Groonkly Bits

I’m catching up on the various comics I collect. My subscribe list at my local comic shop is fairly small, so I tend to let a few months pass before I buy up my lot. That way I get bigger chunks of story in one sitting for my serial satisfacation.

During the summer, the new book Eternals as written by Neil Gaiman debuted. It is to be a 6 issue limited series, though I’d guess there’d be an option to continue it if the series proves popular. The Eternals have been around for ages. Created by Jack “The King” Kirby, they are an offshoot of humanity created by the mysterious Celestials. They’re long lived, small in number, and superpowered. they are an analogue of Kirby’s New Gods and, in the Marvel universe, the greek, egyptian, etc etc gods of old.

Although the Marvel U tends to have “real” gods mixing in with the normal and supernormal hoi polloi. Asgardians like Thor and the Greek demi-god Hecules are among that number. Marvel Corp likes to keep their universe populated with damn near every kind of fictional alternatives.

Neil Gaiman’s Eternals is focusing on the mythic nature of the eternals as well as the normalness, the humanity, found in each one. Gaiman doesn’t excel in the superhero genre. He’s said as much himself. It’s not a huge mark against him as his style is a bit more subtle than your casual “men/women in tights” fair. I’m hoping he’ll have the time to turn the Eternals book more towards his own vision. I’m 3 books in to the 6 part series and it feels a bit stifled. It’s almost as if I’m not getting the full Gaiman experience. Maybe I should read the full series before I make any hard decisions.

The wallpaper below was fashioned from a rendering of Sersi as drawn by Rick Berry. I do wish Berry was drawing the content for the entire series cause I have serious issues with John Romita, Jr.’s art. I have ever since Romita’s stint on Spiderman. Every character he draws just doesn’t feel right to me. It definitely detracts from the story.

Berry’s art is below. All you widescreen users enjoy it as I have.

(1680×1050)

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The Internet told me to do it.

Gone to let Dragon Con 06 eat me raw and spit me out. I’ll meet geek celebrities and be glad of it. I’ll meet the light and dark sides of geek culture and, hopefully, survive it.

Futurephone reports are a definite.

As I don’t know about my access to internetivity the next four days, I most likely won’t be back on until late Monday or Tuesday.

I was sent these clever instructions from DragonCon vets.

Great Maker, What have I gotten myself into?

No Comments | In: Animation, Books, Comics, Movies, Music, Pop Culture Love, Too Many Thoughts | tags: 2006, dragon con, more like guidelines really, rules of dragon con. | #

detective richard fell has been branded(1680×1050)

I’ve mentioned Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith‘s new, and modestly priced Fell briefly before. The above is a wallpaper I threw together featuring images from issues 1, 2, and 4.

“What’s so special about Fell?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you.

In the world of Fell, Detective Richard Fell did something very naughty, or very right, in his previous precint because he has been transferred to the feral city of Snowtown. Snowtown is the ultimate city without pity. Think of as Sin City if it were real and all the “ladies of the night” didn’t look like supermodels with a fetish for leather kink.

This is a real, surrealized, dirty town filled with the familiar Eliis characters. The hero who’s not knight in shining armor-like but he knows what is right and acts on that instinct without fail. The woman who acts like a real human being rather than some brainless doll with big boobs. She may be a bit crazy but hey, nobody’s perfect. The endless parade of crazy people who I swear Ellis must have met in real life cause that kind of crazy and seriously fucked-uppedness can’t have come from his brain. And if they did, like I suspect, I fear for that poor old man’s soul.

Then there’s Templesmith’s art and the wonderful experience of it. His drawings match so well with Ellis’ cynical style that I’d swear they were joined at the hip or maybe the same person acting out a role as a double agent of comics genius.

The book costs only $2.00. That’s on purpose. Ellis wanted to give something to those comics fans who can’t afford the bigger books. I have to admit, paying 4 dollars and up for various books is daunting to say the least. It makes it difficult to take chances on new works cause you’re not sure if it will be worth the ride in the long run.

Because of the low price there are less story pages. Around about 16 or 18 if I remember correctly. Templesmith and Ellis are using the nine panel structure so there is no sense of lost story or pacing. Each story is self contained so any Joe/Jane BLow can come off the street and experience Snowtown without feeling they need to read previous issues(although I highly recommend that they do).

As for the leftover pages, Ellis has dedicated that to random bits of knowledge in comics writing and ideas on the industry. So anyone who wants to learn something about creating a book like this has hit the jackpot of all jackpots. If you don’t care about the biz, well you’ve got a neat and complete, gritty story in your hands and no reason to bitch.

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And I don’t mean scared in the way of, “My beastial nature is too much so I have to forever walk a lonely path”. Wolverine is “piss in your pants there’s a monster hiding under the bed waiting to eat me and I’m totally helpless” scared.

Whedon gets points from me for making Wolverine this kind of scared. You rarely get to see him that way. Normally he’s too busy being a badass or striking the angry pose to bother showing fear.

The following is taken from John Cassaday‘s awesome cover artwork for an upcoming Astonishing X-Men cover. He gets all the creative points. I merely rearranged it and added perspective with well placed blurring so as to have a neat looking desktop for a few weeks. This is usually the time it takes for me to get bored with the image and move along.

see the scared Logan(1680×1050)

“Torn”, the current arc on Astonishing X-Men is slow in coming, we’re talking Planetary slow(this began around 1999 and is currently on issue 25) or mountains crumbling into the sea slow, but it is not lacking in amusement. The latest Big Bad’s being what I think is the new Hellfire Club featuring Xavier’s evil twin sister Cassandra Nova, Danger, the classic Sebastian Shaw, the treacherous Emma Frost and several others who have chosen not named themselves yet.

It’s times like these when I appreciate the graphic novel form. One complete story in your hands with only your own laziness in the way of finishing it.

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You know, I never thought I’d see the day a Marvel comics event would be covered on an MTV news bit.

In the wee hours of this morning I was reading, doing a bit of catching up for class. The TV was on but muted. I look up for half a second and I see Joe Quesada talking about the shock ending of Civil War #2 which was out last Wednesday. Then I read that Yahoo news also covered the event(MAJOR spoilers in those links. Just thought I’d tell you in case you magically managed to avoid them so far).

Even Howard Stern is in on the action.

Holy damn. The funny books sure have come a long way since I began reading the suckers. Back then you’d be lucky to find 2 people in 100 who’d know who Zabu was, much less the X-Men’s magically induced enemy, the Juggernaut.

Now all the pages of Marvel, DC, and some choice independents are scrutinized on the boob tube. To tell the truth, the industry could use the buzz. Maybe the PTBs will be wise and use this momentum to re-build the business.

Or maybe we’ll get more fucked-up fanboy flotsam like Northstar and Thor** vs Spiderman and Namor “serving up breakfast***” in a sunny suburban town.

As for the mega news itself, well I’ve only just started to read the Civil War event and I certainly haven’t bought the issue in question. I do know what the big deal is, I read about in CBR(spoilers in there, too) earlier this week. All I have to say is, they better stick to their guns and not pull that reversal crap that Marvel and DC have made famous over the last 60 odd years.

Otherwise, it’s nice to see the change. The kids are finally growing up and leaving the safe comfort of The Known.

As for Civil War itself, I’ll share an opinion on it after I read a couple more issues. Even though I have already chosen a side.

Officially:

Cap finally pulled the stick out

And unofficially:

what? i can moonlight

* By ‘world’ I mean fanboys from here to Katmandu.
** Thor using mjolnir to spike on Spidey was actually damn funny.
***In the sunny yesteryear of college. A handful of friends and I would play volleyball night or day. When someone was up to serve, we’d call it “serving up breakfast from The Kettle”. It was shortened and stretched into many phrases, as you may imagine.

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This book has nothing to do with the ABC television show featuring Ms Sydney Bristow.

If Jessica Jones were a real woman I’d marry her on the spot. She’s not perfect. Far from it. But it’s her problems and how she deals with said problems that make her one of the most interesting lead female comics character that I’ve read in a damn long while.

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You are sitting at home curled up in your favorite chair reading a book. You are at the club dancing away your woes with reckless abandon. You are at dinner, chatting about the little things with your lover. You are at the local sex club considering dipping a well-bound leather toe into the bondage arena.

There are 1,001 people on the Global Frequency and those are just a few of your comrades.

Warren Ellis will always rank highly with me because he can take a simple device, like a worldwide organization linked only by mobile technology, and turns it into something inspiring. The heroes in Global Frequency don?t wear capes or tights. They don?t lurk in shadows or jump buildings on sheer will alone, though a few may wear the common gimp suit behind closed doors. They are the common man or woman, chosen because they are the best in their field. Linked by a common purpose, and a specialized world phone, to do what they can to make the world a little safer?a little better.

Now that?s the kind of real-life hero I can have faith in.

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You may have already seen this article in today’s Washington Post on the glories of Baghdad’s past at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56350-2003Mar19.html. I couldn’t help but think about your story Ramadan, and Haroun al-Raschid’s desire to keep his glorious city just as he knows it. I think that it’s appropriate for all of us to remember that what is now Iraq was once the paramount center for learning and science. — Laura Gosling

I find myself remembering someone telling me off on Genie because, according to whoever was telling me off, Baghdad was virtually unscathed in the Gulf War, and I had the kid who heard the story limping home across a bombsite. I think I’d rather that they had been right and I had been, and remained, wrong. Right now it looks like Sandman 50 will have been more accurate than I knew. –Neil

That was found on Neil Gaiman’s journal yesterday.

The Washington Post article can be found here.

If you haven’t read Sandman #50, go to your local bookstore and ask for the Fables and Reflections trade paperback by name.
-Groonk

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What is the Waiting place? It’s what Dawson’s Creek wished it was. It’s What My So Called Life coulda been. It’s the anthem for all those who know there’s something better out there but are still stuck in their current situation. Whether by unwilling choice or uncontrollable circumstance. It is worth putting on your coffee table.

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