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.
Where The Girls Are
Apr 10
Had a total moment while watching Monsters vs. Aliens. As gentle giantess Ginormica shoved her size-SUV feet into car rollerskates and prepared to zip through the streets of San Francisco, the thoughts, they started to pile up, falling like anvils.
In Defense Of The Expanded Universe
Apr 09In the X-Wing novels, you find out that Wedge Antilles has two giant black circles painted on the nose of his X-Wing. They represent Death Stars.
I had a very caustic, very fannish rebuttal to Matt’s post about how he hates the Star Wars Expanded Universe. It maybe needs some fleshing out, but it’s practically ready to be published.
In retrospect, I’m quite glad that I didn’t press the button.
Not because I’m no longer a fan of the EU; in fact, I’m still way more involved with it than I should be; it’s the friend with benefits of licensed fiction. Why? Because of the moments like the Wedge one I mentioned above. The EU, for all of its structural problems (and there are several structural and tonal problems that date back to the era when Bantam held the rights to publish EU material – this is the age of Star Wars fiction that drives people away from it, with its overreliance on hokey superweapon plots and forced love interests for Luke), has some great moments, from running jokes about Ewoks to Darth Vader’s grandson standing imperiously on the deck of a Star Destroyer, clad head-to-toe in black and looking out into space while being hailed as the galaxy’s new big hero. Chewbacca’s death at the hands of a freaking moon. The entirety of Rogue Squadron resigning their commissions to pursue a private vendetta. From the outside, they’re cliche and silly, but if you are connected to the font that the fiction is springing from, they are also exquisitely resonant. Kind of like comics.
It also flirts with breaking the 4th wall in the most entertaining ways, from the Imperial head of state vowing that the Empire will always strike back to in-character discussions that seem to secretly castigate forum trolls (it’s no shock that a majority of the EU authors are also active posters on TheForce.net). In that sense, the metacommentary and the string of callbacks and payoffs create an appealing and comfortable sense of momentism – writing toward iconography. The Expanded Universe at its best is, in short, the most delicious comfort food you’ve ever had served in a fully-restored ’40s diner.
I’m thirty years old; I don’t know a world that has never had Star Wars in it, and I’ve loved it since probably when I was in the womb. In a very real sense, it is my mythology more than any Greek or Roman myth is. I’m not obsessed with it, but I know it. Some dark corner of my mind regards it as a real story, and knowing that there is a history and a future that lives in the spaces around the films perpetuates that feeling, even if some of the books (The Crystal Star, anyone?) are simply not very good.
If you like Star Wars, there’s a good deal of EU stuff that you’ll like. While there is a canon, it’s not vital to read the whole thing. Just read the stuff that’s good – good not on a ‘licensed fiction’ level, but on a ‘that was actually pretty good’ level. At least, I think they’re good. Books like:
The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn
Rogue Squadron by Michael Stackpole
Shatterpoint by Matt Stover
Dark Rendezvous by Sean Williams
I, Jedi by Michael Stackpole
Vector Prime by RA Salvatore
Traitor by Matt Stover
The Unifying Force by James Luceno
The Legacy of the Force series by Aaron Allston, Troy Denning and Karen Traviss
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.”
