Donnybrook: No Longer Just the Misremembered Name of a Country Singer

Donnybrook isn't a good book. Go read Crimes in Southern Indiana instead. If I had stopped there, I would have been a happier man and I wouldn't have to write this screed. But that is a road not taken. Here I am. Angry. Bitter. And with the knowledge of so much wasted time burning at the back of my skull.

Donnybrook is never seemed like a book that would suffer from being too classy. It certainly begins with a fine impression. When we first meet each of the principle characters (a desperate, if well meaning good ol' boy-cum-family man, a troubled cop with a tragic past that doesn't matter, and a guy named 'Chainsaw'), we meet them doing what they do best. They are robbing, shooting, and cooking their way off of the page and into our hearts. The lives of these men is a hard-scrabble life at best. Life was never easy for these folks, especially not in this economy (a fact, I feel like we were told more than once, but maybe I am just misremembering my own questionable works of fiction). As a beginning, it's strong.



This all sour as soon as the plot begins in earnest. That is to say, it goes sour as soon as the lack of a plot develops. Because Donnybrook is not so much a story as it is a series of scenes cut at their most interesting point and inserted somewhere else. It is a technique that reminds me of the kind of movies we got in the 90's after Pulp Fiction had its moment in the sun. And like that great glut of movies, this story is found lacking. Instead we are reminded of better stories-- stories like the kind that made up Frank Bill's last book.

As a story, Donnybrook is nothing but smoke and mirrors. We bounce from scene to scene before we can get bored or notice that this scene makes no sense. Smoke and mirrors posing as a structure can still hold an audience captive, but the the bits between the smoke and the mirrors have to be interesting. Unfortunately, in this case, they are not. Instead we are given men named Chainsaw and a Chinese man named Fu, who might be the only named character of color in the entire book (though, luckily, minorities are spared the vomit-coated brush that Bill paints all of his white characters with). The Chinese man is named Fu. Do you want to guess what he is an expert in? I'll give you a hint: He doesn't own a restaurant and he doesn't run a laundry.

It is that special combination of gritty and trite that eventually tipped me over from mild boredom to full blown anger. I cannot pin point when this happened. It might have been when the back-country soothsayer was introduced. It might have been when I said "Fuck you" into the book. The two events might have been related. Of this I cannot be sure.

As a target of my annoyance, I eventually fixated on how taudry the book is, on how fascinated it seems to be with the most ugly things in the world. I became annoyed because it put a spotlight on these things not to tell a story or to make a point, but to show them because it could. These things are there to get a rise out of me for lack of anything better.

We couldn't get characters that we can have empathy for or enjoy the company of. Instead, like some smelly, drunken Richard Stark charicature, we get action after stupid, crap-slick action. An attempted rape? Sure. A racist cripple? Yeah, okay. Haven't seen that in a while. Another scene in a bar? I've never been to Indiana before, but I am willing to believe that it is made up solely of bars. Children literally biting the ankles of a terrible cop? Go on. What about underage prostitution? Toss that in there too! Secret incest family? Sure. What the hell!  It worked for that broad who wrote The Flowers in the Attic and she got at least two movies out of the deal!

Towards the end of the book there's a description of prize fighters huffing spray paint and I had to wonder, with so many other drugs readily available, why they would bother with such lame high school shit? Are they art major drop outs? Is Frank Bill including these scenes because he's playing a game of white trash bingo with himself? Do I actually care?

In black and white, as a list, these things all sound kind of cool. Even making fun of it, I have this thought in the back of my head that I missed how cool they really were. There is no reason that these horrible thing can't be fun ("fun" being, perhaps a relative term. . .).  We want to read about crankheads and bare knuckle boxers, to be enticed by a story, and to believe it if only for the beauty of the prose.

Writers like Cormac McCarthy, Jason Aaron, Garth Ennis, and sometimes even Nick Cave understand how to do this. These are men who write about violence, often in the same kind of back country that Bill sets this story in. They are different from Bill because they know how to forge these horrors into a story. Frank Bill puts forth these ideas like your cat puts forth a dead rat. There is no poetry to it.

Again: The problem is not the inclusion of these things. The problem is that all of this dope snorting, face punching, bear-trap snapping nonsense isn't attached to anything worthwhile. It's just stuff. It's just an ugly pile of stuff. It's a drunk man showing up at your door with a sack full of broken glass saying that he brought you a new window. It's exactly that.


The reason for all of this praise is likely down to Frank Bill being an example of the American dream. He's a guy who came out of nowhere, with his own voice, who wrote a book that, despite its flaws, does violently clip the reality of modern America. He is also a guy who seems like he would drive straight to Missouri and kick Daniel Woodrell's ass if he didn't get a good blurb out of the man.


Crimes in Southern Indiana might not be a great book, but it is a good one. It's solid as a rock. It has a unique voice and does suffer from the kind of sawed-off fragment sentences that litter Donnybrook ("Butted the hot barrel through Dote's hand" and "Released the man's arm. Listened to him grunt and thud into timber" are the kinds of sentences that seem to exist solely as a bloody-minded challenge to any copy-editor who will take them on).

Each chapter in Crimes is not so much a short story as it is a sharp slice through a brutal America. There is something tangible about those stories. And even if you don't quite believe them, they do not overstay their welcome. They are notable for being good stories about brutish things.

Donnybrook has all of the same energy as Bill's first book, yet this energy is going in all of the wrong directions. Instead of taking the kinds of scenes that made Crimes stick out and building a bigger world out of them, they are chopped up, tossed around, and garnished with a sprig of pubic hair. Its length, like its violence, exists merely to exist. It's a shame, because any writer that is this fascinated with having people step on fox traps is a guy who should be actively encouraged to write more. He seems like he should be my kind of writer.

All of this made me think of Mr. Rogers. Besides his impeccible sense of style, he a man who exists as a complete contrast to modern America. He is quiet and kind and has a kind of unimpunable sincerity that I find utterly baffling. Writing this review made me think of this quote:

I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger — much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. - See more at: http://www.current.org/1969/05/i-give-an-expression-of-care-every-day-to-each-child/#sthash.Gf56XCaO.dpuf

I think it is much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger-- Much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire.

I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger — much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. - See more at: http://www.current.org/1969/05/i-give-an-expression-of-care-every-day-to-each-child/#sthash.Gf56XCaO.dpuf

I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger — much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. - See more at: http://www.current.org/1969/05/i-give-an-expression-of-care-every-day-to-each-child/#sthash.Gf56XCaO.dpuf

Mr. Rogers wrote a perfect review of this book before Frank Bill was even born.



FUCK YOU HERE COMES THE AD CANNON BETTER GRAB YOUR BUTT

I wrote some comics! I have two stories and they are collected in both Old College Comics Presents and The Freshman Fifteen (You can buy them here). They're all made by a collection of friends who like writing, who like comics, and do not have a patience for waiting for somebody else to publish their work. We're a little indy upstart and every single purchase lets us know that we're doing something right.

I also do a podcast called White Guys, Square Glasses. This one don't cost you anything but time. Which, to be fair, is something that you can't get back, so I don't blame you for not wanting to spend an hour or so listening to two dingbats ramble on about The Hunt for Red October or Danny Trejo's upcoming (fictional) magnum opus.

And while you're at it, why not follow my twitter?

The Only Other True Detective Theory That You Have to See

I was skeptical, but I'll tell you, now, after seeing this, my eyes are wide open.



There's no coming back from this, people. It's all out there now.

I'm Sure There's a French Phrase for The Wind Rises

The Wind Rises feels like a man's final movie. It's no secret that Hayao Miyazaki is a fan of aeronautics. You can see it in everything from Porco Rosso to Laputa to Kiki's Delivery Service. It is no wonder that The Wind Rises is the work he would choose to round out his storied career. It is a movie with a singular vision, one driven by a man with enough influence, talent, and respect to make exactly the kind of movie that he wanted to make. It feels like a movie a man would make knowing he would never have another chance.

It is also a movie so long and so dull that it can only be explained by passion of a single man at its helm. No group of people would willingly make a movie this listless without a genius at the helm. Even an accident would have made something more lively than what I saw.Knowing that makes this all the more the bummer.

Either in order to make sense of The Wind Rises or to keep my brain from shutting down, I started thinking about Dr. Zhivago. They're both historical films, they both share a grand scale, and they're both bound by doomed romances. Most importantly they are driven to complete a singular life's work. David Lean's film is also a movie where a great many things don't happen for a long period of time. If I remember correctly the climax of the film is Omar Sharif writing a poem in a cold house. It's not exactly helicopter explosion city.

Yet, Dr. Zhivago has something that The Wind Rises does not. David Lean's turn at a mystical artist has emotional stakes. It has conflict that is both personal and historical. It's a movie that is weighed down with a sense of doom from the very first scene (even if we don't know a thing about the Russian Revolution). Even if we do not care about the plight of a mystical poet and his failed romances, we do care about his family and the women he loved because there are horrible consequences lurking in the back of every twist of the plot.

The Wind Rises has none of this. It's a drama with no real stakes, which is to say that it is a drama with no drama.

Our hero sleepwalks from scene to scene until he overcomes each and every obstacle merely by sticking around long enough. By the end I am not left with a sense of Jiro's life or accomplishments. He moves from one scene to another with little connection between the two. Plot threads are forgotten. Others are half-heartily followed through on. There is no resonance, instead I am overwhelmed by the thought that like Jiro, I should have fallen asleep.

It's strange because the techniques at play in this film are not any different than Hayao Miyazaki's other films. With the exception of maybe Nausicaa or Princess Mononoke, most of his films do not have a sense of being driven forward. His movies tend to unfold calmy and quietly. Spirited Away in many ways does have a driving conceit at the center (the fear of losing ones parents and one's memory), but it also has one of his most incidental plots. It also might be his very best.

The idea of a film without a story, a film that is told in a seemingly lilting, meandering format is on perfect display in his first great film, My Neighbor Totoro. Roger Ebert's describes the movie as"is based on experience, situation and exploration—not on conflict and threat."

My Neighbor Totoro works because we are invested in the world. We're invested in the characters. We want to see where they're going, even if that means watching them do something as simple as plant a garden. Or wait in the rain. We are care about the movie because it's fun to look at, but we also care about the characters. It's a fully realized film that is bursting at the seams with life in its 86 minute run.

The Wind Rises rare bit of life occur in Jiro's lengthy dream sequences. It's telling that the most affecting moments of the film are those that are completely untethered from reality.

These dreams are moments of pure beauty. They remind you of the great talent that Hayao Miyazaki possesses. They show that his vision and passion can work together to deliver a kind of visual showcase that nobody else in film can. It was enough for me to think to myself "I think I love this movie" during the first twenty minutes of the film.

It was not to last. It does not last because the rest of the film gets in the way. Jiro's non-trials with plane building. His rather uneventful world tour. His romance that, after courting, has all of the passion of a bowl of fruit. We have moments of wonder sandwiched in between these long periods of tedium. And then we finally return to Jiro's dreams. Finally.

This isn't a spoiler, but the final scene, like the first scene, takes place in a dream. It is a scene where Jiro reconciles his dream with his reality. It is where the two concepts meet and he, we must assume, comes to another epiphany. This time, though, instead of thinking of how much I love Miyazaki and how much I want to go on a journey with him about planes and about the kind of men who want to fly, I am annoyed at how long it took us to get here. It is not a scene that is connected to anything that matters. It wasn't until later, that I thought about this movie and why I have taken against it that I realized that the dreams have to matter as much as the dreamers.

Slapping around what might be the last work of a great director doesn't lift my spirits. Forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but the older I get, the less fun slagging off things has become. I want things to be good. I want good directors to make good movies. Rambling on about how the emperor has no clothes is not the fun hobby that it once was. It's all of the fun of jousting windmills but without any of the idiotic nobility.
 
Looking back on the legacy of Hayao Miyazaki, I think he has the right to make a bad movie. If anyone is allowed to say whatever they want, good or bad, it is Hayao Miyazaki. He's earned it.

The Wind Rises seems like a movie shaped by passion-- Passion for the material, passion for the time, and a passion to say something that maybe his lighter films could not say. It is a shame that this passion doesn't translate into a better film.

The Wind Rises stands as a testament to the magnitude of Miyazaki's legacy, yet ultimately exists apart from it. Its rare moments of wonder only remind us just how wonderful of a career that he has had, of what a wonderful man he must be.



WATCH YOUR SIX, IT'S THE AD GAUNTLET

It is at this point that I open myself up to severe criticism. You can do so by visiting Old College Comics and buying one of the anthologies I worked on. For better or for worse, Hayao Miyazaki's fantasy works were huge inspirations for me and my silly viking comic.

I also do a podcast called White Guys, Square Glasses (for some reason) with my friend Cruz Flores. We recently shifted the format to be about one movie a week. This last week we discussed Goon. Next week will be. . . The Toxic Avenger. Ugh. I'm dreading that one. The Wind Rises will not be one of them, but I'd like to think that there will be a future podcast about one of his other films. You know, One of his good films.

Here's my twitter, too.

The One and Only True Detective Theory That You Need To Read

There's a lot of chatter on the ol' computer box about who-done-it in the HBO show True Detective. While this show is one of the most talked about programs on TV, one of most important points about the mystery has been ignored. People are focusing on the wrong details and spinning out into crazy conclusions and my theory would save all of those people-- and their readers-- a lot of heartache.

I've been through the episodes over and over again and I think I have a real handle on the TV show and where it's going. I'm no expert, so let know what you're thinking.

(MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD)

(YOU WERE WARNED TURN BACK NOW!)

Okay, here's my theory:

You all need to shut the fuck up and watch the fucking show.

You're not Poirot. You aren't even Miss Marple. Jesus fucking Christ, if you're anything, you're an Inspector Clouseau if he had taken to smoking industrial loads of ketamine instead of having his manservant randomly attack him. Knock it the fuck off and watch the fucking show. Nobody cares about you half-assed, cockamamy ramblings you've dressed up as a "theory." Remember Lost? Remember it? Remember nanobots? Do you? I can see it on your face that you do.

It's going to show its hand when shows its hand. Stop trying to outsmart it. Like solving the mystery before anyone else in the room does makes you enjoy the show any more. That it makes you understand it any more.

The only theory I have about the show and the mystery is that you're all wrong and you're driving me nuts. Shut the fuck up and just be grateful that we're living in the greatest age of television since. . . ever.

Alright. I'm sorry I yelled, but this is what you have brought me to. You think I'm happy about this?

(END SPOILERS!!!!!11!)

The Headhunter becomes the Headhunted!

I like Jo Nesbo.

He mixes the sublime with the vulgar in a way that the best genre writers should. The best stuff, though, that elevates the material. It takes something taudry or cliched-- like murder and greed and theft-- and it turns it into high art. Michael Chabon does it. Donald Westlake did it. Stephen King certainly does it. So does Jo Nesbo.


The adaptation of Headhunters does not do this and while I could go on and on as to why that is the case, I do enough of that here already. This is about being positive. It's about how Jo Nesbo can turn out a good yarn*.

On my podcast episode about the Headhunters film I kept on perseverating  on the idea that "the book was better." As a rule, I hate that phrase. It's lazy, it doesn't mean anything, and worse, it's pretentious. In this case, it happens to be true (which is the worst kind of cliche). While the movie a tolerable, competent thriller, the novel is an ecstatic celebration of that genre.

What makes it worth reading is the ending. It is not exceptional in its writing, Jo Nesbo, for all of his talent is not a Graham Greene or a Cormac McCarthy. Whether because of his translation** or because of his actual style, he's a straight shooter. What he excels at is not so much the prose as it is the form.

The back cover sells Headhunters as a Coen brothers like caper, which is rather disengenious as it's as straight as they come. There's a guy, he's a scum bag, and he commits crime. There is no irony. There is no distance. And there certainly isn't a tone (the Coen brothers, if anything, have that down). I don't now too much about the Norweigians, but I doubt that they have this dry of a humor. . . That is until the last chapter.


Until the last chapter where the narration changes and suddenly you realize that you haven't been reading a violent crime novel, but a comedy of errors. A joke, writ large, with the last chapter serving as the punchline. And what's more, as a twist, it works. It works really well. Because Jo Nesbo's been doing this sort of thing for a while. He knows his way around a murder or two. He also knows his way around a joke.

So, avoid the movie. Read the book. And if you're desperate for a Norwegian movie go watch Trollhunter instead. I mean, I guess.

I read Headhunters smack between Ledfeather and The Long Goodbye, which are two. . . very different books. I also read it on a road trip with my dad. Like the best crime books (the Stark series leaps to mind), it moves at a clipped pace. I doesn't have to fight to keep your attention, because it doesn't give you the time to get bored or annoyed. There's no ruminating, there's just action.

The trick Nesbo plays with Headhunters, especially at such a point in the story is something worth experiencing. . .or at least something to distract you from how boring Wyoming if it ever comes down to it.



THE AD GAUNTLET

I wrote a couple of comic book stories. They're collected in The Freshman Fifteen and Old College Comics Presents along with a lot of other stories from people much more talented than myself. I'm rather proud of the fact that these books came together and I am even more proud of the fact that they are pretty good.

You can listen to more of this type of nonsense on White Guys, Square Glasses. We sometimes talk about crime and we mostly talk mad shit. We just underwent a format change, so we'll be tackling movies like Headhunters more often. . . but hopefully, you know, like, better.


You can also follow my twitter. Hey. It's all optional. Nobody's forcing you, here.

*He's also the only point of connection I have with this attractive Norweigian woman that comes into my work, but that's neither here nor there.

**Then again, I've never made that excuse for Haruki Murakami, but then again, who knows?

Shut up, Tom, I'm trying to watch this trailer

Track, World War II, and the Coen brothers? I'm down. You coming, too?

Revisiting Bebop

Have you ever watched Cowboy Bebop? Because if not, you should and if you have, man, how awesome is Cowboy Bebop?



I started watching Cowboy Bebop in junior high and while I haven't watched an episode in maybe six years, it is still one of the gold standards of anime. And unlike Dragonball Z or whatever other garbage that Japan shipped over here by the boatload, Cowboy Bebop holds up. It's so goddamn cool, guys. There's the music and the design and there's a super corgi that solves puzzles! What else do you want!?

I feel like I've been chasing the highs of Bebop ever since I first watched them. I have to imagine a lot of people do that with their first exposure to a band or a movie or something. Cowboy Bebop did that for me. It was this fresh, new, crazy thing that I could kind of only imagine at this point. What was even better was that I didn't have to deal with bad animation or laughable voice acting or any of the other pitfalls of the genre (the medium? Whatever). Bebop was this funny, well-designed world that were full of really cool characters. Nothing else sounded like it. Nothing else looked like it. It's been fifteen years and it still stands on its own as this original work of art. As many good shows as I've watched, it never was as good as when I finally got to the end of "The Real Folk Blues Pt. 2."

 What I'm saying is that Japanese anime is exactly like cocaine use.

And all of that got me to make the mistake of pining for a blu ray version of the movie and the series, something I never bought, even back when gray market Chinese copies of anime were readily available (as opposed to torrenting, something that would years distant from the height of my anime fanhood) and it really made me-- HOLY SHIT IT'S FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR A BOXED BLU RAY SET? JESUS CHRIST DOES IT CURE ERECTILE DISFUNCTION AND BRING BACK ALL YOUR DEAD PETS? And. . . is that an In Through the Out Door reference? What in the. . .

Oh, well, the American set is only. . . non-existent. Huh.. You people are fucking insane. I'm glad I wasn't drunk when I found because I might have ended up trying to pull some end maneuvers around import taxes with my friends in Japan. Such is my love of Bebop.

While Cowboy Bebop's current availability seems to be just slightly out of reach, it's spiritual successor, Samurai Champloo is on Instant Watch.  If you've got the time and good taste I would highly suggest that you watch it. It's the last thing Shinchiro Watanabe has done since Bebop and that is a fact that depresses me to no end. Oh, he's got a new series out? Alright. About goddamn time.

I was thinking of all of this because I just rewatched the film (which, in Japan is named after a Bob Dylan song) and, as good as it is, it reminded me just how great the show is as a singular work. Part of what makes that show great is that, like any great performance, it leave you wanting more. There's a pang I feel when I know that these twenty-six episode (and the movie) are all we are ever going to have and that anything additional, however unlikely it might be, would only serve to tarnish the legacy of that show.

I don't know. Maybe I'm overstating it. Maybe I just really like the idea of a Welsh corgi solving space crime.

While we wait for that, enjoy the best remix of "Tank!" that You're the Man Now Dawg has to offer.

Shameless Self Aggrandizement: An Ongoing Concern

We released a new episode of White Guys, Square Glasses.

Here's a quick cut of it--


Man, I should really update the blog for our show. . .

Why Aren't I Making Movies?

I just.

Man.

I gotta do something while I'm here.

Sex: It's What People Do

Author's Note: It's been pointed out to me that this has a lot of, shall we say, unfinished sentences? While I appreciate the effort I am well aware of my lack of a copy-editor that isn't my cat. The following is a second go at this article.

As discussed in a previously post, I went on a bit of a comic book buying binge. I blame Christmas. And my poor impulse control. And a lot of things.

Speaking of which, one of the comics I bought is Sex.

I don't know that I've ever read a Joe Casey comic before. There was a time when I wanted to pick up Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker, but since that violently imploded, I think I'll take the long way around to checking out that book. From my understanding Mr. Casey is a man who takes superheroes and pits them against situations that are completely opposed to superheroics or situations that are the ultimate conclusion of the superheroing business. (Trade? Practice?)

That's a fine way to go about things. It's also as much a part of the comic landscape as the straight stories about people in capes. He seems far less pleased with his ideas than a guy like Mark Millar does and he also seems far more talented than the kind of "But what if Batman was in real life!?' type of nonsense that pours out of the Preview pages.

Sex's particular take on superheroes is "What if Batman quit being Batman? Also, what if everyone in Gotham City was a sexual maniac? Also, what if costumes were a poorly explored metaphor about sexual dysfunction?" And then it goes from there. Kind of. In its defense it doesn't feel cheap or exploitative. Maybe it's because I'm so jaded and cynical, but I never batted an eye at the sexual content of the book.

Then again maybe that's also a problem. If I'm not batting an eye at the contents of a book that was sold with the tagline "IMAGE WANTS YOU TO BUY SEX" then maybe something has gone wrong somewhere along the lines.

Though, the boners and the tits are there. My reaction is sort of tempered by the fact that they are there and they are sticking up at you. If that's the sort of book you were looking for-- and I thought I was-- then Sex will deliver.

The main problem with the book is that as good looking as it is, it is listless. Appropriately listless considering the theme. Or one of the themes. I'm not sure I care to parse them out. Our main character is primarily defined by the fact that he doesn't do anything. He has a thrilling past and one full of trauma and psychological conclusion, yet we're stuck in the present with this white goofus who seems to have the acting range of an opium addled Keanu Reeves.

Like scenes like this? Well, don't get used to them.

Ennui isn't an emotion that moves stories forward. That's a lesson we never quite learned from the French.

This lack of drive carries over to Sex's world building. In works like Watchmen or The Winter Men or any number of other books in this vein we have fully realized worlds that are as much a part of the story as the characters or the dialogue. Batman has had 70 years to throw a world together, but as readers we know what Gotham City is. It's a place that is alive and that has real weight. As a writer Joe Casey is making an analogue of Gotham City without any of the texture of that city. In Sex we're treated to a lot of men in suits and skyscrapers. Saturn City doesn't feel like a real place and that's important if your main characters aren't exactly leaping off of the page.

As far as Sex's supporting characters, we have the Alpha Brothers (the world's one and only Sebastian O cosplay gang), The Old Man, Keenan, and this world's Catwoman stand in, each weaving in and out of each others' lives, trying to make a living in a world without Batman the Armored Saint. Yet, by the end of the trade the only thing that's changed in any of their lives is that Not Catwoman had to get glasses. Which she thinks makes her look old. Considering that Lisa Ann is the world's most popular porn star and she's known for dressing up like another well known MILF, I can't help but feel that Not Catwoman can't see the forest for the trees. You know. Literally in this case.

Plus the main character has a goatee and what the fuck is that in 2014?

Overall, though, the book is rather humorless. I mean. It's called Sex. I'm not looking for Benny Hill here, but if you're going to have superheroes standing around not being superheroes, at least make me smile. I mean, Lord almighty nobody is having fun in this book. I'll go watch Shame if I wanted that. (I don't.)

All in all I'm excited that Hayao Miyazaki is making comics again. I want to read something nice.



WELCOME TO THE AD GAUNTLET--

I came out with a comic book myself. It's called  Old College Comics Presents and it's pretty fucking exciting. The cover looks great. The paper stock is solid. Some of the words and drawings together are pretty decent, too. If you're not interested in picking up the new comic, we also have an old one (It's called The Freshman Fifteen. Get it?). Either way, who are you to resist?

(It seems our website hasn't been updated. . . Huh. That'll have to be resolved rather soon. . .)

I do a podcast with my actor friend Cruz Flores. It's called White Guys, Square Glasses. It is a title that is 75% accurate. If you like the kind of nonsense I've written in the above article you might like the kind of nonsense that falls out of my mouth on our show. It's about media and pop culture and rambling on about whatever catches our fancy. In short: It's a podcast. But it's one from me.

Another Thought on "Nowhere Men"

"Nowhere Men-- It's like SHIELD: Architects of Infinity, but without the bullshit."

How Ill are Comics?

The Answer: Comic book are most ill.

As many comics as I have been buying and as many as I have been reading, my To Do List is getting higher and higher. Most of the time, when I buy one of these books-- or any book, really-- it's with the mental concession that I will either learn something about the craft or churn out a non-fiction piece of some kind on this blog. In that way it can do some actual, positive good in my life and not just entertain me, which, hey, I guess that is something. There's a lot of things out there that can't even manage that.

These are the following books that I have bought, but haven't read yet:

 Ghosted.

I'm always up for a good crime story. Supernatural stuff, though? It's about as attractive to me as a gay bar called the "Knife Wound." Even though something like Hellblazer or Hellboy will occasionally drop, you more often than not end up with the same shity paranormal investigator story ever written between 1993 and today excluding The X-Files (but not even all of The X-Files). It is a genre that has created an environment where RIPD could thrive.

Ghosted, luckily, isn't garbage. It seems very much aware of how overpopulated the genre is, as well as how underwhelming it usually is. The first two issues introduce you to a violent and vulgar world where a professional thief is tasked to steal Vincent Price a ghost. And then it gets weird. From what I have read, I liked. I'm looking forward to how this thing plays out.


Sex.

I've been wanting to read a Joe Casey book for a long while and since Butcher Baker is never getting a proper release or conclusion, I figured this is going to have to do. I've heard good things about this book, which allows me to ignore how loathsome I find that "But what if Batman was like this" type of bullshit that I imagine plagues Image's submission department. Plus, when I opened it up there was a lot of boners and tits and I realized that I haven't read a book like that in a long while and I figured the time had come.

Slayground.

Slayground is Darwyn Cooke's next installment in his run of Parker adaptations. There isn't much else to say about it other than the only reason that I haven't touched it yet is that, like a fine wine or a bottle of whiskey, I'm saving this up for the right moment.


Nowhere Men.

I've already read up to where this trade ends, so, really this is all about me re-reading the first arc of the story. I think I've already discussed this book, but it deserves a second mention, because it might be one of the coolest books on the market. It's also the coolest book that I'm reading where I still have no idea what it is that I'm reading.


Nowhere Men has managed to somehow  tell an interesting, clever story that still seems like it's just on the edge of getting started. The seed of the book seems to be "What if The Beatles were super-scientists." Yet by the end of the first issue, that idea has exploded into a kaleidoscope of side plots and ephemera that have still yet to link up or coalesce into a central idea. It's exciting to read where it can be this coy and still be this good. As lost as I might be, this book that has a clear vision and a clear direction and I'm perfectly fine with going along with the ride.

Judenhass.

I think 2014 is the year of me getting up the energy to finally read the graphic novel of the history of anti-Semitism. Finally.

There's a unifying theme in this list, which is that Image Comics is turning out some great work. I don't know what got into the water at Image HQ (which I imagine to be a trailer hidden away the in the mountains and when you knock on the door Erik Larsen comes to it with a shotgun and smelling of battery acid), but it's working. Whatever it is, somebody needs to pump some of it into the Marvel and DC HQs (a glittering skyscraper and a second-hand Soviet satellite, respectively).

The breadth and the quality of works that have come out of that company in the past year is astounding. Manhattan Projects. East of West. Zero. Saga. Satellite Sam. Prophet. Lazarus. Jupiter's Legacy. And those are just the comics that I'm reading. Thinks about how great those books are. Think how weird they are! Think about what this means!

They've got a wide array of books driven by talented people with a vision and that's exciting. It gives me hope. And it makes me think that maybe what's wrong with the world is that I'm just not paying enough attention. At the very least at 9.99 a pop, the price is right.

Now is an exciting time to be a comic book read. I'm glad for it. I'm glad for all of it. Because it'll be a cold day in Hell when I give a good shepherd's fuck about a Guardians of the Galaxy cross-over.