Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Free Form Comments

Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If a week goes by and I have failed to add you to the blog roll TELL ME TO DO IT AGAIN, and KEEP TELLING ME UNTIL IT GETS DONE. I can be lazy about updating the non-post parts of this site. Remember these comments can be directed at all the readers, not just me.

ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.

AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.

WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is available on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post. You can propose what you will, I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music and books.

21 comments:

Christian O. said...

Fraction is going to write a new Iron Man series. And Rick Remender is co-writing War Journal with him now. I'm pretty excited about these two things right now.

James said...

I saw Rick Remender's name in the new solicitation, is that a permanent thing then? HMMM.

Yeah, I am crazy jazzed about Invincible Iron Man.

Ping33 said...

holy crap there's a new Runaways this week.
I'm skeptical... I've not been liking Whedon's take on it.

I really don't like Iron Man... or 'Suit guys' in general... I will probably have to check out Fraction on it though. Speaking of: hasn't it been a long ass time since the last Casanova?

James said...

Casanova was supposed to be this week, but there was a printing mishap and now it's due out next... week.

Anonymous said...

Hey Geoff, I saw that you have a link to YeshivaU (my alma mater). Are you teaching there? Just curious.

Shlomo R

Unknown said...

I'm expecting to check out the new Iron Man, since I think Fraction could do some cool stuff with it. I think I'll actually buy the issues, at least for the first arc or so. That way maybe it won't get canceled like The Order.

James said...

The Order wasn't cancelled; as far as I can gather Kitson was offered the Spider-Man gig and Fraction decided he'd rather wrap-up the story than carry on without him.

In other news, I bought way too many comics today.

Prof Fury said...

New Mountain Goats album Heretic Pride is out this week, if you haven't already heard. There are comics-style liner notes available here.

Christian O. said...

"The Order wasn't cancelled; as far as I can gather Kitson was offered the Spider-Man gig and Fraction decided he'd rather wrap-up the story than carry on without him."

Fraction said it was the same thing that happened to Nextwave, which means that the title couldn't support both Fraction and Kitson, so either Fraction had to go or Kitson. So they decided to end it.

And it's been forever since the last Cass for me, since I've gotten any issues past #10, since apparently every time we lose a books (and while I don't work there anymore, I know how wonky and generally fucked up our deliveries from Diamond has been) it's been the box with Casanova in it. Fuckers.

Christian O. said...

And yeah, Remender's addition to War Journal is permanent. They'll be co-writing it for at least a year and then who knows? If anyone else could do War Journal justice it would be Rick.

James said...

christian: Thanks for the info. I've not read anything by Remender, but I only hear good things, so I will read the co-written PWJ with interest.

Streeborama said...

I posted a review for George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead over at my blog. I highly recommend that everyone that frequents this blog go out and see this film. I know some of you are in New York and other places where it should be playing. Please support one of the original independent filmmakers and the Patron Saint of Guerrilla Filmmaking, George A. Romero.

Streeborama said...

PS - I also posted a series of video reviews for Diary of the Dead over at Youtube,.

Anonymous said...

Geoff,

I'm reading Batman Unauthorized right now (I went straight to your essay first of course). I'm loving the whole thing though. I'll make a longer post later about the whole book. Oh, can I get dibs on a post about the new All Star Batman and Robin when it comes out next week? I always have something to say about it... just my luck this'll be the first time I don't.

Unknown said...

Re: Rick Remender - I've read several of his books (The Last Christmas, the first five or six issues of Fear Agent, the first issue of The End League, most of Sea of Red), and while I wouldn't say he's a bad writer, there's something about his writing that turned me off of him. It's kind of like Robert Kirkman, who I also liked at first but grew tired of, but with Remender, I can't put my finger on what exactly it was that tipped the scales (with Kirkman, it was excessive wordiness). Maybe my tastes just changed, and his style of comics ceased to be what I wanted to read. So take that as you like, as vague and uninformative as it is. I'm a big help, huh?

zombieswan said...

Have you seen and/or read the Buffy season 8 comics? I'm quite addicted, and hate reading them while they're new cause I have to wait a month for each way-too-short fix. And sometimes I hate the way they illustrate some of the characters.

But last month, they had this really really funny joke where the villain scratched his face (he wears a Supervillain-esque mask) and you expect maybe he is going to pull the mask off and then.... well. If you haven't read it, I won't spoil it but it was FUNNY. Just the way the show sometimes was.

I miss Buffy. Blast it. (I'm all about silly words for profanity nowadays, with the 3 year old carpet crumb catchers around.)

I like the hair. I don't remember if I mentioned that last time I commented. I saw on your myspace page the old cut; this makes you look less Christopher Robin-ish. Not that you ever looked like CR. But if you HAD. :)

And you can add me to your blogroll if you want, but I doubt seriously many of your readers would want to read my whiney blog. :)

OOh, and do you know if Ximena and/or Jason have a blog? If so, tell me where... I keep in touch via email but I never thought, before I googled you, to look for blogs. And I didn't find them, so they may be under a superhero identity or something.

Geoff Klock said...

Someone introduce me to Rick Remender. Have I read anything by him?

I am with Ping -- I don't care about Iron Man but Fraction will have me there.

James -- I know Casanova is looking at big delays.

Shlomo -- I teach two RhetComp classes at the Stern College for Women, just this term. It is a great place to work.

Fury -- thanks for the comic link. I am listening to the new album, and I like it more than the last one for sure. Just the first song alone. But I have not had time to really digest it -- it takes me a LONG time to have an opinion about an album.

Streebo -- thanks.

Scott -- you can do a thing on it, sure. But it has to go up Wed, Thursday or Friday, because my weekly comics out post is on Friday, and I can't leave it out of my weekly line-up. But you are welcome to get to it first.

Dr Z -- I have read the comics. You can put "Buffy" or "Angel" into the toolbar to read reviews I have done of every issue. You are right -- each comic book is more like the act between the commercials, and not like a full episode. And the art is dowdy. The scratching the neck thing was priceless. I hate my hair, and am still figuring what to do with it besides put it under a hat. It is very thin. I am not balding but like my father I have a very high hair line and like my mother it is thin. I am going to shave it all off completely in the spring and go all Lex Luthor. I will add you to the blogroll. That is how I keep track of people. Jason has sort of a class blog, but nothing like this. Which is weird because he is such a tech guy and I am such a luddite.

Unknown said...

Outside of the stuff I mentioned above, the only thing I know of by Rick Remender is Strange Girl, which I haven't read. He's probably done something else, but I don't know what.

Christian O. said...

Rick Remender is a genre writer at his core. Except he's a clever genre writer that, more often than not, subverts it or at the very least shows us something new and interesting about it. I'll admit he's a bit obvious at times, but there's an energy and fun that you don't find a lot of other places. He has written, among others:

Strange Girl, the story of those left behind after the Rapture. Instead it's a far more rebelious fuck you to the Left Behind series than the Deity-worshipping "don't rock the boat" attitude of the actual books. Let's just say, it's very evident that he's not exactly a traditional Christian. Though Christian iconography does pop up in a lot of his work in... well, less than endearing manners.

Sea of Red's basic premise is Vampirates. But it's also so much more than that. It's the revenge tale of a guy who has been betrayed, stuck alive at the oceanfloor for five hundred years and is now out for payback. Except things aren't quite what they first appear to be.

Fear Agent is pure Sci-fi. And not the gadget'y, let's-explain-how-the-flux-capacitor-works sort of way. It's a love letter to EC comics and it's great.

Crawlspace is him, Kieron Dwyer and Tony Moore doing their Horror thing

He has also written/is writing Sorrow, The End League (Superheroes End of the World stuff, but with a twist), Doll & Creature, Black Heart Billy (about a Punk boy with a robot face), Night Mary among others.


I really wish Night Mary hadn't been cancelled actually. The art was great and the concept (girl who ventures into peoples dreams to fix their psychological problems) felt like it could really have come into something more.



UNRELATED QUESTION:

What's the deal with Cyclops lately?

Christian O. said...

Oh yeah, and he's also taking over the Atom soon and has been writing a column on Newsarama called "Against The Grain." Which the rest of the Image board guys are now teasing him about since he "sold out and went with the program." ;)

Geoff Klock said...

Christian: thanks.

I do not know what the deal is with Cyclops.