing pages?
Bio Stuff: Other Online Work
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Bio Stuff: Interviews
Read, free and legally, the comic book in which a villain's name is inspired by my own (Doctor Klock)
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November
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- Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day
- Comics Out 29 November 2006
- Ron Padgett's "Haiku" and "Nothing in that Drawer"...
- Casanova review at Guttergeek
- Free Form Comments
- Comics Out 22 November 2006
- From Perry Meisel's The Cowboy and the Dandy (Comm...
- Ellis and Ennis's dumb sense of humor
- Beta Blogger: Labels
- Free Form Comments
- Donald Barthelme's Review of Superman III
- Comics Out 15 November 2006
- A Speech from Warren Ellis's Nextwave: Agents of H...
- Studio 60, Episode 8: No no. No. No.
- The OMAC Project, summaries, and spoilers
- Free Form Comments
- Brad Winderbaum's Satacracy 88: Episode Four
- Comics Out 8 November 2006
- John Ashbery on John Clare’s Mouse’s Nest (Commonp...
- Superman Returns: a rant about story failures
- Quick Housekeeping
- Nikki Cox
- Comics Out 1 November 2006
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16 comments:
I will begin -- could someone that has a copy of Brian Michael Bendis's Total Sell Out handy email me? (geoffklock@earthlink.net)
I'd like to bring up About Superman returns. Basically wouldn't you consider it nothing but a big budget fanfilm? I mean honestly. It had no continuity and yet it's part of the original movie storyline. It's like Singer decided to make a fanfilm rather than what Nolan did with Batman begins. Well made, but still a big fanfilm.
Personally I thought he should have completely made his own version of superman instead of just modifying the old ones. When I heard about I figured it'd be like Kingdom Come instead it's the old campy stuff, and Clark's a goof ball, and Lex hatches a realestate skeem once more. Like I said big fanfilm.
I want to return to the subject of Geoff's podcast (briefly mentioned in last week's 'comics out' section). It's no secret that the Geoff Klock interviews on Geek Speak are among their best episodes. Between his second book coming out, the lesson plans he needs to generate, and his settling back in the States, I'm sure that Geoff feels he doesn't have the time to deal with all the technical crap that goes into recording and releasing an audio podcast. So, if there is anyone here who can direct Geoff down an easy path to podcasting, this would be a good place to start helping.
pat -- I think that is a good way of talking about why that movie didn't work. It is great fanfilm, it is just not a great film. But we would need to be clear that Superman Returns is distinct from Kill Bill -- the latter is a kind of "fanfilm" but Tarantino is reinventing and reimagining every step of the way.
Anonymous: thanks, that would be helpful. I am not great with the tech stuff. I think what I would need would be some kind of short weekly audio rant I could link to on the blog.
Well KillBill was more of a tribute to films tarintino loved, not dorectly based on any particular story.
BTW what you think of that fanfilm "Patient J" I posted here a while back. I honestly thought it was the best Batman fanfilm I've ever seen.
I thought Patient J was alright. I didn't really like the actor playing the Joker. He did a good job of imitating Mark Hammill, but I don't think there was all that much new there. I'm also not a fan of "humanizing" the Joker, because it I think it takes away from the danger and randomness.
Just wanted to let everyone know that if you have old books/comics that you don't need (and used bookstores don't give diddly-squat for), and there are other books/comics you'd love to own, you should check out BookMooch.
I've been using it for a couple of months now, and have given away 5 books, received 3, and have 4 more on their way to me. There aren't any fees at all; it works on a point system, and the sender always pays the postage (generally $1-2 for media mail). It's a much more fun and cheap method of obtaining trades and graphic novels than my local used bookstores, I've found.
Enjoy!
Mitch: What do you mean. That's how the Joker is in the comics. Mark Hammill just did an excellenent job portraying him(in a G rated format) as for humanizing. Hello, Killing Joke? One of the best Batman stories ever told.
You have to understand what make's the Joker work. In the course of a day his life was ruined completely, and right when he saw his face in the water he just started laughing. Everything that happened was so rediculous. So obsurd. He felt life was all a big joke. So he treats everything as a joke, including mass murder.
I think the portrayal was very accurate
Oh and could you link my new blog thingy Geoff?
I don't think I've seen anyone talk about The Prestige around these parts, so here are some thoughts:
I loved it, for the most part, though much of the third act dragged for me as I was always (at least) a few steps ahead of Nolan when it came to twists in the plot. This was exacerbated by the kind of semi-patronising "reveals" that M Night Shyamalan is always crucified for, but (I find) rarely guilty of. (I've yet to see Lady in the Water, so I can't comment as to whether he has finally revealed himself to be a bloated ego-maniac or not.)
As discussed in Geoff's OMAC Project post, a good story is more than its spoilers, and The Prestige certainly is that, and knowing the ending(s) won't affect my enjoyment at all on repeat viewings, but that wasn't much solace when I was sat in the cinema going "yeah yeah, I know this already".
Ok -- folks have been added to the blog roll. I also have to admit to not having yet seen the little Joker movie or the Prestige, but I will get to them eventually.
Starrlett: I know you will be writing reviews shortly -- when you have a new one just link to it on one of these Friday posts so everyone can read it.
I'm just about finished with "The Filth" and as you can imagine, I'm interested to hear what you think about it, Geoff.
Honestly, I wish it had been the first of Morrison's stuff I read, because it makes a great sampler platter of all of his reccurring themes/ideas: nostalgia, superheroes and the fictional worlds they live in, gross/bizarre/magic hidden worlds under the surface of the most mundane things and even cyborg animals done up as weapons--all of it at a million miles an hour.
It's been fun, but it hasn't done anything totally new for me. I find myself shrugging my shoulders a lot and saying, "Crazy old Grant Morrison."
Mitch: that's a fair point -- every writer has there themes and at some point you are going to get bored. I love the Filth because I think it is one of the best places to see all his themes with the least amount of errors (fill in artists etc) -- it is one of the first Morrison books I give people to show what he is like. But like Beckett, Morrison comes back to the same places over and over. Still, I love it for being so much fun, even if it's not the first time I have seen his stuff.
This is why, by the way, in a conversation about style vs substance that I keep having in little bits on this blog and others, that style is more important to me than ideas, than the book's "big point" -- because I can get tired of a big point but never of a well told story. I think the Filth is a pretty good story (whereas WE3 is a PERFECT story and New X-men is a mess)
I like that Morrison's X-Men is messy. I would argue that any solid run which truly captures the spirit which is essential to the X-Men needs to be messy.
Ping: Korday is too messy for my taste.
Geoff mentioned this above, but I thought I'd put the info for my CGS 200(Which was a blast)piece at Silver Bullet here. Thanks again for contributing to the article Geoff.
You can read my article here: http://www.silverbulletcomics.com/news/story.php?a=3251
And listen to me talk about the whole crazy experience on the Comic Timing Podcast here: http://www.speakgeekspeak.com/comictiming
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