Four-Color Critiques #8: I Love You, Peter David.
Apr 28I get the vague sense that this is not a popular feeling to feel, and yet, there it is. I love Peter David. Heart him. Enjoy the shit out of his writing.
Come on. How can you not love that guy? He looks like Clemenza from The Godfather after gastric bypass surgery.
But this isn’t about how dashing Peter David looks. No, this is about what the man writes. Which is to me almost always good stuff.
A Little “Lost”
Apr 15I seriously am in bed most nights by 10 p.m. EST.
Man, at least when I lived in the central time zone, that meant making it till the news. Now it means making it to the hour-long drama that comes before the news.
On some nights, I don’t even make it that far, and as my wife has made a habit of pointing out to me weekly, I’m especially bad at making it through Wednesday night’s 9 p.m. episodes of Lost.
Which has led me to realize that it’s maybe not so much my weak-ass ability to stay awake that’s tripping me up as it is the fact that, honestly, I’m just not into Lost anymore.
I know, Frank! I’m as surprised as anyone.
American Mash-up Comics
Apr 14I think we’re maybe on the verge of another major era in comics, and I think it’s going to come from the internet, specifically comics bloggers. And I think it will kick UNHOLY ASS.
Reading Chris Sims’ Solomon Stone comic the other day was an enjoyable experience, but what really stuck with me was a tagline on the Action Age homepage:
“Two-fisted American Mash-up Comics.”
It sorta clicked something in my head, because if you read Solomon Stone, or Rich Lovatt’s excellent Mecha-Simian over at Zuda, or even the work of Jeff Parker, Fred Van Lente, and Matt Fraction, they all share a similar mash-up sensibility in many of their ideas.
Robot + Ape + Space = Mecha-Simian
Vampire + Private Investigator + Teen + Skateboarder = Solomon Stone
Kung fu + Rich dude + Tripped-out Eastern Spirituality = Iron Fist
All these pulp, heavy genre, often outright silly concepts are being tossed together, blended until smooth, and then poured out into the gullets of waiting readers.
Read This Now: Solomon Stone!
Apr 09Having subjected you people to the horrors of “Cousin Jar Jar” yesterday, I now come bearing a gift, some fine reading that can be yours for the cost of a click and some of your valuable time.
Chris Sims is the sick in-need-of-treatment sexy brilliant mind behind one of the all-time great comics & comedy sites, the Invincible Super-Blog.
Now he’s got an online comic, along with art team Matthew Allen Smith and Benjamin Birdie. It’s an Action Age creation, and they bill themselves as “American mash-up comics,” which is just about right–imagine every weird and insane concept of pop culture’s bargain basement tossed into a blender and mixed until it’s smooth, creamy, and delicious. It’s some clever, funny shit, and well worth a read.
So GO READ IT!
Jar Jar Sings: The Worst Sound Ever
Apr 08Back when the world was new and the horrors of The Phantom Menace were barely upon us, Meco decided to capitalize on the Star Wars Mania: 1999 Edition with a CD release of all his past Star Wars music covers/remixes/whatever you want to call them. The CD hit retail in 2000, a year or so off the mark, but who can argue with brilliance?
Meco, of course, is the “artist” credited with that disco cut of the main Star Wars theme that afforded the coke-addled masses of 1977 to flood the dance floor with their Obi-Wan Struts and Hammerhead Hustles, so excited by the Star Wars phenomenon that even their recreational drug use and boogie time had to somehow involve the film.
It’s perhaps less known that Meco continued his “work” to provide tracks for all three original Star Wars films; Wikipedia also reports he managed to parlay his “disco movie music” schtick into records focusing on The Wizard of Oz, Close Encounters, Superman, and Star Trek (which I need to get my grubby hands on).
The 2000 Star Wars music compilation featured two new tracks, a Europop annoyance entitled “Jedi Knight” and the song we have come here today to “enjoy,” “Cousin Jar Jar.”
