Gimme some sugar, Bub.
Oct 31
Happy Halloween all – this is quite possibly the best thing ever. No, really. Screw air and sliced bread, this is my new happy place. I don’t know why, really – it has Let’s Make Money written all over it. But I’m a sucker for Zombies and Ash. So, Ash fighting zombies, Marvel Zombies as it happens, is pulling on me like a magnet.
WikiWikiWhack: Marvel Zombies, Ash, in comic form
The Hard, Cold Truth
Oct 31We comic book fans occasionally suffer under the delusion that someday, and soon, the mundane world will “get” comics. We see Watchmen earn a spot on Time’s list of the 100 greatest novels of the century, and we see American Born Chinese snag a National Book Award, and we imagine that at long last, our hobby and artform that we hold so dear won’t elicit another “Bam! Pow! Zap” headline in a national newspaper. We won’t get oddball looks at Subway when we whip out the latest Marvel Civil War crossover and read it over lunch. We won’t be seen as drooling man-children clinging to the relics of our youth with an unsettling vigor.
We’re so fucking crazy.
That’s my local Barnes & Noble, right there. (Sorry for the shitty cell phone pic.) A big ol’ sign announcing “Graphic Novels,” and what’s beneath it?
Piles of manga, aimed square at the kiddies, and How To Make Money Like A Porn Star, a recent release that’s been garnering some negative coverage, to put it kindly.
That table sums it all up, don’t it? Kiddie fare piled alongside an objectifying book of trash, complete with tit-lathered full-color cover.
Shit, if I didn’t already love comics and I saw that table, I wouldn’t want anything to do with them either.
Marc Guggenheim: Kick ASS.
Oct 30I hate TV writers.
For several years, I yearned to become a TV writer. Throughout those years, and in my current state of not BEING a TV writer, I built up a significant resentment for this rareified breed, these lucky duckies who sit in posh writers’ rooms and eat free food and make jokes all day and then get paid lots of money.
If there’s anything I hate MORE than a TV writer, it’s a TV writer who also gets to write COMIC BOOKS. Yeah, thanks, dude. You really need to have TWO dream jobs, don’t you. I’ll just toil away at bullshit while you get to fulfill every fantasy I’ve ever had. Go ahead–lick whipped cream off the bald head of Ving Rhames. Take away ALL my hopes and dreams.
In spite of all this, I have to confess that I am loving Marc Guggenheim right now. If you’re not familiar, Guggenheim just wrapped a kick-ass arc on Wolverine, maybe the best Civil War tie-in story, and now he’s teamed with Howard Chaykin on Blade’s latest attempt to support an ongoing title.
I am confused as to why more fanboys aren’t wetting themselves over this Blade title. It’s firmly rooted in the Marvel U, it’s got CHAYKIN drawing VAMPIRE CLOWNS, and Guggenheim’s writing is suffused with bad-assery. That second issue, the Doctor Doom time-travel issue, just kicked all kinds of tail. And Guggenheim’s structuring it in a great reader-friendly way–a larger story that weaves quietly through each issue, but a main story that’s completely stand-alone. In other words, just pick one up and let it beat the shit out of you, already.
So Marc Guggenheim, I hate you so much that I love you. Or something.
Spengler, Stantz, Venkman, Zeddemore, and Lovecraft.
Oct 25HP Lovecraft as a Ghostbuster (or at least, paranormal investigator)! Awesome!
