DC Comics has decided to end Bruce Wayne’s run as Batman. I know killing off an iconic character got geeks and lukewarm comic fans alike to buy your graphic novel last time, DC Comics, but this is reeking of desperation. Take a page from Marvel Comics playbook and ditch marketing your printed books altogether and instead throw all your capital towards mediocre movies about second-tier characters. Another Batman movie has got to be better than Ghost Rider or Daredevil, right?
Link Goodness
- The comics deal that put Mile High Comics and Charles Rozanski on the map.
- The 20 biggest record company screw-ups of all time. Number one? The killing of Napster. Also ridiculous yet notable; the selling of Motown for peanuts, letting Bob Dylan go for a thousand bucks and the Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy debacle.
- An image gallery of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue covers from 1964-2008.
Shadowcat: Admin Assistant
I just received a web change request from a woman named Kitty Pryde. I am planning to post the following to her Wikipedia page under “Powers and Abilities”:
Additional to phasing through objects, being a computer genius and skilled in multiple martial art disciplines, Kitty also works as an administrative assistant for a nameless Canadian oil & gas company performing the heroic tasks of finalizing Power Point presentations, providing vector-based logos, approving ad copy and being the primary contact for all web edits.
Riverdale Redux
One of my all time favorite comics is Archie because it is pure cliche, white bread Americana. I enjoy the simple artwork, the light-hearted story lines and the homoerotic undertones. With each issue I rooted for Archie to either come out of the closet to Jughead or grow some testicles and score with Betty or Veronica (or both). I definitely think Archie could have been the meat of a Riverdale love sandwich if he played his cards right (at the very least he could have pitted Betty and Veronica against one another for more entertaining story lines. I am talking about hot oil bikini wrestling matches, foxy boxing, pudding throwing and latex fashion shows). I even watched the made for TV movie Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again starring Lauren Holly a few years ago. It was terrific in its awfulness and its portrayal of Veronica as a turbo slut vying for Archie’s affections by showing up at his house in nothing but a trench coat and lingerie was awesome. Artist Steven Butler is giving the gang from Riverdale a facelift in 2007. I may have to pick up a Double Digest at the grocery store and get reacquainted with the kids when I am laying some foam ropes in the New Year.
Unemployment Round Up
My third week of unemployment will include two web design job interviews; one in the heart of downtown Denver which is a block off the 16th Street Mall and the city’s main bus depot (I’m all about the public transportation) and one a few blocks away from Govnr’s Park which has amazing happy hour beers and a Slider Basket that would make Wimpy cry (the Won Ton Juans are equally as glorious). Keep your fingers crossed that one of these interviews will pan out before my severance runs dry and we will be subsisting only on a meager public school teacher’s income. The wife has yet to wear tattered clothing and babble incomprehensible phrases while standing over a barrel fire, but I can assure you that that time is nigh, my friends. Onto an unemployed artist’s browser history:
- Wedding cake in the form of the Great A’Tuin.
- Jimmy Dean chocolate chip pancakes and sausage; on a stick. I just threw up in my mouth a little.
- Colorado Avalanche season preview.
Link Goodness
- A comprehensive explanation of the sport cricket. In St. Lucia the wife and I encountered some cricket grounds while driving through the countryside. Our guides informed us that while cricket is not a big game on the island, a brand new stadium, Beausejour Ground, was built on the outskirts of Rodney Bay and will host matches of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007.
- Existential Garfield comics. This depressing storyline originally ran the week of October 23, 1989 as a lead up to Halloween. Garfield awakens in the future when the house is abandoned and he no longer exists. Some theorize that the end of this storyline implies that the rest of the “conventional” strips are just fantasies Garfield plays out in his head to delude himself from realizing that he is starving to death in an abandoned house. Here I thought that Garfield was just a shallow husk of commercialism that yielded film abominations staring Jennifer Love Hewitt and plush orange stuffed animals.
- Claire Hoffman, staff writer for the LA Times, spends some time with Joe Francis, founder of the Girls Gone Wild empire. Hijinks ensue.
Scientology: Running On A Full Tank Of Crazy
Isaac Hayes apparently got jerked around by Scientology regarding the South Park incident. Scientology is difficult for me to comprehend on many levels because I have a firm grasp on reality and generally do not like my spiritual beliefs to read like a bad Fantastic Four comic*. From the Wiki entry on Scientology:
The story of Xenu, the galactic tyrant who first kidnapped certain individuals who were deemed “excess population” and loaded these individuals into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). These space planes were said to have been copies of Douglas DC-8s, except with rocket engines. He then stacked hundreds of billions of these frozen victims around Earth’s volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a “three-D, super colossal motion picture” for 36 days, telling them lies of what they are and what the universe should be like and telling them that they are 3 different things: ‘Jesus, God, and The Devil.’ The traumatized thetans subsequently clustered around human bodies because they watched the motion picture together, making them think they are all the same thing, in effect acting as invisible spiritual parasites known as “body thetans” that can only be removed using advanced Scientology techniques. Xenu is allegedly imprisoned in a mountain by a force field powered by an eternal battery. He is said to be still alive today.
I do not think I ever dated a girl crazier than that blurb and that is saying a lot.
* In college I was given the assignment to compare God with a fictional character that I believed most closely represented my view of a higher power. Most students compared the almighty to Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny whereas I chose the Fantastic Four character Galactus. I concluded the paper by stating Galactus was the best example of a deity because he ate planets to sustain his existence having no regard for the existence of the planet’s inhabitants and claimed he was above insignificant creatures morals and religions. If memory serves me correctly, I recall getting a B.
Link Goodness
- Red Scare comic book propaganda from the 1960s. Especially enjoyable is the letter from J. Edgar Hoover to the kids.
- A man sues for the right to be drunk on private property.
- Pro Skateboarder Danny Way jumps across the Great Wall Of China becoming the first person to clear the wall without motorized aid.
Stay Away From The Voodoo
Voodoo is practiced by many in Haiti. My only experience with Voodoo is the movie The Serpent and the Rainbow, obscure Marvel Comics character Brother Voodoo and the evil Voodoo witch Miss Cleo. In order to educate myself about the religion (and perhaps subconsciously prepare for the 2003 HOW Design Conference in New Orleans), I am currently reading about West African Vodun, Haitian Vodou, Louisiana Voodoo and Candomble Jeje.