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146. Blue Beetle


Last night, I worked a shift at my local comic shop.

Sorta.

I used to work there, about 12 years ago. I used to shop there until about a year ago. I still maintain a pull list there. It contains two Strangers in Paradise trades and the Captain Nemo/League of Extraordinary Gentleman spinoff graphic novel. The actual list consists of Mind MGMT, Aliens vs. Parker and Five Ghosts – the latter of which needs to get scratched off the card. I also pull random things that I either missed when I fill out my normal order through my current service (like the first issue of Snapshot or stuff that I just jumped on to that will still be a few months before I can add it to my normal order (like the aforementioned Five Ghosts, or a Captain Marvel).

Anyway, my friend Brian is in town for a few days and staying with my other friend Jason – the manager of the local comic shop (which is more of a Magic: The Gathering shop). Jason had to work last night and invited me to hang out at the shop, where Brian was meeting him. On Tuesday nights, after the store closes, they put out the new comics for Wednesday morning and pull the books for all the file customers. I wasn’t just going around while that happened. There’s nothing better than fresh comics. I wanted in. So, I helped count and organize the books and helped pull the books for the file customers.

It was fun, but also kind of sad.

I pulled the books for about three boxes of worth of customers. I got no beef with Marvel & DC, for the most part. Read what you like. I certainly do. But the amount of people I saw with absolutely no indie or creator-owned comics kinda broke my heart. And I found the ones that only had TV show adaptations to be even more sad. OThe guys with only indie and creator-owned books that hadn’t been made in years kinda cheered me up in an even sadder way.

Still it was fun hanging out with my friends and working with comics. And drinking.

I got paid with a reprint book of old Chris Claremont/John Byrne Starlord comics called The Hollow Crown. Seems worth it.

145


I was super excited about seeing Stoker. I tried to go see it at the theater, but was short of cash (as I usually am – I am catching up on the ones on my plate and will gladly accept more Commissions and you can click on my Amazon link and buy whatever you like at no extra charge and it will help me out) the day that it played at The Neon.

I didn’t know a thing about it other than it’s the first English language film by Chan-wook Park, the director of – among other things – The Vengeance Trilogy (the super-underrated Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Lady Vengeance, and the just as excellent as you’ve always heard Oldboy. I was on board no matter what.

It’s so good. It’s about a young girl learning some life lessons after her wacky uncle moves in. So, it’s a lot like Uncle Buck, really.

It’s beautiful and tense and disturbing and restrained all at the same time. The two leads are absolutely fantastic to watch and are able to completely draw you in at the same time repel you and make you feel dirty. Matthew Goode (Ozymandias from Watchmen) is charismatically off-putting. His role is complex and he pulls it off effortlessly. Mia Wasikowska is absolutely great. I’ve never seen or heard of her before, but she’s awesome in this. I was shocked to learn that the script was by Wentworth Miller, aka the guy with the full body tattoo of a prison layout from the show Prison Break, and one Resident Evil movie that wasn’t Milla Jovovich. It’s very smart and sharply written and shares a lot of the themes found in Park’s other films.

The only real weak link in this film is Nicole Kidman. Her face, actually. It doesn’t move. She expresses no emotion, but not for lack of trying. She’s so plastic-y and botoxed-up that she can literally no longer do the thing she gets paid to do. But that only explains away part of why she’s so terrible in this.

144


Once again, I was house/cat-sitting for my folks. Once again, cable TV only disappoints. At least the next time I housesit (a couple weeks from now), it’ll be for a whole week, so I can bring my Netflix delivery system (PS3).

I did wind up watching a fairly decent movie on the SyFy (ugh) Channel called My Soul to Take, a Wes Craven movie from a few years ago that got horrible reviews. But I enjoyed it. I also caught about 40 minutes of The House Bunny aka Boobs: The Movie. It was on and there were boobs. I watched part of an episode of ALF, the last half hour of The Karate Kid III (in which I realized I’d never actually seen that one) and ultimately, the newest episode of The Venture Bros. which sort of made it all worthwhile.

I did read Superman Unchained, though. It was okay. I don’t know what I was hoping for. I think it was the art that kept me from enjoying it fully. I’m not a fan of Jim Lee’s work, and this comic was pretty much a showcase of all things that I kinda find repugnant about it. Especially the ridiculous four-page fold-out poster panel. Both sides are just a blurry mess of lines and “kewl”. And once I removed the glue that held the pages together to unfold this unseemly mess, I was pretty much too exhausted to be impressed by whatever it was Jim Lee thought he was drawing to try to impress me that warranted a four-page fold-out poster panel. Again – it was mostly just scratchy lines and words that I couldn’t read because they were hidden by the piece of cardstock that the four-page fold-out poster panel was glued to in order to hold the thing in the book.

Also, I guess I was really hoping this was going to be an adaptation of Django Unchained starring Superman.

And Superman still doesn’t look right with a high-collar and armored glowy lines and without red undies and the cape that attaches to nothing.

You know what? Fuck this book.

143


So this is a thing I’ve never done here.

I’ve listened to the new Black Sabbath album – “13” – a couple times. It’s the reunion album of Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Ozzy Osbourne, their first full album of new material in over 30 years. They’ve reunited a few times in the past, and on their 1999 (?!) live album, there were two brand new tracks, which were just okay. Since then, Iommi and Butler reunited with the late former Sabbath frontman Ronnie James Dio as Heaven and Hell and managed to sound pretty much like their Sabbath stuff. But here we have the (mostly) original line-up back together (no Bill Ward, instead Rage Against the Machine’s Brad Wilk on drums).

And it’s just okay. Admittedly, there’s a lot of hype, build-up and expectation with this album, and honestly, the only thing it can do is disappoint. And it does. They’re not going to be the same band that made “Paranoid”, but it’s hard not to want them to be. The album mostly sounds like an Ozzy solo outing – which I am not a fan of. I’ve never enjoyed a solo Ozzy. There’s a few good songs, sure, but nothing I’ve ever really enjoyed. I think I’m not a fan of Ozzy in direct proportion to how much I love the first six Sabbath albums.

An Ozzy solo effort usually has a memorable song or two, something really catchy that can stick in your head. “13” is not able to achieve even that. On all eight of the original Sabbath’s albums, the songs are infectious, groovy and heavy – songs that live inside of you after you hear them. Even the bad songs. “13” is sadly generic all the way through. When I saw This is End, one of the tracks from this album played during the credits. I couldn’t tell you which one. I mean, I could look it up, but while listening to it I couldn’t have picked it out.

But that said, it’s heavy. It’s an Ozzy solo album, with Ozzy being Ozzy – but with a better backing band than he has ever had. Iommi may not be able to write the memorable riffs from yesteryear, but he can certainly play the hell out of what he does write. It’s not imaginative or original or memorable, but holy crap it’s done so well. Geezer is a stand-out on this album, playing as hard and as crazy as he always has, and it’s amazing. Together, they are fantastic and really drive everything forward. They are playing and trying as hard as they can. But in the end, 40 years of perception throws up a pretty big brick wall. On the other hand, for a couple dudes in their 60s who hadn’t really played together regularly in decades, it’s pretty good achievement.

By no means is the album bad. It’s actually quite good, but it’s a Black Sabbath venture in name only. Worth a listen if you’re a die-hard Sabbath fan, or even if you’re just interested in the curiosity of it. But buy it used. I imagine there’ll be plenty copies available at second-hand stores in the near future.

142


Trailer Park of Terror. Hoo, boy. With a title like that, I expected something ridiculous and over-the-top with a good sense of humor about itself. I expected tons of gore and comedy. What I got was an overtly serious movie with music video style editing, unlikeable characters – heroes and villains – and villains with zero motivation. Basically, the Redneck Zombie Family from Cabin in the Woods, but with less personality. Every cliche is present and plays out exactly as you think it will. The kills, the creature effects, the plot, all by-the-numbers, unmemorable, unimaginative and illogical. Waste of time.

141


Got my monthly comics shipment yesterday. It’s like Christmas once a month, and I’ll never get around to reading 60% of them. That stupid thing in my head that makes me not stop buying a comic.

140


Just want to give a thanks to Jason Young and Jim Purcell for their response to the triple digit comics inquisition from yesterday. Also to Keith Callbeck, Dragon Fan Blog & Erik Larsen himself over on Twitter for throwing out some titles that hadn’t been mentioned here, like Witchblade, The Darkness and Usagi Yojimbo.

It seems there are definitely more than I thought, but it’s still depressing. I get why Marvel and DC have done away with it (for now – as Jason mentioned, at any moment, they all could just revert to original numbering, or dual numbering again). It’s a business, and new #1’s give a (temporary) boost to books with sagging sales. But it also seems like there’s this weird stigma for books with high issue counts, like it scares off new readers. I think that’s a load of crap. When I was first getting into comics, the high issue numbers excited me. If I was getting into X-Men, holy crap, there’s 230-some other issues of this thing I’m beginning to love. New comics – first issues – were exciting too, because you could jump in from the beginning, but there was something special about realizing you had an entire history you could track down and read. 260 more issues of Daredevil exist? Yes, please, thank you (hey gang, guess when I started getting into comics?). As I got older and my tastes got more discerning (questionable), and started following creators rather than characters, you could realize “Oh fuck, John Byrne wrote and drew something like 60 issues of Fantastic Four! I gotta get those!”

Sure, you can still do all that, but how cool would it be to know that Action Comics is gonna reach issue # 1,000? And again, who knows? DC could completely dissolve this New52 thing and go back to the original numbering system and continuity in a few years (I hear your boner, Fanboy, go away). But it’s still an element of Marvel and DC comics that I’m gonna miss.

And I’m sure that a lot of those feelings are just part of the collector mentality that – at their core – all comic fans have.

But hey. How awesome is it that most of the books in the triple digits are creator-owned and independent comics? As I am whittling down my Marvel and DC purchases in general and trying to support more and more creator-owned fare, it’s pretty awesome that these books are surviving and thriving in today’s economy and comic market. Savage Dragon may not be the icon Superman is, but it’s been going for 20+ years and nearing issue 200 – every issue done by it’s original creator, no less – you can’t deny it’s longevity and staying power. If I were just getting into that book now, “Hey, there’s 180 some more of these things! Awesome!”

By the way, I’m not sure what “scribulous” means, but this might be an example.

UPDATE: Apparently “Scribulous” is already a thing. Fuck.

139


I had a thought question. Bear with me.

Journey into Mystery has been cancelled. This is the title that eventually became Thor. Thor ended and JiM returned. A couple times that I recall. Both books have existed concurrently at times. It is ending with #655, I believe. And with that, I think, is also the end of any comic from the Big Two Publishers with issue numbers in the triple digits. In fact, I want to say the only comics AT ALL that have triple digit numbering are some of the Archie comics, Spawn and Savage Dragon. Am I right in thinking that’s true?

If I am, that makes me a lot sadder than it probably should.

138


Fear. It.