As I often do, here's a potpourri kind of post.

Checked out some of the NYC Comic Convention reports and wasn't very interested in most. Very little of the "news" out of conventions interests me much, especially when grown, smart men like Joe Quesada say dumb things like adapting an old Stephen King series that was never one of his most acclaimed works as somehow "elevating the art form" of comics. Elevating an art form pretty much has to come from a totally original project, right?

Erik Larsen's column two weeks ago at CBR was good--I like process stuff and it was great to get the perspective of a publisher and creator at the same time. But last week's, which kind of started out questioning whether it was okay to deal with political issues in comics and if it was okay to feature real people in comics, but then losts its footing, was pretty bad. There was a very confused message from Larsen that sales on Savage Dragon had dropped partly due to his fearless, controversial nature, but his example of an attempt at political relevance was stupid and rightly dropped prior to publication, though the dropping wasn't right by his reasoning that one shouldn't feature real people in comics. It was right to drop it because it was very dumb. It's true that it's risky, legally, to feature real, living political figures, but that can't be Larsen's real concern, since in his column he explicitly says he would like to punch Pres. Bush. The problem is that he was considering directly quoting the man, and that's just not interesting. Better to come up with a new character with different mannerisms who nonetheless exemplifies Bush's arrogance and wrongheadedness, or whatever qualities you want to get across. It's safer and more creative.

Christopher Butcher is always a good read, though I would love if in one of his convention posts he learned something. I see a lot of shmoozing and name-dropping, and a lot of pride at being a mouth panelist, but not so much of the, "gee, I was amazed to see ----" and "I had no idea that ----" and "I must admit I had really underestimated ----" or anything like that. We're all very flawed people and it's good to remind others we're all like that.

Brian Hibbs reviewed Civil War #7 on his Savage Critic site and while I haven't read the series, I take some small issue with his premise that every superhero comics reader wants change or the illusion of change, and that Civil War's problem is in the execution. Well, the execution is probably flawed, yes, but the issue is that we all want change. Actually, I'd just rather have a good comic as my foremost concern. Whether it "resets the table" and changes the status quo is less and less relevant to me, especially since, as Hibbs notes, most of these things go back to pretty much how they were to begin with. So why would I want that illusory change anymore, as a grown-ass, 37-year-old man? Why not just a really good Spider-Man story? I do think he makes a good observation (I'm agreeing in principle, again, not having read the series) that if you're doing a story about heroes making the wrong choice for good reasons, you ought to feature well-developed alternative viewpoints, so it doesn't seem like the whole Marvel Universe just falls in line with fascism.

Oscars yesterday were pretty good. I'm not all that critical of the Oscars because I realize it's a very long broadcast and has to please hundreds of millions of people. Someone at work criticized it for not having a specific them or direction, but I think that asks too much or misses the point. It's a variety show, really. The opening comments from film folk was too long. The Will Ferrell/Jack Black/John C. Reilly song was funny. The foreign and American film montage bits from Tournetore and Mann were fine. The Sherry Lansing tribute no doubt boring to many but she's an important Hollywood figure and I like that they honor people quite aside from whether most viewers even know what a studio head is. The Ennio Morricone tribute was kind of half-assed--why not a montage with scenes of how well his music worked in film? I mean, I guess there was a little of it, but not enough--no "Man with a Harmonica" from Once Upon A Time in the West?

The Departed is one of the few nominated films I've seen so far and I loved it and own it, but I don't really see it as Best Picture. Very happy for Marty, probably my favorite director, but it was just a very skilled crime film. Not that I have a bias against genre films but I didn't see it rising that high above genre or having anything profound to say. Just very skilled, often inventive, filmmaking from a master.

Ellen was good. I like edgier humor and missed the type of host ready with a barb or a sharp quip about something silly or embarrassing that just happened to a presenter or winner, but she was very appealing. Musical performances were pretty good, though enough with Randy Newman already. I recognize what a talented miniaturist he is, but come on Academy! Move on. I liked the troupe who worked in silhouette, making symbols to represent the Best Picture nominees. That was cool.

Finally, I finally caught up with a couple old friends/colleagues on their blogs. Jog-the-Blog we all know, and thanks to him for listing me on his blog. Paul Weissburg is an old CBG alum who's been back blogging the past few months, at Hoopla. Very good, wry commentary on some mainstream stuff, hitting the right note. More often now, as an old bastard, I like the wry over the righteous and indignant. I had also missed the always-solid Mike Sterling at Progressive Ruin. What I like about the Wolverine/Hulk joke is that he had it ready for the anniversary. Sure, he's a retailer and it's easy for a guy in his position to keep track of such things, but still, kudos for hitting that joke on the right date.

Finished Awake in the Dark, The Best of Roger Ebert, which has some great essays from Roger Corliss and Andrew Sarris in it as well, about the state of film criticism. Another time I'll have to pull some of the great, inspirational quotes from it, but one I read tonight from Corliss struck me. He was talking about how it had taken him "forever" to get around to considering the film Out of Africa, but by then he'd realized that "forever" was really the point. In other words, good criticism is good criticism, whether it's for a dealine the week something comes out, or years later. This really makes me feel better about reviewing books a year after they come out.