* Today on Robot 6: Frank Miller directed a Gucci ad. YESSSSSS

* This teaser for an upcoming arc of Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead looks very, very promising if you like zombies. The series goes so long without zombies becoming a genuine threat to the cast other than isolated fuckup-based incidents that when the threat re-emerges, it’s usually stunning.

* Speaking of The Walking Dead, here’s the trailer for the 90-minute pilot episode of Frank Darabont’s adaptation of the series for AMC, which will debut on Halloween.

A few quick thoughts: 1) I’m surprised they kept the coma/hospital opening, which was written before Kirkman had seen the very similar opening of 28 Days Later; 2) Modern slow zombies just look like Improv Everywhere zombie-flashmobs to me anymore; 3) The music cue in the back end of the trailer is to me by far the most unexpected and interesting thing about it. But as always, trailers are meaningless and we’ll see how the show is.

* Brand spankin’ new Jordan Crane comics! Where the hell is this thing headed?

* Brian Chippendale and C.F. are doing a little book tour together in November. Be on the lookout for two ragamuffins who make good comics. Wait, does this mean Powr Mastrs 3 is seriously coming out by November?

* Bobsy of the Mindless Ones makes the case against Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver’s S.H.I.E.L.D. I must admit I’ve dialed way back from my initial enthusiasm for the book. It’s great to be in love with ideas, but it helps if the ideas aren’t so familiar, and if the ideas are happening to actual characters rather than sort of vague gestures in the direction of character. The critique Bobsy goes with is one I hadn’t even really considered, which is that an alternate history of a fictional world whose history is constantly altered loses the impact of good alternate history. In a way it reminds me of Brian Michael Bendis’s similarly conspiratorial/revisionist Illuminati project, which also missed the point of conspiracy fiction by taking a bunch of supergeniuses and attributing to them all the icky aspects of being the world’s secret puppetmasters with none of such organizations’ efficacy. (They couldn’t stop Secret Wars 2 from happening, so what good are they?) Personally, my biggest problem with S.H.I.E.L.D. (and, it would seem, Fantastic Four, into which Hickman has drawn some of his key S.H.I.E.L.D. concepts) is that by turning Iron Man and Mister Fantastic’s dads into members of an elite secret society that’s been saving the world from Marvel’s alien villains since ancient Egypt, modern-day Marvel has turned yet another pair of Stan Lee hard-luck heroes into destiny-driven Chosen Ones. The appeal of virtually every Silver Age Marvel character is that they were all varying stripes of self-centered asshole who fell bass-ackwards into their lives as superheroes, and indeed had to make the choice to live those lives that way. They’re not the culmination of centuries of machinations by spider-gods or Leonardo da Vinci, they’re just folks. Genius folks in some cases, but still just folks.

* Tom Spurgeon ponders DC management.

* In this gutwrenching post on a) the death of his father and b) the music of Hole, Matthew Perpetua drops a throwaway notion that I’m stunned had never occurred to me before: Perhaps the reason there’s so little in the way of genuinely tortured-sounding rock music today is because labels can no longer afford to babysit crazies and junkies. Rattle off a list of a dozen of the mid-’90s big alternative artists and surely at least half had weapons-grade heroin habits, alcohol addictions, or other debilitating mental illnesses. With sales levels today being what they are, who can afford anything other than consummate professionals? (I suppose you could argue that the incarceration rate of today’s rap superstars gives lie to this, but incarceration is a step in the right direction from “getting murdered by your/your rival’s former label head.”)

* Real Life Horror: I can’t even imagine swimming in Loch Ness, let alone swimming Loch Ness. When I visited, I’m not sure I even touched the water. Just in case!

* Congratulations to this list of Democratic officials who’ve stood up for civil rights, American values, and basic human decency. Short list.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.