| Pop Culture Gadabout | ||
|
Sunday, February 07, 2010 ( 2/07/2010 12:17:00 PM ) Bill S.  “YOU’VE GOTTA LIVE NO MATTER WHAT THE COST.” The second volume of Inio Asano’s two-book mini-series,What A Wonderful World! (Viz Media), is very much of a piece with the first: more elegantly rendered intertwined vignettes (a.k.a. "tracks") about urban kids and young adults, struggling to make sense of a world where random catastrophe and cruelty exist alongside cherry blossoms and the simple pleasures of a bowl of ramen noodles. Though primarily realistic in his storytelling approach, Asano is not averse to slipping in a few fantastic elements: a possible hallucination by a battered man who may or may not have an encounter with a shinigami, a mysterious epidemic that makes “you totally stop thinking.”“In a way,” one of World’s battered young protagonists thinks about the latter as he prepares to take his afflicted sister out to view the spring blossoms, “it’s a pretty convenient illness for the modern man.” As with the first book, several telling motifs pop up in volume two: references to cram school, Japanese society’s childhood destroying educational sausage factory; the risks of Samaritan action; substance abuse and ruinous family miscommunication. In the volume’s title story, a convenience store clerk sees a stray dog with two arrows in it -- the work of punk kids using the mutt for target practice, he thinks. He lets the dog loose without bothering to try and remove the arrows. “I didn’t say I was going to rescue you,” he tells the animal, yet later, when he sees it bandaged and in the company of a homeless man he’s heartened by the sight. “The world’s not all that hopeless, after all,” he says with a smile, even as the reader realizes that the guy hasn’t done a damn thing himself to alleviate that sense of hopelessness. In another “track,” the acting editor of a porno mag half-successfully tries to balance his job responsibilities with his role as a husband and father: the crass and the humane both competing for his attention. That Asano is able to give both sides their due is a large part of the art in this crafty manga mini-series. Labels: sixty-minute manga # |Saturday, February 06, 2010 ( 2/06/2010 10:09:00 AM ) Bill S.  “THE BAWDY MELODY OF A REQUIEM” After listening to their debut album for weeks, I can’t decide if Philly band Drink Up Buttercup’s name is meant to be celebratory or disturbing. (Maybe a little of both?) In any event, Born and Thrown on A Hook (Yep Roc) is a rollicking disc of smart-pop: a collection of energetically neurotic psychedelic/glam/art rock packed with stuttering circus-y keyboards (courtesy Farzad Houshiarnejad) that recall an intentionally funny ELP, rhythmic hop-scotching and bellowing choruses wrapped around sing-songy lyrics about less-than-beautiful losers.At times, the results remind me of Duck Stab era Residents (“Mr. Pie Eyes,” “Sosey Dosy”) if that group of Brechtian performance geeks had an actual vocalist like the deceptively angelic James Harvey or an inclination to display some genuine musical chops. “Young Ladies” musically recalls Kurt Weill and John Lennon in turn, while the folksy “Lovers Play Dead” treats young love like a Romero horror film. “Pink Sunshine” acts like it could be an album track off of some sixties era band’s attempt at aping Sgt. Pepper -- which may sound like a putdown, but isn’t meant to be to these ears. This is a band, after all, that isn’t afraid to quote the Archies in “Doggy Head” (great melodica sound in that ‘un!), evoke Leo Sayer or insert a brief instrumental out of some Lon Chaney silent in between tracks, than follow it with an organ/bass concoction from the Deep Purple Book of Heavy Rock Moves. Born is all over the map, in other words: held together by Harvey’s high vocals and a sharp eye for low-class dives in high-class towns. Barrels of fun for lovers of poppish quirk -- and I’m betting they just kill in a smoky Philly rock club. Labels: art-pop # |Friday, February 05, 2010 ( 2/05/2010 07:24:00 PM ) Bill S. WEEKEND PET PIC: Here's a recent head shot of Ziggy Stardust (a.k.a. Dusty), our geezerly Aussie/Sheepdog mix:  THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark." # | Wednesday, February 03, 2010 ( 2/03/2010 01:41:00 AM ) Bill S. MID-WEEK MUSIC VIDEO: From a poppishly quirky album that I’ve been playing way too much over the past few weeks, Kate Miller-Heidke’s Curiouser (Review to Soon Follow): # | Tuesday, February 02, 2010 ( 2/02/2010 06:39:00 AM ) Bill S.  “NOT SINCE I REGAINED MY WILL HAVE I UNLEASHED MYSELF SO COMPLETELY.” As someone who knows nada about the massive World of Warcraft game franchise, I was mainly looking for one thing from Tokyopop’s latest graphic novel World of Warcraft: Death Knight: a simple coherent sword-and-sorcery fantasy that wouldn’t require a heavy dose of supplemental reading for me to get the basic story. This I did get, from solid comics pro Dan Jolley and Argentinian artist Rocio Zucchi: a prequel to lord-knows-what about a young would-be warrior named Thassarian, who's killed by a nefarious type named the Lich King and transformed into an undead warrior slave. In thrall to the wicked King, Thassarian slays his own mother, but before the book’s finish we know he’ll break away and take arms against the rotter.In other words, WoW: Death Knight provides a quick, no nonsense back story to a major figure in a popular multi-player online role-playing game. As such, it may carry more emotional resonance to those readers actively invested in the game, but for an outsider, Jolley’s script comes across flat and characterless. Even the death of Thassarian’s mom doesn’t carry much weight since we don’t know much about her in the first place -- in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.” Zucchi’s art is at times more expressive than the cliche characters deserve, though once her figures become the pupil-less undead, she has her work cut out for her. Would love to see what she can do in a comic not so hamstrung by the contrived requirements of a game-playing rule book, though. Labels: modern comics # | |
|
|
