Archive for October, 2006
Hope you guys had a chance to catch my “Guest DJ” gig earlier today on CD101. Hanna had a blast as well.
Here’s a song I played especially for her, as it’s one of her favorites. She was singing along to it in the studio, much to the delight of the regular DJ, Lesley James.
“Fall is here, hear the yell
back to school, ring the bell
brand new shoes, walking blues
climb the fence, books and pens
I can tell that we’re going to be friendsWalk with me, Suzy Lee
through the park and by the tree
we will rest upon the ground
and look at all the bugs we found
then safely walk to school
without a soundWell here we are, no one else
we walked to school all by ourselves
there’s dirt on our uniforms
from chasing all the ants and worms
we clean up and now its time to learnNumbers, letters, learn to spell
nouns, and books, and show and tell
at playtime we will throw the ball
back to class, through the hall
teacher marks our height
against the wallAnd we don’t notice any time pass
we don’t notice anything
we sit side by side in every class
teacher thinks that I sound funny
but she likes the way you singTonight I’ll dream while in my bed
when silly thoughts go through my head
about the bugs and alphabet
and when I wake tomorrow I’ll bet
that you and I will walk together again
cause I can tell that we’re going to be friends”— The White Stripes, We’re Going To Be Friends
Yeah, yeah, I know. Whoop dee do.
But hey, I’m excited for my return to CD101 as a “Guest DJ” tomorrow. On top of that, I’ll be bringing along a friend: Hanna! She doesn’t have school that day, so she’ll be my co-DJ and may even say a few words, if she’s not too shy. We’ll be on from 11 AM till noon.
For you Columbus kids, that’s 101.1 on your FM dial.
For anyone else who might be so inclined, you can listen live via the web.
Hanna wants to play some Green Day and The Clash. My playlist includes Ben Harper, Lyrics Born, Concrete Blonde, R.L. Burnside, Transplants, local boys The Sun, and maybe a few more…
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010427.php
Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has instead been drawn to Iraq.
Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1950s fantasy classic, “Lord of the Rings,” to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.
“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.
“It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S.,” he continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”
My favorite time-waster lately has been looking up obscure comix facts on wikipedia.
Comix articles on wikipedia are copious and detailed, it turns out. I don’t know who does them, but I do always find out something new. They have obscure characters, but also rundowns of storylines from individual books. I wonder if the companies themselves add to their articles.
I thought following characters would allow me to read fewer comic books, but on the contrary, it makes me want to read more. It’s a lot easier to duck into a comic if you know you can quickly come up to speed on the backstory. It’s especially good if you read books that rely heavily on backstory, like Geoff Johns’ Justice Society.
Per Degaton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Degaton
Battle for Bludhaven
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bludhaven#The_Battle_for_Bl.C3.BCdhaven
Infinite Crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Crisis
Psylocke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psylocke
Sweet Christmas!
Long before 48 Hours or Lethal Weapon had driven the “mismatched buddy cop” genre into the ground, I was grooving to the coolest comic Marvel produced in the early eighties. Pairing the black urban ex-con with the naïve rich white kid from the furthest of suburbs, Power Man & Iron Fist took a couple characters whose own books were fading away and made a team that became one of the most prominent titles in Marvel’s lineup. The acme for the series came during a run written by Mary Jo Duffy and penciled by Kerry Gammill, somewhere around issues 60-80. Shortly thereafter, the characters fell into less competent hands, and are unfortunately remembered more for the mediocre years that led to the demise of the series. Over the course of the best issues, however, Mary Jo Duffy did a wonderful job blending the jaded cynicism of Power Man’s inner city New York with the mystical awe of Iron Fist’s lost city of K’un-Lun in a series of mostly self-contained issues.
Given the time these were published, I’m puzzled that Kerry Gammill didn’t garner the same rabid following that grew around his contemporaries Byrne and Perez. In those days photorealistic depictions of super-hero action were the paradigm, and Gammill’s work was head and shoulders above the other two. More textured than Byrne, more fluid than Perez, his work drew me into those gritty alleyways and penthouse offices these Heroes-for-Hire traveled. Perhaps it’s because his output wasn’t that of those other early 80’s stars; besides PM/IF and a brief stint following Byrne on Superman, I don’t recall seeing any other comics with his name on them; perhaps he was just moonlighting with the comics gig. If so, that’s our loss. Here’s a page from issue #67:
Everyone digs Luke Cage—the jive talking, bulletproof brother with a penchant for yellow silk shirts and the greatest catch phrase in the history of comics (seen above). But I was always more impressed by the Daniel Rand part of the team. Iron Fist was the anti-Batman; sure, he saw his parents killed and spent years in seclusion preparing for a mission of vengeance, but he still managed to emerge as an optimistic, sheltered kid. He was calm, graceful, and serene; he had the coolest costume not designed by Steve Ditko; he was all about skill and less about super powers (having a power that could only be used sparingly); and he was the biggest badass of the Marvel universe. Yeah, Wolverine always gets that title bestowed upon him, but I would contest that claim by pointing to the occasion Iron Fist threw Wolverine out a fifth-story window during a bout with the entire X-Men team, or the two occasions he beat Wolverine’s primary nemesis, Sabretooth, unconscious. No wonder Sabretooth decided to switch arch-foes. Here are a couple panels from Sabretooth’s first appearance in Claremont & Byrne’s Iron Fist #14, wherein “The Living Weapon” makes Sabretooth scream like a little girl.
Which brings me to a specific issue of the title. It was my incredible good fortune to stumble across a particular eBay auction while searching for individual issues of this series. Some lady was selling her husband’s old comic collection (don’t want to know the story there) and was offering a 19-issue set of the series for a couple bucks. Apparently not being familiar with collecting herself, she had left nestled in the bunch the second appearance of Wolverine’s future arch foe in Power Man & Iron Fist #66. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care much about Sabretooth himself—my days of following the X-Men ended when X-Factor #1 hit the stands and I saw that Jean Grey was still alive. But it’s annoying when you’re trying to track down a favorite old title only to find one issue sitting in the middle of the run that’s too godawful expensive to get because a totally unrelated character appears in it. So I only felt a little bad taking this one off her hands with all the others.
The story lurking behind that excellent Frank Miller cover goes like this: Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, private detectives operating under the name Nightwing Restorations (this being back when Dick Grayson was still wearing Christmas colors) are seeking to recover a statue known as the Jade Tiger from the vault of an art thief when they discover the art treasures are protected by a couple mercenaries named Constrictor and Sabretooth. One of the ladies is an ex-cop with a bionic arm, the other a lady Samurai, but the fight goes badly for them. A badly wounded Colleen escapes, but Misty’s bionic arm has been trapped by the vault’s magnetic lock. She’s pinned to the wall inside, running out of air, and the bad guys don’t even realize she’s inside.
Colleen manages to contact their friends and professional rivals at Heroes-for-Hire, who mount a rescue operation. Iron Fist sneaks in ninja-style to rescue Misty while Power Man does his bull-in-a-china-shop routine at the front door to provide a distraction. Both heroes run into their counterparts, the constrictor taking on Power-Man, while Sabretooth decides he’d like another shellacking at Iron Fist’s hands. Here’s the Constrictor, who has the same powers as the giant penguin from Monty Python’s Scott of the Antarctic sketch.
Here are a couple panels for all the Wolverine fans out there: Watch as Logan’s arch-nemesis gets beaten unconscious by a guy wearing slippers. Again.
Hey!! Oh, No!!
The quartet of protagonists walks off arm-in-arm on the last page as the bad guys get loaded into the back of a police van in cuffs. Sabretooth apparently decided at some point after this that he could build a better rep if he stayed the hell away from Iron Fist and picked on someone easier.
Eight years ago, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. At the time, she was given three years to live, but managed to surprise her doctors every step of the way with her longevity. This past year, however, has seen a steep decline and it appears her struggle with the disease is reaching its conclusion.
Over the summer, the hospice nurses told my dad that they expected her to go within a couple weeks. Months went by afterwards, the physical decline accelerating but not coming to an end. She was bedridden and taking enough pain medication to put any of us into a coma, but remained awake and aware all the way through.
A few weeks ago, she took a turn for the (even) worse and went into the hospital. I figured that the worst was finally over, and she would soon be done with her suffering and my dad would be able to move on and heal from his own ordeal. Once again, that hasn’t worked out. Despite my mindset that we’ve had eight years to anticipate and adjust to this eventuality, I wasn’t prepared for the way it happens: so incredibly long and drawn out, withering away so rapidly and slowly at once. She could die tonight, or lie in the nursing home she’s been moved to for another couple months. No one has a clue.
It feels strange going about my day-to-day life at this point. She’s lying in that room, coherent some days and not others, and while I’ve got that idea rattling around the back of my head I’m also trying to remember that I need to pick up milk and diapers on the way home from work, and I have to put the finishing touches on a comic in time for MidOhio. Whatever we’re doing during the course of a given day, everyone goes quiet when the phone rings.
Geez, what a downer of a post. Here’s some levity to provide balance:
So Yahoo’s got this article called The Must-Have Halloween Costumes. Apparently pirates is where it’s at. Then under the listing of “what else is hot,” we get this gem:
“5. Other Marvel Comic characters
This category includes Flash, Robin, Spiderman and Thor. “These are evergreen costumes,” says Bertolino. One deluxe Spiderman costume nets $115 at Boston Costume. Robin rentals start at $65.”
God, I am such a dork for even pointing this out. But come on, lady, it’s simple fact checking.
Sad news: due to poor reader response, Reader Submitted Monday Morning Guess the Artist Pages, also known as RS-MMGtAP, has been cancelled. You broke my heart, kids. I hope you’re happy.
So once again, this week’s page comes from my own personal comic book collection. No guessing if you own this particular book and can look up the artist credits.
(click image to Super(boy)size)
(previous weeks: 9/12/2005, 9/19/2005, 9/26/2005, 10/3/2005, 10/10/2005, 10/17/2005, 10/24/2005, 10/31/2005, 11/1/2005, 11/2/2005, 11/3/2005, 11/4/2005, 11/5/2005, 11/6/2005, 11/7/2005, 11/14/2005, 11/21/2005, 11/28/2005, 12/5/2005, 12/12/2005, 12/19/2005, 12/26/2005, 1/2/2006, 1/9/2006, 1/16/2006, 1/23/2006, 1/30/2006, 2/06/2006, 2/13/2006, 2/20/2006, 2/27/2006, 3/6/2006, 3/13/2006, 3/20/2006, 3/27/2006, 4/3/2006, 4/4/2006, 4/5/2006, 4/6/2006, 4/7/2006, 4/8/2006, 4/9/2006, 4/10/2006, 4/17/2006, 4/23/2006, 5/1/2006, 5/8/2006, 5/15/2006, 5/22/2006, 5/29/2006, 6/5/2006, 6/12/2006, 6/19/2006, 6/26/2006, 7/3/2006, 7/10/2006, 7/17/2006, 7/24/2006, 7/31/2006, 8/7/2006, 8/13/2006, 8/21/2006, 8/28/2006, 9/4/2006, 9/11/2006, 9/18/2006, 9/25/2006, 10/2/2006, 10/9/2006)
What ‘cha doin’ tonight?
Tonight is the latest installment of Show Columbus, an annual showcase of local art, music and fashion*. It takes place Downtown at the Vault, a former bank in the 100 block of East Gay Street.
Jess and I went there last year as one of our first dates, and had a wonderful time. It may be the thing that brought us together.
Who knows? That Bar of Modern Art thingie might even open tonight, too.
* Did you say fashion, Tony? Yes, kittens. Fashion.
I Keee You!! will be debuting at SPX this weekend from Atomic Books. Advance copies I guess. Officially not available on the site till the end of October. Retails for $7.95 with a handsome cover. Features strips and drawings by Brian Ralph, Jeffrey Brown, Nick Bertozzi, Suzanne Baumann, and others. I should be getting my comp copy in the mail sometime soon. An impressive group of cartoonists I’m happy to be a part of.
* I did this strip like two years ago so it’ll be a suprize for everyone.
** Atomic Books is an awesome shop that carries a wide variety of zines, comix, and what not. This is one of their rare dabblings in publishing. Atomic Books still lists one of the remaining copies of the first Panel anthology (that I sold them three years ago). They do consignment, yes. The only sure way to get your money from any retailer is to sell them books at shows out right or a find a distributor (?). Don’t let your work linger in consignment limbo. The exposure excuse is what the internets is for.
I love me some Keillor..
I propose that we change Columbus Day to Bush Day, a cautionary holiday, like Halloween, a day to meditate on the hazards of ambition. We could observe it by going through the basement and garage and throwing out stuff we don’t want or need. Also, by not mortgaging the house to pay for a vacation, and not yelling at the neighbors, and not assuming that the law is for other people.