Bruce Baugh joins the High School Soundtrack sweepstakes. If you spot anyone else, lemme know.

Jim Henley is en fuego. Here he is on a variety of subjects including the irresistability of Brian Bendis’s Daredevil, the use of same as a model to beat the “wait for the trade” movement into submission, and the lousy writing in highly-moral clothing in Darwyn Cooke’s The New Frontier. And here he is with more thoughts on Watchmen, focusing on character-specific insights of the type we see only too rarely when talking about this book. (For your complete Watchmen round-up, click here.) Those who criticize the comics blogosphere are advised to send themselves in Mr. Henley’s direction. (Do you think all this brown-nosing will convince him to blog his thoughts on Jones’s Incredible Hulk and Morales’s Captain America?)

Grame McMillan presents a quote from Jamie Boardman that neatly sums up the argument against the floppy pamphlet format: normal people don’t like reading them. ‘Nuff said.

NeilAlien does what he does best (and keep in mind he does a lot of stuff very very well): analyze Dr. Strange appearances in recent comics. His main focus is the good Doctor’s cameo in the most recent issue of Daredevil. To a certain extent he’s used as comic relief, but he is within character. Neil is puzzled as to what Doc is doing there in the Luke Cage-staged intervention to calm DD the hell down, but it makes sense to me: It’s reasonable to assume that there’s a sense of brotherhood between vigilante superpeople, even between street-level types and cosmic guys, particularly the NYC-based ones; it’s also reasonable to assume that Dr. Strange, one of the most magnanimous heroes in the Marvel pantheon, probably does truly care about Daredevil, even if they’ve only worked together very rarely. I thought it was actually somewhat touching that Strange and Reed Richards showed up to try to help (as they saw it) Daredevil. Anyway, check out what Neil has to say about it.

Did I go and start myself a meme? Johnny Bacardi, Rick Geerling, and the Leptard were sufficiently inspired by my long list of high-school favorite albums to write their own. (Bill Sherman gave it a shot, too, but found himself stymied by the predominence of comedy records in his adolescent collection.) You wanna give it a try?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that The Return of the King was nominated for eleven Academy Awards today, but no nominations in any acting category? Or for cinematography? That’s crazy, ladies and gentlemen. Crazy.

It is, however, nice to see Miramax get shut out. Even the Mighty Weinsteins couldn’t muscle Cold Mountain into the Best Picture running. I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand this new wave of period war epics. Cold Mountain, Master & Commander, and The Last Samurai all look good enough, I suppose, but do any of them contain a giant war-elephant attack? Didn’t think so.

You know what? In all seriousness, over the course of the three LotR movies, award-worthy performances were turned in by Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Andy Serkis, Bernard Hill, and (especially) Sean Bean. Eight actors, three films, and a grand total of one nomination, from the very first film, for the most renowned actor? I’m telling you, man: crazy.

I’m a little trepidacious about doing this, but I’ll hang it up by the end of the week: We’ve fallen on some tough financial times lately, so I was wondering if you could maybe hit the tip jar to your left and help me make this blog a cost-effective enterprise. (UPDATE: You’ll notice from the enormous new button over there that I added an Amazon pay link. I’ve been told that for many people this is more convenient than PayPal.)

If you need a reason to chip in, perhaps you could find one here at Karolyn’s–she’s listed 1000 all-purpose reasons. And again, as a thank-you in advance, here’s a little blog beautification effort: lyrics to one of my favorite songs. Enjoy!

—–

Candy says, I’ve come to hate my body

And all that it requires in this world

Candy says, I’d like to know completely

What others so discreetly talk about

I’m gonna watch the bluebirds fly

Over my shoulder

I’m gonna watch ’em pass me by

Maybe when I’m older

What do you think I’d see

If I could walk away from me

Candy says, I hate the quiet places

That cause the smallest taste of what will be

Candy says, I hate the big decisions

That cause endless revisions in my mind

I’m gonna watch the bluebirds fly

Over my shoulder

I’m gonna watch ’em pass me by

Maybe when I’m older

What do you think I’d see

If I could walk away from me

–The Velvet Underground, “Candy Says”

(I highly recommend the cover version found on Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man’s album Out of Season.)

Lots of great reading for those interested in Watchmen, all inspired by Eve Tushnet: here’s Jim Henley, John Jakala, Steven Berg, and Jim Henley again (and again). Superhero stories as a literature of ethics, Soviet apologism, Nixon as “replacement god,” “finding meaning by making it,” and much more–a great work, yielding great rewards in the exploration thereof.

Hey, it’s nice to see I’m not the only interviewer to founder on the rocks of Gloeckner: On her blog, Phoebe recounts the venerable Gary Groth’s attempts to determine how “autobiographical” her comics are. Unlike a lot of the folks in the attached comment thread, I think this is a perfectly reasonable and understandable question to ask, all the more so because the events in what we’re presuming to have been Phoebe’s life are so dra/traumatic. And I do think male writers, European writers, whatever writers would and do get asked this same question quite often. (Look at J.T. LeRoy, for example. Hell, look at the frequency with which autobiographical impulses are attributed to J.R.R. Tolkien, for Pete’s sake.) I think that it’s Phoebe’s method of answering–“there is no truth”–that leaves journalists (vocational truth-seekers, whether they choose to think of themselves that way or no) coming back to this well so often. (That and the fact that, yes, there’s an extra element of interest in the fact that Phoebe’s comics are about a teenage girl doing drugs, having sex, et cetera. Purient interest plays a part–the “car wreck” factor, as I’ve called it. But I’m not sure this is so unreasonable a response to such strong (in all senses of the word) material.)

Fans of good Alan Moore comics rejoice: your Watchmen analysis roundup can be found here.

While we’re busy linking to other posts here on ADDTF, check out My review of Bill “Egon” Kartalopolous’s review of Craig Thompson’s Blankets.

Also on the point-counterpoint tip, Bill Sherman comes to bury Mark Millar’s The Unfunnies, while Alan David Doane comes to praise it. I haven’t read the book, so it’s tough to comment, but it seems clear that whether it’s good or not, it’s not exactly the groundbreaking, shocking explosion of comic-book complacency Millar makes it out to be, given that Robert Crumb, the Air Pirates et al were doing this stuff nearly forty years ago now. So the real question is this: Is Mark Millar a) completely ignorant of the history of underground comix, or indeed any comics that aren’t superhero fare; b) vaugely aware of their existence but content to ignore them for the purpose of selling this comic to an audience he’s fairly certain is completely unaware of them; c) fully familiar with them but ready and willing to bullshit his fans anyway? He appears to be a fundamentally decent guy, so my guess it’s either (a) or (b). Any other theories out there?

Also in that ADD post is a review of Paul Hornschemeier’s excellent Mother, Come Home. Alan has a tendency to oversell this book–I think it becomes a little too neat in the profundity of its tragedy by the end–but that’s really not much of a complaint: If a book’s going to stumble a bit, shouldn’t it do so by aiming big and not small? Quibbles aside, this is obviously a breakthrough book by a hugely talented artist with years and years ahead of him, and I recommend it highly. So, incidentally, does Time.com’s Andrew Arnold (link courtesy of Dirk Deppey.)

Back to Indy Magazine, you’ll find an interesting editorial-cum-mission-statement from editor Billy the K. Bill says he’ll be focusing on the medium of comics, as opposed to the machinations of the industry–the Direct Market, bookstore sales, the manga boom, et cetera. (Hey, I resemble that remark!–ed.) It comes off as a bit more dismissive of the comics blogosphere–not to mention capitalism (yes, oh woe is this Dartmouth graduate “crushed [him]self between [sic] the boot-heel of capitalism”)–than I’m comfortable with, but actual critical analysis of the art, not the business, would be a welcome thing on the web. (Witness the ecstatic reaction to Eve Tushnet’s Watchmen essay, for example.)

Speak of the Devil: Eve Tushnet–back to comicsblogging, with a vengeance!–reviews Brian Bendis’s killer Daredevil: Hardcore. As Eve notes, this is a tough, tough book to stop yourself buying in its monthly installments.

Chris Puzak breaks down the discounts at Wal-Mart’s online graphic-novel store. Any way you slice it, they’re pretty damn deep. This is good news for people like me who don’t exactly have a lot of disposable income to feed their trade paperback jones, but (as Tegan Gjovaag notes) probably bad news for comics retailers and people who don’t like gi-normous retail monstrosities coming in and devouring every market in sight.

Big Sunny D jumps on the Sleeper bandwagon, which Dirk Deppey promptly tries to run off the road. To me, Dirk’s complaint reads a little bit like “I would have enjoyed Chicago if it weren’t for the damn musical numbers,” but diff’rent strokes, etc.

Dirk also asks what the hell the big deal is about Mark Millar anyway. I’ve got some problems with the man’s work (see above), not to mention his online personal, but when Millar is at the top of his game, he brings a slick contemporary zeal to superheroics that’s nearly unmatched. If you ignore his tin ear for dialogue, his goofy politics, and his over-the-top pronouncements–sometimes a lot to ignore, I’ll admit–you’ll find, in Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates at least, some of the giddiest, oomphiest, least intelligence-insulting superhero action comics of the past decade.

Finally, I think it’s worth noting how wrong the usually astute Paul O’Brien is about the most recent New X-Men storyline. As I put it the other day in my top-secret, spoiler-laden musings on said storyline, “Wow. This is the kind of geeky, idea-intensive frisson that the best, most highly-detailed SFF can engender. I love love love it. More more more!”

Apparently this is a relaunch, but if you haven’t read Indy Magazine before, it’s new to you! The first installment of this snappy-looking altcomix magazine includes a review of Craig Thompson’s Blankets, the gist of which is that the book isn’t good because Thompson doesn’t adhere to some formalist version of the Aristotelian unities. Yikes.

I wanted to like this review, because Bill Kartalopolous is obviously putting a great deal more thought and consideration into his critique than most reflexive Blankets bashers–the word “emo” is not used, for example. But the review goes on for eight deadly pages, each of which points out a stylistic choice of Thompson’s, then criticizes him for not using it often enough, or consistenly enough, or properly, or something. Without realizing it, Kartalopolous has made a strong case for the book–it’s a dizzying, enveloping blizzard of formal effects and sensations, mimicking the immersive sensations of adolescence note-perfectly. True, if you want a perfectly planned and executed how-to manual of graphic-novel making, this isn’t the book for you. But I, for one, am happy to “settle” for transcendence over perfection.

(Links courtesy of NeilAlien.)

As you may have gathered, Amanda and I have fallen on some difficult times recently. In December, I lost my job, as did everyone else who worked with me on it. We had already done all our holiday shopping before I got the news, unfortunately. In addition, it looks like I will have a hard time qualifying for unemployment insurance, due to the funky way my ex-employer had me on the books.

So if you’ve enjoyed this blog, or if you’ve enjoyed the pleasure of my company at some point, or if you haven’t enjoyed either but are just a nice person, it would be terrific of you to hit the tip jar to your left and send a donation my way. I do spend quite a bit of time working on the blog, and a financial incentive to do so would be incredibly helpful at this point in time. Thanks in advance for whatever support you’re able to lend.

But as I’m reluctant to beg without offering anything in return, I’m going to try and post something beautiful for you: Here are the lyrics to a new favorite song of mine. Enjoy, and thanks again.

—–

So it’s grey, well so are my favorite cities

And we have, we have all the time in the world here

We’ll just stay tucked in the shade and our eyes they can’t be blinded

We’ll just stay tucked in the shade

So it’s grey, well so are my favorite cities

And the sky on such a memorable night

And we have, we have all the time in the world here

That’s a lie, that’s a lie

–Azure Ray, “Favorite Cities”

The Return of the King swept the Golden Globes in all the categories for which it was nominated last night, winning Best Picture (Drama), Best Director, Best Score, and Best Song. (I found it inexcusable that no one from the film was nominated in an acting category, particularly since the lead-actor category is split into Drama and Comedy, thus doubling the potential slots; but I suppose it’s difficult to say who’s the lead in RotK–Frodo, I guess–and at any rate the buzz surrounds clear supporting players like Sean Astin and Andy Serkis.) Here’s hoping it replicates this feat at the Oscars.

I went to see The Return of the King twice this weekend. What a great film. Amanda has an altogether unique take on it: Check out her absolutely fascinating comparison between the Ring and anorexia.

The most disturbing and unfortunate effect of the stranglehold Howard Dean had on the Democratic Party this past year (up until a couple of weeks ago, that is) is that he forced otherwise reasonable candidates to fall all over themselves in an effort to prove to the so-called “Democratic wing of the Democratic party” that they, too, are “anti-war.” Roger L. Simon puts it like this:

…what Dean has done by feeding the antiwar (really anti-Bush) frenzy of the leftwing of the party is far worse than demonstrating that he’s a hothead. He has essentially intimidated the others (except Lieberman, obviously, and Kucinich, in a different way–both fringe candidates) into a limited and conventional response to a complex situation for fear of losing the nomination. The potential of the Democratic Party has been stymied. There is no dialogue on foreign policy. Who knows what Kerry and Edwards really think about confronting Islamic fascism? Who knows if they know what [they] really think anymore?

In its most concrete encapsulation, this produced a raft of congressman and senators who voted for the war, then after the war was a done deal, voted against the $87 billion appropriation needed to fund the troops already there. Kerry and Edwards were two such men, the shameful opportunism of which is a big reason why I’m so hesitant to support them now.

My hope is that with Dean seemingly ready to collapse into a singularity and pull Wes “The Stepford Candidate” Clark in with him, Kerry and Edwards will be able to reassert themselves regarding foreign policy, without feeling the need to pander to an anti-war segment of the population that, if Iowa is any indication, is simply not an integral component of political success. No, it doesn’t bode well that these guys changed their points of view on as serious an issue as the war in Iraq simply out of political expediency. But my support of George W. Bush over the past few years should prove that I’m the forgiving sort, if the situation warrants.

Interested in reading an essay about Watchmen that’s actually about Watchmen, as opposed to “what Watchmen did to/for comics”? You bet your ass I am, and Eve Tushnet has produced a fantastic one.

I’ve been wondering why all these people have been listing the IMDb Top 100 on their blogs lately. Apparently it’s a meme these days.

Films I’ve seen are in bold

Films I own (in any form) are bold and italicized

(List courtesy of Johnny Bacardi.)

1. Godfather, The (1972)

2. Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)

3. Godfather: Part II, The (1974)

4. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, The (2003)

5. Lord of the Rings: Two Towers, The (2002)

6. Casablanca (1942)

7. Schindler

A very thorough and thoughtful response to my posts on comics interviews comes from Steve Wintle. A lot of the piece stems from a misreading of my feelings about the Comics Journal–it’s other people who think the Journal exists to hype Fanta product, certainly not me. (If there’s any Fanta-related bias in the magazine at all, it’s just that both entities ultimately answer to Gary Groth.) Beyond that, though, he makes many useful distinctions between interviewing and journalism, and between politics, entertainment, and business, and between televised and print pieces. However, what it comes down to for Steven is that

Discussions about the survival of the medium, expansion of the Direct Market, exploration of other genres or many other similar topics that are a concern for the discerning comic reader aren’t necessarily for comic companies, even if we believe they should be.

Let us agree to disagree on that one, Mr. Wintle.

Just to prove that I’m not a big party-pooper when it comes to hype, here’s a two-parter from the Pulse about what Brian Bendis is up to. Bendis is back on Daredevil as of this week–boy, is he ever. Great stuff, but from Bendis that’s no surprise.

Speaking of Daredevil, Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada will be writing and drawing a DD miniseries. I think that in terms of the Daredevil character’s recent history, there are two strains of story type. You’ve got Bendis’s dark crime stories, focusing very specifically on how Matt Murdock’s drive to destroy crime affects him as a person; and you’ve got the Smith/Quesada/Mack stories, which rely heavily on religious imagery and emotional operatics (which often take physical and violent flight). They’re both interesting takes, though the contrast between them has been growing ever starker. I’m interested to see where Quesada’s new take on the character comes down, but with a title like Father, my guess is it’ll be in the latter category.

Chris Allen hands in his year-end report cards on several comics publishers, including Marvel, DC, Top Shelf, and Drawn & Quarterly. His focus on PR, press relations, and overall line coherence is a welcome one. These are decisions made by the company itself, and can’t really be pinned on the individual creators. It shows to go you that publishers have an important creative role to play, in a sense, and it’s fascinating to evaluate how they’re doing with it.

From what I can gather, issue 13 of McSweeney’s, the comics-centric issue edited by Chris Ware, will include work by Ware, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes, Lynda Barry, Los Bros Hernandez, Adrian Tomine, Julie Doucet, Seth, Joe Matt, Joe Sacco, Chester Brown, David Collier, Debbie Drechsler, Jeffrey Brown, Ron Rege Jr., Gary Panter, Archer Prewitt, Charles Burns, Michael Chabon, Ira Glass, John Updike, and Chip Kidd. To quote Hair, “sheeeeeit.” (Thanks to Egon and ADD for the pertinent links and info.)

Speaking of the comics edition of McSweeney’s, the Comics Journal messboard thread on the subject contains the following howler (well, it would, wouldn’t it?) from poster Scott Grammel:

Between this and the digest thread [discussed by me here–ed.], we’ve pretty much got the two opposite poles of where-should-comics-go-next pretty well bracketed.

Indeed. After all, the McSweeney’s issue will package the work altcomix superstars in a reader-friendly volume that will bypass the direct-market ghetto and find an eager audience in bookstores, while the theoretical manga-digest-sized editions will merely package the work of altcomix superstars in a reader-friendly volume that will bypass the direct-market ghetto and find an eager audience in bookstores.

Wait a minute.

Oh, right, I remember the distinction now: The manga-sized volumes have the potential to appeal to thousands and thousands of manga-reading teenagers, while the McSweeney’s volume have the potential to appeal to art-school graduate students who listen to Belle & Sebastian. Clearly the self-evident philosophical and aesthetic superiority of the latter make it the correct venue for where-comics-should-go-next. I mean, isn’t that obvious to everyone?

Holy Moses, what an issue.

Highlight to read, starting right here: My goodness! So the Beast is actually Apocalypse! (He is, right? Granted, he’s saying he’s 3 billion years old, as opposed to the official 5,000, but it sure does seem like it’s the same guy.) Someone out there in the comics blogosphere already predicted this, I believe, and indeed the Beast’s prominent use of the A-word in #151 made it a little bit obvious. After all, Morrison had avoided using it even when having Cyclops discuss his possession by the guy, opting always for the more obscure En Sabah Nur. Seeing the word “apocalypse” come out of the mouth of the supervillain in an dystopian alternate-future X-Men story… well, it was a big winking clue from Mr. M.

Wow. This is the kind of geeky, idea-intensive frisson that the best, most highly-detailed SFF can engender. I love love love it. More more more!

Phew. Am I right, or am I right?

Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Welch, Roger Simon, Tacitus, Stephen Green, Jonah Goldberg, and yours truly (Jim Henley too, but, well, duh): It’s been a bad couple of days for President Bush on the blogosphere. Wha’ happen?

Simply put, a one-two punch:

1) The strong showing of John Kerry and John Edwards and the drubbing of Howard Dean in the Iowa caucuses, coupled with the rapidly diminishing returns of Wes Clark, make it look like the Democratic party will field a responsible, electable, non-berserk candidate for president after all. I don’t know enough about Edwards’s record or positions to comment, and Kerry’s opportunistic backpeddling on the wars in Iraq/on terror is transparent and infuriating, but I don’t get the feeling that either of them has a dangerous temperament, or that they like to put sneer quotes around the War on Terror. In other words, I don’t feel that they’ll sell out our ambitions to foment democracy abroad, nor will I feel dramatically less safe while buying comics in Times Square or across from the Empire State Building if they’re in the White House. Thus the main obstacle to foreign-policy hawks voting Democratic is removed (in the process reminding many of us that, domestically and socially, we were always a lot closer to the Democrats than we were to Bush’s Republicans).

2) The President’s State of the Union address started strong and rapidly swerved into the nightmarish. Mandatory drug testing for schoolchildren, enshrining anti-gay bias in the goddamn Constitution, “unleashing” the churches and temples, taking time in the most prominent political speech of the year to basically take potshots at Barry Bonds, an adamant refusal to reexamine the excesses of the PATRIOT Act, advocating what is essentially a faith-based approach to teen sexuality: If you sat around and tried, you couldn’t have come up with a better laundry list of things tailor-made to make me not want to vote for you. What’s more, Bush wants to throw a ton of our money at all these things, and more besides, continuing a spending spree that’d put my wife at a 3-hour sale at Loehmann’s to shame. And even if you’re not a fiscal conservative and do think the government should be spending a good deal of money on important programs, these sure as hell aren’t the programs you had in mind.

There’s a large and growing class of voters who are socially liberal, fiscally moderate, and hawkish. Neither party is a comfortable home for them, and so they must prioritize and vote accordingly. With the Dems making it easier for hawks to hold their noses (beaks?) and vote donkey, and the President making the social libs and fiscal mods run screaming from their television sets, I think we’re beginning see a realignment of the post-9/11 realignment. And I don’t see this boding well for the President.

Or “Let’s let the nice man with attention deficit disorder make a list so that he can then get some stuff done around the house, make the bed, put away the laundry, that sort of thing.”

Here’s a list of my favorite albums from high school. I’ve only included one album per artist. In some cases they’re the first albums I encountered by the artists in question; in all cases they’re the albums that influenced my high-school self the most. And I still love them today. Enjoy!

1. Alice in Chains: Dirt

2. Aphex Twin: