No point at all

From the evidence of Final Crisis #1, it seems Grant Morrison doesn't know what a Lagrange point is.

Lagrange points (or libration points) are areas formed by the orbit of one body around another, positions in which gravitational forces are balanced so that things put at those points tend to stay there, relative to the other bodies of the orbital system. A celestial body by itself doesn't have "a Lagrange point" as such; you need two bodies in an orbital relationship. There isn't one Lagrange point in such an orbital system but five of them, all moving with the orbiting body in fixed relationships. This diagram should make it clearer than words alone could do:

The two bodies shown above could be the Sun and the Earth, or the Earth and the Moon. The Sun–Earth L4 and L5 points lie 60° ahead of and behind the Earth as it orbits the Sun; the Earth–Moon L4 and L5 points lie 60° ahead of and behind the Moon as it orbits the Earth. Because things put in libration points tend to stay in those positions relative to their bigger neighbors, they've been considered as potentially useful places to put space stations or other orbiting hardware. As it is, they tend to collect interplanetary dust.

Morrison seems to get that "Lagrange point" has some relationship with a planet's gravitational field, but the term doesn't quite make sense the way he uses it here. (He might instead have used a term like "the Lagrangian zone" to indicate "a spherical zone as far away from the planet as its Lagrangian points" or "out to the Trojan points" which is a more colloquial term for the L4 and L5 points.) The subsequent lines about "no one must enter or leave the gravity well" and "dust for radiation prints" are equally senseless for different reasons, except to reinforce the conceit of this being a cosmic police procedural, and to tip us off that none of this should be taken seriously.

It disappoints me when a writer I otherwise admire immensely devotes time and attention to promoting crackpot pseudoscientific drivel, Whitley Strieber UFO abduction books, and supposed Mayan astrological forecasts while not knowing real scientific concepts and terms. It's okay for him to throw in a misused word just because it sounds sciencetastic. After all, who would know what a scienceish word actually means? Unless you were a practitioner of scienceism or something.

Whirling transient nodes of thought careening thru a cosmic vapor of invention

I have no personal anecdotes or strange associations to relate, nothing special to say here. It's just that Blazing Saddles has always been of nearly religious significance in my family -- no, screw that, it was totally religious for us, no "nearly" about it, that movie is what my family followed instead of deity or church or religion. So the passing of another of its stars is something I must acknowledge with considerable regret and reluctance.

Even when Harvey Korman wasn't the actor doing the "funny" thing in a scene, he's still the center of attention, but without upstaging any of the other performers. See for instance here, but it's the case all throughout Blazing Saddles -- even when he's performing with Mel Brooks. The people around Hedley Lamarr are all insane, but it's his withering glare and icy putdowns that get the laughs. I don't know anything about acting, but it seems like he was was genuinely paying attention to the others in the scene with him, responding to them and not just waiting for his next funny line, and that's why those scenes work so well. In this film Korman pulled off one of the best comedic performances recorded on film, and I hope he's remembered for that (and a few dozen other times he did the same) instead of only as the guy who kept cracking up at Tim Conway on The Carol Burnett Show. That always bugged the hell out of me.

And I may be the only person who feels this way, but I'm also inordinately fond of his performance as Colonel Slaghoople in Viva Rock Vegas -- the second and infinitely superior live-action Flintstones movie -- a minor yet warmhearted role in which he gets a comedic bit that may be silly and completely throwaway but never fails to crack me up because of his perfect off-the-cuff delivery.

Also, he once performed a touching romantic scene with Bea Arthur.

War is a racket

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 34 years. Butler served during the Boxer Rebellion and saw action in Honduras, Nicaragua, Veracruz, commanded a base in France during the First World War, and led the Marine Expeditionary Force in China during the late Twenties.

On his death in 1940, Major General Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. He was one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor (since Butler's death, no one has received more than one Medal of Honor) and one of only three to be awarded both a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor, and the only person ever to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.

After retiring from the Marine Corps in 1931, Smedley Butler went on a national speaking tour. His standard speech was so well received that he prepared a longer version to be published as a small book in 1935. It also appeared as a condensed book in Reader's Digest. Here's the opening page of that book:



The text of War Is A Racket can be found here among several other places online.

Major General Butler was no misfit or wild-eyed radical, and his name is still honored by the U.S. Marine Corps to this day. The Marine Corps base in Okinawa is named after him. We can only speculate what his view of the Second World War might have been, because he died before America became involved. We know Butler was no admirer of Hitler or Mussolini, and he was a firm supporter of President Roosevelt. We can very easily guess what Major General Butler would make of the world now.

On a day like today, when Americans like to repeat comforting phrases about soldiers and the sacrifices they made, it's worth remembering that this man -- who clearly knew the business of war as well as any man of his time but held no illusions about what he had done and what it all meant -- turned around and said in no uncertain terms: to hell with War.

In honor of Mother's Day

On this special day we salute the world's most huggable industrialist. Tender as corned beef and warm as pastrami, her fondest ambitions are to see her enemies eaten by scorpions and to become Supreme Overlord of Earth. Whether making her robot oil with 10% more love than the next leading brand or rushing off to some charity BS for knocked-up teenaged sluts, Mom is one clever old skank. And don't you forget it!

Of course we all know and love Mom from her many heartwarming appearances on the television series Futurama but even her most devoted fans may not realize Mom has continued to enjoy a thriving career on television in the present day. Here's one interview she granted to a local affiliate back in December of last year, displaying all the folksy homespun charm and compassion she's always demonstrated as the head of Momcorp:



When asked for further comment, Mom replied "You call that a pressed ham? What is this moose drip? I'm sick of hearing about those turtle squirts! Jam a bastard in it, you crap! Shut your filthy trap!"

I am a clown, yet I am filled with indifference

For those of you who weren't fortunate enough to score a copy of Bongo Comics Free for All on Free Comic Book Day, nor saw this story when it appeared previously some time ago, enjoy The Simpsons manga courtesy of Chuck Dixon and the astoundingly wonderful Nina Matsumoto. There isn't a panel of this that isn't packed with awesome.

A losing play

My daydream goes something like this:

(RAB enters a tavern located somewhere in another state. Spying a patron not otherwise involved in activity or conversation, he approaches and doffs his hat.)

Me: Good day to you, sir. I am an avid supporter of a sporting team not local to this region and which has frequently competed against your own favored team.

Other person: Based on this statement, I assume that you may be a visitor to this area. If so, welcome to our community, my good fellow.

Me: My thanks. It is a lovely community and does yourself and your neighbors much credit. You know, I am firmly of the opinion that in their next encounter on the playing field, my preferred sporting team will best your preferred sporting team and emerge with the winning score.

Other person: Well, such an outcome is entirely possible. After all, both teams are composed of talented and dilligent players who will have trained extensively for the encounter...and of course one must never entirely discount the role of luck in determining the outcome of a given competition. However, bearing in mind these reservations, I remain of the opinion that in the event my own favored team will triumph, owing to their demonstrable skill and fortitude.

Me: A reasonable position. Watching their next encounter on the playing field shall be all the more enjoyable for me now. Should my expectations be vindicated, I shall enjoy the satisfaction of having correctly predicted the outcome of the game. On the other hand, should your prediction come to pass and your team achieves victory rather than mine, I will at least be able to take vicarious pleasure in the thought of you enjoying this vindication as I would have done.

Other person: So it would be safe to say there will be reward in the sporting event for both of us no matter what the outcome. I will enjoy my role as spectator even more for knowing this.

Me: As will I. Let us purchase and enjoy beverages together at this tavern in commemoration of our mutual respect in this matter.

Other person: Yes, let us.

(all exeunt)

That's my daydream. This isn't.

III. Conclusion

In which you will kindly recall that you asked me to write a convention recap. Well, at least one of you did. Don't blame me that it turned into another three-part epic no one is reading apart from my mother, and then only if there's nothing good on television tonight.

On Saturday evening, Lisa Hoppe and I attended the ReBoot panel (video here and doesn't it make my life easier not to have to recap all these panels when you can watch them for yourself) featuring series cocreator Gavin Blair and onetime producer Dan DiDio. This panel was for me what conventions are for. Not shilling things, not hype and press events and publicity for your big budget film, but seeing folks who are delighted to talk about something they had fun creating, and who are equally delighted to see how many people responded to it.

Dan DiDio in particular was a surprise. My close personal friend Gavin Blair -- by which I mean he once shook my hand and he signed my booklet, which is more than many of my so-called real life friends can say -- remarked afterward that comics people only get to see DiDio trying to promote the latest DC event under the scrutiny of his corporate employers, but the Dan DiDio he knows as friend and colleague is a completely different person. There was nothing to hype here, just a couple of guys reminiscing about this really cool thing they did a few years back...and it was obvious DiDio was having the time of his life telling those stories. If someone attended this panel without ever having seen or heard of ReBoot, that person would have left wanting to see the entire series right away, simply because Blair and DDio made their experiences working on it sound like so much fun.

That night saw a big dinner with the TwoMorrows/Kirby Museum crowd and Jack Kirby Collector contributor Mike Gartland, plus some sort of Philly art mafia consisting of Mike Manley, Jamar Nicholas, and Scott Cohn. Believe me, I am as shocked as you are that I got to sit with those guys. Have you seen their artwork? Go look: it's awesome. My presence there was solely because none of them knew me and generously assumed I had some right to be in their company. If only they knew.

Moving along to the last day of the convention, a few highlights...

Waiting for the Kirby: King of Comics panel to start, I ran into my actual real world friend Jeff Brady as well as JKC contributor and all-around swell guy Adam McGovern. They probably regretted sitting next to me when I heckled Mark Evanier about feral cats in his backyard. Also in attendance were several major participants in Kirby fandom, such as Harry Mendryk (whose own convention recap is much more informative than mine and has cool photos, so I encourage you all to check it out) and the shockingly erudite Atlas historian Michael Vassalo.

Sometime after the panel, I heard of one attendee grumbling that it had focused too much on the entire careers of guests Joe Sinnott and Dick Ayers and gave insufficient attention to Kirby. This strikes me as doubly mistaken. First, both offered a lot of praise for Jack and discussed the work they did embellishing his pencils, how they approached it and what it was like to work with him. Sinnott was particularly effusive in his love for Kirby; Ayers is less outspoken about it but the respect and warmth are there as well. More importantly -- look, I'm the big Kirby fanatic, right? Write a book about the guy, have a panel in his honor, mention his name in passing and I'm right there, as most bloggers learn all too quickly. But Sinnott and Ayers are still with us, their careers are worthy of attention, and I'd rather give them a standing ovation with both in front of us to enjoy it than only offering them praise at yet another memorial service.

I'm proud to be one of many at the con who personally congratulated Laura Hudson on her success at irritating those jerkwads at Virgin Comics. You can tell the worth of any journalist by the caliber of person she offends. To be called an "evil writer" can only be considered praise...because anyone who uses the phrase "evil writer" as a pejorative richly deserves offense. I told Laura to bear in mind the example of investigative reporter Wayne Barrett: on hearing former New York Senator Al D'Amato violently disparage him on television as a scandalmonger, a gutter journalist and worthless hack, Barrett beamed and declared it "better than winning a Pulitzer."

I was also glad to hook up my close personal friend George Khoury with a cheap source of Tom Strong action figure sets. A dealer was selling these at such a steep discount that having bought one I felt obliged to buy a bunch of other action figures from him simply to ease my feeling that I was taking unfair advantage. Yesterday at St. Marks Comics I saw the exact same set going for $44.99. I should have bought out the guy's whole stock. Around this same time, George and I got into a conversation with Erik Larsen about the original Fawcett version of Captain Marvel as compared with more recent interpretations, another of my favorite hobby horses. Okay, now I really am just dropping names...but Larsen is getting a lot of Gerber and Kirby work back into print as well as many other good comics, so if there's kissing up to be done I for one don't mind getting in that line.

As the convention wound down, I hung out for a while in Artists Alley with Richard Howell and his Claypool cohort Jesse Reyes, where my fatigued rambling was tolerated with characteristic graciousness by the always charming and civilized Carolyn Kelly. Carolyn was mercifully spared further babbling from me, however, when I went off to help John and Rand and Lisa pack up the TwoMorrows display before we all got hustled out by the Javits Center maintenance crew. When one of these shows ends they waste no time in letting you know you aren't welcome anymore. After loading up the van, a bunch of us went to dinner just off Times Square, and another convention weekend was over.

I feel as if the preceding entries have been just a big list of names, but that's what the whole convention experience is about for me. I don't go to buy stuff or see a lot of panels but rather to see people, so that's what I've recorded here. Although they were also at the con, I totally missed connecting with Sean Witzke and Jog and Neilalien and the returning favorite Redhead Fangirl. Dammit! There's always something you didn't manage to do.

II. Consolation

In which the author is moved to contemplate human mortality.

The Steve Gerber memorial panel on Saturday is covered extensively here and here sparing any need for yet another recap. From the world of comics there was Mark Evanier, Gail Simone, Paul Levitz, Buzz Dixon, Marty Pasko (who delivered the single funniest line of the event), and Hildy Mesnik (a coworker with Steve at Sunbow Productions on the G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons), as well as Steve's brother Michael Gerber and Steve's daughter Samantha, and finally (and most surprisingly) Steve's writing collaborator on Omega the Unknown and Hard Time Mary Skrenes, not known for attending conventions or interacting with fans. After the memorial, I had a brief chat with the charming Hildy Mesnik, who was also an editor at Marvel in the early Nineties, and with Len Wein, who seems not to have aged even slightly in the nearly twenty years since I last saw him at a convention.

The Legion of Super-Heroes panel in honor of their fiftieth anniversary -- that really just does not sound right, no matter how technically accurate it may be -- is discussed here, including a link to a full podcast so you can hear the whole thing for yourself. As moderator, Peter Sanderson left me uncertain as to whether or not he's actually ever read a Legion comic...but Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen were both lively and entertaining nonetheless, while current series editor Mike Marts was a bit more reserved and was disinclined to reveal anything about the future of the series other than stating that Jim Shooter was sticking around for the long haul. It would have been a much more lively and possibly contentious panel if Shooter himself had been present, but he skipped the con altogether for reasons as yet undisclosed...

Paul jolted me a little by naming a couple of my old friends from Legion fandom back in the Seventies as two people he particularly enjoyed hearing from; he also gave a namecheck to the original founders of the old Legion Fan Club in the letters pages of Superboy way back when. This combined with the reminiscences of the Gerber memorial panel contributed to a feeling of creeping nostalgia...or if not nostalgia per se, at least a sense of passing time. Like revisiting your old grade school or seeing the summer house where you spent your vacations decades later, it's not a desire to be young again -- who'd want that? -- but a feeling that being so far away from your past makes you somehow bigger. Your life occupies a bigger volume in spacetime than it used to. The years seem shorter because each year represents an increasingly smaller percentage of your total lifespan to date than they did when you were twelve.

I'd been looking forward to the Grant Morrison spotlight...but I ducked out of the packed hall shortly after the deliberately over-the-top and very entertaining intro was screened. The truth is, after the Gerber panel it just didn't sit right. Morrison made a concerted effort -- as he says in so many words; see the above-linked video -- to become a rock star of comics, a pop culture icon and media celebrity, to create this aura of glamour around himself previously unknown to comic book writers. (Neil Gaiman, his only rival in this achievement, is a special case.) He set out to do this and succeeded admirably and of course it's a sound decision in terms of his career. But at that particular moment, I didn't feel any pressing need to be in that audience.

Coming out of the panel I headed for the convention center cafeteria on the lower level, where someone unexpectedly called my name. It was Jon Browne, proprietor of They Walk Among Us, an outstanding comics shop in the London borough of Richmond for the past 18 years. I've often held up TWAU as the perfect example of a comics retailer who gets it right -- by presenting a welcoming and friendly environment, by diversifying stock to include a wide variety of toys and games and memorabilia, and mainly (as Jon is quick to point out) by an iron-jawed tenacity in sticking it out through lean times. I'd encourage any retailer to follow their lead, but I suspect the main lesson they'd have to offer is "work harder!"

We discussed the recent death of Steve Whitaker, who introduced me to Jon and his wife shortly after the store opened. Like me, Jon had also fallen out of touch with Whitko, in their case when the latter moved away from London...and had only just reestablished contact with him online a mere six days before he died. We also talked about happier things, like how the shop is doing and a number of celebrity customers who shop there.

After a while it was time to get in line for the Venture Bros panel, so I made my farewell to Jon and went off in that general direction. Last year the VB panel was one of the highlights of the weekend, but a line had started forming an hour before it began...and it had received a lot of publicity and was sure to be even more crowded this year. I'd been telling people that turning up more than an hour in advance was not uncalled for and I was all set to heed my own advice -- but. En route I ran into one Roz Kaveney, who at one time many years ago was very nearly my editor when I was very nearly a writer. She invited me to join herself and a friend for coffee, so I found myself heading straight back to the cafeteria. From now on, if anyone ever says "but you've never bought coffee for a transgendered former civil servant who works in British non-governmental organisations and writes scholarly tomes on teen movies and Buffy the Vampire Slayer" I'll be able to say "don't be silly, of course I have."

This was definitely worth being late to the line for the Venture Bros panel...but it had ceased to be any sort of line and was instead a confused heaving mass. Way more people had turned up than the hall outside the panel rooms could contain, and it tested the convention staffers on their crowd control abilities. They handled the situation smartly, moving the panel to another room three times the size of the room it was scheduled in -- even then, it was standing room only once more -- and everything got under way peacefully if twenty minutes late. A good recap of the panel can be found here (along with coverage of the Battlestar Galactica and Moonlight panels if those are your cup of coffee as well).

Something I haven't seen get quite the coverage it deserves. According to my close personal friend Lance Festerman -- that is to say, I spoke to him once for about two minutes, but I think there was a real bond formed between us and I'm sure we could totally hang out together and talk about stuff -- who was running the convention for the first time this year, NYCC had 15,000 more attendees this year over the previous year. I'll assume that's accurate pending evidence to the contrary. Yet we saw little of the traffic congestion and overcrowding of the past two years...partly because of the increased space available, but also partly due to better coordination and planning. The Venture Bros-related pileup was the only major issue I witnessed, and it was cleared up pretty quickly. I know a few people who swore off attending after last year, but this time was a lot more comfortable.

And next year I'm not going to commit to doing one of these goddamn post-con writeups no matter how much you beg me. Next: Lo, there shall come an ending!

I. Contumely

In which many names will be named.

Almost as soon as I arrived at the Javits Center for NYCC 2008, Rand Hoppe of the Kirby Museum introduced me to John Morrow, who'd travelled up from North Carolina along with Jim Amash to staff the TwoMorrows Publishing table. As previously mentioned, even though the Kirby Museum wasn't sharing space with TwoMorrows at NYCC this year, that table remained my default rendezvous point: the place I told everyone to look for me if I couldn't be found anywhere else and the first place I looked for other folks.

I also spent a good bit of time hanging out with Mike Philips and Tim Callahan of Sequart Research and Literacy Center -- publishers of Teenagers From The Future, the epic collection of essays about the Legion of Super-Heroes that sold out its entire preview run before the weekend was over. I was lucky to score a copy at the rate they were flying away.

Totally by chance while I was still scoping out the show floor, I ran into Gavin "Gavok" Jasper of 4th Letter (though apparently he slept through meeting me), and the following day I also met David Brothers of 4L when he stopped by the Sequart table. They're both every bit as cool and personable as one would expect from reading their blog. I also had the fortune to spend time with Patrick Meaney and Rob Kelly, however statistically unlikely it was that any of us would cross paths that way. My long term plan is to get all four of these guys doing work for Sequart and/or TwoMorrows so that hooking up with them will be much simpler at future conventions. It's all about who you know...

The multi-talented Thom Zahler was almost directly opposite the Sequart table, and one of my stated goals for the con had been to pick up a full set of his really very wonderful Love and Capes comic series. Later this year, IDW is going to release a collection in trade paperback form: a much more convenient form for gift-giving if you happen to know anyone who might enjoy a) warm-hearted romance with a comedic superhero motif sometimes compared to The Incredibles and b) receiving gifts.

I missed the screening of Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist but made it to the Will Eisner panel with producer Jon B. Cooke (who turns out to display previously unsuspected gifts as a panel moderator, and future convention organizers are encouraged to make use of him in this capacity), the film's director Andrew Cooke, Paul Levitz, Mike Uslan, Mark Evanier, and Will's nephew Carl Gropper. Gropper was probably the most interesting panelist for his family perspective on having Eisner for a relative. There was also plenty of discussion about Eisner the visionary genius who saw the comic book page as a unique graphic entity unto itself and not merely a vehicle for reprinting comic strip panels, and Eisner the unusually shrewd businessman (according to Levitz, rivalled only by Joe Simon and Joe Kubert in that respect). I still regret missing that film, though.

Later in the day, my actual close personal friend (as opposed to the countless people I refer to as "close personal friends" but who are in fact complete strangers or at best passing acquaintances who would barely recognize me under most circumstances) Richard Howell put me on the trail of Peter Sanderson, who was facing a last-minute cancellation by an intended member of his Legion of Super-Heroes panel the following day. I had a good idea of someone who could fill that gap, and spent a lot more time than I probably ought to have done trying to track down all the involved parties and get them on the same page.

It all turned out to be for nothing -- Peter found someone else to fill in -- but to be honest, I enjoyed the temporary excitement all the same. A few years ago I found work as roadie and guitar tech for a rock group simply because I was tired of watching gigs from the audience. Standing there with nothing to do but watch always made me feel antsy; I only ever wanted to be backstage, sorting out minor emergencies behind the scenes so the show could run smoothly. By the same token, I don't feel comfortable just passively attending a convention; I like to have a problem that needs solving.

In fact, I might as well admit it: I'm the one who stopped Jim Shooter from attending NYCC this year, just so he'd miss the Legion panel and I could run around all afternoon trying to line up a replacement for him. I'm so ashamed of myself.

Next: Death be not proud!

Tuesday evening coming down

And so another New York Comic Con comes to a close. Funnily enough, I've spent some of my free time since the con ended shopping for comics. Yeah, I know, right? But there's a reason for it.

My friend Howard, the Henchman 21 to my Henchman 24 if you will*, went into the hospital for emergency surgery last week, as I briefly hinted in my previous post. There were complications and he's been through a rough time of it. But I finally received word that Howard was doing a lot better and, although he's still not up to receiving visitors, he wanted me to get him some reading material to pass the time. I didn't see this last message until late Sunday night...that is to say, just after three whole days during which I was surrounded by dealers eager to sell me their comic books at low, low prices. If only I'd thought of it at the time, I could have got a huge stack of comics right there. Complete with autographs for the sick boy in hospital. That would have been lovely. Not to mention a prerelease copy of Teenagers from the Future before they all sold out.

But I didn't, so I hit the comic shops to get the books he wanted (Dynamite Entertainment's Lone Ranger and Project Superpowers and the latest Buffy) plus some others I hope he'll find entertaining (my chance to make him read Patton Oswalt's brilliant JLA: Welcome to the Working Week has come at last). Howard keeps up with the current titles a lot more than I do, so this means for a change I'll actually be hitting the shop every Wednesday and scoring his weekly fix for him until he's back on his feet.

Hey, it's the least I can do for a guy who keeps a complete set of Legion of Super-Heroes action figures on display next to an open window, hoping a stray bolt of lightning will transform him into the Composite Superman.

I'm working on a writeup of the convention, but I've also got a backlog of messages to catch up on so please bear with me a day or two longer.

* Or am I the 21 to his 24? It's a tough call. On the one hand I'm the thinner one and he's the one with the bigger collection of geeky memorabilia...but I'm also the more emotional one whereas he's the more grounded and efficient one. **

** No, I am not saying he's the husband and I'm the wife. That kind of talk is childish, not to mention sexist, and has no place among adults. Quite frankly I'm surprised you even thought such a thing.

Now these points of data make a beautiful line

Jonathan Coulton's song for the video game Portal is lovely all by itself, but this tribute to the Amiga computer -- animated on an Amiga 4000T -- takes it to an even higher level. (Even more so if you know the context of the song in the game.)



Read the comments at the above link to understand the regard in which the Amiga platform is still held by hardcore computer graphics geeks. I am neither a hardcore computer graphics geek nor a video gamer, but I can enjoy good geek humor and good animation when it's put in front of me.

And like I say, the song is great by itself. (Lyrics here.)

This post is for Howard, as soon as he has a chance to read it.

Stan Lee even called to remind me

As various people have noted, the New York Comic Con begins Friday.

New York may not yet have the repute or high profile of San Diego, but if this year's guest list is anything to go by, that won't be the case much longer. And you thought last year was overstuffed! We're moving from "finally a major comics industry event in New York again" to "another multimedia showcase promoting Hollywood that pushes aside the comics people, sending them in search of smaller events" with remarkable speed. Two years ago it was all about the comics, man.

That said, it's certainly been a major event of the year for me over the past couple of years and this year will be the same poignant combination of joy and heartbreak as always. Since some folks have expressed an interest in my plans, I thought I'd post a quick rundown here.

To start with, I'll be there all three days. My name badge lists "Estoreal" as my company affiliation -- apart from anything else, this is the only way Redhead Fangirl can recognize me from year to year -- so if you spot a debonair stranger with a certain reckless charm wearing a badge that mentions this blog, feel free to say hello. I always have time for my public.

I originally expected to spend most of my time at the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center table -- this has always been the best way to meet everyone at a convention, since everyone stops by to visit sooner or later -- but it turns out we won't have one this year. Instead, Rand Hoppe will be helping out at the TwoMorrows Publishing table, so chances are good I'll be hanging around there instead.

I'll also be stopping by the Sequart.com table, as they'll be showing off copies of Teenagers From The Future, the Legion of Super-Heroes anthology edited by the rugged yet urbane Timothy Callahan. If you want, I'll even sign your copy...if Tim says I can.

The one panel event I expect to be attending on Friday is a screening of the Will Eisner documentary at noon, and the discussion afterward. On Saturday, there's the Steve Gerber memorial panel, and the Legion of Super-Heroes panel, the Grant Morrison spotlight, and the Venture Bros panel which was such a highlight last year, and then the ReBoot panel...

I'm going to be totally burned out when this weekend is over.

Sweet food of knowledge

1. I so wanted this to be true:



(via Serious Eats)


2. Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.

"Caffeine appears to block several of the disruptive effects of cholesterol that make the blood-brain barrier leaky," said Dr Jonathan Geiger, who led the study. "High levels of cholesterol are a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, perhaps by compromising the protective nature of the blood brain barrier. Caffeine is a safe and readily available drug and its ability to stabilise the blood brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders."

And I really hope this one is true. I make a lot of jokes about getting old and my memory failing and does anyone else remember The Amazing Three because that was a very strange cartoon and what was I just saying a moment ago? But the reason I make such jokes is that my family history contains more than a few examples of dementia and it's something that scares the crap out of me. But I also drink coffee.



(via Daring Fireball)


3. Finally, an ad jingle for Rice Krispies by The Rolling Stones, circa 1964:



(via The New Yorker)

Jim Mooney

Jim Mooney interviewed by Chris Knowles:

Certainly I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about the nine years I spent on Supergirl. First of all, it was a strip that wasn't terribly challenging. After a while, you were pretty much doing the same thing over and over. The other thing I didn't like about it was, before that I was doing some stuff for DC, House of Mystery and so on, in a much more sophisticated style. When I started on Supergirl, Mort Weisinger insisted it had to be what he considered the "house style." It had to look the way he wanted it, which was much simpler than the way I'd been drawing previously. So, I was pretty much fenced in by that particular requirement that Mort had. If I changed my style at all, he'd call me into his office and say, "What are you trying to do, make a million bucks? Do you have somebody ghosting for you?" I said, "No, I was just trying something a little different." He said, "Well, don't! Draw it the way you were drawing it before."

Steve Gerber interviewed by Dan Best:

I first became aware of Jim Mooney without even knowing that the person drawing it was Jim. That’d be Tommy Tomorrow back in Action Comics in the mid ‘50s. With the Planeteers in their purple and red Bermuda shorts. I first became aware of him at DC in one of Mort Weisinger’s letter columns. They were having a vote for a new hair-style for Supergirl and in the lead up Mort wrote that the drawings were all done by Supergirls’ regular artist, Jim Mooney. Then all of a sudden it was, Oh, that’s who this guy is! He’s been drawing this stuff for ten years and I’ve been loving it as a kid and now I know who it is.

Omega was a departure for Jim, although it had all of the elements that made a strip like Supergirl really appealing. The way he drew kids was just remarkable. I’m sure that an editor brought up his name and I agreed to it immediately of course, but I don’t recall the exact process of his selection. We did have a lot of phone conversations and I liked him a hell of a lot, he’s a wonderful guy to talk to and he really understood what Mary (Skrenes) and I were going for with Omega, and what I was trying to do with Man-Thing. He was a very, very perceptive artist with a keen appreciation of story.

Above, just a couple of my favorite sequences by Jim Mooney. However he may have felt about working on Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes for Mort Weisinger, he still managed to do some exceptional work...and Gerber was exactly right in seeing a direct line from the strengths of that earlier work to his later accomplishments with Omega and Man-Thing and Son of Satan and even to his final work for Claypool Comics.

Yet another of life's little disappointments

Wow, I really don't know what to...oh. Branson. I read too quickly. Dammit.

But really, can you blame them? Imagine the house Richard Branson bought for his mother. Now think of what Jesus put his mom through. Which one would you rather have for a son?

(Read the original here.)

The first cut won't hurt at all, the second only makes you wonder

Steve Whitaker 1955-2008

Whitko was the first person I ever knew who was as crazy as I was about Kirby's Fourth World and Gerber's Omega the Unknown. He helped me find a flat in London that was walking distance from his place in Twickenham. Before that I must have stayed at his place ninety times. (So you see why he was so keen to help me find a place of my own.) He wasn't born in London and he didn't die in London...but he loved that city and simply walking down the street with him was an education in the history and customs and noumena of the place. Everyone wanted to be near him for the endless stream of learning and knowledge he had to share.

Others at the link above have more to say.

I am so totally fucking sick of death right now.

Sing me a song that was a hit before your mother was born

Well, maybe not that long ago.

Over on Will Shetterly's blog I recalled a political campaign music video from a few months ago that deserves to be more widely seen, even if the unfortunate candidate himself is long gone from the Presidential race. It isn't often I've gone back to watch a campaign spot more than once simply to enjoy the music! The retro-pop animation also grabs me:



As I mentioned in my comment to Will, I wasn’t one of this guy's supporters…but if I’d seen this immediately before stepping into the booth, it would have been hard to avoid voting for him.

What's that? You say you want a younger, fresher candidate? Or perhaps you'd just like to supplement the Lennon song with an equally cool McCartney number? Behold the future:



More details about this precocious troubadour here.

These are two of the best Beatles covers I know of. Julie Taymor, eat your heart out!

The night after you saved the universe

"Plants are like people. Writers are like plants. Therefore, and this may come as a surprise, writers are like people. Given them light, water, nourishment, a comfortable pot and an encouraging world and they'll grow."

-- Steve Gerber, Howard the Duck #16

A couple of years ago, Steve wrote a blog post thanking a group of friends who helped him move into his new apartment. With characteristic self-effacement, he said:

Why I have people like these around me is a mystery. Nobody could be nice enough to have earned their friendship, least of all myself. Somehow, I got very, very lucky.

To which I had to reply:

You know, this turns out not to be the case.

Turn back the calendar to the Spring of 1976 and see an overenthusiastic teenager attending one of his first comic book conventions, excited beyond all description because his favorite comic book writer is going to be there in person. Said writer — who at that time was enjoying prominence and attention equivalent to what an Alan Moore or a Grant Morrison possess today — took a table in the dealer’s room and made himself available to anyone who wanted to chat with him. Said teenager remembers spending pretty much the entire day at that table, and not being shooed away by said writer or being put in his place for asking endless naive and eager questions about Omega, the Defenders, Starhawk, Howard, and all the other pressing topics of the day.

Instead, at the end of the day, you thanked me for being interested in your work. To top it off, you even gave me a free “Howard The Duck for President” campaign badge — even though you were selling them at the convention — as, so you said, “a token of your gratitude.” I left that day knowing that while I may have been totally obnoxious and wanting to hog all your time, you still made me feel like I had done you a favor rather than vice versa.

Some of my later encounters with favorite comics creators were much less pleasant…but these weren’t as upsetting as they might have been, because I always had you as an example of how a truly classy person behaves. Years later I ended up working at Marvel and a few other comics publishers…and though it all, I always remembered meeting you as proof that someone in this business could demonstrate class and respect for others; the rock star ego trip was not inevitable. And whenever I’ve gotten praise for my own writing, I’ve always tried to emulate the example you set.

Nowadays, the mere fact of this blog is evidence that you’re still the same guy who’s willing to be honest and accessible even with strangers, and that you still care about making people feel appreciated. And I’m forced to assume that the folks who’ve known you in person all these years see the same thing. I’m just saying, is all.

I was fortunate enough to see Steve again at two other conventions here in New York before he moved west, but it was a much bigger thrill many years later to start corresponding with him when Steve was briefly a member of the Jack Kirby Discussion Group. Our correspondence was about non-comics stuff -- mainly to do with depression, relationship issues, why we both loathed Florida with a passion -- so I fell into the unbelievable position of regarding Steve simultaneously as an impossibly distant childhood idol, an approachable real life hero and role model, and a regular guy with whom I discussed regular guy stuff. In those e-mails I never mentioned having met him all those years ago nor what an impression he made on me as a thirteen-year-old, feeling he'd be uncomfortable with gushing hero worship. I kept quiet about it for a long time...and I'll always be glad I finally took the opportunity to tell him what that formative experience meant to me. I'm glad I had the chance to know him not only as an icon but as a person, though it means I'm feeling the loss of both right now.

(Who else in life do we know at first as gods, then as heroes, then as all-too-fallible mortals, then at last -- if we're lucky -- as friends? I think we usually only have that full gamut of relationships with our own parents. Which would explain why it feels as if I'd lost another parent.)

Also a couple of years ago, I wrote an appreciation of Omega the Unknown that says more than I can bring myself to say right now about just how much Steve did for me with his work and by the example he set.

(Thanks to magnetgirl for the button illo at top.)

Goodbye, Steve

Right now, there are no words.

Transitions

I'm still on a severely reduced blogging schedule, but a couple of things have happened that deserve at least a quick mention.

One regrettable development on the political landscape: as of the start of February, fomer Superman writer Elliot Maggin has called off his bid for Congress this year.

I previously mentioned Maggin's congressional ambitions here, and I was always hoping to find some way of supporting his campaign which somehow didn't involve large sums of money that I don't possess...but his reasons for terminating his candidacy are unassailable. I hope he'll try again someday, and I hope he'll succeed, because that would be amazingly cool.

And while we're on the subject of icons from my childhood, a fond farewell to Barry Morse. I know he had a proper serious acting career on stage and screen from the 1930s up to the present and might wish to be remembered for something more than one supporting role from the mid-Seventies...but back in the day I was endlessly fascinated by Space: 1999 and he was my favorite part of that show. If I'd been just a bit older I'd remember him from The Fugitive with David Janssen instead.

Anyway...for decades Morse was one of those actors who seemed to work nonstop, always bringing a touch of class and professionalism to small or supporting roles. His Wikipedia entry points out that "Morse was perhaps the only actor to have performed in every play of William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw" and also that he did charitable work in support of Parkinson's disease sufferers in honor of his late wife. That cause is very close to my heart as well, so I'm going to say he was a good guy and I'm happy to have been a fan of his work.

They all hate us anyhow

Anyone interested in seeing a discussion of the current Democratic primaries without all the tired horse race and boxing match metaphors used by television pundits should have a look at this post by former mock television pundit A. Whitney Brown (formerly of Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show for those of you not old enough to remember that far back) wondering how to make sure his vote counts. Definitely don't skip the comments thread: Brown's post itself is really more of a request for further discussion of the questions he raises...and what ensues is one of the most thoughtful and even-tempered online discussions I've ever seen, particularly among a bunch of political junkies. Plenty of good observations and sound reasoning on display from supporters of all the Democratic candidates, not to mention those who are supporters of none in particular and are still looking for the right choice to make. Given how heated this primary season has become between supporters of Clinton and Obama in particular, it's heartening to see a bunch of people sharing their views in a genuine attempt to reason out the best course.

But, you might say, you prefer your political discourse in musical form? Then enjoy this performance by Randy Newman at the end of this year's Macworld Expo keynote address, as introduced by Steve Jobs. There's a slight glitch in the video at the halfway point but nothing is missing.



Even I as a shameless Mac partisan have my gripes about Apple and Steve Jobs from time to time, but what other corporate CEO would have the balls to close his appearance at the company's biggest annual PR event with such pointed satirical commentary? People who only know Randy Newman from his film scores or that song from Toy Story may be surprised...but anyone familiar with Newman's work before that will know better.

Sigh

This relentless warfare of Clinton versus Obama has claimed two more bystanders: now John Hodgman and I are at one another's throats. By which I mean, we had a civil exchange of slightly differing views.

It is surely time, as Lincoln said in his second Inaugural address, to bind up the nation's wounds and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Or perhaps I exaggerate.

I can only hope Mr. Hodgman knows I love him more than ten Justin Longs.

Update: A small correction to the above has been posted. An object lesson (if one were needed) that we should never blindly accept a second- or third-hand account of events, even when coming from a generally well-informed source such as John Hodgman, without attempting further verification.

That is all.

Sick daze

Apologies for my extended absence, but I'm still getting over a bout of viral pneumonia that put me out of commission for most of the past three weeks. From what I'm seeing on other people's blogs it looks like this or something milder but similar has been making the rounds all over, and it's been no fun at all. I still feel like crap, I still have to take six different medicines to combat all the symptoms, and I'm still hacking up large quantities of phlegm at highly inopportune moments, but I'm in better shape than I was a few days ago.

As soon as I'm back to fighting strength...I'm still going to be on a reduced blogging schedule for a while. I fell way behind schedule on all my assignments while I was nonfunctional, and I'll need to make up for all that lost time as quickly as I can. It's a full plate waiting for me, once my appetite comes back.

In the meantime, here are some links of interest I've come across today:

I sincerely believe Marc-Oliver Frisch has discovered precisely where mainstream comics went wrong this year in this collection of particularly telling quotes. Can you spot the common theme?

Jim Shelley offers a year-ending recap of The Top Ten Digital Comic News Stories of 2007. People could spare themselves much frustration in life if they'd just broaden their horizons and try to learn about something beyond their own narrow field of endeavor. The comics industry seems determined to repeat every single mistake made by the recording industry with regard to digital distribution because they never bothered to find out how poorly those strategies worked out for the record labels, who are in the process of retreating from subscription models and onerous DRM even as we speak.

The Fortress Keeper writes the rebuttal I would like to have written if I had the strength and if I'd seen the offending lazy remark in the first place.

Have an excellent New Year, folks, and I'll be back when I'm up to it.

Toying with Kirby

With Christmas shopping in full swing, and inspired by a discussion with Jon K over at Jon’s Random Acts of Geekery, here are some pictures from the Big Jim’s P.A.C.K. line of toys featuring box art by none other than Jack Kirby!



And another shot showing the fourth figure in the series visible inside the box:



Ah yes, those were the days...back when Mattel made high-quality merchandise and didn’t expose children to high quantities of lead from Chinese factories. Or if they did, we were none the worse for it. I played with Mattel toys like Big Jim all through my childhood and it did me no harm whatsoever, other than an uncontrollable urge to eat paint chips.

Obviously these boxes have no art credits, and other artists did the packaging for later additions to the line, so precise attribution is a matter of opinion. However, looking at these I feel pretty confident in asserting these four boxes are the ones Kirby drew. Compare them to his published comics work of the same period (say, his last few issues of Kamandi) and you’ll see the same techniques and even the same drawing errors!

Kirby did a few other art jobs for Mattel prior to this, and about a decade later produced some designs for the Kenner Super Powers toy line. In all likelihood Kirby could have made better money doing this kind of work full-time than he did in comics, but Kirby saw himself as a storyteller -- essentially, a writer who just happened to draw the stories he wrote -- rather than a commercial artist.

Looking at comics from 1975 or 1976 you may come across this ad for the toy line, sometimes mistakenly attributed to Kirby but actually the work of illustrator William Stout, who rendered it in a Kirby-derived style after asking the King’s permission.

Images found at http://www.big-jim.eu.

Solidarity

I was a little surprised the WGA East Rally in Washington Square Park on Tuesday didn't receive more media coverage, even locally. What little mention it got on the news here was almost entirely focused on the quasi-campaign appearance by John Edwards. There were about a dozen camera crews set up in front of the podium to record his appearance for various news outlets...and as soon as he finished, most of them packed up their gear and left quickly while the next speaker was talking.

The thing of it was, Edwards was far from being the only interesting person there. Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show acted as emcee, opening the rally proceedings and wrapping the whole thing up at the end. Other celebrities addressing the crowd were Tim Robbins, Danny Glover, Gilbert Gottfried, and Colin Quinn. As a political groupie I was excited by the presence of our congressmen Anthony Weiner and Jerrold Nadler and Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer. I may be a minority voice there. To get a sense of how celebrity-filled the turnout was, you can watch an excellent star-studded video of rally highlights (highly recommended) and read a couple of representative eyewitness accounts here and here.

All around there were people who looked as if they must be famous and I ought to know them but no one I could identify easily.  It was fairly easy to tell the SAG actors who were there in sympathy apart from the writers, though: the successful actors all dressed down and looked scruffy (to show they were still regular folks) while the writers all dressed up and looked well groomed (to show they weren't desperate).  Not realizing the dress code in advance, I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, ripped jeans, and had stubble, so presumably at some point I was mistaken for someone trying to look like an actor.  Or a guy looking to score weed in the park who didn't know there was a rally planned.

I've previously mentioned my sympathy with the Writers Strike, so I was thrilled to be a tiny part of it. I got there well before the rally started and as a result I ended up at the front of the crowd, about three feet away from the presidential candidate (and all the other speakers) with no one between me and the platform. Isn't the Secret Service supposed to prevent something like that? But I wasn't there to gawk at Edwards. Well, okay, maybe a little. (I also saw Barack Obama up close when he did a campaign stop in Washington Square Park a couple of months ago, so there's always the possibility in the future I might get to tell someone else's grandchildren "I got to see him before he became president...") But really I was there just to help the crowd be nice and big, to show how much we New Yorkers value our endangered television and film writers. For one thing, if the strike isn't resolved they'll all start writing for Marvel and DC and none of the rest of us will ever get a chance.

Anyway, I had this idea for a little visual gag to do in this post. To show I was really there, I went looking for some photo of the rally in which the camera was pointed roughly in the direction where I was standing. I'd post it with a caption saying something to the effect of "I'm that out-of-focus blur in the distance" or "You could see me here if only that tree wasn't in the way." Side-splitting humor in the finest tradition of Estoreal, right? But when I looked at photos on the WGA East website for a suitable picture, I came across this one:



Can we just zoom in on that for a second?



Yep, that's me, immortalized by the WGA, representing...um...peripatetic freelance comic scripters and comics history essayists out in support of our screenwriting brethren. Don't mention it, guys, I know you'd do the same for us.

Con text

A comics convention turns out to have a lot in common with a New York City public park. One difference is that you meet a lot more crazy people at a convention.

This past weekend was the Big Apple Con in Manhattan, and once again I joined my friends Rand and Lisa Hoppe to promote the Jack Kirby Museum the same way we did at the HOWL Festival in Tompkins Square Park back in September.

Visiting British hack Rich Johnston describes the con:

"A hundredth the size of the San Diego and NYCC events, yet with a decent guest list and a critical mass of people and attention. Where else would you see S Clay Wilson and Rodney Ramos sitting together? Or someone who once played a stormtrooper sitting next to Val Kilmer? Where suddenly without warning on Saturday, Neal Adams shows up as a surprise...Basically it was a British comics convention in the USA."

I've been to a few conventions in the UK, and that's an apt comparison. It was intimate enough that no one felt overwhelmed...including the guests, who got to have decent conversations with fans in a normal human way. No one, fan or pro, seemed to experience the terrible crush of "where am I supposed to be in five minutes ago got to get out of here I need to touch base with you you and you and has the panel started yet?" that can make one of these things a relativistic blur.

The Kirby Museum ended up just one table away from no less than Sergio Aragones, who walked in, set up his own table, and then sat down to draw pretty much nonstop for the rest of the weekend as a steady stream of fans, friends, and colleagues stopped by to pay their regards. If you wanted to see everyone at the convention including all the comics pros in attendance without making any effort, there was no better place to sit than in direct sight of his table.

It was a good thing we didn't have the table next to Sergio, or the flow of traffic would have prevented anyone from reaching the Kirby display. Instead, the table between us and Sergio was occupied by a guy named Mark Evanier. Which couldn't have been more appropriate placement, really, as Mark was in town not only to sign copies of Groo with Sergio -- as well as discussing their future collaborations -- but also in connection with his own upcoming book on Kirby.

During the three days of the convention, Rand Hoppe was acting in his capacity as museum curator in borrowing original Kirby art from dealers and collectors in attendance to make high-quality scans for the museum archives. Speaking as a hardcore Kirby fan, looking at this original art from New Gods and The Demon and Kamandi with Mark -- who had last seen some of those same pages more than thirty years ago as they came off Kirby's drawing board -- and hearing his anecdotes about those pages, how they were drawn, the minor spelling corrections and touch-ups he made...well, that was pretty damn great.

But for all that I enjoyed our chats, I think Mark would forgive me saying that the nicest person I met during the weekend was an artist named Carolyn Kelly, who happens to be the daughter of Pogo creator Walt Kelly, as well as a terrific person in general. Occasionally you're fortunate enough to meet someone who has the quality of being totally present in a conversation, someone whose manner says implicitly "I am giving this conversation with you my full attention because I see you as a fellow human being whose opinions matter" and makes the other party feel very special and rewarded. Talking with Ms. Kelly for five minutes made me feel as if we were old pals, and I'm sure a lot of people felt the same way.

As is always the case at conventions, I spent way too much time talking with Richard Howell -- no stranger to being mentioned on this blog but apparently a stranger to reading it, to judge from his reaction of "You have a blog? I didn't know you had a blog," when I asked his thoughts on my comments about his webcomic Deadbeats a while back. (Richard, if you ever see this, those comments can be found here...but it isn't anything I haven't said to you already.)

Other notable visitors to our table included Jim Salicrup (who was my editor at one time), Peter Sanderson, and official Friend of the Kirby Museum Danny Fingeroth, author of Superman On The Couch and Disguised As Clark Kent though the world may know him better as a former writer of Dazzler. Perhaps outshining all of these notables was the arrival of Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, a comic industry historian and archivist widely considered the world's foremost authority on Atlas -- the company run by Stan Lee in the Fifties previously called Timely, but subsequently to be known better as Marvel Comics -- and a friend of mine on the Kirby Mailing List since its inception more than a decade ago. Doc V has his practice in Manhattan (I've even known people who were his patients!) but we'd never met in person until this weekend. Through the good doctor, I was also introduced to fellow list members Nick Caputo and Barry Pearl. When painter, comics artist, and Kirby scholar James Romberger (who curated the HOWL Festival) joined us, this was the largest gathering of Kirby-L participants in quite some time.

So that's me dropping names promiscuously. What else, you ask? The Kirby Museum display had pretty much exactly the same promotional materials and merchandise on hand -- basically, whatever was left over from September -- and as you may remember me saying at the start, the two experiences had a lot in common. Our visitors here included many more comics pros; that was different.

At the convention we had a few more of the intense sort of fan with strongly held opinions, rehearsed over and over again in their own heads, and maybe not so much experience talking about their views with others in a social environment...so you end up as the captive audience for an extended diatribe on how, for example, if he had lived Kirby would have sued to keep those Fantastic Four movies from ever being made. (To which we replied that Kirby was certainly more interested in seeing movies made from new ideas; both Silver Star and Captain Victory started life as film treatments. A way of "agreeing" without actually, you know, agreeing.) Or fervent denunciations of Stan Lee. (Which we answered by pointing out how Stan elevated the credits for artists and writers at Marvel beyond anything other comics publishers had ever done, and built them all up as celebrities in his letters pages and Bullpen Bulletins.) People like these simply want to be heard and acknowledged without interruption, every bit as much as the guy in the park with detailed explanation of precisely how the Bilderberg Group caused 9/11.

(Great, now I'm going to get more Google hits for that than anything else I just said.)

Other than that...exactly the same types of people in the same percentages stopped by our table in both locations. The serious knowledgeable comics fans. The bemused parents whose children were attracted by familiar Kirby characters like the FF and the X-Men and the Hulk. The bemused children dragged along by parents who wanted to show their kids what comics they read when they were young. The folks who knew nothing about comics themselves but had a relative in the business. The ones who'd never heard of Kirby. The ones who only cared about Kirby and didn't like any other comics. In Tompkins Square Park or the Big Apple Con, they come to our table, take our postcards and flyers, and learn a little bit. And they are all so much fun to meet.

Our top story tonight

For everyone missing The Daily Show because of the WGA strike...it's not back, and here it isn't:



Also, someone needs to tell all studio executives and media moguls the same thing someone should tell all politicians: anything that you say or have ever said in front of a camera can be found and be made available for everyone to see. It's not possible to escape your own words anymore...so either quit lying, or at the very least try to be consistent and tell the same lie all the time. The following example repeats and underscores the central point made in the above video:



On a side note, to anyone interested in the future of comics online...this issue is going to affect our industry too, especially with those publishers operating under the same non-creator-owned "pay once, profit from forever" model.

The allegory of the cave

"The nerd has based his career, maybe his life, on the computer, and as we’ll see, this intimate relationship has altered his view of the world. He sees the world as a system which, given enough time and effort, is completely knowable. This is a fragile illusion that your nerd has adopted, but it’s a pleasant one that gets your nerd through the day."

The Nerd Handbook is a brief essay on how to be with a nerd. It's one of the most astute and insightful character analyses I've read...all the more impressive because the author Rands (a.k.a. Michael Lopp) is the very guy he's talking about, but has managed to step outside himself to describe what he looks like from outside while also explaining how that person works from the inside.

This is an essay thousands of self-identified nerds will send to their significant others, because it describes things they might never have had the words to explain before; people in relationships with nerds will send it to their very own nerds, by way of saying "I understand you a little better now." It definitely scored a bullseye with that audience. The essay got 74 comments within the first day it was posted, virtually all the replies being variations on "I'm scared by how well you know me" and "Have you been spying on me?" The remainder of comments so far have been arguments over the respective definitions of "nerd" and "geek" and whether or not these words should be used interchangeably. (And yes, the difference matters a lot to nerds and/or geeks.)

Some of the terminology used by the author is specific to the computer-obsessed variety, but his description applies equally well to the comics and science fiction crowd; he's also careful to note at the start that, despite his choice of male pronouns for the sake of simplicity, it applies equally well to female nerds.

As for me, there are a couple of items I didn't relate to...but yeah, this is at least 80% me, probably a bit higher. I shivered with recognition a few times. If you're reading my blog -- and you almost certainly are -- you'll either recognize yourself or a few people you know.

(Via John Gruber at the always useful Daring Fireball.)

A writing lesson from Gail Simone

i·ro·ny (ī'rə-nē, ī'ər-)
n. pl. i·ro·nies

1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
   
2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
   
3. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. 
   

More here.

The random talk of people

1. A public service announcement:

Believe me, I take a back seat to no one when it comes to deploring the current trend of Cartoon Network broadcasting things that aren't cartoons. It's hardly an isolated phenomenon: I still don't know why the Sci-Fi Channel shows wrestling and soap operas -- ones that aren't Dark Shadows anyway -- and as long as I'm being curmudgeonly, I also don't know why MTV airs the Music Video Awards when they never air music videos. But it bothers me most of all when Cartoon Network does their damnedest to run away from the medium which once provided their core identity, when so much great animation goes entirely unrepresented on the airwaves. Don't even get me started on the relentless self-promotion of Adult Swim, so in love with its own hipness and daring. The problem with Adult Swim is that they know they're much smarter than they actually are, if I may borrow an apt phrase.

All that understood, I'll be watching Cartoon Network this Friday night for Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and I recommend you do the same. Where I am, the episodes will air at 11:00 PM and again the following 2:30 AM, but check your local listings to be sure you don't miss it.

Nothing I could say would adequately convey the full impact of Marenghi's accomplishment, so just see it for yourself...




2. A true story:

Last night I saw the following written on the chalkboard in front of a well-known bar on First Avenue: "Your liver is evil and must be destroyed." And I thought: wow, they've hired Warren Ellis to write their signs.


3. And now...the fish-slapping dance:



Produced with Stripgenerator, and with thanks and apologies to Jim Roeg.

The Right Honourable Lady

The following is possibly only of interest to hardcore Doctor Who fans and other Anglophilic sorts.

Last night I watched the first two episodes of The Amazing Mrs Pritchard on Masterpiece Theater. Despite my nearly boundless love for political dramas/thrillers/soaps/comedies (particularly those of the British Parliamentary variety) and despite my total admiration and worship for the divine talent and beauty that is Jane Horrocks (Little Voice! Bubble in Absolutely Fabulous!) I won't be watching the rest of the series.

Although the premise was potentially interesting -- ordinary supermarket manager fed up with clueless politicians declares herself a candidate for local MP, only to find herself succeeding beyond her wildest dreams and becoming Prime Minister by accident -- and Ms. Horrocks (here looking almost exactly like J.K. Rowling) was excellent as always, the script really let this down. The writer gave Mrs. Pritchard at least three different, mutually contradictory characterizations in the course of the first hour. Was she "just plain folks" whose common sense cuts through the obfuscation of old party hacks or was she a brilliant orator with a superhuman ability to memorize and recite the careers of potential rivals despite never having been interested in politics? The script couldn't make up its mind. Also, the storytelling consisted largely of expository dialogue telling us important things about the characters rather than showing them. And there was more than a little sexism in the way the initial conceit was presented. Yes, the series was written by a woman...but if you think a woman can't be sexist and perpetuate the same old lazy stereotypes of how men and women supposedly behave, then we live on different planets. (And I don't mean Venus and Mars.)

The doings of Parliament have inspired a lot of great television over the years. House of Cards and its sequels are one example on the dramatic side. The comedic tag-team of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister probably did more to explain the inner workings of governments and why things are the way they are than anything else on television. The prinicples discussed in YM and YPM are universal and apply to all democratic nations; the American viewer can get just as much of an education from them as the British audience. (One of the creators of YM went on to direct the surprisingly excellent Eddie Murphy film The Distinguished Gentleman depicting the same factors in play in American politics, albeit with a greater emphasis on the corrosive effects of money and lobbyists.) Even the main idea behind The Amazing Mrs Pritchard -- decent woman of integrity gets an education in how politics and government work while juggling ordinary home life with her husband and kids -- was already done better (and with considerably less condescension) in a little-known British sitcom called No Job For A Lady starring Penelope Keith.

Like I said at the start and have just demonstrated, I watch a lot of British television with political themes. But the above list conspicuously omits one of my very favorite television depictions of a British political leader: a character who was always realistically and convincingly depicted in every appearance, brilliantly written and acted, no matter how wild and outlandish the situations were.

Yes, my disappointment with Mrs. Pritchard last night made me think of another female Prime Minister of recent memory...and that's when I realized Russell Davies made a huge mistake in building his Doctor Who spinoff around Captain Jack Harkness and the oversexed boys and girls of the Torchwood Institute. Instead, he should have done a series about Harriet Jones.

From the moment we meet her in Aliens of London, she's a coherent, consistent, and believable character -- timid and unsure, but with a core of feisty determination beneath that, ultimately leading her to help save the world from an alien conspiracy. When the Doctor reveals that this newly elected junior back bencher from Flydale North is destined to become Prime Minister, it makes sense. We can believe it because the strength of the writing and acting has shown us her exceptional qualities; we didn't need to be constantly told because we'd seen it for ourselves.

Now, instead of a tired and obvious X-Files wannabe series, imagine how cool and unique it would be to have a series about political intrigues and governmental infighting against the backdrop of a world facing the prospect of invasion by aliens. Think of it as West Wing with science fiction. In addition to worrying about who's going to become deputy undersecretary of commerce, Jones also has to worry about fending off the Cybermen or the Sycorax without causing public panic. Questions are being asked in Parliament about budget irregularities...how can the PM answer the Opposition without exposing the secret anti-Dalek gun those hidden funds really went to? You could have your Torchwood or UNIT or what have you in the story as well, but PM Harriet Jones would be the focus of the series. Torchwood was a combination of a lot of second-tier SF series we've seen before, but this would have been something really fresh.

Well, I'd watch it, anyway.

One billion

One billion seconds ago President Gerald Ford declared that the American Bicentennial would be marked by the ringing of bells.

A billion minutes ago the emperor Hadrian was born in Rome, the Maya first entered the valley that would someday be Mexico City and the temple in Jerusalem fell for the last time.

A billion hours ago Cro-Magnon from the east and Neanderthal from the south began a ten-thousand-year struggle for dominance of southern Europe as the glacier receded.

And a billion dollars spent in Iraq ago was the day before yesterday.

From a speech given to the Burbank Democratic Club yesterday by Elliot S! Maggin, one of my favorite Superman writers and now candidate for California's 24th Congressional District.

(Oddly enough, this is the same district former Babylon 5 cast member Jerry Doyle also sought to represent in Congress back in 2000. Seven years ago, Doyle ran as a Republican against a Democratic incumbent...but thanks to redistricting Maggin is now challenging a Republican incumbent who's been in Congress for twenty years, while Doyle's opponent is still in Congress as well. Ah, politics!)

Youngsters who wonder why the name "Elliot S! Maggin" sounds vaguely familiar should investigate some of his comics and comics-related work here.