Low Moon

Jason, writer/artist

Fantagraphics, June 2009

216 pages, hardcover

$24.99

Buy it from Fantagraphics

Buy it from Amazon.com

Tom Spurgeon’s recent review of this book centered on whether or not it was (apologies to Elaine Benes) spongeworthy. Of all the Jason books released by Fantagraphics, this short story collection is the first one to get the hardcover treatment, obviously due to the titular story’s serialization in The New York Times–but does it really deserve the extra frou-frou and increased price point? Does the format flatter the work? With all due respect to the Spurge, shit yeah. And I say that as someone who casually dislikes hardcovers as a rule. But you could do much, much, much, much, much, much worse than to spend 25 bucks and an inch on your bookshelf on yet agoddamnnother collection of murderously bleak and astonishingly well-executed high-concept existentialism, drawn with an unimpeachable clean line and colored like unto a thing of beauty. Time and time again during these five stories I was almost physically impacted by Jason’s skill as a storyteller: A character spits a mouthful of something spoilery into a sink in “Emily Says Hello,” relationships are established and upended with the tiniest possible handful of panels in “Low Moon,” petty and heinous crimes are paralleled Crimes & Misdemeanors-style with chilling results in “&,” another mouthful of something spoilery is forcibly ejected in “Proto Film Noir,” a strange plant fires spores into the sky indifferent to the plight of an observer in “You Are Here”…his skill and his bravado left me shaking my head with amusement and/or amazement time and time again. He’s one of the best, as is this book.

UPDATE: Spurge corrects my interpretation of his review in the comments.

Wednesday Comics is printed on newsprint after all. Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat regrets regretting the error.

* Here’s a nice little suite of action-movie reviews that are well worth your time (both the action movies and the reviews):

* Not Coming to a Theater Near You’s Cullen Gallagher reviews George P. Cosmatos’s Rambo: First Blood Part II. Gallagher plays it straight, which I think is a pretty rewarding way to engage the problematic yet hugely bizarre and entertaining shoot-’em-ups of the ’80s.

* Meanwhile, fellow NCtaTNY critic Leo Goldsmith reviews Joseph Zito’s Invasion U.S.A. Goldsmith does not play it straight, but hey, with scenes like this, it’s tough to blame him. It’s still a fun review, and let’s face it, Chuck Norris’s Matt Hunter does not invite the level of commentary that does John J. Rambo, Sylvester Stallone’s Vietnam Frankenstein. Points for locating the film within the Golan-Globus oeuvre.

* Finally, The Onion AV Club’s Scott Tobias reviews Sam Raimi’s Darkman. For young teens searching desperately for a post-Burton-Batman live-action superhero fix, this one was tough to beat; Raimi’s made three Spider-Man and still has yet to do so.

* Here’s a quartet of interesting posts from the Comics Comics/PictureBox crew:

* Frank Santoro sings the praises of Mat Brinkman’s recently collected Multiforce. I do hope Frank will take a closer look at Teratoid Heights while he’s at it; as I’ve tried to argue, there’s emotional content aplenty in that book beyond the “look at the purty pictures” aspect.

* Next, Dan Nadel takes a look at Grant Morrison’s Batman run, specifically Batman & Robin (which he likes) and Batman R.I.P. (which he doesn’t). Like many readers, Dan blames the discrepancy in art, here between the great Frank Quitely and the, well, less great Tony Daniel, for the discrepancy in quality. I’ve defended Daniel’s work on R.I.P. before and will do so again–no, he isn’t Quitely, but not many artists in the history of superhero comics are, and I think the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh was quite obviously intended as a riff on the “extreme” Image heroes whose artists are a clear influence on Daniel. (Actually, now that I think of it, TBoZEA functions a lot like Image’s similarly decrepit, in-house Image parody character, the Maxx.)

* Back on the Frank Santoro beat, keep your eyes peeled for Cold Heat Special #9 by Santoro and Closed Caption Comics’ awesome Lane Milburn.

* Finally, Santoro’s new blog presents highlights from his comics collection, which often end up for sale at the PictureBox table at conventions.

* NeilAlien goes buck-wild on Brian Bendis et al’s recent dethroning of Doctor Strange as Sorcerer Supreme.

* Speaking of Bendis, Powers is returning. I’m looking forward to it.

* I finally got a chance to read Graeme McMillan’s interview with Grant Morrison I linked to the other day, and here’s the part that stood out to me the most:

Watching a billionaire Batman disarm poorly-trained, poverty-stricken muggers effortlessly or beating up skinny junkies might be fun for a scene or two but does tend to raise thorny issues of class and privilege that the basic adventure hero concept is not necessarily equipped to deal with adequately.

Morrison says this by way of explaining why he’s focused on Batman’s weird/super adversaries rather than doing street-level stuff. It reminds me a lot of what I was talking about earlier regarding superheroes and torture. I think there are several perfectly legitimate approaches to dealing with these sorts of unpleasant situations, and while heightening the contradictions”by doing one of those “logical conclusions”-type stories is one, simply bailing and addressing some other aspect of the genre seems valid to me as well.

* I’ve been trying to stay as spoiler-free about The Descent 2 as possible–y’know, beyond the spoiler inherent in the existence of the film itself–but here’s a big gallery of Descent 2 stills to whet your appetite if you’re in that market.

* David Wain, who once ran from The Missus and I when we recognized him in the Museum of Natural History as though he were Princess Diana fleeing the paparazzi, is holding a copy of The State: The Complete Series DVD box set in his hot little hands. I’m still not convinced it’s not an elaborate put-on, but I’ve got the thing pre-ordered on Amazon, so we shall see.

* I’m glad they’ve instituted Supergirl’s bike shorts as her official under-skirt covering, because besides being exponentially less loathsome than showing her panties all the damn time–let alone comics superstar Jeph Loeb’s decision to reintroduce this underage character into the DCU by way of a protracted nude scene–it’s actually fairly realistic. I’ve spent my fair share of time around Catholic high school girls in my day, and they almost always wore boxers under their skirts (in large part, let’s be honest, because of spending their fair share of time around Catholic high school boys like me).

* Brian K. Vaughan is off Lost. The fanboy in me always reacts to announcements like this by thinking “B-b-b-b-but doesn’t he want to stick around till the end?!?!?”

* Guillermo Del Toro talks about a bunch of things, including trying to carve out a new filmic identity for The Hobbit versus The Lord of the Rings. I maintain that Del Toro is overrated, so I view this with the usual blend of excitement and skepticism.

* Damn Data and Bryan Alexander both take a closer look at that horrendous-looking viral-video North Carolina sewer lifeform than I’m willing to do.

* Apparently the comics internet was always a horrible, horrible place.

I suppose there’s a degree to which we must give superheroes beating criminals for information a pass just by the nature of the genre, the same way we give their vigilantism a pass but probably wouldn’t approve of anyone in real life kidnapping a criminal, pounding the shit out of them, and hanging them unconscious from a lamppost outside One Police Plaza. But I think that a good writer, on some level or other, owns up to the ickiness of this behavior. After all, superheroes routinely do things to criminals in their power that we would classify as war crimes if the Bush Administration did them. Far be it from me to impose a political litmus test on fiction regarding this or any issue, but I like to assume that thinking people who make up stories for a living have given this topic some thought (hopefully even before America started routinely doing this), and thus if a writer doesn’t comment in some way on how profoundly fucked-up this aspect of superheroic behavior is, it’s on them.

A case in point is Justice League: Cry for Justice #1. For real, there was a major, major disconnect between how awesome Ryan Choi kept saying Ray Palmer was in the comic, and how awesome writer James Robinson kept saying Ray Palmer was in the supplemental material, and the fact that his main action beat in this issue was torturing Killer Moth. That’s not awesome!

I often think of the scene in The Dark Knight Returns where Batman throws a guy through a window, informs him that he’s bleeding out, and the only way Batman will bring him to a hospital is if he coughs up info. Miller’s writing is such that even though we’re obviously supposed to see Batman as a hero, we are also to understand that he is a dangerous, disturbed man, and that this conduct is not particularly honorable–it’s something his demons have driven him to do.

Another case: recently Ed Brubaker had a scene where Daredevil tortured some nigh-invulnerable supervillain by lighting him on fire or something like that. Now it turned out that he wasn’t actually doing this–I forget how it worked, but I think it was one of those “power of suggestion” deals, like how you read about in frat initiations when they tell the initiate that they’re going to be branded but then touch them with an ice cube, the burn mark appears anyway. But still, Brubaker wrote the scene in such a way that there was no doubt that what Daredevil was doing was a seriously messed-up act by a seriously messed-up man.

And of course there are any number of similar examples, from Rorschach even to that horrible, horrible JMS Spider-Man storyline after Aunt May got shot where he was like “no more Mr. Nice Spidey, I’m going to break fingers and make deals with devils and abandon my marriage every day until I get my octogenarian aunt back.”

The Atom’s conduct in this issue, on the other hand, was just gross–extra gross, given his torture technique’s resonance with his and his wife’s own history, as a friend of mine pointed out.

At any rate, isn’t torture what bad guys do?

Then there’s the whole issue of the unreliability of information extracted through torture, which no one seems to want to address in comics or anywhere else. But that’s another story, I suppose.

“Starlight” by Muse…in a higher key!!!

Mike Nelson. Joel McHale. Red Dawn. RiffTrax. Happy Birthday, America!

OH MY GOD

* Here are a couple of video interviews with Grant Morrison I haven’t had a chance to watch yet. (Via JK Parkin.)

* Here’s an audio interview with Jordan Crane I haven’t had a chance to listen to yet. (Via Mike Baehr.)

* Here’s a Gilbert Hernandez superheroine comic I haven’t had a chance to read yet. (Also via Mike Baehr.)

* B-Sol at Vault of Horror notes the locations of Deadgirl theatrical screenings across the country on July 24th and 25th at midnight. They shoulda thrown San Diego in there.

* I really don’t care if Let Me In is “a more accurate English-language translation” of the title of the novel upon which Let the Right One In was based–it’s not as good a title, and it’s silly that that’s what They’re calling the Hollywood remake. (Via Jason Adams.)

* I have no dog in this race at all, so I’ll simply say that Tom Spurgeon’s argument for pulling the plug on the Harveys has me mentally singing its central proposition to the tune of “Pulling the Plug on the Party,” which is awesome.

* Yes, by all means, please collect David Mazzucchelli’s Rubber Blanket so I can finally read the damn thing.

* Can’t remember if I’ve seen this before or not, but the Clive Barker adaptation Book of Blood hits DVD on September 29th.

* My pal Ben Morse makes the case for his definitive Batman stories.

* My pal Ceri B. takes a look at a pair of horror-ish comics that were part of what was once known as “the New Mainstream,” The Light Brigade and various 30 Days of Night books.

* Wow: Scientists have discovered a single, massive ant mega-colony spread across Europe, the U.S., and Japan. (Via Thoreau.)

* Torture links of the day: We tortured multiple prisoners to death. Shouldn’t that be a bigger deal, especially given how the torture debate has come to center not on the morality of abuse generally, but whether the way we abused people wasn’t that severe?

* Adorable, animated-style Battlestar Galactica figures are pretty hilarious in the context of the series’ final episodes. Speaking of, it’s kind of adorable that the upcoming tv movie Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is pretty explicitly devoted to tying up plot points they never got around to covering in the series itself.

* Tim O’Neil, whose lengthy ruminations on the mainstreamiest of mainstream comics have become one of the crown jewels of the comics blogosphere, kicks of a series of posts addressing the State of the X-Men Union.

* Not Coming to a Theater Near You’s Katherine Follett reviews Paul Barthel’s sex-and-violence spectacular Death Race 2000. RIP, Frankenstein.

* B-Sol at the Vault of Horror praises Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel’s Deadgirl. Actually, he rhetorically asks “This Year’s Inside?”, which isn’t exactly the way to convince me I need to see the movie, but I get his point. It’s funny: The Missus saw the trailer for this thing ages ago and immediately wrote it off as yet another meditation on what violently sexualized misogyny does to the men who perpetrate it rather than to the women who suffer from it. I think she probably has a point, but it’s tough to say without seeing the film.

I’m gonna be in town and I was hoping someone could recommend something to do. I understand they have a very nice zoo.

CLIVE BARKER will hold a brief conversation with GRANT MORRISON before the signing.

WHO: GRANT MORRISON

WHY: Signing Batman and Robin and his latest Hard Cover Book

WHEN: WEDNESDAY, JULY 1st, 2009

MUSIC PROVIDED BY: iheartcomix.com & DJ Franki Chan

DRINKS: ASAHI & TIBETAN TEA

6:00 PM to 9:00 PM @ MELTDOWN

7522 SUNSET BLVD, L.A., CA, 90046

OH MY GOD)

(hat tip: David Paggi

* It’s come at last, at last it’s come, the day I knew would come at last has come at last: Topless Robot’s Rob Bricken reviews Transformers 2, first in traditional prose fashion and again in handy Frequently Asked Questions form. Childhood-raping accusations are kept to an absolute minimum (logic-raping accusations, not so much), plot holes that make Terminator Salvation sound like Chinatown by comparison are delineated in loving detail, and the comment threads offer all the lulz you’d expect, from labeling the reviews “hate-filled” “propaganda” to calling people who found Michael Bay’s racist-caricature robots racist racist themselves to anonymously suggesting everyone go out and get laid instead of complaining. It’s magnificent.

* Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about Michael Jackson, separating art from artists, and Jeffrey Dahmer.

* Renee French’s art is unnerving.

* Josh Simmons’s art is unnerving.

I’ll Be There in Twin Peaks from Mashed in Plastic on Vimeo.

Michael Jackson and Twin Peaks fans, prepare to get knocked flat on your ass.

* Michael Jackson is dead. I’ve been so busy today I’ve barely had time to process it, but is there any way to overstate the depth of the man’s genius and the tragedy of his decades-long demise? Just the other day I was watching the footage of the Motown anniversary concert where he debuted the moonwalk, and I got to thinking about how while it’s easy for people my age who’ve watched him and parodies of him all our lives to take for granted, this stuff didn’t come out of nowhere–this guy had to think all those moves up and then have the physical talent to do them. And that’s quite aside from his world-beating songwriting and singing gifts, and his ability to comport himself as probably the closest thing the world has actually produced to a Ziggy Stardust rock and roll messiah, and the fact that he accidentally became one of the most important figures in horror history, and on and on and on…and whatever the truth of his dealings with children, which I think were disturbing even in the best-case scenario, it’s also impossible to separate that, and him, from what was likely horrendous abuse at the hands of his loathsome father…and of course there’s no inherent reason that he couldn’t have kept producing worthwhile music for years to come if he could have mastered whatever it was that was so visibly tearing him apart….and, and, and. God, just such a complex, astonishing, tragic figure. Fuck, okay, now I’m getting upset about it. I loved you Michael Jackson.

* Coincidentally, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a blogger who’s getting so good I was already going to link to him today simply to say “Ta-Nehisi Coates is a really, really good blogger,” wrote two pieces on Michael just a couple of days ago that you should read. Andrew Sullivan’s post is just beautiful, too.

* While we’re at it, I’m still pretty proud of the essay I wrote about the influence of “Thriller.”

* Well this has got to be my favorite review of the month: Not Coming to a Theater Near You’s Adam Balz tackles The Running Man with an utterly straight face (“Richards is brought on stage, introduced to the live audience against a thunder of jeering – he is, after all, the Butcher of Bakersfield, a lie that is reinforced through doctored video of him firing on the unarmed crowd – and set down in a metal cart that will deliver him, at an unimaginable velocity, through underground tunnels, into the massive, 400-square-foot arena.”). I have seen The Running Man more than any other of the ’80s’ many ultraviolent sci-fi action movies, largely because it was the one I watched as a kid. Heck, it was all but designed for a kid, modeled as it was on the visual language of pro-wrestling–but with killing! So this review really has it all for me. There’s a list of the varied career paths of the many, many non-actors who star in the film (Family Feud host, titular member of Fleetwood Mac, son of Frank Zappa, future governor (twice!), football/lacrosse legend, etc etc etc), a tidbit about Stephen King/Richard Bachmann’s writing process, a leisurely stroll through a couple of the movie’s adorably gigantic plot holes, a Slavoj Zizek reference, a comparison to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, you name it. If any of that sounds appealing to you, please read it.

* Now, if you’d told me earlier that I’d find a review today that I’d actually like better than Jog’s take on Greg Rucka & J.H. Williams III’s Detective Comics debut, I wouldn’t have believed you. Funny world, innit? Still, this thing’s very good–better than the comic, I think. (Did anyone else think it was funny that between the main Backup story and the Question backup story, there were two virtually identical scenes of a lesbian crimefighter in her civvies walking into a room and chatting with her late-middle-aged sidekick as he works on the computer?)

* Over the past few years Fantagraphics has truly brought out the format geek in me; I think it was their amazing softcover digest-plus re-release of Love & Rockets that did it, but the design and format of their Jason books has been killer too. So it’s fascinating to me that they’re repackaging Jason’s black-and-white/two-color books (some for the third time!) in the hardcover format they did for Low Moon. I’m actually not 100% sure how I feel about this–part of the appeal of Jason’s stuff is just how damn many books he’s put out through Fanta and just how awesome all of them are, and when you boil them down to three or four volumes you lose that impact a bit–but I’m sure they’ll be gorgeous things, and of course the comics are among the best in the world.

* While promoting that longer-but-still-not-complete Watchmen Director’s Cut that will inevitably be supplanted by the actual full-fledged Director’s Cut that he’d been describing to anyone who’d listen for months before the release of the film, director Zack Snyder said that Frank Miller really is writing a sequel to 300. Fingers crossed!

* To distract its citizens from the ongoing protests, Iran is broadcasting…The Lord of the Rings?

* Topless Robot. Transformers 2. The magic happens tonight.

* There just wasn’t much to talk about over the past few days! Please note that if you ever miss me around here, you can probably get a temporary fix by following @theseantcollins on Twitter.

* Last weekend, I think, MTV2 was doing this weird thing where they’d just show a hodgepodge of stuff MTV used to air during the ’90s–sketches from The State, Beavis & Butt-Head segments, the original silent and awesome Aeon Flux episodes, actual music videos, etc. Among this melange I caught the opening installment of the in-retrospect outrageously faithful animated adaptation of Sam Kieth and Bill Messner-Loebs’s The Maxx, and wow, that thing held up. Now it turns out MTV is streaming episodes at its website. (Via JK Parkin.) The Maxx was really my gateway to alternative comics in a lot of ways–visually and eventually thematically it threw open some doors in my head that I walked through years later–and I know a lot of folks my age have a similar story.

* Frank Santoro Will Teach You To Make Comics!

* Anders Nilsen has been posting sketchbook comics like crazy lately; here’s the latest. They’re a little cutesier and sillier than usual.

* Behind-the-Curve Comics Theater: CF’s “Vollenweider’s Cave,” via everyone last week. Note the uncredited cameo by the Toxic Avenger, or his face at least.

* Just the other day I was talking with my brother, who was freshly returned from proposing to his girlfriend at Disney World, about what a kickass theme park ride Lost would make. I must have been tapping the zeitgeist, because lo and behold, a rumor to that effect was recently debunked. Too bad!

* Holy moley, this gallery of 200 Dick Tracy characters is impressive. (Via Tom Spurgeon.)

* Hey, look, it’s Nick Bertozzi! (Also via Spurge but I can’t get the link to work)

* While the Loch Ness Monster will always hold a special place in my heart, and while I love giant squids to pieces too, I think the cryptid that really fires my imagination most is the mokele mbembe, the sauropod dinosaurs that supposedly still lurk in isolated jungles in central Africa. But what if the mokele mbembe isn’t a dinosaur at all? The extinct rhinoceros relative Indricotherium would match the long-necked descriptions offered by eyewitnesses and local legend; its former habitat would map pretty neatly to the contemporary African jungles; and obviously it’s a bit easier to imagine a surviving pocket of slightly prehistoric mammals than it is to imagine a bunch of dinosaurs running around millions of years after the fact. Finally, HOLY CRAP LOOK AT THIS AWESOME PICTURE

* 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!).

Below is a list of alternative comics creators and publishers on Twitter. I can’t say it’s comprehensive–this was just me grabbing the people I follow, and the people they follow, and so on until I got sick of it, so there’s certainly people I missed–but it’s a start. I also can’t say that all of the below fit the dictionary definition of alternative cartoonists, but better too many than too few, right?

Aaron Diaz @dresdencodak

Act-I-Vate @act_i_vate

Alison Bechdel @abechdel

Andy Runton @owly

Becky Cloonan @beckycloonan

Billy Mavreas @billy_mavreas

Box Brown @boxbrown

Brett Warnock (Top Shelf) @brettwarnock

Bryan Lee O’Malley @radiomaru

Cameron Stewart @cameronstewart

Chip Zdarsky @zdarsky

Chris Onstad @achewood

Chris Radtke @radtke327

Chris Staros (Top Shelf) @chrisstaros

Chuck BB @chuckbb

Colleen Coover @colleencoover

Corey Lewis @kenby

Dan Goldman @dddangoldmannn

Dan Nadel (PictureBox) @dannadel

Danny Hellman @dannyhellman

David Heatley @heatley

David Lasky @davidlasky

David Malki @malki

Dean Haspiel @deanhaspiel

Drawn & Quarterly @dandq

Dustin Harbin @dustinharbin

Dylan Horrocks @dylanhorrocks

Elijah J. Brubaker @elijahbrubaker

Evan Dorkin @evandorkin

Faith Erin Hicks @smuu

Fantagraphics @fantagraphics

Graham Annable @grickle

Icecreamlandia @icecreamlandia

James Jean @processrecess

James Lucas Jones (Oni) @jameslucasjones

Jason Little @beecomix

Jen Sorensen @slowpokejen

Joe Chiappetta @joeychips

John Leavitt @leavittalone

Jon Vermilyea @jonvermilyea

Karl Kerschl @karlkerschl

Kate Beaton @beatonna

Kaz @kazunderworld

Laurenn McCubbin @laurennmcc

Leigh Walton (Top Shelf) @leighwalton

Lloyd Dangle @lloyddangle

Lucy Knisley @lucylou

Matt Forsythe @mattforsythe

Matt Madden @mmaddencomics

Matt Maxwell @highway_62

Michael Kupperman @mkupperman

Mike Dawson @mikedawsoncomic

Molly Crabapple @mollycrabapple

NBM @nbmpub

Neil Jam @neiljam

Neil Kleid @neilkleid

Oni Press @onipress

Pantheon Books @pantheonbooks

Paul Hornschemeier @forlornfunnies

Paul Pope @pulphope

R. Stevens @rstevens

Renee French @reneefrench

Rick Spears @rickspears

Rick Trembles @ricktrembles

Rob Vollmar @robvollmar

Salgood Sam @salgood

Sarah Dyer @colorkitten

Sarah Glidden @kidglidden

Scott Campbell @scottlava

Scott McCloud @scottmccloud

Terry Moore @terrymoore

Tim Hodler (PictureBox) @thodler

Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow

Vasilis Lolos @vasilislolos

Warren Craghead @wcraghead

Zack Soto @secretvoice

Continuing his series of posts on torture porn, Curt Purcell reviews Hostel, which he likes less than I did, and Hostel Part II, which he likes more than I did. That’s about what I expected.

For the record, I thought the thriller component of the first film was enormously effective–my pulse was pounding!–in no small part because of the smart acting choices made by Jay Hernandez and, I suppose, by Eli Roth’s direction of him.

Also for the record, contra Curt’s interpretation of my Hostel Part II review, I didn’t have “apparently visceral discomfort with what [I] call ‘the aestheticized abuse of women” in the Heather Matarazzo torture scene qua the aestheticized abuse of women. Granted, that’s not necessarily my thing the way it is for much of the material Curt’s Groovy Age site focuses on, but I have no problem with it in theory any more than I have an inherent problem with the aestheticized abuse of any character in a horror movie. Moreover, I’m guessing Curt took my comment that I found the Weiner Dog Bloodbath scene to be one of the most unpleasant I’ve ever seen to mean that I didn’t “enjoy” seeing it. Enjoyment’s a tough nut to crack with horror, but again, and much more so than with Curt, “unpleasant” is more or less what I’m looking for with horror!

So if neither of those points is the key, what is? It lies in this quote from Curt:

In a movie that carves out its own signature fantasy space with a distinctive hyper-realistic style, the bloodbath scene sticks out like a sore thumb with its sumptuous, soft-lit gothicisms. It’s mentioned several times in the commentaries that this scene was actually quite disturbing to people on set during filming, and that’s less surprising to me than Sean’s reaction, because they were seeing it without all the framing, styling, cuts, editing, and post-production that so insistently reassure, “It’s only a movie.”

It was precisely because it had all that “it’s only a movie” nonsense surrounding it–and I’m thinking less of the Euro-horror sensuality in the scene itself, which is fine, and more of the splatstick stuff in the climax, which undercuts the whole film–that it bothered me so much. It’s kind of like the bit in Inside that made me turn off the movie. If I’d been watching Henry or Dahmer or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or something similarly weighty and serious in intent, I’d have stuck with it, but to violate that particular taboo in the name of a slick, glossy (if gory), credulity-stretching thriller? Thanks but no thanks. Ditto the demise of Weiner Dog. Paradoxically, it’s precisely the lack of realism that makes these sequences tougher both to watch and to justify. If i’m going to watch a nude woman get tortured to death, I want to feel like I’m eating my vegetables, not Cookie Crisps.

* Michael Kupperman is reviving the Golden Age Marvel character Marvex the Super Robot in Marvel’s upcoming All Select Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1, and I interviewed him about it.

* While I’m busy touting my Marvel clout, I’m reasonably sure it was a suggestion I made among a group of my friends that led to my pal Kiel Phegley asking whether Paul Cornell & Leonard Kirk’s late, lamented Captain Britain & MI-13 might be brought back as a digital comic, and Joe Quesada responding favorably, in the latest Cup o’ Joe column at CBR. If you like this idea, why not say so in public, and to any of your friends or acquaintances in Marvel’s employ? It sounds like if we ask for it, they’ll listen.

* That Cup o’ Joe interview also makes it sound like Marvel is out of the line-wide event business, or will be after maybe one more trip to the well. I think that’s good for the long-term health of the superhero comics industry, but May’s ginormous sales dip likely indicates it’ll be a challenge in the short term. I suppose it depends in part on whether, like Marvel over the past couple years, you try really hard to keep all your plates spinning, or whether you can only spotlight one or two franchises at a time to the detriment of the others.

* James Robinson and Mark Bagley on Justice League of America? Sure, I’ll eat it. I don’t have the experience with Robinson that many superhero readers do, having never read Starman, but while I didn’t end up liking his One Year Later Batman arc I’ve enjoyed his work in the Superman books recently quite a bit. Bagley, meanwhile, is not my favorite artist when it comes to drawing DC characters, but he knows how to tell a story and his work on Ultimate Spider-Man remains a woefully underappreciated component of that title’s success. I remain concerned about DC putting the cart before the horse by preventing its flagship team title from including its biggest characters because they’re busy elsewhere–there’s a reason Grant Morrison’s JLA and Brian Bendis’s Avengers were/are the biggest books of their eras, and it’s not because they focused on Vixen or Jack of Hearts–but still, color me intrigued. (Via JK Parkin.)

* Now this is how you write a post-artcomix-festival thank-you letter: TCAF’s Chris Butcher shows us how it’s done.

* The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror 2009—aka Kramers Ergot 7.5–will be guest-edited by Sammy Harkham. That line-up is effing nuts.

* It wasn’t until Heidi MacDonald used the word “remote” to describe the old location of the Eisner Awards that I realized, hey, wait, yeah, that is kinda weird, isn’t it? All the way at the end of the convention center by itself after the show shuts down for the evening, and you’ve got to walk under the sails through that deserted stretch of swag tables and autograph aisles. Anyway it’s moving to the Hilton.

* Because the original Red Dawn is a) a gonzo artifact of its time; b) a John Milius fever dream; c) TOTALLY AWESOME, I’m not sure I’ve said word one about Their plans to remake the movie, because why bother? But Latino Review is reporting that Tony Gilroy, Oscar-nominated writer/director of Michael Clayton and screenwriter of, I think, the last two Bourne movies is writing the Red Dawn remake. Suddenly this project got a lot more interesting. Incidentally, Red Dawn has recently joined Atlas Shrugged as a key text for the Obama era in the minds of some prominent and semi-prominent conservatives, so it should be interesting to see how they react to the prospect of the film being remade by the pen of a writer whose thrillers are generally perceived to tilt left.

* That Red Dawn link was via SciFi Wire, but I’m not linking to them again until they knock off their obnoxious habit of putting spoilers in their article headlines, above the by-now-pointless “spoiler warning” tag.

* B-Sol reviews The Blob. That scene where it eats the old man’s hand really was horrifying to watch as a kid, wasn’t it?

* These are two years old at least, but no less awesome for that: Marvel go-to cover artist Marko Djurdjevic redesigns He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Dig this Marilyn Manson-esque Skeletor! But the Mer-Man is more representative of what the redesigns look like overall. (Via Monster Brains.)

* I have no idea what the deal is with this photo from Rob Zombie’s upcoming Halloween 2, and I’m unlikely ever to find out first-hand, but damn what a great character design. It’s almost criminal to consign it to some other monster’s movie. (Via Arrow in the Head.)

* Finally, my pal Chris Ward talks to Jazma Online about Political Power: Barack Obama, his upcoming comic from Bluewater (yes, the “Female Force” people–Chris wrote the Condoleezza Rice issue). I’m trying to think how to put this…Chris is an interesting choice to write this project, or to write anything that you don’t want to read like the work of a crazy person, which is what Chris is. I think the interview speaks for itself. And it also has some juicy tidbits about life at Wizard.