About a year ago, I went to my friend Bob’s place to watch a wrestling PPV and with an hour to kill before the show, he broke out a bootleg DVD he bought at a convention. The DVD featured two videos starring “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. One was Tag-Team — a failed pilot where Piper and Jesse Ventura were blacklisted wrestlers who became cops — and the other was listed as being just the Roddy Piper Show. Tag-Team was worth a watch, but it was nothing special. Besides, it was nothing new to us. Most everyone in the room had heard of it one time or another.
The other video was pure insanity and the fact that nobody had heard a single thing about it made it even more troubling. Originally known as the Herve Villechaize Show, the special was taken over by top WWF villain Roddy Piper. Few remember, but back in the 80’s-to-early-90’s, Friday nights in the fall would usually include a prime time look at the upcoming season of Saturday morning cartoons. I mainly recall this being on ABC’s TGIF, where you’d see Carl Winslow talking excitedly about the upcoming season of Winnie the Pooh. This special in question is one of those, but increasingly batshit insane.
The version I watched was completely cut to pieces, but I later found out that it was called the All-Star Rock ‘N’ Wrestling Saturday Spectacular. It aired on CBS in the fall of 1985, during the heyday of the Rock ‘N’ Wrestling Connection. The reason behind Piper’s inclusion here is that this is also the year that they would introduce the big WWF cartoon, which featured Brad Garrett voicing Hulk Hogan.
Not only does the show star Roddy Piper and feature the misadventures of ousted would-be host Herve Villechaize, but it also includes such guests asPatti LaBelle, Pee-Wee Herman, New Edition, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hulk Hogan, Captain Lou Albano and Cyndi Lauper. All while showing clips of Muppet Babies and shit. Oh, and Gary “Original Space Ghost” Owens as the announcer.
I’ve always been meaning to do some kind of review of this, but never liked how Bob’s copy would skip around constantly. Luckily, a guy by the name of Ray Boucher found a VHS tape of the show and uploaded the entire thing to YouTube a couple months ago. It’s up there in all of its “Captain Lou doing Shakespeare” glory.
It’s a surreal and entertaining way to spend 48 minutes. Or 96 minutes if you’re like me and have to watch it twice. If anything, you need to see Piper and Pee-Wee argue with sock puppets.
Hey folks. Back from watching Wreck-It Ralph, which I consider the second-best racing movie to star John C. Reilly. I enjoyed the movie, although the explicit Custer’s Revenge sequence was a little too hardcore for a Disney film. Maybe it’s just me.
My crew for this week includes Gaijin Dan, Jody and Was Taters. Taters has decided that all of her picks from Worlds’ Finest will be based on how the comic has become about Power Girl being naked and little else. Fun trick of DC, giving her a more conservative outfit only to pull the rug out.
Action Comics #14
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales, Sholly Fisch and Chris Sprouse
Age of Apocalypse #9
David Lapham and Roberto de la Torre
Animal Man #14
Jeff Lemire, Steve Pugh and Timothy Green II
Ever since Marvel and Capcom released X-Men vs. Street Fighter, nearly everyone said that there needed to be a fighting game that pit Mortal Kombat against the DC characters. Many were joking, but a couple were dead serious. Some of the laughs were directed at how ill-fitting it would be, despite being the natural follow-up to the Marvel vs. Capcom stuff. Marvel and Capcom at least felt right together. Marvel feels more down-to-earth and many of its more popular characters are more street-level, making such matchups as Wolverine vs. Ryu seem natural. Mortal Kombat has a stigma of blood and guts while the public sees DC as the more squeaky-clean of the big comic companies.
The night prior to the 2008 New York Comic Con, this image was released to the public.
And I didn’t get any sleep because oh my God. They were really going to make this?! Really?!
The more I thought about it and the closer the game came to release, I started to come around to the idea of these two worlds mixing it up. DC has gotten far darker and bloodier over the years and Mortal Kombat – despite its many problems – is still home to a pretty strong sense of mythological identity. There have been bad games, bad movies, bad comics, bad TV shows and more, but there’s still an allure to the franchise outside of the blood and guts. When they make it work, it really goes the full mile. Like the latest game, for instance.
It’s noticeable how the two sides don’t exactly match up so well head-to-head. Sub-Zero and Batman aren’t really all that alike. There are only a few pairings that truly work in that aspect. Like even though Deathstroke and Baraka are rivals in the game, Deathstroke has more in common with Kano as a one-eyed, top-notch assassin. Then there’s the perfect pairing of Johnny Cage and Booster Gold, making it a huge shame that neither shows up in the game at all.
The other big pairing that works perfectly is Mortal Kombat’s Shao Kahn and DC’s Darkseid. As far as I’m concerned, the two share the same level of threat, badass and stature. They each hold onto their own realm as feared tyrants and wish to extend their grasp, blocked only by easily-twistable rules. Darkseid has his truce with the people of New Genesis while Shao Kahn must fulfill the rights of Mortal Kombat in order to move forward. It was only natural that they’d make these guys the main villains of the crossover.
Still, there were questions. How would these two sides clash? Why would they fight when the rosters are mostly good guys? How can you have Kano beat up Superman and act like it’s a thing that makes sense? Hell, forget about the Mortal Kombat guys! How is Joker vs. Superman supposed to make sense?!
Luckily, Midway put the how and why in some good hands with DC writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti. The team known for breathing life into Jonah Hex and Power Girl would write the game’s Story Mode. Meanwhile, the collector’s edition of the game would feature a piece of cover art by big-time comic artist Alex Ross.
Seeing Scorpion and the gang in Alex Ross style is still so surreal.
One of my great weaknesses when writing stuff for this site is that I get distracted by the internet really easily. I’m almost done with my next Crossover Celebration article, but instead of putting the finishing touches on it, I find myself thinking, “You know what I haven’t looked up in a while? Tool-assisted speed run videos.”
You know the kind. The ones that show the quickest possible way a game can be finished. Usually, they were a nice way to do away with your childhood demons. Like, for instance, watching somebody play through Karnov without getting hit once. They’re a great diversion, but there’s a few I’ve recently come across that had my jaw dropping. Somebody playing through by dodging every attack and hitting every enemy just right can be entertaining, but it’s the glitchy ones that steal the show. Tool-assisted speed runs that sometimes aren’t even based on speed. Just the tool-assisting.
For instance, I’ve seen speed runs of someone getting through Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in less than two minutes due to a glitch. There’s also one for Battletoads where the players find a warp zone, create a warp zone from one of the players dying, end up on a screen of nonsense until one of them dies somehow and after hitting continue, they win. One that’s even more ridiculous is a Boy and a Blob.
Yes, he just ran through the credits screen to beat the game.
Fighting games are ripe for exploitation and few are better than this video of Marvel vs. Capcom. I thought I wouldn’t be able to be pulled in by 25 minutes of this game, but almost immediately it grabbed me in and wouldn’t let go. Highlights include Hulk breaking out of Ryu’s Raging Demon with a two-jump Gamma Crush that attacks both opponents in mid-air and yet he still is considered the loser.
But the one that truly brightened my day comes from Family Feud for SNES. A game that I actually had as a kid because why not. This one is absolutely amazing because of a major fault in the program. As long as a correct answer exists in your answer, it works. So for instance, if one of the correct answers was “pans” and you answered “Spanish”, you’d be given the points because you have those four letters in the correct order mixed in there (“Spanish”). Someone decided to have some serious fun with this and I haven’t laughed so hard in quite some time.
Hahaha! Look at the Hall family in-between rounds. They are SO PISSED.
Here’s a video featuring yours truly that I’m kind of super happy about. Check it out.
(you like that shirt, don’t you? Go get you some black swag from Ray’s shop.)
I got in a bike accident earlier this year, maybe you heard me being a big baby about it? The doctor kinda laughed when he told me what was up with my knee, which was that I “hurt it about as bad as you can hurt it without requiring surgery.”
After the accident, I got caught up in that cycle of feeling bad about myself and then feeling worse about myself, so I spent a lot of time chilling on my couch eating half pound hamburgers (throw some basil and A1 peppercorn sauce inside and whooooooo) and eating uncooked chocolate chip cookie dough like that’s a reasonable thing to do outside of special occasions. But it felt good, so I did it, and I enjoyed every slow bite, every crunch of chocolate in my teeth. I watched a lot of Netflix, too. You know how that goes. “Wah wah wah I can’t lock my knee any more, life sucks, I keep getting into stupid fights by accident, I have to stand differently now, my pace has changed, and can someone help me shovel chocolate chips down my gullet, thanks in advance.”
Anyway, it turns out if you sit on a couch eating crap all the time, you gain weight. Who knew, right? I definitely noticed after a while. It wasn’t hugely obvious, but I try to pay attention to myself (doubly so post-accident) and I was feeling kinda ehhh about it. I figured it was okay, because I’m getting older and metabolisms slow down and I’m not biking every day because of my leg and these things happen and blah blah blah I’m okay, you’re okay.
I’ve got this friend named Larry Leong. I’ve talked about him on here before or whatever whatever. He’s a good dude, and we hang out whenever I visit LA. Last time I visited, me and my death squad played some basketball, played some video game basketball, and just chilled out for a while. It was a nice weekend, the sort of weekend where you’re trying to figure out the best place to relax in the sun and thinking about walking absurd distances just ’cause it feels so good outside. You know those days? Those days drive me crazy. Tank top days. Frisbee days.
Anyway, on my way out of a mutual friend’s house and out of LA, me and Larry said goodbye and he hit me with the ol’ “Hey, catch you later, man. You gained some weight, huh?”
:negativeman:
He got me so good. I don’t know what I peaked at, but when I weighed myself and decided to get right, I was at 184. I’m a hair under six feet (well, including my hair, a hair over at this point, but pedantic points are less than trash), so that ain’t too bad, but it is too much for my frame. It is too much for me, personally. On top of that, a couple of my oldest friends were getting married in LA in September, and I wanted to fit into my suit, you know? What if I met my next ex-wife there? I gained enough weight that I felt bad about it, because I knew that I shouldn’t have done it.
So, when I got back to SF, full of shame and thinking of ways to get back at Larry, I decided to start running. I haven’t really run since high school, but it’s mostly flat in my hood, so I figured I could do it. I asked around, bought a pair of shoes to make sure I couldn’t punk out, and started running a minimum of a mile each time out. I ran eight days straight, sprained my right ankle on night eight, and then made it worse on day nine, when I finished my run and realized that my ankle hurt so bad because I’d sprained it, not just because I wasn’t used to running.
That is 2012 in a nut shell. I decide to do something and immediately pay for it in blood.
I decided to fix my diet after that, since I was going to be benched for a couple weeks. I didn’t decide to eat less or eat healthier. I decided to eat smarter. Diets don’t work because diets need to last forever, but if you change how you eat, and I mean genuinely change it not just change it for a fad, you can do big things.
I cut my portions and paid closer attention to what I ate and when. No more half pound burgers, no more full bowls of rice, no more cookie dough. I rarely drink soda outside of root beer floats, and I don’t really get down with candy either, so that wasn’t an issue. I stopped cooking dinner at midnight, too.
I started weighing myself three times a day. That really helped, because it let me see exactly how what I ate affected my body. Fatter burger than usual? Up 2lbs on the day? Forgot to eat dinner? The point is to figure out how what I do affects my body, and figure it out in a way that lets me act on it. Eat too much one day, scale back the next. Lose the right amount of weight one day, keep it going the next.
Once my ankle was well again, I ramped up the exercising, too. I came up with a schedule. Wake up at 6, crawl out of bed eventually, and then spend the next two hours and a half hours before work writing, working out, or both. Usually both. My goal is to run three days a week, but I knew I wouldn’t always be able to make it. So I use free weights, resistance bands, and basic push-ups to get active for the off-days. If I’m chilling and playing video games for a few hours, I’ll stand up and do 40 curls with the resistance bands, just to make sure I’m not totally lazing about. It’s easy, it’s fast, and it gives my brain a break from staring at a TV screen.
Between late July and early October, I shed around 20 pounds, going from 184 to 164ish. I tend to hover between 163 and 166 these days. It feels good. I wake up earlier almost by default now, as I found out this weekend when I was up before the sun every day despite going to bed super sleepy. I feel better and more alert in the mornings after running or working out, which in turn makes my days better. My focus is better, I do more things, and I have more time to do those things. I feel more like me. I fit into my suit, too, and balled out at that wedding, looking like I just came fresh from the Harlem Renaissance.
Larry’s video series is called Move, Damn You. It’s great advice.
So yeah. That Hurricane Sandy thing happened. I figure I can break some writing rust talking about it.
As many of you know, I live in northern New Jersey. I’m just on the border into New York. Word of Hurricane Sandy brewing came maybe a week and a half prior and the talk at work was how it was supposed to be worse than the storm from the Perfect Storm. I chose not to really take it seriously and instead made jokes about George Clooney. As it got closer and my boss became a bit more wary on us being open for certain days, there was still a bit of denial in there. One of my coworkers figured that in situations like this, the supermarket chains pay the weather channels to sensationalize everything so more people go on food shopping sprees.
As it got closer and closer, the reality started to set in some more. Especially when on Sunday night, the district manager called our store to say not to open on Monday at all. Keep in mind, the storm wasn’t supposed to kick in until 6pm on Monday. I guess they were just afraid of people coming in for the early shift and then being stranded in the mall when it was time to go.
I at least prepared enough. I got extra food. I loaded my tablet with movies and CHIKARA shows. I stayed glued to all the weather stuff on TV. On the Weather Channel Sunday night, it made it seem REALLY bad. The next day, watching local affiliates, it seemed less bad. Mainly because there was some kind of big CONE OF DESTRUCTION or whatever they were calling it that was going to cause the most trouble and my county was outside of that direct path. As I sat there with my dad, watching the storm start up outside, we figured that if things hold out for just a couple hours, we’d be all right. That optimism faltered when I’d watch the news and see them have multiple technical difficulties every other minute.
The power cut out at 7:30pm.
I still have two major storms fresh in my mind, both from last year. There was Hurricane Irene and that nasty Halloween snow storm. Irene wasn’t really all that bad outside of cutting out the power for so long. I went to sleep with the power on, woke up with the power off, walked outside and the weather was absolutely beautiful. Sure, there were twigs littering the street, but everything had dried up by that point and you’d hardly even believe that there was a drop of rain. The snow storm was a bad trip because it was too early for there to be snow. All the trees still had leaves and they acted like catcher’s mitts, holding onto more snow and weighing down trees to dangerous extents. That ended up causing far more damage than Irene did. Plus having no heat when there’s mountains of snow outside is a minus on its own.
Waking up on Tuesday, there was good news and bad news. The good news was that the storm had passed, going against the warnings from the news that it would be a 36-hour situation. It rained on and off that day, but nothing worth worrying about. The bad news was that it didn’t share the same, “Oh, there was a storm?” aftermath of Hurricane Irene. With Sandy, the sky was still dark with clouds and the streets looked just a little bit post-apocalyptic.
This tree fell two houses down from me. The homeowner was lucky that he/she moved the cars up so far. I walked around for a couple hours, mainly to see if I could get some kind of cell phone signal. I wasn’t getting too much luck, so I’d turn my phone off for six hours at a time, since roaming for a signal caused it to drain too easily. The streets were filled with threes tearing down phone lines and I saw a couple trees buried into the nearby houses. There were also exposed wires on the sidewalks and other pitfalls.
Today’s the big voting day, because apparently it is an election year? Who knew.
Anyway, go out and vote if you feel led to do so. If you’re in California, here’s a guide to the state propositions. Some of them are tricky. I mean, obviously you want to vote against human trafficking, but apparently that prop is slanted to unfairly malign sex workers and makes colored folks even more vulnerable to arrest? Read up before you go out! Politics is an ugly, lie-infested, dissembling business, so don’t get caught out there. Here’s another guide, if you want to compare/contrast or check for biases in whatever direction. I haven’t looked at the latter one yet, but my main man Shumphries just put it on twitter and I figure having two sites to look at is better than just one.
Don’t be a dick to non-voters today, either. Not voting is in no way, shape, or form a vote for “the other guy” (whichever other guy it is you hate). It’s choosing the third option, the “you’re both terrible” option. Mitt Romney hates women, Barack Obama has been killing brown faces overseas. Pros and cons, cons and pros. Neither of these dudes are perfect, and both of them are beholden to corporations who are not Us. If you feel strongly about something, don’t let people peer pressure you into compromising your values. Vote with your heart and your mind, and if it doesn’t feel right to you, you don’t have to do it. Voting and not voting are both valid political choices.
Pundits are saying 40% of eligible Americans aren’t going to vote today. This isn’t a sign that they are lazy or stupid or hateful. That opinion is as dumb as the old “Oh, high schools are just meant to turn out unthinking moronic robots” nonsense. If almost half of eligible people aren’t voting, then that’s a sign that something is deeply wrong with our process. If they don’t care, what made them not care? If they don’t feel like their vote counts, that needs to be addressed.
“Vote for the lesser of two evils!” is a thing I’ve heard over and over this election, but somehow voting for an evil is more acceptable than rejecting evil outright. We don’t have to compromise if we don’t want to.
Vote or don’t. All I ask is that you think real hard before you do either, because doing either one of them just because doesn’t help anyone. I, personally, know what I’m doing. I’ve put a lot of thought into it. Rev up your mind, crank up your conscience, and make the decision that feels right to you.
Whoa! Electricity! Sweet electricity! How I missed you!
What a week that was. I’ll go a little more in-depth about my experiences tomorrow. Right now, I have some panels to post. Thank God this was a small week. Especially because that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Annual is 60 pages. Damn. It’s pretty cool, though. Co-creator Kevin Eastman does his first illustrated TMNT comic in about 20 years and it’s essentially a Guy Ritchie movie with three factions of ninjas added in.
I’m joined by Jody, Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa. This may be the first week where I didn’t read the most stuff.
Aquaman #13
Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis
Avengers + X-Men #1
Dan Slott, Ron Garney, Jeph Loeb and Dale Keown
Avengers vs. X-Men Consequences #4
Kieron Gillen and Mark Brooks
I got this email on Halloween about a comic. It was a comic produced by Percy Carey’s Arch Enemy Entertainment. I’ve been trying to get off basically every mailing list ever, since my inbox is a disaster zone, so I wrote back, in full, “Hi, please remove me from your mailing list.” as soon as I received the email.
At like 0500 this morning, I got this email from Carey, reproduced in full with the exception of his email signature: “What’s wrong with you? Tree said you were cool and I thought you were too over the phone but ok cool I will take you off David. But you made an enemy out of me. Tell Joe Hughes Percy Carey said hi.”
Ugh. I actually liked Sentences, his autobiography co-created with Ron Wimberly, a whole bunch. Book of the year status. But okay, whatever. I had another guy say that it’s “Weird when people do so much complaining about mainstream comics and WON’T read an indy book when you give it to them free.” when I asked to be removed from his mailing list, which was kind of funny, since I voted for his indy book in an awards show (which it won) and just didn’t want to be on a mailing list, free books or not. But it’s whatever whatever. Life goes on.
People are very close to their creative work, and I can’t blame them for feeling a pinch when someone displays disinterest (though it isn’t really that on my side, it is probably definitely that from the outside looking in) for their work. But the sun wasn’t even up yet so I made a mental note to drop him an email, despite the weak threat that he could get me fired, explaining that I’m not that type of journalist any more and I’ve removed myself from 99% of mailing lists. It’s not you, it’s me. I’ve done that before, and it feels better than just not answering at all, which is probably wiser. And then I went back to sleep.
Which… okay. Weird? Yes. But I guess he really wants to have that conversation. But, there are also these, which followed ten minutes later, I guess because I didn’t answer fast enough. I didn’t answer the tweets because they arrived at 0510, maybe 15 minutes after he sent me that email, and I was in bed, on my way back to sleep.
@joehughes28 Joe I have a problem with one of your writers. I about to take it back to the streets. I tried to be nice.
Joe, the guy Carey’s tweeting at, is my editor over at CA.
I feel like making big threats in an email is one thing. I know what “you made an enemy out of me. Tell Joe Hughes Percy Carey said hi.” implies. “We are not friends. Think about that fact and think about the fact that I know your boss and what that means.” I get it. I roll my eyes because it’s such an impotent display of power, but I get it.
But actually trying to get me fired by hitting up someone in a position of authority over me? Because I said “Hi, please remove me from your mailing list.” to an unsolicited email? Nah, son. I’m not the guy that gets bullied. You’ve got me confused.
This is one of the things you have to watch out for when writing about comics, or really any type of entertainment journo. People can and will try to pressure you into doing what they want you to do, and when you decline or object, you’re going to have a fight. You can ignore it and avoid the fight altogether, you can answer back and try to smooth it out, or you can answer back and escalate the situation, which is almost definitely what this post is going to end up being.
Don’t let anyone push you around. Put whatever spotlight you have on them if they try it.
One of the weird things about writing about comics (or comics journalism or entertainment journalism or whatever this quagmire is called) is that you have to walk the fine line between advertising or marketing someone else’s work and actually creating meaningful content outside the restraints of an economic exchange. I’m fine with “Buy this book!” benefitting someone else, as long as the route I take to tell you to buy it agrees with me. For me, that’s long dumb essays about how cool Carrie Kelly is. For others, it’s something else.
These are advertisements for advertisements of upcoming series that Marvel sent out to all or most of the comics sites. They’re teasers for upcoming advertisements and announcements.
They’re also information-light. You get two names and a buzz word. They’re intended to hype up the fanbase… which makes me realize that comics marketing and advertisement (toward a certain segment of the fanbase) is largely accomplished by way of the press. You don’t see ads for Captain America comic books on TV — you check CBR or ComicsAlliance, where you’ll find stuff like this. Comics sites even post solicitations, which are essentially the thing that retailers use to order their comics. It’s catalog content.
This is the part of comics journo that I don’t want any part of, mainly because they’re such a blatant advertisement. There’s no content here to discuss, only the barest slip of info that makes you think about a series you weren’t previously thinking about.
I’m not really down with unlettered previews, either. They don’t feel like “look at this great art from _____” so much as “this series still exists and is coming soon!” But even with unlettered previews, if you know what you’re doing, you can spin those into something worth checking out. You can provide content outside of “this exists.” You can talk about the technique, the past history of art on a book, the artist’s prior work and how that will influence her work on this new comic, or even just dig into the storytelling and see what material you can squeeze out.
You can provide context is what I’m saying, and as writers-about-comics, that’s something we should be good at and do whenever possible. We need to be able to explain what something means beyond just “this exists and you can buy it.”
But if you look at one of those teasers up there, “this exists and you will be able to buy it” is as far as you can go, or at least as far as most people went. “Daniel Way and Steve Dillon are working on something to do with the word lightning. What could it be? Could it be Thunderbolts-related, since their slogan is ‘Justice, like lightning!’?” is… worthless, as a news piece? What does it mean, other than being a lead-in for a post a week later that says “Yup, it’s T-bolts! Here’s a cover!”
It’s advertising.
I’m blessed enough to be in a position where I can be a prima donna and pick and choose what I write about. I don’t think this stuff, these advertisements masquerading as editorial material, is very conducive to a healthy press or audience. It’s kind of emblematic of how eager the press is for access (we’ll post whatever you send us, even if there’s no real info attached!) and how willing the publishers are to game the system. We should be better, on both sides, because there is absolutely nothing that will be lost by being better, outside of blind obedience. An informed audience is never a bad thing, and treating them like they want to be informed is also never, ever a bad thing. Kick down some information or hidden context. Ignore series that are announced with the artist to be determined. Change the game. You can still tease with info that people can talk about, instead of blindly speculate about, without blowing the reveal.
When you’re covering this stuff, don’t stop at “this exists.” Take it a step further. Look at what you can say about it, rather than just reporting on it. What does it say, what does it mean, what does it do? If the answer’s nothing, is it worth posting?
My problem isn’t even with the teasers in and of themselves. They’re pretty effective, in terms of generating conversation. It’s that the press released them like they were actual news, instead of advertisements. Comics journo doesn’t have an ombudsman, so the lines between editorial and advertisement can get muddy. We need to be better at discernment, rather than posting everything that passes through our inbox. “No, thanks,” isn’t an insult.
Don’t let anyone take advantage of your enthusiasm. I’m willing to help you move a few units and get the word out if your work speaks to me on some level, and if not me, someone else will. That’s how comics journalism works, basically, and that’s okay. But there are better ways to do that than these teasers.
