It’s no surprise to me that Chaos Comics would release a set of WWF comics back in the late 90’s and early 00’s. That era was like a golden age for professional wrestling and WWF was really running with the ball in order to become the #1 game in town. It was a cultural phenomenon at a level that we may never see again. Unlike the days of Hulk Hogan wearing the red and yellow, it wasn’t just one man’s popularity holding up the company. Even the midcard guys would get wild responses from the crowd for doing nothing more than walking out and saying the same thing verbatim again and again followed by performing a horrible match (I’m looking at you, Road Dogg and Godfather). WWF had a ton of personality to play with, so as bad as any wrestling comic tends to turn out, playing with the properties during the Attitude Era made sense.

The Undertaker is the only one to get his own ongoing series, which I’ve already covered in a two–parter. Other than him, we got one-shots for Mankind, the Rock, two one-shots for Chyna and a four-issue miniseries for Stone Cold Steve Austin. At least with Undertaker, it doesn’t make you bat an eye as much because he’s an undead demon cowboy with an ill-defined backstory. How do you do a comic about Chyna, let alone two?

I’ll start with the Rock’s one-shot, as I might as well bookend this with the two top guys and the Bookend is another name for the Rock Bottom anyway. See? All ties together. Like all of these non-Undertaker stories, it’s written by Steven Grant. On art for this one, we have Fabiano Neves. For the non-wrestling fans out there, I guess I should say some stuff about who the Rock is… or was. What I’m saying is—

Okay, okay! Even that guy on the left looks like he knows I walked into that one.

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this happened once before
created: Big things popping, little things stopping

–Black Panther DVD

–Gantz was pretty crappy

–Camilla D’Errico draws good

–Here are some good looking Marvel books

–Evangelion 2.0 was pretty okay, but 1.0 is bland (longer post on 2.0 later, maybe?)

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when i came to your door
consumed: No Effort Week! Gearing up for Black History Month next week, so this is gonna be short.

-Ooooh, man, looks like Rae & Ghost were right, ’cause there’s all types of sharks in the water! Online retailer TFAW is doing a little thing they’re calling Digital Comics Month, where they go around and interview major players in the digital comics landscape, and also Zenescope. Now, I’m not saying that they borrowed my blueprint, but check out their questions, see if they seem at all familiar. I think Jay-Z saw the same thing happen to Kane. They probably should’ve tried a little harder, though, because questions like this:

“TFAW.com: What do you think of the piracy issue that comes along with digital distribution?”

Don’t even make any sense. No one is pirating digital comics. They’re pirating print comics. Gotta do better than that.

-Pedro Tejeda is writing again, after a bunch of bullying from me and Jamaal. I liked his review of the new Ghostface record, but his review of 88-keys’ The Death of Adam is on point. I thought it was an ill concept album, and that’s about where it stopped. Pedro’s point about why we should even believe Adam, and why the narrator is on his side, is pretty good, and sorta made me re-examine what it was about. The result is an album that is both a little shallower than I’d expected and more interesting to think about. Visit that dude so he writes more.

–This video of a housewife doing acid is amazing and probably sold me a copy of The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America.

–The Mindless Ones go drinking with superheroes and the results are fantastic. Someone get Garth Ennis to write the comic adaptation. He’s the best at comics about dudes in bars.

-You guys see that Matt Fraction x Bryan Lee O’Malley conversation in Casanova: Gula 01? Fraction couldn’t be more wrong about Kanye. I’ve gotta stop reading backmatter.

–Cheryl Lynn has a habit of throwing ideas at me on Twitter. She was blue-skying some Kanye + Comics ideas and I basically went and called that bluff.

Top to bottom: “Gold Digger” (art by Jim Calafiore), “New Workout Plan” (art by Jim Lee), “New Workout Plan” (art by Ed Benes)

-I bought Superfly: Deluxe 25th Anniversary Edition and Curtis! (Deluxe Edition) because Curtis Mayfield is that dude.

---

no reply
David: New Mutants 21, Thunderbolts 152
Esther: Action Comics 897
Gavin: Justice League Generation Lost 18, Incorruptible 14, Avengers 9, Captain America 614, Chaos War 5, Deadpool 32, Incredible Hulks 621, Namor The First Mutant 6, New Avengers 8, Punisher In The Blood 3, Secret Avengers 9, Thunderbolts 152, Ultimate Comics Avengers 3 6, Uncanny X-Force 4

Spoilers after the jump, though I figure that you already know what goes down.
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It’s been quite a while since my last We Care a Lot article and even longer since I had a Venom article that was about actual Marvel canon. Over a year, in fact. Even longer when it comes to a canon article about Eddie Brock! For forever, I seem to have been sitting on the potential Anti-Venom entry. Why haven’t I written it? Honestly, it comes down to needing a good ending. I’ve been waiting for that perfect ending to finish off the article. And, well, you’ll see how that went…

We all remember the infamous One More Day/Brand New Day status quo change. Devils and Harry Osborn and whatever. The whole thing’s been beaten into the ground to the point that I might as well skip it. The short of it is that I decided I was done with Spider-Man in general and despite all the claims of how great the series has become, I would simply put it at the bottom of my list of great things I should be reading. I wasn’t going to fast on it completely, since I agreed to myself that I would still check out any issue that included one of my favorite characters. In this case, those would be Eddie Brock, Deadpool and Juggernaut. The first one matters the most here, though I suppose Deadpool’s issue plays a role too.

The story New Ways to Die begins eight months after the new status quo of three issues per month. It starts off at Amazing Spider-Man #568 and ends at Amazing Spider-Man #573. It’s got Dan Slott on words and John Romita Jr. on art.

Of all the various plots going around, the two of importance for me are that of the Thunderbolts and Mr. Negative. The Thunderbolts is in its Norman Osborn phase, where the team is made up of Songbird, Moonstone, Swordsman, Bullseye, Penance, Radioactive Man and Mac Gargan as Venom. For one reason or another, Swordsman, Moonstone and Penance get the story off. They’ve been training by attacking motionless dummies for the sake of going after those who are unregistered. Venom goes nuts and starts tearing into all of them. Before Songbird can chastise him for it, they’re given orders to head to New York.

Read the rest of this entry �

get olga
created: We’re talking good comics strictly here.

-You should be reading Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Simon Bisley, and Stefano Landini’s Hellblazer. Here, let me help you out–read this and then pick up Hellblazer 275 to see John get married.

–B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs Hardcover Collection Volume 1 is a long title for a good book, and it’s got my first pull quote on the back, too. It’s credited to ComicsAlliance, but it’s my words. Go on ahead and buy that. You won’t regret it. Here’s the piece they quoted from.

kurylenko
consumed: When did I start liking video games again?

-More blogs from friends! 4l! reader Taters has a couple you should check out. In Continuity is her general comics blog, while UnMasquerade is a tumblr devoted to heroes unmasking.

-I started playing Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions. Tactics is my second favorite FF (after 7), but it’s the one I’ve played the most. I’ve probably put 300 hours into that stupid game since 1998, and I can tell that I’m already hooked on the PSP joint. It’s just exactly what I want out of a game–a little different each time, plenty to explore (in terms of abilities), and pretty much a puzzle game. What combinations work best? How much can I dominate out of sheer skill before I get TG Cid and roll over everything in the game?

-It’s funny, but I never beat a Final Fantasy after 7. No, that’s not true. I think I beat Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I came close with 9, and I played a lot of 10, but man, that story got super dumb toward the end. I played probably an hour of 12 before I got bored, I worked on 13 and wasn’t impressed so I just skipped it… I enjoyed my six or eight months playing FFXI more than most of the other Final Fantasy games, and I quit that game because it was work and I’d been bamboozled into thinking it was fun.

-All I play now is Rock Band, FFT, Persona 3, and NBA 2k11. Weird, isn’t it? I was completely different just a few years ago.

-I don’t usually buy singles, but I made an exception for Wiz Khalifa’s Black And Yellow. He’s put out a couple of ill mixtapes (Kush & Orange Juice and How Fly specifically), and since I don’t go to shows, the least I could do is kick him a dollar for a hot song.

-Killer Mike is one of the most interesting rappers out right now. He’s clearly studied Tupac, Ice Cube, Scarface, UGK, and a bunch of other cats who mixed their thug raps with real life issues and black empowerment. He keeps it honest, is what I’m saying, and I think that’s why I regularly bump his whole catalog. He drops an ill black power track every once and a while, too. There was that “Bad Day/Worst Day” remix with Ice Cube, and it’s semi-sequel “Pressure”, which also featured Cube. It’s just coincidence that these two feature Cube, but maybe not. They’re the ones that stick in my mind the most, cause Mike holds his own up against a rap legend. I mean, “Pressure” goes SO hard, man, from the beat to the lyrics to that Malcolm X excerpt at the beginning. The video is pretty crazy. His latest joint is called “Burn”, and yes, you guessed it: he goes all the way in from the first line on. He also puts the whole Johannes Mehserle situation on blast.

-It isn’t as strident, but “Grandma’s House” is fantastic, too. “My life dope?” “straight cocaine.”

-Gonna be nearly silent running next week here on 4l!. Light posting at best, linkbloggy type stuff, and comic excerpts. It’s so I can bang your head all throughout February without stressing myself out and Ustreaming a murder/suicide. I’ma show you how to do this, son.

tell her i’m very single
David: Hellblazer 275
Esther: Maybe Superman/Batman 80, but probably just Tiny Titans 36
Gavin: Green Lantern Corps 56, Deadpool MAX 4, Avengers Academy 8, Darkwing Duck 8

my mind warps and bends
created: Slow week!

-I took a look at ComiXology’s sales charts and Diamond’s sales charts, add in a bit of educated guesswork, and come up with something interesting about digital comics.

floats the wind
consumed:

-New blog from a friend! Sol, the lady behind the Greg Land gif that brought the internet to its knees, has launched Walking the Comic Book Runway, a fun examination of fashion in comics. This is something I talk about with her all the time, so it’s cool to see her putting these thoughts out there. There’s a few posts right now, but I’m sure if you visit and conversate a bit, she’ll keep on pushing. Go on, do that. She knows her stuff.

-Y’all heard Ye and Jay’s “HAM?” Yeah, it’s straight. The beat is Final Fantasy hot, but Kanye sounds sleepy and Jay needs to stop talking about Beanie Sigel without actually saying dude’s name. As is, though, I liked it better when it was Pill’s “Trap Goin’ Ham,” incredibly ignorant video and all.

-More P I Double: “OK Denn” and “Real Mutherfuckin’ Gs”, “Run Up to Me” with Freddie Gibbs, and one of my favorite songs from 2010, Yelawolf’s “I Wish” remix with Pill and CyHi da Prynce. Every verse on that remix is hot.

-Yelawolf: Woke up in the morning with a fucking pen and a pistol/ I put one to the paper, I put one in my fist/ Stuck up a shop with the pen then I shot up my notebook/ I’m reading bullet holes, I wish a fucker would

-CyHi: I been fly, my momma gave birth to me on a plane/ Nigga, so I guess you could say I’m airborne/ I’m running my city getting my mayor on/ Stay on my grizzly, you know I bear arms

-Pill: Born into poverty, heart torn, obviously/ Dad gone, so we trying to figure out how to eat/ Older brother hustling, momma working overtime/ Now I’m standing in the kitchen whipping baking soda time

-All three of these cats know that when you’re wrapping up a verse, you need to go in or else nobody’s gonna remember you. You can’t just peter out and fade, you gotta hit harder than the rest of your verse or keep rhyming til the beat’s gone, no matter what you’re saying.

-More Yela: “Pop the Trunk” goes so hard, man. It just bleeds menace, from the beat to the lyrics. That bridge at the end is nice, too. “I Just Wanna Party” with Gucci Mane is pretty okay, too. I don’t even really get down with Gucci like that, but he gets it going here. Look for Big Boi roundabout 2:45, too. And who can forget a hot song off one of the hottest albums of the year, Big Boi’s “You Ain’t No DJ”?

-“Yeah, I’m pale, but I’ll impale you with an Impala”

-Also, I bought Weezy’s “6 Foot 7 Foot” with Cory Gunz. Gunz can spit to an absurd degree, and it’s nice to hear Mixtape Weezy again. This song bangs, and Weezy’s punchlines are back to being next level. “Real Gs move in silence like lasagna”? “You niggas are gelatin, peanuts to an elephant/ I got through that sentence like a subject and a predicate”? Ayo.

-Gunner is the only dude who can use “pause” because he’s so rapidfire. It’s like “breath!” “Wayne, these niggas out they mind/ I done told these fuck niggas, so many times/ that I keep these bucks steady on my mind/ tuck these, I fuck these on your mind, pause”

-Dang, I guess the South still got something to say.

-Peer pressure works! Jamaal Thomas over at FBB is rounding up his top ten floppies of 2010. Go, read.

-Here’s an index of all of Spurgeon’s holiday interviews. There’s 20, and they’re great.

–Part 2 of Joe Q’s exit interview is up at CBR. Quesada really did a lot for Marvel, and I think for the comics industry overall. He stumbled, obviously, but if you compare Marvel now to Marvel then… gimme Marvel now any day of the week.

–Sean Murphy is great, but you knew that already.

–Periscope Studio is also full of great artists, and this week they’re drawing the Thunderbolts.

-This NY Times profile of Radical talks a lot about how they’re selling comics to Hollywood, and the only creator they bother to mention is Nick Simmons. How do I feel about that? I think this image says it all, and also shows that you should never run an auto-retweet script on Twitter.

-I buckled under and bought a Kindle. Looking forward to reading real books and newspapers again.

-The Kindle purchase is part of a hard push toward going mostly digital this year. Down the line will be an iPad for comics (once Dark Horse’s store launches and hopefully after Marvel pulls its digital head from its digital butt and fixes). I did some testing, though, and I can already go almost all VOD. I watched the Buckeyes game last week on ESPN3, which was mostly delightful. I use Netflix and Hulu to watch random movies and TV. And now, I can use iTunes to buy stuff I want to keep. I bought Archer and FLCL (iTunes link, but the first ep is free). Between Amazon and iTunes, I should be able to buy most of the stuff I want to keep and rewatch.

-My only issue is the price. It’ll tend to run slightly more than the Blu-rays after the Amazon discount, but less than the MSRP. At the same time… I have instant access forever with no physical media to worry about. This’ll force me to only buy things I really, really want, which is probably a good thing in the long run. I’m doing a lot of thinking about what I think is fair.

–Archer is incredible, though. “Karate? The Dane Cook of martial arts?”

–Judging by the box art and this blog post about their reasoning, Catherine is cruising directly to all of the Game of the Year awards. Gonna be crazy, and probably a story that ends with a good, wholesome message. “Don’t cheat on your girlfriend or else you’ll be damned forever and turned into a sheep dude by sheep cultists.” Here’s a subtitled trailer and a gameplay heavy trailer.

-The Persona games have done a generally good/weird/interesting job of playing with sex and sexuality. A game where the focal point is “You cheated on your girlfriend and now your life is ruined” should be pretty good. It’s sure to be unsettling in probably a Silent Hill sorta way.

-Shoji Meguro did the Persona 4 soundtrack, I’m pretty sure. Curious to see what he comes up with for Catherine.

-Also, whoa, Vincent is in Persona 3 Portable? Cool.

-How messed up is it to cheat on your girlfriend Katherine with a Catherine? What is that, some kind of screwy fetish? Bad luck?

count to ten
David: Heroes for Hire 2
Esther: Batman 17, Batman and Robin 19, Birds of Prey 8, Knight and Squire 4
Gavin: Batman And Robin 19, Booster Gold 40, Justice League Generation Lost 17, Knight & Squire 4, Secret Six 29, Chaos War Dead Avengers 3, Deadpool 31, Heroes For Hire 2, Incredible Hulks 620

the song is not the same when we’re
created: I sent off 2010 and welcomed 2011 in style. Quality over quantity, right?

-AOL jawns: Comics for movie buffs, Digital December mop-up with a retailer and Archie

-Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter interviewed me and whoo, look at the size of that thing. I go in on a lot of subjects–fashion in comics, race and why Iron Man 2.0 is a vote of no-confidence for black folks and comics, the importance of art and story, what news stories journos should cover… click through, read it, tell me what you thought. The response on Twitter and Spurgeon’s intro was super flattering, so now I’m wondering where all the haters at.

all played out, played out, all played out
consumed:

-As I type, I’m watching Ohio State beast Arkansas (as of the first half) on ESPN3. This is the future. I’d pay money for this service if it carried full seasons for the Buckeyes, Hawks, or Falcons.

-How come every sports broadcast ever has a blonde lady down on courtside/sideline? That’s definitely a trend, right? Holly Rowe on ESPN, Doris Burke on NBA 2k11. It’s always two dudes in the booth and one lady on the field.

-Buckeyes won, Pryor got MVP.

–Dark Horse Presents coming back is pretty cool. I missed out on it the first time around, but I liked the Myspace stuff they put up.

-Seneca update: he posted his top 10 list, get at it. He also liked Silent War.

-I figured out Black History Month 2011. I’m going to keep it under wraps, but what I’m thinking will probably be more work for me, but less time spent thinking and fighting on the page.

-You want to enjoy life? Every payday, take twenty or thirty bucks and buy yourself a fat steak. Cook it yourself on the stovetop or grill, seasoned as you like, and maybe some broccoli or corn on the cob or something to go with it. Then sit down with it and a nice movie and tune everything out while you eat.

-Bonus round: make it a point to carve something you don’t like entirely out of your life.

-This is what I do: open a billion windows on Wikipedia by accident. This week’s haul: Mass extinction, Doomsday event, wormwood star, Chang’e, Giewont, Year Without A Summer, Pararaton, Eschatology, and False Vacuum. I’ve liked been interested in eschatology ever since I was a kid, probably pre-teen even, and I usually find myself lost and reading about it once a month. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Tough to wrap your head around. It’s too big.

–I like DrawThisDress.

-I’m a little behind on Persona 3. I just met Ken, the kid, but he hasn’t joined up yet. The story hasn’t quite coalesced just yet, though it’s flirting in that direction. I know that the Kirijo group did something, but that’s about as far as it goes. It’s interesting, though. I should probably play it more often than a few hours a week before bed.

-I watched Gurren Lagann, thanks to Netflix. It was good, maybe a solid B if I had to put a figure to it. The most interesting parts were the mecha bits and the way the spiral played out thematically and literally (in terms of story structure). I’m glad I didn’t buy it, because I don’t know that I’d ever watch it again. I liked it, but I didn’t like it. There were some good set pieces, and the structure was fascinating, but sometimes it got all Gainaxed out. Dropping a slow paced flashback episode into the middle of the sprint to the ending was a crap choice, too.

-I’m looking forward to that FLCL blu-ray, though. Fooly Cooly was dope pretty much throughout, and when I rewatched it a couple years ago, I got even more of the jokes. It’s just thoroughly on point.

-Been thinking a lot about space vs entertainment lately. I own a lot of books I’m not in love with that are just taking up space. I purged a lot of DVDs a while back, too. My new rule is that if I don’t see myself enjoying it more than once, I don’t buy it on physical media. The only exception right now are floppies, but since I can just trash those and I don’t buy that many anyway, it’s not a huge deal.

–DC Universe Online looks interesting, but I played Final Fantasy XI for like six months before I realized I was paying to do boring jobs. I’m wary, but I might cop it if I get too curious/find people to play with. My biggest problem with MMOs is that grinding blows and partying up with strangers tends to blow. The time sink/addiction thing isn’t really a problem for me at all. Discipline, right?

-Did y’all hear that some professor felt so guilty about having to say “nigger” when reading Huck Finn that he’s producing a volume with “nigger” replaced by “slave?” What a big fat crybaby, man. Get over it.

-If you’re down to buy four dollar digital comics, do us all a favor and stop buying digital comics. Don’t encourage that nonsense.

-Brief, because I got these Best of 2010 posts to do.

talktometalktometalktometalktome
David: ain’t nothing
Esther: Secret Six 29
Gavin: Azrael #16, Ant-Man and Wasp #3, Avengers Prime #5, Ozma of Oz #3, She-Hulks #3, Ultimate Captain America #1, Irredeemable #21, WWE Heroes: Undertaker #2

girls who are boys, who like boys to be girls
created: Not a whole lot, but I’m pretty happy with what we’ve got.

-We’re in the home stretch of Digital December. Two more pieces this week and done. To catch up, peep my interview with Fantagraphics about their run up to digital publishing. You can also check out seven things you want to see in digital comics, where I pull reax from Twitter and talk about them. Finally, I look at spin and call it out in terms of ownership and digital books. Non-digital–here are ten Marvel books to read in 03/11.

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and I’m too tired to care about it. can’t you see this in my face, my face
consumed: Still on comics hiatus while I’m on vacation, which is somehow simultaneously grind time (bang bang bang). I got through a few things, though.

-I’ve been burning through Akira Toriyama’s Dr. Slump. I knocked out the first four volumes over the course of four days. Good bedtime reading, and so densely packed with jokes that each page is great. There’s a chapter early with a joke that revolves around Arale being a robot without a vagina, and Senbei is like “I didn’t put one on because I haven’t seen one before! All the magazines are censored!” Weird reading a comic for kids that’s like, “Dirty magazines? Yeah, our main dude reads them constantly and is a huge pervert. Also this chapter is about vaginas.”

-Sort of makes, “Hey kids! Comics!” look stupid in hindsight, don’t it? I vote we all stop saying that.

-I read Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy’s Shang-Chi: The Hellfire Apocalypse. I’m trying to wrap my head around Gulacy still. His art style doesn’t quite appeal to me, but I like the way he does fight scenes. He can dip into the T&A well a little too much, but his camera angles and staging are good. More on this guy later, I’m sure, as I figure out who he is and how he came to be.

-This is what happens when we allow moe to run wild:

-Speaking of moe:

-I’ve been listening to a lot of The Beatles this past weekend. Just on a whim, really. I’m not very familiar with their catalog, so I asked around to see where I should start. That ended up meaning listening to Revolver about ten times from what, Thursday to Monday? Then I switched to Rubber Soul. I like a lot of it. Deeper thoughts as I continue my trip through their library. A post of its own.

-“Eleanor Rigby” is fantastic, though. I had no idea that that’s where Bobby Ray got the chorus from “Lonely People” from, but that’s another song I dug. I bet this pissed off however many Beatles fans listen to southern rap when it came out, huh? Video’s mildly nsfw, I guess, though everything is blurred out.

-Marty over at TFO didn’t like it much, I don’t think, and apparently I did know that it was a flip of “Eleanor Rigby,” because I’m in the comments down there. I just didn’t know that it was “Eleanor Rigby” from The Beatles, is all, I guess.

-More Marty: His review of Das Racist’s Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man is great. I liked Shut Up way more than Sit Down, but this is the kind of review that makes me want to go back and bump them back to back to back to back. He pulls out what works about the music, provides context for the albums, works in the sociopolitical context, too… this guy is good. Das Racist is good, too.

-The Deborah Solomon interview he mentions is here. She’s completely out of her depth. This is the best bit, though:

Like most musicians, you dislike the process of categorizing your work. That said, how would you categorize your work?
Suri: It’s a realist painting of a collage. Vazquez: I would say we are proto-postworld pop.

Ha. Is that capitalized?
Vazquez: It’s all capitalized! Suri: All caps everything!

-“ALL CAPS EVERYTHING.” I think Jay-Z once said, “I might type in all caps for a year straight, I might bring back Cazal shades.” Look it up.

–Here’s Witzke on the Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach:

Gorillaz is a 21st century project as it is larger than just songs on wax, and how much work/knowledge the audience brings to their time with it. If you are a Jamie Hewllet fan, who’s been reading all his comics for years, Gorillaz is a completely different experience if you’ve never heard of the him before this. There is a matrix of “if, then” questions that determine what you can and will take away from Gorillaz as a project, most of them are deliberate on Albarn and Hewlett’s part, some of them aren’t (consider – this is the first Gorillaz project without any overt George Romero zombie or Exorcist references – did you know that? Do you care? Do I?).

Basically, you should be reading that.

-Listen to these while you do so. “Rhinestone Eyes” (dig those Jamie Hewlett storyboards) and “Welcome to the World of Plastic Beach” with tha Doggfather. (“Helicopters fly over the beach/ Same time everyday, same routine/ Clear target in the summer when skies are blue.”

I love his letters (BOOM!) and how he draws De La and the other guests of Plastic Beach.

-Some idle thoughts on Plastic Beach: Murdoc is the villain of the Gorillaz. That much is true. Noodle and Russ are pretty self-sufficient. Russ has his mental issues, but he knows better than to trust Murdoc farther than he can throw him. Noodle, though, is 100% in control, with Demon Days being her Jean Grey in New X-Men moment. 2D, however, just kinda follows along. He’s been stuck with Murdoc for years, and at this point, Murdoc’s kidnapped him and taken him to Plastic Beach. That makes 2D the damsel in distress, doesn’t it?

-2D and the clown mask–is it a coping mechanism? Intentional dissociation? Transference? There’s an interview someplace where he talks about wearing the clown mask in the “Stylo” video and how it got shot up. Did I imagine that? Maybe it was on the iTunes Sessions EP. He’s terrified of Cyborg Noodle, though. Does that make his participation in “Doncamatic” a cry for help? “Talk to me talk to me talk to me” while wearing an outfit that Murdoc clearly picked out for him.

-Jack Sullivan agrees with me. “If you invert the island it’s like he’s trapped in a tower, and the whale is like a dragon, so pretty much yeah.”

-What’s “Doncamatic” mean? Nonsense word?

-What’s it mean that Murdoc made such an extremely pop-sounding album that’s actually kind of sad and foreboding once you get past the sound?

-Here’s Gorillaz covering The xx’s “Crystalised.” You can see Daley in this one. Also “Doncamatic” and “On Melancholy Hill”. “Empire Ants” on Letterman.

-I should stop. There’s a ton of official live Gorillaz on Youtube, and turning youtubes to mp3s is easy and I should stop now before it’s 3am.

-The time between me writing that “I should stop” bit and actually stopping watching youtube: enough time to save like eight or nine fresh new live Gorillaz tracks, including the entire Letterman sessions.

-I have a problem.

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i got my head checked by a jumbo jet. it wasn’t easy, but nothing is, no
David: New Mutants 20
Esther: Action Comics 896, Tiny Titans 35 Possible: The Dark Knight 1, Detective Comics 872
Gavin: Green Lantern 61, Astonishing Spider-Man/Wolverine 4, Avengers 8, Captain America 613, Carnage 2, Daken: Dark Wolverine 4, Deadpool Team-Up 886, Hulk 28, Secret Warriors 23, Ultimate Comics Avengers 3 5, (maybe) Ultimate Comics Thor 3, What If 200

Sittin’ in the mornin’ sun, I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ come
created: Oh yes, we’re still going strong with this Digital December ish on CA.

–DC Comics! IDW launching something new! Marvel Comics and their vault! I also contributed #s 7 and 4 to the Best of the Year over there. King City and The Outfit, of course. Who loves you, baby?

-Anyone notice which question almost everyone skipped? Pay attention. There will be a quiz, and after the quiz comes beatings.

-Over at TFO’s Best Music countdown, I chipped in number 14 (Gorillaz, “Stylo”), definitely one of my favorites this year. I’ve got another song coming and I’m really happy with how that review turned out, plus a bigger piece that I’m collabing with somebody on. Yes.

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Watching the ships roll in
consumed: I’m about to consume a bunch of burgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob, and steaks, but I gotta cook them first, right? So pardon if these are short. I’ve got 4th of July BBQ for Christmas Eve Eve Eve to get to.

-Warren Ellis’s Supergod: Sucks, manages to combine several of Ellis’s worst tics into one terrible, poorly paced, and clunky story.

-I played some more Persona 4. I’m back burnering it for a couple months, though, since I think I’m close to the end.

–Boardwalk Empire is good!

-Newsarama’s poll probably should’ve been better thought out.

-Paul Cornell and Gail Simone have both done some pretty net-pleasing things lately. Using “mansplaining” like that’s a word people should say out loud, getting revenge for Ryan Choi. Ehhh. I’m not down with all the pandering. Just do good stories, that’ll please us plenty. Those of us that aren’t insane, anyway. Cheap pop is just that, so don’t be that guy.

-I listened to a lot of Dungeon Family apparently.

-New music and books are on pause while I work this Digital December thing, not counting new Rock Band songs for extracurricular activities. Plus, next week, Amazon should have some crazy music deals for me to indulge in, so I don’t need to be buying new stuff anyway.

-With that said, I bought the new Ghostface for five bucks and reread Darwyn Cooke’s The Outfit and Graham’s King City (three or four times on that last one, actually).

-Marty’s review of Gil Scott-Heron’s new album is great.

-Spurgeon has interviewed Matt Seneca and Joe Casey. These are always worth a read.

-Dirk Deppey has been laid off from TCJ, and he was kind enough to mention us in his outgoing post. I really do appreciate that, because when I was first getting into blogging, it was Dirk and Tom and Graeme and Heidi who I learned the most from. Curious to see what he does after taking a couple weeks off.

-These burgers ain’t gonna grill themselves, so let me see what I can do to wrap this up real quick…

-[Generic dismissive thought about Marvel’s upcoming Fear Itself event]

-[Clarification that I love Stuart Immonen and that I hope it makes him eleventy million bucks]

-[But on the real, you’re sick if you think I’m buying a seven part event at four bones a pop]

-[CEOutro]

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And then I watch ’em roll away again, yeah
David: Batman, Inc. 2, Hellblazer 274
Esther: Batman/Superman #79, Batman Incorporated #2 Possible: Batman Annual #28, Green Lantern: Larfleeze Christmas Special
Gavin: Azrael 15, Batman Incorporated 2, Green Lantern Corps 55, Green Lantern Larfleeze Christmas Special 1, Justice League Generation Lost 16, Chaos War Dead Avengers 2, Deadpool 30, Deadpool Pulp 4, Incredible Hulks 619, Namor First Mutant 5, Punisher In Blood 2, Secret Avengers 8, What If Dark Reign, Incorruptible 13

black is something to laugh about. black is something to cry about.
created: It’s Digital December at ComicsAlliance, and we’re gawn in. So far, I’ve got interviews up with Boom!, IDW, and Dark Horse. On Thursday, DC Comics hits. On Friday, ???. Next week… something more. 2010 is the year that CA put the boot to your favorite comics news site.

It’s also music countdown at the Factual Opinion, so I’m pitching in to help out Marty Brown and my Joe Casey Fan Club brothers Sean Witzke and Tucker Stone figure out what was good this year. You can check the entire category here, and check out the first of my contributions on the top 50-31 songs list. More to come, of course, including a bit of writing that I ended up being really happy with. That’s rare for me, so stay tuned.

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black is serious. black is a feeling.
consumed:
–Charlie Huston wrote a short story, The Impossibility of a Diaphanous History Machine, on the Mulholland Books site. I like Huston’s work. He writes dialogue like people talk, where punctuation may not mean what it traditionally means, and I dig that a lot. This story is about bombs, and I like the gag about mental ones.

-Here’s a piece he wrote about children, poverty, and fuel for stories. I generally don’t like people writing about writing. I think that you should just shut up and do it, because “This is how I write” is one of those things that’s just awfully boring, but this is practically a statement of intent. It’s hype. A voice coming out of a dark alley that says, “I have a gun.” Needless to say, I’m hyped for this new book. Drops in 2012, though.

–Huston’s website is here. Get familiar.

–Matt Seneca goes in on a Wonder Woman piece by Bill Sienkiewicz. It’s from an aborted series written by Frank Miller and drawn by Sienkiewicz called Wonder Woman: Bondage. I would trade every issue of Wonder Woman and JLA published over the last five years to see this series. That creative team is one of the best in comics. Every time they get together, somebody needs to sit up and take notice.

-I liked this comic by Sloane, especially the way the grid explodes toward the end.

-Ron Wimberly posted a dope story, too.

-Did y’all hear that they killed Brother Voodoo?

-I read Felipe Smith’s Peepo Choo 3 on my lunch break today. That series is three books long and I dug them a lot. They can be mean and gross, hysterically so on both fronts, but man, they click along pretty well. Last volume had a great action scene, while this one ended up having a lot of heart. Morimoto Mazza Fakkin’ Rokkustaa is one of the best new characters of 2010, too. More on this later, once I sort my thoughts out on it. I kinda laughed at the end. I don’t need more, I think the wrap is fine, but I’d read more.

-Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! 9 was fantastic, as expected. Juralumin got one of the hands down best scenes in the book, Yotsuba has some great physical comedy with an exercise ball, and Azuma nails some really nice things over the course of the book. The dinnertime conversation which was very adult, the Yanda/Yotsuba relationship… good stuff. The translation still bugs the life out of me, though. Do I really need to know what the Japanese onomatopoeia for rolling is? And do I need to see it untranslated every single time? Just write “roll roll roll” and we’ll get it.

-The translation really and truly sandbags the book. Stop explaining and just show us. They did well with a dinner scene that would have been tough to translate without notes, but for every one of those, there’s a “Fuuka-onee-chan” to wade through.

-New music: on pause. Been listening to old stuff and have been too busy to buy new joints. Gotta get a lot of stuff did before the Christmas break, and that means doing a couple weeks of work in a few days. Gross.

-But while we’re on the music tip–one of my favorite lines this year is from Evidence, on Copywrite’s Three Story Building. At the end of his verse, he goes, “Started to rap, told my mama I’d be Common/ She thought I meant normal/ I said, “Let’s be honest.” Something about that stuck with me, it’s just ill from top to bottom.

-Copywrite is responsible for another line that I think about a lot. It’s from “Fuck Soundcheck,” off his T.H.E. High Exhaulted tape from forever ago. “I don’t blame you for being wack. I blame your fans for being dumb enough to feel you.”

-I’m not saying that I believe that it’s a fair statement or anything that you should say in polite company. But it’s probably true.

-You hear that Steel might be dying next year in this Doomsday event? I should probably care more, but I could care less, instead. Sorry, John Henry.

-New issues of Chew, Bulletproof Coffin, and Atlas hit ComiXology today. Be nice to catch up on the first two and to ditch a few floppies of the last one.

-I keep trying to think through why I’m uncomfortable with “fun” being a crap descriptor of a comic. I’m trying to purge it from my vocabulary because it’s become vague and meaningless. I think Tucker came closest to how I feel with his review of Batman & Robin 17, a book I thought was mediocre at best. Something else I need to think through, clearly.

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black is us, the beautiful people.
David: Amazing Spider-Man 650, Thunderbolts 151
Esther: Batman and Robin 18, Birds of Prey 7
Gavin: Batman And Robin 18, Green Lantern 60, Green Lantern Emerald Warriors 5, Green Lantern Plastic Man Weapon Mass Deception 1, Time Masters Vanishing Point 5, Avengers Academy 7, Chaos War 4, Chaos War Thor 2, Strange Tales 2 3, Thunderbolts 151, What If Spider-Man, Darkwing Duck 7