Some Americans like to take potshots at France. And while I find the phrase "Surrender Monkey" totally hilarious, it totally ignores how bad ass the French Resistance was during WWII.
It's Bastille Day, which... you know, the French had an odd time of it deciding how things would run after they figured out how to get out from under the boot heel of their oppressors, but today we're celebrating a day in the move toward freedom for a people.
And the French were never more awesome than when played by Hollywood actors sticking it to the Nazis. In song.
La Marseillaise via Casablanca
Thanks to Bully for the inspiration.
Film. Comics. Sci-Fi. Superheroes. Pulp. Noir. History. Superman. 20th Century Archaeology.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The Amazing World of Jimmy Olsen
I went and saw Sunset Boulevard tonight and then watched an hour of Louis on FX (it's okay. A bit different.).
Anyway, no post as my plans now include reading some Batman comics and then going to sleep.
So I leave you to ponder at what point this party got out of control:
This is exactly why you want to leave before Superman tears the roof off the joint.
Anyway, no post as my plans now include reading some Batman comics and then going to sleep.
So I leave you to ponder at what point this party got out of control:
This is exactly why you want to leave before Superman tears the roof off the joint.
Super Pets: Books for Kids!
DC Comics and Capstone books will soon release a line of kids' chapter books starring the DC Super Pets! I know! I'm using exclamation points! (...because I'm excited!)
For those of you not in the know, back in the day Superman editor and controversial figure (aka: well-known jerk), Mort Weisinger was all about adding new characters and accouterments to the Superman titles. Thus, you got everything from Kandor to Beppo, the super monkey. Some stuff stuck, some stuff didn't.
Superman wound up with a whole line of buddies, the most famous of which is Krypto the Superdog.
The really great news isn't just that these books are coming, but that they'll be drawn by Tiny Titans wunderkind cartoonist Art Baltazar.
Sadly, I can't really justify buying these books. I think. We'll see. I'm a bit of an impulse purchaser. But those of you with kids should totally check these things out. It's a book with Beppo and Titano! How can you go wrong?
I think I'm lying. I'm totally buying that book with Krypto and Ace the Bathound on the cover.
For those of you not in the know, back in the day Superman editor and controversial figure (aka: well-known jerk), Mort Weisinger was all about adding new characters and accouterments to the Superman titles. Thus, you got everything from Kandor to Beppo, the super monkey. Some stuff stuck, some stuff didn't.
Superman wound up with a whole line of buddies, the most famous of which is Krypto the Superdog.
The really great news isn't just that these books are coming, but that they'll be drawn by Tiny Titans wunderkind cartoonist Art Baltazar.
Sadly, I can't really justify buying these books. I think. We'll see. I'm a bit of an impulse purchaser. But those of you with kids should totally check these things out. It's a book with Beppo and Titano! How can you go wrong?
I think I'm lying. I'm totally buying that book with Krypto and Ace the Bathound on the cover.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Harvey Pekar Merges with the Infinite
I was telling some folks earlier today that I was surprised that I had a moment when I read the headline.
Comics great Harvey Pekar has passed.
But, then, it kind of makes sense that, even as casual a reader as myself, might feel they knew Pekar little. To read Harvey's comics (most of which existed under the title American Splendor) was to get to know at least some version of the man. The comics were vastly autobiographical, honest, and unflinching. Sometimes funny, sometimes not, sometimes tough to read when Pekar shared his day-to-day, especially in Our Cancer Year.
If you haven't read American Splendor comics, pick up a collection or two, and if you aren't going to do that, then, for the love of God, rent the movie. The movie is actually just really, really good and stars Paul Giammti in most scenes, but it includes interview footage with Pekar, his family and the folks around him.
For a guy who outwardly seemed gruff and likely a little tough to deal with, its a bit surprising that the man more or less pioneered autobiographical comics, something that's become a huge staple of the indie comics and web comics scene. And, not to bag on anyone's efforts, Pekar is still largely unmatched. He wasn't enamored with making himself seem clever, or his life seem hip (good Lord, no), but he did like to catch the details of the everyday in a way authors, documentarians and Pekar's fellow cartoonists could only dream about.
That's a tough thing to do, and to keep it as honest as Harvey did, even through chemo and all the rest... kind of amazing.
Oddly, Harvey was never the artist of his own comics, but to work with Harvey who had started his work with R. Crumb, became a sort of thing. And to capture what Harvey was trying to put into his comics seemed to be a challenge artists wanted to rise to.
In his last few years I think Harvey enjoyed a little boost in personal fame and popularity. I'm not sure how much it helped with what seemed to be his anxiety over finances, etc... but I hope he came to see that there was a large audience out there that loved his work.
So long, Harvey. Thanks for changing comics.
I can only hope that you've got access to your record collection wherever you are.
Comics great Harvey Pekar has passed.
But, then, it kind of makes sense that, even as casual a reader as myself, might feel they knew Pekar little. To read Harvey's comics (most of which existed under the title American Splendor) was to get to know at least some version of the man. The comics were vastly autobiographical, honest, and unflinching. Sometimes funny, sometimes not, sometimes tough to read when Pekar shared his day-to-day, especially in Our Cancer Year.
If you haven't read American Splendor comics, pick up a collection or two, and if you aren't going to do that, then, for the love of God, rent the movie. The movie is actually just really, really good and stars Paul Giammti in most scenes, but it includes interview footage with Pekar, his family and the folks around him.
For a guy who outwardly seemed gruff and likely a little tough to deal with, its a bit surprising that the man more or less pioneered autobiographical comics, something that's become a huge staple of the indie comics and web comics scene. And, not to bag on anyone's efforts, Pekar is still largely unmatched. He wasn't enamored with making himself seem clever, or his life seem hip (good Lord, no), but he did like to catch the details of the everyday in a way authors, documentarians and Pekar's fellow cartoonists could only dream about.
That's a tough thing to do, and to keep it as honest as Harvey did, even through chemo and all the rest... kind of amazing.
Oddly, Harvey was never the artist of his own comics, but to work with Harvey who had started his work with R. Crumb, became a sort of thing. And to capture what Harvey was trying to put into his comics seemed to be a challenge artists wanted to rise to.
In his last few years I think Harvey enjoyed a little boost in personal fame and popularity. I'm not sure how much it helped with what seemed to be his anxiety over finances, etc... but I hope he came to see that there was a large audience out there that loved his work.
So long, Harvey. Thanks for changing comics.
I can only hope that you've got access to your record collection wherever you are.
07/14 is The Sixth Gun Day
Howdy, Signal Corps!
This is a friendly reminder that Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt's Western/ Fantasy/ Horror comic is arriving in comic shops on 07/14/2010. Both issues #1 and #2 will arrive at your local comic shop on Wednesday.
Issue #1 was previously released as a Free Comic Book Day release, but is available for a bit more than, well, free. We at The Signal Watch quite liked the comics and believe its worth the price of admission. You can read my review here.
We're looking forward to picking up issue #2 and seeing what follows.
This is a friendly reminder that Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt's Western/ Fantasy/ Horror comic is arriving in comic shops on 07/14/2010. Both issues #1 and #2 will arrive at your local comic shop on Wednesday.
Issue #1 was previously released as a Free Comic Book Day release, but is available for a bit more than, well, free. We at The Signal Watch quite liked the comics and believe its worth the price of admission. You can read my review here.
We're looking forward to picking up issue #2 and seeing what follows.
Old, Cranky Comics Fan
I started this post before reading about Mark Waid's Twitter post from the other day.
Mark Waid, the forefront in fans-turned-pro, the guy who became known for not just writing great superhero comics, but his encyclopedic knowledge of superhero comics, has decided to quit reading superhero comics.
Well, maybe. I kind of think maybe Mr. Waid was having a particularly bad day and used a smidge of hyperbole, but...
It wasn't actually one comic, by the way. He later explained it was his basic dislike of so much he'd read of late in the superhero mega-genre. Unlike the trolls on Newsarama, it seems unlikely Waid made any impotent proclamations regarding stopping reading comics if, say, DC didn't acknowledge Jimmy Olsen was the one, true, original Flamebird or that they didn't like some turn of events in a Captain Marvel mini series and so were done with DC... forever*. Instead, you get the feeling Waid is just weary of the state of things. Of course, one could make the same claim when he wrote Kingdom Come in the mid-90's.
...then there was that time in the dystopian future where Superman got the JLA back together and quit taking any BS from the 1990's...
Waid has since further elaborated, stating specific writers he feels are doing a good job, and that he's a bit worn out on what he sees as cynicism in the creation of superhero comics, or messages of cynicism in the comics. In general: cynicism. He doesn't like it.
At first blush, its a bit of a bitter pill to swallow from the guy who is writing the power Irredeemable series about a Superman proxy gone amuck, but Irredeemable is about what happens when hope turns to horror and our heroes turn on us. A bit different, I think, than what Waid is describing.
But he also describes that he's tired of seeing the same thing done over the 100th time (perhaps cynical recycling of stories?), and that's an idea I can get behind.
I started the post around the fourth of July. I was in a mood.
On the Fourth of July, a favorite comic shoppe posted an image to Facebook from The Dark Knight Returns as a sort of wink and nod to the holiday, patriotic fervor, all hat good stuff. Those who've read The Dark Knight Returns will recall the image immediately.
If you were a kid in the mid-80's (and I was), it wasn't so much just that Dark Knight would turn out to be the most influential comic book of the next 25 years. At the time, if you read comics and hadn't read it, you would. It was just done. Like owning jeans or trying to moonwalk when nobody was looking.
But the first comment read:
Nevermind the type-o's, but this was enough of a comics fan that the person followed this favored comic shoppe on Facebook, and didn't think it odd that (a) he hadn't read Dark Knight Returns, and (b) that the art not being his cup of tea was a reasonable excuse for shrugging off one of the essentials of the past three decades for enthusiasts of the genre and medium.
Kids today. I swear.
But it is a reminder that the breakthroughs of Dark Knight and Watchmen will be forgotten by subsequent generations, just as breakthroughs in cinema television, the visual arts, etc... are absorbed, reprocessed, and ignored as archaic or strange when the subsequent enthusiasts of the medium become the audience.
I also can acknowledge that a lot of what seems popular with the kids these days just doesn't... do a lot for me as a reader.
The X-Men (the supposed stand in for minorities, but, really, the superheroic embodiment of teen-geek alienation since at least the late 1980's) plus vampires? Yeah, I know vampires are the new zombies/ monkeys/ whatever...
But I can't do it. And I guess at least Neil Gaiman appears to agree with me. But the kids like their memes in comics, too, these days. But jumping on these memes is certainly popular with the kids, or at least it appears to be. And it certainly stinks of a certain bit of that cynicism from the publishers (seriously, Marvel, hoping to get Twilight spill over is just embarrassing, I don't care what mopey teenagers are picking up X-Men.).
After 70-odd years of superheroes in comics, with thousands of characters, with some characters popping up multiple times in a month... I'm not at all surprised that Mr. Waid has detected a certain repetition in superhero comics. I'm stunned that Law & Order ran for as long as it did and spawned a half-dozen spin-offs and countless imitators, as that seemed to more or less be the same show every time I watched it, but there's certainly a comfort factor in repetition, and some of it I can get behind. I was interested in, for example, what DC wanted to do with Brainiac in a post Infinite Crisis DCU. But I could barely muster the energy to turn the pages of the recent Tony Daniel written Batman series when, once again, the inmates of Arkham were loose in Gotham, and, once again, Gotham was experiencing gang war. That may be the third time that's been used since 2005.
But too often it does seem a bit mind boggling, when I'm reading a superhero comic from the big two and realize that was what they decided to put out there. Either the story was pointless, or the plot seemed generic and recycled... and when reading some of the recent excuses DC has had for Justice League and Justice Society comics... it all feels like filler until they can get someone with a vision on the books once again. And in a worse case scenario, you wind up with ridiculousness like the recent "Rise" and "Fall" storylines spinning out of the abysmal "Cry for Justice".
I'm certainly not sure I am ready to quit reading superhero comics, but the number of them I do read seems to be on the decline. My plans to move to largely trades and collections seems to be a smarter move every week that I get away from the comic shop habit. We'll see.
There really is quite a bit out there that I do find worth my time with superhero concepts and ideas. Grant Morrison's Batman has been nothing short of terrific for about four years. Geoff Johns' Green Lantern is a sleek jet fighter of a comic that may not be the most complex reading you're likely to do, but always stays interesting. His Flash is also promising. Rucka's Batwoman and Question stories were a highlight of 2009. Amanda Connor worked wonders with Power Girl for 12 issues. Sterling Gates fully rehabilitated the modern Supergirl title, and saved the character. I've liked REBELS that I've read in trade. Levitz's new Legion books seem like the real deal. And its going to raise some eyebrows, but I'm actually a bit enthusiastic about JMS coming on Wonder Woman and Superman.
I'm nowhere close to Mr. Waid's assessment, but I also want for superhero comics to try to do more with themselves and start working toward fulfilling the promise of the 1980's, and quit tracing back to the lazy and bad habits of the 1990's.
*comic nerds: when you pick some arbitrary thing that's going to mean you will no longer ever, ever, ever read a company's comics, like, ever... it makes you look kind of crazy. Go ahead and stop reading, but, you know, keep it to yourself or bounce it off a friend or two before making bold proclamations. Honestly, your opinions in the comment sections? Nobody cares. It makes you look a little nutty.
Annnnd today was the day I stopped reading super-hero comics. One that I won't name finally broke me. Collection stops as of now. No joke.
Mark Waid, the forefront in fans-turned-pro, the guy who became known for not just writing great superhero comics, but his encyclopedic knowledge of superhero comics, has decided to quit reading superhero comics.
Well, maybe. I kind of think maybe Mr. Waid was having a particularly bad day and used a smidge of hyperbole, but...
It wasn't actually one comic, by the way. He later explained it was his basic dislike of so much he'd read of late in the superhero mega-genre. Unlike the trolls on Newsarama, it seems unlikely Waid made any impotent proclamations regarding stopping reading comics if, say, DC didn't acknowledge Jimmy Olsen was the one, true, original Flamebird or that they didn't like some turn of events in a Captain Marvel mini series and so were done with DC... forever*. Instead, you get the feeling Waid is just weary of the state of things. Of course, one could make the same claim when he wrote Kingdom Come in the mid-90's.
...then there was that time in the dystopian future where Superman got the JLA back together and quit taking any BS from the 1990's...
Waid has since further elaborated, stating specific writers he feels are doing a good job, and that he's a bit worn out on what he sees as cynicism in the creation of superhero comics, or messages of cynicism in the comics. In general: cynicism. He doesn't like it.
At first blush, its a bit of a bitter pill to swallow from the guy who is writing the power Irredeemable series about a Superman proxy gone amuck, but Irredeemable is about what happens when hope turns to horror and our heroes turn on us. A bit different, I think, than what Waid is describing.
But he also describes that he's tired of seeing the same thing done over the 100th time (perhaps cynical recycling of stories?), and that's an idea I can get behind.
I started the post around the fourth of July. I was in a mood.
On the Fourth of July, a favorite comic shoppe posted an image to Facebook from The Dark Knight Returns as a sort of wink and nod to the holiday, patriotic fervor, all hat good stuff. Those who've read The Dark Knight Returns will recall the image immediately.
If you were a kid in the mid-80's (and I was), it wasn't so much just that Dark Knight would turn out to be the most influential comic book of the next 25 years. At the time, if you read comics and hadn't read it, you would. It was just done. Like owning jeans or trying to moonwalk when nobody was looking.
But the first comment read:
Never read the Dark Knight Returns (art isn't my style, therefore it's hard to get past it and stay interested) but there is something INCREDIBLY errie about that....
Nevermind the type-o's, but this was enough of a comics fan that the person followed this favored comic shoppe on Facebook, and didn't think it odd that (a) he hadn't read Dark Knight Returns, and (b) that the art not being his cup of tea was a reasonable excuse for shrugging off one of the essentials of the past three decades for enthusiasts of the genre and medium.
Kids today. I swear.
But it is a reminder that the breakthroughs of Dark Knight and Watchmen will be forgotten by subsequent generations, just as breakthroughs in cinema television, the visual arts, etc... are absorbed, reprocessed, and ignored as archaic or strange when the subsequent enthusiasts of the medium become the audience.
I also can acknowledge that a lot of what seems popular with the kids these days just doesn't... do a lot for me as a reader.
The X-Men (the supposed stand in for minorities, but, really, the superheroic embodiment of teen-geek alienation since at least the late 1980's) plus vampires? Yeah, I know vampires are the new zombies/ monkeys/ whatever...
But I can't do it. And I guess at least Neil Gaiman appears to agree with me. But the kids like their memes in comics, too, these days. But jumping on these memes is certainly popular with the kids, or at least it appears to be. And it certainly stinks of a certain bit of that cynicism from the publishers (seriously, Marvel, hoping to get Twilight spill over is just embarrassing, I don't care what mopey teenagers are picking up X-Men.).
After 70-odd years of superheroes in comics, with thousands of characters, with some characters popping up multiple times in a month... I'm not at all surprised that Mr. Waid has detected a certain repetition in superhero comics. I'm stunned that Law & Order ran for as long as it did and spawned a half-dozen spin-offs and countless imitators, as that seemed to more or less be the same show every time I watched it, but there's certainly a comfort factor in repetition, and some of it I can get behind. I was interested in, for example, what DC wanted to do with Brainiac in a post Infinite Crisis DCU. But I could barely muster the energy to turn the pages of the recent Tony Daniel written Batman series when, once again, the inmates of Arkham were loose in Gotham, and, once again, Gotham was experiencing gang war. That may be the third time that's been used since 2005.
But too often it does seem a bit mind boggling, when I'm reading a superhero comic from the big two and realize that was what they decided to put out there. Either the story was pointless, or the plot seemed generic and recycled... and when reading some of the recent excuses DC has had for Justice League and Justice Society comics... it all feels like filler until they can get someone with a vision on the books once again. And in a worse case scenario, you wind up with ridiculousness like the recent "Rise" and "Fall" storylines spinning out of the abysmal "Cry for Justice".
I'm certainly not sure I am ready to quit reading superhero comics, but the number of them I do read seems to be on the decline. My plans to move to largely trades and collections seems to be a smarter move every week that I get away from the comic shop habit. We'll see.
There really is quite a bit out there that I do find worth my time with superhero concepts and ideas. Grant Morrison's Batman has been nothing short of terrific for about four years. Geoff Johns' Green Lantern is a sleek jet fighter of a comic that may not be the most complex reading you're likely to do, but always stays interesting. His Flash is also promising. Rucka's Batwoman and Question stories were a highlight of 2009. Amanda Connor worked wonders with Power Girl for 12 issues. Sterling Gates fully rehabilitated the modern Supergirl title, and saved the character. I've liked REBELS that I've read in trade. Levitz's new Legion books seem like the real deal. And its going to raise some eyebrows, but I'm actually a bit enthusiastic about JMS coming on Wonder Woman and Superman.
I'm nowhere close to Mr. Waid's assessment, but I also want for superhero comics to try to do more with themselves and start working toward fulfilling the promise of the 1980's, and quit tracing back to the lazy and bad habits of the 1990's.
*comic nerds: when you pick some arbitrary thing that's going to mean you will no longer ever, ever, ever read a company's comics, like, ever... it makes you look kind of crazy. Go ahead and stop reading, but, you know, keep it to yourself or bounce it off a friend or two before making bold proclamations. Honestly, your opinions in the comment sections? Nobody cares. It makes you look a little nutty.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
What the @#$%, CNN?
So, I couldn't help but notice an ad during World Cup play that Christiane Amanpour, one of the most respected journalists on the planet, has bailed on CNN and joined ABC News. Apparently old news, but....
Don't worry, CNN will be fine. They are pimping their iReporters, one of which is a puppet.
You know, CNN... you used have decent ratings, but not so much these days. Maybe, just maybe... its time for a good, long look in the mirror.
Don't worry, CNN will be fine. They are pimping their iReporters, one of which is a puppet.
You know, CNN... you used have decent ratings, but not so much these days. Maybe, just maybe... its time for a good, long look in the mirror.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Signal Watch Watches: Predators
If you're going to make a Predator movie, Predators is certainly as Predatory a Predator movie as one could Predator.
One supposes that the initial pitch was "hey, let's remake Predator." And somewhere along the line, somebody pointed out that while everyone loves a good space alien with laser blasts, what made the original film was the assemblage of talent.* One would be oddly hard pressed to find another Arnie, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura or Bill Dukes from today's pool of talent. Also, your built in audience isn't going to see changing the Predators' look visually as an improvement. And so, Predators is more or less a jolt to the series rather than a remake, reimagining, what have you. It can be seen as a sequel, but its definitely intended to tell kids born after 1987 that Predators are pretty cool, so we're going to try to reboot this franchise.
I'll admit, this movie is not going to win any awards, and for good or ill, its a throw-back to a kind of action movie I kind of thought Hollywood had forgotten to make. But I also realized how much I missed this sort of movie. Straight up plot, tough as nails characters, a screenplay you could write on the back of a napkin, and relying mostly on practical FX in an era when we're CGing the right number of sweat droplets onto a character's brow.
I don't think this movie will be huge, and I have no idea if it will spark a Predator renaissance. But it was a fairly solid summer action movie matinee, the kind I used to make sure I saw in the theater between the ages of 13 and sometime in my 20's.
The casting is a bit more a mixed bag than the he-men of the 1987 film, featuring the curiously ripped Adrian Brody as the reluctant leader of our band of misfits. Rather than a crew of soldiers stumbling into the situation, we find that the Predators seem to have been nabbing folks from all over Earth and dumping them into their game. The movie also features Danny Trejo, Topher Grace and Alice Braga (who was pretty good, I thought).
No idea who was in the alien suits.
The plot isn't overly complicated, but the writers did add some new twists, some of which it will be up to a sequel to explore in its entirety.
Anyhow, you can do worse for a matinee screening. I'm a bit embarrassed that I was so jazzed by a movie I knew was clearly a B-movie, even as I was watching it.
One funny bit... The movie was filmed on a mix of soundstage (Troublemaker Studios, here in Austin), Hawaiian jungle and with a few scenes in Central Texas. There were at least two scenes where it was so obviously Central Texas that I almost snickered a bit, as the last shots had so clearly been... not Central Texas.
Also, the trailer for "Machete" got a round of applause from the Austin audience. Let me know what people are thinking in your theater. All I know is that Michelle Rodriguez looks awesome in that trailer.
*seriously. If you were a kid who watched nothing but action movies in the 1980's, and I was, these guys seemed absolutely amazing.
my personal heroes, 1987
One supposes that the initial pitch was "hey, let's remake Predator." And somewhere along the line, somebody pointed out that while everyone loves a good space alien with laser blasts, what made the original film was the assemblage of talent.* One would be oddly hard pressed to find another Arnie, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura or Bill Dukes from today's pool of talent. Also, your built in audience isn't going to see changing the Predators' look visually as an improvement. And so, Predators is more or less a jolt to the series rather than a remake, reimagining, what have you. It can be seen as a sequel, but its definitely intended to tell kids born after 1987 that Predators are pretty cool, so we're going to try to reboot this franchise.
I'll admit, this movie is not going to win any awards, and for good or ill, its a throw-back to a kind of action movie I kind of thought Hollywood had forgotten to make. But I also realized how much I missed this sort of movie. Straight up plot, tough as nails characters, a screenplay you could write on the back of a napkin, and relying mostly on practical FX in an era when we're CGing the right number of sweat droplets onto a character's brow.
I don't think this movie will be huge, and I have no idea if it will spark a Predator renaissance. But it was a fairly solid summer action movie matinee, the kind I used to make sure I saw in the theater between the ages of 13 and sometime in my 20's.
The casting is a bit more a mixed bag than the he-men of the 1987 film, featuring the curiously ripped Adrian Brody as the reluctant leader of our band of misfits. Rather than a crew of soldiers stumbling into the situation, we find that the Predators seem to have been nabbing folks from all over Earth and dumping them into their game. The movie also features Danny Trejo, Topher Grace and Alice Braga (who was pretty good, I thought).
No idea who was in the alien suits.
The plot isn't overly complicated, but the writers did add some new twists, some of which it will be up to a sequel to explore in its entirety.
Anyhow, you can do worse for a matinee screening. I'm a bit embarrassed that I was so jazzed by a movie I knew was clearly a B-movie, even as I was watching it.
One funny bit... The movie was filmed on a mix of soundstage (Troublemaker Studios, here in Austin), Hawaiian jungle and with a few scenes in Central Texas. There were at least two scenes where it was so obviously Central Texas that I almost snickered a bit, as the last shots had so clearly been... not Central Texas.
Also, the trailer for "Machete" got a round of applause from the Austin audience. Let me know what people are thinking in your theater. All I know is that Michelle Rodriguez looks awesome in that trailer.
*seriously. If you were a kid who watched nothing but action movies in the 1980's, and I was, these guys seemed absolutely amazing.
my personal heroes, 1987
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Tpull Moves On from Comic Fodder
I want to take a minute to note the conclusion of Tpull's run as Head of Writing About Comics over at Film/Comic Fodder.
You can read his farewell column here.
He cites the best reasons I think one can hang it up: he is recently married. His wife is someone he wants to spend time with. I tip my hat.
Travis is a professional writer, so it was a pleasure when he joined up at Comic Fodder back when I was cranking out columns at that site circa 2007. When work and life got to be a bit much and I had to bid Comic Fodder farewell, he not only took the job of primary blogger, he greatly improved the content of the site, producing up to four comic review columns per week, covering a dozen or more comics.
On top of that, Travis wrote great columns and think-pieces on a weekly basis.
People, I don't know if you've ever tried to run a comic blog, but that is no mean feat.
One of the greatest things about Travis's columns stemmed from his absolute love of comics. That enthusiasm buoyed his approach, keeping him from taking the easiest of all routes for reviewers: the negative spiral.
The easiest thing in the world to do is to criticize. If you don't believe me, its because you're likely slow, and lack the critical thinking skills necessary to ponder such an idea, you nitwit.
Travis' reviews looked for the good and bad, managed to skirt much company or even genre bias, and were always a much better yard marker for the actual quality of a comic than 99% of the rest of the reviews out there on any given day. Add in Travis' greater understanding of the content of a comic than darn near any reviews at the more trafficked sites, his ability to analyze stories, writers, artists, etc... I don't know if it was his natural talent or a concerted effort that kept his reviews from playing the "it all stinks" card that so many other reviewers don't just give in to, but some have made a name for themselves by gnashing their teeth, but he was consistently fair and always provided insight.
I'm going to miss those columns.
On the other side of it: in his farewell column, Travis mentioned the joy of returning to reading comics without having to wear his critic's hat. I can empathize. Reading comics, in particular superhero adventures, shouldn't be a task to check off, and I've been down that particular path myself. I think Travis did better than myself at managing to avoid ever getting too bogged down with the responsibility of the schedule, but I am glad that he can close the comic and not have to worry about turning on his laptop.
Vaya con dios, TPull columns. You'll be missed. But I wish the best for you and Mrs. TPull.
Up, up and away.
You can read his farewell column here.
He cites the best reasons I think one can hang it up: he is recently married. His wife is someone he wants to spend time with. I tip my hat.
Travis is a professional writer, so it was a pleasure when he joined up at Comic Fodder back when I was cranking out columns at that site circa 2007. When work and life got to be a bit much and I had to bid Comic Fodder farewell, he not only took the job of primary blogger, he greatly improved the content of the site, producing up to four comic review columns per week, covering a dozen or more comics.
On top of that, Travis wrote great columns and think-pieces on a weekly basis.
People, I don't know if you've ever tried to run a comic blog, but that is no mean feat.
One of the greatest things about Travis's columns stemmed from his absolute love of comics. That enthusiasm buoyed his approach, keeping him from taking the easiest of all routes for reviewers: the negative spiral.
The easiest thing in the world to do is to criticize. If you don't believe me, its because you're likely slow, and lack the critical thinking skills necessary to ponder such an idea, you nitwit.
Travis' reviews looked for the good and bad, managed to skirt much company or even genre bias, and were always a much better yard marker for the actual quality of a comic than 99% of the rest of the reviews out there on any given day. Add in Travis' greater understanding of the content of a comic than darn near any reviews at the more trafficked sites, his ability to analyze stories, writers, artists, etc... I don't know if it was his natural talent or a concerted effort that kept his reviews from playing the "it all stinks" card that so many other reviewers don't just give in to, but some have made a name for themselves by gnashing their teeth, but he was consistently fair and always provided insight.
I'm going to miss those columns.
On the other side of it: in his farewell column, Travis mentioned the joy of returning to reading comics without having to wear his critic's hat. I can empathize. Reading comics, in particular superhero adventures, shouldn't be a task to check off, and I've been down that particular path myself. I think Travis did better than myself at managing to avoid ever getting too bogged down with the responsibility of the schedule, but I am glad that he can close the comic and not have to worry about turning on his laptop.
Vaya con dios, TPull columns. You'll be missed. But I wish the best for you and Mrs. TPull.
Up, up and away.
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