for those who don't know, M.O.D.O.K. stands for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing. Check out more on this dynamic hipster at http://www.ludickid.com/modok.htm or at Last Gasp Publishing's website, here:
http://www.lastgasp.com/1/
tonight's ep of Dinner for Five hosted by Jon Favreau featured an eclectic crowd as usual: Billy Bob Thornton, Peter Berg, Buzz Bissinger and Brian Grazer. Always been a fan of Berg (both as an actor and director), plus Thornton is constantly amusing (he was decked out in full gangsta gear for the diner at LA's Le Meridian). Anyway, the thing that shocked me about the show was how producer Brian Grazer (24, Friday Night Lights) actually won me over. I always thought he was a tool - no particular reason, other than I can't stand his spiky faux-Iggy Pop hair do and the fact that his name is attached to everything under the California sun. But he was actually very down to earth, self-deprecating and humble on the show and spoke with great conviction about making films and television that other people didn't want to look at twice. If you can catch it, do so.
also, on the comic-book-front, I am about 1/2 way through the first volume of Walter Simonson's masterful run on Thor from Marvel back in the 80s. I wasn't a big Marvel-kid growing up, expect for the X-men and the Punisher, so I never caught this on the stands and it took me twenty years and countless articles before I shelled out the cash for the new collected editions of the material. Damn good stuff. I loved Simonson ever since his work on the Detective Comics back-ups of Manhunter from the late 70s, but this surpasses even that. Later in the week I will try to upload some of the mind blowing artwork.
So, after a month off for the work on NaNoWriMo, I took an additional month off because I am a lazy bastard. Anyway, with the new year arrived in one piece, I will try for at least weekly updates with the Weekly 5 and a review or interesting weblink here and there.
Let's start it off with the Weekly 5 Year End Review:
Scan It: Best Graphic Novel or Comic of the Year: My vote goes to Brian K. Vaughn's and tony Harris's Ex Machina. A mix of political commentary and superhero action, with just the right amount of wise-ass comedy, this book rocks consistently. Fantastic art by Harris (the best stuff he's done since his seminal run on Starman) only adds to the high quality of this book.
Read It: The final three volumes of Stephen King's Dark Tower series is hands down the winner. Among the three, I have to pick Wolves of the Calla as the best.
Listen to It: Three way tie here for me: Mission of Burma's On off On, Mike Watt The Secondman's Middle Stand, and finally, even though I don't think it came out this year, I got it this year, so My Morning Jacket's It Still Moves. Rock.
View It: Easy-peasy Japanesy -- Movie: Hellboy: the new special edition dvd makes it that much better. TV: Lost: more intense than a bowel movement after a latenight session at Wes's Rib House.
Bookmark It: Shameless plug time: www.forcesofgood.com - Sure, there was only one issue this past year, but the online pop culture mag/authority figure will be back in February with an all new format and daily updates, plus weekly reviews of all the hottest films, books, comics, and more. Check back for the new launch date!
So, first in for the year, let me know what you call Tops in your own little spacepods. Comment and tell me what made you squirm in '04.
So, while reading some forum stuff over at the NaNoWriMo site, I discovered that posting fiction whole hog on the web constitutes publication and might actually adversely effect my chances of having some shite really published. Being so informed and hoping that, as weak as my writing is, I might someday want to try some stuff for publication I have taken down Open Wounds from this site and will no longer be posting the full text of my WriMo novel over on my sister blog, The City, Wide.
I have left up the first chapter of Open Wounds here and if anyone is interested in reading the rest, drop me a line. As for the novel over on the other site . . . I'm not sure. I will keep posting word counts daily (or whenever I have more words) and I might throw in weekly excerpts and take down what's already there, not really for sure on that yet.
But in any event, that's that.
Night, Clementine. Night, Boris.
Still working on the challenge and finding it harder (but not much more) than I thought. I am a bit behind, but with the next four days off from work, the goal is to get back on track so that I am at least 1/2 way there by Monday at Midnight. Otherwise, I seem to have gotten a second wind with 2000 words written so far today and over 3500 for the last two days.
Otherwise all things quiet. Looking forward to tonight's episode of Lost and Smallville.
Expect a possible article up on this blog over the weekend that I won't be using for Forcesofgood.com. Speaking of which expect a new issue of that e-zine to premiere in early December retooled and with a continuation of the Chop Socky Creature Feature in a new format.
Finally, check out the attached poster that I just completed for my brother's band - go see them in a couple of weeks if you're in the Motherland of Providence.
Bedtime for Democracy and Goodnight, Bonzo.
So my first batch of writing is done and blogged. 1860 words down. Check it out at:
www.thecitywide.blogspot.com
Visit my writer profile "ryanjackson" at the National Novel Writing Month website at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ under the writer's profile search.
Thanks and wish me luck.
Spooky night, happy frights!
Bookmark It: My fave Helloween Website: http://www.geocities.com/dzilla1964/ - Fond childhood memories spent in front of the boob tube!
Read It: Salem's Lot by Stephen King - perfect October reading. Also any of the horror stuff by Ray Bradbury, particularly, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Listen to It: this is a given: Rob Zombie! Or White Zombie. You decide.
View It: I could have you here all night. But top of the list right now -- 28 Days Later, The Fog, Nightmare on Elm Street (the original.)
Scan It: DC Comics' new title, Toe Tags -- a horror anthology that just started; the first issue features the talented George Romero, writing a zombie story (what else!?) - awesome!
So there it is. Get out there and treat yourself to some of these tricky little numbers.
Happy Halloween!!
I figured out the next fiction project: Here it is . . . . Wait for it . . . .
I am going to participate in National Novel Writing Month. That's right, write a novel in 30 days. 50,000 words from Nov. 1 to Nov. 30. I think I can, I think I can. I have to at least try. So Weekly Five tomorrow, the new novel (man!) on Monday.
Visit my new sister blogspot at www.thecitywide.blogspot.com
Wooo . . .
The Red Sox won the World Series. It finally sunk in today as I watched the parade through Boston on TV. Wow. Unbelieveable.
So, there haven't been any posts in a while, because of my computer problems, then the ALCS and then, astonishingly, the Series! But, those are done, I am finishing a graphic design project this weekend and then I am back in the saddle. I am puzzling over what will be the next fiction piece on here and I am narrowing it down, but expect some fiction on Tuesday.
In the meantime come back tomorrow for the 3rd installment of The Weekly Five -- Special All Hallow's Eve Edition.
Boo!
That's right, mofos, the Sox did it. The Yankees didn't choke - they just got their pansy, little girls asses handed to them by a team with more heart, more drive and more guts than any other team in the history of sports. That's right, ANY other!
The Series will be great. Sure it will. But the real beauty here was sticking it to the team that gets everything handed to them. Beating the Goliath of the sporting world. Defeating the ogre, the bully, the oversized jackass, the monster, the monkey on our back.
Yeah, Red Sox Nation is going into a Shakespearean cathartic (sp?) exhale.
We won.
We finally, really, actually won.
Man, it feels good.
More tomorrow.
No posts since friday due to a single reason - the Sox. Be back in the swing of things after them. Sorry.
Yankees Suck.
Didn't really get a new look yet, just tweaked my template a little in an effort to make the viewing and load times a little easier. Anyway, now that my computer is back and raring to go (thanks to my main man, Slick), I will be trying to get back into a regular swing of posting daily. We'll see how long that lasts. At least I have two days in a row right now . . .
So, if you haven't already, go check out www.forcesofgood.com, read my column, a review I wrote on the comic Starman and lots of other cool stuff. Then circle back here and let me know what you think.
The next issue of Forces of Good will be premeiring at the beginning of November with new interviews, columns and reviews.
I'm back in computerland! Yeah! Here it is:
Scan it: The excellent new comic from writer wunderkint (sp?) Brian K. Vaughn, Ex Machina. This books rocks so hard it hurts. This guy is the genius behind Y the Last Man and his newest title is a full of the same passion and twisty-turny plot development. Take one part of the West Wing, add two parts super-hero action and a final dash of X-files like mystery and you have one sick comic.
Read it: Stephen King's The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. Stop whatever it is you've been doing for the last 20 years, get to your local book seller and buy these books. Finishes like it started - strong and hard.
Listen to it: Cake's new album -- I've only heard a few tracks, but they stand up with all the rest of this band's classic sounds.
View it: Lost - best new show of this season or last. Or the one before that too, maybe - tied for my favorite show in recent history with The Shield. Yeah, it's that good.
Bookmark it: Browse on over to www.batmanbegins.com for all the latest info on the newest Batman movie. Including the sick-ass trailer featuring the truly demented Christian Bale as a truly disturbed young Bruce Wayne. This movie is going to blow every other comic book movie out of the water come Summer 2005. Check out the pic of Gary Oldman as a young Commissioner James Gordon!
That's it for now. Over the weekend, come on by and scan the new look I will be sporting.
Check you later! (Name that movie and win a DC "No-Prize"!)
So! My computer has bedeviled my friend's efforts to repair it for about two weeks - in fact it is still with him. This is just a breif update, the blog will be back on course, hopefully next week, when I get my computer back. In the meantime, head over to www.forcesofgood.com on Monday (10/4/04) to check out my column, "The Chop Socky Creature Feature."
Forcesofgood.com is a new pop culture e-magazine that I will be a regular contributor to and will feature interviews, articles, regular columns, reviews, and news about all the things we love about pop culture - be it movies, books, TV, comics, fashion, art or trends. So, if you are sick of reading whining internet nerds bitching about every little thing that they can bash, head on over to a new magazine with a new approach - let's celebrate the things we love, instead of trashing them and complaining about it all the time.
As ever, thanks for reading and I hope you take the time to check put my newest venture. If you go, come back here and let me know what you think of my column and the whole site.
Thanks, and I will be back with a vengeance next week!
Promises, promises . . .
As I stated a week or so ago, my computer was trying to kill itself. It succeeded. I am having a friend do surgery on it and it is even resisting that! So, no post 'til I get it back in a week or so. Sorry, talk to you all soon.
the ultimate in cosmic sounds and dragracing rhythms, Six Star General performs this Friday at Gabriels in Warren, RI. See the flyer above, designed, executed and posted by me. More tomorrow on fiction.
"What I'm doing isn't vengeance. It's punishment." -- Frank Castle, The Punisher
Here is the first of the new weekly review installment. Enjoy. Find comics, read them, scan them, love them.
Rating Scale (based on the thought processes of Ash from The Evil Dead Trilogy):
1 out of 5 Boomsticks = total misfire - you suck, asshead.
2 out of 5 Boomsticks = dud - lotsa ammo, no boom
3 out of 5 Boomsticks = bang - Shop smart. Shop S-Mart!
4 out of 5 Boomsticks = deadshot - Hail to the King, Baby!
5 out of 5 Boomsticks = superfine - Filled with atoms and molecules, and things you primitive screwheads wouldn*t understand!
Avengers #500 and 501 - Marvel Comics
writes: Brian Michael Bendis
pencils: David Finch
inks: Danny Miki
The first two chapters of the "Disassembled" storyline that will see the end of the long running Marvel title. The opening of the story "Chaos" finds the Avengers relaxing in their headquarters when a supposedly dead teammate shows up at the front door. When that zombie-like ally explodes, killing another Avenger, Ant-man, Chaos ensues. Brutally attacked on multiple fronts, the Avengers quickly find themselves outnumbered, outgunned and outclassed. With more deaths promised and the resurrection of the team advertised with mostly new members in the November-shipping New Avengers, this story promises to have lasting effects on the entire Marvel universe.
Having only just started reading The Avengers during Geoff Johns' run on the title, I am not as emotionally attached to these characters as long-time fans. Bendis has received a lot of slack in the fan press and online for the quick and apparently uncalled for abuse to the team and the resulting deaths. Looked at by many as a quick gimmick storyline, designed to attract people with shock value only, the book reads differently to me. Not knowing a lot of the history of the team during its latest incarnation (this is the third series of the team, the original having been launched in 1963 under the reins of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby) I find that Bendis' story is gritty, intense, and pulse pounding. Normally a writer who depends on talking heads and slow moving character development, this is a departure for Bendis and shows his creative depth. Portraying classic heroes like Iron Man and Captain America as indecisive and confused is not a slight by the writer to those characters, but rather a more realistic take on how any person would react under such horrific conditions. When She-Hulk loses her cool and "hulks out" it is regressing the character and that's exactly the point. This is a calm and reasoning lawyer who all of sudden turns into a raging monster on par with her cousin David (the Incredible Hulk) Banner at his worst. And no one in their reviews seems to be pointing out the obvious -- if Tony (Iron Man) Stark can be made to appear drunk at the UN when the recovering alcoholic hasn't had a drink in years, don't you think that whoever is ultimately responsible for this vicious attack on the Avengers could have also drugged She-Hulk in the same manner, to cause her breakdown?
On the art side of the equation things are a little less clear. While I think that Finch is an above average artist and very good at big action scenes, he doesn't quite have the chops to pull off the emotional elements that are key to this story. Bendis would be better complemented by a more well rounded artist for such a big story. Marvel is really touting this as their big "event" story of 2004 and as such should have had a higher profile artist on the gig -- my pick would have been Bryan Hitch (regardless of his slow turn around time.) That being said, however, I have to commend Finch on the above-mentioned She-Hulk scenes (started in #500 and ended with aplomb by Captain America in #501) -- he pulled it off in spades. It's blurry with rage and chaotic beyond the call of duty.
All in all, I am really looking forward to the remainder of this story. Sure, everybody is sick of the death of characters just to sell books. But Bendis has never been about that kind of storytelling and I am confident that all of the destruction and mayhem are serving a bigger purpose. Bendis is a long term, big picture type of writer and for those readers who stick in for the long haul, the pay off is always worth the blood, sweat and tears that you put in.
4 out of 5 Boomsticks! (I reserve the right to downgrade this, if the last two parts of the story totally blow!)
Batman #631 - DC Comics
writes: Bill Willingham
pencils: Kinsun
inks: Aaron Sowd
Part of the massive, 3-month long "War Games" storyline, this is the pinnacle issue of Act 1. For those unfamiliar with the Batman books (including Detective Comics, Nightwing, Legends of the Dark Knight, Robin, Birds of Prey, and Catwoman) these "event" stories happen pretty much on a bi-yearly basis now * something so big going on that it carries over into all of the books and effects the lives of all the characters in the Batman Family. Last time around, Batman's alter-ego, billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, was accused of murder and then became a fugitive of the law (check out the trade paperbacks Bruce Wayne: Murderer and Batman: Fugitive).
This year's macro-series finds the Batman operating mostly alone in Gotham, having alienated some of his most trusted allies and his partner, Robin, having given up his heroic mantle because of a promise to his father. When the devious Penguin unleashes a genetically altered Scarecrow on some of the other crime families in Gotham City, the ensuing power vacuum leaves the city open to a massive gang war. It's Russian mob vs. Asian street gangs vs. meta-freak. A bloodbath results and Batman has to do everything he can to hold the pieces together -- including trusting new allies that he normally wouldn't deign to speak to.
So far this storyline has been so-so to me. Admittedly, I have not read all of the 8 parts that made up the first act, I only read the main titles (Batman, Detective, Robin, and Nightwing.) But, in all fairness to the writers, I didn't need to read all the parts to follow the story fully - which is great when you consider the price of buying all the books. The flip side of that, however, is a proof to my "so-so" analysis - not enough important stuff is going on to justify the length of the story. Decompressed stories are great when the creators are exploring characters and their motivations, but this story is all about sweeping change to the criminal landscape in Gotham and Batman's role in that arena. So action is the key to the story, and Batman works best in those stories as a super-hero, not a detective. Another problem is the so-called "mystery" of this entire storyline -- the question of who started this gang war. If I'm right about who it is, I figured it out in the very first chapter (Batman: the 12-cent Adventure) and it didn't take a Batman-caliber computer to put it together. Hopefully, I'll be surprised at the end and the obvious deduction that I made is just a red herring.
The three things in the story so far that stand out as the better parts of the story are so buried beneath the machinations of the gangs and Batman's operatives, that they are almost overlooked. First, Batman's relationship with police Commissioner Jim Gordon has always been a classic comic element. But since Gordon's retirement from the force, Batman has been at best on a no harm, no foul-type of truce with the Gotham City Police Department and the new Commissioner Akins. This storyline is finally bringing the strain of that relationship to light. Second, the recent retirement of Robin and the much bally-hooed (bally-"booed" on a lot of the message boards) replacement by a female Robin also seems to be coming to an end, with the return of Tim Drake to the Robin outfit and some resolution to the strained relationship between Bruce and Tim.
Finally, the last element of this storyline that seems to be a goal of the writers is the outing of Batman. I don't mean that he's gay (although he seems to have more kids staying in that stately Wayne Manor, that Michael Jackson has at Neverland . . . ) but rather televised proof that Batman indeed exists. Where the caped crusader has always relied on the myth of his existence to scare criminals (a superstitious and cowardly lot), this new public revelation of him, in broad daylight no less, is bound to have dire consequences for his crime-fighting future. That's if the writers follow through with it. We'll see.
With 16 more issues to come in this gigantic story, I am not sure how much more the writers can stretch the gang war theme. They better have something big up their sleeves if they expect readers to stay tuned and commit the cash to follow the rest of the story. I didn't mention the art, because, while its not bad, it's just about competent and not much more -- basically, it doesn't rate mentioning one way or the other -- eh.
3 out of 5 Boomsticks.
So that's the first. Let me know what you think and more to come next week - and I promise, those'll be shorter!
