Old ghosts indeed
The first of two essays of mine posted today. I won't tell you where the second one is until later. Let's see how it manifests itself, shall we?
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The first of two essays of mine posted today. I won't tell you where the second one is until later. Let's see how it manifests itself, shall we?
Shooting for one Thursday.
So I've had this plotted and thought out for too long. It's time to actually get it out on the page and start making a story out of it. I'll make every attempt to get a chapter (or part of a chapter) a week. I'm no Dave Wellington; I don't think I can yet get three a week in play. But who knows?
Anyways, check it out. I'd say "skip it" if you're not into zombies, but...well, it's not just zombies, though it's likely going to take some time for that to become evident.
Disposable heroes of comicacry? Uh, right...
The trailer for I AM LEGEND looks pretty good (Sean's words "Best of the three [he showcased this morning.]") Normally the presence of Will Smith makes me a bit leery, just because of the type of big movie he's usually cast in, being much more of a movie star than an actor (though I know he can act.) Now, this isn't going to be Matheson's novel, so I'm going to put that aside. Only the basic conceit has been retained (OMEGA MAN may be a truer adaptation, though it's much more muddled in end of the decade politics among other things.)
The question in my mind is, will this be an action movie or will it be a horror movie? Goodness knows my use of the term "horror" is looser than most (just ask Rick Geerling--he'll set you straight.) I sense the possibility for lots of creepy moments, but who knows how it'll turn out. It certainly promises to be spectacular, at least with the initial moments. But we'll have to wait and see if that will settle into real chills.
However, the fact remains that I'm actually interested in going out and seeing it. Which is...unusual...
Thanks to Boing Boing and I-Mockery, you too can have your initials in MONSTER INITIAL STICKER FORM. Go, enjoy.
That seems to be the rumor, anyways. I'm pretty excited about this, since I'm one of those five readers who thought that SEAGUY was the meatiest of Grant Morrison's offerings in the last several years. Wonder how much it's going to deviate from the following that I jotted down (and even got linked to in LitG) from Wondercon in 2006. Was it only 2006? Seems like forever ago.
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High points of the panel included his relating the utterly and beautifully absurd first issue of SEAGUY v. 2, which he’s basically written though there’s no interest in it at Vertigo right now (apparently the numbers on the first series were less than stellar, which is criminal on a cosmic scale.) Apparently our hero has been brainwashed by the agents of Mickey Eye, when he realizes that the parrot who replaced Chubby the Choona at the end of the first series is a BAD GUY. Seaguy is transformed into El Macho, world’s greatest matador! But he’s not a normal matador. See, you can’t kill bulls now, they’re sacred. So instead of poking them with a sword, you have to dress them and by doing so, utterly humiliate them. No really. The ghost of Chubby appears to Seaguy and ultimately, Seaguy follows him out of his artifically crafted life (apparently abandoning his pregnant wife.)
Of course, she isn’t pregnant. She says “Well, we just couldn’t keep him” to her round belly. Then she lifts her shawl and underneath it is not an unborn child, but a Mickey Eye.
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I'd still buy it.
I'm not particularly a fan of the Rolling Stones, I have to say. I like a number of their songs, particularly from say pre-1974 or so. But I don't own any of their albums or can say that I've listened to many of them all the way through. But "Gimme Shelter"? Genius. Same with "Sympathy for the Devil" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want". "Start Me Up"? Lameness personified.
But ROCK AND ROLL CIRCUS just might convince me to become a fan. Originally envisioned as a television special in 1968, ROCK AND ROLL CIRCUS is an amazing slice of the English rock pie of the time. Jethro Tull, The Who, Marianne Faithful and John Lennon (with Eric Clapton and Mitch Mitchell backing him up) perform, along with the Stones and Taj Majal (a well-regarded but mostly overlooked American bluesman of the time). But see, they're not just performing, they're all at the Rock and Roll Circus which is this sort of ramshackle Eastern Continental feeling kind of affair with performers who are a little too old and clothing that's a little too gaudy. Those vignettes are few.
But what you get instead of an actual circus is some really great performances. You watch stuff like this and you really understand at a fundamental level what bult the audiences for these bands before they became big and bloated (or big and emaciated in the case of Mick Jagger) rock dinosaurs. Here's bands arguably at the peak of their powers performing for tiny, miniscule audiences that wouldn't fill up the stage of the coliseums that these bands would go on to fill. There's a lot of power at play, and while Mick's onstage antics might get laughed at by the jaded kids of today (once they've seen GG Allin, how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm?), but I guarantee in 1968, there'd have been nationwide cases of the vapors had this actually been televised.
The really miraculous thing about ROCK AND ROLL CIRCUS? It's something that can't be duplicated. Not just because Keith Moon and Brian Jones are dead, not just because the lightning has long escaped its various bottles, but because the lawyer and label-driven acts of today would never allow such a thing to happen. Not in a stripped-down and earnest manner as is the case here. Egos would never be put aside to combine into something a little more magical.
And really, the rendition of "Sympathy for the Devil" is worth the price of admission alone. Well that and Marianne Faithful's radiant and too-brief presence.
It's all comics. Some people don't like what you love. Sides can be taken over form versus content. You're all very smart and passionate.
Now please get back to work making comics or getting folks who don't currently read comics to give them a try.
Remeber, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Full Bleed is up, on the subject of comics journalism. Read if you dare.
Two things come to mind.
1) Larry's birthday is tomorrow. Be sure to wish him a happy one.
2) I really should go to Denny's and claim my free breakfast. And then I'll light a pyre for the memory of my youth, fire it with gasoline and watch it recede into the distance by way of my rearview mirror, Joshua trees and creosote crowding out the dwindling smoke trail.
But I'm still relatively with it. I think. Just downloaded Radiohead's IN RAINBOWS as of about ten minutes ago. A little stuttery, but mostly painless. Commendable affort on their part, given that the servers are probably being UTTERLY HAMMERED right around now, given the free publicity that the "pay as you exit" strategy has engendered.
For those of you not paying attention, Radiohead, a band of some celebrity (and yet still maintaining critical/aesthetic credibility), has offered their latest album, IN RAINBOWS as a digital download. They're not offering a physical artifact, but for a collector's edition (vinyl and all that in a deluxe package) for a stately sum in a couple months. If you want it now, you have to get it as a download. Which can be copied as many times as you want without any restrictions. This means that it'll be all over the internet by...three hours or more ago.
The catch is, you don't have to pay a nickel for it. You could download it for a penny or pay twenty bucks for it. Me? I paid 5 pounds, which is around as much as I'd pay for the CD once it hit first-week sales. Am I silly? Probably. But I liked their last three albums well enough that I can take a chance on it without feeling too bad about it. My guess is that a lot of folks will pay about ten bucks for it, maybe less. Thing is, this money goes to the band and not to the record company, because they're not under a contract right now. Is this sane? Sure it is. Bands like Radiohead make some money on the albums, but the record companies make more. Radiohead, et al, will make a lot more money touring and filling arenas for multi-night engagements (of course, they'll have to foot that bill themselves, or pay the part that the record company regularly would.)
How's this gonna work out? Heck if I know. But I figure at least that Radiohead will be able to pay off their studio time and production costs for IN RAINBOWS (and have a wad leftover if they were smart about how they used the studio time itself -- that stuff ain't cheap, believe me.) Of course, Radiohead was in a position to do this in the first place because of their own talent/skill, and the work of the marketers at the record label that got the word out and helped make Radiohead as big as they are.
Watershed moment? It'll probably be the one that makes the books, though Prince and a couple other artists have done this beforehand. But this one made a ton of headlines because, arguably, Radiohead were at the peak of their popularity with their last album. OK COMPUTER (released about eight years back, maybe more) had more MTV visibility, but the three follow-on albums haven't been compromising in terms of quality/"difficulty", and have all done very well. We'll see where this goes. Should be very interesting for everyone involved.
The next big story like this will be the band that breaks because of free digital downloads/distribution. Radiohead already made it. And if this sinks, they'll be fine. They're gambling an album's worth of material that will still drive fans into stadiums. But folks who have nothing, they're the real pioneers in this.
At least that's what my editor thinks it is. Me? I stopped counting after one. Each one that follows is a little miracle.
Stop by the Comics Waiting Room and give it a look, won't you?