My One Word Review of the Dark Knight…

Wow.

Now on to the rest of the week’s crap. I’ve fallen behind in my blogging lately thanks to work and a five month old who likes to bounce. Now that he’s asleep I can share a few items and thoughts for the week. Let’s continue with where I started… comics:

• Marvel’s Secret Invasion continues and LOTR King reviews the latest Avengers installment.
• He also reviews Thor #10. This title has been slowly getting stronger and stronger and has become one of the more interesting Marvel titles.
• The AVClub has published its comics panel.  Not a whole lot that I’d read, but it’s still worth browsing.

Moving on to television, a few interesting things…

• The AVClub reviews one of the most underrated televisions shows of all time… TV Funhouse
• Electricity & Lust reviews Generation Kill. I’ve been really enjoying this HBO mini-series. Also, check out his new movie blog here.

In technology/Web 2.0 stuff, I found a new website I want to try, Fluther. Apparently the collective will answer your questions. I just wonder how you know if they’re right or not?

In words and the such, more good stuff from One-Story.

Finally, I’m also starting a new project for myself. As I find myself in airports from time to time, I thought I’d start a blog that covers travel. You can find it here, but I haven’t really posted anything yet.

Where’s Your Burpcloth?

That’s the big question in my house for the 15th straight week as Sean continues to resemble Linda Blair. This week I’ve actually put a decent dent in my giant stack of comics, watched some Battlestar Galactica, and continued to listen to the new Jakob Dylan album while also listening to the new Mudhoney album (I wrote a tiny bit about it here). So before the baby spits up all over me again, let’s begin…

In comics this week there are a few good things to note…

• LOTRKing gives us a Marvel year in review. Or at least the year so far. I half agree with his X-Men synopsis but can’t argue with the rest of his article. He also digs back into the archives and reviews Fantastic Four #124 from 1972.
• The AVClub features a lengthy comics panel
• Electricity & Lust pointed me towards Peter Travers’ review of The Dark Knight and it sounds quite amazing.
• Zach Smith had a cool free comic called Satan P.I. on his website (it showed up in my reader) but the link has been disabled. When it comes back I’ll link to it, it’s really sharp and fun!

Finally in comics, I believe the comics world is off in Chicago (or about to return). I know the guys at my local shop, Ultimate Comics (as seen in the new Marvel book 1985) are there. I’ve also found the Invinsible Superblog.

In television, thanks to Cinematically Correct for posting the preview of the new season of 24. The question is, will they sucker me in again?

In books and other misc. words, a few things I noticed this week…

• David Guterson, the author of Snow Falling on Cedars has published The Other. The Times reviews it here as well.
• One-Story posted some interesting stuff this week. Their intern released a quite interesting list of his top-10 stories. This was in response to a top ten list published by EW which spurred a discussion here.
• The Times talks about a new e-book reader.

Electricity & Lust has two interesting posts this week. Their Diggin post talks about the New Hold Steady (among other stuff), and they provide the usual great mix of links per usual. Many weeks they help me keep up on stuff in ten minutes instead of searching for hours. I’d add them to my RSS if I were you.

And finally, George Carlin died a week ago. I’ve posted a few thoughts from others below, but my favorite was when Howard Stern asked Gilbert Gottfried if he had any bad stories about George Carlin and he did. Apparently George told Gilbert to get the hell away from him and to leave him alone once.

• Cinematically Correct mentions it here.
• The AVClub here.
• The New York Times here.

Happy Mother’s Day

Before I say anything about anything this week, Happy Mother’s Day to Shannon, your Junior Grumpy Future Comic Book Nerdloves you!

I’ve got to start this post with Comics. While my pile has been growing and growing and I’m WAY behind on comments, Marvel’s Secret Invasionhas been fantastic. The two issues they’ve released have been the kind of comics I have always loved to read; full of surprise and history and action. The tie-ins have been pretty awesome too. Here are a few reviews to check out:

• Mighty Avengers #13tells us a little of what Nick Fury has been up to.
• New Avengers #40tells us some of what the Skrulls have been up to.

I have not seen Iron Man yet (babies will do that) but here is some news about the thor movie.

The AV Club has noticed Ryan Adams and his blog.

The Philadelphia sports-loving Bizzaro Jerry has put up his weekly Lost post. It’s good stuff, which can be confirmed by Shannon’s out-loud laughter and praise while reading from her perch on the couch. His Bizzaro Jerry status (or mine depending on which universe you live in) can be confirmed somewhat with his Speed Racer post. I’m kind of happy to see this movie fail, the commercials make it look worse than I Love Trouble.

Electricty & Lust has released its links of most anticipated summer movies. Not sure why Hollywood has redone Short Circuit (this time without this week’s Howard Stern highlight – The Incredibly Hung Steve Guttenberg) but I can agree with the other links. There’s also some good stuff on Electricity & Lust’s Linkemonypost.

We finished HBO’s In Treatment and I have to say that, much like life, the last episode was full of sound and fury, yadda yadda yadda. It was a really interesting nine week experiment in television endurance and I wonder if HBO will try another season of it. Like life, the series showed how messed up people are without making it all tidy or giving us much of a resolution.

I’m reading Franzen’s The Corrections and so far it’s great stuff. I still have a mountain of New Yorkers and comic books to climb.

Weekly Notes

So again my sleep schedule was up and down this week, but here are a few notes, reviews, links, etc. for the week…

First, let me say that I read the first issue of Marvel’s Secret Invasion. Let me just say, WOW. I don’t want to drop any spoilers but I’m excited, confused, and waiting to see what happens next. Some reviews:
The AV Club review (along with the comic’s panel) is here.
LOTRKing’s Review is here (though filled with spoilers so be warned!).

Now that Secret Invasion is out of the way, what else?
Thanks to the New York Times I discovered Jott, an interesting site that allows you to Tweet, blog, e-mail, etc. from your cell phone without having to go through the pain in the neck of texting (I’m showing my age).

I had to finally put down Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon. I didn’t realize it was originally published as a serial. Either way it was a bit too much fantasy for me. I like my fantasy in comic books or movies, not fiction.

The One Story Blog is doing its thing. It’s a great magazine and worth the subscription if you like short fiction.

Like Twitter? You’ll, um love likenotice Dawdlr. The postcards are beautiful though.

Check out Ryan Adams and his brilliant brain at work.

Electricity and Lust is renewing its focus on movies but it’s still just as great.

I still have a stack of comics and New Yorker magazines to plow through and will let you know if I find anything…

The Week That Was

With a new baby and all, my sleep schedule is screwed up, thus my media consumption is down. WAY down. Beyond the Game Show Network feeding me a steady stream of Match Games and Super Passwords, my heavy eyelids have shortened my attention span to nearly zero. However, never fear gentle reader (and I know there’s only one of you out there), I have a few things to add to the world of the interwebs this week…

The good folks at the AV Club published their latest Comics Panel. It covers a number of things I’ve been reading, including Kick Ass (which I thought was fun) and the Fantastic Four.

This week’s Lost was pretty good. Here is a good recap from a pop culture blog that writes a lot more than I do. The nice thing is, I think the author and I share a lot of common tastes. Check out Cinematically Correct here.

Thanks to Our aforementioned friends at Cinematically Correct for also bringing the latest fun stuff from Ryan Adams to my attention to. Hopefully an album is on the way.

Also in music, The Raconteurs (Jack White’s band) announced that their second album is coming out on Tuesday. Yes, I said THIS TUESDAY. Holy surprise Batman! I can’t wait. The album will be called Consolers of the Lonely. I can’t wait! I want to go get it from my local record store but I fear with my schedule I might end up buying it off the interwebs.

I think that’s it for now.  I ordered the new Kathleen Edwards album off the interwebs and will write about it if I’m awake.  The one good thing about late night television is that I’ve seen parts of Planet of the Apes, the Blues Brothers, Animal House, etc. lately.  I saw the Blues Brothers on Cinemax and forgot the joy of that film uncensored.

Catching Up

I’ve been behind on blogging lately as my wife was in her ninth month of pregnancy and then had the baby a week ago.  As a result, my reading and viewing habits have been lazy lazy lazy.  Here’s a taste of what I’ve been consuming…

Starbuck’s, yes the coffee company has put out a great CD of music handpicked by Bob Dylan. Find it here. It’s a nice listen of blues, bluegrass, country, reggae, etc. I was surprised at how much I liked it.

Let’s not forget comics. It’s been a big few weeks for comics (and I’m still behind). First, I want to AGAIN mention my love affair with Captain America. Every issue gets better, James as the new Cap is fantastic, the writing is entertaining, and the art is wonderful. I’m curious to see how the entire Sharon Carter thing plays out. I’m also interested to see the new Cap start meeting other members of the Marvel Universe. The one question I have is, what’s going to be up with Steve Rogers during this whole secret invasion thing? While I don’t believe he would have sided with Tony Stark during the Civil War, would he have found a better way to resolve the conflict? Is he a Skrull? I guess we’ll see…

The other book I’ve been enjoying is Fantastic Four. Two issues into Mark Millar’s story arc, I’m enjoying the conflict that is being set up. I suspect that the new creative team is going to bring us along on big adventures and can’t wait.

And finally (in terms of comics) is the Hulk books. The Incredible Herc has been fun and Hulk Red has been interesting too. I suspect that we’re not too far off from the Hulk coming back in style. I like the subtle touches such as Clay Quartermain being around. I just wish he was a little more like the character from 10 or so years ago when he, Rick Jones, and the Hulk were on the road.

In terms of books, I just finished Generation X by Douglas Coupland. Boy, he was ahead of his time when he wrote that book in 1991. Reading it today I feel better. I’m not as weird as I thought I was…

Current reading includes Gentlemen of the Roadby Michael Chabon, The Last Defenders, Northlanders, and some New Yorkers and National Geographic Travellers. I’ve also got a CD wish list that I plan on cycling through. I’ll let you know if I hear anything good.

New Animated X-Men

On the Marvel website a new first look at Wolverine and the X-Men. I can’t tell if it’s just DVD or an actual television series. It looks like a good team at least.

Captain America #34

I’ve returned from the comic book store with two weeks worth of new releases.  I started flipping through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, FF, Astonishing X-Men, Star Trek Year 4, etc.  The title I was most excited in, however, was Captain America.  Issue number 34 introduces us to James “Bucky” Barnes the Winter Soldier as the new Captain America. 

I’m not going to give the story away but it jumps right into the action without a long protracted passing of the torch.  I think what’s made this title so compelling is that they’ve brought in strong stories, a strong supporting cast, and made it more about espionage than super powers destroying the world.  So far so good, this is a title worth checking out.

Onto Astonishing X-Men…

Spiderman

Click here for a great complaint letter to Marvel regarding the recent Spiderman mess and the One More Day storyline. Not sure I could have said anymore than this.

A Confession of Sorts

I’ll admit it, as a kid and a teenager I wasn’t much into what could be coined as thoughtful or alternative comics. For the most part I was reading Marvel’s main titles such as the Avengers, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, etc. While I’ve always enjoyed reading, it seems that as a kid comics were the easy alternative. They were (until late in high school) my choices. I found that most of the joy of reading could easily be sucked out of books by bored, lazy, or just plain uninformed English teachers. While that did change for one year in the 11th grade, comics have always been one of my main escapes.

In the past year or two, however, I’ve tried to combine my love of literature with my love of comics. Beyond the indy comics I find at Chapel Hill Comics I’ve recently stumbled across one of my favorite authors writing for a Marvel title. Jonathan Lethem is writing an interesting and challenging limited series (based on a low-selling 70s series) titled Omega the Unknown. So far it’s pretty interesting and out there.

This brings me, however, to my confession of sorts (as the title would suggest). I’m just now, in my 30s, reading the Watchmen for the first time. In some ways I’m embarassed to admit that considering I’ve been reading comics as long as I can remember. It’s different, and to be honest, I’m not sure that I would have enjoyed it five or ten years ago. While I still read many Marvel titles I find myself angered by the idiocy of some of their plotlines. Take the recent Spiderman – One More Day Fiasco. Part of what makes Spiderman so great is that the title has always tried to keep Peter Parker as normal as possible. While dealing with Supervillians and cosmic forces, he has to keep his job, pay the rent, and try to keep his girlfriend happy. An approach more along the lines of the demise of Gwen Stacy would have been a far better ending for Aunt May.

This is one thing I find myself enjoying about the Watchmen, I find that the characters are flawed, dealing with issues not unlike those found daily in life. It’s compelling and I am starting to unfold while people still rant and rave about the series. Let’s hope that other comic writers somehow rediscover this kind of writing.