* I Deserved That Part 1: CRwM makes Swiss cheese out of my ill-supported contention yesterday that extreme, difficult violence in various horror movies can be labeled good or bad, worthwhile or pointless, based on the artists’ intent. All I can say is mea culpa. I shouldn’t have said “intent.” I didn’t even really mean “intent,” I don’t guess–I certainly wasn’t sitting there mentally comparing, say, what the makers of Inside must have been thinking to what the makers of Henry must have been thinking. I was inferring motivation, which was my mistake, but what I was really thinking of was “effect.” I’m glad CRwM called me on this.
* I Deserved That Part 2: Tom Spurgeon says “Where’s your god now, Moses?” to those of us who defended Final Crisis #1’s chart placement behind Secret Invasion #2. I don’t see the connection he’s trying to make between the commentariat’s take on its performance and that of the dire May 2009 sales chart–no, we’re not defending the relative health of the top books this month, but that’s because they aren’t healthy. Still, in retrospect, defending the failure of the first issue of an event comic by top talent from a Big Two publisher to hit #1 in a marketplace designed specifically to get first issues, event comics, and top talent from Big Two publishers to #1 does seem like so much weaksauce. I think maybe Grant Morrison is telling a story between the lines when, in interviews, he proudly and correctly points out that Final Crisis and Batman R.I.P. were the bestselling books of the year for DC. (Pick the phrase to emphasize in that sentence.) Whatever, they’re still awesome comics and I’m still twelve kinds of skeeved out by the idea that I should think of them as artistic failures because they didn’t do Civil War numbers.
* Behold, The Immortal Iron Fist is becoming, at least for five issues, Immortal Weapons, and you can see a sketchbook preview here. The recently revived and expanded Iron Fist mythology is sort of the foundational text for a quartet of rewardingly outside-the-usual-territory Marvel books that includes The Incredible Hercules, Agents of Atlas, and the unfortunately cancelled, possibly-to-be-revived-digitally Captain Britain and MI-13. I hope Immortal Weapons is good and does well.
* Speaking of the debt we owe to Ed Brubaker these days, my goodness the upcoming Criminal: The Deluxe Edition is an eye-catching object.
* Well, here’s a swell idea for a regular column: The AV Club presents Gateways to Geekery, a guide to the kinds of things you hear great things about but seem too daunting to dive right into. This go-round, Tasha Robinson recommends Stephen King gateway texts. I pretty much agree with all her recommendations: Where to start, must-reads for the newly broken-in, and books you should probably stay the fuck away from. (Hello, Dark Tower series!) (Via Whitney Matheson.)
* I know it’s a cash grab by Capitol Records, but these double- and triple-disc reissues of Radiohead’s back catalog–soon to include Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail to the Thief–really scratch an itch I’ve had for over a decade. I remember enviously eyeing that Japanese import EP with “Killer Cars” on it at the campus record store for ages but never quite having the guts to spend the cash on it, and now all I have to come up with is around $10 when these every-B-side-remix-and-live-version collections hit the Amazon used listings and I’m good to go!
* There’s really nothing about the idea of Beck doing a quick-and-dirty cover of the entirety of The Velvet Underground and Nico and releasing it online song by song that I don’t like. Ditto the runner-up album for the honor, the Digital Underground’s Sex Packets (which I was just listening to on Wednesday!).