SPOILER TIME

* I really, really enjoyed this storyline. Like I’ve said, I was hoping that the discovery of Earth would really reveal major cracks in what’s left of the humans’ civil society, and this sort of thing was exactly what I meant. Zarek had been a terrorist long ago, but in this episode he seemed to be showing a level of barbarity that surprised even him–that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. It’s what I want from Battlestar Galactica.

* I don’t get the notion–which to be fair I’ve only seen expressed by other people who don’t get it–that the storyline is pointless and that the resolution we saw last night represents a return to the status quo ante. If Battlestar Galactica does anything well it’s showing how long-lasting the consequences of old storylines can be–I mean, half of the lead mutineers here were Pegasus refugees, Gaeta’s motivations can be traced back to New Caprica, and his relationship with Baltar is one of the oldest, if quietest, running gags on the show. I can’t imagine that at this stage in the game, a briefly successful coup that resulted in the death of virtually the entire government except a President who is herself dying is going to get swept under the rug.

* I like when the show does action and gives its action heroes action hero stuff to do, so seeing Starbuck and Apollo run around with guns like the old days was a real treat.

* On a related note, even though I wish the commercials hadn’t spoiled this for weeks, Roslin completely going nuts gave me chills like crazy. It was very very clever of Mary McDonnell to riff on Hillary Clinton’s trademark strident vocal pitch, but the way it seemed to vomit out of her, as opposed to Clinton’s rather robotic rallying cries, was really frightening. A great, show-defining moment.

* You know one thing that does bother me about the show? It’s never ever fleshed out the marines, or made them anything other than thugs. It’s a weird dropped ball.

* Attention to detail alert: the little puddles of water and urine beneath the urinals.

* Attention to Freud alert: Starbuck braining a dude as he’s draining the lizard.

* The scene between Baltar and Gaeta was one of my favorites in the entire history of the show. It gave James Callis more to do than he’s had to do in the season so far. It followed up on a long-established relationship that hadn’t been at the fore of the show in a long long time, which is the sort of thing I always appreciate in long-running serialized dramas. It was probably Alessandro Juliani’s finest few moments as an actor. I think there was something moving about how these two have sinned against so many people, and each other, and yet in that brief moment managed to forgive themselves and each other and take comfort in one another. As a Deadwood fan, I’m a sucker for when grown men cry because they love each other.

* Maybe even more moving? Zarek managing a smile for Felix, and Felix smiling back. They’re human, after all. Somehow, showing that made the show simultaneously more uplifting and more depressing. And again, that’s what I want from Battlestar Galactica.

* I suppose that if you held a gun to my head I’d have to tell you I thought that the itch in Gaeta’s stump going away right before he gets executed was a little much, but only if you held a gun to my head.

* I know people didn’t like the Chief’s tunnel-crawling, but I thought the endless nature of it all just showed how far he was willing to go for this. It helps that Aaron Douglas is sort of the heart of the show–it fits that his Chief saved the day.

* Ending the arc with the Chief discovering literal cracks in the heart of Galactica herself–well, that’s no accident.

* Plugs 4 Pals part one: Ben Morse will be editing War of Kings: Warriors, a digital comic tying in with Marvel’s space-opera event. Ben knows from Marvel’s space stuff, so if you’re interested in that sort of thing at all, you’d be wise to check it out.

* Plugs 4 Pals part two: Justin Aclin has launched a new blog to promote Hero House, his superhero graphic novel, due from Avatar in September. Justin knows from superhero comedy, so if you’re interested in that sort of thing at all, you’d be wise to check it out.

* Tom Spurgeon explains “why Diamond’s new minimums policy is wrong, and what they should do about it.” Like some other recent efforts of that sort, it recognizes the need to square the circle between what one assumes are Diamond’s concerns about getting weighted down with unprofessional product and the rest of the industry’s concerns about Diamond’s judgement in determining what constitutes “unprofessional product.” It also unpacks several business and financial assertions made by and on behalf of Diamond that don’t hold much water upon closer examination.

* Speaking of Spurge, in a comment downblog he corrects my mischaracterization of his position regarding Final Crisis and the big superheroes in general: It’s not that he thinks they have “no juice left at all to thrill or inspire or encourage,” but that Final Crisis would have been a better book had Morrison addressed that question head on rather than taking it as a given. And he’s right, you really don’t see Morrison questioning his own beliefs in his work all that often. They’re more an articulation of those beliefs, in fact; from interviews I’ve both read and conducted with Morrison, though, I do get the sense that a lot of his darker books arise from unrelated, IRL personal problems he’s had. In this case, the implication appears to be that the notion of drab, uninspiring superheroes is one he’s confronted behind the scenes rather than on the page.

* Tom also notes, both in that comment and in his original review, that Morrisonian victories just sort of happen. I see what he’s saying–the heroes win due to inherent qualities present within them all along rather than using some newly acquired internal strengths to effect their peripeteia (note: I’d been using that word incorrectly for about a decade so I’m breaking it out now that I know that it means “reversal of fortune”)–but it still seems kosher to me since it usually takes them a lot of blood, sweat, and tears until they’re in a position where they have the confidence, know-how, or freedom to act in this way. It’s a lot different than the work of former Morrison protege Mark Millar, wherein the protagonists always just start winning because it’s the point in the narrative where that’s supposed to happen, and there really wasn’t anything stopping them from winning before then aside from Millar’s rudimentary knowledge of Robert McKee.

* NYCC news, Brian Michael Bendis division, part four: There’s a new Michael Gaydos-drawn Alias miniseries on the way. (Good catch, Kevin Melrose.)

* NYCC news: Ed Brubaker and his Captain America collaborator Steve Epting are working on something called The Marvels Project, “which explores the origins of the Marvel Universe” and launches in June according to the meager info at the link. Anyone got more substantial stuff on that?

* NYCC news: Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers? I dunno if I’ll eat it, but I’ll think it’s a terrific idea for an image, that’s for sure. Wouldn’t it be rad if it were actually about animal rights in some semi-serious way? I’ll be over here holding my breath.

* Two new series from Naoki Urasawa debut today: Pluto and 20th Century Boys. I’m curious.

* So that’s what Mat Brinkman looks like. It’s kind of a bummer that we’ve lost him to the fine art world the way we lost Dave Cooper and Marc Bell, huh?

* Lux Interior died. I’m not going to lie and say I was a big Cramps listener, aside from the healthy appreciation held by anyone who came of age in that weird early-mid-’90s period when suddenly any vaguely outsiderish subculture could get purchase in the national media and suddenly psychobilly and other revivals of ’50s trash culture were a visible thing and Beavis and Butt-Head couldn’t get over how awesome the title “Bikini Girls with Machine Guns” was. But one deep-seated belief I always had was that “Lux Interior” is the best, funniest nom de rock invented by anyone ever. And now, after seeing clips of the relevant show here and there around the internet, a belief that the band’s 1978 gig at California’s Napa State Mental Hospital is one of the most inspired and subversive ideas ever had by a rock band is gaining ground fast. I’ve spent a little more time in mental institutions than I ever anticipated or hoped to spend, and there’s this mix of rage and excitement and fear and crazy happiness you feel that is embodied pretty well by sticking a bunch of weirdos in the middle and letting them play down and dirty rock and roll.

* The Obama administration has decided to back the Bush administration’s use of extraordinary rendition as a backdoor to torture by officially declaring its belief that a lawsuit regarding the practice is off limits to the courts due to “state secrets.” The read seems to be that this is more an matter of the new administration attempting to keep the previous administration from being on the receiving end of legal action than with actually continuing the practice itself, but either way it’s scary. Glenn Greenwald has more.

* Finally, if you’ve never heard the story of the life and loves Genesis P-Orridge, coiner of the terms “industrial music” and “acid house” and one of my childhood heroes–particularly the part of the story about how he’s had extensive surgery, including breast implants, to make himself look more like his late wife–this profile of Gen is for you. (Via 33 1/3.)

* NYCC news, Brian Michael Bendis division, part one: Ultimate Spider-Man is being cancelled and relaunched as Ultimate Comics Spider-Man. According to the interview with Bendis at the link, this entails a new #1 issue; a new artist, David Lafuente; a more shared-universe feel between UCSM and the rest of the rechristened Ultimate Comics line; a phasing-out of Spidey’s two biggest antagonists, the Green Goblin and the Kingpin; and most interestingly, if the interview is to be believed and depending on how you parse what is said, a new character as Spidey. There will also be a two-issue sign-off for the original series called Ultimate Spider-Man: Requiem, featuring Mark Bagley and Stuart Immonen.Ultimate Spider-Man has been a lot of fun for a lot of issues, so I’m quite interested in seeing how this pans out.

* NYCC news, Brian Michael Bendis division, part two: Powers is also being relaunched with a new #1 issue. Bendis blames its erratic shipping schedule, which he was “embarrassed” by, for the move, and says he and artist Michael Avon Oeming are stockpiling issues before restarting it. Powers, too, is a very good comic, but it’s hard for it to get traction in your head when it comes out so sporadically. I’d love for it to arrive on a consistent basis so that it gets a little more oomph.

* NYCC news, Brian Michael Bendis division, part three: Powers is headed for a TV adaptation on FX. Of course I’ve been hearing about live-action Powers adaptations all decade long, so I probably won’t be holding my breath, but it would be awfully nice if someone could pull off serialized live-action non-ridiculous superhero storytelling, wouldn’t it?

(Many of the above links via Kevin Melrose.)

* NYCC news: Geoff Johns is launching a new Adventure Comics series. It will feature the Legion of Super-Heroes–presumably the grown-up versions of the original Legion, whom we’ve seen in Johns’s Action Comics, Justice Society of America, and Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, as well as the Superman villains Lex Luthor, Bizarro, and Brainiac. In other words it’s a continuation of Johns’s excellent Action Comics run, more or less, so I’m excited about it.

* NYCC news: There’s a new Taiyo Matsumoto book called Gogo Monster on its way from Viz this November.

* NYCC news: Pixu II came out and I totally missed it, dammit.

* NYCC news: Kiel Phegley presents the best of the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference. I think the most interesting exchange involves Marvel’s Executive VP – Global Digital Media Group Ira Rubenstein and what could charitably be described as a downplaying of fanfiction and, really surprisingly given his job, YouTube.

* B-Sol at the Vault of Horror has once again polled a variety of online horror commentary luminaries to create a list of the Top 20 Foreign Horror Films of All Time. Bucking the trend of the previous lists regarding the age-to-ranking ration, the number one film is also the most recent, Let the Right One In. My guess is that this is simply because it’s the one foreign horror film that nearly every horror blogger has seen.

* Fantagraphics is launching Johnny Ryan’s Blecky Yuckerella as a webcomic!

* I really liked my pal Sam Walker’s ideas for famous images she’d like to see reinterpreted by comics artists.

* Monster Brains T-shirts? Yes please.

* I’ll stop posting drawings by Jim Woodring when they stop looking like this.

* I’ll stop posting pictures of Kate Winslet when they stop looking like this.

* The one good thing about this Michael Phelps marijuana nonsense is how everyone who isn’t the news media or Phelps’s sponsors seems to realize that it is, in fact, nonsense. In a political culture given to fits of fact-free stupidity on a daily basis, reefer madness may well be the stupidest of it.

* Finally, my friend Sarah took some steps to protect her neighborhood this weekend.

Please read this before viewing the images below.

Done?

This plus this equals this:

(courtesy of the comic genius of Matt Wiegle)

* Today I popped up in a couple of interesting places on the Internet. For starters, there’s the new comic by me and Matt Rota that I mentioned earlier, now playing at Top Shelf 2.0.

* Next, I’m the subject of this week’s installment of Show Us Your Shelf Porn over at Robot 6. Feast your eyes, glut your soul. (God, I feel so naked.)

* While I’m busy talking about myself, I just want to remind everyone that I’ll be attending the New York Comic Con tomorrow afternoon and Saturday. You can catch me at the Twisted ToyFare Theater panel on Saturday at 5:30pm in room 1A17. Failing that, you can find me wandering around the floor with such comics-commentary luminaries as Josiah Leighton, Kiel Phegley, Ben Morse, Dave Paggi, TJ Dietsch, Rickey Purdin, Matt Powell and so on. I’m not sure what I’ll be wearing, but you shall know me by the David Bowie Sketchbook. (And my hair is bushy right now, unless I shave it overnight, which, who knows.)

* Speaking of Kiel Phegley, he’s launched a new interview and news blog called Four Color Forum. Here’s his mission statement. Go, read, as the fella says.

* The Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica is going to debut in an uncut/unrated DVD release on April 21 prior to its airing on TV. Weird, but nice, but also just a way to get you to buy it twice.

* Tom Spurgeon sings into the Miracle Machine and blasts the thoughtform of Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis into oblivion. While it comes as no surprise that Tom didn’t care for the book–a story written by a person who believes in the concepts articulated in an interview like this is unlikely to speak to someone who believes those concepts to be “paper thin.” Similarly, it’s always tough for me to get much out of Spurgeon superhero criticism when it’s predicated on the notion that the superheroes in question have “no juice left at all to thrill or inspire or encourage”; I simply don’t see why that’s so, because in my experience it’s not. (That’s not to say I share Morrison’s belief in their near-messianic power and appeal; on the contrary, they’re just devices, like zombies or gangsters or egomaniacal doctors or sexy librarians or whatever. It’s all in the execution.) But Tom’s more specific lines of attack are very interesting: unpacking the differences between the use of jump cuts in Final Crisis vs. Jaime Hernandez’s “Tear It Up, Terry Downe,” critiquing the circular logic of Morrison’s notion that Superman and Batman always win because that’s what makes them Superman and Batman, noting the more challenging Jack Kirby conception of Anti-Life, and so on. It’s my favorite negative review of the book to date.

* Morrison himself still has plenty to say about the series and its tie-ins. The IGN interview with Morrison linked above is the longest so far, a rich blend of Morrison expounding upon his ideas and tooting his own horn; among the juicy tidbits is his clearest statement yet that the series was about DC office politics as much as anything else. Meanwhile, Newsarama has posted the second half of its “exit interview,” which is roughly half Morrison yakking in the same vein as the IGN interview and half explaining what happened in the comic to Matt Brady.

* I wasn’t going to link to the non-story about how They want Casino Royale director Martin Campbell to direct a prospective Green Lantern movie, but Rob Bricken at Topless Robot explains in a fun fashion why that idea is interesting even if the “news” angle is bullshit. He also points out that Campbell directed GoldenEye, too, which I did not know. That was a fun movie.

* The Onion AV Club’s Scott Tobias reviews Velvet Goldmine, a movie that dramatically changed my life, as part of his delightful New Cult Canon series. No matter how angry Christian Bale gets, he’ll always be poor, meek Arthur Stewart from the ‘Erald to me.

* There are two great things about Kevin Lee’s review of Paul Verhoeven’s masterpiece Starship Troopers (I don’t know what else to call it–that film is freaking inspired): The part where he points out that part of the fun of the film is that it is not embarrassed of or condescending toward proficiency in straightforward genre/action-movie filmmaking, and the lengthy collection of reviews from contemporary critics who completely missed the fact that the film is a satire. (Via The House Next Door.)

*Paul Pope draws IG-88. That sentence is either completely meaningless to you, or completely awesome.

* I think you’ll agree that seeing Ben Jones art in three dimensions is pretty mind-blowing.

* Dan Nadel blogs about the Mat Brinkman/Melissa Brown art show he curated.

* Finally, the future of comics.

SPOILERS SO BE CAREFUL

1) The main thing I’m taking away from Lost so far this season is the sense that the creators and crew are having a lot of fun just being Lost. Like last week: There was no reason, strictly speaking, to reveal the birth of Desmond and Penelope’s kid in a flashback of undetermined temporal origin, then cut to the present day and show how old the kid is now–it’s just fun for the writers to monkey with flashbacks/flashfowards/time like that, so that’s how they did it. Similarly, in this episode, they just did a bunch of Lost-ish things because it’s fun to do them–having our heroes get shot at by persons unknown, having secondary characters we haven’t seen in a long time pop up out of the blue, riffing on aspects of the show (like the light from the Hatch) that we haven’t thought of in ages, and so on. The show seems to have a lot of confidence in what it is and what it does well at this point. It’s fun to watch.

2) Moreover, there were just a lot of thoughtful, intelligent moments, where they could have played a particular plot point a number of ways but went in just the right direction with it. For example: Of all the moments that the time-displaced castaways could have stumbled upon past or future versions of themselves in the middle of, they have Sawyer come across Kate delivering Claire’s baby. It’s the perfect moment to use: A) Sawyer loves Kate, so it’s heartbreaking to see her; B) Everyone loves the birth of babies, so it’s a hugely emotional moment for Sawyer just for that reason; C) Sawyer’s not the deepest thinker, and making him the first castaway to find a recognizable moment from the past therefore emphasizes just what a mindfuck it is; D) put it all together and you’ve got such a mix of intense and bizarre emotions, exactly what you want for the first time you do this on the show.

3) Related: Locke realizing they’re in the middle of the night that Boone died (they mentioned him by name! Hooray! I love it when the story acknowledges people who in show-time died just a few weeks before, as it really should) and the night he really came to believe that he was on the Island for a reason. That’s a rich moment for Locke to relive.

4) Another smart bit: Having Miles keep his illness on the DL, revealing it only to Daniel, the one character who he thinks might know something about it. Miles’s sarcastic personality might make you think he’d make a big screeching deal about it and freak out, but it seems truer and more interesting to make his sarcasm a sort of cloaking device for a more intense desire to be apart from other people. He wouldn’t want to be the center of attention, ever.

5) Another smart bit: I like the way they’re establishing more of a rapport between Juliet and Sawyer. At the rate Lost takes bad guys, or at least ambiguous guys, and makes them into good guys, the only way the show’s relationships work is if they can convincingly create bonds between the characters that emerge from shared adversity. They’re doing a good job with these two right now. It helps that the actors are good at bringing out their mama-bear and wounded-puppy sides respectively. It’s a little corny, but it’s comforting.

6) Still another smart bit: I loved watching Jin wake up on yet another beach filled with yet another group of survivors of yet another wreck, and realize all over again that he doesn’t speak the language. I suppose they couldn’t have gotten a whole lot more out of having him go through that whole storyline over again beyond the initial No Exit impact of him discovering what’s up, so it’s good that Rousseau and her babydaddy can speak some English, but it was a great moment.

7) Michael Emerson’s line readings get more and more awesome with each passing episode. “He’s my lawyer.” I don’t know if I ever would have come up with a way to say that the way he said it, but the way he said it was so funny and perfect.

8) Kudos to the show for not dragging out certain “deception” elements of the plot–like having Ben come right out and say he’s trying to steal Aaron. But boo to continuing this nonsense where Kate and Jack keep refusing to explain to each other why they’re doing what they’re doing. For chrissakes, it takes 30 seconds to tell someone you care about why you’re behaving a particular way. Take the goddamn time. This week’s installment of Todd VanDerWerrf’s must-read weekly review focuses a lot on that particular point. (Be warned, the review drops some Mad Men and BSG spoilers on you out of the blue, a few sentences into the paragraph about how TV series have to create a sense of false drama.)

9) I still don’t know if Sun’s kid counts as someone they need to get back to the Island because she was pregnant when she left. It doesn’t seem like Ben is approaching it that way. Actually, I’m sort of getting the impression that the kid is dead or missing.

10) Obvs, Miles is Dr. Marvin Candle Jr.

11) I can’t figure out who Charlotte is, though. She’s too young to be Ben’s childhood sweetheart Annie. (I’m pretty sure Penny is Annie, anyway.)

12) Fun to see Rousseau as a fresh-faced youngster with a spring in her step and a song in her heart and a bun in the oven and non-high-waisted trousers on her legs.

13) You know what I wonder about? The Hurley bird.

Top Shelf 2.0 has posted a new comic written by me and drawn by Matt Rota. It’s called 1998 High Street and it’s part of a series of related comics we’ve been calling the Cage Variations. I hope you enjoy it.

* Grant Morrison has cancelled his appearance at this weekend’s New York Comic Con due to family issues. I hope all is well. Selfishly, I’m bummed that I won’t be able to get him in my Bowie sketchbook (he can draw) and that I won’t be able to discover first-hand whether his first post-Final Crisis con appearance would be more like a victory lap or a walk of shame.

* Speaking of NYCC, Tom Spurgeon lists 10 things he’d do if he were there.

* Chris Butcher argues that by raising their minimum order thresholds for Direct Market comic distribution, Diamond is essentially forcing a paradigm shift away from Direct Market distribution toward exclusively digital or print-on-demand distribution, and that since Diamond and the Direct Market are essentially synonymous, this is an odd move to make. I don’t know enough about how all this stuff works to offer an informed comic, but I will say that I can’t imagine a distribution system that cuts out Crickets and Or Else by necessity is a healthy one in the long term.

* The Onion AV Club speaks with The State’s Thomas Lennon, Kerri Kenney-Silver, and David Wain. It is so, so wonderful to hear them refer to The State as a going concern, then see actual evidence for this.

* Stephen King says Twilight author Stephenie Meyer is a lousy writer. This is not a terribly controversial assertion–The Missus loves Twilight to pieces, and even she says author Stephenie Meyer is a lousy writer–but it’s interesting to hear King articulate it, since I think he’s usually a go along to get along type when it comes to his fellow authors. Case in point: “Jo Rowling is a terrific writer,” from the same article. (Via STYD.)

* Ta-Nehisi Coates reports his initial reaction to the opening Battlestar Galactica miniseries, prompting a lengthy comment thread in which various readers recount their equivalent experiences and offer advice as to how best to proceed from there (here’s mine).

* Naomi Watts says They are indeed still remaking The Birds. (Via Jason Adams.)

* Jim Woodring sketchbook fun!

* I’ll admit having said “Yeah, why don’t they do that?” about several of the entries on this list of 10 Helpful Suggestions for Terminating John Connor. I also wonder if they ever explained why the T-800 has an Austrian accent. (I bet there’s a novel somewhere that does.)

* A blog dedicated solely to pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Kate Winslet may well be the greatest possible blog. Proof:

(Via Sean B. Congratulations, Sean!)

(photoshop magic courtesy of Shaggy)

SPOILERS

* The Eyes Wide Chuck thing was extremely blatant, down almost to the last detail. Having Chuck refer to it as such doesn’t make it any less so. What the did the orgies of the rich and powerful look like before Kubrick introduced Venetian carnival masks into them, anyway? Still, points for making Chuck’s dad a member of the Illuminati.

* I was all set to complain about how unrealistic the student/teacher affair storyline was, how only a crazy unprofessional nutjob would meet with an opposite-sex student outside of work alone after hours, let alone with the student you’ve already been publicly accused of having an affair with, let alone on the night of the meeting at which your guilt or innocence in that affair is to be adjudicated. But then they fucked at the end of the episode, which was awesome and hot, and also revealed that she was, in fact, a crazy unprofessional nutjob just beneath the surface all along. So all is forgiven.

* This also means that maybe they can drop the Dan/Serena will they or won’t they business for a while. Haven’t they gotten together and broken up twice so far during this season alone? Enough already, esp. because doing so always requires one or the other of them to be needlessly shifty and stupid and annoying for the breakup to happen each time. Plus the show has other will they/won’t they stuff going on with Chuck & Blair and Lily & Rufus. Teacherfucking instead, please.

* I’m pretty sure Dorota is Gossip Girl.

* And the bald shall inherit the earth: ICv2 has released its November sales chart for the direct market. Of particular note is how Brian Bendis and his “give the people what they want” take on event comics, Secret Invasion, took the top slot and five of the top 10, while smug Scottish middlebrow mediocrity Grant Morrison and his utterly incomprehensible abject failure of a fan-rejected event comic, Final Crisis, plummeted all the way to #2 on the charts and took a paltry, embarrassing three of the top 10. Your revolution is over, Mr. Morrison! Condolences! The bums lost!

* Speaking of Final Crisis, the reactions keep rolling in. Tim O’Neil reveals just how angry this comic book made him, which quite frankly is way more angry than any comic that isn’t some vile piece of filth, some hideously racist or sexist or homophobic horrorshow, should make anyone. I think there are any number of factual errors and unsupported business and critical assumptions in there, to say nothing of the hyperbolic mischaracterizations of other people’s viewpoints and the admitted ad hominems directed against them. Moreover, the main, underlying argument seems simply to be a particularly vehement and event-comic-specific expression of “you got chocolate in my peanut butter,” which as I’ve said before strikes me as odd in this particular case. But the main thing I take away is that it can’t possibly be healthy to get that worked up about a comic book, or a comic book creator’s interviews, or comic book readers’ comments, not when they’re not doing anything actively evil. It certainly doesn’t lead to Tim’s finest hour as a writer, as an overabundance of elaborate fecal analogies, snarky “you know”s, and the rather pot-kettle concluding demand that Grant Morrison “grow the fuck up” would indicate. It’s not just my feelings about Final Crisis that make me skeptical about this approach, mind you–I’ve said for a long time that commentators whose primary mode of interaction with art is based on rage don’t do it for me.

* Also on the FC beat, Tucker Stone be-bops and scats all over the thing. Honestly there’s a little too much be-bopping and scatting for my taste, but then I don’t get these crazy kids and their rock and roll. My main problem with it is that it obscures his actual point, which I believe is that FC had its ups and downs but it’s ultimately pretty neat that Morrison did it his way. It’s interesting how Tucker seems to come away from the comic sharing many of the reservations that Tim does, but taking the exact opposite positions–Morrison doesn’t have contempt for his audience, he has faith in them; there’s merit to experimentation regardless of whether it leads to an Ang Lee Hulk situation from a business perspective–than the ones Tim ends up taking. Tucker’s takes on recent issues of Bendis’s Ultimate Spider-Man (of which he is a vocal and frequent proponent) and Ed Brubaker’s Captain America and Daredevil are also worth a read, provided you’re okay with him working blue.

* ICv2 reports that the Christopher Handley case has been postponed until late March. Handley has been hit with child-pornography charges rooted in his possession of manga. I’ve discovered continued support among some relatively prominent online comics commentators for the notion that unpleasant speech does not deserve protection; some of that support is so extreme that it seems tailor-made to demonstrate the slippery slope argument in action. This attitude is disturbing and both legally and morally wrong. Support the CBLDF.

* One aspect of the story that Reed is setting up a Chicago comics convention to compete with, and possibly supplant, Wizard World Chicago that I haven’t seen noted by anyone but Heidi MacDonald is that Reed’s concomitant move of the New York Comic Con to early October starting next year will move the NYC show into closer competition with altcomix shows like SPX and APE. However, given the really embarrassing lack of an alternative and literary comics presence in the programming and exhibitor list for NYCC–a show based in New York freaking City!–I’m not all that worried. If anything, this may simply guarantee that alt/lit publishers avoid NYCC permanently.

* Speaking of Wizard, sorta: Back when I was still with the company and me and the other guys there who like alternative comics got a booth at MoCCA 2007, a few of ’em chatted with Tim Leong of Comic Foundry, who told them that he liked us and liked a lot of stuff we did but kept bashing us because it got him attention. I found that level of open, unabashed duplicity oddly refreshing, so in that sense it’s nice to see that he stuck with it till the bitter end.

* Here’s a Seattle Post Intelligencer article on my old pal Davey Oil (the other half of my oft-told Blair Witch Project origin story!) and his comics/performance-art project, the Slide Rule Comic Strip Slideshow Players.

* Josiah Leighton, who I am happy to report will be attending the New York Comic Con with me this weekend, does his thing with Nicolas De Crécy’s Foligatto.

* I really enjoyed the latest Five for Friday over at Tom Spurgeon’s, because it reminds you just how much we’re losing as the alternative comic book dies off. And I say that as a big proponent of book-format comics and a pretty big skeptic of the pamphlet format, mind you.

* Speaking of Spurge, his review of Robert Kirkman’s Invincible/Astounding Wolfman crossover offers a pretty interesting take on the core idea behind Invincible, the character’s equivalent of “With great power comes great responsibility.” For my part, I’ve always felt that the book’s success stemmed from a great deal of initial pep, slowly giving way to a meticulously planned roll-out of long-term storylines. That and Bill Crabtree’s coloring.

* Holy God these images from an upcoming Kyle Baker Hawkman project look amazing.

By all means, Mr. Baker, do indeed draw everything like this from now on. (Via Kevin Melrose.)

* Curt Purcell does a one-man Manly Movie Mamajama by way of Super Bowl counterprogramming. The initial results of his back-to-back first viewings of Point Blank and Get Carter made me giggle.

* Whitney Matheson’s Best of the Lost Comments post this week is as much of a treasure trove of “why didn’t I think of that?” as ever.

* There is no possible answer on any possible Earth to the question “Whatever happened to Bill Jemas?” that could ever be better than this one. (Via Heidi MacDonald.)

* Seeing David Lynch starring in a short film called The Soul Detective now, I feel as though my stomach is filled with a team of bumblebees.

* Looks like They are still planning on remaking The Birds.

* Bruce Baugh serves up some WoW-blogging odds ‘n’ sods, including an image of a gigantic sea turtle that’s right in my water-monster/immensity wheelhouse. (And don’t worry, Bruce, I’ve got the patience of a saint.)

* Hilzoy and Glenn Greenwald, two commentators who to the best of my knowledge do not carry water for the Obama administration when it comes to torture, civil liberties, and human rights, debunk recent reports, gleefully promulgated by torture enthusiasts, that the administration will be continuing the Bush 43 practice of extraordinary rendition as a backdoor to torture.

* The carnival of Acme Novelty Library #19 Final Crisis #7 continues: Here are 7 Reasons Why Douglas Wolk Loved Final Crisis. Kevin Melrose rounds up some info on the comic’s prominent, Dark Reign-undercutting use of a superheroic Barack Obama analogue. And the jibber-jabber about Morrison’s post-game comments about Wonder Woman continues in this comment thread.

* I know I swore off posting links to promotional stuff for Watchmen–you haven’t seen me link to those not-as-convincing-as-people-seem-to-think Dr. Manhattan period images, for example–but a couple of rather lovely image galleries went up recently. First there’s this series of black and white portraits of the main cast, taken from an upcoming book of such images. And second there’s this gallery of things like Nite Owl’s snowsuit, some of the World War II villains the Minutemen fought–you know, geeky stuff–taken from another, different upcoming book of such images. Regarding that first set, quite frankly, this picture of Malin Ackerman as Silk Spectre is stunning.

I can’t remember if I’ve discussed this on the blog or not, but one thing I was a little skittish about regarding the film was how drop-dead gorgeous Ackerman looks as Laurie, versus the somewhat more contextualized beauty of the character in the comic–she’s attractive to the other heroes in the book at least partially the same way the pretty girl in your office or your honors chem class is, you know? That girl probably couldn’t compete with an airbrushed Bar Rafaeli swimsuit layout, but because she shares your interests and is part of your world, why should she? But now I’m thinking that maybe it’s the same deal as those movie-fied costumes: Zack Snyder’s dealing with people’s expectations derived from Jessica Alba in a blue jumpsuit, and he has to shift things accordingly. Maybe that’s more thought put into the reasoning behind having a smoking hot woman wear next to nothing in your movie than is strictly required, I dunno, but that’s what I’m thinking. It’s also kind of amusing how much of the already meager costume they’re apparently taking out in post, as it were. (Links via everyone.)

* Heidi MacDonald notes concerns that a pair of British anti-obscenity laws could spell trouble for any number of media, though in the comment thread UK native Paul O’Brien says it’s much ado about nothing.

* Tom Spurgeon takes a look at a recent issue of Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark’s Daredevil, emphasizing the sheer craft chops on display. That’s something that impresses me more and more about Brubaker’s superhero work.

* Rambo in America? Sure, I’ll eat it.

* I’ll admit it, this this gallery of/McG interview about Terminator Salvation concept art and design work has me intrigued. (Via I forgot whom.)

* I’m not going to read the whole review because I haven’t seen the movie yet, but from what I skimmed, CRwM‘s argument that The Strangers should be viewed as an update of the slasher film rather than part of the post-torture-porn “home invasion horror” subgenre was interesting to me.

* Cryptomundo’s Loren Coleman reprints a 1940 article on the sasquatch that presents the phenomena strictly in terms of a possible early-man angle, which is interesting.

* Josh Cotter’s Driven by Lemons: still killin’ it.

* I liked this piece by Closed Caption Comics’ Molly Colleen O’Connell, who I believe is Italian-American.

* Independence Day at the Overlook Hotel. When I was at Wizard we frequently ate at a restaurant that had a picture that looked just like this. It was screwed to the wall, dammit.

* Morrissey naked. The pleasure and the privilege is yours.

* Finally, this made me do one of those “slow-building applause that leads into a raucous ovation” kinda things. Then my wife and I made love on a bed of Kramers Ergot 7 comp copies, after which we smoked cigarettes we lit by burning whichever pages were still dry enough to catch fire.

SPOILERS HO

* The House Next Door’s Todd VanDerWerff returns with reviews of the latest episodes of TV’s two great science-fiction dramas, Lost and Battlestar Galactica. I don’t think I have particularly novel thoughts about either episode this week, but here goes anyway:

* Regarding Lost, like everyone else, I’m guessing that the H-bomb is buried in that Chernobyl-style concrete block in the original Hatch, and that maybe that was the origin of the “press the button, save the world” mission; and that the adorable British soldier girl who Daniel Faraday told she looked familiar to him is a) his mother; b) Mrs. Hawking, the scary time-cop lady who is apparently Ben’s superior in some way.

* But what struck me is how much confidence the show’s creators have in their ability to push our buttons at this point, and how much fun they’re having as a result. There’s no reason to introduce the birth of Desmond and Penny’s son Charlie in flashback, then reveal that he’s currently about two or three years old–but they do it that way because it’s fun to make our minds do a little work in order to piece together that timeline. Similarly, it’s fun to make our brains race around the history of the show to connect Adorable Soldier Girl with Faraday’s Mom with Mrs. Hawking, or the H-Bomb with the giant concrete block in the Hatch that Sayid said reminded him of Chernobyl. It’s fun in the same way it’s fun to have Young Widmore cockily say “Do you think some old man knows this Island better than I do?” and then cut to bald badass Locke punking him out with his Awesome Tracking Skillz, Bourne-style.

* I do agree with Ross Douthat, though, that some of the scariness of early Lost has been, well, lost now that we know so much more about the Island and the Others and the Dharma Initiative. I mean, I find it to still be a very intense show–as with Battlestar Galactica, The Wire, The Sopranos, and Deadwood, maybe I’m just naive, but I honestly have no idea whether any of the characters will live to see the end of any given episode, which is truly thrilling. But it’s true, and something I’ve discussed with people recently, that the sense that our heroes are up against enemies who are supernatural, almost existential, threat to them has been lost to a certain extent. I think that element will be reintroduced as Jacob, whoever or whatever he is, becomes more prominent in the storyline. The show’s last genuinely terrifying moments all took place in Jacob’s cabin, after all.

* As for Battlestar, like I think I’ve said, I’ve been pulling for an officer-corps revolution for at least a couple of seasons–since Baltar started really ranting about the Adama/Roslin aristocracy–so it’s nice to see it happen. All of the show’s power struggles, coups d’etat, civil wars, and juntas have heretofore involved palace intrigue, some combination of Roslin, Adama, Lee, Baltar, Tigh, Zarek, Cain and her Pegasus successors, and/or the Cylon leadership squaring off over this or that issue. This time around, Zarek’s involvement is largely as a satrap for Gaeta and the rebellious military; what you’re seeing is the fleet’s middle class rising up against its upper class, which feels right.

* Cleverly, the show reinforces this by putting all of its main characters on the targeted side of the rebellion. Roslin, Adama, Tigh, Lee, Starbuck, Baltar, Chief, Anders, Athena, Six, and Tory, under siege by the likes of Gaeta, Zarek, Racetrack, Seelix, and a bunch of assholes from the Pegasus? Clearly the ruling class is in trouble.

* This line-up also subtly conveys the dire straits humankind now finds itself in. When you look at that list of characters, I count a grand total of four prominent human beings who are still truly loyal to the government, maybe only three depending on WTF is up with Starbuck. Every other main character is either a Cylon, a traitor, or dead. When the show forced me to acknowledge this last night, I was actually pretty shocked and wondered how things could continue from here. Which is exactly how I want to feel after watching Battlestar Galactica.

* Final Crisis #7, by Grant Morrison and Doug Mahnke, came out yesterday. I reviewed the entire series here. There’s a burgeoning comment thread attached to that review, mostly focusing on critical approaches to Grant Morrison comics, here. And there’s a semi-related post about how Morrison uses the concept of “the future,” and about the Icelandic trip-hop/techno outfit Gus Gus for some reason, here.

* Believe it or not, other websites have been discussing this comic too! Here’s Jog’s review. As with most of his FC reviews, he’s skeptical…

Final Crisis is a deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply flawed work.

…but ultimately mostly pleased. Kudos to him for leading with how the opening of this issue is basically Morrison dragging Dark Reign‘s zeitgeist misreading out into the street and beating it to death. Made me laugh to beat the band, as the fella says. Did everyone note the pharaonic architecture of the, ahem, White House?

* Douglas Wolk does his usual annotation thing, as does David Uzumeri. Both of them detect a heaping helping of Watchmen references and Alan Moore bashing–young(er) imaginative Morrison slaying the Dark Father, that sort of thing. Personally I didn’t see it–I remain a bit thrown by how out of the blue the Mandrakk/Monitor climax seems after six issues of “this comic is about Darkseid,” though Jog’s comparison of the Monitor digression in Final Crisis/Superman Beyond to the similarly tangential presence of Darkseid himself back in the Sheeda-centric Seven Soldiers helped me contextualize it a bit better. But if you’re really going to read the climax as Morrison slaying a particular way of doing comics, Moore is as good a target as any, though Matthew Perpetua prefers Brian Bendis.

* And from the sound of this interview with Morrison, so does Morrison. Sayeth Grant:

I wanted to be faithful to the spirit of the King. This had to be a story of gods, of God in fact, hence the ‘cosmic’ style, the elevated language, the total and deliberate disregard for the rules of the ‘screenwriting’ approach that has become the house style for a great many comic writers these days. The emphasis on spectacle and wonder at the expense of ‘realism’, the allegorical approach…it’s all my take on Kirby.

This certainly isn’t the first time he’s taken fairly obvious swipes at the Master of the House of Ideas.

* Just as interesting, however, is the way he uses this interview to express anticipatory displeasure and dismissal of how his own publisher will handle many of the ideas he introduced in Final Crisis. I’ll be honest, this bothers me a bit, since I think he has not exactly been forthcoming about his own role in both the series’ delays and in DC’s inability to properly situate it amid the rest of their line. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about this.

* As is his wont, he goes after the peanut gallery too:

Of course I’m aware of a perpetual and chronic discontent from a particular jaded minority on the internet but I try to overlook their constant expressions of dissatisfaction on the grounds that it’s depressing and often personally abusive.

Surely part of the fun of comics includes following stories across titles? If you like comics, what’s so awful about buying another one to see what happens next? And if you don’t want to buy it, don’t bother. Do something else. Buy cigarettes or booze or bananas. I don’t know!

Every time I read about the agonizing pains of ‘event fatigue’ or how ‘3-D hurts my head…’ or how something’s ‘incomprehensible’ when most people are ‘comprehending’ it just fine, it’s like visiting a nursing home. ‘Events’ in superhero comic books FATIGUE you? I’m speechless. Admittedly they do tend to be a little more exciting than the instruction leaflets that come with angina pills but… ‘fatigue’?

Superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant ?

“As long as it feels right and looks brilliant.” Aye, there’s the rub, Grant! YMMV, as they say. But it’s nice to see him once again explicitly prescribe a “buy what you want, read what you want, ignore what you want” remedy for Dem Ol’ Konfuzin’ Event-Komik Blues–even, if he is to believed in this interview, when that cuts against the lasting impact of his own work.

* So what would he want you to want to read, and how would he want you to read it? Comme ca:

FINAL CRISIS # 1- 3

SUPERMAN BEYOND # 1 – 2

SUBMIT

FINAL CRISIS # 4 – 5

BATMAN #682 – 683

FINAL CRISIS # 6 – 7

I’ll probably give the whole shebang another read-through in that order. It’s too bad it’s not going to be collected like that in the near term, but in much the same way that the heroes pray for resurrections, the readers pray for Absolutes.

* This sort of thing drives me crazy, and is actually part of my problem with the intensity of focus some critics have on Morrison comics too:

I found myself wondering what it would be like if comics’ storytelling stopped aping film or TV and tried a few tricks from opera, for instance. How about dense, allusive, hermetic comics that read more like poetry than prose? How about comics loaded with multiple, prismatic meanings and possibilities? Comics composed like music? In a marketplace dominated by ‘left brain’ books, I thought it might be refreshing to offer an unashamedly ‘right brain’ alternative.

Some really, really needs to banish Grant Morrison to Earth-PictureBox Inc. Seriously, there are a lot of exactly these kinds of comics out there. I’m always disappointed when intelligent people–intelligent professional comics-writer people, for god’s sake!–act as though there aren’t because Martian Manhunter hasn’t been in one. How I would have loved to title a post “Carnival of Acme Novelty Library #19″! I really want Alvin Buenaventura to comp Morrison a copy of Kramers Ergot 7. You don’t need the combined might of Superman and Captain Marvel to lift it, Grant, I promise.

* This is getting into the minutiae a bit, but there’s a passage about Wonder Woman that echoed something my friends and I were discussing just yesterday:

NRAMA: Regarding the big legends of the DCU: Superman got his mini-event, Batman took on Darkseid, Flash tries to outrun death, Green Lantern overcomes granny . . . but Wonder Woman turns out to be Anti-Life Patient Zero and spends the bulk of the series as a disfigured thrall. Why does Wonder Woman not have a comparable moment in that context?

GM: I wondered about that myself. I love what Gail Simone (especially) and other writers have done to empower the Wonder Woman concept but I must admit I’ve always sensed something slightly bogus and troubling at its heart. When I dug into the roots of the character I found an uneasy melange of girl power, bondage and disturbed sexuality that has never been adequately dealt with or fully processed out to my mind. I’ve always felt there was something oddly artificial about Wonder Woman, something not like a woman at all.

Having said that, I became quite fascinated by these contradictions and problems and tried to resolve them for what turned into a different project entirely. Partly because I didn’t want to use any of that new material in Final Crisis, I relegated Wonder Woman to a role that best summed up my original negative feelings about the character. My apologies to her fans and I promise to be a little more constructive next time around.

Wonder Woman gets a ‘moment’ in Final Crisis #7 but by that time, Mandrakk has sucked all the life out of the story!

The thing about DC’s Big Three (or Trinity, if you must) is that the only thing that inherently links those three characters is their pop-culture currency from 1966-1978, and the fact that their copyrights are controlled by the same corporation. On an alternate Earth, the DC Trinity consists of Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and Doc Savage, while Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are consigned to the Wold Newton Universe and WildStorm comics written by Alan Moore and Warren Ellis.

(My pal Matthew Perpetua pointed out to me that in most regular readers’ eyes, the real trinity at this point would probably be Superman, Batman, and Hal Jordan. I’d probably rather read interaction between those three, if only because it probably wouldn’t be about how important the three of them are to each other and the world.)

Thinking about this, I realized that what Wonder Woman needs is an Ed Brubaker/Captain America run. To quote Tyra Banks, I always thought that Captain America had all the potential in the world, I obviously recognized his important role within the fictional Marvel world, he was fun to see in team-ups, and it would constantly frustrate me that no one was producing the post-9/11 Cap book of my dreams, but for the most part I’d written him off because almost all the stories done with him were so lame. In other words, he was Marvel’s Wonder Woman–seriously, replace “post-9/11” with “feminist” and the situations are almost identical. If Marvel had structured their entire universe around, say, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Captain America as a “Trinity,” Cap would have looked like a total unreadable punk by comparison. But they didn’t do that, they used him where it made sense, and eventually they got lucky and Brubaker came along knowing EXACTLY how to use the character, and he turned out to be awesome. Then they killed him and somehow he got even more awesome. Now he’ll come back, probably around the same time as the movie hits, and he really WILL be a big deal to the fans.

To be fair, I actually agree with Mark Millar that Marvel’s real pop-culture magical characters are Spidey, Wolverine, and the Hulk, not Cap, so it’s not a perfectly analogous situation to Supes Bats and WW, but you know what I mean. Point is, instead of forcing her into an “important” role in every because she’s an “important” character–and certainly instead of making every run on her solo book be about how important she is–just tell a cool story with your biggest characters. Eventually someone will come along and really know how to make the character sing to people who didn’t write papers on her in college/aren’t bloggers who focus on gender in DC comics/don’t want her to be 300 in drag, and THEN you can start making a big deal of her again. (Chances are that writer will be Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison, as has been the case with basically all the other major characters at DC over the past few years, and it sounds like in this case it will be Morrison.) I don’t purport to know how that would work anymore than, in the end, I had a clue how to make Captain America work. But I gotta believe someone does, and Morrison seems like a safe bet.

* Chris Mautner reports that Charles Burns will be the guest editor of the next volume of Best American Comics. Neat.

* Doomsday & The Descent director Neil Marshall doing an Ancient Rome war movie called Centurion? Sure, I’ll eat it. And have a second helping! (Via Dread Central.)

* The Blair Witch Project extended edition? Blair Witch Project prequel? Lots of stuff to chew on in this interview with Co-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez on the occasion of the film’s 10th anniversary. The pair talk about how the film got made, say they’re mulling over prequel ideas, and reveal that there was once a 2 1/2 hour cut of the film and that they’d like to see that footage restored in an anniversary-edition DVD release. Personally, I’d like to see a certain scene cut: the bit where one of the townspeople in the beginning explains what ends up being the last shot. It was the only thing from the final version that wasn’t included in the rough cut I saw, and the movie’s much scarier without it. Yikes, shivers. (Via Bloody Disgusting.)

* I think I already mentioned that the guy who’s directing Army of the Dead for Zack Snyder, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., is going to be directing the prequel to The Thing, which fact was confirmed today. But I don’t think I noticed that the movie is centered on…Kurt Russell’s character’s brother? All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again, eh, screenwriter Ronald D. Moore?

* Here’s a great line from from Tom Spurgeon’s review of a Marvel Adventures Two-in-One thing:

They’re really ordinary comics, easy to read because they’re simple, not because they can boast of any special clarity.

* Evil on Two Legs posts what seems to me to be a pretty solid list of the best horror movies of 2008.

* So this would be, what, the Barbara Alert system? (Via Tor.com.)

* Hi, they’re the State.