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
Emissit 9/30/2003 03:30:00 AM 0 comments
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.
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 $4.5 billion dollar deficit is balancing the books. I guess the Conservatives were aiming for a deficit, and that the substantial "growth" they keep talking about in health care and education is "negative" growth, causing us to spiral down to being the worst in the country. I mean, if we're tenth, we're fucking last -- there are only TEN provinces and the territories are never included in the rankings.
Ugh...
Emissit 9/30/2003 02:00:00 AM 0 comments
Now I remember why I stopped d.'s daily diatribes and its inheritor, What the !@#$ 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.
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
Emissit 9/29/2003 10:19:00 PM 0 comments
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
Emissit 9/29/2003 03:47:00 AM 0 comments
It wanted to turn "Diggle's" into "dickless". Who says computers aren't without their own unique sense of humour?
I Wonder...
Emissit 9/27/2003 01:32:00 AM 0 comments
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.
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
Emissit 9/27/2003 12:54:00 AM 0 comments
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.
...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
Emissit 9/25/2003 11:15:00 PM 0 comments
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
Emissit 9/25/2003 12:38:00 AM 0 comments
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.
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
Emissit 9/24/2003 11:22:00 PM 0 comments
"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.
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
Emissit 9/24/2003 12:43:00 AM 0 comments
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
Emissit 9/23/2003 04:24:00 AM 0 comments
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.
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
Emissit 9/23/2003 04:11:00 AM 0 comments
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.
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.
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