Book Watch: SuperGods by Grant Morrison

In some ways, I feel like I could send the dozen or so regular readers of this site a copy of SuperGods by Grant Morrison and call it a day with The Signal Watch.

The basic breakdown of the book is equal parts comic book history and Grant Morrison's personal journey and how it associated with comics, eventually becoming his career, which, he reports, is fairly lucrative.  If you read your fair share of comics history and Grant Morrison interviews (and I do), then there's not a whole lot new in the pages, but what Morrison manages to do is what he does so often in the comics he writes: takes an existing idea and takes it on a new journey with a new thesis statement.

The bits of bio about Morrison are what's been reported in comics press: working class Scottish upbringing, hippie anti-nuke parents, punk-era-living under Thatcher, bands, a really vocal attachment to his cats (man, I hear you), early comics he's still talking about, etc...  And if you've read your David Hajdu, Lee Daniels and Gerard Jones, the comics history stuff is mostly known.  However, it's interesting to hear about it through Morrison's filter, what grabbed him as a kid, what grabbed him as a young man, and as a guy at the tipping front end of Generation X (I consider myself the last, dying gasp of the X'ers before Y came along assuming the internet was a foregone conclusion), how we looks at Miller and Moore's books in relation to the industry.  And, of course, he gets to talk a bit about the guys he works with who have been making comics history for the past two decades and more.  

Austin, I am Returned

Well, that was most certainly a trip to Ohio and back.

Flew back this evening, fortunately experienced no delays, no shenanigans, etc...  I am really tired, I ate terribly today, and as always happens when I'm sort of watching Comic-Con news just tic by, I'm a little irritated that I've never gone.  But then I remember how I do in crowds and meeting new people and...  yeah.

Work today was interesting.  Got to do a little cheerleading, shoe on podium banging, and do a lot of listening.  And Columbus is a lovely town.  We recommend.

Your Mid-Day Dietrich Moment

and that, people, is how you wear a hat.

Columbus (Ohio) Day, Comic-Con Stuff and a few words on Music

Columbus, Ohio

Tomorrow I present in front of a bunch of folks from a consortium of libraries here in sunny Columbus, Ohio.  The trip had been rumored since I was in Boston, but I didn't get confirmation that they actually wanted me here until last week.  With the mad scramble to get paperwork done during a holiday week, it wasn't really all locked down til Tuesday that I was actually going.  

So here I sit in a Springhill Suites in Columbus, Ohio.  I've seen only two slivers of the town.  The route I came in on and then the route I took to a nearby comics shoppe, something I like to do when I'm a-travelling.  I have to give a thumbs-up to Laughing Ogre Comics, not just for the great name of the shop (it sounds like they really want to open a pub where people can play RPG's with no fear of wedgies), but to their shop itself, which was professional, friendly, well-stocked and well laid out.  If in Columbus, we recommend.

Movie Watch 2012 - Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians

A recent episode of NPR radio documentary program This American Life featured bits of the story from the 2011 movie in telling its own version of the story of a gang of card counting Christians, Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians.  It's currently streaming on Netflix, so you can check it out for yourselves.

The doc follows a group of young people, mostly under 30 I'd guess, who are a wide variety of youth ministers, parishioners, pastors of small congregations and then just friends and hangers-on who follow a few leaders in the group into the wacky world of card counting in order to try to beat the house at casinos all over the country.  They form a small business which actually raises investment capital from folks they know and within the group, and then redistributes the winnings back out among the investors, the management and the gamblers.

"Masks" coming from Chris Roberson and some up and comer named Alex Ross

Oh my gosh, you guys.

Coming soon from Dynamite Entertainment!

Pretty much everything I wanted DC's pulp books to be that they just totally and completely were not. If you haven't been watching Dynamite lately, you're missing out on some pretty decent stuff, by the way.

My Grandfather, Marvin Ross, Passes

My grandfather passed on Tuesday morning at the age of 93.

As my dad's parents had divorced when he was a kid, Marvin was my father's step father, and so while there's no blood relation, there's no question he was my grandfather if all the usual granddad criteria apply.

The family loves the above photo of a young Marvin Ross, partially because his service in the 82nd Airborne during World War II is household legend.  Africa.  Italy.  France.  All this for a farm kid from Kansas who worked in FDR's NYA farms to make ends meet.  With the end of World War II, he returned stateside, earned his degree and eventually worked for Eastern Airlines where he helped roll out the first computer systems for the company.

In many ways, his life often read to me as a Rosetta Stone for 20th Century America.

It can't go without saying that he was heavily involved with his local Legion post, serving as President, and active in the activities of the American Legion.

He and my grandmother visited often, hosted us in Florida (in Miami and then in Ocala), and my folks made certain we were as close as could be despite the geographic distance.

The more I learned of his days in the military and then his career in technology, the more questions I had, and he was always willing to share a story or two about dealing with punchcards or taking fire in a house in Italy.

In recent years, after the passing of my grandmother, he'd lived first in Houston near my folks, and more recently in Las Vegas with his son, Frank.  The last few years was hard of hearing, but no less sharp when he was chatting (and you were two feet away and shouting).

I spoke with Frank and he reported that my grandfather spent the Fourth with his family, reportedly just his usual self.

He'll be deeply missed by us all.

An Awkward Encounter with an Old Flame: Superman and a few other DC Comics Solicitations for October 2012

I've stopped trying to dwell on the end of my love affair with all things DC as nobody wants to hang out with the guy moping around after a break-up, but since DC Comics and I are still in the same neighborhood, I think we're feeling our way to try to be friends, even if we're not quite ready to spend a lot of time alone together right now as things would inevitably get awkward.  We're just a person and a comic company who have both grown, and that has meant we've grown apart.

Looking at DC's October solicitations does feel like the stormy part of the break-up is over with, and after all my pleading and their curt refusals to pay me heed, it's nice to see a few overtures of friendship in the making.  It'll never be what it was, but you have to learn to live with each other if you're going to see one another whether you like it or not.

We may disagree on Justice League, but I see things like the Joe Kubert Presents anthology on the list, and I can give a warm smile DC's direction.  Just out of nostalgia, they're playing our song.

And then, the announcements about trade collections almost feel like finding a sweater left behind that you hold for a second and wonder what you should so with it, even as you like the feel of it between your fingers.

Green Lantern: Sector 2814 by Len Wein?  Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth Volume 2 by Kirby?  The Wonder Woman Chronicles by Marston?  You can't just toss those memories out.

Reviewing the Super-Books is always where I hold my breath for an instant, watching to see what DC does, see how DC reacts as we bump into one another again on the street.

And of course I got distracted and decided Germanic/ Norse Mythology by way of Opera is Really, Really Important

Back in college my pal Bryan Manzo was a music major, and one night (I cannot remember why), he started telling me about Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas.  Based on Germanic and Norse mythos, the 4 operas (usually performed over four separate nights) trace the fate of gods and mortals in pursuit of a ring that will lead to obtaining untold riches (enough to rule them all).   There are dwarves who live beneath the Earth, broken swords in need of reforging, dragons, etc...

Sound familiar?

It's no secret Tolkein was riffing on these ideas when he set out to build his own complete mythology in Lord of the Rings.  It's for someone else to say whether he expected audiences to understand his references when the book saw publication.

Characters in the opera include Wotan (Odin), Loge (Loki), Donner (Thor), Valkyries, dwarfs, dragons, nymphs and other magical and mystical folks you hear referenced in everything from Thor comics to album covers.

Thanks to Bryan, I've known about the idea of the operas and how Tolkein's work reflected mythic elements since, say, 1997.  But I'm also a pretty lazy fellow, so I kept a few facts in my back pocket, including the names of the operas and that they were a bit of a Rosetta Stone for a lot of modern mythology and cultural touchstones, be it pop-culture or otherwise.  It was always one of those "well, maybe one day I'll look into it" sort of things.

About two months ago, somehow, in a single day, The Ring Cycle was referenced multiple times in print and online.  I saw the trailer for an upcoming comic, I saw stills from a 1920's film about hero Siegfried (directed by Fritz Lang), and it popped up a few other places including Twitter and a conversation at work.

I am not one to ignore cosmic coincidence, and so I finally took a few steps.

Toys That Should Not Be: The Steve Jobs Statue

When I started blogging the collectibles market was just really taking off.  We quit doing Toys That Should Not Be as, really, what I'd advise is to just open the Diamond Previews Catalog and flip through the thing.  Every page or two, you'll find something that makes you die a little inside.

And I'm not even talking about the import Manga statues with the removable clothing.

If you're not done grieving Apple Overlord Steve Jobs, you can now make everyone who enters your home or office stop and ask the exact same question in under two minutes:  Is that Steve Jobs?

Indeed it is.

Syco Collectibles has introduced the Steve Jobs statue.  Only $100, this fantastic piece of artistry looks pretty much like a tiny Steve Jobs, complete with jeans, scrubby beard and black turtle neck and posed like Scorpio planning his attack on humanity from his undersea base.  Only, you know, tiny.  Standing on the edge of a MacBook in discount store sneakers.

I have to say, I think it's a hell of a conversation piece, and that conversation may just be your co-worker leaving your office and commenting to your colleagues about how you're still really hung up on losing the guy who yelled at people until the iPhone was cooler.

To their credit, Syco is sending part of the proceeds to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and we find that admirable enough that we've ordered four of these, so Steve Jobs can look down upon us from every corner of the room.