Lucy Van Pelt discovers metafiction.
No Comments | Posted: February 18th, 2010 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You | Tags: peanuts
Presented without commentary: a press release I just received.
13 Comments | Posted: February 16th, 2010 | Filed under: Think About It Won't YouEdited To Add: Wait, you know what? I’ve got one comment. Fuck you guys.GEEK TO CHIC
Unleash Your Inner Geek at the Boston Center for Adult Education
Glasses, headgear, pants that looked like you were waiting for a flood- sound too familiar? Yea, yea, yea, we know that you’ve grown out of that phase. You’ve moved to Boston, gotten a kick butt tech job and may have even found a little arm candy. No one remembers that you went dateless to your senior prom, anyway.This spring take your comic book collection out from underneath your bed and unleash your inner geek at the Boston Center for Adult Education’s (BCAE) “Comic Book: Heroes & Monsters” drawing class.
At the BCAE learn how to develop your supernatural fantasy into a character, story and professional comic book! Artist John Cafferty will teach students how to transition from creating composition, formulating a design and adding lettering, to the final step of inking- just like the comic book pros!
The “Heroes & Monsters” drawing class will be taught over the course of 5 sessions beginning Wednesday, March 17, 2010. This class is perfect for anyone who has an interest in animation, drawing, art, and of course, comic books! Capes, Spandex, Superwomen, and even headgear are welcome!
So, here’s a reference I didn’t expect to see on BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD.
6 Comments | Posted: February 8th, 2010 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You | Tags: batman, brat pack, rick veitch
This is a tiny game piece that features Aquaman’s wife vomiting acid blood.
6 Comments | Posted: February 2nd, 2010 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You
HI AND LOIS takes on webcomics creators in a stab at relevancy during the death throes of their business.
5 Comments | Posted: September 18th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You
A definitive explanation of what the DC Comics restructuring means to you, the fan.
39 Comments | Posted: September 9th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You
Thomas Dangerfield writes a letter to Marvel Comics.
6 Comments | Posted: August 7th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You
Hulk: Philosopher
3 Comments | Posted: August 4th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You, Wacky Out Of Context Panels
“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.” – Albert Einstein
“What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.” – Sigmund Freud
“There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.” – Don Herold
“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.” – Socrates
WEDNESDAY COMICS Penny Pinchers: Prepare For An Assault From The Maths
2 Comments | Posted: July 10th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You, Thinking About Comics | Tags: wednesday comicsAn email from a friend stated the following:
A typical $2.99 comic book is 32.6 cents/ square foot (22-6×10 inch pages)I’m just going to assume this is all true because I can barely figure out a tip and just end up throwing $10 at whoever is willing to bring me my damn gazpacho.Wednesday Comics is 13.6 cents / square foot (15-14×20 pages)
The standard $2.99 comic book costs 2.38 times more per square foot than Wednesday Comics.
“We don’t resent competition — indeed, we welcome it!”
6 Comments | Posted: June 25th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You
Found in Tales of Suspense #78, dated June, 1966.
Kitty Pryde fans, ladies and gentlemen.
11 Comments | Posted: April 7th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You, Thinking About Comics
Via an email exchange with Mike Sterling.
From the Google Features page for Suggested Search (emphasis mine):
Search term suggestions on Google.com are powered by the Google Suggest service. Google Suggest communicates with Google while you type in order to offer suggestions to you. All the information you send to Google — such as searches you type or ones you select in Google Suggest — is protected by Google’s privacy policy. When providing suggestions, Google Suggest doesn’t refer to anyone’s personal searches; it uses information about the relative popularity of common searches to rank its suggestions.
Think about it, won’t you?
Presented without comment.
11 Comments | Posted: March 12th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You | Tags: heroes reborn, jim lee, rob liefeld
I have found my new life philosophy.
18 Comments | Posted: February 21st, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You | Tags: Add new tag, philosophy, wolf, wolves
Just in time for Valentine’s day, it’s your favorite comic book rapist!
6 Comments | Posted: February 9th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You | Tags: alan moore's neverending ulcer, watchmen
In which I go on for a while about The Wire and how fucking great it is.
30 Comments | Posted: February 2nd, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You | Tags: the wire
Dr K wasn’t kidding when he told me The Wire was the best TV show America had produced so far. Since getting the DVD set from Amazon, I’ve watched at least seven episodes a week, and even thought I’m not finished with it yet (and I will personally hunt down and murder the families of anyone who even fucking thinks about putting a spoiler in my comments,) I wanted to put down some thoughts on why the show works so well for me.
1.
The Wire creates a living, breathing chunk Baltimore for the viewer by removing cinematic artifice almost entirely. The camera is deliberately neutral, only sparingly used in a way that frames a shot in a dramatic manner, allowing viewers to focus on the content of the scene. It’s an interesting hybrid of documentary filmmaking and the way most procedural programs are shot. In an era where more and more televisions shows (24, Lost, and Battlestar Galactica, to name three of the most popular) are using techniques borrowed from the movies, it’s a fascinating choice on the part of original series cinematographer Uta Briesewitz and his successors.
2.
The visual aesthetic is just part of the way the series builds its world, and the most obvious. Sound plays a huge part in creating a living, breathing world for the viewer, and Jennifer Ralston, Andrew Kris and their team manage to subtly place the audience in the middle of the action without resorting to 5.1 effects and dramatic musical cues. In fact, outside of the very rare montages (I believe the second season had one, the first had two) any music used in the show is playing on a radio, bumping through a club’s soundsystem, or coming out of an identifiable source. The show’s spiritual and creative predecessor, Homicide, had only a few weaknesses in its first few seasons and its too-frequent montages and the use of sound effects to catch the viewer’s attentions were chief among them. Sonically, The Wire is a show that revels in the real world’s sounds and silences, the awkward conversational pauses and blaring of sirens on their way to a crime scene.
3.
Both of the above aspects, when combined with the low key on-screen performances from the cast and scripts that allow everyone on the show to behave like real people, pull the viewer into what’s happening and engages them in a way that no other television show manages. While I greatly enjoy Deadwood and Battlestar Galactica, there are distinct moments when it’s obvious that they want you to know that acting and drama are happening. With The Wire, the moments hang on Stringer Bell’s offhand comment to a street hustler or a terse order from Lt Daniels. It’s only in Omar that the theatrical comes out and that’s an organic part of his character and how he inhabits the world.
4.
Speaking of characters – in the first season, there’s around twenty speaking parts of real importance and when the second season begins, they add an additional fifteen or so, without losing track of the original cast. Yes, some are given more focus than others, but that’s still really ambitious for a show that covers as much storytelling ground as The Wire, with a surfeit of personal issues that never feel cheap or exploitative, just part of real life. Again, it’s those matter-of-fact performances that sell the details much more than tight zooms and barked dialogue. I also have to note that I absolutely love the easy, matter-of-fact chemistry between Sonja Sohn’s Kima Greggs and Jimmy McNulty, played by Dominic West. The way they both use the job to bury their respective personal problems is one of those delicious, writerly touches that I can bring up with someone and they just smile and nod.
5.
There are moments where I wished every show’s producers and creators treated their audience with as much respect as Simon and Burns do, and I actually get sort of angry at how TV in this country is handled. Writers for the networks have to compete with A) forced act breaks where the audience (even if they’re using a DVR) get yanked out of the story for moments at a time because of advertisements and B) a near-constant bombardment of on-screen advertisements during their show while at the same time their media model that is losing its relevancy because of A and B. Each season of The Wire (at least I assume so, unless they go horribly wrong somewhere, which everyone assures me they do not) is a true novel for television with individual episodes serving as chapters, not as discrete pieces of story on their own. I know that Lost (which I have not watched because of my high-school level reaction to so many people describing the show as incredible, mindblowing, and incredibly mindblowing, but will likely get around to it one day) and Battlestar Galactica both follow similar models, but even when watching Galactica on DVD, the commercial-induced breaks (even when they last just a couple of seconds) are jarring and remind me that I’m watching a TV show, not enjoying a story.
6.
No matter how I’m engaged with a work, story (not plot – story) always comes first, and The Wire has been one of the greatest story experiences I’ve had in any medium. How events impact characters and vice versa and how those moments elevate the way the series serves as an elegy for a city that’s deeply broken is nothing short of masterful.
So, hey, I’m back.
38 Comments | Posted: January 17th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't YouWhat’d I miss? Nobody killed Batman or anything, right?
Oh, they did? Let me take a look at this.
Oh, hey, there’s no reason at all people would flip out and scream bloody murder over his final actions, because he explained how he was breaking the one rule he would never break before and the situation demanded it, is there? I mean, he addresses the elephant in the room before even pulling out the gun.
Oh, they did? And they’re still?
…
Wow.
OK, but I mean, it’s Batman. He made them like ten crudzillion dollars last year with that movie. Morrison put an out for the situation in the first four pages of that comic, to be used by the one character who could be trusted with that sort of power, you know? Surely comic book readers have to…
Oh, really?
Damn, people.
Damn.
Chekov Manga: The Adventures of Pavel Chekov
4 Comments | Posted: January 4th, 2009 | Filed under: Outbound Linkage, Star Trek, Think About It Won't You
Top Ten Lists I Did Not Make For The Year-End Wrap-Up That Every Comics Blogger Seems To Be Doing
No Comments | Posted: December 30th, 2008 | Filed under: "Funny", Meta, Think About It Won't You- Top Ten Comic Books That Only Bloggers Seemed To Read
- Top Ten Classic Newspaper And Golden Age Reprint Books I Did Not Buy, Instead Choosing To Spend My Money On Multiple Copies Of DC’s Invasion! Trade Paperback
- Top Ten Art Comics That Irritated More Than Entertained Me, Featuring Sophie Crumb’s Appearances In MOME
- Top Ten Reprints I Bought Like Six Months Ago But Haven’t Gotten To Yet
- Top Ten Superhero Movie Moments That I Wish The Comics Had A Bit More Often Like When Batman Totally Punches The Joker’s Face In During The Fundraiser
- Top Ten “Chris Ware, What The Hell, Man? Are You Trying To Ruin It For The Rest Of Us By Being So Fucking Good And Creepy At The Same Time?” Moments In Acme Novelty Library 19
- Top Ten Moments From The Flood Of Jack Kirby Reprints That Came Out This Year (Using images swiped from Chris Sims’s blog.)
- Top Ten Marvel Panels That Did Not Feature Cannibalism And The Mutilated Corpse Of The Wasp
- Top 47 Comic Books In Which Batman Appeared
- Top Two Comic Books In Which Batman Did Not Appear
“Don’t you guys like heroes any more?”
3 Comments | Posted: December 26th, 2008 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You | Tags: fantastic four, jack kirby, lettercol, stan lee
Happy Holidays! Here’s three murderers with a popular yuletide hit!
2 Comments | Posted: December 25th, 2008 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You | Tags: christmas, doctor octopus, doom, marvel, spider-man
