the stuff inside my head that must get out
archives
Mon, 29 Nov 2004
Warren Ellis sent a bad signal about anti-commie comics. The link leads to a comic called Treasure Chest of Fun that features "fun" stories like This Godless Communism... Truly good clean fun for kids!
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Masters of the Bankruptcy Universe
Licensed publishers MVCreations got royally screwed in the Crossgen fallout and are struggling to survive. Personally, I never liked any of their He-Man adaptations very much, and neither did my customers.
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Fri, 26 Nov 2004
Before Spider-Man India there was the classic Indian Epic Ramayana. From the website:
The original Ramayana was a 24,000 couplet-long epic poem attributed to the Sanskrit poet Valmiki. Oral versions of Rama's story circulated for centuries, and the epic was probably first written down sometime around the start of the Common Era. It has since been told, retold, translated and transcreated throughout South and Southeast Asia, and the Ramayana continues to be performed in dance, drama, puppet shows, songs and movies all across Asia.
thanks to boingboing.net for the link
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Tue, 23 Nov 2004
It's nice to know that no matter how sophisticated the French seem on the surface, underneath it all they're just as dorky as the rest of us. In some cases even dorkier.
Sun, 21 Nov 2004
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Sat, 20 Nov 2004
Feast your eyes on this here 12-page PDF preview of the upcoming Couriers vol 3 the Ballad of Johnny Funwrecker tpb. It's not for kiddies or you peacenik types out there, but for grown up lovers of action and crime comics.
Check it out and get ready to meet the author Brian Wood at the downtown store on Wednesday February 2. I'll be posting more info about his appearance soon, as well as some other top-secret news about the changes at the downtown store.
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Fri, 19 Nov 2004
Mark Evanier blogged about this new documentary about the good old days when comics were gorey and shocking and they even got so popular that there were congressional hearings about their ties to juvenile deliquency. Now the powers that be have set their sights on video games and comics are being embraced as educational and even intellectual. By the time they decide that video games might actually have artistic merit I wonder what we'll scapegoat then. Those damn holographic projecto-domes!
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Wed, 17 Nov 2004
Crossgen assets purchased by Disney
There just might be some life left in Crossgen Comics after
all.
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my mirror universe twin?
Read here about
the fate of the most evil villain in comic book history. So far.
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I just found out about this issue of Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane where Lois is changed into a black woman!
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Tue, 16 Nov 2004
Check out this cool hack that let's you drive an etch-a-sketch with a common serial mouse. Good fun for the kids.
Sun, 14 Nov 2004
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Sat, 13 Nov 2004
Captain America #1 written by Ed Brubaker
I take back everything I wrote earlier about thinking Brubaker was not
a good fit for Captain America. The preview copy I read this week was
excellent and I'm now greatly looking forward to the next issue. It
has twists and turns, fistfights on trains, cosmic cubes and agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D., everything I'm looking for in a good Cap comic, except
for Jack Kirby, but Steve Epting does a nice job anyway. I think I
liked this even more than the Iron Man #1 I liked so much last week.
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Thu, 11 Nov 2004
Check out this link for an online version of a great series of books we carry at Hijinx. The Brick Testament series seeks to interpret the bible using the medium of Lego.
Other recent biblical adaptations include Scott Hampton's Bible Eden and Simon Bisley's Illustrations from the Bible. I'm not a particularly religious person, but I really like all of these books.
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Mon, 08 Nov 2004
Iron Man #1 by Warren Ellis
There are quite a few new comics coming out this week, but the only one I
had a preview copy of was the new Iron Man #1 written by popular
writer Warren Ellis. I'm a fan of Ellis and I thought that a tech-driven
character was perfect for his sci-fi sensibility. My faith appears to be
justified as this book was thought-provoking and gripping.
Iron Man has always been a favorite of mine, but in recent years the comic has been fairly forgettable. How forgettable? Remember when Tony Stark came out and showed the world he was Iron Man all along? Well, apparently everyone is going to forget about that and accept that it's now just his anonymous bodyguard in the armor while he's out courting supermodels and running Stark Industries.
Deeper retcon (retroactive continuity) activity comes when we learn that Tony Stark originally became Iron Man during the original Persian Gulf War rather than in Vietnam. The changes don't bother me, as they are in service of a great story. This one gets a solid A rating from me.
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the Incredibles
I saw The Incredibles on Sunday night and really can't recommend it enough.
It was the best Pixar movie yet, the best action movie I've seen in years
and maybe even the best superhero movie ever. Go see this movie.
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Sat, 06 Nov 2004
that ain't cool at all
According to this article the WB has declined to pick up Global Frequency the
TV adaptation of the comic by Warren Ellis. That's too bad, as they'll
probably fill the show's timeslot with an insipid sitcom or bad teen
drama series. So much for quality broadcast television.
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Thu, 04 Nov 2004
Comic Relief in Berkeley is my all time favorite comic shop that I don't own. I'd venture to say that without them, I'd never have been inspired to open Hijinx. CR's owner Rory Root is a great guy and a good friend, and I've never met anyone more knowlegable in the field of comics.
Why am I using valuable space to plug a competitor's store? Because they're being evicted from their current location near UC Berkeley and are scrambling to find a new spot. If you find yourself near the East Bay soon, do yourself and Rory a favor and buy something from their incredible selection of graphic novels and comics.
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Wed, 03 Nov 2004
mock the vote
The votes have been tallied and the chads impregnated, and it looks
like we'll have some happy and unhappy campers in America for the next
4 years. I'm just bummed that my candidate lost.
Michael Chabon is best know by comics fans as the author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay a fictionalized account of the earliest days of comic book production. It's about a lot more than that, but it's Chabon's love of comics that has endeared him to the comics community, as if his Pulitzer prize-winning status will somehow rub off and add a veneer of respectability to our favorite art form.
In his keynote address at last year's Comicon, Chabon lets us know that we've got it all wrong. In our quest to be recognized as a legitimate art form, we forgot how to make comics for kids. I agree with almost everything in the speech, but nothing more than this:
Let's not tell stories that we think "kids of today" might like. That is a route to inevitable failure and possibly loss of sanity. We should tell stories that we would have liked as kids. Twist endings, the unexpected usefulness of unlikely knowledge, nobility and bravery where it's least expected, and the sudden emergence of a thread of goodness in a wicked nature, those were the kind of stories told by the writers and artists of the comic books that I liked. The first two, very generally speaking, you tended to find more often at DC; the second two at Marvel.
Thanks to Joe Field, creator of Free Comic Book Day for pointing this out to me.
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Ed Brubaker is a really good writer, but I feel like he's misused most of the time by the big two. Except for his run on Gotham Central, I really haven't enjoyed most of his comics lately. When I heard that he's taking over Captain America, I really don't see that as his kind of book, but I hope I'm wrong.
My very favorite Brubaker comics are his autobiographical stuff, collected in The Complete Lowlife. They're honest stuff and pretty darn entertaining to boot. I just finished reading the new Authority: Revolution, and while it was worlds better than the recent Robbie Morrison fiasco, it still falls far short of the Ennis or Millar runs on the series.
As for Sleeper his poor selling but critically lauded Wildstorm series, I don't really enjoy it. I like the crime noir style of writing, but I really dislike all the superhero action that seems artificially grafted on. I would much prefer if the protagonist were just a double agent rather than one with crazy pain-powered superhuman abilities.
While this post seems pretty negative, I assure you that I really like the work of Ed Brubaker, and I hope he gets a chance to do some comics that can really showcase his skills soon. Meanwhile, read an excerpt from his lengthy interview in the latest Comics Journal.
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