I can’t embed it, but here’s the second Scott Pilgrim vs The World trailer. Enjoy it, yeah? It looks good.

edit: Found a non-Facebook embed:

I wrote up this short piece on how JT Krul and Geraldo Borges’s Rise of Arsenal got the way heroin works wrong. While proofing before posting, I realized that I didn’t care enough to post it. Rise of Arsenal got everything you can get about heroin wrong, including how to freebase and the effects of the drug. It’s lazy and stupid and pointless. My post was going to be called “Rise of Arsenal: Wynken, Blynken, and On the Nod” which is some kind of perfect storm of stupid and amazing, but no–not worth it. Rise of Arsenal is lazy and stupid and doesn’t even have a villain. There’s no conflict beyond “Will Roy Harper shoot up?” I can’t even get mad about it.

Instead, here’s something I posted three years ago. I think it still applies.

Read good comics instead of getting mad about bad ones.

Just an experiment, maybe an ongoing thing if you like it.

What’d you buy and read today? Any books we should be looking out for? Any surprises? Let’s talk about this week’s books, or even books you’ve read recently that aren’t from this week. The comment box is yours. Have at it.

rest in power ryan choi we gon neva forget u

Return of Bruce Wayne 01
words by grant morrison, art by chris sprouse/karl story/guy major/jared k fletcher, cover by andy kubert

Read the rest of this entry �

Sean did it because Wolkin asked him to. I’m doing it because I can. I’m picking movies for a personal film festival. These aren’t my favorite (that would be Out of the Past), but I love all of them. No explanations, though the titles of each day should give you an idea what I’m going for. Feel free to chime in. If you’re really puzzled, I’ll explain in the comments.

Three movies a day. I could probably come up with a food menu for these, too, for the full David Brothers Experience.

Friday: Nothing Succeeds Like Excess
Ninja Scroll, directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri (dub) (possibly on second generation VHS)
Scarface, directed by Brian De Palma
Bad Boys II, directed by Michael Bay

Saturday: Building Blocks
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, directed by Steve Barron
Akira, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo (original dub)
Malcolm X, directed by Spike Lee

Sunday: A History of Violence
Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa (sub)
The Killer, directed by John Woo (dub)
Blade, directed by Stephen Norrington

-The Fourcast is one year old this week!
-(We took a six week break last year when my work schedule got crazy and I officially stopped sleeping.)
-We talk about things we liked last year: Wednesday Comics, Amazing Spider-Man, and Gastrophobia
-We have a wish list for the next year, too!
–Batgirls
-More ongoing series of graphic novels
-Happy Fun Comics
-Esther’s love of Frank Miller
-More Crime and War Comics
-David’s complete inability to add properly
–Absolute Flex Mentallo
–Wednesdayer Comics
-Dead Heroes
-No wait, No Dead Heroes
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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–Podcast Alley feed!
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I like a lot of crappy characters. It comes with the territory, I think. Everybody has those weird little crap characters they like. More specifically, though, I’ve got a perverse fascination with crappy black characters, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has read more than ten words of this site before. I mean, I’m just saying that I [slang term], [rap reference], [animated gif of someone shaking their head], y’know?

But there’s something I love about all these characters that were just dashed off back in the day. Moses Magnum has the greatest name in comics, the kind of name you just steal outright if you ever get a chance. Hypno-Hustler has a great name and backup singers. Shades & Comanche are the down-on-their-luck scrubs that litter every story about the hood. I don’t even have to defend my love of these characters, either. There are people out there who want to read about people whose only power is “I shrink.”

One crappy black character I never liked, though, was Triathlon. Delroy Garrett was introduced in Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s Avengers, in a story with Moses Magnum no less, but I never took to him. He was boring. He had some weird Fake Scientologist entanglement, his costume was ehhh, and his powers were lame. Oh, you are as strong as three guys? Congrats, I’m happy for you. Learn to shoot lasers or use a sword.

Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman, though. Those guys looked to be featuring Delroy Garrett in his new role as the 3-D Man in Atlas. I couldn’t even really say that I was skeptical. I think I knew he was going to be in the book going in, but Parker has rarely done me wrong. I liked his Agents of Atlas work both times around. They were pretty clever and deftly written little books, weaving into and out of Marvel history without feeling like a Crisis or a history lesson.

This week’s Atlas #1 is the grand return of the Agents of Atlas. The first series (which had fantastic covers) was an introduction and establishment of a status quo for the Agents. The second series placed them squarely within Marvel’s Dark Reign status quo, kind of like how the second Runaways series tied in a little closer to the greater Marvel Universe.

This third one, though, feels like something different. It also stars Delroy Garrett as a has-been hero. He made some hard decisions during the Skrull invasion, and the aftermath of those decisions is that he has been completely ostracized by his peers. He’s looking around for a new career in Los Angeles with his actress girlfriend when he runs into trouble. Garrett ends up being accused of murdering one of his mentors, on the run from the police, hunted by some mysterious entity, and suffering from vivid nightmares. The nightmares point directly toward Atlas.

The tone of Atlas is something like ’50s paranoia, like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There’s a creeping feeling of mystery and danger that runs through the issue. Everything Delroy trusts is either wrong or broken, and his one lifeline is a comatose old man. He’s one man against the world, with no friends and no allies to speak of.

As befitting the tone of the book, the agents haunt Delroy. They appear in nightmares, news reports, and as silent characters up until the end of the first story. They infest his dreams and while they don’t come across as villains, exactly, it is clear that Atlas isn’t your same old super-team.

This book was excellent. Hardman and Elizabeth Breitweiser’s art was appropriately moody and subdued, Parker’s dialogue and pacing were on point, and (pregnant pause) it made me a fan of the 3-D Man. His new status quo works for me in a way that Triathlon never did. I never thought that would happen, but what can you do? I picked up the first issue on a whim, rather than waiting for the trade like I usually do, and it paid off huge. Huge enough that I’m buying it monthly from here on out. Check out the preview at CBR and go pick it up.

Looks like next week is going to feature another Jeff Parker bullet to the dome, too. Good show.

Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet (abridged HTML, unabridged PDF) (04/1964)

The three biggest black figures for me are Richard Pryor, Muhammad Ali, and Malcolm X. I learned something important from each of them. Pryor taught perspective, Ali taught confidence, and Malcolm taught the importance of intelligence in all things.

Speak plainly, be friendly, consider your position, and if the time comes, you put the hammer down. You don’t thank someone for finally doing the right thing they should have been doing all along. You don’t accept anything less than what you deserve. Your anger should be a scalpel, not a bludgeon. Get the jelly out of your spine and keep cobwebs out of your mind. When it comes to right and wrong, there is no compromise. There is either the ballot or the bullet.

A brief quote:

“How can you thank a man for giving you what’s already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what’s already yours? You haven’t even made progress, if what’s being given to you, you should have had already. That’s not progress. And I love my Brother Lomax, the way he pointed out we’re right back where we were in 1954. We’re not even as far up as we were in 1954. We’re behind where we were in 1954. There’s more segregation now than there was in 1954. There’s more racial animosity, more racial hatred, more racial violence today in 1964, than there was in 1954. Where is the progress?

And now you’re facing a situation where the young Negroes coming up. They don’t want to hear that “turn the-other-cheek” stuff, no. In Jacksonville, those were teenagers, they were throwing Molotov cocktails. Negroes have never done that before. But it shows you there’s a new deal coming in. There’s new thinking coming in. There’s new strategy coming in. It’ll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It’ll be ballots, or it’ll be bullets. It’ll be liberty, or it will be death.

Malcolm X would have been eighty-five years old today. Happy birthday.

Johanna Draper Carlson has the details on who won what at this past weekend’s Glyph Comics Awards at ECBACC. She also has some interesting remarks on the awards, particularly in terms of women represented and the number of projects that won multiple awards.

Here’s the list, and commentary/thoughts from me below.

Story of the Year
Unknown Soldier #13-14, Joshua Dysart, writer, Pat Masioni, artist

Best Writer
Alex Simmons, Archie & Friends

Best Artist
Jay Potts, World of Hurt

Best Male Character
Isaiah Pastor, World of Hurt, created by Jay Potts, writer and artist

Best Female Character
Aya, Aya: The Secrets Come Out, created by Marguerite Abouet, writer, Clement Oubrerie, artist

Rising Star Award
Jay Potts, World of Hurt

Best Reprint Publication
Aya: The Secrets Come Out, Drawn & Quarterly

Best Cover
Luke Cage Noir #1, Tim Bradstreet, illustrator

Best Comic Strip
The K Chronicles, Keith Knight, writer and artist

Fan Award for Best Comic
Luke Cage Noir, Mike Benson & Adam Glass, writers, Shawn Martinbrough, artist

I’m not sure of the protocol on judges speaking after the fact, so if I’ve over-stepped, please forgive me. I co-judged this years awards, and I’ve got to say that I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out. Here’s a few brief anecdotes/bits about the winners-

–Unknown Soldier 13 and 14 are collected in Unknown Soldier Vol. 2: Easy Kill. Dysart discusses a few of his favorite pages from that volume on DC’s Graphic Content blog. I talked a bit about Unknown Soldier last year as part of BHM, but I’m well past due for an update.

-In the “Small World” department, it turns out Alex Simmons co-created the dead and forgotten DC hero Orpheus, who I did a poor job of writing about a few years back. Simmons has been telling all-ages tales on Archie & Friends for the past couple years, in addition to documentaries, biographies, working with MoCCA, and launching a comic convention. The paths people take in comics are kind of funny sometimes. I think Tom DeFalco and Herb Trimpe have both done work on the Archie comics in recent memory, to name a couple other names you probably recognize. Archie & Friends All-Stars Volume 3: The Cartoon Life Of Chuck Clayton is the trade collecting the story of Chuck Clayton, “teenage cartoonist” and former Generic Comic Book Black Guy.

-Jay Potts cleaned up! Read my interview with him and then go read World of Hurt.

–I’m glad Abouet and Oubrerie’s Aya got some attention.

–Luke Cage Noir is out in a premiere hardcover, and it was a pretty good tale. I didn’t talk about it on the site, but the Funnybook Babylon gang mostly dug it. I liked how it played upon some of my preconceived notions going into the book, and the creators did a good job of telling a solid done-in-one tale. Here’s the cover:

-I like that most of these aren’t from the Big Two. I don’t say that to be mean or whatever, because the Big Two do what they do fairly well for the most part, but I think the really important work, the stuff you need to be paying attention two, aren’t going to come out of their factories. Supporting black comics isn’t supporting Luke Cage. It’s supporting the people who make the books. I think the Glyph awards do a great job of representing that. Bravo.