and not for the first time.
i just had phone conversation with a girl i know. she was complaining and making fun of her BF because she saw him reading a cartoon book. one of those manga’s or whatever. please tell me why this grown ass man was all intense into it.
i was curious, and asked what it was exactly. she went into the other room, found it on the table, a big hardcover The Walking Dead.
i said “oh, well, yea. absolutely”
“absolutely what?”
“oh, i mean, absolutely he Should be reading that. its excellent. you know, you should try picking it up and checking it out yourself”
“uh… no. i’ve got better things to do than sit around reading comicbooks about zombies. i have NO interest.”
“well, its not really about the zombies. i mean, they’re there, but its more about the people. about how they—
“No. i know. you’ve talked about it before. i’ve seen the show. i know what its about. i still don’t care. like i said i have better things to do then read about cartoon zombies”
“well, what if it was a book? a novel about zombies? i mean, is it the medium that you have a problem with? or is—
“No. no. youre not going to talk me into it. i told you, i have no interest”
and that was the end of that. we’ve had similar conversations before. and after we talked a bit more here she mentioned that after she hung up the phone her plan was (among other things) watch Monk on netflix.
so, apparently “better things to do” is watching crappy tv shows on netflix. no offense to Monk, i think its fun. but, for me, that doesn’t qualify as better things to do. if you were too busy to read silly comicbooks because you were spending your time at the lab trying to cure cancer, then ok. but not Monk, or In Plain Sight, or any of the other silly shows she’s watching now.
i’m a little bit annoyed now. her attitude about it seemed condescending and small minded.
![starflavoredspaghettisauce:
teachingliteracy:
theatlantic:
The Green Lantern Is Gay
It’s time to tally up the betting pools and start paying out: If you picked Green Lantern as DC Comics surprise gay character you won. But depending on who was making your odds, you probably didn’t win much. As far as the speculation goes, the Green Lantern had been the favorite, mostly because rumors sourced to those in the know had been making their way around the Web for days saying as much.
At DC’s own blog, Alex Nagorski says the newly reimagined Alan Scott experienced “a traumatic event [that] will serve as the catalyst for him assuming his superhero identity as The Green Lantern.”
[Image: DC Comics]
See, here’s a thing that bothers me. I get it. You want minorities and whatnot to appeal to a wide readership and promote tolerance and equality. And that’s great. Embrace the gay community. Make some gay characters.
But don’t take characters who were previously established as straight and just SUDDENLY make them gay! That’s not how it works!
Make new freaking characters.
Now granted, I know this is an alternate universe version, but it still slaps a lot of continuity in the face.
I completely agree. Im annoyed with converting pre-existing characters. Also, it seems a little offensive to me. Its like theyre saying a new gay character wouldnt work, or that they didnt want to put in the effort of creating a new character. It kinda reminds me of the 90’s when you’d see counterfeit brand simpsons merchandise where Bart was turned from yellow to brown, given braids, and a basketball instead of skateboard. If you want to apeal to any particular minority then create a character deservibg of it. Dont just throw a new trait on an old character like he was just changing costumes. Also, and most importantly, i am really really annoyed with any character being re-worked, re-designed, re-imagined, re-whatever else, I’m tired of characters old characters changing, and different dimensions, parallel worlds, alternate realities and being brought back from the dead. Some characters could have up to 5 different titles running at the same time, all with different story lines. The whole idea of this New 52 thing was to start all over. To recycle the same characters from the beginning. But i say lets kill some old characters and let them stay dead. Lets create new heroes to last.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4xzziNmRV1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
It’s time to tally up the betting pools and start paying out: If you picked Green Lantern as DC Comics surprise gay character you won. But depending on who was making your odds, you probably didn’t win much. As far as the speculation goes, the Green Lantern had been the favorite, mostly because rumors sourced to those in the know had been making their way around the Web for days saying as much.
At DC’s own blog, Alex Nagorski says the newly reimagined Alan Scott experienced “a traumatic event [that] will serve as the catalyst for him assuming his superhero identity as The Green Lantern.”
[Image: DC Comics]
See, here’s a thing that bothers me. I get it. You want minorities and whatnot to appeal to a wide readership and promote tolerance and equality. And that’s great. Embrace the gay community. Make some gay characters.
But don’t take characters who were previously established as straight and just SUDDENLY make them gay! That’s not how it works!
Make new freaking characters.
Now granted, I know this is an alternate universe version, but it still slaps a lot of continuity in the face.
I completely agree. Im annoyed with converting pre-existing characters. Also, it seems a little offensive to me. Its like theyre saying a new gay character wouldnt work, or that they didnt want to put in the effort of creating a new character. It kinda reminds me of the 90’s when you’d see counterfeit brand simpsons merchandise where Bart was turned from yellow to brown, given braids, and a basketball instead of skateboard. If you want to apeal to any particular minority then create a character deservibg of it. Dont just throw a new trait on an old character like he was just changing costumes. Also, and most importantly, i am really really annoyed with any character being re-worked, re-designed, re-imagined, re-whatever else, I’m tired of characters old characters changing, and different dimensions, parallel worlds, alternate realities and being brought back from the dead. Some characters could have up to 5 different titles running at the same time, all with different story lines. The whole idea of this New 52 thing was to start all over. To recycle the same characters from the beginning. But i say lets kill some old characters and let them stay dead. Lets create new heroes to last.
i also found a bunch with signatures on them.
if i were to try sell these or something, i wouldn’t even know where to start.
Batman and Punisher crossover signed by both Barry Kitson and Denny O’Neil
Detective comics written by Chuck Dixon, illustrated and signed and numbered 865/2500 by Scott Hanna
2 Zen the intergalactic ninja. i don’t really know anything about this series. both signed by artist Bill Maus
the adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix signed and numbered 345/5000 by Scott Lobdell
Dawn signed by writer/artist/creator Joseph Michael Linsner.
Shattered Image written by Kurt Busiek and Barbara Randall Kesel. inked by Kevin Conrad. illustrated and signed by Tony Daniel.
Elementals signed by Tony S. Daniel who was still going by the name Antonio back then. personally signed to my brother D.J. we have another one somewhere signed to me as well.
Tony Daniel has gone on to do some incredibly cool and high profile stuff. X-Force. a Spawn mini-series written by Alan fucking Moore. some Flash stuff. i think he did a few Teen Titans. he’s done a Batman series written by Grant Morrison. last i heard he was doing Detective comics once it was relaunched with the New 52 thing.
we have a number of stuff from Tony as well. he’s my moms cousin. i’ve never met him but my ma, my sister, and my grandma all went to his wedding in chicago years and years ago. his mother, my ma’s aunt, on a few occasions collected a number of things he’s done and mailed them to us. we have stuff from X-Force, Spawn: Blood Fued, his own series The Tenth, and a few other things. i think we stopped getting things around the time the Tenth was finishing up.
my brother and i were old enough to realize how cool this was. but we weren’t old enough fully understand and appreciate Exactly how cool that really was.
going through old comics. my brother was more of a collector than i ever was. and we both stopped years and years ago.
among many other neat stuff i found:
a Ghost Rider comic written by Warren Ellis.
3 medievil Spawn and Witchblade comics written by Garth Ennis
2 Wolverine stories illustrated by Sam Keith
a Daredevil cover by Mike MIgnola
an Ash mini-comic issued out by wizard magazine. this was a series done by illustrator Jimmy Palmiotti, who has since gone on to do great and wonderful things. and written by Joe Quesada who became the guy in charge, the editor-in-chief of Marvel for awhile. i also have a full issue of Ash somewhere signed by both of them. but at the moment i don’t know where it is.
i thought this was sweet. all of the stuff with Hellboy and his dad, professor Bruttenholm, is always sweet to me.
“If you don’t mind me saying, you look a little familiar, sir. Do i know you?”
it’s funny to me that he can walk into a place and everyone there doesn’t just run screaming in terror.
yep. that’s how women are depicted in the typical comic. gets pretty annoying.
(Source: hornyguitargirl)
comic books are really confusing.
i read comics often. i follow certain writers more than characters. i don’t go out and read every single comic with Batman in it. but i will read every Batman comic written by Ed Brubaker or Brian Michael Bendis. and, i dont typically spend too much time reading comics about the tights and capes type of heroes. there are exceptions. but not too many.
anyway. what i’m getting at is that one of my coworkers does read comics. he reads everything marvel. everything DC. and absolutely everything with superman. when i talk to him it reminds me of talking to a young child. i try to carry on a conversation about the writer, or about the story, or just an idea that was expressed. and, clearly, this has all gone over his head. he just likes superman. thats it. doesn’t really remember the stories. this guy is only attracted to the name, reputation, and costume.
that’s fine. i guess. to each their own. whatever. but today he was going on about mainstream comics current affairs. and that’s the shit i call confusing. Wolverine is on like 4 different teams in 6 different comics and a different story with a different costume in each one. Spiderman is in several different stories. he’s also in the Fantastic Four. and i think he’s even been turned into a 13yr black kid. and Batman. with his 3 different titles and Batman Inc.
and there is the whole new 52 thing where they rebooted a bunch of the characters. while so many others weren’t but they all still live in the same ‘universe’ for some reason.
maybe people like it this way. but its all too much for me. none of the stories make any sense to me because theirs too many of them all going on at the same time.
you wanna give yourself a headache? just pick any random semi-famous comicbook character and try to read his wikipedia page. try to follow the complete history of who he is, what teams he’s been on, who his parents were, who his kids are, who his other kids were in the parallel universe that was destroyed by his alternate reality parents after his future self travelled back in time to warn them all about his great grandson who’s actually a reincarnated version of his arch enemy that was once really his highschool P.E. teacher and… well, you get the idea. (after i wrote this, i couldn’t help but think of CABLE. if you know the character even a little then you know what i mean)
hey, if all that is your thing, then more power to you. i’ll just stick to certain writers and specific story-lines.
i’ve posted this once before; somewhere else. but thought it would fit in nicely here in this blog.
i’ve always liked how Ivy and Harley developed this pseudo-lesbian thing.
the images above are from Bossom Buddies by writer Paul Dini and artist Bruce Timm
“Are you available?”
“Honey, I could be blessed with a pair of adorable kids, a white picket fence, a dog that brings me my slippers — with the paper — and a teenage nymphomaniac for a wife an’ for you the answer would still be yes.”
100 Bullets
writer: Brian Azzarello
artist: Eduardo Risso
100 Bullets. cover artist: Dave Johnson
i’ve recently read through 100 Bullets in its entirety. very cool. a lot to keep track of. a lot of names and families and connects to keep track of. but worth it when it all came together in the end.
we live in amazing times for story telling.
once upon a time the only way to get a good story was to read an old musty book. even television, during its earliest incarnations, was often referred to as the idiot box. the internet was just used for Myspace and to watch videos of kittens on Youtube. we’ve gone leaps and bounds ahead of this since then. funny to because relatively speaking it wasn’t that long ago.
today i surround myself with books, ebooks on the kindle, comic books/ graphic novels, tv shows, movies, online streaming sites like Netflix or Hulu and/or content created for the internet, and video games.
the things they’re doing in the gaming industry i just wouldn’t’ve believed 4 or 5 years ago. emotional and compelling and engages me in such a way that rivals the big movie releases or award winning tv shows.
A friend of mine gets annoyed whenever i mention video games. she claims that they are just a waste of time. what’s funny about that to me is the fact that she’s said this to me, more than once, on days that she skipped work to stay home and watch silly tv shows on Netflix. my view is, at least with a game i feel like i’m interacting with something and i’m rewarded with a feeling of accomplishment after i finish it. unlike watching a marathon of the show Psyche. (nothing wrong with Psyche. its fun. but it doesn’t exactly leave a meaningful impact on me)
its not just her. many of the people i know still view games as something for kids, or boys who don’t want to grow up. maybe that was once true. i grew up on Mario like so many others of my generation and i still get enjoyment from those type of games but some of the gaming experiences i’ve had in the past few years have left a lasting impression on me same as any good book or movie would. as i said above, a good story comes in all forms. a person shouldn’t limit themselves to any one genre or medium.
playing through Heavy Rain made me feel as if i was living in the movie SE7EN. an emotional, intense, slow burn, detective story about a serial killer. the Uncharted series was like the original Indiana Jones movies. fun, adventurous, witty dialogue, likable characters, amazing locations/settings.
below is a trailer for the upcoming “The Last of Us”. it looks moving. it looks desperate. it looks strangely beautiful. like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
i know even less about this next one. but it also takes place in a post apocalyptic world. and also makes for an excellent trailer.
testing testing. 1, 2. 1, 2.
i could be wrong, but i’m pretty sure that signature in the bottom is for Kerry Callen.
