THE RACK: Sound Advice

I thought Ebert’s review of TRANSFORMERS 2 was good until I read this…

From Flicked Off:

In practice, there are a bunch of machines who are mad at other machines and they enter into many encounters where they whirl around, but if you are any kind of normal person, you won’t be able to tell which machine is which, and so it will pretty much look like two or more enormous microwaves with swords violently mating

DESIGN FETISH: Album covers from Soviet Russia

Instrumental Rock Group Zodiac may have my favorite name and cover, but the above gentlemen have a certain joie de vivre about them, don’t they? Take a look at the whole collection on EnglishRussia and then visit pal Dave’s site to thank him for the joy he brought you through me. (Boy that sounds dirty.)

CONTEST: Win a copy of Lamar Abrams’ REMAKE!

One of my favorite books picked up from this year’s MoCCA is Lamar Abrams’s slacker superhero romp Remake. In it, Max Guy makes friends, eats bread pudding, and uses his Max Blaster to change things into stuff:

Remake is funny, fast-paced, and lovingly-made parody of genre conventions in both video games and comic books, and I’ve got an extra copy to give away. To win a copy for yourself, just comment below and tell me what you would do with a Max Blaster of your own: what everyday subject would you turn into another thing and why? For example “I would turn my neighbor’s yapping dog into Jenny McCarthy because she deserves to be on a chain for spreading that malarky about autism and vaccines!” This will run through Friday, June 26 at 11:59PM.

THE RACK: Uh Oh

DESIGN FETISH: Samsung’s S2 500gb Portable Hard Drives

J Jonah Jameson by John Keogh

Keogh is the artist on Lucid TV, your new favorite webcomic about doctors that really, really hate their job but love the power that comes with it. Click through to view my collection of J Jonah Jameson commissions and sketches.

LYDIA: The Naked Truth

You know, when I dropped the key phrase in this strip to friends of mine, they totally understood.

THE RACK: Staff Picks for the week of June 24, 2009

THE RACK: A Reflection

WEEKEND POLL: What Comics Character Do You Really, Really Irrationally Hate?

DESIGN FETISH: Lobby Cards from PERRY RHODAN – SOS AUS DEM WELTALL.

Will Kane’s got a fantastic collection of German lobby cards and promotional photos from a terrifically stylized science-fiction movie.

I think I worked for this guy for about ten minutes back in 1998.

From Detective Comics #109

LYDIA: The Truth Is Out There

Research for Panel 03 is why Max is currently doing a six-year stretch of assault with intention to sexulate.

DESIGN FETISH: Samus (Phazon Suit) Action Figure Statue, Actually

I’ve only played one Metroid game for more than a couple of minutes (the Gamecube one that was a first person shooter, which I remember made some die-hard fans downright apoplectic) and I don’t collect toys anymore, but this is a gorgeous high-end collectible, a action figure statue that’s lit from within and actually completely incapable of being posed in all sorts of exciting ways.

Picking On That One Comic Shop Again.

Hey, guys, remember the NOT BUY retailer? Here’s the a few recent missives from his shop’s Twitter account:

“Adam Hughes can sure draw a nice pair of chesticles, fun bags, dirty pillows, Power Girl #2 will sellout by the end of the day!”
10:13 AM Jun 17th from web

“I wish I could put a piece of tape on Action Comics Annual #12′s offensive $4.99 cover price. What overpriced trash”
10:14 AM Jun 17th from web

#haveyouever bought a comic with stunning artwork even though you knew the story was ass??
4:50 PM Jun 16th from web

Links, as I am busy today. I’ll mark the NSFW ones, ok?

Yes, I know that people who follow me on Twitter have seen these. Shut up.

• Happiest People Ever – A misnomer, at best.
  
• Sexy People – My favorite blog ever. This is not at all an exaggeration.
  
• Awkward Family Pictures – I’ve seen a lot of these, but there’s frequently a previously-unearthed gem.
  
• Everything is Terrible- Remixed video footage from the gutters. The movie debuts this weekend. If I were in LA, I’d go to this. (Sometimes NSFW when it comes to language.)
  
• Fuck Yeah, Dr McCoy – What do you think it’s about, sharks? (SFW except for that URL.)
  
• This is Photobomb (Frequently NSFW) – People screwing up other people’s photos.
  
• Grain Edit – The BoingBoing of design blogs, sending you to other new places that can then introduce you to other new places, etc, etc.
  
• Kevin Dart – I discovered Kevin Dart from Grain Edit. I want to see him doing comic covers stat.

DESIGN FETISH: Books!

You can skip to the bottom if you read comics you don’t enjoy and don’t want to be lectured to.

OK, here’s the thing. People email me wanting to know what I think about things. Not, like, things I care about, but things like DC’s upcoming Blackest Night or the return of Steve Rogers. I think it’s nice that people want to know my opinion on something that obviously means something to them, but (and God, this sounds even more egotistical than usual) I don’t spend any time at all thinking about that sort of thing anymore. Over the last year or so, I’ve started to create more than react, and I’ve opted to be more positive in general about comics, sticking to talking about what I like and actually want to read versus whining about matters that don’t interest or excite me at all. So, if you want to know what I think about comics happenings along these lines, the answer is more-than-likely going to be “I’m not.”

If DC wants to do a Green Lantern-themed remix of Marvel Zombies, that’s fine. It’ll probably sell very well to the sort of people who want that sort of thing. (I actually really enjoyed The Sinestro Corps War, but that seemed to fill up my space magic-ring-themed mega-event reserves to their required levels pretty handily, with the upcoming Wednesday Comics strip by Busiek and Quinones keeping things topped off.) If Marvel wants to resurrect a character that nobody with half a lobe in their skull thought would stay dead, that’s fine. I’ll read it in the book format because I think Brubaker’s done a bang-up job with the title, and I’ll write a one-off comic strip about how the marketing stunt around it ended up doing at a fictional comic shop because that’s the sort of thing people like, but I can’t imagine devoting any real thought to the matter unless it was my bottom line that was being affected by the whole issue.

In the past couple of months, I’ve seen some people who I thought were smarter get caught up in grinding out content about what they hate about comics, and it baffles me. Why rehash the “news cycle” that Newsarama and CBR are working when you can celebrate how cool, how vital comics are by pointing out smaller titles that you enjoy? Don’t get me wrong: there’s some reviewers whose insightful savaging of the mainstream is something I enjoy and look forward to, but they’re actually coming up with useful analysis of the medium and its trends, not pissing and moaning about how comics aren’t what they think they should be and how Dan Dildio (I swear I saw that yesterday) needs to fuck right off.

(The short version: If you don’t think you’ll like something, ignore it. Something better will come along. That’s what I do and don’t you want to be just like me?)

LYDIA: Interrupted

More of the usual corporate hijinks. There’s a Venn diagram in Panel 01.