Not Quite an Exclusive on Iron Man the Movie

In the upcoming Iron Man film Tony Stark will be played by Robert Downey Jr. This broke on Ain't It Cool News moments ago; as of this moment, Newsarama does not have this up. I beat Newsarama to a story. The substance abuse thing is now inherent in the casting; smart stuff, and fun. You heard it here second.

Thomas Pynchon and Porn

Since Blogger is being wonkey this week, I thought I would just post a single fun fact I discovered today (in a free copy of the New York Post), a connection between two writers I read on a regular basis. Thomas Pynchon -- author of Gravity's Rainbow (my favorite novel), V, Mason and Dixon, and The Crying of Lot 49 (the last two quoted in my upcoming book) -- has a niece: porn star, porn director and sex columnist for the Village Voice Tristan Taormino. Taormino, for the record, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University and has written and edited several books herself. You can visit her website here. Pynchon is her mother's brother.

Comics Out 27 September 2006

Four books grabbed me this week:

The penultimate Ultimates. Good but seemed a bit, I don't know, rushed? That's ironic considering the schedule. I love the book, but I only remember that it exists the week it comes out. Pop fun.

JLA 2. Brad Metzler is not the greatest writer in the world, but he has a unique dexterity at handling a large cast; that quality alone will have me on board for his whole run, I think. Not hating the art either; the layouts in particular are quite nice. Architechtonic, like the writing.

Batman. Superstar Grant Morrison continues to dabble -- just in this one book -- with total mediocrity. All Star Superman? Possibly the best book in a career of staggering genius. Batman? Clearly his worst, at least so far. If there was not a name on it I would have guessed Chuck Dixon. And did I mention the book will have a fill in writer and artist for, I think, two months? It's on Newsarama this week. Does anyone else remember when Alan Moore wrote a four issue Spawn-WildC.A.Ts crossover, and a three issue mini-series about Spawns's costume? Alan Moore returned to glory in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Promethea (and LOST GIRLS, which I have in my house and will be blogging about soon); Grant Morrison isn't anywhere near as far gone as Moore was. I will cut him lots of slack. He has earned it. Batman, which I will continue to get, will not count against him in my mind.

Stan Lee Meets the Amazing Spider Man. A tribute to Stan Lee's 65 years at Marvel. It has a very nice ten page Joss Whedon story in it, but I would not say that the story alone, or the book as a whole, is worth the cover charge of four bucks. Only for Whedon completists.

From Gershom Scholem's Kabbalah (Commonplace Book)

The most radical form that this view took was associated with the talmudic aggadah according to which prior to the creation of the world the whole of the Torah was written in black fire on white fire. As early as the beginning of the 13th century the daring notion was expressed that in reality the white fire composed the true text of the Torah, whereas the text that appeared in black fire was merely the mystical Oral Law. Hence it follows that the true Written Law has become entirely invisible to human perception and is presently concealed in the white parchment of the Torah scroll, the black letters of which are nothing more than a commentary on this vanished text. In the time of the Messiah the letters of this "white Torah" will be revealed.

NBC's HEROES

Heroes is an atrocious thing pretty much from beginning to end (the only exceptions being a guy from Japan -- the only guy having fun and the only one who has read a comic book or seen a movie, apparently). Among the offences of Heroes: a text opening telling me nothing I have not seen before, a very boring "leap of faith" off the roof unresolved (typical) until the end of the show (also the obvious "dream" transition), a reference to the untrue cliche about only using ten percent of our brains as a suggestion about where superpowers come from, a crappy "hip" font for captions (like high school girls going though the computer font list for a fun way to make a school paper stand out), hitting me over the head with a big exposition stick (my father was like this let me tell you all about it; that's why we are brothers; let me list off all the things I have tried to do to kill myself recently even though you know about all of them already; my father left me his fortune), a bad emphasis on the word "hero" in the phrase "hero worship", a plot where a hooker with a heart of gold takes money from the mob to put her genius interracial child in a private school and they come after her, the cliche of the mad "artist" (only on TV and in high school do artists act like this); the psychic power not to paint the future but to paint news coverage of the future (the newspaper photo, the TV footage), the cliche of the kid who tells an amazing truth and the authority figure who understands it metaphorically (who ever did that?) and Asians who are conformists because, you know, they are Asians. TV is crap.

And then Studio 60 came on only seconds later, and I remembered that Aaron Sorkin is God, and that everything is alright.