YOUTUBE ROUND-UP

I like to imagine that the alternate title for this one is "Satan Takes Many Faces."

Even if this took 25 seconds to edit, that was way to long.

At first I thought this one was going to be about lusting after Sawyer, you can imagine my surprise when it turned out to be, in fact, highlighting his internal struggle.

More crazy then the first one, or way crazier?

Not to be left out, Hero's fans respond. Notable for highlighting the homosexual tension between those two dudes, who are supposed to be playing brothers.

An excerpt from my forthcoming book

WHO'S AFRAID?
An Oral Biography of Virginia Woolf
Complied by Tom Batten

PORTNOY GLADSTONE
Former Butler to the Woolf family

She would just shit her brains for Bluegrass music. Not a lot of people know that.


DAN GLINES
Guitar player for The Backwards Gulch Boys

We were invited to play a show at Woolf Mountain. They said it was an annual festival. and that we were going to be the headliners. They promised all kinds of money and stuff, so we were right excited. 
But when we got there, and there wasn't no festival at all. They had us playing in this big open air area that could have fit a hundred folks easy, but there was only one person there and it was her, Mrs. Woolf. All by her lonesome. She was wearing this weird Japanese looking robe with nothing on underneath-it was hanging loose so we could see-and she had this big sword. One of those Arab swords, I think they call them scimitars. 
We're like, hell, let's just play. So we start playing. And she starts writhing around, waving that sword in the air and all this. It was one of the strangest sights I ever saw. But it was exciting, too, 'cause she was naked and I thought maybe when we were done playing that would play out somehow. 
Anyway. We finish our first song, and we're about to get going on another one when she starts yelling. She raises the sword up over her head and she stands as still as an oak tree in summer and she yells out, "Release the Snakes!"
I think the idea was that some snakes where going to come out and she was going to fight them. But no snakes showed up, just her Butler or something, he came out looking real worried.

COSBY SCHNELL
Groundskeeper of Woolf Mountain

I was with Mrs. Woolf all day leading up to that concert. That was the first time she ever mentioned snakes to me or anyone else.

DAN GLINES

So she gets real depressed looking, and she hangs her head and walks off dragging that big blade behind her. With her gone there was no one left to play for, so we packed up. But then they wouldn't pay us, saying we didn't play a whole set so we were violating the contract.

COMIC PICKS FOR THE WEEK

PICKS
AIR #1 - An all new Vertigo classic of tomorrow by acclaimed writer G. Willow Wilson. Don't be the last kid on the block to know what it's all about. Or do, if you're the weird kid who puts the others in a much nicer context.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #568 - DAN SLOTT! JOHN ROMITA JR! VENOM! THE THUNDERBOLTS! GREEN GOBLIN! ANTI-VENOM? It's the most exciting and dangerous smörgåsbord I've seen since my cousin's wedding!

FINAL CRISIS LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #1 - The super anticipated FINAL CRISIS TIE-IN that brings together GEOFF JOHNS, GEORGE PEREZ, and nearly every incarnation of the Legion of Super-Heroes EVER! Wouldn't it be weird if it brought together different incarnations of George Perez instead? I imagine that would be a little less action packed then I expect this to be, but who knows, maybe he has the requisite amount of self-loathing it would require to make that something worth seeing...

TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE #4 - The best and most irregularly released humor comic in the world finally returns to tell tall tales of where it's been and what it has seen. Tales that will fuck up your entire life, forever.

YOUNGBLOOD TP VOL 01 FOCUS TESTED - Yeah, you heard me. Joe Casey continues to be one of the most interesting writers in comics, this time taking a long-time punchline and flipping it into a vibrant and interesting look at celebrity and duty. And punching.

FROM THE HELP DESK

If you ever walk in on your roommate masturbating, I would suggest that you just start masturbating, too. That way things won't get too awkward. 

Need advice? Write in!

BIGFOOT IN A COOLER, I KNOW, THIS IS SERIOUS...

So these dopes are telling everyone that what may appear to be a super fake looking dead Bigfoot stuffed into a cooler is, in all actuality, a real Bigfoot stuffed into a cooler.  And CNN is reporting that they were questioned today by reporters for over half an hour. 

These reporters should have to donate whatever portion of their salary that time made up to charity, or maybe just be made to throw that money into the sea.  Is there nothing going on anywhere in the world that might be a better expenditure of their journalistic abilities than this?  Maybe they could be sharpening pencils for under-privileged children somewhere...

Of course, if someone wanted to pay me to heckle these guys I would be more then thrilled to do so.  You see, it's the system that I hold accountable.  Because I am lofty and profound.

What I am interested in is where these crypto-zoological hucksters see this whole thing going.  Are they counting on blackmailing some medical examiner or something?  

You know, this might just be the best viral marketing campaign for coolers of all time.  Who wouldn't buy a cooler big enough store an entire Bigfoot? 

GAME ON

Looks like Tarantino is no longer waiting for people to sink into obscurity for a few years before he snatches them up and dips them in sweet, precious gold.  http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117990590.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

WHAT I AM SAYING TO YOU IS...

This is pretty lame.  SECRET INVASION #5 furthers to epic crossover super-event approximatly 35 seconds, and while they are indeed action packed seconds, I would be lying if I said they made any sense, or were that much fun to read.

I want to like this.  I want to, and damn it I probably should.  It has fighting, it has robots, it has explosions and robot doubles...this should be tons of fun.  But instead, I get a few pages in and sure enough, there's someone dropping that old peanut of a line "What I am telling you is...blah blah blah."

I would like to think that author Brian Michael Bendis made a deal with some weird old gambler on a cloudy night some years ago, a deal that stipulated that he include that phrase in everything he writes, forever, and in return he'll get a free West Wing Box Set.  I would like to think that because it actually totally boggles my mind that he might actually think that everyone on Earth uses that phrase all the time.  I have never heard a real person say that, in fact hearing someone lead into a point that way would only ensure that I ignored whatever the thing the person was trying to tell me.

Maybe in some yet-to-be revealed tale it will be revealed that in the Marvel Universe Captain American used that phrase in a speech when he first addressed the people post-frozen in ice.  And for that reason it is a phrase that has completely taken hold in the sort of cultural lexicon or something.  And let me tell you...the comic where this is revealed will be 48 pages for 4.99 and will be fucking awful.

But back to actual story.  Wait, I don't know if I can do it.  Maybe I could try and say something nice?  Okay, let's see...did I mention the explosions?  Wait...the art is pretty good.  Except the artist is drawing everyone with  weird jaws now.  Used to be weird eyes, now it's weird jawlines.  

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Congratulations to former Clinton chief strategist Mark Penn for being the subject of our first ever PICTURE OF THE DAY.  I believe this is from the press conference on the jailhouse steps following his arrest for shoving a clerk at Wendy's who refused to give him a refill on his Frosty.

R.I.P. BERNIE MAC

I'll always remember Bernie Mac best for his work in 'Bad Santa,' where he played an unscrupulous mall detective.  Most of his work in movies amounted to little more then sneering and snide asides, but in "Bad Santa,' at least, he participated in at least one scene that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

The manager of the mall, played by John Ritter, comes to Mac's office to discuss the matter of the, well, Bad Santa.  While Ritter squirms uncomfortably Mac downs a glass of metamucil, chain smokes, and peels an orange.  He does all of these things will some depraved relish, and while it may be the content of their conversation that makes John Ritter uncomfortable, it's watching Mac go through with this little routine that made me churn in my seat.

I don't know quite how to describe it--it's just gross.  I felt like I could smell the weird stale air in the office.  It's not often that a film can get across such a tactile feeling as that, and yet that one sequence gets it across completely.  Maybe it's the way he used his hands, peeling the orange and stamping out cigarettes in an overflowing ashtray, all the while those big creepy eyes locked on to poor Ritter...

Mac was good with his hands, and in fact they basically steal every scene that he's in in all three of the 'Ocean' movies.  In fact, if memory serves, he spends a lot of time in those movies discussing different moisturizers and manicure techniques...

 

Another exciting Comicon has slumped to a close, leaving us in fandom left with nothing but to kick up our feet and ask, "What happened?"
It seems like all the talk around the shop this year is that nothing that exciting was really announced. Of course, this was the talk last year and the year before that, too, but forget those years, they were stupid and now they're behind us.
The situation seems to be this: The whole Comicon Paradigm is changing faster then anyone seems ready for it, and all this sad-sacking around is only helping in missing this point.

I went to San Diego last year, and I'll tell you won't they don't really come across with on G4: The comics content of the show is a little weak. Maybe that sounds too harsh...yes, Marvel and DC have big complicated booths covered with art and giveaways and high profile creators, yes Fantagraphics and other indie publishers have cool booths filled with books that are often unavailable in stores. True. You can eavesdrop on conversations between creators you've been following since childhood, you can get sketches from favorite artists and buy original art and all that.

As cool as all that is, the movie/TV/video game stuff is AMAZING. Huge life-size spaceship centerpieces, Models, movie props...the big blue Sci-Fi channel 'thing' in enough to melt the mind of the mightiest of mortals. And guess what? THAT'S WHERE ALL THE PEOPLE WHERE. Last summer I would sit at my table on the comics side and wonder at the sheer throngs of fans, thinking that it was totally overwhelming, until I got up and walked over to the other side of the convention center where the movie stuff was, and it was like the entire planet Earth was being evacuated into that side of the room. It was so packed you could hardly even stop moving long enough to examine any of the cool stuff, because at any given moment there was something like six-thousand people trying to stand exactly where you were standing.

That's where all the action is. And as cool as it might have been to meet Mike Mignola and Geoff Darrow, I was only able to meet them because they were sharing a table that had no line at it at all.

Believe me, in another year or so they're going to ditch the "International Comicon' name and come up with something else, because anyplace that has Darrow and Mignola sitting side by side with no one to drool over them doesnt deserve to be called such.
It's no secret that the movie business has gotten a taste of the blood money gushing from the wound in the comic industries side. Half the people that came to our table last year identified themselves as producers or agents, and the only question they had was 'Who is your representation?"

It's just not the big deal for Comics that it used to be. I think there are a couple reasons for this. First of all, the convention season is now 11 months long, which means that any announcements have to be parceled out to make each show seem worthwhile. And every announcement that is made is made with an eye on the next show--look at Darwyn Cooke ending his press conference for his new 'Parker' adaptations by telling reporters that he'll have some creator owned stuff to talk about at Baltimore in a month.

Secondly, the rise of more and more websites devoted to comics news has also lead to news getting announced more frequently. Sometimes I wonder how people over thirty ever knew which creator was jumping to which book at what time. I loose sleep over this, I really do.
The internet and it's open access have also lead to a more informed fandom. Geoff Johns writing that new Flash:Rebirth book would have been an exciting announcement, but who in the world didn't see it coming?

Fans seem to get more excited about the movie stuff, anyway. Take the Stan Lee-Grant Morrison panel, a once in a lifetime thing, where some young buck asked these two comics legends wether or not Iron Man and Hulk would team up in any upcoming movies. Now, the reporter who covered that panel didn't mention wether or not the questioner was a nine year old boy, but I would be willing to bet my actual grown-up teeth it was some dude dressed up like the bad guys from Stargate. And it would come as no surprise to me to see that that same theoretical young man was in the audience screaming his head off with approval when Grant Morrison announced at another panel that he was tired of seeing comics that seemed like nothing but movie pitches, and that 'comics should be more like comics.'

This is the future, ladies and gents (mostly gents). I don't know what the future of the industry holds, but unless everyone managed to screw the pooch so badly that things collapse again like they did in the 1990's, it seems inevitable that the film industry will continue to squeeze comics into a smaller and smaller corner. I for one can't wait to see how comics fight back. It's increasingly the only point I agree with Frank Miller on, comics are outlaw literature, that's when they're at their best.