* Due to her absence from the initial wave of hype about the project’s upcoming relief, as well as some cryptic statements on her blog, I thought the great Phoebe Gloeckner was no longer associated with actress Mia Kirshner’s book about violence against women and children, I Live Here. However, this interview with Kirshner at PW Comics Week makes it seem like Gloeckner’s still aboard. There’s really no limit to my enthusiasm for her work and seeing more of it in any form would be the highlight of my comics-reading year, to say nothing of the profound need for more attention to the subject matter–in the case of Gloeckner’s contribution to the book, the epidemic slaughter of women and girls in Juarez, Mexico. (Via Chris Mautner.)
* Forget about apples-to-oranges, Jon Hastings goes apple-orchard-to-orange-grove with a list of 21 shows that are better than The Wire.
* You can watch things for free on Joost, right? Because I might start watching Death Note, if not Naruto or Bleach.
* I guess there’s something in the air with liberal bloggers and pop culture, because fresh from Matt Yglesias overselling The Wire, Ezra Klein sticks both fists into the Goatse-sized plot holes in Heroes. In discussing that show today I realized that much of my loathing for it stems from how its fandom was a direct offshoot of the “Lost sucks!” movement during early Season Three of that show. Who sucks now, fanboys?
* More political bloggers gone pop: Ta-Nehisi Coates notes the personal cultural crisis he experienced when he realized he didn’t really care for current hip-hop anymore. I’m not a black man (I hope you were sitting down!) so I didn’t experience things in the intense self-examinging way he did, necessarily, but I’m at least one white boy who fell out of love with the genre’s new stuff around the exact same time he did, reverting to listening to old stuff and/or other genres much like he did, so I think it’s safe to blame the music for sucking rather than any sort of ethnographic phenomenon.
* Finally, more awesome things are being said about me and my comic “Kitchen Sink,” this time by Rick Marshall:
My buddy Sean T. Collins has a new comic up at Top Shelf 2.0! It is… not for the squeemish. You know what? I’m kind of disturbed that the knowledge that this script came from a friend of mine doesn’t worry me in the slightest. I read it and I think, “Yeah, I can see Sean writing this.” And I DON’T EVEN FLINCH. Oi.
I frighten my friends! Delightful.
Don’t bother with Death Note. It’s hideously overrated and predictable as hell, much like The Wire, actually.
Don’t listen to Dan. Death Note is awesome. Well, at least up to Volume 7 or so.
I’ve already read the whole series and loved it–I was wondering about the anime that’s gonna be online now for free…
Even before Volume 7 it was getting tired. I mean, didn’t it seem pretty obvious that Ohba was just pulling rules for the Note out of his ass to give Light a get out of jail free card for whatever misfortune befell him? And it was only a matter of time before the Shinigami just checkmated him with said rules?