Every year, my best friend Sean and I have a habit of giving each other horrible Christmas gifts. From memory, he’s gotten me a “three wolf moon” t-shirt, Suburban Commando, Jingle All the Way and the Country Bear Jamboree. With the movies, it means that I have to watch them and he has to be there to endure it next to me to make sure. Well, the joke’s on him that one time because I genuinely enjoyed Suburban Commando!
Sean gave me an early Christmas gift recently and the other night we had the privilege of watching WWE Films’ Knucklehead, starring the Big Show.
Do you want your movie poster with or without toppings?
WWE Films have released a lot of wrestler-starred movies over the years, usually in the form of cheesy action movies with the likes of Steve Austin, John Cena and for some reason Ted Dibiase Jr. They also did a horror movie with Kane and a serious family drama with Cena. When I heard about Knucklehead, I was initially interested. Big Show has always made me laugh and the idea of putting him in a comedy as a big doofus only seemed natural. I was totally onboard. Then I saw the trailer.
Wow. Okay, um, so you know that saying about how a movie trailer is the studio trying to dress up the movie to make it look like how they wish it was? That’s what we have here. As far as I can tell, this is as entertaining as you can possibly make the movie look with the hour and a half of footage at your disposal. Yes, the best selling point they had in their repertoire was, “Big Show takes a monster shit on a bus.” Personally, I might have played up that the climax of the movie is Big Show vs. Terry Tate, Office Linebacker, but I don’t know if that million dollar idea carries over to other potential viewers.
I’m going to go full spoilers on this baby, so consider yourself warned. Not that it matters, since if you’re reading this, you’ve either seen it already and want an echo chamber on how bad it is or you’re morbidly curious on how terrible it can possibly be.
get three coffins ready created: Just a couple. You can read me talmbout Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning & Brad Walker’s Heroes for Hire or a round-up of the current slate of Batman-centric comics. I’ll have a gang of goodies next week.
my mistake, four coffins consumed:
–
Brandon Graham’s King City 12.
Did you read that? Stellar end to a stellar series, and definitely one of my favorites of 2010. Cripes, man. The first thing I wanted to do after reading King City 12 was to read King City 12 again, but slower. And after that, I wanted to reread 1-12. Which I will do, and you will reap the whirlwind here, but I have to put that off and let it settle for a week. But seriously: if you weren’t reading King City, and apparently it sold like three thousand copies or so a month so a lot of you weren’t reading it, you missed out on some good comics. Only a few comics came close to even touching it this year.
-Takeshi Koike’s Redline is in the middle of an encore presentation at New People, so I saw it for the second time on Monday. I wrote a review for CA after my first viewing, and you know what? I liked it even better the second time around. It’s distilled spectacle, determined to give you whiplash from the hard cuts and harder action scenes. Every single frame demands more attention than you have to give, simply by virtue of being filled with information. The cast is full of character sketches (sexy girls, tv stars, hard-working earth dudes, a renegade cop, a cool dude, a cool girl, a MACHINE GOD), but all of it hangs together perfectly. The sketches are clever enough to support their own shorts, even. It’s funny, it’s frantic, and I’m glad it exists. It’s counterprogramming for all the moe stuff that’s dominating the anime industry, which probably explains the reports of it not doing very well at all in Japan. Buy the Blu-ray when they drop it.
-I bought the self-titled Hard Nips EP. I read a review on the Mishka blog about it and liked the single “Release It,” so I threw four bucks at it. I don’t really have a frame of reference for this kind of music. If it was rap, I could tell you what year it sounds like and who had an influence on the flow, but this is all new to me. I think I like it. I have a hard time with Yoko Sawai’s accent on a couple songs, but I like the way it sounds. It’s very heavy, with deep sounding guitars and vocals that feel like they’re climbing out of the music. If they drop a full album or another joint, I’d pick it up.
-Bilal’s Airtight’s Revenge is unexpectedly good. Not that I don’t like Bilal, but it’s been a good while since I really sat down and listened to some old fashioned neo-soul/R&B sanging cat. He’s hitting those high notes like D’Angelo used to, and the album is overall pretty strong. Clever, emotional, on and on. I like it more than Cee-Lo’s The Lady Killer, which is itself inferior to his Stray Bullets mixtape. Apparently they’re all from the same sessions, which makes The Lady Killer being aight pretty weird. Stray Bullets bangs.
-Redman’s Redman Presents…Reggie is… aight. Kinda disappointed. It makes me want to listen to Red Gone Wild, mostly. Just aight isn’t good enough these days.
-Been listening to a lot of Blur. Really digging Modern Life Is Rubbish and Parklife.
-B.o.B dropped a new mixtape, No Genre. Unsurprisingly, I cosign it. There’s a joint with TI, Bobby Ray, and Young Dro over a flipped version of the Sanford & Son beat. Quincy Jones on production. It disappeared off his official site, though. Label issues?
-Been reading Dragon Ball Z in Vizbigs. It’s been years since I’ve read DBZ in Shonen Jump, but I apparently never read this stuff. It sticks pretty close to the show, so there aren’t a lot of general surprises, but there are a few specific ones. Vegeta turning into a monkey I’d entirely forgotten about, for example.
-I bought Persona 3 Portable. I’ve been playing Persona 4 off and on for about two years now, more off than on, and figured I might as well check this one out, too. Gives me something to do before bed, anyway.
i don’t think it’s nice, you laughin’ David: Esther: Yes: Batgirl 16, DCU Holiday Special, Knight and Squire 3, Superboy 2 Maybe: Batman Annual 12, First Wave 5, Red Robin 18 Gavin:Booster Gold 39, Justice League Generation Lost 15, Knight & Squire 3, Welcome To Tranquility One Foot Grave 6, Chaos War Ares 1, Incredible Hulks 618, New Avengers 7, What If Wolverine Father
if you smoke a dime, then i’ll smoke a dime
-I bought Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here last week and finally got around to listening to it (that’s what happens when you go on vacation, you don’t do things). It’s nuts, totally worth whatever it was I paid for it.
-Scott-Heron is gravel-voiced, astute, and clever. The production is tight, a lot more modern hip-hop than I expected, but with an eager nod toward the black blues/soul tradition. It sounds like what I want this kind of music to sound like.
-He hooked me from the first song, honestly. “On Coming From A Broken Home Part 1” opens with a few bars that are like a shot directly to my dome:
I want to make this a special tribute
to a family that contradicts the concepts
heard the rules but wouldn’t accept
and women-folk raised me
and I was full grown before I knew
I came from a broken home
-I listened to it twice in a row, took a break to wrap up this music countdown thing I’m working on with my TFO family, and now I’m on listen three.
-I finally broke the spell Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy had over me. Listening to it twice a day, minimum, had to stop. I put on OutKast’s ATLiens and Aquemini, two of my most favorite albums ever, back to back. I ended up running through Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and Big Boi’s solo record, too. Feels like I just replaced one addiction with another.
-I hadn’t heard of Daley before this song, but he seems pretty dope. I thought he was a she before I saw the video, to be honest. Apparently he’s an amateur gone pro, and that’s kind of cool.
-I like the song, but I don’t like every part of the song. The horns (though they’re probably from a keyboard, come to think of it) that sit on top of the drumbeat don’t quite work for me. It puts me in mind of circus music, or the guys with the accordion and a dancing monkey.
-The rest of the song, particularly the vocals (the “Talk to me talk to me talk to me” on the hook is pretty great). It’s laid back, and it fits well with the tone of Plastic Beach, or rather, a return to Plastic Beach.
-Doing a zillion things at once right now, and I’m New Here has switched over to Ski Beatz’s 24 Hour Karate School. I picked it up the other day, and the first track is pretty straight.
-Curren$y on the first track is reminding me that I need to pick up Pilot Talk II. I thought Pilot Talk was just aight. Spitta stayed in his comfort zone, which is fine, but a little boring on an LP. I like him enough that I’ll give him a second try, though.
-More on Ski Beatz: Is it just me or was the Dipset breakup the best thing that could have happened to Jim Jones? It forced him out of his comfort zone, which was being a voice in a crowd of many, and into something resembling the limelight.
-Jones was never the most lyrical dude in Dipset, or even the most interesting flow-wise, but he’s got an ill voice that’s just made for rap. That rasp really works.
-Having to go solo, or something like solo, has led to him linking up with Dame Dash, Joell Ortiz, and other cats who have pulled some good work out of him. He feels hungry again. I like that. He’s not great, but he’s interesting enough at this point that I’ll check his work out just off GP.
– /*-~~JETS~~-*/ fool
-There were two songs dedicated to weed this year that were just called “Marijuana.” Yelawolf did one on Trunk Muzik 0-60, and Kid CuDi had one on Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager. Remember when we used to get at least one weed smoker’s anthem a year? Bone Thugs alone had that subgenre on lock.
-Cripes, remember when the phrase “Bone: Thugs-n-Harmony” wasn’t embarrassing on any level? When they fell off, they fell all the way off.
-Back to Ski Beatz: six tracks in and I’m well pleased. Production is on point.
-A larger post on music coming soon, I think.
-Pac-Man Championship DX CE on PlayStation 3 is hotter than the surface of the sun. They completely turned that game out.
consumed: I didn’t do much reading over the past week. I was in Los Angeles and had other priorities. Despite that, I ran through:
-Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s Umbrella Academy: The Apocalypse Suite: I bought the digital comic off iTunes by accident like four months ago and finally got around to it. This was my second time through the series, and I liked it. I do think that the art way outclasses the script, which is just sorta okay. I’ll read the sequel for the first time next year when Dark Horse drops its digital store.
-Jacques Tardi’s It Was the War of the Trenches: This was fantastic. Longer post next week, since I get some other stuff done first, but: yes, you want this. I let it sit for a couple months after reading the first twenty pages or so for some reason, but reading it all in a shot was a great experience.
-I picked up New Mutants 2: Necrosha by Zeb Wells and a whole gang of artists, including David and Alvaro Lopez, who I haven’t seen since their days on Catwoman with Will Pfeifer. In a way, this book is the best example of what I like and don’t like about corporate comics. Wells is telling a pretty good story and bam, a fairly crap X-Men crossover pops up. He treads water through that, managing to do some cool stuff with Doug Ramsey in the process, and then gets back to his ongoing plot. Except! After Wells gets two issues in and introduces his big bad villain and scripts a particularly fun issue for an old X-Force fan like me, we get a crossover with Siege that’s written by another writer entirely. And then, after that issue, is a three issue detour into X-Men: Second Coming. That’s gross. And yet, Wells is holding his head through all of this, and he’s created the only X-Men comic I’m even really interested in right now. Dude is good. I just wish Marvel would give him room to breathe, but I guess working with the X-Men comes with certain expectations.
nigga, I’m feelin’ better than ever, what’s wrong with you? you get down! David:Heroes for Hire 1, King City 12 Esther: Yes: Action Comics Annual 13, Secret Six 28 Maybe: Batman: 80 Page Giant Gavin:Secret Six 28, Ant-Man & Wasp 2, Chaos War God Squad 1, Heroes For Hire 1, Ozma Of Oz 2, She-Hulks 2, Taskmaster 4, What If Iron Man Demon In An Armor, (maybe) Wolverine Best There Is 1, Irredeemable 20
This week brought the end to one of the more enjoyable Marvel miniseries of the year in Avengers & the Infinity Gauntlet. Written by Brian Clevinger (of Atomic Robo and 8-Bit Theater fame) and Lee Black with art by Brian Churilla (the Anchor), it’s a very fun and all-ages reimagining of the Infinity Gauntlet storyline. Rather than have a bunch of heroes run headfirst into a gruesome death by Starlin’s second favorite character, only so that Starlin’s first favorite character can be the one to stop him, Clevinger goes a different route. The group of heroes sent to figure out what’s wiped out half the universe is made up of Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Hulk, Wolverine, Doctor Doom and US Ace. Yes, that space trucker from the awful US-1 comics of yesteryear.
The real star of the comic is Dr. Doom, mainly because of his dynamics with the rest of the cast. He hates Spider-Man for his lack of respect and penchant for annoying humor. He hates Ms. Marvel for daring to give Doom orders. He hates Hulk for being an imbecile. He hates Thanos for being one level above him in the megalomaniac game. He hates US Ace for being a ridiculous space hick. He hates Wolver… actually, he sort of almost seems to respect Wolverine just because they see eye-to-eye as the straight men of the group.
It’s a fun four issues and I can’t wait to check out Clevinger’s Captain America: The Fighting Avenger in January. But that’s not what this post is about. You see, Avengers & the Infinity Gauntlet has this subplot about the Skrulls and Kree joining forces to destroy Earth (long story). There’s a sequence that shows the people of Marvel Earth from all over the globe responding to this. Nick Fury, Mole Man, civilians trying to stay alive, etc. One panel shows the Punisher trying to fight back against the alien invasion. He’s surrounded by flame and… er… the bad choice of coloring hit me by surprise.
Hey, now! Hm… Then again, the guy’s already killing people on the streets. It’s not like public indecency is going to add that many years to his 329 back-to-back life sentences. Still, be warned: if you mention “Micro” around Frank Castle, you BETTER make sure he knows you mean his hacker sidekick.
I jabbed Clevinger about this and this is what he had to say about the Punisher’s Naked Kill:
😀 Lee and I never got to see a color proof for issue 4, so this panel came as quite a surprise. Looking at it now, I’m not sure if we’d have said anything or not. I mean, we got to include the phrase “meanest mother trucker” and show Wolverine killing a guy on panel in an all ages book. Why not go balls out and have Punisher, uh, go balls out?
It’s nice to see him taking it in stride like this. Since he’s been so cool about me poking fun at Frank’s exposed shotgun and grenades, I thought I’d do him a solid. Right here, right now, you’re getting a 4thletter! exclusive. Cross your fingers, but I’m hoping Marvel could use this for the cover for the Avengers & the Infinity Gauntlet trade.
What courage. I would never allow that thing anywhere near Wolverine’s claws!
Sorry for the lateness. I was planning on finishing this baby up yesterday, but I was exhausted. Exhausted from MARKING! Why was I marking again? Oh yeah…
Right! Miz winning the title. Good times. But I’m sure I’ll be forgiven for finishing this list off a couple days late. Posting it on Thanksgiving sort of works, right? You’ll forgive me, won’t you, Miz Title Win Reaction Girl?
Oh. Never mind, then.
As for the PPV? I thought the first half was brilliant and the second half was below average. The Kane vs. Edge match especially. That’s a shame, since I like the angle.
new york is killing me
-Hopped a train (or series of) to another leg of my vacation today.
-Amtrak is like Greyhound, only all of the ex-cons and creeps have been replaced by old people and preppy college kids.
-As I speak, there’s a young girl insisting that her parents better get her a laptop.
-There was one dude with a chihuahua, an LV bag, and a stuffy demeanor that reminded me of dude from Silence of the Lambs. “Put the lotion in the basket.”
-I’ve spent most of the trip listening to new music and a few albums I recently bought that I’d been putting off. It’s interesting, hearing new stuff. I like a lot of stuff that I normally wouldn’t expect myself to like.
-Charlotte Gainsbourg’s IRM? I bump that like it’s an MOP record. “Take a picture, what’s inside?”
-I keep calling her “Charlotte Gainsborough.” I can’t figure out why.
-The kid J Cole’s Friday Night Lights mixtape is pretty straight. He doesn’t knock my socks off, but he’s got real potential. Blow Up is a hot song, and so is that single he had with the marching band.
-Lil Wayne: I think I’m over him.
-Nicki Minaj: Yeah, done with her, too. Dumped. Somebody needs to pull her card. Trump.
-Who expected Kanye to go in on race relations in porn? “She said her price’ll go down if she ever fuck a black guy/ Or do anal, or a gangbang/ It’s kinda crazy it’s all considered the same thing.”
-“How can you say they live their life wrong?”
-The only thing I’d change about Kanye’s album would be to flip the first few bars of Ye’s verse on “Runaway” with the clean version. He uses this sample I’m really fond of–a lady going, “Hey!”
-You’ve undoubtedly heard it on the radio, but maybe that went out of style in the ’90s. I like the way it sounds in the song, though.
-“She find pictures in my e-mail/ I sent this girl a picture of my HEY!/ I don’t know what it is with females/ But I’m not too good at that HEY!”
-Taking champion music like “All of the Lights” and flipping the script entirely–that’s all too well done.
-I forgot that Gil Scott-Heron dropped I’m New Here this year. “New York Is Killing Me” goes super hard, and I’d forgotten how much I was feeling it when it leaked earlier this year. There’s one with Nas, too.
-It’s this raw, dusty, dirty, Otis Redding sounding joint. Blues plus. Soul on wax.
-Speaking of Otis Redding–five bucks for The Very Best Of Otis Redding. I like those odds. The version of “Sitting By The Dock of the Bay” is different from the one I usually get down with on Rock Band. I managed to pick up on that before I even looked up the titles. The RB one is “Take Two.” The one on the album sounds different, fuller maybe. Less raw.
-The new Sade is two dollars today, wow. Glad I wanted before buying.
consumed: Nine or ten hours of travel time gives you a lot of time to read. Not sleeping the night before halves that reading time. Regardless, I read:
-Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond, Vol. 9 (VIZBIG Edition): This one is a six hundred page series of fight scenes, give or take a hundred pages, and makes a whole lot of cape comics look stupid in the process. “This ends now!” sort of fights, where you go and go and then your SECRET RESERVE OF ENERGY wins the day, are old and busted. Musashi coming down off the mountain and out of the shadows is the new hotness.
-Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library #20: This is my first ACN, and hey! This was pretty impressive. It was also a surprise birthday gift from my buddy Lauren Davis, who is good people.
-Mike Carey & Marcelo Frusin’s Hellblazer: Red Sepulchre: This is the start of their run, and I read up through a couple volumes after this. I haven’t read this run in a couple years, and it’s still pretty good. I like how Carey put his puzzle pieces together.
take a picture, look inside David:Detective Comics 871, King City 12, New Mutants 19 Esther: Definitely: Action Comics #895, Batman and Robin #17 Maybe: Batwoman 0, Detective Comics 871 Gavin:Batman and Robin 17, Avengers and the Infinity Gauntlet 4, Captain America 612, Deadpool 29, Deadpool Pulp 3, Deadpool Team-Up 887, Incredible Hulks 617, Namor: the First Mutant 4, Secret Avengers 7, Secret Warriors 22, Shadowland: Power Man 4, Ultimate Comic Avengers 3 4, Incorruptible 12
November 24th, 2010 Posted by Esther Inglis-Arkell
Let me start by saying, “All hail Paul Cornell.” Between Action Comics and Knight and Squire he is rocking books set on both sides of the pond. Each book takes an unconventional look at superhero comics. Knight and Squire looks at a superhero team set in the English country side. Things are incredibly civil. The heroes and villains hang out together at a bar protected by a kind of truce magic, and both sides enjoy it. Everyone in town knows who Knight and Squire are, but no one says anything because that would be rude. It’s a relaxed look at an adventuring team.
Action Comics, which chronicle’s Lex Luthor’s quest to get the black lantern ring, is definitely not relaxed. It follows the most brilliant, driven man in the world, and that man has a chip on his shoulder. It’s a great read because Lex Luthor achieves real grandeur in his quest. His intelligence shines through, as does his moral code, which is a very primitive and appealing one; he has to be in control, and he won’t ever stop fighting to get control. He won’t back down. While it’s clear he’s not actually a good person, he has a greatness that lets you understand why people would follow him.
I just wish he’d stop killing people.
But he won’t, because he’s Lex Luthor.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that the character could be spun so enough that there is a comics series about how he’s just trying to do good and the conflict with Superman is a grudge match fueled by unfortunate misunderstandings. It’s just that stringing those misunderstandings together will result in making this character – the embodiment of strength of will – look ineffectual, and Superman – the embodiment of kindness – look petty.
I mean, I’ll still buy it. For crying out loud, I’m still checking out Green Arrow solicits trying to see some sign that they’ll bring Conner and Mia and Dinah and even Lian and Roy back. I buy comics long after they make me miserable. Pretty much every fan does. It’s just that sometimes we’re the cause of our own misery.
Deadpool started small and climbed up to multiple titles per month. People noticed a quality drop and didn’t like it. So Marvel started a poll to cut a Deadpool title and people didn’t like that either.
Batman was the lone vigilante in the night. Unwavering and infallible, he was a solitary soldier. But people liked that solitary soldier, and so he was put on team, in charge of teams, as an adversary or backer to teams. His world was crowded with followers and sidekicks and lovers and old friends, because people wanted to see more of him. And through it all, the writers struggled for that same, solitary, infallible persona. Eventually it got ridiculous, and it’s a good thing that Grant Morrison is ushering a Batman who embraces the group dynamic, because that “I am the night” thing wasn’t cutting it any more.
Comic mentality is often junkie mentality. People want more, faster, more intense. And then when they get a steady stream of stories artificially twisted around a marketable concept instead of one or two new takes, it’s never as satisfying as it should be. Everyone ends up frustrated. Fans because they aren’t getting what they want, and creators because they’re giving people exactly what they always said they wanted.
November 23rd, 2010 Posted by Esther Inglis-Arkell
The DCU blog has a preview of Teen Titans #89, when Damian joins the team.
Here is some sample dialog:
“The only joke that I see is Beast Boy. My first order of business will be kicking him to the curb. We’ll call him if we ever need a talking chipmunk.”
“Should have left it alone, One-Eyed Jackie.”
“You’re funny. Look even funnier when I take out your other eye.”
List of things Damian should not be saying:
1. Nicknames. This is a kid who calls Alfred ‘Pennyworth.’
2. Sentences with dropped articles. This is a kid who calls his dad, ‘Father.’
3. Contractions. I don’t think Morrison’s Damian ever really used them.
4. The phrase ‘kick him to the curb’ or any slang that would be seen before the turn of the last century.
Renting Damian out to various titles is good. He’s a funny character and an obnoxious little snot. They’ve got that part down.
One of the main reasons he’s funny, though, is the fact that he’s a child who speaks like an 18th century vampire. The kid was raised by a family of functionally immortal aristocratic ninjas. Having him talk like that smart-ass kid from around the corner doesn’t work on any level. This character has one of the most recognizable ways of speaking in the DCU. The only character easier to single out through speech alone would be Bizarro. A few obnoxious remarks just don’t cut it.
With this series winding down, I thought I should take a second to discuss my thoughts on the Survivor Series concept in general. I’ve found through watching these 23 shows that it would benefit the WWE to go back to the earlier concept from the first ten years. Nearly, if not every match should be an elimination tag. If you really need to fit in a title match, go ahead. The thing is, forcing your champions into these tag matches both gives even the most invincible face champion an excuse to lose for once and it keeps things from getting stale. It’s optimal to have your money feud spread out with a high-profile tag match such as this, rather than wearing out the luster with rematch after rematch in a singles setting.
Survivor Series is an awful lot like the Royal Rumble. It’s a who’s who of the roster. We get mystery wrestlers, replacements, good eliminations, bad eliminations, chaotic guessing games of who’s going to win, current feuds developed, new feuds created and old feuds rekindled. While the elimination tag matches aren’t as fun as the Royal Rumbles, they do have the advantage that there doesn’t have to simply be one winner that night. As much as I love the Royal Rumble, it’s a pain knowing that sometimes only two or three guys involved have anything resembling a chance at winning. At Survivor Series, we have multiple matches with potentially multiple winners. If somebody loses, a lot of the time, it doesn’t hurt their status. Sometimes a win can make you look great.
It is silly that this year’s Survivor Series has only one of these matches. In the past couple months, we had a 7-on-7 elimination tag at Summerslam and another one at Bragging Rights. Both were a lot more important than Rey Mysterio’s team vs. Del Rio’s team. How strange that the company insists on shoving different gimmick PPVs in our faces month after month, but doesn’t want to give any service to their original gimmick PPV.
I am officially a day behind. The fatigue finally hit me, mainly due to real life scheduling and sleep sounded a lot better to me than writing about the Goodfather. I’m going to try to have the rest of this up before leaving to watch Sunday’s show, but I’m sure I’ll probably tap out and finish the last installment the day after despite my best efforts. Boy, I suck.
And speaking of people who suck, as well as Thanksgiving, I want to direct your attention to Luther Reigns. He’s a hoss from the mid-00’s who is featured in today’s update. For that, I bring you this clip, which features one of my favorite quotes in all wrestling.
He’s had peas before. That… That’s good to know, Luther. Thank you for sharing that.