A while back, my brother Geremy directed a music video for “The Dog Days are Over” by Florence and the Machine. You might recognize that song as the one that plays in the ads for the movie Eat, Pray, Love, the TV show Covert Affairs and a handful of other things. Considering you’re reading this very site and you definitely aren’t the Eat, Pray, Love type, here’s the video to jog your memory.

So why am I bringing this up? Because I’ve been informed that MTV has announced the nominees for the MTV Music Video Awards and “The Dog Days are Over” got nominated four times. On one hand, I was ecstatic for my brother and his success! On the other hand, it means that I’m going to find myself watching MTV in the near future. A fair trade. I guess.

It seems the winners of these shows are done via votes and while Florence is up against the crazy lady with the big nose and the wacky outfits, as well as the angry white rapper who looked so hilariously uncomfortable when performing Letterman’s Top Ten List last month, I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask for at least a couple votes from you guys. Seriously, though, go find that clip of Eminem on Letterman. He did NOT want to be there. It’s amazing.

Video of the Year
Best Rock Video

It’s also nominated for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography, but those are non-voting categories. They will be decided via games of Pictionary.

In other news, remember that Goldfrapp video he did with the dancing goths? The YouTube comments are so great on it. You have no idea how many people believe it was created by the Illuminati to endorse Satan (so many instances of “Wake up, SHEEPLE!”). I literally had to explain to my brother what the Illuminati even is. Ah, people are funny…

(with a tip of the hat to Morgan Jeske for this week’s gimmick)

It was Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane that hooked me. McFarlane was on Amazing Spider-Man, and later Spider-Man, around the time I was getting into comics. Jim Lee made a huge impression on me with X-Men #1, to the point where I even still have my issue with the crazy gatefold cover after jettisoning most of the old stuff I owned.

It was only natural that I followed them over to Image, though that was as much a happy accident of trading comics as anything intentional. I stuck with Spawn for a couple of years, inadvertently reading my first Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison stories in the process. WildC.A.T.s… I’m not sure how long I stuck with it. I definitely read it off and on, like I did everything I was into back then, and I definitely read it because a) I loved Jim Lee’s art and b) Grifter had the best mask in comics, outside of black costume Spider-Man.

Years pass. I quit comics at the height of Onslaught and the Clone Saga. I pick up a couple of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira hardcovers on the cheap in 98 or 99, fifteen a piece, and I occasionally browse the racks at my local BX, but I’m not exactly buying anything. I buy my next comic in Madrid, in late 2000, early 2001. It was Norma Editorial’s Spanish language edition of Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s 300. I move back to the States in ’02, discover the graphic novels section at Booksamillion in what, early-mid ’03? I pick up Wildcats: Street Smart because, hey, I liked WildC.A.T.s back in the day! I know Scott Lobdell’s name! The art looks pretty neat! In the end, though, it was just okay in such a way that I didn’t bother looking for more.

I picked up Wildcats 3.0 at some point, I think partway its run. I don’t know why–at the time, Joe Casey and Dustin Nguyen were both completely unknown to me. But it knocked my socks off from top to bottom, from the covers to that weird Wildstorm angular lettering, and I was hooked. A few issues in and I backtracked to Wildcats again, this time pushing past the completely lackluster opening arc and picking up Wildcats: Vicious Circles.

And look, Lobdell and Travis Charest are gone, replaced with Joe Casey and Sean Phillips, with a short assist by Steve Dillon. It’s a dramatic change, as the art went from weird and realistic to a fault to being… ugly. I mean, there’s no flash in Phillips’s work, Wildstorm FX was unusually subdued, and cripes, man, there’s barely even any costumes. The panel borders were super thick, too, what is that about?

It took some getting used to, but once it clicked, it clicked hard for me. I got what Phillips and Casey were doing. Wildcats wasn’t a superhero comic, not in the traditional sense. WildC.A.T.s was about a Covert Action Team fighting a war. Wildcats, then, was about life during peacetime. The war that gave all of the Wildcats their reason for being is a distant memory.

Like Winter Men, Wildcats is about what happens next. The answers varies from person to person. Grifter drifts from place to place and job to job, desperately trying to regain old glories and remaining obsessed with Zealot, his former lover. Priscilla is running from life by drowning in leisure. Jeremy’s trying to prove his love for Pris by “fixing” her. Hadrian, always the soldier, stepped into the shoes of his former boss and attempted to run a company in a forward thinking way. Maxine Manchester… well, she’s more or less the same.

Rather than being about any particular bad guy or conflict, Wildcats is more like the chronicles of an estranged superhero family. Hadrian is the father, but he’s distant and troubled. Jeremy is trying to overachieve and win the approval of others. Pris wants anything but to be part of the family, but doesn’t realize that she has no idea how to be anything but part of the family. Grifter needs a cause, and he’s worthless without one.

At this point in my comics reading career, I’d picked up Ultimates and Authority. I was regularly reading Chris Claremont and Salvador Larroca’s X-Treme X-Men, Chuck Austen’s Uncanny X-Men, and I think I was just getting into Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. Wildcats, at the time, was the most “out there” book I was into. It starred superheroes, but actively avoided superheroic action. When it came time for one of the big bad guys to have his big showdown, he’s finished off with a bullet in the back of the head. There was plenty of X-Men-style drama, but very little of the accompanying continuity-heavy action and violence.

Wildcats was necessary for me. It was definitely part of the process that opened me up to different kinds of storytelling. Phillips is a personal favorite now, and reading comics about regular people doing regular things doesn’t seem so weird any more. Wildcats is story driven, maybe to a fault, and running into it face first while getting back into comics was definitely did me a favor. Of course, it’s all out of print now, though easily available used. DC’s printing Wildcats Version 3.0 Year One later this year, which collects the first twelve issues of that run, but I can’t really see them reprinting the run where Casey found his legs and setup 3.0.

“I’m tryna get to this place that my grandpa told me bout as a child/ Told me only a few could make it and the fakest aint allowed/ Be a star out your game and aim above the clouds/ and if you miss, youll at least be amongst your own crowd”

Slightly different this week! Music recommendations, none of which are probably endorsed at all by Gav and Esther (Est?). Amazon is doing this 1000 albums at $5 deal, and I found some stuff I like. Here’s some recs.

Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill: L Boogie is nice, and this was probably her peak. A little more R&B than rap, but a rap album nonetheless. Before I wanted to marry Erykah Badu, I wanted to marry Lauryn Hill, and this album is pretty much the reason why. Samples: Doo Wop, Ex-Factor, Everything Is Everything
D’Angelo – Brown Sugar: Way before he dropped his naked video and instantly made an enemy of every young black male around my age and gave every young black girl around my age whiplash, D’Angelo dropped Brown Sugar, a dope R&B album that was profane, beautiful, and pretty much immaculate. Also: “Brown Sugar” is about smoking weed. Samples: Cruisin, Lady, Brown Sugar
NERD – In Search Of…: I’ve loved this record since high school. It’s upbeat, melancholy, has some ill punchlines, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to do the entire album at karaoke at some point. “It’s the kinda high that got me leanin’, 120 speedin’ in the rain, meaning of a hydroplane.” Samples: Lapdance (NSFW), Rock Star, Provider
A Tribe Called Quest – Midnight Marauders: One of the top five greatest albums of all time. If you don’t like this, we can’t get along. If you like Low End Theory over Midnight Marauders… we’re gonna fight, but we can be friends. Samples: Award Tour, Electric Relaxation
The Roots – How I Got Over: It’s only five bucks. Go watch Dear God 2.0 and then just buy it already. You need this in your life.
OutKast – Stankonia: Awright awright awright arrararawright… OutKast is the greatest rap group of all time and this is one of several high watermarks for the group. Toilet Tisha is another ill spoken word/instrumental track, Stanklove is heavy, So Fresh So Clean is a certified classic, and all the music videos rule. Plus Kast is one of the few groups that’ll let a song breathe, just because it sounds dope. Samples: B.O.B., Ms Jackson
Blu & Exile – Below the Heavens: I like Blu a whole lot. I think he might be the rapper most in line with where I’m at right now, if that makes sense. Atmosphere defined one era of my life, Cannibal Ox/Company Flow/Aes Rock another, and so on. There’s probably some examination that needs to be done in there. Anyway, dude should make more music more often. I’m a big fan. Samples: Blu Collar Workers, So(ul) Amazing (maybe it’s the MOP sample, but this jawn reminds me of Premo a whole lot)

David David David David Banner: Amazing Spider-Man 639, Hellboy: The Storm 2, Baltimore: The Plague Ships 1, The Boys 45
All Eyez on Esther: Definitely: Secret Six 24, Red Robin 15 Maybe: Batman Odyssey 2, Superman: The Last Family of Krypton 1
Gavinmatic: Magog, Secret Six 24, Avengers: The Origin 5, Avengers Prime 2, Captain America 608, Deadpool 1000, Doomwar 6, Gorilla Man 2, Hawkeye and Mockingbird 3, Hit-Monkey 2, Punisher vs. MU 1 (maybe), SHIELD 3, Secret Warriors 18, Young Allies 3, Irredeemable 16

July was 4thletter!’s best month, hits-wise, in the history of months. I’m honestly really happy about it, because we didn’t cover any of the San Diego Comic-con news cycle, we didn’t have any of those snarky posts that get a lot of hits (“This popular book you like sucks and you’re stupid for liking it!”), we didn’t ride any waves of outrage-based blogging… I don’t think I even called anything racist or any other bloggers stupid and y’all know how much I love to do that.

No, we had our best month by just writing about stuff we like, regardless of when it came out, and you folks dug it. That’s pretty awesome.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned.

-Movie review!
-Guess what we’re talking about.
-You guessed it!
–Batman: Under the Red Hood
-Esther gives it a thumbs down.
-David gives it a thumbs up.
-The thumbs up and thumbs down are pretty much for the exact same reasons.
-The Jonah Hex short was pretty good, though.
-Here’s a trailer:

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Welcome back to another week of showing the gist of the comics we’ve read from this week. Not an overly fantastic week, but my personal picks for the better comics are Franken-Castle, Punisher MAX and Generation Lost.

Authority: The Lost Year #11
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen and Brandon Badeaux

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #4
Grant Morrison and Georges Jeanty

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