Lost 4.1, "The Beginning of the End"
Feb 01ABC has spent the better part of this week gluing me to my couch in a vegetative state, thanks to the absolute lack of any decent programming on any other network, and their heavy dose of self-congratulatory Lost pablum.
On Wednesday night, they replayed the Season 3 finale, with little captions that had trivia and details, and we watched that. THEN we sat through most of the recap episode they played before the premiere, which was billed as a “two-hour event,” and made me think we were getting two hours of NEW Lost. Not so much.
All told, my wife and I had like three hours of refresher course, all of it making you believe the show is GOING PLACES. Lines were drawn, dots were connected, inconsistencies and annoying storytelling time-marking were ignored. It really made you feel hyped for the season four premiere, because it allowed you to forget that much of the time, Lost is a show about going NOWHERE.
Then, of course, “The Beginning of the End” did in fact go nowhere.
Mercury Poisoning
Feb 01I won’t even pretend to be close to impartial or objective anymore–I’m a sad fat male prostitute for the work of Mr. Warren Ellis.
Here’s a short interview on his latest project for Avatar, the NewPulp sci-fi miniseries Anna Mercury.
Blind Genre Item: Betty Bitchface
Jan 31What popular recurring gal was spotted on the streets of Park City, Utah (aka Sundance Central) sporting the magical pairing of gigantic sunglasses and major bitchface? In fact, we first noticed her because she looked so, well…stabby. Only after pondering her pissed-off visage for a few moments did we figure out who she was.
Not that we’re blaming Betty for looking so crabby-stabby — after all, Park City is way too cold for the sexy tanks she regularly sported on the show that made her famous, and the strike has brought her much-anticipated new project to a screeching halt.
In fact, we just can’t help but love Betty, bitchface and all. And many fans of that aforementioned geek-cult show feel the same way — so much so that the show’s leading lady was rumored to be more than a little green with envy when Betty was around, stealing the spotlight. We’re putting all of our hope and faith into the strike ending soon, so Betty’s new project — which sounds like a total geekgasm — has a chance to get off the ground. Maybe that will cheer her up.
Cory to fanboys – bite me
Jan 29Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing editor, speculation fantasy author, and all-around wet blanket, had another poke at comics today as he wrote up the second trade collection of Warren Ellis’ Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. – as ever, it got my goat. I continue to disagree with the term Underwear Perverts as any sort of useful comment on comics, particularly when the user hasn’t, you know, barely reads superhero comics. Warren has earned it – Cory, not so much. He calls out an X-men-sure-do-come-back-to-life-a-lot” joke as deft lampooning. So…
Anyhow, I debated (and I’m still debating) commenting directly to the man himself, using Boing Boing’s new comments system, only to find about a half dozen people have, at this writing, beaten me to the punch.
“Enough already please, Cory. You’re beginning to sound like the guy who thinks “We are the Knights Who Say ‘Ni!'” is still a good line.”
Cory’s response?
“Deal with it.”
Rightly so. There is no dealing with Cory directly, obviously, so we should deal with it. The dude has his bespectacled, self-styled Intelligentsiac head up his ass. There will be no moving him – better to focus our efforts on promoting the best in superhero comics to everyone besides him.
Superhero comics have an important place in popular culture, and reflect the era in which they’re printed – it includes post-modern deconstruction, but it should never exclude the roots of the form. Yes, some of it is bad. A lot of it is awesome. The bad is no reason to whitewash the awesome, just to appear hip and clever.
I’m still going to tell him that X-men joke is stale, though.
