Box Office Pain

Reading Box Office Poison, I kept noticing little things, like someone's chin or neck, or a particular pose, that reminded me of another cartoonist's work that I love.

About halfway through, I noticed a character with the surname Kreider. I flipped to the list of Robinson's cartooning friends to whom he expressed gratitude, and sure enough, Tim Kreider was listed.

Later in the book, one of the overlapping speech balloons in the party scene contains the title of Kreider's comic, "The Pain -- When Will It End?"

Do yourself a favor and read the entire archives.

Of particular interest to you superhero-types are The League of Indecency and More Superheroes Nobody Wants to See.

And by far the most useful one for my own life, Our New Line of Greeting Cards.

But seriously, read them all. And buy his books. So I command!

I cheated.

I read Nausicaä while waiting for advice, since I knew nobody would tell me that I simply must read it seventh. I spotted a couple things that made me giggle like a moron.

Kurotowa is introduced and tells Princess Kushana about the state of the battles on the main front, including the armies of the Dorok principalities:


Haha. Dorks.

Later, Kurotowa explores a lost city beneath Pejitei, where he finds...


A pop culture reference, 22 years early! Damn, Miyazaki's good.

And so I can have some Western comics content: If you don't like John McCrea, you don't like comics. I'm just sayin'.

Attention Dorkwads!

I got these 20 books out of the library today, and I need your help:

David B., Epileptic (which I've already read the first half of, but I think there might be new stuff in those parts in this edition)
Chester Brown, I Never Liked You
Charles Burns, Black Hole
Darwyn Cooke, Selina's Big Score
Guy Delisle, Pyongyang
Will Eisner, The Contract with God Trilogy (of which I've read the first book)
James Kochalka, American Elf
Jeanne Martinet (and the original artists), Truer Than True Romance
Hayao Miyazaki, Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind
Jim Ottaviani & Big Time Attic, Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards
Alex Robinson, Box Office Poison and Tricked
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis, Persepolis 2, and Embroideries
Seth, Clyde Fans Book One, Wimbledon Green, and It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken
Bryan Talbot, The Tale of One Bad Rat
Bill Willingham (& various artists), The Sandman Presents: Taller Tales

They're due in three weeks (though I can renew them online if there are no holds). Where the hell do I start? Where the hell do I keep them? What the hell was I thinking?

I'm still in the middle of a novel and a David Foster Wallace short story collection, too.

Inspiration strikes!

During my nightly jaunt 'round the blogodome, I came across Mike's latest entry.

One quotation in particular struck my fancy:

"no it wouldnt...stupid thread...ur being stereotypical here.."

I thought, "What if Superman were an illiterate internet-thing?"

Dear Mr. Bendis,

I wouldn't have minded an issue of Powers with only 26 story pages. Really.

I can only hope this is all leading up to a scene in which all the spoken-word people gather to tell each other how brilliant they are and get splattered by a meteor hurled from orbit by the superpowered team of Henry Rollins and Russell Simmons. If that happens, all will be forgiven.

Sincerely,

Leigh

PS: Thank you for giving the current issue's malcontent some dialogue that I can't possibly mock in ways that everyone who read the issue hasn't already thought of. It makes both our jobs easier.

PPS: Also, thank you for making Ultimate Spider-Man good again. Please never add terrible ranting loons to that book.

Not Safe For Work At All

Back in August of last year, Kevin did post a wondrous post, introducing me (and I'm guessing, many others) to the world of Iceman. Be sure to heed the warning in that post and consider it to apply to this one (and the comments! (thanks, Spencer!)) too.

I've been looking back there occasionally, often with dismay at the number of things that have been removed. At least the Teen Titans and Robin/Clayface pictures are still there to amuse and horrify (respectively).

But sometimes, there's a new comic.

A new comic that shows us Blob's penis, Beast's anus, and Xavier's leadership. And let's not forget that Wolverine's cock has an elbow (click through to page 13 for that!).

I have to wonder whether Scott shaves, or if he just uses his optic blasts Superman-style.

Too lazy to Google.

I would like to know two things:

1. When "No quarter asked, none given." was first used in a comic book.
2. When it was used a second time.

The first is forgivable. The second is not.

Comic book writers: Please never use this cliché or any of its variants, except in the broadest of parodies, or, I suppose, in reference to a mute, unsuccessful beggar.

Thank you.

Bonus link!

The reluctant comics-based Valentine.

(click for slightly larger version)

This would have been timely if Blogger had let me publish it. Oh well.

Why I love comics.

Sometimes, I'll read something—a story, a page, a single panel—and realize that an artist I've never met has tapped into a part of my life, rendering it for a worldwide audience.

Or as Roberta Flack sang,

I felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by the crowd,
I felt he found my letters and read each one out loud.

Of course, one usually hopes that it wouldn't be as embarrassing as the page that spoke to me in Craig Thompson's Carnet De Voyage. This was my life from 1997 to 2002:

(Click to see the full page.)

I laughed until I stopped[1].

From the same book, here are some adorable porcupines:


______
[1] For further hilarity, see also: John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise. The list of 700 hobo names is of particular interest to those conversant in the nerdly arts.

Shock! Horror!

I'm outraged, let me tell you.

Thanks to Mike's post last week, I was looking forward to tonight's Bones, only to find a disturbingly biased portrayal of comic readers.

While investigating the death of a teenager who dressed like a superhero, Bones and Angel come across a handful of elderly teenagers on the roof of a comic shop, also dressed vaguely as superheroes.

What about the dozens of us who hang out on the roof of Borders and pretend to travel though Europe or to North Korea, grow up in Iran, pee on our brothers, become involved in a pansexual love triangle, go to a school of badasses in Japan, live in a Bronx tenement, collect comic books, or wreak vengeance on an Irish mob family who betrayed us?

Shame on you, 20th Century Fox Television.

Just when I thought I was out...

Always remember...


There's really no excuse for this sort of thing.

(The master list.)

Controversy!

First, my mean-spirited, political Superman thing:


Second, for the people who complain that Nextwave doesn't treat Boom-Boom with the proper respect or that H.A.T.E. and the Beyond Corp couldn't possibly exist in the Marvel Universe or whatever: Always remember...


(Oh, how I love the Etheric Loop Recall Televocometer.)

Finally, and apropos of nothing, I don't think I'll ever be able to refer to the writer of A Complete Lowlife and Sleeper as anything other than Ed "Irn" Brubaker. This is a personal failing of mine, and I take full responsibility.

(The master list.)

Always remember... (#2)

Does he even go to this school?

I was already planning it before Spencer said anything. And I'd already made it when Chris made his.

(Coming soon: I finally do that Superman thing I've been threatening since I got the Showcase book. Hilarity ensues.)

(The master list.)

Always remember...

Late to the party, but I had to add to Dorian's list.

Thank you, Rich Johnston.

When I read Ultimate Extinction #1, I had an intense feeling of déjà vu during the Ultimate Misty Knight part of the book.

The whole setup seemed very familiar, and when I saw the reveal of Ultimate Silver Surfer, I knew there would be a sniper in the same building as UMK. I knew she'd chase her down the stairs. I felt like I'd read the entire thing before, even though I knew there was no way I could have.

I was going to ask here if it seemed familiar to anyone else, but I didn't want to seem crazy.

In the latest Lying in the Gutters column, Rich Johnston links to Warren Ellis's End Times script and compares passages from it to the published Ultimate Extinction #1.

After I followed the link and read the introductory paragraph, I knew I'd read that script before. So it turns out I'm not crazy*. Thanks, Rich.

* Well, not because of that.

I hate myself.

I had to listen to My Humps for the first time ever to do this. I hope it was worth the damage it did to my soul.

Well gee, Bob...

(From JLA #124, written by Bob Harras.)

Whatever could he mean?

I'm looking forward to the response in a few months, when JMS awkwardly crams the word "Elseworlds" into Fantastic Four. Revenge!

It's been a while.

But not as long as it's been since Spencer posted.

I finished Bizarro World last night, and even though Kevin just described it as such, I can't think of a better word than delightful. It improves greatly on Bizarro Comics, due in large part to the removal of the overlong framing story. With one notable exception (the Batman musical, but let's face it—even Alan Moore can't manage a 'musical' comic), I was grinning throughout the entire book. It was wonderfully arranged, too. I often found myself thinking, "Wow! Best one yet!" only to think the exact same thing for the next story. Let's go ahead and call that the Anthology of the Year.

And let's call that my yearly awards thing. Moving on...

After not going to the nearby Borders for a couple months, I went there a couple weeks ago to find that their manga section had doubled in size (still no Cromartie High School*, though they did have one copy of the first Antique Bakery), as had their single-issue last-month's-comics section. I went there again today and found a lot more, let's call them, real comics too. (Hmm. Wonder who that'll annoy.) They had Epileptic, Carnet De Voyage, a The Incal GN, many copies of the Runaways digests, the Showcase Presents collections of Superman and Green Lantern, and several other things I'd never seen there.

(I could never find those Showcase Presents books on Amazon—turns out including 'DC' in the search causes it to utterly fail. Also, the subsequent volumes are only $11.55 there. Not bad at all.)

I was so overwhelmed by those (and a $19 CD, which is ridiculous) that I had to retreat back to my home and request a bunch of (which is to say, three) interlibrary loans.

* Of which chapter 58 is the best so far. I ♥ that book. Manga of the Year!

Please to explain.

Why doesn't Marvel own useyourvoice.org?

Does anyone know how far in advance Jenkins probably turned in his script for Generation M #1? Before September 19, maybe?

Weren't there some URLs used in Powers that ended up pointing to jinxworld.com? If so, why is that reasonable for Bendis to do, but not Marvel? Do they assume anyone reading Gen M visits their site regularly, so it's not worth it to spend the $7/year (or whatever) the domain would cost? Not even to keep someone else from using it to advertise their whatever the hell that is?

I'm so confused.

Also, I've added and removed some links over yonder (imagine that I'm pointing—please ignore my freakishly long fingers). I noticed I wasn't really reading a couple of those sites anymore, and I decided to start reading some others. I should probably bookmark them all so my use of my own blog as a 'portal' thing stops making it show up in those damnable sites-that-link-here lists.

More terrible ideas.

First, I must point out that Tom Lehrer used to have Norman Osborn hair.

Second, I briefly considered making a fake cover for the theoretical Marvel comic, What If... Jesus Was a Lion?

But that would have been hard.

Instead, I present a special holiday message, straight from Danny Rand:


That's right, Danny. From all of me, to both of you, Merry Fistmas.

(Y'all can Google 'Zod bless us, everyone' on your own. I got nothin' to do with that. Oh, and I shamelessly stole that cover from comics.org.)