Linkapalooza, Comics Edition
Jun 04I’m in this groove where I sit in the morning before the dog and kid wake up and read my Google Reader in bed. I keep starring items or e-mailing myself links and thinking, “Hey, I should write about that.” So here I am, writing about many such items all in one fail swoop.
Warren Ellis’ latest column for Wired UK is absolutely vintage, genius stuff:
So the Kindle, Jeff Bezos’s magic slate, doesn’t work properly over here in God’s Own Country.
Which is why UK booksellers are not currently hurling themselves in front of the eight or so cars we can still afford to operate in Britain. Here in God’s Own Country we are, by and large, fat and lazy shitbags full of chips. And if we don’t have to use the block and tackle to hoist ourselves off the sofa while watching Strictly Grinning Retards Poncing Around on Ice, in order to obtain a copy of Harry Potter and the Unsettling Handjob in the Middle of the Night, then we won’t.
I need to re-read it, but on first pass I very much enjoyed David Tischman and Glenn Fabry’s Beatles-as-superheroes miniseries, Greatest Hits. Nice to see it getting some wrap-up coverage at Newsarama. I hope there’s more on the way; I like Tischman’s thesis for this fictional universe and would love to see it explored further.
Via Gabriel Ba over at the blog he shares with Fabio Moon comes some pages from what looks like an intriguing noir graphic novel, Kiss Me, Judas, and a sweet new artist find, Jefferson Costa. Love to see more of this stuff.
Art Brut visits DC Comics. Entertainment ensues.
I think this was via Sean Kleefield—The Kirby Project, a great blog that features Kirby characters and homages by artists major and otherwise. My fave so far is the cartoonish OMAC.
This has nothing to do with comics, except that I found it via Gavok over at 4thletter; it just makes me laugh to beat the band.
Oh hell no. You have got to be kidding me. Free-range accordions are frowned upon just about everywhere; outside of certain festivals there are a very small number of people in the world whose performance on an accordion in public is tolerated, and none of those people are so desperate as to have to perform in public libraries between a stack of books and a guitarist with one rapidly melting leg. I don’t care if they won’t let you take the sheet music outside the branch, you photocopy that shit. Put away the accordion and take off that silly-ass hat, you banana-pudding-suit-wearing freakshow.
Stuff We Like This Week: May 29 Edition
May 29
In an effort to combat our occasional…okay, okay, near-constant negativity, we give you a regular feature full of nothing but love — Stuff We Like This Week. Appearing every Friday, SWLTW will recap the things that have set our little nerdly hearts aflame within the past seven days.
This Dwayne McDuffie/JLofA Thing Annoys Me.
May 29As first reported (I think) over at Robot 6, Dwayne McDuffie has been “fired” from Justice League of America, where even fans of the book would admit he’s had a troubled run, saddled with inelegant dictates to tie his stories and characters into whatever crossover or event happened to be the hype du jour.
My first thought upon hearing it was of a classic blog post by the cantankerous Dirk Deppey over at Journalista, in which he coined a genius term and hit upon what makes the backstage dealings at DC so fascinating and complicated at the same time:
Add to this the opaque nature of DC’s inner workings and pretty much all commentary turns to Kremlinology, reducing speculation from how the company works and what it can actually do, to little more than which apparatchik is in or out of favor at a given moment. Even comments made by creators defecting from the company need to be seen in this light: Who was giving them information about the chain of command? Their editors? How much of it is real, and how much of it is ass-covering? How many people have passed the buck up to DiDio because he’s the figurehead that they see, how many just want to protect their turf – and how many actually know what they’re talking about? The more you think about it, the more suspect most speculation becomes (including, I hasten to add, my own).
So, yeah. Kremlinology. Suspect speculation at best. Part of me doesn’t want to indulge, cause even at a high level, it amounts to gossip.
Still, it keeps gnawing at me, this Dwayne McDuffie thing. It should not have been this way.
What Are You Waiting For? Scalped
May 28“You’re reading Scalped, right?”
“Dude, read Scalped!”
“You didn’t pick up Scalped this week? What is wrong with you?”
“I will kill a puppy if you don’t add Scalped to your pull list.”
People overestimate how much I like dogs, which is why it shames me to say that no, I haven’t read Scalped yet. I’m asked frequently, by the online crowd, by my friends, by my comic shop employees; they all want to know if I’m reading it. Lord knows I should. Yes, I’m a Jason Aaron fan. He’s rescued the ongoing solo titles of two Marvel characters who rarely ever have entertaining, well-written ongoing solo books (Wolverine and Ghost Rider), and his breakout work The Other Side, drawn by Cameron Stewart, is excellent. I pick up what Aaron throws down over and over and over again, but have not read the critically acclaimed OMGawesome book that established him as a voice with real staying power in comics.
What am I waiting for?
Well, I’m waiting for Fables to end, bascially. It’s a strange and annoying calculus, but I limit myself to a (completely arbitrary) total of three Vertigo book at any given time. Right now, they’re Fables (spinoffs count as part of the main title, BTW), Madam Xanadu and DMZ. I cling to it stubbornly, because I can’t start a diet, I can’t drink less, and I can’t find freaking love, but I can stick to my Vertigo limit. Except for Jack of Fables. But that sort of counts as Fables. I’m so alone.
Except that the Fantastic Fangirls did the What Are You Waiting For? thing. And the thing I was waiting to read was Scalped.
So here we are.
I’ve read the first two trade paperback collections of Scalped and, I’ve gotta say, they were awesome.
Despite having a nunchaku-wielding Jeet Kune Do crooked cop/brawler as its main character, Scalped manages to be a gritty, introspective crime drama that is noir and Western at the same time. Jason Aaron’s straightforward plot and cynical, self-destructive characters are incredibly engaging, thanks in part to R.M. Guera’s bleak sepia-toned art. And did I mention that Jock does the covers? I probably shouldn’t, or else I’ll start to crave monthlies.
I mean, really. Just in that last paragraph, we have
- nunchaku
- Jeet Kune Do
- Noir
- Western
- self-destructive
All of which are things that I love. So, thank you, Jason Aaron. I’ll be catching up with Scalped as soon as I can, and then adding the book to my pull list. Thanks for ruining my life.
Matt’s Adventures with Luther Arkwright
May 28When I heard about the Fantastic Fangirls‘ May blogging event, What Are You Waiting For?, it wasn’t really a matter of finding something to read or watch that would fill in a critical blank in my geek awareness. It was more a matter of choosing from the seemingly endless list of stuff I still have to consume.
I’ve never read Sandman, Preacher, From Hell, Frank Miller’s Daredevil, or all of Lee/Kirby’s Fantastic Four. I have an uncracked copy of Dash Shaw’s Bottomless Belly Button staring at me guiltily. I’ve never seen Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or even Vertigo. (Yes, I have seen Star Wars too many times to count. SHUT UP.)
In other words, I have a LONG way to go toward feeling fully versed in the essentials and cult classics of geekdom, and I’m the kind of guy who hates feeling like he’s missing out on part of the collective understanding because he hasn’t seen/heard/read something. So lots to do, lots to do.
For this particular opportunity, however, I decided to pick up a book I’ve owned for more than three years and never been able to get into: The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, by Bryan Talbot.
