Signal Watch Reads - "Donald Duck - Lost in the Andes"

Wow.  You can tell a lot of love went into this book just by picking it up, looking at the binding, the reprint quality, the paper stock and the supplementary material.

I finally finished Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes from Fantagraphics Books over the weekend, and I am busting.  Not just about the actual comics, which were thoroughly enjoyable, but the whole package of the volume.

As I'm learning, you may be a fan of your favorite comic characters, but few American comics characters draw the kind of devotion that you see from Disney Duck fans, especially when it comes to the works of Carl Barks and Don Rosa.  And its not just been here in North America that you see that kind of enthusiasm.  The Ducks are a global phenomena, and I've come to really enjoy some of the work you see originating from Scandanavia as well.

The collection isn't a chronological reprinting of Carl Barks' work, but a sort of greatest hits package from the period with feature length stories such as "The Golden Christmas Tree" and a lot of shorts as well as one page gags, all circa 1948 or so.

Some items about which I do not give a @#$%

Folks who've been floating around for a while will know this about my approach to the Academy Awards:  I read the results in the morning after skipping the telecast, and sometimes I even flip through a gallery of "celebs" on the red carpet, because, hey why not?  I want to see ScarJo all dolled up, too.  But I can do it without suffering through any programming by E!

But that's the way it is.  We all have things we just don't give a @#$% about that are very important to our loved ones, our friends, our co-workers, and whomever is running what I see at Yahoo! and often on Twitter.

Perusing this blog will tell you - I obviously care deeply about a lot of things that absolutely do not matter.  Clearly I'm bummed about things like the appearance or disappearance of Superman's outer/underwear.  I care about the fate of imaginary superdogs.  I get huffy that more people don't go to see movies at 11:00 in the morning.  I wonder why there are so few images of Marie Windsor for me to re-post from the internet.

Here is a list of things I supposed to care about that I basically do not give a @#$% about.  Not "I am hostile and am angry" but, "no, I heard you.  I understand, but when I think about those things, the neurons are barely firing here behind my eyeballs":

• The Oscars
• video games
• pro-wrestling
• Dr. Who
• Anything by Joss Whedon
• Kevin Smith and any of his projects
• seeing Ghost Rider 2
• that the new Star Trek is totally different from old Star Trek and makes no sense
• Downton Abbey
• Adele
• Woody Allen since 1996 or so
• being mad at George Lucas
• Star Wars, I guess, now that I think about it
• Several bands that people (Randy and JimD) think I hate - REM, Nirvana, etc...
• the resurgence of Jem and My Little Pony
• any zombies in comics that aren't in iZombie or Bombie the Zombie
• Avengers vs. X-Men
• Sales figures on comics

I think that's probably a pretty good sampling.  At least as its related to this blog.

I was going to erase this post, because it seems kind of half-assed, but that's what you guys get tonight.

I'm going to go do something else.

I still love "The Fantastic Voyage"

On Saturday morning Simon, his ladyfriend Leta and I will made our way down to the Alamo South Lamar for a screening of The Fantastic Voyage (1966).  The Alamo South hosts Kids' Club, about once a month, and I've seen some classics like War of the Worlds as part of the series.  Frankly, its a testament to both the laziness of Austinites and the lack of interest in anything not involving beer that a free screening (FREE) starting at 11:00 AM of one of the sci-fi all-time classics wasn't better attended.

Their loss.

Signal Watch Reads: Superman #6

Superman #6
Measure of a Superman
script - George Pérez
pencils - Nicola Scott
inks - Trevor Scott
colors - Brett Smith (1-22) Tanya & Richard Horie (23)
dialogue/ story/ layouts - Keith Giffen & Dan Jurgens
finishes - Jesus Merino
letterer - Rob Leigh
associate editor - Wil Moss, editor - Matt Idleson

There's a lot to parse about this issue, and very little of it has to do with the story presented in the pages.

Our rogue Superman-clone, as revealed at the conclusion of the last issue, is now freaking out Metropolis and Supergirl has shown up not to see what's going on with Superman in Metropolis, but to discuss events that occurred in a pair of books I dropped a couple of months back.

No Post Friday

If there is any justice: when I die Myrna Loy will meet me at the Pearly Gates wearing exactly this outfit.

Have a good Friday.

Fantastic Voyage (to Denton, TX and the movies)

Wednesday I head to Denton, TX for a 2 day conference on...  you know what?  I'm pretty sure you don't care.  But, yeah, 48 hours in Denton with Librarians and Degree Evaluators.  Should be a hoot.

Anyhoo, on Saturday I'm hoping to join SimonUK at the Alamo South Lamar for a screening of one of my favorites from middle school, shown to us in Life Sciences in 7th grade in order to demonstrate exactly where we might need to know this stuff.

Fantastic Voyage is the original "we've shrunk them down to microscopic size and injected them in a submarine into someone's bloodstream to save this important person's life" story, which is way less specific than you'd think.  Its been ripped off on numerous occasions.

But the first is still the best.

World's least efficient way of keeping your cholesterol under control

Doesn't that look exciting?  13 year old me certainly thought it was amazingly exciting.  I think 36 year old me still sees the appeal.

The movie starts at 11:00, but as Kid's Club at South Lamar is free, be there early as 10:00.  Have some coffee with me and Simon.  We're good company.

And if you need further incentive:  Raquel Welch wears a white "scuba suit" for a good chunk of the movie.

You can microscopically swim around in my bloodstream anytime

You can never have enough scuba-suited, laser-toting Raquel Welch for my dollar.

Come out and join us!  Wear your Slim Goodbody costume so we can map the progress of our crew!

Signal Watch Watches: Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Before turning it on, I knew literally nothing about the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).  I didn't even know it was literally about hunting treasure in the Sierra Madres, just that it featured Humphrey Bogart, and it was not High Sierra.

By the time this movie got made by director John Huston, Bogart was a huge name and draw, and I think you see a bit of Bogart you don't normally get.  Sure, I've seen a desperate Bogart in Dark Passage and the end of High Sierra, but his character here never starts as the cool, collected sort he normally plays.  He's down on his luck from the start, and seems to spiral as the movie goes on.  It's an interesting turn.

Bogart plays Dobbs, an American unemployed in Tampico in 1925.  After a bad experience with what he'd believed to be honest work, Dobbs and fellow bum Curtin (Tim Holt) are sinking low when Dobbs gets his hands on some money through luck and teams up with fellow Americans Howard (Walter Huston), an aging prospector looking to strike it rich.

Signal Watch Reads: Fantastic Four - Season One

Before I'd read the names associated with the books, I generally liked the concept behind Marvel's Season One initiative.  The books would retell the origins of Marvel's top characters and get something in bookstores and online that a new reader could pick up and enjoy.  Unlike DC's now baffling Earth One effort, Marvel basically chose to retell the same stories in a fashion that seems ready-for modern audiences.  In a way, this is the same continuity - just a wee bit cleaned up and with modern backdrops.

I believe this Fantastic Four Season One is the first Season One release, and its a promising start if the goal is to create a comfortable entry point to the Marvel Universe for someone vaguely aware of the brand and characters.

As a veteran comics read, I've tried to become more aware of the Fantastic Four in recent years, but I find my FF fandom extends only as far as the person working on the book.  Kirby?  Yes!  Mark Waid?  Absolutely.  But when Mark Millar took on the book a few years ago, I dropped it and never came back.  And that was after some bumpy readership between Waid and Millar during which my reading was never steady.

Signal Watch Watches: Exporting Raymond

I think I've seen Everybody Loves Raymond only four or five times, and at least two of those were in waiting rooms where I had no choice in the matter.  I'm pretty aware of the basic set-up, and find the actors okay, but somehow it didn't really grab me.  I will say, because I know you people and you think I'm all judgy...  I don't actively dislike the show.  I just never warmed to it the way I just never warm to a lot of perfectly decent shows.  Take House for example.  I don't know why I don't care that the show airs, but I watched one episode and that's all I've ever seen.

I do get how the show became a huge hit.  Developer and show-runner Phil Rosenthal is not incorrect in his narration of Exporting Raymond that the show appeals because its universal and relatable, no matter your income bracket, actual family make-up, politics, etc...  We all watch our parents with a low level of helpless dismay, we all watch our siblings believing they're permanently set to "goof" (sorry, dude.  Don't pretend like you think I'm Einstein over here), and we all both love and mentally/ emotionally grapple with our significant others and feel like we're barely in the game, let alone winning any debates.

The movie of Exporting Raymond (2010) follows Rosenthal as he takes wildly popular American sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond to be reinterpreted and redeveloped in Moscow for the Russian audience.  He believes that the concepts and characters will have no problem making it in a 21st Century Russia due to the basic center of the show seeming relatively straightforward.

Signal Watch Watches: The Room (again - but in a theater)

It had been a while since I'd seen Tommy Wiseau's opus The Room (2003!). While I am no longer quite as charmed by spending my time seeking out truly awful movies after the realization struck me that I was doing so at the expense of seeing good movies, the opportunity to see The Room on the silver screen with a room full of people seemed too inviting.

So, with PaulT and his ladyfriend, Val, we hit a midnight-ish screening of the notorious drama at The Alamo Ritz downtown.  Neither Val nor PaulT had seen the movie before, and, frankly, I was more than a bit unsure about how this was going to go down.  (1) I've never been 100% sober while watching the movie before, (2) sharing in the experience of The Room is not to everyone's taste and (3) I'll forewarn you that the movie features a whole lot of "adult moments", which translates into a whole lot more of Tommy Wiseau and his co-stars than you thought you were signing up for.

this deeply Photoshopped Wiseau gives us an idea of what he thinks he 's doing