Newer Thought to Question Why

A fully-realised thought does not just plop out of the sky. It's not like a latter day Python-esque sketch where a man walking down a street is just suddenly struck by an albatross. Not even the more feasible streetcar. No, a fully-realised thought percolates. It transmutes. Is mused over. It's forgotten. Picked back up and forged into a working thesis. Ideas, ideas grow on trees, but they have to be worked upon to become a thought. Not merely a question, or a ponderance. ...but a real thought.

This is why I constantly have problems with "keeping up". I place strictures on what I consider to be a fully-realised thought with supporting, logical argumentation. It takes more time than the cookie-cutter nature of the quickening of culture through blogonomics. It has to be something larger, something that accurately shows a step-progression of logic, instead of giant leaps and the higgeldy-piggeldy nature of much online writing.

I'll have to think on this further.

If You Hate Something, Don't You Do It Too

The thread following Mike San Giacomo's asinine column this week has degraded from "everyone vs. Mike" in defence of iconic artwork to the typical name-calling back and forth that normally graces Newsarama threads. I guess I should be glad I stopped when I did.

2003 in Muisc: Song of the Year

It's All Right, Sooner or Later

This year it seems as though we've been at a loss for "anthems" that carry us through the summer, that we see everyone singing, and gets played again and again and again such that after about a week, you're already sick of it. Maybe I should be thankful that the record companies took the year off from pimping the "big" single, or else I'm willfully choosing to supress something since it was so goddamn awful. How often have that new Britney Spears song or Pink's "I'm Trouble" been played? Neither seem to have diffused through to public many repeated playings.

...and so, I'm left coming up with a favourite that probably hasn't been played on the radio.

•"21st Century Living" -- Matthew Good

From his debut solo album, Avalanche, "21st Century Living" is like a Rick Mercer rant set to music -- funny, relevant, biting, and catchy. Ringing in at just over three minutes, Good tackles "super-sizing" and "ambition".

"I'd like a super-size of death with a Coke."

A Portrait of Ignorance, Simply Drawn

There's this thread currently stemming from Mike San Giacomo's latest treading into the realms of blissful ignorance in regards to "realistic" and "simple" artwork. As you'll note in thread, I myself have a few things to say, which is odd since I rarely actually take part -- or read -- most of Newsarama. What's more interesting is Alan David Doane's response, Journey into Ignorance.

The Only Thing You Need to Buy This Week

Drawn & Quarterly Volume 5.

It's the only thing you need this week and it's the giant red and green covered anthology sporting a beauty from Dupuy and Berberian. The book is just gorgeous, featuring a story from the aforementioned Dupuy and Berberian, a new Paul story from Michel Rabagliati (if you didn't pick up Paul Has a Summer Job earlier this year, you seriously missed out on some great autobio comics), R. Sikoryak's adaptation of Wuthering Heights to the style of EC horror comics, and a sizeable retrospective of Albert Chartier's art and career. Plus a couple other things.

If you have no clue who any of the people above are, please, stick your head back in the sand now.

The Greatest of All Time?

Take a look at this. Occasionally I'll joke about a book being heavy enough that you could kill someone with it, I think you actually could if this one was thrown with enough force. Certainly the book itself -- or perhaps once you see your bill -- would be enough to knock you out.

Mind you, the above is just the right hand punch from a southpaw. Here's the left.

2003 in Music: Disappointment of the Year

Is This How it Ends?

When it comes to disappointments, like many years, 2003 was full of them. Jewel going further into a "pop" persona, taking on more and more aspects of her current female "counterparts" like Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera is disappointing, but I can't say I care too much about it. Resident-Select Bush continually lets down his country every minute he sits in office -- or sits on his ass anywhere else since he doesn't seem to be in office that much. Comic books can be downright depressing many weeks.

Given my bias when it comes to music, you might expect that I'd list one of the teenybopper crowd or the latest rap "sensation", but you have to have certain expectations if you're going to be disappointed. I expect a Justin Timberlake album to be mindless, bubblegum pop that I'm not going to like. Kind of hard for me to be disappointed by it. Likewise, when it comes to pure shit released in shiny plastic form that's not even fit to be used as a coaster, this year saw a doozy in Metallica's St. Anger album. Yet, there too, I expected it to be crap and it dutifully lived up to those expectations. Had it instead been something comparable to ...and justice for all, it would have been a pleasant surprise.

No, what disappoints me is when an artist/musician that I generally enjoy, produces something that is not necessarily downright awful, but something that fails to challenge me. Something that fails to grab my attention. Something that I perceive to be beneath the artist's ability. Something that I expected to be good, but is merely...okay.

In those terms, the greatest contributor to a disappointment is:

The Strokes -- Room on Fire

Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy the album, but after Is this It?, Room on Fire sets nothing of the sort and is certainly not IT. Basically, they took the safe route that too many pre-packaged (and I'm not calling The Strokes "pre-packaged", just comparing them to such "artists") bands do and essentially produced Is this It? 2. It's treading water and not breaking any new ground. Sure it sounds good, but we've already heard it a couple of years ago. A band can surely survive for years doing this, just look at The Ramones or Bruce Springsteen, creating the same album over and again. It justs gets stale after awhile.

There are many things to like about the album, many of the songs are nice, concise radio-friendly lo-fi gems, but they're all essentially patterned the same as Is this It? Particularly something like "I Can't Win" which seems to bear almost identical structure and phrasings as "Last Nite". It's still a good song, but you've pretty much heard it before.

There is some promise in the slightly different sounds of "12:51" and "Under Control" that hint at something new to come, but again, I say that Room on Fire is The Strokes treading water. I expect broader and greater things from them.

There are of course other albums that I was disappointed by and liked considerably less than Room on Fire, but it's the one I expected more from. Two other albums that stick out as disappointments that ultimately I decided I could write off without paying much more attention are as below:

Finger Eleven -- self-titled

This fourth release from the band (stop screaming already, I know that this is the third "Finger Eleven" album, but they did release an album previously when they were known as the "Rainbow Butt Monkeys") furthered them into a "kinder, gentler" nu-metal trappings and further away from their initial influences of Our Lady Peace and Tool. Maybe it's just the constant playings of "One Thing" these days, but it seems to me that they abandoned giving the music their own sound and just decided to blatantly follow Staind into nu-metal balladeering oblivion.

Linkin Park -- Meteora

Like The Strokes' sophomore album, Linkin Park too essentially repeats themselves from Hybrid Theory to make Meteora. The only difference is that I can't say that I've listened to this album again after the first week or so, and don't even remotely miss listening to it. That, and I still consider most of their lyrics trite and distant. Maybe angry, angsty music just doesn't have its edge with me that it used to. I also think that they ruined the kickass intro from "Somewhere I Belong" by attaching a song to it.

2003 in Music: Preamble

These Precious Things

Instead of waiting until January, I've decided to start posting entries about this year's volley of albums now, and dole them out over the coming days and weeks at no regular interval. As you should know by now, if you've been reading my ramblings with any regularity, I generally gravitate toward alternative, rock, metal. Those sorts of things in nice broad strokes, so if you're expecting some sort of retrospective on what's come out this year in good jazz, or country, or hip hop, you'll have to look somewhere else. Everything I'll be sticking up here will be things that I usually bought myself since I happen to like the artist in question -- or unlike many people these days, bought it for "that song" regardless of whether or not I liked the band.

My only criterion -- which is purely subjective -- is that I had some sort of experience, emotional or otherwise, with it, and do not purport in any way, shape, or form that any lists contained herein are the complete and objective truth, and that if you don't agree with me, you're an absolutely brainless, mouth-breathing heathen. Well, maybe you are anyway, but it's not necessarily because you disagree with me.

Okay, yes, it is because you don't agree with me. You mouth-breathing heathen. No, it isn't. Er...maybe.

Feel No Shame For What You Are

There is no objective qualification for what passes as the "best" in art -- even in capital "A" art that hangs on walls in museums -- despite what may near universally be accepted as some of the greatest. After all, there's probably someone out there who thinks the Mona Lisa is a piece of trash. In similar terms, for the life of me I can't figure out why people like Michael Bay are continually allowed to make films or why everyone isn't humming a Jeff Buckley tune, yet Bad Boys II is likely to do some large sales this holiday season on DVD and it's highly unlikely that Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunk is going to somehow topple whatever happens to be #1 on this week's Billboard chart -- especially considering that it was released more than a few years ago.

I will agree that it can be argued that some piece of music, or painting, or architecture, can be more proficiently produced than others -- that there is a "right" way and a "wrong" way, as it were, to do say an Impressionistic painting. Even there, though, the likes and dislikes of a particular technique is still purely subjective. Something could be line perfect Art Deco, but that doesn't matter a whit if the person viewing it doesn't happen to like the style. Just try convincing a teenybopper that Otis Redding was a genius.

Recently, amongst the comics blogsphere, a "discussion" erupted over the "best" superhero cover of the past decade, starting with Alan David Doane, bouncing to Laura Gjovaag, back to Doane, then to the Johnny Bacardi show, up to Doane, Gjovaag again, then with John Jakala chiming in.

Basically, their propositions for "best" cover are as follows:

• Alan David Doane initially proposed that Seth's cover to the "Marvel Benefit Issue" of Coober Skeeber was the "best". 
• Laura Gjovaag then countered, initially assuming that the Coober Skeeber cover was a joke, and threw out the idea that her two covers of Aquaman with fish were better.
• Johnny Bacardi didn't offer up anything for what he thought was "best", but did say that Doane's offering wasn't it.
• Finally, John Jakala countered Doane's proposition as well. Then, tongue firmly planted in cheek, offered that the Liefeld pin-up was better than everything.

Now, I know that I have a penchant for doing up listy type things that proclaim the "best of..." each year, and I may call people idiots if they pass up the latest issue of Forlorn Funnies -- because, honestly, you'd have to be mentally deficient not to be reading it -- but I usually qualify it with the fact that this is my opinion, and I don't stand as the arbiter of good taste. If you want to go ahead and continue reading a piece of shit that Geoff Johns happens to put out every month and proclaim it as "great", that's your prerogative. Just as I'm going to, when you do, tell you that you're an idiot for doing so. Same as you'll tell me I'm an idiot for not liking it.

Besides, nothing can beat Dave McKean (even if technically, Sandman isn't a superhero title), Chris Bachalo, Bill Sienkiewicz, or John Totleben. Okay, yes, I'm being facetious, but they sure look good, don't they?

I Am The Walrus

Much to Jason Marcy's dismay and the befuddlement of comics readers across North America, Ron Rege, Jr. can publish material. I know, it shocks me too, given how awful his artwork looks and how ridiculous his stories usually are -- I mean, at least Tom Hart and many of his Hutch Owen strips are funny -- that people continue to publish his work, but there it is. I meant to post this weeks ago when the actual magazine came out, but in the second issue of the new Canadian magazine, The Walrus -- think a cross between Harper's and The New Yorker only produced by Canadians -- the back page sports an incomprehensible piece of crap from Rege.

The magazine itself can be perused here, although thankfully Rege's contribution, Parallel Universe is not.

Not Just For Comic Geeks Anymore

Apparently the 80's nostalgia craze has gone beyond just retro music and the boy's toys adapted for comic book use -- i.e. properties like Transformers or GI Joe, in case you happen to be dense -- and has embraced updating the "girly" stuff as well. You can read an article on it here. Now the female and gay demographics won't have to feel left out when buying completely inconsequential dusted off crap.

The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers

From Dirk Deppey's indictment of the direct market:

"It may well be obvious to outside observers that the Direct Market has crawled so far up its own ass you can see its head coming out its own mouth..."

out on my feet

Is it me, or does it seem like every December I pull up my stakes and disappear until January? It seems as though every year December marks the beginning of a kind of fugue state where I'm operating primarily for work or school, and everything else kind of just falls by the wayside. There's little time for extraneous thought and diversion.

Anyway, after seeing all this ads in recent comics for the "Spider-Man ISP", I decided to check out the browser. It's a skin that operates using a browser called Phaseout -- another freeware, open source browser like Mozilla, only this time operating in a Flash environment. It's pretty neat, actually, with some increased functionality over Mozilla, although ease-of-use the first time isn't exactly 100%. It's fairly small as well, although it looks like it uses up more system resources than any of the Mozilla-based browsers. You can check it out yourself here.

Burn You Up, Burn You Down

I've been listening to the new Peter Gabriel Hit collection -- and to say it's one of the better hits compilation albums out there would be an understatement, aside from the noticeable omission of music from Passion, almost all the hits are here (sadly, it's lacking "Mercy Street", "Intruder", "Secret World", and "I Have the Touch", but he still crammed as much as he could onto these two disc).

The highlight, though, has to be the new song, "Burn You Up, Burn You Down", which was sadly pulled at the last minute from Up. Listening to it, you can understand why it was pulled, but not for the reason you'd probably think. The song is fucking great, a great upbeat rhythm piece more akin to Gabriel's "pop" hits than the measured introspection that was found on Up. It's even downright funky. Although it wouldn't have fit there, here it's gold amongst the other great tracks, relieving that we get to hear this rather than have it buried in his vault of unreleased material.

"Lovetown" is also on the second disc, if you didn't happen to have the Philadelphia soundtrack.

A Voice in the Wilderness

The comments blurb bit should now be fixed. Previously, occasionally when you clicked on the "comments" link or even when opening the individual archives, the page would apparently be blank. I'm not exactly sure what the problem with the script was, but deleting the "remember me?" code seemed to do the trick for the individual archives pages, and placing the comments field within the

tag seemed to do it for the comments pop-ups.

Signal to Noise

When you think about it, in the context of an infinitely possible universe, with the possible existence of any manner of sentient life across it, we're all relatively insignificant. What does one voice matter in the cacophony of thousands, of millions? In this universe, hell, just on this planet, there are several billion other people with thoughts, hopes, dreams, and so on and so forth that might be like yours, might be completely different, might have thoughts significantly more profound, more intelligent, more eloquent than yours. So, what's the point? In this world of ants marching, with someone who's going to be better, faster, more efficient, more intelligent, more insightful than you, what the fuck are you still doing here? You're nothing, just another insignificant speck on a tiny blue marble in a vast black sea.

Kind of harsh, don't you think? If the world really were like that, that one voice didn't matter, you may as well just consign yourself to oblivion right now. I mean, you don't matter, you shouldn't be heard, we need the fucking space for another Starbucks.

I give in to too much drama, granted, but this is essentially the argument held by one Matt Brady, of Newsarama fame -- a site devoted to the egregious amount of comics "journalism" which usually amounts to so much regurgitated press release pap, in case you didn't know what it was or what I thought of it --, as he said on the Brian Wood Forum:

That should be a question in the EULA agreement on EVERY blog host:

"Do you really, honestly - and we mean honestly, not that 'honestly' you use when you ask yourself whether or not you look good in that pair of jeans - think anyone gives a shit about what you think?"

If they did that, and people were 100% honest, there would be no "blog culutre."

His argument is largely levelled at the "blogs", which for some reason or another seems to have raised his ire. Mayhap because we don't kowtow to his bandwagon, or -- in context of the thread itself -- don't all bow down and worship in the house of the pimp or some other febrile nonsense. ...and, of course, anyone who doesn't agree with you should be silenced. What a fair and balanced outlook from a surprisingly conservative media standpoint. (Everyone rush out and buy some more Marvel and DC shit right now so Matt can go to bed happy, thinking he's done a good job being a shill "journalist") ...but I get away from myself.

The key point, the one where this becomes a reductio ad absurdum argument -- despite the obvious self-defeating qualities of the 'who gives a shit?' question in the first place, with a reflexive view back on the query -- is that in the world painted above, in the world where one voice doesn't matter, there would be a silence. There would be no art, no literature, no joy of creativity. Quiet little sheep. Head down. Go to sleep. No one cares what you think.

Endless fields of white, an existentialist's dream. Yet, if no voice mattered, and we were all essentially "shamed" into silence, there'd be no thought of those blank pages, because the necessity for the pages themselves ceases to exist. Electronic bandwidth ceases to exist. Communication becomes perfunctory, utilitarian, and sterile.

The counterargument is simple: every thought matters. Every voice. Every single ounce of any idea. Good or bad. Maybe it doesn't matter to me, maybe it doesn't matter to you, but it certainly matters to someone, even if just for the cathartic release of getting something out of your head. Basically, in some way, fashion, or form, the blog entries -- even if on endless trivialities of what you ate for breakfast or that neat thing your kitten can do with a bowl of milk -- it matters to the person posting it. Possibly a lot, possibly just as a passing notion, but it matters. It's communication. It's information. Without it, human beings, as social animals, cease being human beings and become some other. Some form of automata.

The trick is finding those similar souls, talking about things that matter to you.

Colour Me Amazed

The importing of the original Don't You Hate Pants? postings actually worked. This, of course, means that all links made previously to the blog will have been destroyed, but well...um, "my cat's breath smells like cat food."

A Distant Sound of Thunder

Just a reminder to those of you slavering for the release of the next in Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series that the fifth book, Wolves of the Calla, comes out today. Or at least, I bloody well hope it does. Unlike many other high profile, highly anticipated works (like say, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which we had for like a month before we could sell it), we haven't received our shipment yet. This is especially odd considering that the release date of November 4th has been advertised all over the place. Hopefully, ours is going to be in nice and early this morning.

For those of you interested in the specifics, this is going to be a thick fucker, weighing in at over 700 pages, for $52 Canadian ($35 US). ...and, if you haven't already clued in, unlike the other four in the series, this one is being released to the public as a hardcover original (co-published by Donald Grant and Simon & Schuster). The other four were all trade paperback originals, with a non-trade hardcover offered exlusively through Donald Grant. For comics fans, you should also note that this one's being illustrated by Bernie Wrightson.

Simplicity of Style

I've always stated that I wanted d-generation.ca to be simple, clean, and efficient. As many of you will remember, the initial design for the opening page was white with my "mission statement", followed by a simple navigation bar to the various areas of the site. In the last update, I streamlined that even further, through collapsing everything into the multi-purpose weblog, Don't You Hate Pants?

Personally, although I like each thing ordered in its own kind, -- "everything in its right place" and all that, it's the metaphysicist in me that earned a philosophy degree -- I always felt that having everything scattered about here and there was unnecessary clutter, and not the easiest to navigate. That's the intial reason why I switched to a one-stop blog. Yet, to me "everything in the same place" didn't quite work either, so I branched out and decided to embrace this Movable Type method of blogging.

The appeal, largely, of Movable Type was the categorisation it allows. Now, you can look up anything under the category of "comics" and be awed at the fact that there's nothing there, but eventually, you'll see everything of its kind with kind. ...and you've still got everything, all at once, on the main page.

Of course, there are compromises to be made with such "improvements". Namely, nothing is simple any more. It may look simple on your end, but the architecture housing this puppy is bloated and overcomplicated -- and that's after I pared down the useless bits I'd never touch.

Anyway, welcome to the new blog, same as the old blog. I'll still be tweaking things in the coming days, so expect some more changes.

in which d. emerson eddy loses what little sanity he has left

I'm fiddling around with Movable Type, and it's driving me batty. If all goes according to plan, Don't You Hate Pants? will soon get a new friendlier looking interface, provided, of course, I can manage to teach myself the new scripties for the template and whatnot. If not, you may hear about a frothing madman rampaging through Southern Ontario killing people who admit they know CSS and Perl sometime later in the week.

"The Room is on Fire as She's Fixing Her Hair

Like several thousand other white boys across North America, I picked up the latest Strokes album this week, after being thoroughly dejected and disappointed after finding out that the limited edition two-disc set of REM's "Best of..." release had been delayed a week. No REM fix for me for awhile, it would seem. I had planned on picking up the Strokes' Room on Fire anyway, but I was going to wait for a couple weeks until after I got my high fidelity jones out of the way first.

Now, after hearing the first single, "12:51", I was partially expecting something different. I knew that originally the Strokes had set out with this album being produced by Radiohead-producer, Nigel Goodrich, and despite that process being aborted, I was expecting something along the lines of the disparaty between Radiohead's Pablo Honey and The Bends. Instead of something different, we essentially get Is This It 2. Keep in mind, this isn't a bad thing.

This offering is a little more refined than the earlier disc, there's a larger "album" feel here than the last disc, but the overall sound and approach is still the same. The influences are still easy as hell to spot, with a blend of 60's and 70's rock with New Wave, so you'll see snippets of Hüsker Dü mixed with Iggy and the Stooges, some Peter Gabriel-era Genesis accompanied by the Cars clang. I suppose some people could make a game of it, deconstructing each song into their component parts of what strum came from which classic rock guitarist. I'd rather just listen to it at this point.

If I have any complaint at all, it's that -- due to the fact that the band focusses on getting to the heart of the song without any frills or extravagencies -- like Is This It, the album is too damn short, clocking in at just over half an hour.

The Shit's So Thick, You Could Stir it With a Stick

Just a reminder to everyone that REM's latest "Best of..." disc, In Time comes out today. I do like the one new song on it that they've been spinning as a single, "Bad Day", which sounds a bit like old REM before Bill Berry had to invoke the wrath of god on himself, nearly die, and leave the band to become a farmer. Still, this collection will contain most of the good stuff from their four phenomenal albums of the nineties, Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster, and New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Honestly, you could probably just repackage "Automatic..." in it's entirety as a best of disc. Personally, it was one of the best albums, if not the best album of the 90's, certainly of REM's career -- and that's saying something.

The tracklisting is as such:

1. Man On The Moon
2. The Great Beyond
3. Bad Day
4. What's The Frequency, Kenneth?
5. All The Way To Reno
6. Losing My Religion
7. E-Bow The Letter
8. Orange Crush
9. Imitation Of Life
10. Daysleeper
11. Animal
12. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
13. Stand
14. Electrolite
15. All The Right Friends
16. Everybody Hurts
17. At My Most Beautiful
18. Nightswimming

For those keeping score, it's got a song from Dead Letter Office, two songs from Green, a song from Out of Time, four songs from Automatic for the People, one song from Monster, two songs from New Adventures in Hi-Fi, two songs from Up, two songs from Reveal, the soundtrack offering "The Great Beyond", and the two new songs "Bad Day" and "Animal". I know I'll be among the people disappointed not to see "Drive", "Radio Song", "Shiny Happy People", "Star Me Kitten", "Crush With Eyeliner", "Strange Currencies", "Wake-Up Bomb", "Leave", or "Bittersweet Me" to be included, but I guess that's to be expected in a single disc release from a phenomenal band.

Mind you, there will be a limited edition double-disc set, with more soundtrack offerings, demo versions, live versions, and such. It'd be worth it alone just to hear the version of "Star Me Kitten" with William Burroughs again.

AAAARRGH!

Anyone else been noticing that Blogger seems to be eating things more often lately?

The Many Modes of Maynard

If you've been reading me for any period of time, you probably know about my obsession with the band Tool, who I consider to be today's alt metal gods carrying on in the tradition of King Crimson and Pink Floyd. I also said previously that I'd talk a bit more about the Underworld soundtrack, and I'm still intent on doing so, but this isn't it. It's only part of it.

In recent years, Tool's frontman, Maynard James Keenan, has been spreading his wings with numerous projects, emerging somewhat like a sweeter Mike Patton (the manic genius and voice behind Faith No More, Tomahawk, and Mr. Bungle, among many, many more projects). His first separate product, showing his "feminine" side was A Perfect Circle, which showed us an increased range and vocal structure from Maynard, who already had sickly sweet melodies coupled with acid screams on Tool down to a science.

On the Underworld soundtrack, there's the debut of his new project, Puscifer. I don't know if this was just something he and Danny Lohner put together for the album or if it's going to be something completely new and independent, but damn is the song good. I'm certainly hoping this isn't just a one-off for the soundtrack. It's called "Rev 22:20" and is a nice little lounge number about being entranced by a woman and the joys of sex. This, of course, made all the more interesting given that Revelation 22:20 (I'm using the King James version, since it's what I have handy) reads, "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." Seems as though Maynard was taking "come" to have its latter day meaning.

Invest in Wooden Caskets, in Guns, in Bodybags

Why is it that whenever I play one of the online games that Microsoft included standard with Windows XP that invariably the person I'm playing against always pulls out of the game -- be it hearts, checkers, backgammon, reversi, or spades -- a hand or move away from me winning the game? I don't do it when I'm about to lose, or if something shitty happens like missing a nil or receive the queen of spades. Is it some kind of fundamental inability to accept a loss among many English-speaking players? By ducking out of the game just before the end, you're intent on "saving face" through some bastardised version of a strategic retreat. Personally, it just makes you look like a shithead.

Overdrawn at the Blood Bank

So, I picked up the first issue of the new Vampirella Comics Magazine the other day...

If that sounds like a punchline to anyone else, you're not alone. Honestly, I never imagined picking up an issue of something like Vampirella myself, but this new launch as a magazine was supposed to bring Vampirella herself to a new level in comicdom. It was supposed to combine quality creators with the character, along with a more mature outlook that wouldn't embarrass any sensible reader. As you can tell by the cover, you're still going to be embarrassed if you take this puppy out in public. Tits and ass are still in full fore, unlike the revamp of Lady Death, this is just the old dog in refurbished clothes.

I suppose that my hesitations when looking over the solicitations a couple months ago, deciding whether to order this, were well deserved, even now to the point where the original cover painting by Mark Texeira has been enlarged and cropped to make the nearly nude Vampirella even larger on the cover. I guess I only have myself to blame. Now, I'm not intent on wholly bashing the entire magazine -- there are indeed some highlights -- but it seems as though the new sensibilities work against the choices for the cover and the content within -- much like the smutty Greg Horn covers on Emma Frost work against reading the more "wholesome" coming-of-age story within.

Primarily, the new sensibilities are twofold. The first is that the book has now embraced and magazine format, and as such, is going to showcase more than just comics, and more than just Vampirella material. The second, is that quality creators are being enticed into doing Vampirella stories, rather than just the usual run-of-the-mill T&A artists.

To satisfy the first criterion, there are interviews in this issue with Alan Moore and Mark Wheatley. Both are incredibly brief -- totaling seven pages in all -- but they attempt to broaden outward from just Vampirella. Alan Moore talks briefly about the upcoming re-release of his novel, Voice of the Fire, as well as Top Shelf's forthcoming volumes of The Mirror of Love and Lost Girls. Personally, this is the piece that got my attention in the first place, but at a scant four pages of text, it amounts to little more than a promo for Moore's forthcoming work. If you were thinking of picking this up just for the Moore interview, that would be a bad call; read it in the store and leave it on the racks. I can honestly say that the interview with Moore is at odds with everything else in the book. Being Alan Moore, this history of the beginnings of his novel are quite interesting, even though whoever copy-edited it left a major gaffe -- with "pneumonic" being used instead of "mnemonic", a nice little malapropism. This kind of thing actually runs through the non-comics segments, with typos and misused words prevalent, it drags the book further away from being "professional". The Wheatley interview is a nice promo for his new Frankenstein Mobster book, although there is no great insight into its production or anything else, just the standard song and dance. There is, however, a brief snippet of a "Frankenstein Mobster meets Vampirella" strip, that apparently in order to read we must go to the Vampirella website. Personally, I'm more interested in that than the other text pieces that I'll discuss below.

In addition to the interviews with the two comics creators, there are also brief text pieces -- and large images -- of the new Vampirella model, Kitana Baker, and one with convention nut who dresses up like Vampirella, Diana Knight. Both are little more than printed soundbytes, appearing vacuous, and only reinforcing that the pieces are only there for the pictures of nearly naked girls. I'm not even going to start on how many problems I have with this sort of thing -- if you want softcore porn, just buy softcore porn, there's plenty of it available. Things like this truthfully don't titillate, they just serve as an outlet for people who possibly can't regularly buy the true adult flesh rags, like say, children and teenagers. ...and honestly, as I said of the cover, it works against those of us buying it for the Moore or Wheatley interviews, or even the horror fans who this mag seems to be targeting.

That target actually becomes apparent in the "reviews" section. I use sneer quotes since most of the capsules aren't really reviews, but rewritten promotional material, especially the comics review section, which doesn't actually review anything, it just puts together some quotes from the horror comics' creators from other interviews, uncredited, and text pieces in the books themselves.

Of the second criterion, there are two comics stories: a black and white tale both written and illustrated by Steve Lieber, and the other in colour, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, with art by Gabriel Rearte and Meth.

The former from Lieber seems to be exactly in line with the new sensibility of bringing back some "class" to Vampirella. The story, "The Killing Floor", is your typical rote horror yarn you'd expect from a book like Creepy or Eerie, with our protagonist and her hapless male friend crashing a cult intent on raising the dead with the years of blood that has seeped beneath the killing floor of an abattoir. It's nothing particularly ground-breaking or enlightening, but it's a solid genre piece, well illustrated and written. The emphasis isn't here to showcase Vampirella's assets, it's to tell a succinct horror yarn, and as such Lieber performs admirably.

The other comic, "Vampirella Must Die", is exactly what many have come to hate about the "bad girl" fetish of comic books. It's bad. Very bad. The intent here seems to be cheesecake, mixed with "humorous" lampoons of superhero cliches and conventions, and the result is a bad Image comic book, particularly a Rob Liefeld helmed Image book, along the lines of Glory and whoever the other "Maximum Press" heroine was...Avengelyne? It's fails miserably at being worthwhile, made even worse from the promise that this will be the magazine's first serial.

I guess with that in mind, I'm given even less reason to return for the next issue.

Another Skeleton Song Stuck in my Head All Night

finally clued in to what the new Sevendust album reminds me of the most. The last time around, I said that it sounded like they were writing three-minute versions of Dream Theater material. There still is that hint of the same sound -- being a three-minute radio-friendly art metal band, but an analogue more apt bound into my head. They sound a lot like 5150-era Van Halen back when Sammy Hagar was still their lead singer. There isn't that clang of keyboards that Van Halen toyed with for that album, but the song structure and approach isn't too far off. Provided, of course, Hagar was screaming about "I'll fuck up your face and never look back" instead of love coming walking in, but there you go.

It Was A Sunny Day In Palookaville

This may not be news to anyone but Stuart McLean's new book, Vinal Cafe Diaries, came out today, with a cover and interior illustrations by Seth. Seth, of Palookaville fame if you have no clue who I'm talking about. The book looks gorgeous, some really nice full page illustrations serving as subject breaks, along with phenomenal facsimile vintage advertisements/coupons on the inside cover.

I'm not sure if any of you know who McLean is, but he does a radio show on Sundays for the CBC called The Vinal Cafe, and has released several previous collections of his stories transcribed -- Home from the Vinal Cafe, Stories from the Vinal Cafe, and Vinal Cafe Unplugged, in addition to this one. He's truly a master Canadian storyteller and damn funny to boot, having won the Stephen Leacock award too many times to count. (Now, if you don't know who Leacock is, you've got problems.) I've only had a chance to flip through the book so far, but it looks like this one has the story about Dave alone in a hotel room with a duck, that honestly has to be read to be believed. That story alone will have you in stitches.

It's published by Penguin, ISBN: 0670044369. You know you want it.

To Crumble and Just Break Down

On a whim -- and because it was only twelve dollars -- I picked up Sevendust's latest album, Seasons. Now, I really liked their self-titled disc and their breakthrough Home. Yet, 2001's Animosity was such wank. It seemed like they were trying to go in all directions at once -- Staind whining, Korn angst, Slipknot rage -- like they were trying to be more and more "radio-friendly", losing something integral to their core, and releasing an album that didn't seem entirely sure what it wanted to be.

What impressed me about Home wasn't just how hard the album was, to the point where some songs were just downright crunchy, but that the whole album gelled into more or less a male fronted, harder version of Skunk Anasie or a latter day Faith No More. Animosity just sounded like nu-metal trash.

Anyway, Seasons continues the softer, gentler side of Sevendust, but it's a more cohesive product. There's an attempt at an album sound here. One that makes them sound like they're writing three minute versions of Dream Theater songs, which I'm not sure is a good thing. The songs on the album are decent, well-crafted, but they still lack the raw energy and power behind their earlier work.

An' Another Thing

I've been taking time out from steady rotation of Hawksley Workman's lover/fighter, A Perfect Circle's Thirteenth Step, and David Bowie's Reality lately to spin Dave Matthews' new solo disc, Some Devil. I'm impressed, actually. I kind of expected something more like Everyday, with an emphasis on guitars and pop stylings, instead, we've got an album that sounds a lot like a 60-minute version of "Crush" from Before these Crowded Streets. It's soft, melodic, and rather dark, sounding most of the time like Sting being backed up by U2, all of them on valium. I may put up a review proper in the coming days, but I just wanted to note that it's quite a good disc.

comments?

I've been running a forum for this site from about the same time d-generation went live originally, but I'm wondering if it's necessary. I know it only costs me peanuts, but if it's not being used, except for Logan, Alan, Nick, and I to talk to ourselves, what's the point?

I've noticed for awhile that webloggers out there are having a "comments" system embedded more and more in their pages. I'm coming from a situation where I was coding these bloody things myself rather than having an auto-enabled script -- I hand coded d.'s daily diatribes before blogging was vogue, back when the "live journals" were cumbersome, clunky beasts hosted on another's server -- which originally necessitated an alternate forum to post comments and such. Now, the question is, if I add a comments system and close down the forum, which comments system should I use?

I know that there are standalone scripts like fiz.box or haloscan that can be integrated into blogger's coding, or I could ante up and switch the entire thing over to Moveable Type -- mind you, that would cost more than what I currently pay for the forum. For those of you with comments systems, what do you think is the best?

It's The End of the World As We Know It

I think I've finally managed to fix the problem I've been having with the "new" site's archiving system and the RSS feed. You see, the "new" blogger has a default to create a subdirectory of /archives/, rather than previously just archiving the pages in the same directory as the main blog. Basically, I suppose this is to keep your main directory clear and relatively free of the archives that will build up of any given amount of time.

The only problem is, you've got to make sure all of your "permalinks" are encoded in the proper fashion, that there actually is an "archives" subdirectory on your server, and that the archive URL is accurate, otherwise you'll wind up with an RSS feed that tries linking to things on your hard drive. That's never a good thing for an aggregator programme.

The Sad Last Stand of a Broken Man

"This is not The Greatest Song in the World, no.

This is just a tribute."
-- Tenacious D, Tribute

Of all of the "nostalgia" projects that Marvel could possibly put out -- say, regaining the license to Micronauts, maybe a new Alf comic, or resurrecting dead concepts like Rocket Raccoon -- the one that probably wouldn't pop immediately into anyone's head is a resurrection of the Marvel Cosmic. It started with the Infinity Abyss mini-series, then earlier this year with Marvel: The End, and now with the ongoing Thanos series. I guess Quesada must have a soft spot for Starlin's work, or something, because it doesn't seem to fit in with the current Marvel publishing scheme. Today's Marvel seems all about grounding the characters in some sense of "reality", getting them out of their costumes, and into a sort of more realistic approach to their storytelling -- going from just straight up, goody, coloured costumes to spinning the story through other genres (i.e. superhero as cop drama, superhero as legal thriller, superhero as sitcom, etc.)

The Cosmic Shakespearean Tragedy

Although often waxing Shakespearean monologues of woe, destruction, and hubris, the characters in Starlin's cosmic tales have always been appropriately larger-than-life. You won't see Gamorra settling down off the New Jersey turnpike earning a living as a stripper, giving us insight into the human condition, peeling away levels of her psyche with every fallen article of clothing, no. That would just be silly. Granted, someone writing fan fiction has probably already tapped that idea, but that's never been the approach that Starlin has given the cosmic characters. ...and you won't start seeing an alternate approach here either.

If you think of Richard III with a cast of aliens, gods, superheroes, and a giant purple madman in the title role, you'd come close to the nature of the arc of Starlin's Thanos. Up to this point, Thanos has largely been portrayed as an unrepentant villain -- with occasional flights of seeming heroism that usually amount to nothing more than doing the "good" thing in order to save his own purple hide. Now, aside from Thanos Quest and The Infinity Gauntlet, although I enjoyed the premises and the large landscape of the entire Marvel Universe Starlin set his epics against, my interest normally fizzled out before I reached the end. Although there were interesting things going on here and there, series like the other Infinity books, I never finished.

It has been some time since I read the initial offerings of the few, but if I remember correctly, I always found the execution to be entirely too bland and it's always going to end up back at the status quo. Nothing really changes, and Thanos himself ended up looking like nothing more than a pathetic failure. A Quixote tilting at windmills for his lady Death. Even if you take it as a character arc, intent on progressing Thanos himself, it fails because there's really no growth, just endless cycles of striving for power, attaining it, and then losing it again. I suppose there's probably a moral lesson in there somewhere, that those out to gaining power through negative means are destined to see it fall from their grasp, or from the perspective that those with the "disease to please" can never achieve anything of substance for themselves since they're doing nothing more than walking to the whims of another. ...but I think I'm attributing too much to a "cosmic adventure" comic book. Maybe that is the thematic character development that Starlin is trying to make explicit in this first issue of Thanos' new ongoing series, but it feels like all so much exposition.

As Thanos sits, sits on a barren desolate world that he himself destroyed, he waxes for the audience, "I have always been a monster, Adam Warlock. This I have accepted, even taken pride in. You cannot conceive of the misery I have left in my wake." (Thanos #1, pg. 6) Yet, Starlin hasn't the wit of Shakespeare, and what follows the villain's self-admission comes as nothing more than a recap, giving no further insight into the nature of the beast. No dramatic turn, no further character points, a simple retelling, not even coloured by the character's narration.

To exposit or not to exposit? That's a bloody question

I've seen it many times before that a comic is lambasted for not telling the reader enough about the past history of a character that it's deemed unfriendly to new readers. Strangely enough, this criticism usually comes from longtime readers and not someone new to the material. Case in point, Crimson Dynamo. I've seen numerous reviews and comments about the series being difficult for people without a working knowledge of the previous incarnation of the character, since this new series doesn't say anything about it other than the name of the guy who designed it and wore the original armour. What does it matter? This new book isn't about him, it's about someone entirely new, who themselves have no clue who this guy was. Knowledge of the original creator has absolutely no bearing on the enjoyment of the new series.

Likewise, though, when a book does receive a detailed history of the character at hand, it too gets cut to shreds for "boring" old readers, and dumping too much exposition on their heads; information that they already know to boot. Jim Starlin is from the "old school" of comics writing, and as such, the first issue of Thanos is essentially an encapsulation of his prior history. Everything a reader might "need" to know about the character that happened before this point. Honestly, it isn't terribly exciting, but it gets the information across that will allow us a more "informed" view of what will come now that Thanos has apparently turned a new leaf.

The interesting thing is that no doubt, had Starlin not included this material, self-same critics would have been attacking it for turning Thanos on to a new path without giving us the information of what came previously to judge the repentant hero turn against. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, that really seems to hinge on whether or not the given critic happens to like the previous work, whether it's a currently popular writer/artist, whatever, that lends a bias to their critique.

In the best of all possible worlds, exposition is woven seamlessly into dialogue and action, but, honestly, very few seem to actually be able to do this. Starlin's tack is to make it explicit, have the characters come right out and say what has gone before, albeit with a slight turn of reflection. I think, had Thanos' recounting of his history been a little more peppered with questionable recollection -- the usual colour of an unreliable narrator -- , there might have been a greater hook to "listen" to what he's saying.

Excellent Birds

Where Starlin does go right, -- and I believe where he has always been great and the reason why he can bring me back every time he does a new project despite the fact that I never seem to wind up finishing them --, is as a draughtsman. His pages are always well-designed and easy to follow. In this first issue, he uses a fair amount of double-page spreads, that nicely enhance the "scope" of the cosmic nature of the book.

There's also an interesting design element on most of the pages that I think is part of the true appeal of the book. On most pages, there are little black boxes. As evidenced in the spread above, it's in the lower left hand corner. Like on the other pages, it makes very little sense. It's not a box for page number, there's no dialogue or caption, it's just a black box superimposed over the image. It's an alien image brought into the design, and makes you notice it because it feels so out of place, especially as it grows larger and larger on every subsequent page, eventually developing into three black panels. Then three black panels with a progression of opening eyes. Apparently, someone has been watching, and at Thanos' repentant surrender turn, screams a cryptic, "So it begins!" This, I suppose is the hook of the book, an unexplained set of devious eyes lending credence to the idea that something "bigger" may be happening. If you blink, you'll miss it.

So Weary. All the Time

Stormy Weather.

Billie Holiday or Eartha Kitt?

Many a man will go to his death with this question on his mind.

dead letters - dated March 13, 1998

I find these things in the darnedest of places, either crumpled up into a ball or folded, inserted in a book. Sometimes these were things that I was actually thinking at the time, sometimes they were real letters that saw a "final draft" and were delivered, sometimes they were just material that I was working on to put into a short story or something. This one I found when I started thinking about Harold Bloom's Stephen King rant and decided it was due time I re-read Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, -- it was folded up, coffee-stained, and hand-scribbled, inserted inside. I think this was an exercise, since I'd be damned if I could figure out a "who" here and I'm fairly certain I worked a lot of this material into my "relationship soliloquy" play, Throb. It's only slightly edited here and follows a similar theme and approach that I've worked into many monologues about asking someone out for a date. I would have been seventeen when I wrote this and some of this was just embarrassing.

I know that this is probably going to seem a little strange. In this age of instantaneous contact through various electronic means, who actually receives anything in the mail aside from bills and solicitations for credit cards, music and video clubs, or a gym? Let alone a hand-written letter from someone you haven't seen in a matter of months and is probably the last person you'd naturally expect to have heard from again. For all I know, you could very well have forgotten that I existed and may be somewhat unnerved reading these words. This is a terrible way to open a letter, but if you find this either creepy or inappropriate, please allow me to apologise now.

And now I'm beginning to second-guess myself. I want to write the right words, or rather the right combination of words, but all I seem to be doing is rambling and dancing around the point I haven't even alluded to and am already apologising for. If this were a conversation, I'd probably be stammering, if anything even managed to pass my lips other than a squeak or some inane triviality. What is it about women that turns most men's intelligence and eloquence into seeming incoherence?

I wanted to do this back in December, before you left for greener pastures, but my brain got the better of me. I have an incredibly hard time being selfish, I always have to factor in all extenuating circumstances and repercussions anything might have on the other person. I can't just wantonly inflict myself on another human being. I don't exactly know why, it's just not something I can do. In this case, I began asking myself, "Is this right?", and I began thinking about things like our relative stages in education -- you nearing the end of your and me being somewhere in the middle -- or something trivial like age difference. I only ended up tying myself into one big Gordian know of "maybe". And so, conflicted, I said goodbye and let you walk away.
We do so many stupid things in our lives and spend the rest of it thinking on all that was and all that could have been.
By now, probably back about the first paragraph in truth, you've got an idea of what I want to say. What I want to ask. I was hoping that I could actually do this in person, or via telephone, but seeing that I'm not about to scour the city, you're not listed in the phone book, and I think showing up on your doorstep like a lost puppy is going too far, I set about writing you this letter. Again, I apologise if I've made any undue transgression, but I didn't want to sit around wondering or hoping that we might just happen to cross paths. I'm never that lucky.
What I wanted to ask is both as simple and as complicated as this: would you like to go out for a drink or coffee? Maybe a set of white wall tires? I've never been any good at this sort of thing, and knowing my luck you've probably either moved and thus not reading this, or happily ensconsed in someone else, or simply not interested. I know that I don't have much to offer, other than intelligent conversation and a gentle heart, but I figured I might as well ask.
The ball, they say, is in your court. If I don't hear from you, I wish you the best and to have a good life.
unsigned.

Nothing Has Changed, Everything Has Changed

Well, the first of October's season premiere's have come and gone, specifically for Smallville and Angel. Maybe in order to properly enjoy television, I need to be almost falling asleep, but I quite enjoyed both first episodes.

Last season, Smallville ended on a note with Clark donning the red Kryptonite ring -- thus turning him "evil" -- and running away to Metropolis, and Lex awakening on his honeymoon jet to an empty plane and the approach of lots and lots of water. The third season open "three months later", and, honestly, I don't know if there are different writers or they've just finally come into their own, but there is a definite different feel to the show. I know that "status quo" will be reinstated in a couple episodes and we'll be back to fighting Kryptonite mutants every week, but ever since last season, there's been more of an edge and more of a continuing through line to the series.

Highlights of the first episode of season three are actually an appearance by Rutger Hauer as Morgan Edge, even though he doesn't do much more than tempt Clark and look menacing, and the decidedly surreal survival experience of Lex on a desert island talking to some "Louis" that magically appeared and has been helping him. Seems as though Lex is on the road to being a box of fruit loops or a nutbar -- maybe an Oh Henry?.

...and with Angel. Well, the past two seasons have been disappointing. It seemed as though there were some interesting plot points here and there, but the writers weren't willing to do the work in order to get to the grand revelations. With the new "scenario" being that the group are now in charge of the LA branch of the evil law firm, Wolfram & Hart, I had my reservations.

I had a nice big smile on my face when I saw James Marsters receive second billing in the credits -- guess he really is in for the long haul, this is a good thing -- and there were some really nice moments of hilarity, including the opening teaser with Angel being flanked by his firm showing up after a rescue, Fred's inability to answer a phone, Gunn's bizarre transformation, the "...then should I call you 'Wesle'?" crack, nice snide cynical remarks here and there that have been missing from the writing for a while, not to forget Harmony and her reaction at the appearance of "blondie bear". Maybe Joss is just paying attention to Angel again?

Oprah

This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, and I apologise if I just go off on a rant here, but...

Yesterday, we received the second book in Oprah Winfrey's resurrected book club. Like the first, as it came in from Simon & Schuster, instead of actually telling us what the book was on any of the boxes, or even on the invoice, it's listed as "OPRAH BOOK CLUB BOOK TWO". Like with Steinbeck's East of Eden, it completely saddens me that the fact that it has been selected as part of Oprah's book shindig overshadows the work itself. I know sticking her silly little sticker on the book will increase the book's sales, but come on. The first time around, the "Oprah" edition of Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance didn't come in as "OPRAH BOOK CLUB BOOK N", it came in as Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. We're a fairly intelligent bunch operating our bookstores, if you told us that Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country was the next selected for the book club, we know what to bloody do with it.

Snakes in the Grass

I know you probably don't care, and won't have a clue what I'm talking about anyway, but on Thursday, we're having our provincial elections here in Ontario to elect our new premier. For the past eight years, we've been under the jackboot heel of the Progressive Conservatives (I sure as hell didn't vote for them, but apparently there are a large number of idiots populating the province) who've done as much as they possibly could to privatise social services and tear things like health care, education, and electricity to tiny little shreds.

What really irks me isn't necessarily all the crap that they've foisted upon the Ontario people, sure it contributes to my near pathological disgust of the Tories, but the sheer arrogance and ignorance inherent in their very being makes me want to wretch. Just lately, Ernie Eves -- currently our premier and a Tory -- mentioned that if the Liberals are elected that our hydro bills will go up. You can read about it for yourself here, although that link will decay in a few weeks.

Anyway, what he's not telling you, is that several months ago, during the beginning of the summer, due to the deregulation of prices and privatisation of hydro, many people were being shut off -- almost immediately -- when they failed to pay their now exorbitant electric bills. Now, I'm not one who would disagree with the idea that those utilising a service in the private sector don't deserve to have that service terminated if they fail to meet their fiscal agreements, but something like electricity is supposed to be public here and we never should have been in the situation in the first place. The problem only started there, though. In order to be a smiley gladhand and try to sweep this under the rug, Eves decided to put a cap on energy prices at something like 40 cents a kilowat, when it actually started skyrocketing higher and higher. Sure, it's a quick fix that allowed our air conditioners and refrigerators to keep running during the summer, despite an increased drain on the power grid, but there's the little problem of who's paying for the overage? If the actual price is something around five dollars a kilowat -- and honestly, when he placed the cap on prices, the amount per was getting ridiculously out of hand and much higher than the set price --, who's paying the remaining $4.60?

It's still us, we just haven't been hit with it yet. It's been rerouted through creative accounting by the Conservative government, as if we're not supposed to notice the giant elephant being hidden under a doily. It doesn't matter who gets elected on Thursday -- PC, Liberal, New Democrat, Marijuana, Green, Gorilla Grodd -- we're still going to get hit with an increase in hydro bills in order to fix the mess that Eves created serveral months ago. I don't know if he's just deluded, or what, but it's like he fails to see the amount of crap that he's caused.

On a related note, apparently being tenth in terms of education and health care is a good thing, and that a $4.5 billion dollar deficit is balancing the books. I guess the Conservatives were aiming for a deficit, and that the substantial "growth" they keep talking about in health care and education is "negative" growth, causing us to spiral down to being the worst in the country. I mean, if we're tenth, we're fucking last -- there are only TEN provinces and the territories are never included in the rankings.

Ugh...

Now I remember why I stopped d.'s daily diatribes and its inheritor, What the !@#$ is this? in the first place. It wasn't necessarily time or lack of ideas, it was the fact that the relative speed of blogging results in some really abhorrent prose. Jesus.

Why not start a drinking game? For every typo; take a drink. For every run-on sentence that looks like four or five crammed together with no end in sight, nor appropriate punctuation and phrasing to make it at the least appear like proper syntax -- albeit with Latin phrase construction and subordinate clauses --; take two drinks. ...and for every variation of the word "interesting"; take a drink.

I swear you'll be drunk in a paragraph.

Farewell to the Flesh

No doubt there are people out there reading my blog who share many of my tastes -- after all, you're reading my blog, which means either you are twisted and share some of my tastes or you are just twisted -- and as such, you've been watching Carnivale (on The Movie Network up here, HBO down there). Let me just say, I love this show, which means it's not going to see more than a single season. I've seen criticism here and there, mostly saying that the debut was boring, which I can certainly understand. It's slow-paced, gives the atmosphere of a plot of molasses being poured through a four-holed vermicelli strainer, is seemingly playing with the typical "good vs. evil" conventions of this sort of thing, and honestly does feel like someone fell asleep during Twin Peaks and during a sort of half-daze, blurred it together with Grapes of Wrath. Maybe I'm just off in the head, but I like that. To me, it seems like something Clive Barker would come up with, we just need a few more bear attacks and bondage.

Blogger's Spell Checker

It wanted to turn "Diggle's" into "dickless". Who says computers aren't without their own unique sense of humour?

I Wonder...

Just thought of an odd correlation, at which I seem to be good.

We know of many of our ancient Greek philosophers, one's like Heraclitus or Anaxagoras, not through direct copies of the works they had written, but through fragments gathered from many different sources, many of them quotations. Those quotations being presented, usually, within the work of another philosopher -- or historian-cum-philosopher like Diogenes -- and we only have these little bits and pieces of what they wrote, what they thought. Unlike something like Plato's Republic, you can't exactly go out and buy yourself a copy of Heraclitus' I'm a Greek Dead Guy.

The same can be said of many works of literature, plays, performances, and so on and so forth, because there were pieces that came after that survived that contained a portion of a record of those works. ...and now, you have weblogs. Aside from those of us who just run around posting links in lieu of content, or those of us writing whatever inane babble pops into our head at the time, many bloggers are using the blog to reprint other peoples' thoughts, and usually comment on them. It's a similar circumstance, albeit, with the blog, the reprinted article usually isn't meant to be a record of someone else's opinion for posterity.

Somebody Save Me

The Smallville season one set came out this past week and I, naturally being a fan of the show, rushed out and plucked one from the sales person's hands shelving them Tuesday morning... Okay, I only got it on Thursday, and haven't really had the chance to sit down and watch any of it yet, but I did want to put forth a warning to all my fellow Canadians. If you picked up the Canadian-only release of the Pilot and Metamorphosis, you're going to be a bit disappointed with the set's extras. Bottom line: they're almost exactly the same thing. The trailer, the audio commentaries, the interactive map, the deleted scenes; they're all the same as on the single two-ep disc. Kind of crappy that they couldn't do something new aside from the DVD-link "enhanced" feature. Maybe shell out for an audio commentary on one of the other episodes, or something.

...and for those of you who already have flipped through all of the set so far, or are among the weird ones who view the extras first, I'm well aware of the "Something New" section of the sixth disc. That "something new" is just a bloody commercial for the WB's new Tarzan series. I don't care about their rip-off of George R.R. Martin's Beauty and the Beast series.

I know that Americans reading this won't care unless you paid to import the Canadian released disc from last year, but I can say I was disappointed on that front. It's still good to have the entire season in pristine format, though, although I'm also slightly disappointed that it's not structured the same as WB's excellent Babylon 5 sets with the episode adverts coupled with the episodes. I mean, before it aired, Smallville had an extensive, impressive ad campaign accompanied by Perry Farrell's "Song Yet to be Sung" that I would love to have seen again.

Head Down, Go to Sleep

A tip of the hat and raise of your glasses to the years Alan's given us his planned madness. I was going to let things lie publicly, Alan knows how I felt about CBG and what he's done, -- I mean, he unleashed me upon the unsuspecting populace -- but I may as well chime in that the site is going to be missed. Here's to what comes next.

Towers of Glass

As I told you earlier, go read the Harold Bloom article.

A few of you probably know this already, but I'm a bookseller by trade. I work in a bookstore, I sell books. It's what I do when not writing, studying, or doing a picture perfect pirouette when no one's looking, which given cost of living when not a student is a fair amount of time. From a purely financial standpoint, Stephen King is what we'd usually call a "sure seller". He's guaranteed money in my pocket. I mean, aside from his latest, From a Buick 8, which at my store couldn't be given away, week of release usually sees at least fifteen hardcover sales. (We're a relatively small store) I'll not go into the details of how much we really see, -- my percentages are probably proprietary information I shouldn't be sharing with you anyway --, but just think of those as going at forty bucks a pop Canadian. When the book hits the bestseller charts in a week or two, those numbers will increase, and usually by the end of the first month, fifty plus copies have found a new home and I get to keep my job. He's a nice reliable automobile, and when you have something like the fifth book of the Dark Tower coming out in November (pre-order yours today!) as a hardcover -- the first time Dark Tower has done so, aside from the Donald Grant editions, the other books were always trade paperback originals -- for $52 Canadian. This means two things: first, it's going to be a freaking thick tome, and second, I'm going to be able to keep my job for Christmas. I mean, I've already sold a few copies myself and it hasn't been released.

I'm telling you this, partially for the interest of full disclosure, and to give you a reason to slam me for "bias", even though the above doesn't influence my reaction to Bloom.

In addition to being a bookseller, I was an English and Philosophy major. --- er, you can stop laughing now, thanks. -- I've been through academia, so I know many of the hang-ups and hang-ons through critical theory and the learned men and women of letters. I know many people's conceit that the genre is something dirty, something to be shoved away to the side. I know that academia has grudgingly -- abso-fucking-lutely grudgingly -- accepted that there may be some, might be some tiny, inkling of literary merit to Tolkien or Herbert, but it's a mere trifle in comparison to reading Dickens. Or Shakespeare. Or Joyce. Or Byron. Or Keats.

I don't mean to take away from anything that the giants of literature have contributed, nor do I mean to attack Bloom. I respect the man, I respect his ideas, and, personally, were it not for his book Inventing the Human, I may not have had certain insights into the nature of certain Shakespearean plays and garnered as high grades, but tearing down Stephen King is not the way to go. It's been done to death, and I'm sick of it. It's like it has been grandfathered into the accepted memes of academia, that no matter what "Stephen King is shit." To this I say, bullshit.

There is an apparent dumbing down of society. I say apparent with a certain amount of scepticism and uncertainty, since I believe that that "intelligence" is coming about in different forms -- hand-eye coordination and visual acuity have improved by leaps and bounds as are the adaptions to new language (if you don't believe me, try asking a fifteen year old if they know CSS or HTML, and you'll find that at the least half of them do. Imagine if you tried their parents' generation if they could honestly admit to knowing numerous languages, using something like French or Spanish as an analogue. Just because CSS or HTML looks like English on the surface, doesn't mean it is English. Basic semiotics.) -- although you'd get me to partially agree to a dumbing down when it comes to traditional "book smarts". People are reading literature, history, political science, et al. and alarmingly dropping rates. I know, I've seen my bottom line drop year after year. ...but it's not from reading Stephen King.

What Bloom fails to realise, as he goes off on a tangent slamming JK Rowling instead of positing evidence for why King is undeserved, is the amazing body of work, of short stories, that King has amassed. Short stories, which, moreso than many of his novels, show a joy of language, a joy of form, a joy of genre, and a revelation of the human spirit. Ever wonder what it's like to be in a paranoiacs head? Read Paranoid: A Chant and I defy you not to feel it. Ever think about the trepidation of what's around the next corner, the fears of childhood, the scars and marks of abuse, the dangers of alcoholism, King uses all of these with gusto. Just because they're wrapped in a horror or dark fantasy trope doesn't make them any less valid than the ponderings of Salman Rushdie or Jorge Luis Borges -- two authors who I'd say King shares a tradition.

I will admit that King's prose can be flat. His early works can be plodding and redundant, some middle works like The Stand overlong and preachy, and things like Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne read like they were written by his wife, but a few weak novels do not outweigh the positive contributions to the medium. Even then, technical aspects be damned, he -- and Rowling too, although I would agree with Bloom's assessment of her, and more damning to her on other fronts -- fills the reader with a sense of wonder. A sense of astonishment. He inspires imagination, certainly moreso than the sordid affairs of Danielle Steel or many of a romance paperback, while subtly working in other themes and ideas that seem to go clear over the head of the esteemed Mr. Bloom due to the fact that he perceives King as a writer of "penny dreadfuls."

Read "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redeption" and tell me that again with a straight face.

I know that Bloom qualifies it with an "I know of", but what really gets me, is that apparently there's only four American authors currently working, who deserve our praise: Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, and Don DeLillo. I'm not going to dispute that any of them deserve anything less than our praise, although they too falter here and there. Personally, I think Roth has become sloppy over time and his latest The Dying Animal makes me think that he's taken the sexual obsession from earlier works and simply become a fully blown dirty old man, but that may just be me identifying the author too much with his "protagonist". Nothing humorous or ironic about the book, I found some "excursions" into indecent interactions between professor and student downright crude. It's a far cry from the wit shown in his twisting of Kafka's Metamorphosis in The Breast or his previous exploration of sexual nature in Portnoy's Complaint.

...but, I ask, what about Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, and the forthcoming Mirror Mirror? He can turn a phrase like Lewis Carroll and has all the wit and joy of the works he's "embellishing" upon The Wizard of Oz, Cinderella, A Christmas Carol, and Snow White respectively. He's giving us our fairy tales in a different light, from a different perspective, while going through the grey areas of "evil" while he's at it. It's engaging fantasy, literary feints, and social commentary. How can you not praise that? Doesn't Pynchon get praised for the very same thing?

Not to mention the ignorance over Canadian authors as well.

Wonderful and Sad

"I'd write a letter home, but I don't know where to send it."

Everyone has their favourite ABC title. Everyone has their own reasons for liking this one or that one more than the others. Some people will say that they love Tom Strong for its own unique blend of Murphy Anderson-era Superman with Captain Marvel C. C. Beck-isms to give a fresh spin on the "Superman" archetype. Others will say Top Ten because it's Alan Moore doing Legion of Superheroes without any of the silliness, and a densely structured "episodic" cop drama feel. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will get touted as the best with all of its literary allusions and fucking kick ass art from Kevin O'Neill. I'm sure there's probably someone out there who'd say that Art Adams artwork for "Jonni Future" in Tom Strong's Terrific Tales is to drool over and puts everything else to shame (even if it's not written by Alan).

For me, though, my favourite ABC title is Promethea. It's like brain candy. Philosophy, semiotics, religion, mysticism, all in a quasi-bi-monthly package with some phenomenal artwork from JH Williams III and Mick Gray. Artwork that rose higher and higher to the challenge that Moore was putting forth as he explored the various implications and connotations of the individual spheres. ...and it's supposedly ending in five more issues.

Made all the sadder because Moore's writing such a great tale. Ever since Sophie came back from her little trip along the tree of life, the book has taken on a more "mainstream" approach, with an appearance last issue and this from Tom Strong, and the promise of an America's Best reunion soon. It's so bittersweet knowing that the end is nigh...in more ways than one. Given that Promethea is supposed to bring about the "end of the world", it's getting dire and grim for our heroes, but you have to wonder if it's the end of the world literally or figuratively. These things never seem to play out the way you naturally tend to suspect and Moore is known for having more than a few tricks up his sleeve -- even when not wearing a sleeved shirt.

An Unpublished Old Bit Floating Around

There's an interesting interview over at Comic Book Resources right now with Joe Casey, Micah Ian Wright, and Justin Gray about working for Wildstorm and the freedom that it brings, but there was one point that stuck out to me. Although not a direct quote from any of the three involved, the article purports one of the most ridiculous things I've heard; "Some have even called the 'Eye of The Storm' comics depressing because of all the moral ambiguity some characters display." That's just stupid. Many of the Wildstorm titles are depressing, like The Authority and Gen 13 because they suck so much donkey cock, and a book like 21 Down is depressing not because of any sort of moral ambiguity, but because the book is centred around a freaking guy who can see others "final pain". If they complain about it being depressing, it's because it's so fucking morbid and morose most of the time.

Horse Droppings

The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings
Edited by Scott Allie
ISBN: 1569719586
$14.95 US

Ever since Dark Horse started publishing comics, they've had the stigma of being primarily a publisher of licensed comics, continually publishing some form of Star Wars comics, along with Aliens and Predator originally, and now Buffy, the Vampire Slayer today. Now, I'm not going to tell you that any of that impression is ill-deserved or untrue, but they've always been broader than just licensed comics. On top of them, they've published all sorts of horror comics from the keystone of Hellboy to Paul Chadwick's The World Below, the European horror comics of the late 90's, and Gary Gianni's Monstermen.

In recent years, there's been a resurgence of popularity in horror, starting with films like The Sixth Sense to spark interest amongst the "common folk", and in comics primarily with Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's 30 Days of Night. Along with that comes Dark Horse's new horror "line", of which this book, The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings is the crown jewel: a hardcover anthology collecting eight haunted tales from some of the best of the industry and an interview of séance medium, Larry Dreller, by Scott Allie.

It used to be that Dark Horse did something like this every year, although initially it was called the Dark Horse Maverick anthology -- featuring works from the creators who published books under that imprint, from Frank Miller to Stan Sakai. Last year, things changed a little bit, and instead of being the usual saddle-stitched "annual", the book grew a spine, dropped the "annual" appellation, and became the anthology, Happy Endings. Then Maverick as a line was dissolved, they put out the licensed comics showcase, plus other odds and ends in Reveal, that slightly serves as a precursor to this. Reveal has an interview with Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola thrown in amongst the Lone Wolf & Cub 2100 tale and Joe Casey autobiographical drug trade-off.

To me, an interview alongside prose or comics content just feels weird. It makes this seem more like a magazine than an anthology, despite the hardcover. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not, but there's a little twinge in the back of my head that just makes me feel like this is a bad combination for something that is essentially standalone. I appreciate the interview with Dreller, it's really quite good, but it feels too much like filler. Dreller is a great subject, elaborating on his life, work as a medium, and certain experiences that he has had, but in all honesty it feels more like a vanity piece, a lark that Allie himself wanted to go on and justified by having it printed here.

That, basically, is my only problem with the anthology, everything else included within is a great accomplishment, with only one slight blip.

Of the eight stories contained in the book, seven of them are actual comics work and the eighth is illustrated prose. The prose story is one by Perceval Landon, an author who wrote stories around the turn of the last century in a similar vein to Edgar Allan Poe or some of the work of Arthur Conan Doyle, and, for the life of me, I can't say he had a huge body of work, since all I've ever seen reprinted is the same story presented here, "Thurnley Abbey". It's your typical tale of Victorian hauntings and monstrous things that go bump in the night, and if you regularly read horror fiction and anthologies, you've no doubt come across this one before. What are new are the beautiful illustrations to accompany the story by Gary Gianni, who also provided the anthology's cover. Honestly, his work is perfect for this kind of thing, looking dated itself, like the kind of woodcut illustrations and etchings you might have seen one hundred years ago to accompany the chapbook thrillers. Given the nature of today's comics reader, though, I assume they'll more than not be likely to skip it, which is a shame, because it's a fairly decent genre piece.

With all of the prose pieces out the way, there are still 59-pages of comics, well worth the price alone. The first is a story called "Gone" by Dark Horse publisher, Mike Richardson, as adapted by P. Craig Russell. It's a ten-page story that shows all of the craft of Russell's work, with excellent pacing, layouts, and always beautiful linework, but it's essentially a story out of an episode of The Twilight Zone or Ray Bradbury Theatre, without any of the heart that Russell shows in his recent adaptations of Oscar Wilde or century-old opera. Essentially, it's very pretty window-dressing.

The next piece is what that window-dressing is for, the centrepiece of the anthology, and the reason why the book exists in the first place; the only Mike Mignola Hellboy story to be published in 2003. "Dr. Carp's Experiment" is pretty much what you'd expect from a Hellboy short-story, akin to much of what's published in the Chained Coffin and Others collection, featuring a bit of action, a bit of "history", and a bit of self-discovery. The whole thing is essentially an excursion to discover what will happen if Hellboy's blood is injected into another creature, which has very nasty results. This isn't a story that's going to give "The Corpse" a run for its money, but it's still a fun Hellboy yarn.

The third comic piece is a Devil's Footprints story, that has no relation to the mini-series, other than the fact that it features the same protagonist. If you bought this alone without having read the previous material, you'll be no worse for wear. It's a funny story, really, with an excellent twist, involving the exorcism of ghosts from a house. I'll not give it away, but it's definitely not what you'd expect. Following it is "Forever", which involves a curse over a guy who skipped the bill for a tattoo, by German artist, Uli Oesterle. It too has an interesting twist ending. Lucas Marangon and Milton Freewater, Jr. supply "The House on the Corner", four pages outlining the history of the tenants of a haunted house in an attempt to show a little boy that there are ghosts lurking everywhere. "Lies, Death, and Olfactory Delusions" from Randy Stradley and Paul Chadwick is of a similar type as Richardson and Russell's, stemming from childhood adventures. The story is a little more involved that "Gone", following the first person narration of our protagonist of what happened to his dead "friend". It's kind of a sweet little lie in order to help someone find peace, I guess.

The final story, "Stray", by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson is most likely my favourite of the entire book, but it's possibly just because I'm a sucker for furry animals. It's a story of a few dogs and a cat who have their own "haunt" interrupted by a lingering ghost. Funny, sad, and touching, it's really a great story, made all the better through a beautiful colour wash in Thompson's artwork.

I Don't Know About You

Maybe it's the fact that it's four o'clock in the morning and I want to overhaul everything that has to do with the site -- with the exclusion of Jay's portion, which is honestly the only thing that's been steadily updating all the while --, maybe it's continuing lack of sleep, maybe it's growing exterior pressures, but I'm seeing nothing but reflections of cynicism and nihilism out there right now. Maybe it's depression.

Rambling...rambling. Catching up. I haven't stretched any of these muscles for awhile so I'm a little stiff. I don't remember how I did it back when I was writing 500 words bare minimum a day. Maybe it's the fact that I'm listening to the Underworld soundtrack, which is a nice, depressing gothic downer of an album, similar to The Crow soundtrack, actually, only it goes out on a beautiful depressing note, rather than the nice hope in the darkness from Jane Siberry's "It Can't Rain All the Time".

Jane Siberry's a freak. I love her. If you don't own When I Was A Boy, I can't help you.

Anyway, of Underworld soundtrack, I'll say more later, but Sarah Bettens' -- you know her better as the songstress of K's Choice -- "All of This Past", despite being beautiful, is a lot like Sarah McLachlan on valium. Slow, atmospheric, and none all too happy. Maybe happiness is overrated.

Maybe it's me.

Matthew Good's Avalanche

2002 was a great year for music, seeing new David Bowie, Tori Amos, Tom Waits, Our Lady Peace, Tragically Hip, and Dream Theater material, along with countless others. Thus far in 2003 there hasn't been a lot yet, but easily rising to the top of important releases is Matthew Good's sans "Band" solo release, Avalanche. Personally, the Matthew Good Band was one of my favourite groups of artists, easily attaining status alongside the Tragically Hip, almost as a western counterpoint with a more sardonic bent.

Thankfully, Avalanche carries on the progression of sound witnessed from Last of the Ghetto Astronauts to The Audio of Being. The music is still undeniably Matthew Good, still sound enough like MGB to get carry over fans, but also different enough, grander, to perhaps drag in people who didn't like the old material.

As a whole, there's less emphasis on rocking out and overdriven guitars, the album's more expansive, supplementing flashy rock postures with the string section from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and choral work from Musica Intima. If you took The Cure, The Police, The Pixies, the Tragically Hip, Leonard Cohen, and REM mixed them together and gave them an orchestra to play with, that would closely approximate Matthew Good's sound. There's little pieces of all of them present here and there in his music, lending itself to creating an interesting and expansive, understated alternative rock presence.

Track by Track

Pledge of Allegiance (4:59) - This is one of the tracks that reminds me largely of The Police, driven forward by a slowly pulsating bass rhythm and drum back beat. The chimes and choral work supporting the track is a nice touch that brings it beyond 80's new wave into something a little bit different. It's not upbeat or really catchy at all, and as such it's an interesting way to lead you into the album. It's understated, almost insidious, and feels almost like Good's laying down a gauntlet to say that this won't be as commercial or even as "happy" as previous MGB albums.

Lullaby for the New World Order (3:52) - Easily one of my favourite tracks on the album, this song shows how large and deep, how "ambitious", this solo project is going to be. The strings really come to the fore here, delivering an extremely broad canvas for Good's poignant lyrics, "somebody gave you a choice and all you do is abuse it, if god he gave you a voice, then use it" and interplay of some nice guitar work. There's an acoustic version of the song available for download from Good's secret site that shows the strength of his guitar. For something under four minutes, the song feels a lot "bigger".

Weapon (5:58) - The first single from the album that was originally released months ago as part of the Big Shiny Tunes repertoire. It's one of the few tracks that has Good "rocking out" admist the strings and simple vocals.

In a World Called Catastrophe (5:57) - The second single seems like a Matthew Good Band ballad with strings supporting, which is probably why it was released to remind people that the album was on its ways. It featurs all of the things you'd expect, jabs at the current political climate, self-deprecation, wild structure changes between verses and chorus, Good reaching for higher registers in long, drawn out vocals, and some little bits of guitar work in odd places of the song.

Avalanche (7:26) - ...and then we get to Leonard Cohen. There's an almost carousel-like, tarantella rhythm to the beginning of the song, dancing around Good reaching to lower, rough registers almost speak-singing like Cohen, building to a crescendo of the chorus, and a fall back into a cacaphophy of numerous voices similar to say Tricky, and then a further repetition of the tarantella, shift to a refrain of a Tori Amos period of lofty heights, and back into a crescendo to the chorus, and back down again. It's truly a beautiful, moving song.

21st Century Living (3:10) - Then we get a three-minute rant on "super-sizing" that sounds a bit like Rick Mercer put to music, a bit like an 80's REM tune, and a little bit like the MGB of old. The song is hilarious to listen to, certainly one of the best on the album, and has some valid points to it. It works as both an anthem and as a three-minute counter culture commercial, I can't wait to see a video for this.

While We Were Hunting Rabbits (8:00) - This is a rhythm piece. Or at least that's what I get out of it. It's hard to say exactly what this one sounds like, it's like a melting pot of 80's sounds, and a haunting vocal track. It's almost a Roxy Music track in some parts, it's almost The Police, it's almost So-era Peter Gabriel, but it's none of them. The rhythm to it is phenomenal, a great undulating bass line, coupled with pounding drums that only appear for brief periods. That's the first half of the song, the latter half is a long and beautiful crescendo of the strings alone.

Bright End of Nowhere (4:08) - This is a nice, short love ballad, with a very nice piano part. It's just a beautiful song, really.

Near Fantastica (8:00) - This track is bizarre and probably as multi-faceted as "Avalanche". It starts out similar to a Peter Gabriel tune from Passion or Long Walk Home, then develops into a long introduction piece similar to The Cure, only to wind up as a crazy rock piece. Upon first listening to it, it seemed out of place to me with the rest of the album, but it grows on you quickly, finding new little pieces that you don't notice instantly.

Song for the Girl (3:16) - This is another love song of sorts, but as a harder rock ballad than the beauty of "Bright End of Nowhere".

Double Life (4:22) - Here's the track where the Pixies influence shines through the most, not necessarily sounding like a Pixies track, but more like Catherine Wheel. Old MGB fans will probably love this track, which is a lot more upbeat and "rocking" than the rest of the album. I can see this one being released as a single for the summer, actually, it feels like it could be a good summer song. Kind of like "Indestructable" from Underdogs in its structure. As Good himself has said, "Sometimes you just need to rock out," and it's a good thing he does here.

A Long Way Down (3:56) - I'm a sucker for cello, drums, and bass. I'd wager that this track was partly inspired by the promo music on the "what's coming up next" on Much More Music, which follows a similar layering of the three, but maybe I'm just hearing things. When they throw in piano playing lower chords and what sounds like horns -- probably just keyboard, because I don't see a listing for horn players in the credits -- I'm hooked. It's kind of a jazzy piece actually.

House of Smoke & Mirrors (6:05) - To me, the weakest song on any Matt Good Band album is always the last song. It's usually the slowest, most contemplative, and eschews any sort of structure. It seems like he's not set to disappoint on his first solo album. It's not to say that the songs themselves are bad, this one certainly isn't, the piano is downright beautiful, but it leaves you on a quiet, sedated note with no real memory of the song itself due to how slow and long it usually is. It's probably better that he puts them at the end of the album, due to how soothing they are, though. If you want to fall asleep, or simply to relax, this is a good song to get you there.

Out of My Head

I'm a fairly simple kind of guy. I wake up in the morning, I take a shower, I put on my clothes, eat breakfast, go to work, yada yada yada yada. The same as just about everyone else. I do, however have a weakness. Whereas some people are addicted to caffeine, or alcohol, or fluffy bunnies, I have an addiction to media. It doesn't matter what it is -- print, film, radio, music -- I don't care, I'll listen to it. ...or watch it. ...or read it. It doesn't matter. I always have to be reading, watching, or listening to something, even if I'm doing something else at the time. I have to continuously have some kind of sensory input using some part of my faculties.

It's not enough for me, though, to just watch, read, or listen to something, that should be readily apparent to anyone who's been visiting this website or reading my work for any period of time. My highly critical, analytical brain has to try to make some kind of sense out of the stimuli that results in essays, reviews, and just plain old incoherent ramblings. In my attempts to further my own critical analysis abilities, I've been writing comics and graphic novel reviews for some time now, along with the occasional CD review here and there, and now I come to this Spin the Shiny Plastic Circle. This is my attempt to be a film critic. Kind of. More like a film on DVD critic. Music critic too, because they come in handy dandy plastic circle form as well.

Scary Monsters & Super Creeps ~ THREE: Blood & Shadows

1. Passing Judgment

In the 1980's, you could easily say that DC went through a sort of explosion of creative talent and experimentation. During the decade the foundation of Vertigo was lain with Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Karen Berger's continued advancement of writer-driven material, the entire DC Universe underwent a Crisis, Batman and Superman were both revitalised in Year One and Man of Steel, new and old ideas were cropping up in a multitude of limited and ongoing series, while watershed moments like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns hit the shelves. It was also the time when DC actively pushed into licensing, bringing some very old pulp and radio characters to comics once again, in the form of Doc Savage, The Phantom, Flash Gordon, and The Shadow.

Although DC had previously published a comics adaptation of The Shadow in the 70's, featuring the talents of Denny O'Neil and Mike Kaluta, it like many of the other incarnations was essentially treated as a period piece. In 1986, DC changed that with Howard Chaykin's revitalisation of the character. Instead of being set in the past, The Shadow was brought forward into the present, his old agents from the comics and radio shows allowed to age "normally", while he himself stayed relatively youthful through Chaykin's new origin story.

Essentially, Chaykin's take on the Shadow, the character himself, is nothing you'd exactly call original. Although the Shadow had always been a rather amoral hero, meting out justice at the end of a barrel and ordering around his agents like slaves, Chaykin's Shadow became a womaniser and more of a jerk, bringing his characterisation in line with other well-known Chaykin "heroes" like Reuben Flagg before and Harry Kraft after. Having read American Flagg! and American Century, you'd almost think Chaykin only knows how to write one dominant hero type.

Criticism of character patterns aside, "Blood & Judgment" is indeed an excellent reintroduction of The Shadow and his world, even though purists expecting a period piece may and did disagree. Someone is killing the Shadow's previous agents from before his "disappearance" in 1949 -- the ones from the old radio shows and pulps -- which necessitate his return. It's not played as a straight mystery, readers know almost from the beginning who's responsible, but on the back of this, we're introduced to the agents both new and old, a developing "sub-plot" regarding the recruitment of Harry Vincent's daughter, and a new origin -- or rather a variation on a few of them with some new elements added in -- is given for the Shadow.

In this the central conceit of the plot rests on the notion of "who is the Shadow?" In the original pulps, he was really Kent Allard, with "Lamont Cranston" being just one of his disguises, and this is partially the idea with which The Shadow mini-series runs. In some versions, Allard saved the real Cranston's life in Asia and as a "reward" was allowed to use the identity while Cranston globe-trotted as a millionaire playboy, not so here. Here, Cranston is wealthy drug-lord who employed a down-on-his-luck Allard as a pilot -- another favourite Chaykin character trait, I might add -- and is cold and ruthless in his pursuit of wealth and power. The plane goes down and they're rescued by the people of the secret Asian city of Shambala. Cranston, acting in typical villainy, poisons the Shambalan guards, steals some gold, kidnaps the "princess", and rushes off to retrieve his drugs. Suffice it to say, it doesn't go as planned for him. Allard doesn't save Cranston's life, rather the opposite, trying to kill him. Believing himself successful, Allard adopts Cranston's identity.

Cranston, however, didn't die, which sets up more than a simple revenge story. Cranston couldn't care less about The Shadow taking his identity, what's important is that after all the years and amassing new wealth as Preston Mayrock, the bastard is dying. Drawing out the Shadow was his attempt at re-attaining youthfulness -- mind transfer to a genetically enhanced clone -- through the sciences of the hidden society that helped Allard in the first place.

What's interesting here is that Allard and Cranston are essentially the same person, not literally, but in their approach and attitudes toward life. Both are concerned about power and longevity, both are stuck in dreadful moral archaism, they do whatever is necessary to achieve their goals regardless of the consequences, have little regard for human life, and could both be considered quite insane. The only difference is that The Shadow himself kills criminals, and so is seen as the "good guy".

I'll not belabour the arguments of vigilantism or the progression of the anti-hero, but it's interesting to note that The Shadow is ultimately facing himself when he finally confronts Cranston/Mayrock.

2. Into the Light

A year after Chaykin's Shadow limited series, an ongoing series began publication with Andy Helfer and Bill Sienkiewicz at the reins. There are a couple of ways you can view this initial story-arc, "Shadows & Light". The first is that it's an unfocussed mess with Helfer throwing ideas and villains at the wall to see what stuck. The second is a sort of planned chaos, constantly hitting the reader with characters and events in a literary equivalent to Sienkiewicz' artistic style.

Unlike "Blood & Judgment" or what would come in later stories, "Shadows & Light" almost isn't a story-arc but rather somewhere in between an arc and episodic storytelling. It starts as a continuation of the mini-series, following the moments after Mayrock's clone was thrown off a building. There's a brief confusion over whether or not the Shadow is injured, since he and Mayrock's clone look alike, that allows the appearance of many of the Shadow's agents new to Helfer's run on the title. This sparks off a final battle with the Mayrock clone, but this itself leads nowhere aside from the clash with Joe Cardona that seems like an odd attempt at comic relief that never ends up being very funny. The first two issues, essentially, are merely tying up the loose end of the clone from the original mini-series, and even then, it's just kind of there.

The book then divides into three different threads that seem like they're vying for attention. The first is the return of Shiwan Khan, the Shadow's greatest nemesis from the old pulps and radio shows. Today, he's given up his life of crime and become a wealthy and powerful businessman and philanthropist, which, of course, he's willing to throw out the window for the sake of a little mind control satellite. This satellite is what sets off the second string, tying up another loose end over the spa murders in the original mini-series with "The King is Dead. Long Live the Prince" written on the wall in blood. Turns out it wasn't Mayrock who did that one but Benedict Stark, another previous Shadow villain.

If that weren't enough, though, there's the undercurrent during the first two-thirds of the story-arc of the Holy Radiance Mission that leads into the Light, a new villain created by Helfer and Sienkiewicz. It's incredibly fractured, jumping from one focus to another, bringing in a new obstacle to replace an old one, setting a rather frenetic pace for the book, apt to leave some people scratching their heads. Just wait until you throw in the Shadownet, a group of hackers dedicated to the Shadow, yet ultimately end up helping the enemy.

Surprisingly, though, fractured as it might be, it's not confusing. Helfer keeps throwing things at you with the story, new people, new twists, and a new villain, but the overall action of the story doesn't suffer. The plot does, there's no central theme or flow to the story-arc, such that it's less a story-arc and more a collection of tangentially related tales -- as I said previously, but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.

--. We Now Interrupt Your Regular Broadcast for a Paid Announcement from the Holy Radiance

Toward the tail end of the "Shadows & Light" story-arc, the first Shadow annual was published presenting a prologue of sorts. "Fragment of the Sun" was a period piece, chronicling the origin of The Light, the new villain featured in Helfer's Shadow series.

The highlight of the annual is, of course, Joe Orlando's artwork, and as such the story is written with him in mind. Instead of being a straight crime tale, the story veers off into bizarre science fiction and atomic monsters, bringing forth an irradiated child in the form of the Light. The logistics aside of a "nuclear child" -- was every writer in the 80's obsessed with the nuclear threat of the cold war? -- the heart of the story centres on the idea of faith and manipulation.

There are two fronts that the story operates on, the first is of an underground German party that still supports the Nazis and is attempting to extricate the prisoners held after World War II. This is the main plot that the Shadow and his operatives are working to solve in the first part of the story, set in 1046. The second, and the one that we follow into the second half of the story set in 1949, is of an evangelical group purporting to bring about a new messiah for the atomic age. It starts with a soldier irradiated in a nuclear blast, and tracks to his wife trying to bear his child in some misguided sense of loyalty to the evangelical group. His wife, of course, is clearly insane, and bears the "nuclear child" who will become The Light in the present day storyline of "Shadows & Light".
To me, the most interesting part of the story has nothing to do with the main plot whatsoever, but the "story within a story" that comes in the second half of the book. The original leader of the evangelical group, Julius Strait, ahs been usurped by the ex-Nazi scientist who has successfully given him a lobotomy. Strait has, however, gone back to following a modicum of the life he led before founding his own religion, writing terrible science fiction stories -- a rather overt analogue to L. Ron Hubbard. In continuing to write his terrible science fiction stories; he does try to communicate in his jumbled, lobotomised way what happened with the birth of "nuclear messiah". One of these stories winds up at a comics publisher, and it gets adapted into "Coming of the Atomic Man" and as an EC style weird science tale that we're presented in three pages of the annual.
We Now Return You to Your Regular Scheduled Programme, Already in Progress. --

Many today would probably argue that a linear story-arc focussing on one objective -- such as just Shiwan Khan or just The Light -- is the better from a storytelling standpoint. It allows for greater exploration -- but not necessarily contains, I might add -- for a single track, like an expansion of the plot of the hackers, or greater explanation of The Light's rise to power, and what he did to the previous ministries. Yet, that doesn't seem to be the goal of the story-arc-that-isn't, it's episodic comics told in a collection of three two-issue arcs with a little bit of spill-over of each into the other. It's just a different type of crafting a larger story and gives the impression of chaos.

I admit there should be greater focus on the character of the Light, it started as an interesting subplot of a serial killer crucifying people to "see the light", as well as little bits of seeding the mission here and there, but given the focus on making him out to be a huge villain and time taken to show his origin in The Shadow Annual #1, it's all really over and done with before anything large amounts from it. The Light, in other words, doesn't live up to the hype. All flash and no substance.

What adds greatly and makes everything come together just a little bit more is Bill Sienkiewicz, with his incendiary style of art bouncing off Helfer's fractured script and making it feel stronger in the long run. Despite sharing some similarities, Sienkiewicz' dark and scratchy artwork adds a layer of grit to the book that isn't present in Chaykin. His cover paintings themselves add so much to the book.

It should also be noted that it looks as though Sienkiewicz' illustrations of the Shadow agents, DeWitt and Twitch, may very well be the basis for Todd McFarlane's detectives, Sam and Twitch, even more than say, Laurel and Hardy, the resemblance of the characters is uncanny.

3. A Little Death

To set up more of the dissonance that would be felt between the Shadow and his agents, without his knowledge the agents went on a little field trip in "Harold Goes to Washington". As the introduction says, "This is the story of a bad boy. His name was Harold.", and so we follow a sadistic child without time to grow up to be a serial killer.

It's a bizarre self-contained story that Helfer tells here, largely veering away from anything but tangential appearances from the Shadow and his agents, about a misguided child out to assassinate the president. The reasoning, of course, makes perfect sense in kid logic. His father came back from the war a hero after killing many German soldiers. He also believes that it's the president who single-handedly keeps the whole world in peace. If he killed the president, a war would start, and in that war he could kill a lot of bad people, and thus become a hero himself. Twisted logic, sure, but this is a kid who burns bugs and kills dogs. He's not exactly the sanest doughnut in the box.

Although guest-illustrated by Marshall Rogers, I always get the impression that Rogers has a slight style of his own which is overshadowed by the inker over him. Here, his style veers closer to Baker's, in his work on Detective Comics his lines were cleaned and streamlined by Terry Austin, while more recently in Batman: Legend of the Dark Knight, John Cebolerro gave his work a more rounded, animated style, similar to Richard Corben. His work always looks different depending on who's inking him.

What is gorgeous, though, is the pen and ink cover. Even with Sienkiewicz' incendiary cover paintings on the first issues and many of Baker's pastels later on, the cover to Shadow #7 is the most visually striking.

4. Among the Deadly and Dying

For those who may complain about the lack of focus in "Shadows & Light", their complaints are answered in "Seven Deadly Finns". Instead of being a loose collection like the former story-arc, this takes you head-on against one group of villains, the seven Finn brothers.

It starts simply enough with a serial killer, something that seems to be a favourite of Helfer's, and in what is almost a standalone issue, we're introduced to the Finns and to the growing dissonance between the Shadow and his agents that will become vital at the end of the arc.

Although there is one overarching plot here, the Shadow trying to bring down the Finns, it's interesting how the arc is handled, throwing in a few different flavours just to keep things flowing. Instead of a large central strike on the Finns organisation, -- which we learn the Shadow has known that they meet on the floor below his own organisation, without telling his agents -- each Finn is systematically removed, through largely indirect action. The Shadow, of course, manipulates people, and does indeed take out a number of the Finns himself, but he doesn't just walk into a Finn meeting and blow them all away after opening the door.

As such, there are various nuances to the story-arc, including Harry and Margo's magic act, Twitch and his wrestler-nurse, Gwen, Ma Finn and her gorillas, Galen Finn's hot dogs, Dick Magnet's -- a character introduced in "Harold goes..." -- private investigation practice that gets dragged into Shadow business, Artie Finn's squad of madmen, and Rastafarians attacking Harry Vincent and his van. It's the last one, of course, that comes completely out of left field and makes utterly no sense until about the fourth part of the story-arc, you see, the Rastafarians are just trying to get repaid for the cab that the Shadow agents demolished in Shadow #6. It's not a bad twist, per se, but it is handled poorly in the beginning, treating them as though we should know why they're doing the things to Vincent beyond the assumption that they're an ill-conceived gang based on racial stereotypes. Otherwise, the various threads are well executed and add a greater sense to the whole.

You could also say that this is the story-arc where Helfer's bizarre and twisted sense of humour really came to the forefront, in the hot dogs, Ma Finn, the Rastafarians, and the insane people. The dark humour added something to the book, similar to what Ennis instilled in The Punisher, taking the horrors that the anti-heroes do not necessarily with a wink or with utmost sincerity, indirectly alerting the readers that "hey, it's okay to be a cold-blooded killer as long as you mow down criminals", but rather that these are sick individuals in a twisted world. It goes from being a portrayal of reality into being a reminder of surreality.

That's reinforced by the introduction of Kyle Baker as the series regular artist. If all you've seen is his artwork on The Truth: Red, White, and Black, then you're missing out. Among some of his first work for DC, his style here had yet to develop into the clean and crisp sheen that you'll see in his more animated style today. Back on The Shadow, his artwork shared more with the approach taken by Danijel Zezelj, with minimalist features layered under a charcoal shading system.

Then, of course, the unthinkable happened and the Shadow was dead because one of his operatives attempted to save the life of an insane man, hammering home the surreal nature of the work. It's gripping, forward-thinking storytelling.

5. A Brief Reprieve

Quite possibly the best issue of Helfer's run on The Shadow is also the most derivative. Although the story technically takes place around the second and third parts of the "Body & Soul" story-arc, referencing to certain things going on at that time, the second Shadow annual works better thematically as a bridge between the two arcs, certainly as an epilogue to "Seven Deadly Finns".

"Agents", the story being told in the annual, is, put simply, a pastiche of Citizen Kane. At the end of "Seven Deadly Finns", the Shadow's last word before dying was "Lenore" and so intrepid reporter and Shadow biographer, Rupert Tome, goes on a quest to track down its meaning in order to get a position on network television. In order to find out what the word meant, Tome interviews the Shadow agents, and, of course, instead of receiving any information about the word, he gets historical recounts of their time spent with the Shadow.

Despite being derivative, it's still a good character-driven story, illuminating the lives and experiences of the agents who aided the Shadow before the 80's series, as well as how the new agents were found and brought together before Chaykin's "Blood & Judgment". The MacGuffin is naturally never discovered by the character's themselves, but like "Rosebud", the audience is let in on the secret at the end of the piece.

6. Soul Cages

...and then the wheels fell off.

It didn't happen immediately. For the most part, "Body & Soul" was an incredible continuation of what had gone before: the Shadow was dead and his agents were trying to pick up the pieces while his sons took him back to Shambala. There were people outraged by the Shadow's death, but we all realised that of course he'd be coming back. No one really stays dead in comic books for very long, but this is before the "death of Superman" and it was happening on a monthly basis, but we knew that the Shadow would be back, in the mean time, there was a crime spree happening due to the Shadow's death.

In terms of how it was written, this story-arc was a bit of a cross between "Shadows & Light" and "Seven Deadly Finns", slightly more akin to what we're used to in present story-arcs. The arc starts out at a single point, the death of the Shadow and trying to figure out what to do next, and then breaks into two disparate threads. One story track follows the Shadow's agents in New York City dealing with the loss of their "Master", while the other follows the Shadow's sons as they attempt to return their father to Shambala.

Overall, up until the last issue, it's handled incredibly well. There's an even greater amount of dark humour present, along with the ridiculousness of Twitch dying himself green in order to become The Inoculator and carrying on the Shadow's legacy. It takes the surreality of "Seven Deadly Finns" and cranks it up a few notches, about to the same level we'd eventually see on Helfer's Judge Dredd series. You didn't even really mind that the Shadow was dead when you could follow what was happening in New York and the Shadow's sons' misadventures in Asia.

The stories were funnier than previous issues, sure, but they still held a certain amount of bite and were as enjoyable, if not more so, as the previous issues in Helfer's run. It featured two ingenious serial killing robbers, the Hi-Rise Killers, who would break into an apartment, rob it blind, and then toss its occupant off a balcony to see which one of the robbers got to keep the take depending on whether the victim landed heads or tails. It was sick and twisted, sure, but it was funny as hell, and honestly, the humour wasn't the problem with the book.

The problem came in The Shadow #19 and Conde Nast pulled the plug.

As you can tell from the cover, it was just a teensy bit of a departure. The Shadow's head had arrived safely in Shambala -- just his head, mind you, his body itself was kind of...well, indisposed -- and they were growing him a new one. ...but it didn't quite work out, a band of outlaws from a village that was essentially the antithesis to Shambala, appropriately called Malice, had followed the Shadow's sons and invaded Shambala. Unable to just sit around and wait as a reanimated, severed head while the invaders destroyed the city, the Shadow allowed his head to be attached to a robot body.

I know that this was more or less a parody of Robocop, after a fashion, but it took the ridiculousness too far, and turned what was a scathing dark humour book into the realm of cheesy, superhero camp. It just seemed a travesty to do this to the character, and I suppose other people believed so as well, given the series' quick cancellation following.

Honestly, given the progression of the character and the series since the first issue, the fact that it really seemed like Helfer and Baker really were managing to break some new ground with The Shadow, it was a shame to see the book end. What was even worse was the limp Shadow Strikes! series that DC launched afterwards to fill the hole, from Gerard Jones and Ed Barreto.

Next Week: Something shorter. I promise.