Saturday, May 12, 2007 ( 5/12/2007 11:58:00 AM ) Bill S.
WEEKEND PET PIC – S'been a while since we've checked in on any of the OakHaus menagerie beyond the canine crew, so let's give a big shout-out to Piglet, the Nipping Ferret.
THE USUAL NOTE: For more companion animals, check out Modulator's "Friday Ark." And if you missing some dogg blogging, there's always the weekly "Carnival of the Dogs" at Mickey's Musings. # |
( 5/12/2007 07:16:00 AM ) Bill S.
"AS I WATCHED IT ON TV, YOU KNOW IT REALLY BOTHERED ME" – A note to Greg Saunders: yes, pulling up the late Johnny Ramone as an example of current conservative rockers was decidedly out-of-touch. But from all reports, the band's pugnacious guitarist was indeed an avid ultra-conservative who took strong issue with his fellow bandmates' slagging of Ronald Reagan in "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg." Me, I still love the band's music no matter how personally appalled I could be by its individual members' politics . . . # |
( 5/12/2007 06:17:00 AM ) Bill S.
YOU KNOW YOU'VE GOT A PROBLEM WHEN YOU START ANSWERING BACK TO TEEVEE CHARACTERS - A pointed question posed by Charlie Epps on last night's episode of Numbers: "Why do capitalists act surprised when capitalism works?" I don't know, Charlie – perhaps coz because so many self-professed capitalists don't really believe in capitalism? # |
Friday, May 11, 2007 ( 5/11/2007 12:52:00 PM ) Bill S.
"OUR MERE FIGUREHEAD IS NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS" – As someone who was largely out to lunch when Neal Gaiman and friends conquered the world of mainstream comics with their darkly romantic fantasy GNs, I'm not the best man to play "Spot the Sandman Swipe" with Mike Carey & John Bolton's God Save the Queen (Vertigo). As a result, I'm forced to take this much-maligned new graphic novel hardcover in isolation, which may or may not work to the book's advantage. Still, any comic that utilizes the Sex Pistols' legendary anti-anthem as its title and thematic underpinning has got my attention, at least, so let's take our own look-see, okay?
Set in modern times, Queen focuses on a thought-free rebel London teen-girl named Linda, who falls in with an ultra-bad crowd: a group of banished faeries addicted to a blend of heroin and a very specific type of blood (the very fact of its specificity gives away several pertinent plot points). Linda's matronly mom Ava has apparently been pining ever since her husband left her, so without any clear-cut matriarchal influence, our heroine pushes her readymade victim friend Jeff into the world of hard-core drug abuse. (Bye, Jeff!) When the oh-so-pretty vacant faeries run out of "red horse," they bring our heroine to the border between our world and the land of faerie – where, of course, they ultimately abandon her. Within this realm, the haggish Queen Mab is seeking out the last servants loyal to deposed Queen Titania, who has also been banished to North London. Of course, the first creature Linda comes across is a fugitive servant of Queen Titania.
The highly addictive red horse, we ultimately learn, is being given to the drugee faeries by one of Mab's servants, Puck, as means of keeping the banished creatures in check. (Reading this aspect of the storyline, I couldn't help thinking back to the old left wing conspiracy theories which declared that the drug epidemic was largely the result of the CIA's attempts at decimating the black urban community.) Linda returns to North London to learn – to no one's amazement – that her mother Ava is not all she seems. A big Faeryland battle ensues, with mother and daughter in the front lines. When it's over, Linda says piss-off to the drugee faeries back in London.
Not an unfamiliar fantasy tale, but, then, plenty of familiar fantasies have made – and will continue to make – decent entertainments. If only Carey weren't so heavy-handed with his plotting: when you see a close-up of the christening spoon that was given to Linda by her missing father, you know it'll play a role in the big climax (and it does). When Linda comes to the wrong conclusion about her heritage after her first visit to Faeryland, we immediately know she's barking up the wrong branch of the family tree. To be sure, being one step ahead of the story's protagonist can be fun if that's the writer's intent (it's one of the central pleasures in P.G. Wodehouse), but Carey treats each revelation as if it's a big surprise for the reader. Ummm, no.
Much of this could've been rescued with a suitably decadent art style, I suspect, but though John Bolton has shown himself to be quite adept at going pre-Raphaelite in the past, here his painted art is too stilted and inconsistent to do the trick. (Never could figure out what age Ava's mom is supposed to be, but it varies by a good two decades throughout the volume.) We get multiple poses of Linda showing off her skinny legs and all, but when it comes to actual plot movement the visuals get pretty muddy: when a castle column, for instance, cracks and falls down on a character, it takes prolonged page study just to get what's supposed to've happened. At times, you get the sense that Bolton, the artist, is more invested in the full-page portraits that regularly grace the book than in the mechanics of telling a simple comic book story.
That noted, there were a few aspects of Queen that I enjoyed: though it starts out reading like a broad anti-drug polemic (my sense is that Carey was trying for a GN Trainspotting but instead wound up with Reefer Madness), in the end it attempts to toss a bit of ambiguity into the mix by making our heroine's red horse use a key to defeating Queen Mab. Too, the Queen our mother & daughter tie their allegiance to proves almost as imperiously treacherous as Mab: a believable character fillip that even I could recognize as Gaiman-esque. "If you're thinking of executing me for treason," one character warns Titania just before the battle starts, "you'd better pick a different venue." Clearly, this is not noble King Richard returning to Nottingham from the Crusades.
But these small pleasures weren't enough, unfortunately, to save God Save for me. Of the Vertigo hardback fantasies released within the last year, I found Bill Willingham's Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall to be more consistently entertaining (with better Bolton art in it to boot!) No Sex Pistols lyrics in Fables, but you can't have everything . . . # |
Thursday, May 10, 2007 ( 5/10/2007 07:03:00 AM ) Bill S.
THE FIFTEEN-MINUTE FREE COMIC – Well, this year's Free Comic Book Day has come and gone – and over at Acme Comics in downtown Normal, IL., owner Jim had decided to emphasize the major companies and kid-friendly titles on the freebie shelves this year. Having visited Acme during each of the previous FCBDs and seen the predominance of kids and their parents crowded into the shop, though it also meant that some of the works I wanted to see (Eddie Campbell's The Train Was Bang on Time, Fantagraphics' Unseen Peanuts) weren't part of the selection. Wound up with fourteen books, though, so let's take a look at my haul:
Amazing Spider-Man Marvel: With Raimi's big sprawling moneymaker already smashing moneymaking records, no surprise at all to see that one of Marvel's freebies is an "all-new Spidey adventure" by Dan Slott & Phil Jimenez. The real surprise resides in the fact that Slott's one-off original story isn't a complete wank-off (he even makes a decent self-referential joke alluding to the fact that this year's FCBD came on Cinco de Mayo): a simple tale of our hero distracted on the way to his Aunt May's birthday by a carjacking. A few attempts at continuity with the main storyline don't work as well as they could (e.g., the appearance of the red-headed superheroine Jackpot is particularly puzzling), but in general this reads like the kind of engaging throwaway you might've gotten in the old days between big multi-part super-villain stories. A good way to start, though the teaser for the upcoming AS-M #544 tacked onto the back of the book was too brief to really grab me.
Bongo Comics Free-for-All! (Bongo): Every year when I pick up the new Bongo selection, I think, "I've gotta read more of these books from the Line That Matt Groening Built." Then I forget about my resolution until Halloween when the Treehouse of Horror annual appears. This year's entry has a fine and funny Evan Dorkin-scripted opener and a few lesser pieces featuring the Futurama gang and Ralph Wiggins (the Wiggins piece is the biggest disappointment since it never really captures that character’s surreal stoopidity). Still, it's an enjoyable little freebie: I should check more of these Bongo books out this year . . .
Family Guy & Hack/Slash (Devil's Due): Definitely an odd pairing: this Teen Readers two-fer provides an unfunny strung-together set of FG vignettes and the opener to what appears to be a gory horror series centered on a heroine hunting down bloody serial killers. The latter does one of the standard FCBD ploys: give the reader half of what'll be the first real issue in an attempt to hook 'em into paying full price for a comic that they've already half read. I'm a little curious about this 'un (I'm a sucker for a good matronly killer lunchlady), but since they also tell me it's gonna be a "major motion picture from Rogue Pictures," maybe I should wait for the video?
Gumby (Wildcard Ink): I’ve enjoyed the recent Bob Burden & Rick Geary takes on Art Clokey's classic kids show clayboy, so I was looking forward to particular item. But this particular B&W issue, written by Shannon Wheeler in place of Burden – and featuring Geary among a three other artists is too slapdash to work. Liked Wheeler's parody of R. Crumb's famous stoned one-pager, though.
Justice League of America & Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century (DC): Two of DC's individual freebie titles take the occasion of FCBD to feature titles meant to bring us to speed on their respective series. The JLA entry – scripted by Identity Crisis' Brad Meltzer with an "All-Star Cast of Artists" is even more visually jumbled than Gumby (though I liked that Gene Ha gave his Diana Prince version of Wonder Woman believably strong arm), while Meltzer's unstuck-in-time script attempts to tie together so many loose ends from DCUniverse continuity that it'll probably make sense to few beyond the fannish coterie who already read this tale when it debuted in the new JLA title. Legion works a bit better since it's primary purpose is to introduce the characters as portrayed in the Kids WB cartoon series: J.Torres throws lots of anachronistic jokes into the mix ("When was the last time you defragged?" Phantom Girl asks cyborg computer guy Braniac 5 early in the story), but forgets to provide a story beyond, "Gee, will Superboy be invited into the Legion?" (Spoiler Alert: he is!)
Little Archie (Archie Comics): "All-New Story by Bob Bolling" the front cover tells us, and though that'll mean bupkiss to most of the kids coming into the shoppe, it is a good come-on to us elder types who remember reading Bolling's original LArchie tales as kids after we'd run out of superhero books to pore through. This entry, featuring our hero on a summer camp adventure never answers the most pressing question that the series raises (Namely: why do the camp counselors call him "Little Archie"? Isn't he just "Archie"?) but it's amusing enough in its slight way. Inker Jim Amash isn't always helpful to scripter Bolling's pencils (more than once he flattens the figures), but it gets the job done. It's certainly a lot less off-putting than the covers we’re shown in a back cover ad for the upcoming Betty & Veronica Double Digest mini-series drawn "in a dynamic new art style," that looks more decidedly creepy than dynamic.
The Lone Ranger & Battlestar Galactica: Season Zero (Dynamite): Another two-fer book, this time devoted to a pair of tie-in titles. Of the two, only the Lone Ranger half, which appears to be devoted to the long-established western hero in his early days, is a self-sustained story; the Galactica cuts off just as our cast is discovered by a horde of hump-backed Cylons. Mebbe I'd care if I watched the Sci-Fi Channel version of this series, since a lot of the talky panel seem primarily devoted to giving series fans a chance to see if they like how Steven Segovia renders their favorite actors, but I don't so I was much more effortlessly caught up in the Ranger's simple rescue of a pretty young school marm who we'll most likely never see again.
Love And Capes #4 (Maerkle Press): This 'un is a cheat since Acme Comics didn't have it on its FCBD shelves – but I was sent a review copy of it, presumably since I'd done a posting on the first three issues. Thomas Zahler's freebie does a good job introducing us to its appealing cast – and maintains his amusing proto-sitcom style of scripting (in this episode, our super-square hero struggles with the fact that he's not as franchise hot as the Arachnerd). For small-press publishers like Zahler, an event like Free Comic Book Day clearly reps a bigger financial gamble than it does for the Big Guns: in this case, the finished product has me hoping it works out for him.
Marvel Adventures: Iron Man & the Hulk (Marvel): Two short, quick kid-friendly stories featuring their respective heroes in instantly forgettable fights against industrial thieves and insectoid monsters – plus a five-page Franklin Richards shortie that reads like Marvel's attempt at aping Harvey Comics. What does it say that I was much more entertained by Chris Eliopoulos & Marc Sumerak's Franklin Richards quickie?
Mickey Mouse (Gemstone): As with previous Gemstone FCBD releases, the company is attempting to snag young readers with classic stuff: this time a reprint of a Floyd Gottfredson Sunday strip continuity (gotta hold the book sideways!) that is pretty strange. In it, our spunky Mouse here (this was back when Mickey's pants meant he really was covering up a pair of cajones!) develops a shrinking formula in his house that puts him at the mercy of a vicious overgrown fly. To escape, he hides in a book of Robin Hood stories and winds up meeting the man and his merry band. I kept expecting this tale to turn out to be "only a dream," but Gottfredson refused to resort to this gambit – and good for him. Shows why it's too bad they don't make 'em like this anymore . . .
Transformers: Official Movie Prequel (IDW): Plowing through this well-nigh unreadable cross-promotional spin-off did one have one surprising effect: it got me appreciating later Jack Kirby – who could make this brand of mystico-cosmic gobbledegook actually sound it made sense – much more than I previously had. Definitely (to make the obvious joke), less than meets the eye.
Wahoo Morris (Too Hip Gotta Go): Apparently positioning itself to be the next Strangers in Paradise (a rip-off of a Love And Rockets rip-off – aren't we approaching Michael Keaton in Multiplicity here?), this B-&W opening chapter introduces us to a punkish rock band and their struggling loves – somehow book-ended with an Exorcist-reminiscent plot involving hornéd demons. No, I don't know what it means, but I did rather like writer/artist Craig Taillefer's admission that he "edited out all of the naughty bits" from the original version of the story. Presumably to circumvent any parental complaints if any young 'uns inadvertently bring this title home. Hey, guy, don't you know that even the suggestion that these characters have naughty bits is too much for some parents?
Who Wants to Be A Superhero? (Dark Horse): Wherein the once mighty Stan Lee hacks out an eight-page intro with a beaten-up supertype flashbacking to the beginning of his origin ("Now I remember – how it started . . .") Gotta tell ya, this lame exercise depressed the hell outta me – even more than Lee's egregious Just Imagine mini-series or Stripperella. Excelsior, my ass . . .
Anybody got an extra Unseen Peanuts hangin' around the place? # |
Wednesday, May 09, 2007 ( 5/09/2007 08:55:00 AM ) Bill S.
"TURN UP YOUR STEREO-OH" – For this week's mid-time music vid, let's return to the Apples in Stereo (courtesy o' the monaural YouTube) for a new one from their current disc, New Magnetic Wonder:
Tuesday, May 08, 2007 ( 5/08/2007 12:29:00 PM ) Bill S.
"ANOTHER WEEK OF INCLEMENT WEATHER!" – These things being equal, you're just as likely to've first heard the Icicles on a Motorola KRZR teevee ad than the, whatchamacallit, radio: their infectious "Sugar Sweet" (from debut long-player, A Hundred Patterns) was tagged for a campaign introducing the company's new cell phone. Hopefully, this exposure will work to the benefit of the band's sophomore album, Arrivals & Departures (Microindie), coz it's an engaging slice of indie pop.
The Michigan band – four gals and a guy drummer – specialize in mid-tempo pop-rock: girly lead vocals and addictive choruses, jangly 80's era college rock guitar lines that're frequently mixed frustratingly low, lyrics about love's mishaps, cats and fireflies. (I could do without the cats & fireflies part, but, then, I'm just a surly geezer.) On first listen, much of it sounds overly low-key (listening to album finale "Snappy," with its Spanky & Our Gang choral flourishes, I kept imagining how Francophile Belinda Carlisle and her old group would've powered up the beat), but on replay, the hooks sneak out and prove more plentiful than you first thought.
Led by bespectacled frontwoman Gretchen DeVault, the Grand Rapids group specializes in small pop songs: little observational slabs that at their best ("La Di Da," "Whirling," "Snowbird") capture their young narrators' state of mind; at their worst sound like a lesser track off an old Melanie elpee. Fortunately, the high spots outnumber the twee ones, in large part due to the band's deft ways with pop hooks (let's single out lead guitarist Rebecca Rodriquez and grounding keyboardist Joleen Rumsey in particular) and DeVault's sweetly straightforward singing voice (sounds kinda like a more grown-up Juliana Hatfield in places). Among the highlights: the joie-de-vivre celebratory "La Ti Da;" the you'll-miss-me-when-I'm-gone song "Regret" (drummer Greg Krupp almost seems to be channeling the Attractions on this 'un); "Somewhere," with its Smiths-like guitar fingering; and "Snappy," which concludes the disc with both cool attitude ("Keep your judgments to yourself!" Gretchen snips at a deserving ex-) and a great swirling pop-psychedelic finale. Hope they build on this in the future.
But for this Midwesterner, the song that most fully hit me where I live comes right in the album's middle. "Snowbird," a shiver of Cali-pop tunery sung by a seasonally affected Michigander who's feeling trapped in the middle of winter. ("Since we're in Michigan," DeVault sings 'tween an irresistible cooing "lalalala" chorus, "summer may never come again.") It's the modern flyover version of the 60's surf tune "New York's A Lonely Town" (when you're the only surfer boy around). This Central Illinoisian kin definitely relate . . . # |
( 5/08/2007 06:38:00 AM ) Bill S.
YE OL' SELF-PROMO – Received the latest ish of The Comics Journal (#282, with an Alison Bechdel interview its cover story) and was pleased to see that two of my reviews (a full review of Kim Deitch's splendiferous Shadowland graphic novel and a Bullets-sized pieces on Ted Naifeh's Polly And the Pirates digest) made it in. But you've already got yer copy of TCJ, right? # |
Monday, May 07, 2007 ( 5/07/2007 09:40:00 AM ) Bill S.
THE FIFTEEN-MINUTE COMIC – In the future (to misquote a once-famous purveyor of Pop Art Productions), every comic will be famous for fifteen minutes . . . more or less. So let's look at a few recent titles, to test out whether this'll be a good thing or not . . .
Amazons Attack! #1 (DC): Figures that Rockford, IL., resident Will Pfeifer'd open this grandiose six-ish mini-series with an attack in the Lincoln Memorial: live in the Land o' Lincoln for any amount of time, and it's hard to not fall under sway of the Cult of the Great Emancipator. With a title and cover blurb meant to recall both the classic Topps gum card series and the not-so-stellar Tim Burton movie made from same, this series promises to be over-the-top fun. First thing we see is a father and son (the only two visitors to the memorial? now that's a tad unbelievable) play First Victims to the attacking Amazon horde, then we're taken to a White House where everybody but the president seems to have the day off (it's lonely at the top). Led by Wonder Woman matriarch Queen Hippolyta (and presumably abetted by the villainous sorceress Circe – who, though it isn't stated, must've helped this massive array of flying horses, cyclopean giants and big-breasted babes in armor suddenly show up in the U.S. capital), the angry army of Amazons has apparently come for blood after Diana Prince was reportedly captured and tortured By Men!!! back in her own title. Artist Pete Woods doesn't always communicate the chaos of the battle situations with as much histrionic glee as you'd hope – the bit where Queen H. speaks to her troops while the capital dome explodes behind her isn't as spittle-flecked as you'd want it to be – but he's good in the quieter moments. (Especially liked the one-pager where Circe casually offs a Amazon soldier for misspeaking – how'd this woman get to be the Queen's trusted confidante again?) Meanwhile, those of us in the audience who recall that the Mars of Men's World has long been a WW enemy will have to ponder just how much this mini-series title is just tribute . . . or something more????
Justice League of America #8/Justice Society of America #5 (DC): Received the first JSA entry in this mini-crossover as a review copy – and was inspired to go back and pick up the chapter so I'd have a clearer sense of what's going on in "The Lightning Saga" (s'not like having to catch with 49 issues of 52, after all!) Can't say that my efforts entirely cleared things up, but it helped. (Seems to me I recall Red Tornado just turned human at the end of the last big Event Comic I read, but so it goes.) This crossover mini- concerns the two super-team's quest to find seven scattered "soldiers" from the Legion of Superheroes, who mysteriously have shown up in the 21st Century. In the JSA outing, Batman, Geo-Force(?), Starman and the umpteenth version of Sandman enter Arkham Asylum to save the pre-cog Dream Girl from faceless Doctor Destiny. Pretty straightforward, though Starman, for reasons I can't determine, appears flipped out, dispensing non-sequitars like the DCU version of Zippy the Pinhead. As an example of the old reliable super-team scavenger hunt plotline, "Lightning Saga" does the trick nicely: it even opens with members of the two teams playing games to remind us how often these team-up books are actually unacknowledged competitions. Nice touch . . .
Supernatural Origins #1 (Wildstorm): A prequel to a CW series I haven't watched in over a year, this comic takes us back to series' heroes Dean & Sam Winchester's boyhoods right after their mother was slain by supernatural agents. (Neat Tim Bradstreet cover showing the moment – mom floating near the ceiling as her body bursts into flames.) As scripted by Peter Johnson, you thankfully don't need to've kept up with the teevee series to follow this, though I suppose regular viewers'll get much more out of the proceedings than I did. Me, I enjoyed Matthew Dow Smith's art, which uses heavy blacks to give all the adults deeply sunken eyes and highlight the bags beneath 'em, giving the impression that no one in this book – especially distraught father John Winchester – has slept for days. Additionally, the first issue contains a short five-page back-up story by Geoff Johns & Phil Hester: doesn't really add anything about the characters that even a non-series fan like me doesn't know, but it effectively conveys how our series' heroes' lives were turned upside-down by their mother's unusual death. A nice respectful comics spin-off, in other words, though placing the story during the leads' kid-hood pretty much quashes the potential for a lotta funny wisecracks.
Also Briefly Noted: Ish #3 of Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil continues Jeff Smith's delightful run with the Fawcett characters (I'm especially enjoying his take on little Mary Marvel, who for the first time gets to really be a kid). Why is anybody else but Smith at DC even allowed near these characters? . . . Was under the mistaken impression that Brave And the Bold was a "Green Lantern With ______” book until I got ish #3, centered on Batman and Blue Beetle – my mistake. Bringing in the Fatal Five as adversaries in the Lords of Luck plotline makes some sense, but, gee, those future types are all over the DCU these days, aren't they?
More later in the week with a special FCBD edition of "The Fifteen-Minute Comic." # |
Sunday, May 06, 2007 ( 5/06/2007 07:00:00 AM ) Bill S.
"JUST A PILE OF ROCKS THAT HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE" – While everybody else was pushing to get into the new Spider-Man flick for New Comic Book Day, my every-tardy self attended a showing of Pan's Labyrinth at our local revival moviehouse, the Normal Theater. While the movie has its flaws (many of its plot mechanics – a too-conveniently found vial of antibiotics, for instance – are overly visible), I definitely dug it (more than, say, Sean Collins did). Writer/director Guillermo del Toro's blending of fantasy storytelling with the wartime cruelties of life in 1944 fascist Spain worked to convey the harsh world of sacrifice that's as much a part of the world of fairy tales (which, after all, were originally folk tales told by peasants to whom living "happily ever after" meant making it to forty without dying of starvation) as it can be "real-life."
Though the flick offers some wiggle room in its final minutes, giving us space to believe that every fantastic moment we've seen is nothing but the imagining of its plucky young bookish heroine (Ivana Baquero), to my mind Labyrinth only works as a modern folk tale – with young Ofelia being nudged into increasingly more dangerous situations by the spirit of a fairy princess imbedded within her. Doug Jones' (Abe Sapien in Hellboy) ambiguous faun and out-and-evil blank-faced child devourer were both wonderfully realized, but the creepiest moments belong to the film's "real-life" antagonist, the sadistic Captain Vidal (Sergi López).
As the wicked fascist stepfather, Vidal makes a great movie villain, and though the moment when he gets his comeuppance is one that got me going, "Serves ya right, ya bastard," the movie's great cringeworthy moment came a few minutes earlier. In it, the sadistic Captain Vidal has crudely sewn and bandaged the side of his mouth up (a lá Rambo) after it's been sliced by a not-so-helpless resistance fighter (the wonderfully expressive Maribel Verdú); he takes a swig of booze to ease the pain, and we see the gold liquid seep into the gauze. That's one big ouch! # |
Pop cultural criticism - plus the occasional egocentric socio/political commentary by Bill Sherman (popculturegadabout AT yahoo.com).
On Sale Now! Measure by Measure:
A Romantic Romp with the Fat and Fabulous
By Rebecca Fox & William Sherman
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.
"OUR MERE FIGUREHEAD IS NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS" – As someone who was largely out to lunch when Neal Gaiman and friends conquered the world of mainstream comics with their darkly romantic fantasy GNs, I'm not the best man to play "Spot the Sandman Swipe" with Mike Carey & John Bolton's God Save the Queen (Vertigo). As a result, I'm forced to take this much-maligned new graphic novel hardcover in isolation, which may or may not work to the book's advantage. Still, any comic that utilizes the Sex Pistols' legendary anti-anthem as its title and thematic underpinning has got my attention, at least, so let's take our own look-see, okay?
"ANOTHER WEEK OF INCLEMENT WEATHER!" – These things being equal, you're just as likely to've first heard the Icicles on a Motorola KRZR teevee ad than the, whatchamacallit, radio: their infectious "Sugar Sweet" (from debut long-player, A Hundred Patterns) was tagged for a campaign introducing the company's new cell phone. Hopefully, this exposure will work to the benefit of the band's sophomore album, Arrivals & Departures (Microindie), coz it's an engaging slice of indie pop.
