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Saturday, February 11, 2006 ( 2/11/2006 04:54:00 PM ) Bill S. GET WELL, MARK! – When I first read Mark Evanier was suffering from pain and inflammation in his foot earlier this week, the first thought which came to Mr. Conclusion Jumper was that he might have had an attack of gout, especially since he didn't remember spraining the foot in question. The truth turns out instead to be nastier, though: cellulitis, and as I write this Mark is spending the weekend in the hospital. Here's hoping his stay there is short and effective. # | ( 2/11/2006 07:57:00 AM ) Bill S. "IT'S QUITE NORMAL FOR AN AMERICAN MALE TO READ COMIC BOOKS!”"– Watched this week's ep of Bones last night : the easy-to-guess mystery revolved around the murder of a fourteen-year-old comic book nerd, so naturally I was curious as to how they'd handle it. I was expecting regular guy F.B.I. agent Booth (David Boreanaz) to make most of the wisecracks – given his propensity for ridiculing the "Squints" working at the Jeffersonian Institute – but the character was relatively restrained. He was handed one fairly lame put-down, however: confronted by a group of comic shop habitués, he makes a "bet none of you have ever seen a real girl before" joke, which doesn't really work because we can already see that one of the group is a real girl. Perhaps the director should've done a better job placing her out of camera sight. In any event, the episode wasn't as condescending to comic shop culture as it could've been, but the results were still undeniably mixed. The dead young boy – who, of course, is creating his own comic book series (paging Seth Cohen!) with the comic shop owner – is treated sympathetically, but the group of gamers he hangs with is meant to be kinda creepy. ("Dark nerds," Booth calls 'em, making a ref to Columbine in the process.) Scripter Elizabeth Benjamin knows enough about modern comics to name-check Neil Gaiman (our young boy gives his entire Gaiman collection to a smitten girl geek – she thinks it's a romantic gesture; we learn there's more to the story), though all of the comics we're shown in close-up appear to be fabricated titles. When we see the cover to the first issue of Citizen 14, the comic created by the murder victim, a prominent cover blurb tells us it's the "Mind-Blowing First Issue!" Gotta admit, that small touch made me chuckle . . . # | Friday, February 10, 2006 ( 2/10/2006 02:16:00 PM ) Bill S. TEEVEE MUTTERINGS – Well, Surface ended its short season this week – with the image of an Eastern coastal town underwater. I don't know if NBC is planning on renewing this for a second season, but if it doesn't, I know I'll manage to get on with my life. As the fifteen-episode season progressed, I personally found myself only interested in 50% of its plotlines: the storyline surrounding young boy Miles Barnett and his baby creature pet. The second primary plot involving lady oceanographer Laura Daughtery and her irritating good ol' boy tagalong Rich grew more unwatchable weekly, primarily because these two had to be the dumbest leads ever to appear in a sci-fi teleseries (and that's saying something!) Watching these two impulsive waa-babies bump from crisis to crisis grew progressively more frustrating: when mule-headed Rich got locked in an underground compound and faced death by tsunami, I more than half wished the guy'd wind up sleeping with the mutant fishes. And if I had to listen to Lake Bell whine about being separated from her son one more time . . . I do want to go on the record as feeling mighty peeved by the news that Love Monkey has apparently been axed, however . . . # | ( 2/10/2006 08:28:00 AM ) Bill S. SIXTY MINUTE MANGA – (Wherein we learn the Gods of Death love apples.) Though they may be a bargain in comparison to most American comic purchases these days, manga graphic novels can still take a chunk of change if you're following any series to the end. Take a limited mini-series like Tokyopop’s Battle Royale: fifteen volumes long – by no means an unreasonable length considering the amount of story in the series – and you've spent $150 just to get the full work. A not inconsiderable entertainment expense. Which is this writer's way of explaining why he hasn't been doing much new manga exploration in the past half year: just keeping up with the series I'm already following has required some thoughtful budgeting. Haven't stopped my exploring entirely, but I have been much less profligate on that front. I have latched onto one of Shonen Jump's Advanced manga series, Ohba & Obata's Death Note, and read the three translated volumes that have been published so far.  Rated "T+," for the "Older Teen" reader, the series is a dark fantasy about a teen-ager named Light Yagami who is the recipient of a notebook that’s been dropped outside his school by a grinning, fanged creature called a Shinigami death god. The death god, Ryuk, has deliberately deposited the notebook on Earth just to see what'll happen: he's bored with his usual routine, so he tags along with Light, visible only to those human who've also handled the notebook. ("Humans are a riot!" the demon thinks.) With Light, he's definitely lucked(?) onto someone who will make things happen. Smart, athletic and more than a little smugly judgmental, the high school brain sees his possession of the Death Note as his opportunity to remake the world into a better place.Ryuk's notebook, we quickly learn, has profound properties: writing the name of anyone whose face you can visualize, you can change both the time and manner of their death. After testing it on a killer holding hostages in a nursery school (talk about stacking the deck!), Light decides to use the book on a full sweep of criminals who have gotten away with serious crimes. "I'll make this a world inhabited only by people I decide are good!" he asserts, but it isn't long before our would-be world savior steps outside this noble declaration. As the number of known criminals perishing under suspicious circumstances grows, our hero attracts the attention of Interpol and a mysterious criminal investigator named "L." Soon Light, calling himself "Kira," is using the Death Note against his police pursuers as well as those criminals he deems worthy of his judgment. Before the first volume is over, our protagonist is in a battle of wits with the equally formidable L. As our story center, Kira/Light isn't a particularly likeable figure, nor is he meant to be. From the very start, his arrogant pronouncements about using the notebook to build a better world aren't quite convincing (at least as translated), while it doesn't take long for him to become as monstrous as the criminals he's destroying. In the first volume, he thinks nothing of using the Death Note on a person he thinks is L, while in the second, he systematically mows down a group of American F.B.I. agents investigating the Kira killings. This sweeping mercilessness is enough to scare off most of the Japanese police, though not the detective heading the small task force, Soichiro Yagami, who also (but, of course!) turns out to be Light's father. By volume three, however, Kira/Light is already considering the possibility that he may have to do away with Dad and the rest of his family. Grim stuff, in other words, though scripter Tsgumi Ohba somehow manages to slips elements of alternately mordant and lighthearted comedy (much of the latter coming from the grinningly amoral Ryuk) in his criminal mastermind horror tale. L – or at least the one agent of "L" that we're shown – turns out to be close to Light in age, and though the two match each other in looks, smarts and athletic ability, the detective proves slouchily inelegant stacked next to his rival. (The book has mild comic fun with the contrast.) Quickly deducing that Kira is someone who has connections to the Japanese police, L cozies up to his most likely suspect, asking for his help in catching Kira even as he openly admits that he's looking to Light as a prime suspect. Much of the story interest in the second and third volumes, then, comes from Light's elaborate ploys to carry on his Kira work even as he's being closely watched. In one sequence, he manages to use the notebook in a hidden camera-laden bedroom under the eyes of both L and his observing father. Though Death Note is proudly pulpy in its storytelling, its violence is not as over-the-top as, for example, the mature-rated Arm of Kannon. Many of Kira's killings occur off-panel, while as much of the focus is on the logistics and ethical ramifications of using the Death Note as it is on suspenseful sequences like the one where Light's father attempts to get into a television studio being held hostage. Artist Takeshi Obata (known for his work on the popular sports fantasy manga, Hikaru No Go) has a clean, well-lit (apart from the brief scenes in the death gods' domain) style that suits the material – it has the flat evocativeness of a fifties B-movie or a Fritz Lang Dr. Mabuse movie – though occasionally his treatment of the bulging-eyed, gangly L grows repetitive. If the story has the potential to grow too repetitious by focusing on the cat-and-mouse (Which is which? Good question.) 'tween Light and L, that's not the case with the first three volumes. Another new manga series to follow? Well, at least Viz's Shonen Jump paperbacks are a good two bucks cheaper than yer average $9.95er . . . Labels: sixty-minute manga # |( 2/10/2006 07:46:00 AM ) Bill S. WEEKEND PET PIC – Have a "Sixty Minute Manga" review coming up later today, but for now here's a pic of Cedar Dog:  # | Thursday, February 09, 2006 ( 2/09/2006 10:53:00 AM ) Bill S. MONEY IN TIMES OF NO DOPE – I'd sure bee-line out to see a stop-motion animation Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers movie, if only to find out where they got my old couch . . . # | ( 2/09/2006 09:59:00 AM ) Bill S. MENTAL STATUS EXAMS FOR EVERYONE IN THE ACADEMY! – Only comment I have on the Grammys (which I managed to skip again this year) is this: reading that both U2 and Green Day won 2005 awards for material released in 2004 really makes me wonder if Grammy voters are oriented to Time and Place . . . # | Wednesday, February 08, 2006 ( 2/08/2006 03:55:00 PM ) Bill S. THE NEDSTER – Don't get all the regional/political specifics behind it, but I'd love to see a larger repro of this sharp blog-posted Cape Cod illo by comix artist, Betty Boop illustrator and all-around snappy dresser Ned Sonntag. # | Tuesday, February 07, 2006 ( 2/07/2006 01:50:00 PM ) Bill S. 24-ING – So Sean Astin's Lynn McGill has a strung-out sister who is willing to set him up for a quick afternoon's mugging? Is there anyone on this show in a position of authority who doesn't have a majorly fucked-up family member that'd betray 'em in an L.A. minute? # | ( 2/07/2006 09:06:00 AM ) Bill S. "I'LL FEEL MUCH BETTER ON THE OTHER SIDE" – Speaking of being shotloose, I need to belatedly draw your attention to Blog This Pal Gordon Dymowski's January appreciation of Graham Parker's Squeezing Out Sparks, an album I've also rhapsodized about in the past, and his more recent plug for the Love anthology, Love Story. Both are, as Gordon calls 'em, Records You Should Own, though if you can't afford the two-disc Love set, a good copy of Forever Changes (which I discuss on my Favorite Rhinos page) is a fine place to start. # | ( 2/07/2006 08:05:00 AM ) Bill S. A BRIEF STATEMENT OF POLITICAL INTENT – One of the more dubious rhetorical ploys finding common currency on the blogosphere is the "Why Aren't You Talking About This?" tack, wherein one writer attempts to deflate another's writings by writing in comments or an email something like, "If you're so into [blank one], then why haven't you also commented on [blank two]?" with the latter supposedly being an equivalent example of criticism-worthy behavior conducted by the attacked writer's peers or political buddies or something like that. Recently came upon a good example of this approach on Mark Evanier's web blog, wherein a reader attempted to prick Mark with the fact that he hadn't discussed the Danish cartoon controversy even though he allegedly had defended "Doonesbury" and "The Boondocks" from conservative criticisms in the past. Mark's response was much more civil than I personally thought he needed to be, especially since the reader had apparently imagined ME's earlier defense of Trudeau & Macgruder. While I have nowhere near the audience that Mark's excellent blog possesses, I've decided it's time to be proactive and state here for the record: If this blog does not discuss a specific political issue or event, it is not because this writer finds said event politically inconvenient to acknowledge – it's simply because he's scatterbrained and irresponsible.Thank you. # | Monday, February 06, 2006 ( 2/06/2006 12:18:00 PM ) Bill S. AND WHAT ABOUT THAT WILL EISNER GUY SWIPING FRANK MILLER, HUH? – Recommended reading: click through the ad to read Douglas Wolk’s well-wrought Salon review of Jaime Hernandez's new Ghost of Hoppers collection: it catches much of what Locas fans love about Jaime's work, even if the tagline Salon chose to highlight it ("pure eye candy") is more than a little inapt. (A depressing observation: first letter that Salon received for this piece wonders out loud if the Maggie/Hopey relationship was influenced by Terry Moore's Stranger in Paradise. That's just sad for too many reasons . . .) And for the record, my review of Hernandez's previous entry in the Hoppers chronology, Dicks And Deedees, can be found here. # | ( 2/06/2006 09:08:00 AM ) Bill S. "EVELYN, A DOG, HAVING UNDERGONE FURTHER MODIFICATION . . ." – Our plans for Super Bowl Sunday were abandoned suddenly when I discovered to my dismay that the drains in the basement had backed up while we were doing laundry. I subsequently spent much of my afternoon roto-rooting in the basement: the joys of home ownership. While I was getting rust stains on my sweatshirt and muck on my fingers, Becky turned the teevee to Animal Planet's "Puppy Bowl," so when I'd come up to take a short break, I'd sit and watch for a few minutes. Watching one of the larger pups steal toys from a punier retriever mix, I was reminded that much of what we consider amusing puppy play are also displays of learning dominance and aggression. How cute! . . . # | Sunday, February 05, 2006 ( 2/05/2006 10:34:00 AM ) Bill S. "YOU'VE GOT YOUR PRIDE AND A BLUE-STEEL 45!" – The Old 97's are moaning about an angry cuckolded husband waiting for the other shoe to fall, so it must be time for some bullet points:
Background Music for This Round: Old 97's, Wreck Your Life. UPDATE: As Captain Spaulding notes in the Comments section and Tegan also indicates on her blog, it's likely that the reaction against the Danish cartoons discussed in bullet point two is due less to the original twelve commissioned cartoons and more to three much more tauntingly offensive forgeries that were produced anonymously to inflame true believers. Boing Boing has the original twelve plus the three forgeries on its site – along with a series of progressively more inflamatory cartoons that have since been produced in the wake of the controversy. UPDATE II: Roy Edroso expresses his solidarity with the Danish cartoonists . . . # | |
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