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Saturday, December 28, 2002 ( 12/28/2002 03:16:00 PM ) Bill S. HOW ‘BOUT A NICE POLKA TUNE INSTEAD? – Followed last night’s humiliating Scrabble game w./ a viewing of The One, the Jet Li sci-fi actioner crafted by former Millennium men James Wong & Glen Morgan. Lots of post-Matrix martial arts fx that belied the genuine balletic skill of its star, Li’s usual non-acting, an s-f premise that promised more than it delivered: real C-movie fun, in other words. My only real beef was in the film’s overuse of Life-is-Shit heavy metal music during its action sequences. (Yeah, we know you're tryin' to sell a soundtrack here, but can't you be a little less brazen about it?) The musical sludge was layered so thickly, so ineptly, that it rang false every time it kicked in. And out in the viewing audience we started imagining even more disconnected songs/musical styles to replace what was being shoved down our ears. Our Number One Manilow Pick? “Can’t Smile Without You.” # | ( 12/28/2002 05:41:00 AM ) Bill S. “HAVE A BA-NAN-A . . .” – Proof that I’m an exceptional loving husband: this week I bought my wife a copy of Ultimate Manilow (Arista) – and last night, when we were playing a game of Scrabble, I played the disc for her! I know. Barry Manilow snipes are cheap ‘n’ easy. As Mark Evanier has pointed out, the man’s stood as a symbol of everything uncool in pop music for decades now. But I’ve liked – and continue to like – other singers & groups that are comparably unhip (including Bruce Johnston, the temp Beach Boy who composed "I Write the Songs" in tribute to Brian Wilson). And at his best (“Daybreak,” for instance, or “Weekend in New England”) the man does have a knack for creating poppish studio versions of songs that sound like they could’ve come out of a successful Broadway production. But “Copacabana (At the Copa)” remains one of the most unforgivable hit songs this side of that 70’s ode to cannibalism, “Timothy.” And the cumulative effect of his competently expressionless voice buoyed by all those excessive instrumental crescendos ultimately gets to me. Submitted to support my case: last night’s Scrabble game. I started out strong during “Mandy” & “It’s A Miracle.” Even used up all seven letters early in the game w./ FRIENDS (perhaps if we’d been playing The Rembrandts, the outcome might’ve been different). But Becky the Barry Fan, attuned to all that Manilow Magic, still wound up trouncing my ass: 332 to 286. The guy just wore me down. Think it was the boring remake of Ian Hunter’s “Ships” that ultimately undid me. That and the fact that my loving wife got all the high-point letters, of course . . . # | Friday, December 27, 2002 ( 12/27/2002 07:38:00 AM ) Bill S. RUSTY NAIL – With the rush of holiday TV specials out of the way last night, last night the wife & I sat down to watch John Dahl’s psycho trucker flick Joy Ride on HBO. (How’s that for getting in the spirit of the season?) The flick blends William Castle’s teen-prank suspenser I Saw What You Did w./ elements of Duel & The Hitcher – and does so very expeditiously (J.J. Abrams, who recently ruffled fanboy feathers when the purported details of his Superman movie script draft were leaked to Matt Drudge, co-wrote the screenplay). Pretty entertaining, I thought. Director Dahl has the right merciless touch for this type of fare. Without descending into the hopeless nihilism of early Wes Craven, say, he’s able to communicate brutal peril and keep us uncertain about the ultimate fates of our movie protagonists. Film had some neat Hitchcockian bomb-under-the-table setpieces, one of ‘em involving heroine Leelee Sobieski where I honestly didn’t know if her character was gonna make it out of the pic alive. Though I’ve heard good things about his earlier flicks (The Last Seduction, Red Rock West), I honestly hadn’t paid much attention to Dahl’s flicks before this. Think I need to backtrack. # | Thursday, December 26, 2002 ( 12/26/2002 06:59:00 AM ) Bill S. JUST ONE MISSED PAYCHECK AWAY . . . – The title to J.L. Roberson’s benefit comics anthology, Working for the Man (Unbound, $9.95), recalls Roy Orbison’s classic song of working class resentment & ambition, but its purposes are considerably more altruistic. Collected to raise funds for a comic book creator who has recently fallen on dire times, the anthology represents the efforts of 25-plus mainstream & alternative comics folks who’ve been influenced by William Messner-Loebs. Screwed out of his mortgage by the penurious efforts of local bankers, Loebs found both self & family homeless this summer. Members of the comics community, artists & fans alike, have endeavored to help this beloved writer/artist through charity on-line auctioning or donations (much of it advertised through The Comics Journal's message boards) and now this collection: a remarkable amount of positive activism in a relatively short time. I first came into contact w./ Loeb’s work during the 80’s black-and-white comics boom via the frontier adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, a taciturn grizzled backswoodsman who roamed the wilds of Canada and the northern Midwest in the early 1800’s. Fluidly drawn and told, the MacAlistaire stories were witty, poetically rendered, occasionally convincingly brutal: an amalgam of Mark Twain & Will Eisner. I followed Journey through two publishing companies – but for some reason, not enough readers were willing to support a frontier-based comic, no matter how skillfully it was rendered. (No capes for the superhero fanboys; no autobiographical angst for the alternative comics crowd.) Loebs was forced to take his talents to the comics mainstream, working on such mainstay titles as DC’s Flash & Wonder Woman. Around the same time that Journey ceased publication, I suspended much of my comics reading, so I missed Loebs’ transition into mainstream superhero scripter. He obviously developed a coterie of fans for this work: many of his comics from this period are still available as trade paperback reprints. Loebs eventually moved away from mainstream comics, for reasons that aren’t known to me, but he wasn’t forgotten. In testimony, here's this collection. Working for the Man is an e-book anthology, the first such benefit to my knowledge: a collection of thirty pieces, most of ‘em comics (though TCJ publisher Gary Groth contributes a nice laudatory intro, Chad Parenteau a poem and writer/artist Steven Bissette a short story that seems somewhat out of place). Some of the strips recall Loebs’ past work or present situation (this is not the book for you if you’re a thin-skinned financial type); others just content themselves w./ comics storytelling or art. Among the highlights:
At times, however, I found myself having to frantically use the magnification or reduction options: in one case, a long one-page joke strip by Charles Alverson & Sam Henderson, I wound up hitting it so many times that when I moved onto the next page and Parenteau’s poem, I was confronted w./ what looked like 36-point font. Occasionally, the magnification option was handy – as in Doric & Sam’s strip, which had white lettering layered on top of its art – other times, it was a minor irritant to keep clicking that plus or minus icon. Like most comics anthologies (benefit ones, especially) Working for the Man is a mixed bag. The number of alternative artists outweighs the commercial ones, so the art isn’t always conventionally “comic book;” a few strips just plain look amateurish. Some of the material may be ham-fisted in its commentary, though other entries are more subtle and succinctly apt – as in cartoonist Mark Campos’ one-page description of cast-off sidewalk debris, which leads to a self-reflection on how homelessness is “only one missed paycheck away.” Quite a few strips hearken back to earlier eras, perhaps out of acknowledgment for Journey’s setting, perhaps because it offers their crators a setting where deadening hypocrisies can be more clearly delineated. (See, for example, Deppey’s flawed-but-intriguing adaptation of The Well of Loneliness, which depicts the destructive effects of Edwardian values on a struggling lesbian relationship.) Still, there’s plenty here to grab anyone interested in sequential art; I found several new names that I intend to pursue into their own indy comic works. Since the original story of his plight reached the comics community, Loebs has reportedly picked up fresh assignments as a comics scripter, which bodes well for his economic health in the months to come. From what I understand, the quick-fix efforts of comics folks have also gone a long way toward keeping the artist & his family out of the streets in the meantime. Working for the Man is one of those too-infrequent instances where you get to see the members of an artistic community publicly acting like they’re part of a community (no childish artist feuds here, just a bunch of artists workin' to help a man who from all reports is a genuinely nice guy.) For that alone, it's definitely worth checking out. UPDATE: Editor Roberson has since added to my fund of knowledge re: eBook reading by advising that there is a “full width” option on the Acrobat Reader which makes all the zooming and un-zooming that I mentioned unnecessary. Figures I'd miss that. . . # | Wednesday, December 25, 2002 ( 12/25/2002 10:14:00 AM ) Bill S. A BIT OF NOSTALGIA WRIT NEW – When I was a boy, it was an unspoken holiday tradition that I’d get sick by Xmas Day. A hyper kid, I’d usually get myself revved up on Christmas Eve, wake up early and then crash once the presents were opened: making myself vulnerable to any opportunistic germs lurking to pounce. On the rare year that I didn’t manage to get a cold or flu, I'd still do something ddebilitating. One Christmas when I received a Radio Shack kit, for instance, I wound up slicing my thumb while cleaning a wire (never play w./ X-acto knives when you’ve only had a couple hours of sleep, kids!), getting it swollen & infected, pretty much putting me out of the rest of the family get-together. Maybe this was my passive-aggressive way of avoiding big family visits. This December, I decided to revisit this childhood tradition – only w./ a double whammy. In addition to my developing a gunky head cold, one of my root canals has apparently chipped so the left side of my mouth is swollen. Woke up at about 1:30 a.m. on Christmas w./ the Nyquil shakes, unable to get back to sleep. My restlessness disturbed my wife Becky, so we both got up, made some chamomile tea, looked at the new snow outside and watched some bull riding on the Outdoor Life Network. Then we each opened a present. Thankfully, we didn't rouse either the dogs or the mother-in-law upstairs. It was a kind of nice moment actually: quiet and cozy even if I did have to regularly stop and sniffle. Here’s hoping that any of you who’ve stopped by today have a healthy & harmonious holiday. Me, I’m taking it easy. . . # | Tuesday, December 24, 2002 ( 12/24/2002 08:16:00 AM ) Bill S. “YES, I’M WORKIN’ FOR THE MAN” – Spent part of my a.m. downloading new on-line benefit comic, Working for the Man (Unbound, $9.95), and from my first initial scans, it looks like a fun anthology (so long as you’re not a banker, that is). Compiled by John L. Roberson, the book has been put together to raise bucks for William Messner-Loebs, a comics writer/artist who has worked the mainstream as well as crafting his own elegantly Eisner-influenced comics creation, frontiersman Wolverine McAlistaire of the Journey series. Faced w./ foreclosure & eviction, Messner-Loebs plus his family have been living hand-to-mouth since summer. Man represents the efforts of a slice of the comics community to help ‘em out. Haven’t had the chance to fully read the book yet – it’s a sizable collection that takes time to download – though I hope to have a review here by the end of the week. This is also my first experience w./ e-books, so I’m curious as to whether it’ll be satisfying or not. More on this later. . . # | ( 12/24/2002 06:42:00 AM ) Bill S. “TALL & TAN & YOUNG & LOVELY” – As a general rule, cross-company comic book team-ups suck. A successful comics series generates its own character-centric milieu, and blending this w./ another character’s world usually just winds up diluting both. There are exceptions to this, of course, and I’d love to be able to report that the recent Flaming Carrot & Reid Fleming (Dark Horse) comic unequivocally is one of ‘em. But while the book offers an amusing read for fans of either character, it doesn’t quite overcome all the problems of this kind of collaboration. I’ll admit my bias here: I’m a bigger fan of Reid Fleming (“World’s Toughest Milkman”) than I am the Carrot. Though FC writer/artist Bob Burden has a winningly dada-esque sense of the absurd, I’ve just read too many superhero parodies over the years to be totally taken by yet another one – even if his primary costume is a giant carrot-head & flippers. Fleming, on the other hand, is a more unique creation: an unexplainably strong lumpenprole given to irrational fits of rage & fannish devotion to a brain-dead TV serial called “Horrors of Ivan.” His creator, David Boswell, has been just as influenced by 30-40’s comedy shorts as he has comics (I see elements of Edgar Kennedy and James Finlayson, two of the era’s great 2nd bananas, in Reid), and it’s informed his storytelling style to good effect. While the Carrot/Fleming team-up is packaged like a one-shot, in actuality it’s Flaming Carrot #32. As a result, the Burden-scripted story tends more toward the haphazard plotting style favored in Carrot Tales. Though elements of Fleming’s world are incorporated into the piece (most fully in a visit to the set of the “Ivan” teleseries), the full obnoxious breadth of the character isn’t really captured. I’m not sure if many Carrot regulars, unfamiliar w./ Fleming, will be inspired to try Boswell’s books on the basis of this appearance: Johnny Bacardi, a Carrot fan, states as much in his blog review of this book, taking particular issue w./ Boswell’s art. Fleming’s creator tackles most of the book’s art chores (though Burden apparently renders his own creation) throughout the book. Boswell is a flatter, hairier artist than his collaborator, and while he seems at odds with his writer in some panels, for most of the book I like his awkward gait style just fine (it’s especially effective in a sequence where Reid & the Carrot are forced to dance at gunpoint), but, admittedly, it’s not for everyone. In the end, I’m just glad to see that both characters are still around. I hadn’t read a Reid Fleming story in years, but I see from Boswell’s site that he’s been steadily producing books. Good for him. As for Burden, after Mystery Men, I thought he’d disappeared into movieland limbo; nice to know he’s still capable of putting together 32-pages of nonsense about vampire collies & the Girl from Ipanema. As cross-over team-ups go, I’ll take this over anything concocted ‘tween DC & Marvel: it’s almost as spiffy as the time Superman took on Real World character Muhammad Ali. # | Monday, December 23, 2002 ( 12/23/2002 09:06:00 PM ) Bill S. “SHE’S IN LOVE W./ ROCK ‘N’ ROLL, WHOA . . .” – Reading of Joe Strummer’s heart attack over the weekend got me pulling out my Clash CDs: quite a distance from the holiday tunes I’d been playing, but sometimes events demand a different kind of music. Hyped as The Only Band That Matters back when their American label was struggling to sell this whole punk thing to reluctant listeners & radio mavens, Strummer's old group was one of the few bands to couple their rock ‘n’ roll rage w./ political messages. The results may’ve been mixed at times, but at their best (the unrelentingly full-charge debut The Clash, hard rock classic London Calling, plus more of the 3-record Sandinista than most folks remember) the group almost lived up to its formidable hype. As an older-age rock fan, the 80’s punk era was probably the last one to really sweep me up like rock 'n' is supposed to. The sound of that period’s music still sparks my synapses like nothing else since. Putting on the Clash’s debut (English version, thank you), hearing the opening to “Janie Jones,” is guaranteed to get me moving. It’s not easy to do great political rock. The need to have your message understood by an ill-read music audience often leads to ham-fisted “Eve of Destruction” lyrics that can date faster than a TV commercial (“Coke adds life/When there isn’t any.”) But Strummer & the rest pulled it off more times than they had a right to: purty good for a band working in the supposedly “unsophisticated” punk mode. I lost track of Strummer once the Clash broke up. Occasionally, I’d see his name crop on producer credits (he did some work w./ the Pogues). But I never went out of my way to listen to his solo material w./ the Mescaleros, though I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t. Perhaps I was afraid his bellowy voice wouldn’t work, taken away from his “Garageland” mates. The day before his obituary, though, I was reading about a collaboration he’d done with Bono and Dave Stewart: a song honoring Nelson Mandella that was scheduled to be played at a February AIDS concert. If this is the last act Strummer gets remembered for, I’d say he’s gone out on a grace note. # | Sunday, December 22, 2002 ( 12/22/2002 10:27:00 AM ) Bill S. THE NEDSTER – Journalista’s Dirk Deppey linked to a recent newspaper article on underground great & sometime Wilson Barbers illustrator Ned Sonntag today. The author's refs to the Osbournes may be au current, but not entirely apt to these eyes: Ned continues to put out graphics that are equal to anything he’s ever done (even if it is in the service of mags like Outlaw Biker), not coasting on his 70’s era counter-cultural cred. Still, it’s nice to see Ned receiving some press. And having recently taken in a mother-in-law who’s grown weaker over the years from emphysema & a series of heart attacks, there are aspects of this story I can definitely relate to. So when’s Eros putting out a collection of Sonntag men’s mag strips & graphics? I know I’d buy a copy. # | ( 12/22/2002 07:47:00 AM ) Bill S. “ON CLYDE!” – Some random thoughts generated around my holiday song list below:
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