Whenever I remember, I’m going to spend a little bit of time picking apart back issues from my collection that I may or may not like particularly. Today’s selection is Justice League America issues 38-40, which I pulled out on a whim to remember if they’re still as effective as they were when I was a kid. For a bit of context, Justice League / Justice League International / Justice League America / Justice League Europe were pretty much the only regular superhero comic buys for me as a spotty youth. I’ve got the same sort of attachment to the first 40 issues of the main Justice League title as most people have to certain runs of the The Avengers and X-Men. Even with the humor that the series was best known for, it managed to pull out a crowbar and pull a Jason Todd on the reader with these issues.

The first part of this triptych starts off inauspiciously, with an overly long Spy magazine article that serves no real purpose in this story, but will lead to the infamous Wally Tortolini-with-a-superweapon story that was the first sign I should drop the title.¹ It’s after these first six pages (which would mean nothing to anybody who hadn’t read the previous 30 or so issues along with the Mister Miracle title) that we get to the meat of the story: Despero, the interplanetary despot that The Justice League Of Detroit had defeated per the usual whims of comics writers, is really, really, really pissed off that some dude named “Vibe” gave him shit and is hurtling towards our fair world to rectify the shaming he received by the League. He’s so fucking angry, in fact, that every sixth word out of his mouth is “Hate.” I am shitting you not one bit: Here’s a bit of sample dialogue from the villain of the piece, right as he’s made touchdown on Terra:

The stars flickered hate. I sang to them. The earth whispered hate. I whispered back. I rode the nightwinds on a wave of hate.

Now I walk this world: Spit fire. Scream rage. Roar, caper, laugh.

No, it’s not quite Alan Moore, but J.M. DeMatteis manages to somehow make Despero’s internal monologue, which should be hysterical, work in the context of the story. He’s a giant red telepathic spaceman with a mission, our Despero: he hates the Justice League and humanity and he thinks that this is his time to shine with a bright spotlight of hate.

Normally, I want more in the way of motivation from our villains, but this is a pretty straightforward revenge piece – he’s obviously been watching Kill Bill and thinks he’s going to be the Bride to the Justice League’s Crazy 88s. First off, he goes and visit Steel in his persistant vegetative state and rips him off life support out of frustration for failing to be the one to put him there. Then, he decides it’s Gypsy’s turn and slaughters her parents in a chilling scene that still manages to hit me harder that Blue Beetle’s Bullet Lobotomy from Countdown before attacking her as she comes home from school. Finally (and this is all in one issue, mind, along with some storybuilding about the Conglomerate, Booster Gold’s superteam and a cutaway featuring Kilowog receiving the alert that something’s up), he wrecks a train and threatens to slaughter the passengers unless she comes out. See, this is the sort of stuff a guy named Despero can do, as far as I’m concerned; he’s basically Space Hitler, so I’ve got no problems with his murderous rampage as a storytelling tool – it’s completely in character, versus Dr. Light’s sudden reveal as a rapist and the like. Of course, it’s just as he is about to make with the murderation that J’onn J’onnz steps in and delivers a line laden with cliche when it comes out of the mouth of, say, Wolverine but is utterly chilling when the JLA equivalent of Spock utters it:

There’ll be no more deaths today, Despero — except perhaps — yours.

I swear, Batman could take a lesson in Icy Calm Intoning Of Dead Serious Threats from this guy sometimes. I’ve always liked J’onn, and I think this scene is one reason why – he’s the utterly calm Zen master of the insane JLA who can, you know, do everything Superman can do plus turn invisible and read minds as long as you don’t have a match handy. When he actually is bothered enough to go and say something like that, the reader knows that he probably is planning on following it up.

Issue 39′s cover has a humorous tone that is barely reflected within. The first third of this issue features J’onn and Despero duking it out and wrecking a town with only one semi-humorous aside from a bystander. It’s in the middle of the fight between J’onn and Despero that the the Big Red Space Dude reaches into the Martian’s mind and throws him back to his family’s last day, which now features Despero as the cause of his wife and child’s death. I’ve got to say that as far as these things go, that’s pretty fucking awful. Despero is basically the evil version of J’onn when it comes to brute strength and mental powers, and the writers know how to use that effectively. It’s only because Guy Gardner, America’s Third Favorite Green Lantern, puts a green bubble around Despero’s noggin and gives him a bit of feedback that J’onn isn’t in a rest home somewhere, eating pudding-from-a-cup while sitting next to Gypsy and hoping that finger painting comes up today. Nice save for a dude with the worst haircut since Logan was first seen without his mask.

Reading this issue now, it’s hard not to make the comparison to Doomsday’s rampage through Superman #75, which is loud, stupid, and obnoxious in a way that only a comic from the 90s could be. What’s shown here in this issue (from about 3 years prior to that particularly dark moment in comics history) is a well-executed fight that keeps the reader turning pages wanting to see what happens next instead of just going by the numbers. Guy knocks Despero into Long Island Sound with a giant green fist² and the rest of the League finally plays catchup just as Despero decides that he wants to see the selection at Midtown Comics before grabbing a bite in the Village.

A moment to review the state of the Justice League at the time: now split into two teams, JLAmerica and JLEurope, they weren’t exactly heavy hitters outside of J’onn and Guy on the US team and Captain Atom and Power Girl on the Europe team. You can see how a bad guy who’s whooped up on J’onn and is gunning for Guy is pretty much going to be able to cut through Blue Beetle, Mister Miracle, and fairly lame temperature twosome of Fire and Ice like a velicoraptor through a pack of a preschoolers. Oh, and Mister Miracle isn’t really Mister Miracle – he’s a robot who’s constantly malfunctioning in place of Scott Free, who’s off doing some kind of intergalactic escape artist thing with a duplicate that the League doesn’t know is mechanical. The editors don’t note that switch anywhere in this book, we’re just assumed to have have read the recent Mister Miracle special and previous issues of Justice League America to be completely up to date. Editorial notes doled out to the readers in the mighty Marvel manner are probably a good thing on occasions where a team member is repeating the same bit of dialogue over and over in the Mamet style for no reason that’s apparent to newcomers. I’m just saying.

The rest of this issue is pure superhero fight comics – Despero’s determined to kill anyone in his path and you know what? It’s only by the whims of the writers that he doesn’t. There’s a genuine sense of danger amidst the humorous asides and derring-do. Readers had not seen this Justice League fight anyone this dangerous or bloodthirsty before and as a departure from the previous hijinks on Kooeykooeykooey and such, this works effectively as well as standing up as Good Superhero Punchout material on its own. When Despero blows up the Mister-Miracle-robot-piloted shuttle with his Evil Third Eye with the beaten-and-bruised Beetle’s neck in his hand and the next page showing J’onn announcing that he’s going to have to help Despero destroy the Justice League to save the planet? Good, good stuff that makes you want more right away.

I don’t want to go into too much detail as to how J’onn uses his plan to save the League and everyone else on the planet in issue 40, but it’s worthy. It’s worthy in the way that Batman’s “You’re Martians!” line in Grant Morrison’s first story arc on the JLA title of the late 90s. It’s worthy like Arnold dropping from the ceiling and decapitating a couple of baddies with rotary saw blades in Commando. It’s something that was hinted at in the previous issues and is perfectly handled by all parties involved, even if it’s the sort of “all we need is love” plot device that Mark Waid used far too often in his JLA run, ruining it forever for future writers. In the end, they defeat Despero, of course, and as you can see, there’s a funeral for the assumed-to-be-dead-for-real Mister Miracle.

What’s striking about the funeral is the way it manages to be effective, even if the readers know that the “real” Scott is alive and well. A priest that looks suspiciously like Jack Kirby gives the eulogy as a good cross-section of the DCU looks on. Hell, even Izaya, the Highfather of New Genesis is seen here watching from a distance, which is a nice idea if not actually that realistic – wouldn’t a New God know if his son was dead? I mean, they are gods. Gods know these things, right?

This issue pointed to a new direction for the title that left me fairly cold; there was another year of increasingly insipid “humor,” including a character called General Glory, but it all seemed seemed to be filler until Breakdowns was unleashed and pretty soon, Max Lord was shot and critically injured until Dreamslayer took over his body and started being really evil, as his name would rather indicate. From there, it just turned brutally stupid proved that yeah, the 90s were pretty lousy for the mainline DCU titles and the Justice League was excepted not one bit. As a finale, this works well, but it’s sort of sad that it was the last decent issue on the title.

One quick note: this title does feature some of the very small full-storytelling output from Adam Hughes, now more famous for drawing boobies for covers. I know that this was exhausting for him, but I’d love to see him make a return to doing interiors again, even for a miniseries or something.

¹Breakdowns was where I stopped reading all the JL titles. It wasn’t fun anymore and it was trying so hard to be taken seriously. Remind anyone of something?
²Fuck Kyle Rayner and his giant robot costumes. Giant Green Fist wins. Giant Green Fist always wins unless there’s a boxing glove arrow around.

Friday, Friday, Friday! I’ve yet to pick up my comics this week, so nothing to say about anything that most of you care about. I guess it’s time to talk about other things for a bit.

First up, music!
I’ve always been fond of a good cover and I’ve decided to arbitrarily pick a few that are worth noting for those of you whose musical taste has some confluence with my own. These are all 192kbps MP3 files that you can right-click or control-click and select “Save as” or “Download linked file as” to have deposited on your desktop or appropriate folder. If you like these, I recommend seeking out albums by these artists.

Who didn’t love the cartoon Jem? OK, I didn’t, but I thought the theme song was the balls when I was a wee lad who would turn it off immediately after the opening and go make giant Lego spaceships to be tossed off the back deck. Anyway, local synthpoppers Freezepop did a version of the opening tune and stuck it on their last album. I really like the break into the Misfits’ portion of the song as it sounds like a 9 year old trying to be truly evil.

Reggae act Chosen Few shows up quite a lot on those Trojan Records box sets I buy impulsively whenever I find myself needing a little island riddims in my life. Their cover of the theme to Shaft makes me smile every time I hear it. I mean, you didn’t think anyone would improve on the badassery of Isaac Hayes’s original, but here we go. It’s certainly better than that lifeless 2000 version that Hayes cranked out for the Samuel L. Jackson flick.

You know how I like the new Doctor Who program, right? The only way that they could improve it is to use the Orbital version of the theme. A live favorite for years, they finally put it on their otherwise-pretty-awful album The Altogether.

I fucking hate Pink Floyd. I just want that out there, because it makes me really feel conflicted over the version of “Comfortably Numb” that the Scissor Sisters put on their debut album. I shouldn’t like this record one bit, but I think it’s brilliant. Strange that it took Bee Gees-styled vocals and disco licks to make me know all the words to a twenty-three year old song.

I have no issues with the fact that I love Erasure. Their covers album Other People’s Songs is loaded with interesting interpretations of standards from a broad spectrum of British pop. Like me, they love Trevor Horn and decided to pay homage with their take on “Video Killed The Radio Star” by the Buggles. Yes, I know it was the first video played on MTV. Everyone knows that. Stop acting like you’re some kinda goddamn genius because you remember something from the Pink section on a trivia pursuit card.

Finally, extra irony alert! The Pet Shop Boys decided to cover a song by My Robot Friend that paid homage to the smartest men in pop. Their version of “We’re The Pet Shop Boys” delights the hell out of me as it’s the ultimate in rock and roll egotism while still maintaining their humor.

Even more finally, I’m going to urge you all to check out Mastermix.org for a fascinating collection of old-school mastermixes (as the name rather implies.) There’s several gems here, especially the “The House That Jack Built” and anything touched by the Latin Rascals, who were just insanely talented. You can even check out the copyright-infringing Lesson series from Double Dee and Steinski.

Now, movies!
We’ve got a new work project up as well. We’re doing online movie reviews whenever we get a chance now. You can jump directly to mine by clicking here. A lot of these are remixed from the blog, but I’ll be putting up new ones there as well, so check it out.

Call me cynical, but seeing that Marvel’s going to be developing the rest of its films in-house proves that Fantastic Four is crap and they know it. I mean, The Punisher, Elektra, Man-Thing and even Blade: Trinity being pieces of garbage that break even or a bit better, you can sort of write that off, but not the film adaptation of their first family – a movie that should stand tall next to Spidey and the X-Kids, right? How do you prevent the butchering your properties in the future? In-house development.

Too bad that so many of their A-listers are already farmed out to Sony and Fox, huh? I guess Paramount will be distributing Power Pack: The Motion Picture in a few years.

Woke up with a still-sick girlfriend whose cough makes it look like she managed to put the mains back on the line in the last 10 minutes of Star Trek II and NECN’s Matt Noyes has informed me that yes, there’s more crap weather for the next three or four days. I’m cranky and have decided to just look at pictures of flowers I’ve taken. Flowers, bitches!

So, “our” president¹ managed to sign yet another hypocritical piece of legislation today, this time allowing companies espousing so-called “family values” to go and alter Hollywood content for home distribution. That’s right – if Little Johnny’s mama doesn’t want him to see a nipple because fuck knows his eyes will explode and the bloodlust will fill him to the point of creating a being that feeds off rape and murder, they can now get that taken care of with a few clicks of the mouse. Normally, I’d be all for this – it happens in the home, lets parents control what their kids watch, whatever. Fine, fine, fine, take out the bloody parts of Gladiator and make it so the rave scene in The Matrix Reloaded looks like a Girl Scout Jamboree, but don’t be surprised when he’s knocked up Peggy Sue after the Fall Formal, as abstinence “education” doesn’t work one goddamn bit. Honestly, I don’t give two tugs of a dead dog’s cock what these wingnuts do in their own home, just like they shouldn’t care that I’m current getting fellated by Javier, my man-slave².

What pisses me the holy goddamn fuck off over this is the fact that this administration is letting loony right wing “Christians” run roughshod over the media companies because they’re flying the flag of “moral issues,” defacing work that’s been toiled over by tons of people while at the same time ruining CD art with warnings that strongly imply that my ass is getting tossed into the clink if I decide to go and share a few songs with my friends. They assist crazy-ass organizations like the MPAA and the RIAA in their anti-piracy efforts that reduce what I can do with content that I pay for fair and square while bending over backwards to service a crazy-as-fuck minority that happens to squawk a lot and threaten my tail with a couple of weeks in pound-me-in-the-pooper prison if I engage in any “unauthorized copying?”

Jesus, add in the fact that they’re fucking with my Social Security while Bill Frist runs some sort of exorcism against filibusters, and Tom Delay runs like Vin Diesel escaping a fireball when questions about ethics comes up and you’ve got enough to give a man an high-quality embolism that would make make samurai movie fans gush with praise when they see the end result.

What the hell, guys? Are you that determined to get some that you’re just going to fuck everything? At least Clinton restricted his fucking to the Oval Office and it was purely consensual.

¹I didn’t vote for the fucker, the sane and/or intelligent people I know can’t imagine voting for the fucker, only an additional 3% of Americans apparently voted for the fucker with the key electoral flop happening in Ohio, home of a voting machine company whose CEO promised to delivery the state to the fucker. In case you can’t tell, not really a fan of him in these here parts. No, I don’t hate America. Fuck you for thinking that.

²This is a vicious lie. His name is Eduardo. He’s lovely.

I said I wasn’t going to post. Then, Alice goes and points me to this article, which begins thusly:

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Soviet victory in World War II a circus show will dress monkeys as Nazis and have them act in wartime stories, NewsRu reports.

The director of the Yekaterinburg circus, Anatoly Marchevsky, said he opted for monkeys to represent Nazis because it was easy to design costumes for them.

My day is now 600% better.

You ever do that thing, you know, where your mouth keeps moving and stuff keeps coming out even though your brain says “Hey, really, knock it off, you moron! What the hell are you doing? Why did you mention that? Oh Christ Lord Almighty, what in the name of sweet holy fuck is wrong with you? Were you dropped on your head repeatedly as an infant? Do you have Tourette’s? Are you, in fact, a gaping moron that shouldn’t be let out on the street?”

Yeah, I did that very thing this morning and am really quite sick right now. Expect me to be nil by mouth and keyboard for the rest of the day.

As an apology to those of you who care particularly for my bon mots, here’s a Jack Kirby book with a cover inked by Jim Lee, which I didn’t even know existed:

Appendum from the Georgia office: “The inking seems perfectly serviceable. It’s the colorist who should be hunted through the forest by dogs on a cold Bavarian night.” Josh is, as always, pretty close to being something resembling right

Oh, what am I buying this week at the shop? I’m glad that you asked!

Apparently, People Magazine is going to be publishing a story about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie going off on some hottt sex and love trip as they wrap up filming on Mr. And Mrs. Smith, which looks to be loud and grating, if nothing else. Apparently, the tabloid (and don’t act like they’re anything but) is going be talking about how Angelina’s adopted son Maddox is a factor in his breakup with Jennifer Aniston, as she didn’t really want to have rugrats.

Me, I just think the man wanted an upgrade. I mean, why go with:

this…

…when you can get this?

(And yes, I spent quite a bit of time looking for a pair of photos where their assets could be shown equally. Yes, Angelina’s makeup looks a bit tawdry, but…meow!)

Wired Online has a fascinating profile on George Lucas that starts off as a puff piece:

“I like Star Wars, but I certainly never expected it would take over my life,” Lucas says in a conversation at Skywalker Ranch. He estimates that he gave two decades of solid work to Star Wars, not including a hiatus to raise three adopted kids as a single father. Now 60, the once-lanky wunderkind in aviator glasses has grown bearish, with a snowy, close-clipped beard and a sardonic wit that doesn’t come through in the making-of documentaries. He says he’s relieved that the longest chapter of his career is over.

“Normally at this time, I’d be under a lot of pressure to get the script done for the next movie. There wouldn’t be any break from the stress and creative demands. So it’s great to be able to kick back.”

And manages to make me respect him again by examining his roots:

The film that made the most profound impression on Lucas, however, was a short called 21-87 by a director named Arthur Lipsett, who made visual poetry out of film that others threw away. Working as an editor at the National Film Board, he scavenged scraps of other people’s documentaries from trash bins, intercutting shots of trapeze artists and runway models with his own footage of careworn faces passing on the streets of New York and Montreal. What intrigued Lucas most was Lipsett’s subversive manipulation of images and sound, as when a shot of teenagers dancing was scored with labored breathing that might be someone dying or having an orgasm. The sounds neither tracked the images nor ignored them – they rubbed up against them. Even with no plot or character development, 21-87 evoked richly nuanced emotions, from grief to a tenacious kind of hope – all in less than 10 minutes.

Lucas threaded the film through the projector over and over, watching it more than two dozen times. In 2003, he told directors Amelia Does and Dennis Mohr, who are making a documentary on Lipsett, “21-87 had a very powerful effect on me. It was very much the kind of thing that I wanted to do. I was extremely influenced by that particular movie.” Deciding that his destiny was to become an editor of documentaries who, like Lipsett, would make avant-garde films on the side, Lucas worked in the USC editing room for 12 hours at a stretch, living on Coca-Cola and candy bars, deep in the zone.

“When George saw 21-87, a lightbulb went off,” says Walter Murch, who created the densely layered soundscapes in THX 1138 and collaborated with Lucas on American Graffiti. “One of the things we clearly wanted to do in THX was to make a film where the sound and the pictures were free-floating. Occasionally, they would link up in a literal way, but there would also be long sections where the two of them would wander off, and it would stretch the audience’s mind to try to figure out the connection.”

Interesting stuff that manages to get quotes from a broad variety of people including Roger Ebert, Peter Jackson and Walter Murch, who Lucas worked with early in his career. I may be greeting the last part of the series with a mixture of dread and anticipation, but I have to say that getting reminded of his impact in the industry was a good thing. I mean, this is the guy that promoted his film at San Diego Comicon back in 1976 and picked Howard Chaykin as artist on the comics. He may have made The Phantom Menace, but he also gave us THX-1138 and Raiders of The Lost Ark. Let’s hope that Revenge Of The Sith stuffs his coffers to the point where he can do what it appears he’s interested in: small movies that are there because he wants them there, not because of audience demand.

“We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and–call us nutty–it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that,” says White House spokesman Trent Duffy in this (far too brief) Time piece on the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission, a group of representatives gathered from the telecom industry to discuss things like standards and regulations and how it’ll impact you, the consumer. That’s right – if your company donated to a Democratic presidential campaign, you’re not going to be able to have a say at one of your industry’s major meetings because the Bush White House views your vote as being the same as gettin’ a posse together and having them all lined up outside of the Rose Garden with pitchforks and torches, screaming for his head.

I know that this might seem minor to a lot of people but this, combined with the Frist and pals playing around with “the Nuclear Option” to fundamentally change how our government works¹ and the fact they tried to get Yosemite Sam pushed through as our ambassador to the UN in just these last couple of weeks makes me think that this administration and the current state of the Republican Party is all an elaborate hoax to make Nixon look a lot better in this history books.

¹Not to mention, you know, Terry Schiavo being used as a political football.

File Under: Again with the Byrning.
Let’s say that you’re John Byrne. Let’s say that you’ve made public statements equating a Hollywood starlet with a whore because she’s of Latino descent and has dyed her hair blonde in order to play Susan Richards, a character that you’re pretty darn familiar with since you wrote and drew the Fantastic Four’s adventures for quite a few years. Now, obviously, you have some strong opinions when it comes to female heroines and how you want them viewed and Miss Alba, well…damn it, she’s too stank-tastic in your myopic view to play The Invisible Woman! I mean, she’s got to be a bit of a paragon of motherhood and saintliness, right, even if she’s boffing a guy who can, frankly, put Dirk Diggler to shame with a minor bit of effort. She’s a heroine and damn it, she’s on display to the public! They shouldn’t use anyone who might have, say, starred in Sin City as a stripper or someone who doesn’t match your narrow ideas of what race looks right with which hair color because superhero comics and movies should be pure and for the kids, right?

Using this logic, then, comic book creators should be beholden to the intended audience just as much as film producers and actors, yes? So, like, if somebody pointed people to an image that you had created that featured a naked Scarlet Witch, then, like, you’d probably owe everyone an explanation or at least admit that you’re a raging hypocritical pervert with more issues that National Geographic has released since it started publication?

Start your sputtering, you fuck.

(You can click on that to see the entire NSFW image. Special thanks to Josh for pointing me here.)

Since Graeme over at Fanboy Rampage needs to do some work or something this week, he’s not going to be posting the latest insane ramblings of John Byrne and this heavy duty has to fall on someone. Shaenon’s comment to Graeme’s latest post pointed to this thread on the ByrneRobotics.com forum wherein the mainstream’s equivalent of Dave Sim talks about “correct” comics terminology and replies to this inquiry from one of his Moloids:

Then this all brings up the question of language. Do words have inherent meanings or just those we ascribe to them? If enough pros, in addition to the fans, say “speech bubble” then why wouldn’t “bubble” be just as valid as “balloon”? JB says “balloon”, someone else says “bubble”, and they could both be right.

With this answer:

There are lots of people who call Black people “niggers”. Are both terms “right”?

You seem to have missed the rather important point that my response indicated roughly the same percentage of fans and pros use the improper terms for various elements of what we do — but that percentage does not approach a balance. It is not that roughly half say “balloon” and half say “bubble”. It is that some say “bubble” and they are wrong.

That’s right, Byrne – people who say “bubble” instead of “balloon” when describing speech or thought as presented on the comics page are the equivalent of racist bastards who want separate drinking fountains and happen to have a lot of white sheets laying about the house.

Jesus Christ on toast, I am going to be cranky over this for the rest of the day.

Random comics shop retail notes:

While working at the shop today, I sold Arana and X-23 issues to a thirteen-year-old girl. That was sort of bittersweet, as that to-the-intended-demographic transaction was almost immediately followed by an X-Fetishist telling me how freaking hot X-23 was and that I was stupid for not reading the X-Men titles because Claremont really turned it around after that “hack Grant Morrison” fucked it up. They’ll find his body¹ after trash day.

This is a good week for myself, Ian, and any other Chaykin fans out there – he’s got three, count ‘em, three books coming out and I gandered at the previews provided helpfully by the fine folks at DC. City Of Tomorrow launches with a snarling first issue that reminds me in tone, if not content, of his Challengers of the Unknown series. We also get his issue of Solo, where he covers Nazi-occupied France, jazz, mad scientists, western comics, white supremacy, and fear in the space of 48 pages along with the third issue of his compelling, if not exactly pleasant, collaboration with Russ Heath, Legend.

I sold a stack of Byrne Doom Patrol issues to somebody who heard “they were really good.” I want to track down whoever is spreading this vicious rumor and introduce them to my fist repeatedly.

There was one overlong conversation concerning the sex lives of Tomax and Xamot from GI Joe. If one was hurt and the other felt the pain, per the commercial, did the same apply for pleasure? If Xamot had a hot date with, say, The Baronness, did Tomax have to stay home with a sock handy or wear a raincoat to his night classes at COBRA’s training academy?

Finally, I present a recounting my half of a conversation with a customer:

Did I read The O.M.A.C. Project? Yeah, but I didn’t dig it that much, but there’s a lot of people that liked it.

Hey, if you liked DCU Countdown, you’ll totally enjoy it.

No, I didn’t like that either, but lots of people did.

No. I don’t have to like anything.

No, I’m not “wrong.” I’m just not looking for bullet lobotomies and rape in my superhero comics. I’ve got Seven Soldiers, you’ve got all the Crisis stuff. Everyone’s happy.

No, it’s fine that you like it! Lots of people like things that I don’t like and I like lots of things other people don’t like. That’s how these things are. No skin off my nose if you like anything that we sell.

How am I, exactly, insulting you?

And no, he didn’t buy the fucking book.

¹I kid. Honest.

Look, I’ve never been a proper nerd because I never got the Doctor Who bug. Of course, it was always on the local PBS affiliate when I was at the Right Age For These Things, but the low-fi production values that led to three sets (the TARDIS, some tunnel, and a gravel pit near the BBC’s studios) and storytelling that was paced at a level that I didn’t think was quite fast enough made me not like it one bit¹. Oh, as a reader of Starlog and someone who’d turn it on to give it a try every once in a while, so I had my favorite Doctors (in order: McCoy, Baker, Pertwee, and Davison,) but it just wasn’t my thing.

It wasn’t my thing, of course, until I got far too old to really dig it and they snuck Christopher Eccleston into the role. His mad eyes, his body language, his ability to say ridiculous lines like they were born on his tongue and happened to gestate there for years before delivery makes me completely believe in the character in a way that nobody else has – he seems genuinely alien a lot of the time instead of just being British. I’m also shocked by how much I like Billie Piper as Rose. I’ve watched three episodes now (the pilot and second episode and the first half of the London two-parter – the second is torrenting now) and think it’s now exactly the sort of show I always wanted Doctor Who to be now that I’m past the intended age of the viewing audience².

Now that I like it, of course, Eccleston’s saying he’s not around for a second season, which is a bit maddening, but if the scripts keep this quality up, I’ll be getting BitTorrents and watching and laughing and getting caught up in the madness in a way that I never managed to the first time around.

¹For the record, I liked the first season of the War Of The Worlds series, so my taste was and is pretty questionable.
²Anyone who thinks that Doctor Who isn’t for smart ten year olds is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Dear Hollywood:

I have seen Stephen Chow’s newest movie, Kung Fu Hustle, and wanted to let you all know that it’s OK to stop trying – cinematic perfection has been achieved.

Love,
BeaucoupKevin

Allston resident Karl Stevens went and got himself a Xeric grant a little while back and used it to focus his efforts on Guilty, a slice-of-life comic that ably explores the awkwardness of seeing someone from your recent past with whom you had one of those breakups that was more effort than the relationship deserved. There’s no real plot here, but with a work like this, the presentation is what matters, not the actual content¹ and what we’ve got here is the first “real” work from somebody who could, with a bit of effort, find himself in the company of guys like Dan Clowes and Adrian Tomine.

The gorgeous black and white art, taken from photos of models and friends, is at first fairly disconcerting. When I look at this work, my eye wanders to the small details that Stevens captures perfectly and I ended up with pacing issues for the first few pages until I came up with a way to view the page that worked for me: start off holistically taking in the entire thing, then go panel by panel, so I had the timing worked out in my head.

Stevens seems to have taken the dialogue directly from actual conversations because it’s all there; the strange half-sentences and the not-quite declarative statements that people are fond of using keep you amused because hell, it’s voyeuristic and there’s a tiny thrill you get from seeing people being themselves. Hell, even the thought balloons reflect a natural approach that’s light-years ahead of his apparent experience and I’d love to see more people manage to pull off what he’s doing so well in this book.

A few minor quibbles are there: the title of the book should be on the spine or on the cover, even if the art is distinctive and will pull people towards it. Sorry to be pedantic, but it’s true – selling a book by name is hard when the name isn’t on the damn thing. There’s also a fair number of proofreading errors that should have been corrected: misspelled words and an appalling abuse of apostrophes, for instance.

Still, this is an excellent start for someone I’m looking forward to hearing more from in the future. If you’d like your own copy of Guilty, you can send $9.95 + $2 for shipping and handling to:
Karl Stevens
20 Coolidge Rd #2
Allston, MA 02134

I’m not sure if it’s still available through Diamond; look under Karl Stevens Publishing when you get a moment.

¹I know this goes against my general instincts, but this is explicitly written and drawn to capture “real life,” I’m going to discuss technique over story for once.