WARNER BROTHERS DOESN'T LIKE IT WHEN PEOPLE HAVE CHARITY AUCTIONS FOR KIDS WITH CANCER.
I am never purchasing another comic - or indeed watching another film - that has any connection to DC Comics and / or Warner Bros again unless they fix this mess.
Which they won't.
So I'll be keeping all that cash, thanks.
Rumskib. "Hearts on Fire" is completely amazing.
Foxtail Somersault. Some stunning songs. "Divingboard" is exactly what you need when you're a bit stressed out or whatever.
Brittle Stars. Not actually playing anymore, but Rumpshaker will make you shake your rump, in a vaguely swaying-from-left-to-right fashion.
Northern State. Interesting Beastie Boys spin.
The High Violets. Bit grungy. Bit spacey. Good stuff.
Luminous Orange. Japanese shoegaze that doesn't just sound like a MBV ripoff.
Hartfield. Another Japanese shoegaze band, almost impossible to get their stuff in the UK which sucks.
(Originally posted elsewhere, but I thought I should flesh out the list a bit. Hence, you get two extra bands. Go web go).
I was recently in America for a conference. While I was in New York, I stayed in the Radisson Martinique. Imagine my dismay, then, when it turned out to be the worst hotel I have ever stayed in.
My workplace booked this for me, as I needed somewhere in this particular area for a few meetings before heading onto DC. Right from my arrival, there were problems. My UK bank card doesn't work in a lot of places in the States, so my company book / pay with their company card in advance, sending an auth fax to confirm the hotel can take payment from their card.
At check in, I'm told I need to pay. Looking confused, I'm told the room was merely reserved, not paid for. After handing over my card to pay for the first night (and not even knowing if payment would be accepted or not), I headed to my room. (Eventually my company told me they had indeed sent the hotel a fax in advance - did the hotel staff simply not check the fax machine, or throw it away? Who knows. The lady from my company who had to fix this mess informed me that whoever they dealt with on the phone to sort the problem out wasn't particularly pleasant, either).
The room was tiny, the view was a brick wall with some windows in it, I couldn't control the heating (it was always boiling hot), and the two worst problems: one, the safe wouldn't work, and two, the smell of SMOKE!
The room, the floor itself (and all the other floors I checked out) all reeked of a stale smoke odour. Absolutely horrible, especially as I'm a non-smoker. It seemed like every time the (very noisy) air-conditoning radiator / fan thing switched on, the smell of smoke started to blow into your room. I did hit the off switch on this, but it would always come back on...great engineering, guys.
The safe? I had lots of electronic gear with me, and NEEDED a safe as I'd be in and out of the hotel a lot...didn't particularly want to carry it all with me. Lots of back and forth action commenced, with a guy coming up and failing to fix it, then I was moved into another room, then told to wait for the same guy because the safe in that room didn't work, either (he failed to show up, which didn't exactly inspire confidence). Rang the front desk numerous times - eventually he arrives and tells me the safe in the ORIGINAL room is now working. Had to move back downstairs - something like FOUR HOURS were wasted during all of this nonsense.
I was there for something like three nights - by the final night, I was having problems breathing properly, I felt out of breath and my throat was killing - presumably because of the endless stench of stale smoke filling the room. I'd been up since 6AM because of work, had to be on a train early the next morning and it was now after 10PM and I was pretty annoyed. Went downstairs, demanded a new room only to be told it was pretty much booked out, "would you like me to spray your room with air freshener"?
Surely, that has to be a joke. I persisted, and was told they could take up a dehumidifier. Ok, sure. But..."You can't be in the room when its on, and it'll need to be on for around at least half an hour".
Yep, I was presumably supposed to walk around New York after 10PM at night while they messed around with dehumidifers. I persisted some more - eventually got moved to a new room where I was promised there wouldn't be a smell. Sadly, I wasn't in there long before the smell was back again, and to top it off, the toilet seemed to be stuck flushing and there was only cold water in the shower.
My chest still feels a bit wheezy even now. When I mentioned all of this to the hotel I stayed in during my time in DC, the girl at the desk rolled her eyes like she knew all about the problems people have at this hotel. Considering the Radisson is in New York, it must be a pretty bad state of affairs when poor reviews can travel that far.
I would never go near this place ever again, and if you're a non-smoker, I *strongly* advise you to look somewhere else. To top it all off, their Wireless Internet takes the title of "Worst Net access I have ever had in a hotel". It would stay connected (but lose all net functionality) every ten to twenty seconds, meaning you had to constantly disconnect / reconnect till you were ready to throw the laptop out of the window.
Which wouldn't open.
While your room was filled with the stench of smoke.
Is anyone else seeing a pattern of "bad ideas all round" here?
Years ago, I wanted to draw comics. I drew this picture of Spider Man punching the Hulk into outer orbit when I was about 11. It's probably not the greatest drawing of Spiderman and the Hulk anybody has ever done, but I like to think it had some promise.
Plus, I was never that good at drawing Batman so my options were limited.
At that time, I aspired to be like the so-called "big guns" of American comicbook art - they had style. They had vision. They had panache. Most of all, they had talent.
Then I saw the below panel from Countdown #14 and it all went to shit.
.....yes, Supes. They most certainly are.
"I didn't cry when I strangled half the population of a small island of Pygmies, but I'll cry now." Me, earlier on
Click here and spoil yourself. Go on, you know you can't resist. You've been waiting weeks - no, months for this - right? Right? Am I right?
I'm right, aren't I? Wait, why are you still here? Shouldn't you be clicking that link?
Sigh.
From the latest One More Disaster Day interview:
Interviewer: All right. Now, instead of having to build up this pact with Mephisto to dissolve the marriage, why not just divorce them?
Joe Quesada: Sure,
that would have been a very easy solution. However, how would a parent
feel when they had to explain to their kid that Spider-Man just got
divorced from his wife? How would that headline read across the AP or
on USA today?
HAHAHAHAHAHA YOU MADE SPIDER MAN MAKE A DEAL WITH SATAN INSTEAD.
Joe Quesada: The
same can be said with an annulment. Sure, divorce is a reality of life,
but Peter Parker and Spider-Man are not the types of characters that
would do that. Spider-Man is a worldwide icon and is considered one of
the good guys, like Superman.
.........HAHAHAHAHAHA YOU MADE SPIDER MAN MAKE A DEAL WITH SATAN INSTEAD.
Awesome logic there, Joe. Well done.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Oh God, someone hurry up and speed up the cull that's been needed in mainstream comics for years. I'd be too optimistic to think this might just do it, but on the bright side, RETCON PUNCH!!!112 is officially no longer the stupidest comic gimmick in history.
Well done, Marvel.
Inspired by the following image created by my pal Mikey:
I decided to ask a bunch of people to make awesome pictures with my face in it. Here's another two from the same guy:
Here's one from LMS:
....and here's one WITH MR FREAKING T IN IT from Familychoice:
...also eggs and a pipe. Good old random Internets.
Recently I saw a DC Comic (Superman / Batman #41) where Superman has some crazy "otherworldly" dream sequence, where friend and foe alike show up to ramble nonsense at him for a while.
Nice idea. Then I see this:
....uh, wait, what? Now check out his hair - it's obviously supposed to be the famous "running away screaming" guy from the legendary cover of Action Comics #1.
Sadly for all, he's not called "Rick Radomski". God knows where they got that from, but if DC are going to drop in more and more continuity nonsense to look smart and cool, you'd think someone would have bothered to read the issue before mangling it. Check it out:
Now I know the coat is a different colour, but that means little here because as you'll see the colours are interchangable at best, and made up as they go along at worst. More importantly, check out the face, the hair and the name. Yes, he's a Gangster called Butch (and he's vaguely important to the story, as it turns out. Not any more though, because he just got written out and replaced with the awesome menace that is Rick Radomski, Hardware Shop Man).
..there's Butch doing his famous pose bottom left. Note the coat colour has changed, too.
...and there he is again - clearly the same guy from the previous panel, and so by extension clearly the guy doing the famous "run away now!" pose.
"Rick Radomski"? More like Rick Random.
Booster Gold #4: This comic is awesome and full of win. Nobody has even had their skull blown out or had their guts pulled up through their nose yet.
All Star Superman #9: I sense Grant Morrison is running out of "cool shit to do with Superman", hence the arbitrary tossing in of....yawn....yet more Kryptonians into a Superman story. If I see one more collection of Super-whatevers, I'm going to scre -
...oh.
I guess this is the review of Superman #670 then. I’m totally sick of endless Kryptonians flopping out of the woodwork. The cover to Superman #670 is extremely depressing, because you could probably stuff another four or five Kryptonians on the cover (including Kingdom Come superman and soon-to-be-brought-back E-2 Superman and Whineyboy Prime SuperEmo Dude) and nobody would notice. And now Grant Morrison is in on the act. Oh, and “bottled city of Kandor is out there somewhere”…..sigh.
LAST SON OF KRYPTON, PLEASE.
Just kill them all off and be done with it. At least you can get away with Power Girl because she has a unique “last survivor” angle of her own and she doesn’t just stick a big “S” on her costume.
Everyone else? Death. Death, death, death. Thanks.
...wait, where have I seen Katanas' pose before?
....oh.
I think Greg Land just got one-upped.
Since Countdown started to envelope every DC Comic on the stands with it's waft of crapulence, I've simply stopped purchasing DC Comics with the sole exception of Booster Gold and The Goddamn Batman.
Every single title dropped bar two, as a result of the most poorly planned super-mega-maxi-multiseries ever devised.
Considering I'm one of the readers Dan DiDio dragged back into the fold with his buildup (and execution of) Infinite Crisis in the first place, he should probably be worried at this point.
This guy sums it all up pretty well. In fact, it's the kind of DC related rant I'd have probably written myself, if not for the fact that
1) Every time I think DC, I just roll my eyes now and
2) I didn't get suckered into buying ONE SINGLE ISSUE of Countdown (or any of its endless tie-ins) due to the fact that I could smell the stench weeks before the thing was even on sale.
Bam, take that DiDio.
I can honestly say that none of the mainstream titles make any sense anymore, and as for trying to work out what the Hell is going on in any of the others? Forget it. The next paragraph was going to outline (in rapidfire fashion) all of the stupid, confusing things in DC Comics that currently make no sense, but you know what? I can't be bothered. There really is no point, just do yourself a favour and steer well clear until this Countdown shambles is flatlining.
Today, I made one of the greatest purchases ever.
EVER.
See, anyone that knows me, knows I have a thing for Gustav Mahler. So much of a thing, that I obsessed over him in Uni. So much of a thing, that I made a group of 8 year old kids play an excerpt from this Third Symphony in front of about 5000 people in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. So much of a thing, that I would happily fly to Vienna, dig up his corpse and bring it home where he would take pride of place on the living room armchair.
So.
Back in the 90s, this rich dude - also obsessed with Mahler - goes and collects pretty much every single image, photo, drawing and God knows what else and sticks it all in a book called The Mahler Album.
For whatever reason, this book is now extremely hard to get hold of and quite rare.
How rare?
Check this out, kids.
....yes, that does say £477.53.
Used.
Note the "low price" marking, used without a trace of irony.
So.
There I was, randomly jumping around Amazon, and I eventually came across some rare book seller dude.
Exactly ten seconds later, I'd picked up the book (complete with shipping) for just under fifty quid.
Ahaha. Ahahahahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. AHAHAHAHAHAHA!
...uh. So yeah, best purchase ever.
I never really went away, of course. Well, I sort of did. But mainly, I just didn't have anything interesting to say so I kept quiet. But now I'm back with all sorts of dribbling rants about, oh God, all sorts of stuff.
So yeah.....Shazam.
For some reason, Vitalsecurity.org is forwarding people to an empty directory I have in my webspace. As a result, anyone currently going there gets an error message. Apparently something has borked on the server - I am aware of it, and I haven't been hacked or shot or anything.
No ETA on how long it'll take to fix, though. Bah.
These big concerts sort of suck without Queen.
Wow, DC have really jumped over a big bucket of shark related substances.
Honestly, are they so bereft of anything new or interesting to do with their characters that the best they can come up with - after endless crossovers and events that go nowhere, only to be replaced by more of the same thing, including a current event which is a countdown to another event - is to dredge up every. Last. Antagonist from 20+ years of comics history to make an invincible superteam of superbaddies that will inevitably be stopped with some random punching and kicking?
Bad enough they fished out some of the suckier in-continuity villains - Cyborg Superman, anyone? - but they're even pulling out disasters that should be left in the back of beyond such as Monarch in Countdown.
Freaking MONARCH!
Considering everything relating to DC is currently continuity porn of the highest order - that their last couple of events involved threatening you with the return of the multiverse (Infinite Crisis), taking it out of the equation (One Year Later) then stabbing you in the face with it (52), how on Earth does bringing back a character who nobody can explain properly in terms of continuity (read this for hahahas), or even justify which person he should actually be (he's going to be Captain Atom! No, now he's Hawk! No, wait, he's actually Captain Atom! No, wait...) help anyone clear up DCs already increasingly messed-up Universe? It's even more stupid when they just had everyone spend two years buying crossover comics by the boatload in a supposed attempt to streamline the bigger DC picture.
All of these people working at DC seem to either have
a) a huge boner for comics from the Silver Age or
b) an even bigger boner for comics from the 90s, resulting in a desperate attempt to shoehorn both of these never-to-gel slices of comic history into one great big pile of DOESN'T WORK. Bad art, bad covers, more bad art, terrible plotting, awful declamatory "listen to my self important verbosity that supposedly contain gravitas but actually sound like a ten year old wrote me" speeches, endlessly lame portrayals of females and super-token minorities, Dan Didio completely ruining the end of one of the few highlights of recent DC history (MULTIVERSE, LOL) and a TOTAL INABILITY to leave ANYTHING alone, ever.
Maybe it's too much to ask that someone at DC gets the notion of a myth, legend or story carrying a part of its weight by the fact that it has an ending.
At some point, everything just stops and the story is all the more powerful for it. It's Robin Hood firing that final arrow, or King Arthur sailing away to who knows where, or Ewoks using Darth Vaders funeral pyre to toast their marshmallows.
The moment you start to pick at it, to consider bringing some element of that myth back in a way that disturbs the original telling - man, you've screwed the pooch. The finality of what made the original statement so powerful - so final - is gone, and it's gone forever. In recent times, comics have had (shall we say) something of an issue where this is concerned, with its wonderful revolving door policy on death.
Well, DC just slapped down yet another example of stupidity in the form of The Anti-Monitor returning.
Yep, the biggest badguy of all time, suddenly back like nothing ever happened. Not only does this cheapen the myth of Crisis on Infinite Earths for the sake of BLOWING YOUR MIND for about, oh, five minutes, it also causes huge amounts of problems with regards logic and common sense.
Let's see, Superboy Prime, Cyborg Superman, The Sinestro Corps and the Anti-Monitor.
Oh, and Parallax. AHAHAHAHA 90s FOR THE WIN!
....Jesus.
Now, Superboy Prime was a match for practically everyone in the DC Universe on his own.
Anti-Monitor went beyond that and was the ultimate shitkicking supervillain, requiring not just the regular heroes to take him out but the power levels of the original superman and Superboy Prime to slam his ass in a ditch, too.
Already, this game is over. Logically, they should be able to stomp everyone into a finely mushed up sauce and be done with it. Throw in all the rest, and there isn't even a chance in Hell the lame duck superheroes can beat them all.
Of course, they will - no doubt with yet another Deus Ex Machina involving The Spectre - and at that point, I'm surely going to look back at every crossover these guys appeared in from Crisis on Infinite Earths right up to Infinite Crisis and wonder why everyone huffed and puffed so badly to take them down individually.
DC Comics seem to have become creatively bankrupt. This latest development says to me, hey, you know what, we're screwed. We have nothing particularly original to do or say with these costumed clowns anymore so here's the ultimate in mega crossover porn for anyone who really, really enjoyed reading Armageddon 2001, that Parallax fiasco and anything else deemed so confusing we did our level best to either ignore it or indeed admit that it ever happened.
But HERE'S MONARCH BACK FROM THE DEAD ANYWAY!
Yawn. On the bright side, once this crapfest of a crossover is done and dusted, they can't bring anyone else back to fight against a huge collection of Superheroes. Unless, of course, they run with the Super Zombie Monarch Barry Allen tie-in I've been hearing so much about lately.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I don't get it. I read the Sinestro Corps issue, and thought what it promised down the line was an extremely bad idea. Yet looking across at websites that usually stick a great big fist down DCs throat as a result of how bad their comics have become, they were (by and large) singing the praises of this thing.
Almost without exception, people love it with some hailing it as "book of the year".
All I know is, I'm now looking over at that Hardcover Crisis on Infinite Earths Absolute edition, and thinking wow...what was the point? There's 400+ pages of billions of people dying, Universes disintegrating, Barry Allen running into a (temporary?) grave, the original Superman taking a piece of myth by retreating into...someplace else (the mystery of which has already been unraveled and ruined) and more besides. All that epic drama, that struggle, that sense of actually having resolved something and arrived at a conclusion.
But wow - despite being punched into an anti-matter Sun, blown up, disintegrated and probably spat on, just like that, the Anti-Monitor is back.
Bang goes the myth, and here comes commonplace mediocrity to replace it.
Grant Morrison: Justice League of America: World War III (JLA)
Completely crazy, but good fun.
Frank Miller: Absolute Dark Knight (Batman)
Dark Knight Returns and Dark Knight Strikes Again in one volume.
Mark Waid: Kingdom Come
Awesome apocalyptic tale. Just don't read the sequel, because it sucks.
Geoff Johns: Power Girl
The great unsung hero of the DC Universe finally gets a decent collection.
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