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Saturday, October 16, 2010 ( 10/16/2010 08:43:00 AM ) Bill S.  “THESE ARE CRAZY DAYS, BUT THEY MAKE ME SHINE.” Fifteen years of Oasis: if you’re like me, the fact that this bunch of Britpop yobbos were able to hold it together this long without killing each other is amazing all by itself. That they did producing a sublime catalog of guitar-driven pop-rock is even more of a reason to take note, of course -- and for those of you who missed out the first time, here’s a two-disc retro of choice singles, aptly titled Time Flies. Yes, I know the band’s already released a best-of disc (2006’s Stop the Clock), but where that collection culled from the group’s single releases, this ‘un has ‘em all.Which definitely makes it the set to get for those listeners unwilling to sift through the band’s later spottier catalog for the truly supreme stuff. If, like me, you found the opening track of Standing on the Shoulders of Giants so off-putting that you regularly skipped that disc as a drive time music selection, this is the set that’ll remind you of the power and glory of tracks like the Lennonesque “Go Let It Out” or the proto-psychedelic “Who Feels Love.” Despite strong reviews of their first two albums, in particular, Oasis never quite received the adulation in the states that they did in their native country, a fact that’s inadvertently emphasized in the booklet accompanying this collection. Each single listing is accompanied by quotes from fans all around the world, writing about what each song meant to them, and the majority of comments are from the U.K. The track to receive the most Yankee plaudits is “Champagne Supernova,” which may say something about American sensitivities (“Where were you when we were getting high?”), but I’m not sure what that is. The one charge that the brothers Gallagher have regularly face in this country is of being overly enamored with the Beatles catalog, something that the band’s primary songwriter and guitarist Noel Gallagher didn’t discourage by distractingly tossing late Beatles refs regularly into the lyrical mix (“Supersonic” calling up the yellow submarine, “Wonderwall” basing its title on a George Harrison soundtrack, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” reminding us of John and Yoko’s bed-in, etc.) But, musically, the lads took from more than just the Fab Four: “Cigarettes and Alcohol,” for instance, builds on a Stones-y guitar while singer Liam Gallagher indulges in an affected enunciation straight of the Ray Davies Style Book. Beatles emulators? Hell, these guys swiped from the entire British Invasion — and good for them. If Oasis never made got the American fannish attention that, say, Coldplay have since captured, the fact remains that the band has always had the stronger rock ‘n’ roll heart. Me, I’m most enamored with strum and swagger tracks like “Lyla” and “The Importance of Being Idle” (Noel’s updating of “Sunny Afternoon”), but there are days when I have to hear a slower melodious rumination on life like “Little by Little” to get me through the day, too. If the song’s metaphorical conceits (“the wheels of your life are slowing coming off”?) occasionally beg the question, the song’s irrefutable melody and sonic beauty carry you to the end. “True perfection has be imperfect,” Noel sings at one point in this track, a truism that definitely holds for this magnificently imperfect pop-rock group. Labels: pop-n-roll # |Friday, October 15, 2010 ( 10/15/2010 06:29:00 AM ) Bill S. WEEKEND PET PIC: Boomer Cat rests by a pile of magazines -- at least he's not using his claws on 'em!  THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark." # | Wednesday, October 13, 2010 ( 10/13/2010 06:55:00 AM ) Bill S.  “FORGET DYING HARD . . .IT’S TIME TO LIVE FOREVER!” With the recent news that DC Comics is calling it quits with its subsidiary comics imprint Wildstorm, you can’t help approaching the new trade collection of WildCats Version 3.0 a little cautiously. The book reprints half of the 24-issue comic series’ limited run, which begs the inevitable question: will DC put out a collection of the second half?One hopes so, as the series by writer Joe Casey with artists Dustin Nguyen and Richard Friend is an enjoyably smart-alecky one. Taking some superhero characters from the line’s earliest days and re-imagining them in the world of corporate sleaziness proves an inspired move on Casey’s part. In an era where we’re most of us feeling the fall-out from years of corporate ineptitude and malfeasance, the idea of a hyper-intelligent biosynthetic being coming in to retool the financial landscape has its allure. Version 3.0 smartly plays that up, even as it provides enough violent comic book action to hold the ADHD fanboys. The story centers on the efforts of Jack Marlowe (formerly known as Spartan), an alien humanoid with the power to shift through dimensions who has become the CEO of the multinational conglomerate Halo. Marlowe wants to use his advanced intelligence and access to alien technology to position Halo at the top of the heap. This he does with a battery that guaranteed to “last forever.” Aiding him in his empire building are the unshaven mercenary Grifter (the aptly named Cole Cash) and an agent from the National Park Service named Wax. The latter possesses hypnotic powers that he is not above using to dubious ends. Rounding out our quarter of powers behind the scenes in C.C. Rendozzo, a ruthlessly amoral information broker who first is at odds with Marlowe’s crew but ultimately allies with ‘em. Caught in the middle of the Machiavellian action are two ordinary guy number crunchers, Edwin Dolby and Sam Garfield, who find themselves working for Marlowe after Halo buys their accounting firm. Dolby, the younger and more forward thinking of the two, is quickly thrust into the violent fray after Grifter gets seriously shot up in a mission to retrieve a chemically super-agent named Agent Orange. “It seems as if this aspect of our work is forever fated to remain chaotic,” Spartan blandly notes, and Casey plays this aspect of the storyline for some amusing dark comedy involving a Cleaver-esque family of F.B.I. agents built to emulate the Eisenhower Era nuclear family. Sam Garfield, the second average Joe to get swept up by Halo, isn’t manhandled, though he struggles even more with the change -- in large part because the accounting firm he’d been managing was sold to Halo by his father. Seemingly shoved to the sidelines to manage an office of drones, Garfield’s frustration and disappointment mount to the point of Falling Down violence. The point is while we’re pretty sure the WildCats are on the side of the angels in their goal of reshaping the global economy -- one of the first things we see them do is blow up a child labor exploiting Vietnamese sweatshop -- the effects aren’t always so benevolent for the individuals who cross paths with them. Too, both Grifter and Wax have their decidedly anti-heroic tendencies, the second revealed most disturbingly in a subplot where the Park Services agent uses his hypnotic mojo on his boss’ arrogant wife. It’s a calculatedly unpleasant moment, designed to push our willingness to go along with the characters -- and I’m still not sure I wanna accept it. Year One is “Suggested for Mature Readers,” and while there are obscenities a-plenty in this book, the real challenging aspect of it proves to be Casey’s satiric eye toward the global money world. The real enemy, one character states early in the book, during the Revolutionary War wasn’t the British but British corporations like the East India Tea Company. In Version 3.0, national allegiance is not as significant as global company allegiance -- and it takes a creature from off-planet to most effectively capitalize on that fact. Nyugen and Friend’s art breezily shifts from straightforward action sequences to slightly more cartoonly comedy (in both the depictions of the Nuclear Family and the regular Halo Corp ads used as punctuation through the volume) without compromising the series’ look and tone. It’s suitably slick for a story that at heart is about the insidiousness of branding and product. “It’s going to be an interesting year,” Marlowe says at the end of Year One after Halo has just absorbed a major multi-national media conglomerate. I have no doubt about that at all. But will the corporate fiddlers overseeing DC give us the opportunity to read the rest of the story? (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Sunday, October 10, 2010 ( 10/10/2010 07:22:00 AM ) Bill S.  “KAZUKI . . .THE WORLD IS LARGER THAN WE THINK.” Let’s clear this up at the onset: Christine O’Donnell is not the Witch of Artemis.That title, per Yui Hara’s new Tokyopop manga series, is reserved for a seemingly young (though we’re told she’s hundreds of years old) girl in a pointed hat. Looking more pixy-esque than witchy, blond Marie shows up outside the family business where Kazuki, a young boy who has lost his parents, is sweeping the sidewalk. Kazuki’s father has told him tales of Artemis, a world alongside ours populated by people with “special powers.” While his wet blanket older brother insists that Artemis can’t be real, the orphaned Kazuki believes in it because, well, any place can be better than this. This makes him a ready pawn in a mysterious conflict between Marie and a more trendy looking brunette sorceress named Viora. The latter puts a Death Curse on our hero, forcing Marie to take him back to Artemis where he can be cured. The only problem with this: once he’s taken to the other world, he can’t return to his home realm. “It takes incredible amounts of energy to return,” Marie tells him. This fact doesn’t bother Kazuki too much: “Back home was kind of empty,” he says. Unlike Dorothy Gale, he has no desire to return from Oz. Much of the first volume in this teen-rated fantasy is devoted to establishing its two main characters -- wide-eyed Kazuki and his somewhat surly rescuer Marie – along with its fantasy setting. If our young boy seems a bit bland in the opening volume, the title witch proves an amusing figure. Prickly and more than a little resentful to have this young kid tagging along, she regularly gives lip service to her altruistic intentions. (“I like doing things that help others.”) But as Kazuki astutely notes, her “words and expression don’t match at all.” As the Grand Witch of Artemis, Marie clearly has some sort of obligations to fulfill, but by the end of the first volume, we still don’t know what these are. Meanwhile, lurking in the background is Viora who -- for all her threats of Death Curses -- doesn’t seem that sinister. She's more like a Veronica to Marie’s Betty. Hara’s story moves swiftly and easily: this is a book I might want to give to new manga readers still unaccustomed to the task of reading right to left as it isn’t all that text-heavy and its panels aren’t that dense. The artist’s style is closer to Sabrina the Teen-age Witch than a grimmer fantasy manga series like the currently running Alice in the Country of Hearts, which suits the series’ more lighthearted tone. Aside from that ultimately none-too-threatening Death Curse, the only problem facing our twosome in the first book is an artist with magically induced amnesia. Perhaps Hara intends to up the stakes in later volumes -- we are told in the end by Viora that our duo needs to “hurry and notice before the entire world dies” -- but for the now The Witch of Artemis stands as an agreeable lightweight comic fantasy. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: sixty-minute manga # | |
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