Room For Squares

Welp, I'm off to see John Mayer this weekend in Edmonton so I won't be blogging for the next couple of days. Also going to watch my daughters Irish dance in the Sherwood Park Feis (pronounced Fesh) while I'm there.

Should be a lot of fun.

I'll come back with a concert report, I'm sure.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

Gorillaz Break-Up Not New

I ran across this article over at The Village Voice where writer, Tom Breihan, discusses the break-up of the animated super group, Gorillaz.

Now, the piece is dated for the 25th of April, and this has been pretty comon knowledge for, like, 4 or 5 months, if I'm not mistaken. The Gorillaz autobiography, Rise of the Ogre, was supposed to be the closing bookend on what was a wild and crazy near-decade of Gorillaz music and madness. I distinctly remember reading press on the book saying that the band was finished as of album #2 and the book is one last hurrah for the fans.

I checked the wiki entry on the group and it seems a little more vague on the whole notion of the band breaking up, as it were, but with Albarn having moved on to his new pet project, The Good, The Bad, and The Queen, one could say the writing was on the wall.

Anyway, there was no grand point to making this post other than to complain about Breihan's lack of spidey-sense when it comes to nailing the current events and to join in with the disgruntled comment crowd from the Voice site and say 'poo' for the ill informed and churlish comments he made regarding the band, their releases, and Albarn.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

mike

More Interview Links

I found this great interview with David Simon, the writer of Homicide: Life on the Street and the creator of The Wire for HBO. It's conducted by Bob Andelman (Will Eisner's most recent biographer) and was a pretty decent read.

I'm trying to get the wife to watch the first season of The Wire with me but she doesn't seem to be budging. Everything I hear about the show is superb and everyone keeps calling it the best thing on television, so I figure I gotta at least give it a look-see. I love Homicide to bits so I'm pretty much expecting to love The Wire, as well.

Hmmm...maybe when I'm done posting I'll fire the first episode up.

The second link is one that I wasn't expecting to find when I cleaned out all the lingering Google News alerts that were sitting in my inbox. Apparently, the Star Bulletin (a Hawaiian paper, if I'm not mistaken) featured a very nice article on the inimitable Darwyn Cooke. It focuses mainly on the new Spirit stories Cooke is working on but the writer makes sure to mention Cooke's past works and adds a little bit of commentary, as well.

Overall, I was impressed with the piece. This sort of thing usually gets three or four paragraphs buried in the Arts section somewhere and someone is usually prefacing anything they say about comic book creators with a Pow or Zowie!. It's worth the read.

I was also going to post something about the new animated Doctor Who but I'll save that 'til next time.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

Composer Yoko Kanno Interviewed

Over at the Production I.G. website there is an interview with acclaimed composer, Yoko Kanno. If you've ever watched an episode of Cowboy Bebop, Wolf's Rain, Ghost In the Shell: SAC or various other shows, you know her stuff and probably love it as much as I do.

The interview is translated from Japanese so some of the answers are a bit wiggy, but the general idea of what she's saying always gets across in the end.

A nice little peak into the process of this fabulous artist.

mike

Blood & Iron From Mignola and Stones

There's a getting blood from a stone joke in there somewhere but it would be too much work to tease it out so I'm just not gonna bother.

Anyway, the always well informed ToonZone has a nice interview with Hellboy Animated creators Mike Mignola and Tad Stones up on their site and if you have any interest in big red's animated adventures, than this'll be worth the price of admission.

I haven't seen Blood & Iron yet but it's on the list of things to do when I have an hour-and-a-half to spare. I've previewed it, though, and it looks pretty decent. Much darker than the first.

Seeing this actually reminds me that I should post my own interview with Tad Stones sometime soon.

mike

Ramping Up to Spidey 3

Only a short time before the premiere of the the third installment in the Spider-Man series and the hype machine is working overtime. Not that I'm at all surprised by it, but I can't click anywhere on the web without seeing an interview with a cast or crew member who worked on the film.

The few I've read with Tobey, Kirsten or Bryce Dallas Howard generally leave me wanting but I love seeing the stuff on the usually quiet Raimi. Short of listening to his audio commentaries Sam has, in the past, been one to stay just outside of the spotlight. He does the press junket like everybody else but when you've got people like Bruce Campbell or Rob Tapert hamming it up for the fans, it's not a difficult task to sidestep the mob.

Moviehole has an interview with Raimi which I enjoyed and thought I would link to because I always share the love when I find an interview I enjoy. In it Sam talks about the movie, the choices they made with the characters, and the question as to whether or not he would return for a fourth film. In the past he has said three would likely be the end, but he doesn't sound convinced that the answer would be no this time around.

And while on the Raimi subject, check out this news item from FirstShowing.net which talks about Sam and a number of Pulp heroes who are looking to hit the big screen.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

Life's Little Disappointments

I got word on Friday on that Red Cross job I posted about the other day. Turns out I came in as a strong second and they chose, instead, to hire someone who had some previosu history with the organization. Fair enough. It's their NGO and they can do what they want with it. ;)

Normally I wouldn't even blink at this. I've been rejected many, many times before and by less than the RC, but I was kind of putting all of my eggs in the one basket there, so I'm a little disappointed in myself for being such an idiot, and I'm also nursing a bummed ego because I didn't get the job and it was actually a pretty cool position - something I was looking forward to sinking my teeth into.

I know they say that you have to get 100 or more rejections before you get the job you want, and that I'm supposed to just hammer the market with my name and papers, but I'm just so tired of the whole process. With the wife and I being students for more years than I want to think about I've been in and out of seasonal jobs and contract positions for so many years that I wish, just once, that a half-decent opportunity would just drop in my lap.

"Oh, are you looking for something to do with the next few years of your life? Well, it just so happens I know the perfect thing. Here you go. You can have this job."

I just feel like banging my head against a wall for a while. Then, maybe, some sleep. Or a good book, that might do the trick, also. Then, back to the job postings and the résumés.

And, hey, if anybody out there in the MySpace community happens to know anybone who may be looking for a publicist or an events coordinator or a freelancer - something along those lines - I'm all ears. ;)

Onwards and upwards!

mike

World On the March

A couple of things in the news caught my attention today.

First off is this bit off of CBR News talking about the return of Jon J. Muth's adaptation of the Fritz Lang classic, M. I'm really looking forward to this reproduction because I never have gotten around to picking up the old series in the back issue bins even though I check them out from time to time.

Next up is the news that Spielberg and Dreamworks are working to bring Hergé's Tintin to the big screen. Personally I'm not so sure these are the folks who should be working on the project but we'll see how it all turns out. Maybe Transformers will be the acid test to see how SPielberg and his people adapt an existing property.

mike

1300 Words and Counting

It would appear that the oft commented on screenplay/comic script for Smitten has muscled its way into becoming a short story. I'm not entirely sure why, or what makes me think I can do prose, but I was in the bathroom, the source for all truly great ideas, when the first line came to me, fully formed and ready to be typed:

"It was dark in the room except for the thin slivers of dawn that forced themselves through the slats in the closed blinds."

Sure, it's not Shakespeare, but it didn't completely suck and it was a great jumping off point. It should come as no surprise that 2 hours later the line now rests somewhere in the middle of the fourth paragraph rather than kicking off the whole affair, but the chain reaction it set off has been both surprising and gratifying for me. I'm not usually comfortable writing outside of an interview or screenplay format so I'm really happy so far with how things are turning out. I may even start posting sections of it here as I smooth out the rough edges.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

Only the Lonely

Recent statistics place the number of users on the internet at close to 900 million cyber savvy souls. That's a heck of a lot of people when you sit down and think about it. Especially when you consider that, out of those 900 million people, not one of them has made a comment on my blog. At least, not for weeks. And there was, like, no activity before that last Speed Racer related comment.

I was talking to my wife the other day regarding the lack of comments on the ol' blog and how it reminded me of how difficult it was to generate any kind of feedback when I was the Features Editor for Silver Bullet Comicbooks. At the time, I would look at the other sites and there would always be a discussion going on about this interview or that, but over at SBC it was like pulling teeth getting anyone to even acknowledge they were at the site. Heck, I even arranged to get the creators we interviewed to come on the message boards and answer extra questions provided by the fans, adding a bit more interactivity to the mix.

But, despite all my efforts, and the probably 600 million poeple on the internet at that time, we were still unable to generate a more vocal fanbase.

Which brings me back to the blog.

It's not the reason I do it, for sure, but it does surprise me sometimes how quiet things get in my corner of the blogosphere. I'm sure there are tons of other bloggers out there who experience the exact same thing, and I'm not trying to cry and bitch that more people should be talking to me, but there is a certain degree of reach out and touch someone mentality when a person gets out on the web and does something like this.

Or maybe I'll have to write more interesting posts.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

Making Buffy Season 8

I ran across this neat feature at the Dark Horse website showing the process of how a comic book gets made from script to lettering. I'm sure most of is on the comics blogosphere know what that process is by now, but if you don't I guess this would be cool to you for that reason. Mostly it's cool because you get a sneak peek at 6 pages from Buffy the Vampire Slayer #3 by Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty which comes out on May 2nd.

I'm enjoying the series so far, although I was a little disappointed in the second issue. It's filling the Whedonverse void that IDW attempted but never quite succeeded at (some valiant tries, but their Angel books just aren't quite right), so kudos to Whedon and Scott Allie at DHC for making this happen.

mike

'The Music'

David Usher has a new video from his latest album. The song is called 'The Music' and, while not groundbreaking or even deeply moving, it does have a nice melody that I find myself toe-tapping and head-bobbing to, so I thought I would give it a shout-out on the blog.



mike

Iconoclast dies at 84

Slaughterhouse Five was handed to me by my english teacher in high school when he learned I liked Tom Stoppard, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. He took me down the hall to the supply room one afternoon and he gave me a little paperback book (pictured right) that he picked up off of a large pile of the same and said, "read this, I think you'll enjoy it".

I read it and somehow it went over my head. Maybe I read it too fast, maybe I wasn't paying attention, maybe I was expecting it to be exactly like Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams, I don't know.

I picked it up again years later when I stumbled upon the film version on Movie Central one rainy afternoon (I don't really remember if it was raining, but it fits the story so ...). There was some spark in the film that inspired me to go back to the source material and this time, I got it and I enjoyed it - immensely, to be perfectly honest. I had finally begun to appreciate Vonnegut as more than just an important literary figure, I now had my own personal experience with his work to reference and a desire to read more from the guy.

Anyway, news is out that he passed away yesterday at the age of 84 as a result of complications from brain injuries incurred when he fell in his home. He will be missed. He had a good run, 84 is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but it's always hardest when you lose the brightest lights. Hell, I'm still reeling at the loss of Eisner, Toth, Altman...the list goes on.

My very sincerest condolences to his wife, Jill Krementz, and to his family in their time of grief.

mike

Moline on Loners - Woo-Hoo!

I mentioned it a post or two ago, I picked it up yesterday, read it last night and I'm here now to say that I'm very, very glad I did.

I didn't know anything about Loners until about a week or so ago and not having read BKV's Runaways in its entirety yet I was unfamiliar with the premise and the cast of the book. Once I picked it up and read a few pages I was running into familiar characters like Lightspeed from Power Pack and the unforgettable Darkhawk whose origins lie back in Marvel's Dark Ages (also known as the '90s). Ricochet is also a member (coming out of a Spider-Man storyline from a few years back), the new (well, fairly new...maybe second-to-last) Spider-Woman is there and another character whose name escapes me. All of them are living in and dealing with a post-Civil War world and going to a support group which is trying to help them give up the spandex life for good.

Considering how absolutely tired I am of Civil War and all of its tie-ins (and all the after effects, for that matter) I'm thrilled with how writer C.B. Cebulski is handling the scripting of this book. The tone of the past year in the Marvel U is there, the knowledge of the consequences of using their powers in public and unregistered is there, but it's not like they're referencing it in every second panel. Overall it's just an entertaining story about a group of kids with powers who are trying to figure out who they are and why they do what they do.

As for the art, I can't even put into words how thrilled I am to see Karl Moline drawing again. I was crushed when Rogue ended with its 12th issue since I knew it would be some time before I saw Karl's line work in a comic book again. My Google News alerts were proof of that, too. I've deleted so many e-mails regarding athletes in the U.S. named Moline fro this college or that pro team, but I kept the alerts coming just in case something surfaced. It's how I heard about Loners, so I guess the waiting paid off.

I would classify Moline as one of the premiere artists currently working in the industry today. His storytelling is superb, his character bits are priceless and his stuff is just so darn pretty to look at that it's a shame he's only on this series for 6 issues. Maybe if the mini does well Marvel will spin it off into a monthly and officially franchise Runaways.

I can only hope.

I'd be in it for the long haul even if it was just for the artwork, but Cebulski's natural dialogue and burgeoning mystery definitely has my interest piqued. I think I'm going to enjoy watching this story play out over the next five months and I highly recommend checking this book out.

If I had an official rating system (somehow a sliding scale of points based on the ellipsis in the site title seems apropos, but...), it would be something that rated pretty darn high on the charts.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

Potential Job Prospect

I'm not sure if I've mentioned the Red Cross job before but I did an interview today with them for a Public Affairs Officer position that they have open. A friend used to occupy the position within the organization but she has since left to join the military to, as she puts it, "blow shit up."

Hey, more power to her.

She didn't leave, however, without leaving behind some impressions of me with the staff there and putting in a few good words on my behalf, bless her heart. She was instrumental for helping me get the interview which I do appreciate, especially since this is exactly where I want to be at this point and time. A nice juicy communications position in town that can springboard into something else sometime in the future. Working in an area I enjoy, getting paid well and working up some practical experience that I otherwise would not have gotten toiling away on the internet.

The interview itself went pretty well. They nailed me on one or two areas (there was no way to talk around a few of the things they asked me about) but I'm not sure it's really a big issue. We'll see, I guess, if I ultimately don't get the position. Maybe it was more important that I figured it would be. Ah well, it's in their hands now. No point obssessing.

I'm pretty sure that there is one or two other people who are in the running but Bonnie (my 'friend on the inside') says that I have a really good shot so, fingers crosed, knock on wood and all of that nonsense.

The job search continues but if lady luck is smiling down on me, it will end by the close of next week. That's when I'll know.

Maybe I should rub my cat for luck.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

Janjetov is In & Charest is Off of Dreamshifters?

According to Charest's own MSN Group it appears he will not be finishing the Dreamshifters Metabarons graphic novel he's been working on for the past 6 years. Longtime Humanoids alumn, Zoran Janjetov, looks to be stepping in to finish whatever pages are left currently undone for the book (probably 20-30).

In one of his posts he states:

Let me clear up a couple of things, I choose, unwisely, to try do the book, fully painted. The reason I redid pages was because in my opinion I messed up the first time, not because I was told to. Don't throw any pity parties for me, this is a clear cut case of an artist getting a little too precious with the work and forgetting the realities of publishing completely.

I'll be the first to say that Charest has taken his sweet-ass-bloody-time with this story, but I'm still of the club that wishes to see him finish it. He hasn't been a total prima-donna about it and I appreciate his honesty in the statement above and in others he has made on his group. Still, like he says, there are certain realities to publishing and it's totally understandable that Humanoids will not let him continue on the project in the same capacity. It would be nice, though.

And no offense to Janjetov, either. I love the guys stuff, I really do. If there has to be a go-to guy to finally get this project finished than I can't really think of anyone better to do the job.

Either way I'm looking forward to this book no matter who is doing it.

mike

The Mimzy Incident

While browsing through Cinematical the other day I ran across this post. In a nutshell, a bunch of parents brought their kids to a screening of The Last Mimzy but received a bit of a surprise when there was a projectionist mix-up and The Hills Have Eyes 2 was shown instead. The latter movie has a pre-credits sequence depicting a chained naked woman giving birth to a mutant baby, so there was no warning for those seated in the theatre.

I'm assuming that this is a demographic of the movie viewing public that would not notice the difference between a New Line logo and a 20th Century Fox logo when it hit the big screen up above and wonder to themselves, "hey, am I in the wrong theatre?"

Anyway, I can only imagine what the kids must have been thinking. Even though the story does have a 'happy ending' with the group eventually getting to see Mimzy after all, those images may be imprinted on their minds forever.

My wife, who is constantly arguing that horror/thriller movies serve no purpose made the point that we wonder what seeing the opening to THHE 2 will do to these little guys psychologically yet 20 years down the road we consider it a perfectly decent popcorn movie for the same group of kids now all grown up.

Personally, I think this whole sub-genre of torture porn movies like Saw, Hostel, and Michael Bay's remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes are giving good horror films a bad name and I'm pretty sure that most of her objections to the genre stem from this little group of movies (although, really, she is no fan of any movie or show that depicts anyone preying on women or children). I can't really blame her, either. I mean, if ruthlessly torturing, maiming, violating and, finally, disembowling naked teenagers in the most graphic ways possible is the future of the genre, I don't see myself partaking in the ol' cinema scare much in the days to come. I like a good scare just as much as the next guy, and I have a pretty high tolerance for graphic stuff, but these movies are usually just too much to stomach.

I guess my problem with these movies are the same with many of the slasher flicks I grew up with in the '80s. Elaborate, or even not-so-elaborate, set pieces with no story or substance just makes for a stupid movie. If any of the above movies had any truly redeeming qualities, I would probably give them a reprieve. Mostly, though, they remain as appealing to me as curdled milk.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

Brosgol Made Me Feel Like Dancin'

I was over at Vera Brosgol's LiveJournal and I stumbled across this site as a result.

What you do is you draw your own picture and then the site makes it dance for you. A mindless waste of time, I know, but perfect for blogging, don't you think?



This is only a first attempt. I think I'll go back and try one more now that I know a little better how the whole thing works.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

"Jenny Finn, Jenny Finn, Where You Been?"

It's taken some time but, as of today, I've finally finished reading the complete Jenny Finn series.

Not that finishing it is some major achievement, I just remember way back when the series first debuted from Oni press, the negative review that I wrote of it and the surprise I got from Troy in San Diego 2000 when he came up to me and said, "So, you didn't like Jenny Finn #1, eh?"

And it's true, for the most part I didn't like the first issue. There were too many things left hanging, the dialogue led the reader nowhere as far as moving the plot along and, although the artwork was typically and wonderfully Troy's, it looked very cluttered and the line weight didn't do a good enough job of distinguishing between objects without colour or texturing. If you've ever seen Troy's Bacon or Trout stories (which ran in 3 or 4 issues of Oni Double Feature and Dark Horse Presents, respectively) they were better composed and executed as black and white stories, in my opinion.

Anyway, thanks to BOOM! Studios, Jenny Finn got a new lease on life as a two-volume prestige format series that reprinted the first two published books as well as the two that never saw the light of day.

Having read the whole story in its entirety, I think I have a little better appreciation for it. I still don't think it's the best thing I've ever seen from Troy, but the plight of the main character, Joe, now has some genuine purpose to it and that goes a long way to making a 'meh' story all right. I would also say that hindsight is 20/20 when it came to the overall strangeness of the background characters and environments. Before you just got a sense of oddness for oddnesses sake, but, again, seeing how Jenny's and Joe's story has played out has given me reason to go back and give it at least one more reading.

One disappointent with the new version is that the fourth chapter is not drawn by Troy at all. It's unfortunate that he was unwilling or unable to complete the book to maintain some visual continuity. Farel Dalrymple, while an adequate replacement, doesn't seem to be giving this last bit his all and it comes off feeling a bit rushed and pushed off. It takes something away from the big finale, as it were, but if it came down to Farel drawing it or never seeing it at all, I think Troy and Mr. Richie made the right choice in publishing it as it is (and for the record, I do actually like Dalrymple's work elsewhere, so I'm not just bashing the new guy).

Not a glowing review, I know, but I did think I owed it to Troy and the book to give it one more pass with a review since I never was able to see the complete picture back in '99 or 2000 when it first came out.

Oh, and before I forget, I should give kudos to BOOM! for a) bothering to publish it all and b)giving it such a decent presentation. The two Mignola covers and the squarebound format are very attractive and did play a role in my picking up the book this second time around.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

"Good News Everyone..."

Kudos to those of you who know where the subject line comes from.

I wasn't sure what to post today since I'm kind of in a downer mood. At the moment I'm sitting in the dark and listening to the 3000+ songs in my mp3 library on random and updating the sidebar on the ol' blog. The virtual picture of cool, I know.

On the plus side, the shuffle has just hit the Animals songs which is sort of fitting my mood right now and putting a smile on my face. For anyone who doesn't know who The Animals are, I linked to the Wikipedia entry a little bit back for the enquiring minds amongst you. They're best known for their song "House of the Rising Sun" but they did a lot more than that. Some of the best R&B to come out of the UK in the '60s.

Anyway, there were a few news items that I've bookmarked from a week or so ago that really got my juices flowing (sorry for the image) and I figured I would get them off the computer and get a posting out of it.

First up is the happiest bit of info I've heard in a while, and that is the return of Nexus to comic book shelves and helmed by none other than Mike Baron and Steve Rude, the only two guys who should be writing and drawing this guys adventures. I remember reading a while ago that Baron and Rude had tried to bring the character back but couldn't agree on a storyline that made them both happy. It might have been in a Comics Journal interview. I'm pretty sure it was Rude who said that their respective politics had grown sufficiently apart to make it all but impossible to do any new stories.

So, imagine me in that same pose you see Horatio in to the right when I got the news and you'll have an idea of how happy I am to hear about this. I'm waiting with bated breath, to be sure, and best of luck to everyone at Rude Dude Productions. I hope Steve does well enough to make an honest go of it.

Next up comes from the almost-as-excited category and it involves the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles DVDs that I and Indy fans worldwide have been waiting for since...well, forever. IGN reports from the Museum of Television and Radio's William S. Paley Television Festival that they are being worked on as we speak and they will be coming out sooner than later.

In a related bit of news, IGN gives the scoop on the new Star Wars television projects courtesy of the same talk at the same festival. The story can be found here.

Another bit of of fuzzy newness that I picked up about a week ago was the news that Karl Moline, one of my favourite artists and all around swell guy, has not in fact died, been abducted by aliens or given up comics to join a reclusive sect of monks in the Ozarks. What he will be doing is a new series based on a set of characters first introduced by Brian K. Vaughan in the pages of Runaways. These guys are called Loners and the book will be written by C.B. Cebulski. COMICON>COM has the info here, as well as some beeyootiful Karl Moline pencilled pages.


And last but certainly not least, Kitchen Confidential, one of my favourite television shows of all freakin' time, is finally coming to DVD. For the life of me, I can't convince my friend Carly to watch the show despite being written with a razor-edge wit and featuring 4 or 5 very hunky looking guys in and out of kitchen gear, but I strongly urge each and every one of you out there in the blogiverse to check this show out if given the chance. Hell, if they're inexpensive enough when they come out some of you reading this may even get them as gifts from yours truly.

The only thing I think missing from them that they should have are audio commentaries but at this rate, I'll take anything they give me.

Click through the link above to get details and see a pic of the box art.

And with that I go back to my sulking and digital naval gazing.

Onwards and upwards!

mike

New X-Files Movie Close?

I never planned to be running with an X-Files theme but I saw this on SciFi Wire and I got a little giddy.

Former The X-Files star David Duchovny told IESB.net that the long-awaited second movie may come together as soon as this week.

Duchovny told the site that he was in final talks for the second X-Files film and should wrap them up this week. Plans are to start shooting in 2008 or sooner, the site reported.

Duchovny, who played FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder in the long-running Fox TV series, and his co-star, Gillian Anderson (FBI Agent Dana Scully), have previously said they would be willing to reprise their most famous roles for another big-screen adventure.

Duchovny spoke to IESB.net while promoting his next film, TV Set.

I'm hoping that there has been enough distance between the series and the last film to have this feel fresh and fun seeing as it is not supposed to be tied into the current mythology in any way. I guess we'll see what happens.

mike

Posting Quagmire

What does one do when they haven't posted in a week but don't have time at the moment to rectify the situation? Post a link from YouTube, of course.

When I noticed that the X-Files blooper link from a while ago was no longer active I stumbled across this clip while looking for it again. This is probably one of my all-time favourite scenes from the show and encapsulates the whole enchilada for me, from the character's relationship with each other to Mulder's quest and the purpose of the show.



Now, if I can just find the clip where Scully sings Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World".

mike