Say anything you want in the comments to this post: anonymous personal attacks, polite suggestions, things you want to talk about with the folks that show up here, self-promotion, requests to be on the blog-roll, whatever.
For my part, I think everyone should read this summary of a 1960 Superman issue, the funniest thing I have read in ages.
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That is a hilarious Lois Lane summary. Jake is pretty good at summarizing crazy silver age comics. If you search his site, he has a bunch of them. He seems to specialize in Lois Lane comics. You might also check out Chris Sims' blog at http://the-isb.blogspot.com . He talks about plenty of other stuff, but every so often he does similar summaries; his specialty is Legion of Superheroes, which is every bit as crazy as Lois, and sometimes more so.
Two things--
Just finished From Hell, which I wish discuss with someone in detail at some point in my lifetime.
Also, for those of you in the NY area, I just saw THE VERTICAL HOUR on Broadway and it is fantastic. David Hare is one of the greatest living playwrights and Bill Nighy (Davey Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean and Slartibartfast from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)is mesmerizing to watch.
Wow. THE Matt Brady reads my site?
Ooops, I meant for this to be anonymous... let me try that again.
U SUXXOR, KLOCK! WEARS UR PHD, SUCKA?!?!?!!?!?11?!?!
(Oh, and for the record, I've always thought of my site as specializing more in Jimmy Olsen. I just happened to pick up a bunch of cheap, falling apart Lois Lanes at when I hit the Dallas Con.)
Interesting fact is that Drawn together's Captain Hero is based on issues in which the silverage superman does obscure and cruel activities.
So what's the most recent thing everybody read that they could classify as truly "Great" with a capital G?
All right, shameless self-promotion for me.
Inspired by the playful poems posted by Geoff that mess with particular forms of poetry, I decided to post to my own blog the sestina I submitted to mcsweeneys.net (who rejected it).
It wasn't what they were looking for, apparently, but I'm still kind of pleased with the central joke. Or maybe I just like the fact that the title rhymes with my name.
Anyway, anyone who loves himself (or herself) a good sestina, dig it:
http://oceandoot.livejournal.com/4146.html
Sorry, Jake. I guess I got confused. How could I forget when Jimmy used his signal watch to call Superman because he found cockroaches in his apartment?
And, no, I'm not THE Matt Brady; I'm just A Matt Brady. I actually get that question a lot, sometimes even in comic stores when I pay with a credit card. And now that I have my own blog and am making an effort to comment on blogs more often, I'll probably be hearing it even more. This sort of thing bugs me, but I'm just sensitive from growing up with Brady as a last name. Ah, I need to lighten up.
Back from vacation!
thought about posting in both the Casanova and New Comics entries but thought better of it realizing that the conversations were mostly dead and I didn't have anything interesting enough to contribute which would be worthy of resuscitating them.
Just a few notes then:
1) Both here and at the CGS site I've seen a number of people who don't like Casanova because "the story is too hard to follow" ... I don't get this at all. It's a fairly simple story, the hard part is figuring out the importance of all the stuff he throws up at the wall... the problem with this is that it's all significant to a certain extent, and if it isn't yet than it may well be down the road. But UNLIKE much of the Morrison stuff people (including myself) have referenced in regards to Cas, I think that Cas moves in much cleaner discrete story blocks. Each issue is a case, he solves/accomplishes/resolves each case by the end of each issue... now there is the question of the inter-relationship between the discrete cases, which is MUCH more complicated, but they do a fairly good job of illuminating these relationships (or the important elements of them) whenever they happen to come up. I actually think that it's not a matter of readers being "unable to follow" the story but frustration from readers at not being able to understand EVERYTHING on the first pass.
2) 52 - the stories DO have movement. But rather than being like a Soap Opera I think they progress more like the news in a newspaper. More than most other books/series 52 asks its audience to participate extracurricularly... go out and DO that research on old morts, READ those old stories (or wikipedia entries) and basically uncover stuff. I guess that you can say this is "bad writing" but to do so misses the point. 52 pulls readers on a tour through the DCU with all of its warts intact. MUCH more than Civil War it is a Comics EVENT to be caught up in rather than washed over by.
Buckshot: without a doubt, the most recent thing that has made my time with comics worthwhile is Millar's "Red Son". If anyone here hasn't read it, I won't spoil, but suffice it to say that Millar manages to weave in all the traditional DCU elements, the twist pulls off that "OMG!/How DIDN'T I see that coming?" dichotomy and answers my age-old question of "Why do so many of Superman's "family" have that double L thing to their names?" in a satisfactorily kick-ass way.
This is the type of book that you wish you could forget a day after you read it, so you could get that same thrill again and again.
My problem with Red Son was the classic "because one character is different, everything character is different" approach that seems to accompany so many elseworlds. I love the idea of exploring what would happen if Supes was raised by communist Russia as opposed to an idealistic American family, but where the hell did Batman make a wrong turn so he ended up in the Soviet Union?
Why can't we just see what would happen if logic followed on from the changing of a single event in continuity? A recent offender is Bullet Points. Whilst the first issue was certainly entertaining (spoilers coming up!) I don't quite follow how the Iron Man technology happened to be floating around in a Government folder somewhere.
Sorry to come off as an arguementative jerk, it's just one of those things that riles me a little.
best thing I read that was Great with a capital G and a coupla r's thrown in, a la tony the tiger (grrreat!) were not comics, sorry kids:
Hugh Laurie's "The Gun Seller" (yes, THAT Hugh Laurie) and
Stephen Fry's "The Hippopotamous" and "The Liar"
for those of you who need to know who Stephen Fry is, he is Hugh Laurie's long time partner in, well, I guess crime. For the Yanks you can find him in "V for Vendetta"
Matt: thanks for the links.
Mitch: From Hell. To talk about that I would need to start a whole other From Hell blog. But we should talk about it at some point. It is a knockout.
Jake: man, I can't submit my D.Phil till my supervisor gets it back to me with notes. ho hum.
Pat: I did not know that.
Buckshot: I am with Sara: Hugh Laurie's The Gun Seller: the actor who plays House can also write very very well. The novel is a spoof of a spy story good enough to stand without the jokes.
Jason: I inspire poetry. Awesome.
Matt Brady: You and notthebeastmaster. You guys should start a club.
Ping: DEAD RIGHT about Casanova. It is dense, but clearly laid out; the main problem is my memory, not the story. On 52, however, if it pulls you though the DCU warts and all, and the warts mean "bad writing" then no. Your newspaper analogy is good, and the comparison to Civil War is fair, I think.
Marc and Coligo: Red Son is pretty good, but the inconsistent art thing threw me. It has great moments (the end for example) but I would not call it a great book. And rumor has it that Morrison gave Millar the ending.
and Sara is not kidding. The Gun Seller is great.
Rorschach loves Hostess Twinkies.
http://img468.imageshack.us/my.php?image=inkblotae5.jpg
Geoff: Sure, bad writing is part of all big-time Comic Continuity!
Back when I was in University I worked in a video shop and would frequently listen to NPR ALL DAY LONG. One of the things I really liked (other than 60minute documentaries on African Genocide playing in the porn section) was listening to stories develop throughout the day/week/month/year. Especially during the hourly 5minute national news roundup. It was really neat to hear how one new piece of info could change the course or perception of a story greatly. I'm a big believer of taking things on their own terms... I personally don't mind some of the questionable writing decisions in 52 because for me, it is a sketch... a tour, a large mosaic which is putting together a disparate history with the goal of a more cohesive future. I totally understand the criticism of 52 from here and elsewhere, more than most times I'm willing to agree to disagree. 52 is one of the only books EVER which, after I read, I go through, page by page with google and Wiki windows open...delving. For me that experience has become one of the things I look forward to most each (comic) week.
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