It happened again

I think I found another doppelganger.

So. . . it is just me?

(via this isn't happiness via American Polaroid.)

Prophet is the Tits

I don't know what you heard, but this comic book Prophet is the kipper's knickers.

It is a comic you should be reading.



Look at this splash and tell me that you are not curious.

The above splash page is the tone of the piece. It's about a displaced Conan who rides on a giant bug and sometimes is heavily involved in slime men and eating random bits of creatures he finds on his journey. It's as exciting as a comic can be and it is as completely mad as a thing can be without becoming nonsensical. It's great because for the past ten years or so comics have been immensely concerned with this concept of realism at the detriment of good ideas. Just look at the amount of stitches and seams that have appeared on the costumes of super-heroes lately and think about how creative those sartorially inclined heroes have become.

Prophet, for a relaunch of one of the most infamous comic creators of the 90's, strikes me as an old fashioned way of making comic books. A few months ago I read the original run of OMAC and my friend Beef was recently talking to me about reading Kamandi for the first time and we both basically agreed that as wonderful and as ecstatic of a writer/artist/creator as Jack Kirby was, he was as unhinged and as all over the place as a comic maker could be. This current run of Prophet, I feel takes the best aspects of Kirby's energy and makes it into something modern and wonderful.

I'll get back to that in a moment, but first I want to denigrate comics as they are now. It'll be more fun this way.

Instead of using an issue to go over the various ins and outs of the Avengers going over the new psychological problems of Norman Osbourn for five years or how they should maybe buy a new shelf from Ikea, this comic book has a giant battle involving alien elephants. Then it moves on. Because it can. It can afford to throw those things away and because there's so many of them and there's a story that can wrap it all together in a nice, little package. It's an exuberant comic book.

The art is pretty great, as well. It should go without saying, but it's pretty important that a book as nuts as this not look like hell. It's important that the ideas look as awesome as they are on the page. In this case it does. Simon Roy has knocked the hell out of the crazy plate of junk that King has handed him. It's great looking and it is great to the point that it makes me want to double-down on my own art. I won't ever get to the point that Roy is at, but. . . man, making aspirational art is a serious endeavor. It's a sign of something.

As you can tell the art style simple and cartoony and that somehow melds well with the subject matter. At the very least it's an excellent way to separate it from the muscled madness of previous Prophet. I've been following the work of Simon Roy for a while and I've always liked his stuff. It's cool that his art has shown up in a work that interests me this much. Overall it's a nice melding of a kind of serious art style with a fun and representative style. It's exactly what Jack Kirby would have been pleased to see.
















But I'm babbling.

As we speak I'm fairly certain that the new arc of this comic has come out with a new artist, as well (same writer, though). I've wasted my time here and I've wasted the little time I did put to any use. The point here is you should read Prophet.

It's a good comic. Good comics deserve love, too.

The fact that I'm saying this about a Rob Liefeld production should speak enough to its quality.

Damn your Heiney!

Apparently James Bond is going to be drinking beer in the new movie. Apparently, like everything, this is an outrage, which is strange. It used to be that a woman had to get raped and murdered for an outrage to occur and that came to be because the words "raped and murdered" were too vulgar for polite consumption (the same goes for "white slavery" because no white person wants their poor women to be equated with the half-breeds and such that "prostitute" themselves. I mean, perish the thought).

It's absurd. James Bond has been a tool of corporate consumption since he was first incepted. That's almost the entire point of the guy. He's a violent, glamorous ad exec that saves the world. He's Don Draper with an accent and he always has been. To make a poo-poo out of what he drinks is ridiculous.

Even if this was an issue-- and it is because Heineken is a crap beer and what kind of an upper class gent would drink that swill?-- I don't really care because Skyfall is looking to be a good movie. It's got a solid director and more quality actors than you can shake a stick at.

What's more is I believe it is going to be good because of the video below. Look at that gal. She isn't blinking. That's significant. That means somebody put the care and effort into this movie's action. I just watched an action movie (the name of which I cannot remember, sorry) and whenever the characters fired they started blinking. You almost have to when you fire a gun, that's a natural response. Take note of that. The next time you watch a movie go ahead and see whether the actors blink when they fire a gun or not. You'd be surprised how often it happens.

It's maddening.

It takes effort and attention to detail to get over the fact that you're holding an explosion and it is pretty near your face. It takes training. It looks like maybe they took the time and the effort (and the money) to breed that out of this woman.

Watch this--

This is going to be a good one. . . unlike that piece of shit Quantum of Solace. What the fuck was that thing?