Nervous Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald*

*that one's for ADD. It came out in conversation today about, of all people, Gordon Lightfoot, and I decided to use it before I forgot it.

Scattered thoughts, as it's getting late and there's work to be done, the game is afoot, etc.

Received my first order (or the first chunk of one big order for June) from Discount Comic Book Service, and everything looks good, though it was a pretty small part of the order and didn't actually have much I felt like reading right away. There's Morrison's and Stewart's SEAGUY trade paperback--liked the series a lot, but it's still fresh in my mind; Jodorowsky's and Moebius' first DC/Humanoids collection of THE INCAL--when I read these, I want to read the whole series; and the first hardcover collection of the Azzarello/Lee SUPERMAN: FOR TOMORROW, and again, I'll want the second and concluding volume before reading it. Yes, this last one looks out of place, and I was only lured to get it because it was half-price. I may well regret it, from what I've heard, but who knows? I also bought some comic bags, as I hadn't done this for over a year, and the latest issue of THE COMICS JOURNAL, featuring a long interview with Craig Thompson, one with Bob Burden, a big chunk of color "Our Gang" comics by Walt Kelly, and most importantly, a review by ME of the first trade of GOTHAM CENTRAL, that I wrote almost a year ago. It was nice, as I'd forgotten about it (I have nothing else on tap for TCJ, but I really ought to get back in the game), and though I was I think the only guy in this section reviewing something at all superhero-related, I think I did a pretty good job of it. It's funny how seeing something in print, with art and nice captions and fonts and such, it seems smarter than when it's just you plunking away on a keyboard. I liked Sean T. Collins' massive takedown of Jaime Hernandez' LOCAS as well, not because I agreed (I'm still in the early part of the book), and not that it was a brilliant review, but mainly because I liked how much of Sean comes through. I mean, this is not a focused assault on the book at all, but rather Sean hopping back and forth across his impressions and expectations and his own concerns as an artist. Maybe I could say I see myself and my own struggles as a critic in Sean's work here, like that (as I perceive it) need to show one's intellectual credentials with the highfalutin reference (in this case Dulcinea) battling with the need to show one can still keep it real (the punk aesthetic). Above all, it's very readable, so much so that I realized I should stop, so as not to be biased against the book, but I had to stay on the ride. Good column by Steven Grant, too, on the common, foolish practice by many fledgling comics publishers to seek to create a presence by flooding the almost-always-hostile market with too many books at a time. I sensed maybe he was pulling his punches a bit, not mentioning recent failures but pointing instead to publishers who more or less have gone about it the right way, like IDW and Avatar, coincidentally or not current publishers of Grant's work, though Grant doesn't plug his own books or anything.

Oh, I also ordered the new PREVIEWS and MARVEL PREVIEWS, and found relatively few books I was interested in this time. Is anyone excited about the Jeph Loeb relaunch of SUPERGIRL, so soon after Peter David showed one actually could do something interesting with the character, before the book was summarily canceled? I probably will get the latest Alex Ross opus. I do like his art when it's not just covers, and while I'm not really excited about the story yet, at least it's a given it could only err on the side of being too worshipful to the characters rather than cynical and destructive, like most other DC limited series of the past couple years.

Not sure how Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos ended up with a book at Dark Horse, but though I think Ramos' art has some appeal, it looks really ill-suited to the story in question, a murder mystery set in the Vatican. The lead character looks 14! I have my doubts that Jenkins will write an actual mystery here, but I won't condemn the book outright until I see.

I remain uninterested in Marvel's House of M, though I was somewhat surprised that Brian Michael Bendis is leaving DAREDEVIL around issue #80 or so. I guess I kind of expected he'd be there until at least #100, but if he feels he's told all the DD stories he's got, good for him.

Speaking of, I might mention that there's a two-part Bendis interview at ComicFoundry. I don't do many plugs here, but Tim, who sent me the email, seems nice enough, and Bendis is always a good interview.

Offering a $75.00 ABSOLUTE WATCHMEN and a $29.99 V FOR VENDETTA hardcover in the same month seems silly to me. I may actually get both, but I don't know yet. That's a lot of scratch for even Alan Moore comics in one month, especially familiar ones.

Hey, what's the deal with the art duties on GREEN LANTERN. I was surprised to see the cold, lackluster work of Ethan Van Sciver on the first few pages of the first issue, followed by the technically superior but still curiously unenthusiastic work of Carlos Pacheco, but the solicitation for issue #4 shows Van Sciver going it alone. Is the the regular artist now, or do the two men switch, or what? I didn't think the first issue was bad, per se, but it really seemed to take for granted that the reader knew the recent history of Hal Jordan, and that they think he's hot shit. I couldn't figure out at one point if there was a flashback to him starting out at the Air Force base, or that was all happening now, or what. I guess for me there's a big problem from the start, in that I find it hard to grasp how a guy who can fly under his own power would still want so desperately to be able to get back up in a jet again. Do NBA players wish they could cut their games short so they can go back home to play NBA 2005 on X-Box? Jordan's yearning to take that stick again just seems like a kind of nostalgia, and isn't nostalgia a kind of fear?

Finally, I watched THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF the other night, a French action movie mashup of Merchant-Ivory/Fellini/Chop-socky/Dances With Wolves/Lone Ranger and Tonto and CGI horror that manages to fuck it all up almost totally. Mark Da Cascos, as the Native American sidekick to a mushmouthed Christopher Lambert lookalike, does the best, as he doesn't talk much and kicks some ass in decent fight sequences. The beast is ridiculous and fake, and I forgot what the purpose of it was or who was behind it, as the attention shifted to the creepy one-handed Prince with the hard-on for his own sister. The deleted scenes section is great, as the French director babbles on about the imagined merits of several crappy scenes, as if the final product didn't result in the worst sort of incompetent, incoherent compromise. I mean, there's a big monster, lots of fights, and gratuitous nudity at a brothel, and it's still boring.