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Saturday, July 09, 2005 ( 7/09/2005 05:51:00 AM ) Bill S. WHY WOULD YOU EXPECT TO FIND SATIRE IN A BOOK OF SATIRE? – Don't usually follow the "Mallard Filmore" strip (it ain't a part of the offerings in the Bloomington-Normal Daily Pantagraph), but Roy Edroso hipped me to creator Bruce Tinsley's recent upsetness over the fact that a parody "Fillmore" strip appears in America: The Book. Stewart is attempting to "deceive people into thinking it [the strip] was a real one"? The lengths to which some people will go to think themselves persecuted is really quite amazing. And if Tinsley had been aiming his blunted barbs at a beloved conservative figure, would there be yowls against his hook-nosed final panel caricature? Just wonderin'. . . # | Friday, July 08, 2005 ( 7/08/2005 05:52:00 AM ) Bill S. "GONE FISHIN' FOR POWER POP!" – Ain't a lot of pop-rock bands who'd think to open a collection, even one devoted to B-sides and previously uncollected tracks, with a cameo appearance by "Fresh Air" radio folk Terry Gross and Ken Tucker – but that’s exactly what Fountains of Wayne do with their new two-disc Out-of-State Plates. I'm not usually all that thrilled about these rag and bone buffets (to steal a title used by XTC for their collection of leftovers); too often, the initial impulse that kept previously unreleased tracks off albums in the first place is the one the band should've continued to heed. But after playing this summertime release twice, I've decided that even Collingwood & Schlesinger's marginalia kicks the ass of 98% of the pop-rock out there. (For one thing, they're not afraid to put the "power" in power pop.) Unabashedly recommended. # | Thursday, July 07, 2005 ( 7/07/2005 02:39:00 PM ) Bill S. THE SMELL OF URBAN EXPLOSION – Of all the places in the world that I've wished to visit, London is at the very top – so listening to the news this a.m. on NPR about today’s morning bombings, I had a devil of a time tearing myself away from the ongoing news coverage of the atrocity. At one point, one of the reporters from London made reference to the fact that when the subways were first closed down, the first thought to cross people's minds was that there'd been some sort of power failure; it wasn't until the smell of what I probably misheard as "urban explosion" became more palpable that Londoners knew the true story. According to the reporters, it's been over ten years since the IRA did a bombing in London (I didn't realized it'd been that long ago – the Irish terrorist still looms large in our popular imagination thanks to Patriot Games). But some experiences, unfortunately, become deeply imprinted in our sense memories. Damn, but this is awful. . . # | ( 7/07/2005 06:59:00 AM ) Bill S. SUMMER MEDITATION – Just to show that we're not entirely unappreciative re: the glories of summerland, here's a haiku inspired by a recent trip to Starved Rock State Park in upstate Illinois: Cell phone chittering(Profuse apologies to Jim Henley.) # | Wednesday, July 06, 2005 ( 7/06/2005 10:54:00 AM ) Bill S. SUMMER FARE – A few brief comments engendered by the first month o' summer tube-sucking:
# | Monday, July 04, 2005 ( 7/04/2005 07:27:00 AM ) Bill S. "TELLING YOU ALL THE ZOMBIE TROOF" – Zombies, zombies, zombies. Sure seem to be a lot of 'em around these here parts lately, and with good reason. No whiff of musty Euro-culture about 'em or even much of the trappings of pseudo-science: just a bunch of ordinary folk like you or I, going about the country, chowing on their friends, family and neighbors. It's a template that lends itself to any number of stories – the more darkly satiric the better – so no wonder writers love it. Which brings us to Boom!/Atomeka’s new comic collection, Zombie Tales. Back in the late 80's self-described splatterpunks John Skipp & Craig Sector edited an anthology that encouraged writers in the horror field to do a story set in a world of cannibalistic walkin' dead folk. The nearly 400-page volume featured a lot of modern horror heavy hitters (King, Campbell, Lansdale, et al) having a go at the modern zombie mythos – the book was, as I remember, fun, and you could see its authors having a great time in the bloody playground they'd been given. But the sheer volume of the book and the overly consistent theme meant that a certain level of redundancy (both of tone and plotting) crept into the material. With a 48-page comic and six quick stories, that's less of an immediate problem, provided you have an editor who knows their bizness. With its first issue (a second planned issue, entitled Zombie Tales: Oblivion, is advertised on the back inner cover), Tales' uncredited editor works to keep the zombie stories sufficiently varied. We get several flavors of the cannibalistic undead: animalistic predators ("Severance," "For Pete's Sake," "If You're So Smart"), comically dumb zombies who speak like Bizarro ("I, Zombie") and living deadsters who still have their reasoning faculties ("Daddy Smells Different," "Dead Meat") even if their bodies aren't still pumping any fresh oxygen to their brains. Lots of dark humor in this book, of course, (I most enjoyed the seriocomic classroom test that Mark Waid creates for "Smart") and some plain ol' horror comics predictable twist stories, too. If the book's most successful piece is arguably Andrew Cosby & Keith Giffen's goofy serial story "I, Zombie" (which makes Ted, its dumb lummox of a zombie hero, appealing in his childlike attention span), the offering I keep returning to is Johanna Stokes & J.K. Woodward's more dramatic "Pete's Sake." Though its punning title is unfortunately chosen (hey, there, editor – why not advise your writer to come up with something different?), calling up memories of a mediocre Barbra Streisand comedy, the story and art itself strive to look less ironically at an aspect of the zombie storyline that has greater emotional impact: the core idea that these creatures are our family and loved ones and that their coming back to life so soon after dying totally fucks up the basic grieving process. This theme (which also drives one of Stephen King's most despairing novels, Pet Semetary) is a touchy one to negotiate within the confines of a horror story, and if scripter Stokes doesn't make it as devastating as it could be, I preferred the attempt over Keith Giffen's calculatedly crass consideration of the improbabilities of zombie sex. Still in all, I'll be looking out for the second volume of Tales. (Is "Meat" also meant to be a continued story? It reads more like set-up than finished tale.) What can I say? Looks to be a good decade for the living dead. . . # | Sunday, July 03, 2005 ( 7/03/2005 07:55:00 AM ) Bill S. A GERMANE QUOTE – Have an uncompleted posting on Boom!/Atomeka's Zombie Tales anthology on the C: drive waiting to be finished (yes, it's a Big Theme Weekend!) So here's a relevant quote I found from good ol' Clive Barker in Skipp & Spector's 1989 horror story collection, Book of the Dead: "Zombies are the liberal nightmare. Here you have the masses, who you would love to love, appearing at your front door with their faces falling off; and you're trying to be as humane as you possibly can, but they are, after all, eating the cat. And the fear of mass activity, of mindlessness on a national scale, underlies my fear of zombies."# | |
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