Entries Tagged 'writing' ↓

More email regarding “The Strange Case of Bobby Fuller”:

Hi, my name is Don J. Long, and in 1966 I was a radio disc jockey with my first radio gig at age 18, on a local Top 40 Pop and Rock music station in the major Los Angeles radio market, KLFM 105.5 FM, Long Beach. I was employed by the radio station full time from January to June 1966, when the station went out of business. I did the “Morning Drive” show from 6 AM to 9 AM then, with the name “D.J. the Deejay” for my radio handle.

Occasionally, I would do on-air live interviews with musical artists and celebrities on my morning show. I interviewed Bobby Fuller live on the air in April 1966, a few months before his tragic death. We mostly talked about his music, how he came from Texas, and how people compared him favorably to Buddy Holly. He was in Hollywood to do some music gigs at that time, and the program director, Harvey Sheldon, knew the guys who worked the shows up on the Sunset Strip, so they told him Bobby Fuller would be available for an on-air interview so he came down and we talked for about 20 to 30 minutes. It was all later edited into my radio show the following day. Other artists I interviewed, for example, on my radio show were Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits, Gary Lewis, Jerry Lewis’ son, of Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and Del Shannon. I wish I knew where any recordings were of my radio shows. I used to have my own copies but I was robbed in a burglary in 1975 and those tapes were stolen along with my reel-to-reel tape deck.

Bobby mentioned that he had a girlfriend from Las Vegas; she must have been the ‘Melanie’ mentioned in the reports, who was driving around Hollywood at that time in a red 1959 Cadillac convertible, allegedly given to her by a local club owner who was also from Las Vegas, who was her ex-boyfriend, and so the reports go, had ties to the Mafia and organized crime.

He also said he was really happy with his newfound success in the music business, and enjoyed working for Bob Keane (Keene) at Del-Fi and the people at Mustang Records in Hollywood. At that time, his two big hits were “Let Her Dance” and Buddy Holly’s song “Love’s Made A Fool Of You’. His big hit “I Fought The Law” was also starting to get some serious airplay at KRLA, KFWB and KHJ, and whatever they played, we played at KLFM.

Bobby impressed me as being a very positive, intense and driven but personable young man, and not the sort of person to take his own life, especially when his career was still on the rise. I don’t believe he committed suicide, he was murdered. And I would blame it totally on the girlfriend Melanie’s jealous ex-boyfriend, and his associates.

Bobby also mentioned at that time that he was really excited about buying a new red 1966 Ford Mustang 2+2 fastback sports coupe from the local Hollywood Ford dealer, which would have been Don Hartunian Hollywood Ford at that time. I don’t know if he purchased the car or not, but he talked about it on my show interview with me.

For what it’s worth, this is my input into this story. I also gave this same story, my testimony, to the TV series “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1996 when they ran a segment of their program about this case.

Just thought I would drop you a line about this, since I read online you were interested in this case.

Best Regards,

Don J. Long
DJL Projects

Thanks, Don, interesting stuff. It’s a real shame your interview tapes disappeared, I’m sure those would be fascinating to hear today — I’m a big Del Shannon fan too.

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Of the new shows I’ve seen so far this season, Up All Night is the one I’ve enjoyed the most and the only one I’m certain I’ll watch more episodes of. I’m one of the fifty or so people who watched and enjoyed every episode of Running Wilde, Will Arnett’s last attempt at sitcom stardom;  I grew up watching Christina Applegate on Married…With Children; and I saw Bridesmaids in the theater. I’m so predisposed to watch this show a picture of me appears under the heading ‘this show’s demographic’ in the affiliates’ promotional materials.

Of course, none of that matters if the show sucks, but even the slightly rickety pilot makes a strong case for Up All Night. Some seams are visible where it was retooled to expand Maya Rudolph’s role and squeeze in new cast additions (Nick Cannon, of all people? OK, we’ll see…) but even so it’s still easily the most promising new comedy I’ve seen in some time. I am a little worried the show might fall into a tedious pattern of repetitive “diapers and poop are gross, haha” jokes and that Rudoph’s character will continue to be simply a thinly-drawn Oprah sock puppet, but I’m on board for at least the next few episodes — and as long as the writing is strong I’ll likely be in for the first season.

Free Agents is the show that comes on after Up All Night and is “the comedy that comes on at the half-hour mark” in every way; it feels designed to go with Up All Night in the same way Mad About You was made to go with Seinfeld and King Of Queens with Everybody Loves Raymond — and it feels slightly second-rate in the same way those shows did. Where the late-thirty/early-fortysomethings of Up All Night are married and breeding, those on Free Agents are divorced and rebuilding — NBC’s got all the angles covered!

Based on a British show, Free Agents shows it with sharply written dialogue and frequent reliance on the comedy of awkwardness, the special talent of the English. I don’t find myself particularly vested in the characters — Azaria lacks the easy likability it’d take to sell the ‘flustered everyman’ thing he’s going for here, the kind of thing Louis CK has been doing perfectly on Louie recently — but given the strong lead-in from Up All Night I can see it outlasting the original version’s six episodes, anyway. Where it goes from there is down to the writing; if they keep hammering the “are they/aren’t they/dating/not dating” thing I can see it getting tiresome quickly, since I don’t find myself really caring whether the characters are hooking up or not.

Honestly, more than anything Free Agents makes me want to check out the original show, but having watched both the pilot and the second episode I can say it’s a minor pleasure, though I can’t say I’d mourn too deeply were it to vanish suddenly. In the meantime, I’ll have to see if I can track down that UK show…

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When The Sopranos got huge on HBO, the broadcast networks immediately reacted with typical creativity and pumped a number of poor Sopranos-lite ripoffs onto the air. Of course, they all failed instantly since network TV hasn’t done a decent mob show since Wiseguy, but now that Mad Men dominates the cable drama landscape, do the networks learn? No, they do not, they react by pumping Mad Men-lite ripoffs on the air — The Playboy Club is the first of which to air.

Now, when I first heard about this show I honestly thought it was not a terrible premise: you have a worldwide-recognized brand in the title, an excuse to constantly have hot chicks in skimpy clothes, and in early-60s Chicago even a real-life period setting with plenty of story possibilities.  Unfortunately, whatever potential I might have seen in theory is completely squandered in the execution: The Playboy Club is just a bog-standard soap opera in Mad Men drag. The lead actor’s Don Draper impression is so shamelessly blatant he should really be sending Jon Hamm half his paycheck for this show. Despite obvious lip service paid to period accoutrements, the writing is typical network serial drama nonsense dressed up with allusions toward the social change of the time, as if Hugh Hefner financing a mens’ club where women wore bunny outfits had anything at all to do with it.

Despite all manner of  women flitting about (mostly non-60s-looking and disappointingly poor actors aside from lead Amber Heard, although all she’s asked to do is look alternately scared and mopey) I was bored stiff fifteen minutes in, only pausing to note ridiculous plot contrivances that make no sense whatsoever (there were at least three after that point) and to wonder if the premiere was a double-length episode, as it seemed to be dragging on forever. It wasn’t, fortunately, but by the end I’d heard the word “bunny” so many times it had lost all meaning.  I think it lost meaning for the writers too, as they lines they give Hefner to intone pretentiously use the word as if it were somehow simultaneously synonymous with “radical feminist”, “rock star”, and  “celebrity” instead of simply “busty waitress in a demeaning costume”.

Oh well, maybe Pan Am will be better.

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Another season of new premiere television is upon us. I always take a certain pleasure in watching a fresh crop of pilots contending for attention — the experience is somehow made all the sweeter knowing that chances are better than even any given show will be gone and forgotten within six weeks.

It’s a good thing too, because most pilots suck out loud. Sure, I have fond memories of seeing the first-ever broadcasts of shows like Newsradio and — even of being a small child and my mother saying “Well, we can either try this new show Cheers or watch Mildred have her baby on Too Close For Comfort” — but those experiences are few. Even shows that go on to become favorites often misfire in pilot form (as it’s admittedly extremely tough to both create and master one’s form simultaneously and instantly) or simply aren’t represented properly, given that the broadcast episode may be a hacked up and repurposed version of the network pilot — often necessary due to recasting and late-minute creative decisions (such as raising Maya Rudolph’s profile on Up All Night). Community is one of the shows I’m most looking forward to returning; I watched the first episode when it was first on, didn’t find it all that amusing, then didn’t return to the show for a year and half at which time it became one of my favorites. Same with Arrested Development. There’s room for error and misjudgment here, is what I’m saying.

That said, I’d be pretty surprised if I was watching either 2 Broke Girls or Whitney in 2013 given that right now I’m on the fence about whether I could sit through a second episode of either. I like Kat Dennings from Party Down and some movie (oh wait, it was Thor, wasn’t it? Well, some indie movie too I think) and I’ve liked a good amount of Whitney Cummings’ stand-up work so I definitely wasn’t primed to hate these shows or anything, but yeah…they’re not good.

Whitney is the one Whitney actually stars in, of course, but both shows share a similar sensibility given her co-creator/co-writer credit on 2 Broke Girls so that’s reason enough to cover them together. Also, frankly neither merits coverage on its own — both are basically lame, forgettable shows with a couple of chuckles and few actual laughs; generic sitcoms in every way, from the fake-sounding laughter (I notice I find laugh tracks crazy annoying in unfunny shows like this but  when the show’s actually funny I don’t even notice them, oddly) to the strained-yet-cliched setups to the see-them-coming-from-miles punchlines.  The only notable difference between these shows is heterosexual men will find 2 Broke Girls easier on the eyes and heterosexual women will get the same faint, watered-down Sex & the City vibe from Whitney that’s been infused into every single goddamned thing marketed to them for the past decade-and-a-half. Neither effect is close to enough to overcome the basic lack of laughs, unfortunately.

Honestly, it almost kind of seems like the kind of thing they did fifteen years ago that you don’t see so much of anymore, when they’d sign up any half-decent standup comic with a hook, put them in a sitcom and throw it at the wall hoping for another Seinfeld to stick.  Pretty much all those shows were terrible too; I mean, I liked The Norm Show and someone was watching King Of Queens all those years but let’s be real, Grace Under Fire eventually led to Two and a Half Men. In a way it’s kind of good to know that the standup comic development deal isn’t totally dead — it just didn’t work well here at all.

Anyway, Whitney seems like a smart chick so I’m sure she’s banking the money she’s got rolling in for as long as both shows are on the air, and that’ll give her a good position from which to launch her next project. I doubt their cancellation will hurt her too badly, although I’m sure she’d prefer the shows would be huge successes that make her a household name I don’t see that happening.  (But hey, people watch Two and a Half Men, so what do I know anyway? Right? Right?)

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This was one of those things I read about as a kid and then wondered for years afterward if I’d dreamed it or what.  From the Amazing Heroes Preview Special #2, Winter 1986 (coincidentally co-edited by Mark Waid, who would go on to write his own justifiably acclaimed run of The Flash):

(click to embiggen)

To put this into context, at the time this came out DC had just finished publishing Crisis On Infinite Earths, issue #8 of which featured the death of Silver Age Flash Barry Allen and in issue #12 of which Kid Flash Wally West picked up the scarlet speedsuit. As a Flash fan at the time, I hadn’t been at all thrilled about the former, but the pain had been somewhat mitigated by the promise implied by the latter. And now, news that in fact Wally wasn’t even a lock for the next Flash series? That it might not even star a super-speed character? THE HORROR.

Of course nothing ever came of this and Wally ended up getting his own series by Mike Baron and Jackson Guice in 1987, but I’d love to know how far along this other concept got before it was scrapped and whatever became of it, especially if there was any concept artwork. I do recall thinking that the Tangent version of the Flash sounded somewhat similar at least as far as having light-based powers, but it’s really not much of a leap to go from the name “The Flash” to light-based powers once you decide you’re not locked into super-speed. Still, I’d love to know if there’s any connection between the two.

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From http://twitter.com/aaronpoehler. Looking at the amount of stuff built up I should probably do this more often. Or maybe you should just follow me because even this isn’t exhaustive, there were some twitter-only posts that have been excised here and oh geez don’t you feel like you missed out now?

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To be honest I haven’t really been enjoying a lot of Matt Fraction’s recent Marvel writing and I never did get around to reading Casanova (the return of which is this interview’s putative subject) but I thought he encapsulated something here I’ve never really seen expressed before this well and this concisely.

No one ever talks about how the heartbreak of independent comics is that all your friends let you down. We never say that out loud. We never come out and say, “You know what’s bullsh*t? How my best friend didn’t produce work on time.” That’s the thing. It’s a hurtful, painful thing. No one ever talks about that. What happens when you ruin your relationships with all your friends because life gets in the way and you fumble, because doing this much work for free is a motherf*cker. No one comes out and says, “Doing this much work for free is a motherf*cker.”

If you’ve ever wondered why your town — every town — doesn’t have dozens of cool bands putting out new music all the time; a wide variety of blogs, zines, books, and other publications microfocused on the concerns and issues of the community; and a supportive, collaborative environment in which people of all kinds produce and share the fruits of their creativity freely and without fear: this is why.

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If there’s anything I love, it’s the intra-band bitching that leaks after a band breaks up. While there’s money to be made people hold their tongues, but as soon as the door closes you always get some choice tidbits.

Former Foreigner lead singer Lou Gramm moaned to Spinner recently:

As you tour the country, there’s another version of Foreigner out there with another lead singer, just like Journey, Styx and several other big bands from that era. Is that a strange thing to know that you’re being “replicated,” in a sense?

It is. It totally is. But what’s stranger to me is that, as I’ve learned talking to people who see those shows, is that in many cases the audience, especially if they’re younger, don’t even know it’s not the original lead singer. In Foreigner’s case, as I understand it, the singer was actually trained to deliver pretty much exactly everything as I did it, note for note. If I were in the audience and learned that while I was there, I’d get up and leave. I think when the band name remains the exact same, but something as important as the lead vocal is different, it’s misleading. It’s like false advertising.

Now, this is a pretty baffling exchange for a few reasons, not least Spinner interviewer Chris Epting going all the way around the barn there instead of simply using the common and familiar word “replaced”. Both act like replacement members in touring classic rock bands from the 70s is somehow a brand new and disturbing trend when in fact it is absolutely 100% the status quo.  There is no way anyone who gives enough of a shit about Foreigner to go see them isn’t aware nearly every other band they like (Chicago, Lynyrd Skynyrd, REO Speedwagon, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, the Rolling Stones, Queen, Yes, Heart, Van Halen, Def Leppard, the bands mentioned above by Epting, um, basically every band ever played on classic rock radio ever) features a mix of supporting players filling in the spaces left around the few remaining functional originals. This is in no way surprising or disheartening for bands whose heydays were thirty years ago. That’s why on the rare occasions you have an all-original-members tour by any classic rock act it’s promoted heavily, because if you don’t everyone assumes the opposite.

It’s especially ludicrous in reference to fucking Foreigner, which was never a cohesive unit in the Beatles/Zep manner: the band changed rhythm sections and additional players constantly, with guitarist/bandleader Mick Jones (yes he and the guy from the Clash have the same name, let’s move on please) and Gramm remaining the only constants until Gramm quit and was replaced in 1990. Of course, Gramm did rejoin for several years after discovering for the first time that no one gave a shit about Lou Gramm singing outside of the context of Foreigner, but considering everyone else in Foreigner including him had been replaced by Jones before, it’s idiotic to pretend his being replaced post-2003 is in any way shocking. Yes, the current lineup features just one member who played on their classic radio hits, but the lineup from 1992-2003 with Gramm singing had two. Cheap Trick, this band ain’t.

Coincidentally, I happened to catch Foreigner’s Rockin’ at the Ryman blu-ray recently and given what I saw there, I suspect I know the root cause of Gramm’s whining: no one gives a shit he’s not in the band.  I can’t lay claim to ever having been a big Foreigner fan, but after watching the performance I have to give it up: the group delivers a surprisingly convincing and coherent set. It’s impossible to deny the pros Jones has drawn together from such second- and third tier bands as Hurricane (best known, no shit, for having members who were brothers of the dudes from Quiet Riot) and Dokken play the songs properly and recognizably, delivering a crowd-pleasing set I have to admit found a whole lot more enjoyable than I would have predicted. Against all odds, they never come across as half-hearted or worn-out journeymen — the band plays together well without slavishly imitating the licks from the records. They look like they’re having fun, they look like a rock band, they play exceptionally well and surprisingly expressively. In the end, they manage not only to sound like an actual band, but to sound like, well, Foreigner.

As per usual (for vocalists in particular) what’s really behind Gramm’s outburst is bruised ego. There was never any deception or intention to fool anyone into thinking current singer Kelly Hansen is Gramm — in fact, Jones goes out of his way on Rockin’ at the Ryman to thank Hansen in such a way that it makes clear to the audience he wasn’t the original singer, but gives him credit for doing a great job filling in. So he sings Foreigner songs like they are on the records? What a fucking shock! Should he sing them like they were Hurricane songs? Is that what the audience paid to hear?

No, it’s not. When people buy a ticket to see band like Foreigner they want to hear the songs they know from the radio, sounding like the songs they know, played enjoyably and well, and based on what I saw on Rockin’ at the Ryman, they get it. Gramm’s presence is simply not necessary. Would some audience members prefer Gramm up there, well sure, probably. But no one knows better than the classic rock audience that you can’t always get what you want — especially when it comes to live performances of songs that were radio hits in 1977. And to imply anyone was lied to or tricked is so ridiculous and self-serving it helps illuminate Jones’ reasons for moving forward without Gramm: like a spurned spouse, Gramm wanted nothing more than for Jones to fail without him, therefore proving his irreplaceably unique genius was crucial to the band’s success. And when the real world doesn’t confirm his out-of-proportion assessment of his own importance, he lashes out: well it must be Mick’s fault then! I’m still special! I’m still special!

Fuck off, Lou Gramm.

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I don’t think it really hit me until this week that with DC Comics’ “New 52″ linewide relaunch beginning next month, August is basically linewide endings as they (hastily, in some cases) wrap up their current line. I picked up the final issue of the Superman ‘Grounded’ storyline (#714) more out of curiosity than anything — remember, it was a similar wrap-up that brought us Alan Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” so it wasn’t out of the question the thing would be decent. I certainly wasn’t expecting much: it’s hard to imagine a coherent storyline remaining anywhere after the penultimate chapter has been unceremoniously yanked and replaced with a years-old inventory story about Superman’s dog.  My impression of Chris Roberson’s fill-in run as writer is that he’s spent a lot of time doing damage control, explaining away all the dumbass out of character bits J. Michael Straczynski wrote before leaving — which may not be entirely accurate, seeing as all I’ve read of Roberson’s run is his first issue on the book, the Flash issue, and this one — and there’s more of the same here, followed by a perfunctory everything-relaunches-next-month-so-nothing-we-do-matters wrapup ending that manages to be so boring I can hardly believe it: (****SPOILER ALERT*****) Superman gives signal watches to his friends so they can work together better and somehow thereby save the Earth and somehow that totally doesn’t stand out at all in a time when practically no one wears watches anymore and anyway it seems like text messaging would work just as well as a communication medium but oh well the end.  Upon closing the book I thought something I bet I’m going to be thinking a lot this month: “Well, that was pretty shitty, but at least it’s over.” As a longtime reader, sometimes one has to accept that as the most satisfaction you’re going to get from some comics.

Also, I’m not really one to speculate on the amount of effort put into any creative work or to draw unsupportable correlations between amount of effort expended and perceived quality of finished work, but John Cassaday’s cover work on this series sure has looked lazy and uninspired.  At one time it seemed he could do no wrong but I can’t even recall the last time his work looked more than passable. Granted there’s a lot wrong with this run that striking cover art can’t fix, but it certainly doesn’t help that all of his work for the series (the giant S logo first issue aside) has been static, pedestrian, and occasionally cringeworthy (#705). Taking a look at the collected covers of the run I keep spotting some semi-decent covers I missed along the way, but clicking to fullsize inevitably reveals each is a variant alternate cover by another artist, each of which far surpasses whatever cover Cassaday contributed. George Perez’ alternate cover on this issue is a really nice piece of work, Cassaday’s makes Superman look like a halfwit.

Gail Simone ended Secret Six really well this week; though the book had fallen into my “I’ll get to it when I have time” category of late, resulting in a stack of eight or nine issues I had to catch up on first, the book remained consistent thoughout its run even if the art quality did decline (somewhat inevitable for a second- or third-tier book as good, quick artists tend to get poached away quickly). This issue takes the concept out on a high note, wrapping up in appropriate fashion and reminding readers of the series’ unique qualities. Hopefully whatever follows won’t instantly piss all over the series; unfortunately the upcoming Suicide Squad book doesn’t look too promising, but let’s leave next month to next month for now.

I caught up and finished out Simone’s Birds of Prey run as well; though the series technically doesn’t end until this week (I think) the last two issues are a Marc Andreyko two-part fill-in so she’s been done for a bit. This run didn’t work as well as her previous Birds stint; as noted elsewhere, constantly shifting artists make consistent tone impossible and though the characters retain their personalities and signature charm (i.e. Simone making sex/internet jokes through their mouths) the stories didn’t really seem to go anywhere or do anything. More than anything the series feels like a casualty of DC editorial’s constantly changing directions and shifting priorities over the past few years; hopefully they’re committed enough to the New 52 direction for Simone’s new Batgirl series (one of the books I’m most looking forward to, actually) to avoid such pitfalls. *koff*

Along with the regular DCU books, all the three-issue Flashpoint tie-in miniseries finish up this month as well. It’s little surprise that the Azzarello/Risso Batman: Knight of Vengeance book is far and away the standout, this conclusion featuring a stunning sequence that would justify the book’s existence even if the rest were garbage, which it’s not. So far, this is the one story told within the Flashpoint framework that works well enough to survive outside of it; it helps that Azzarello does more as a writer than just say “Okay, in the world of Flashpoint Ambush Bug has Firefly’s powers and is an Australian woman” and expect the reader to give a shit. It comes across as a solid Elseworlds tale of the sort that might have appeared in Legends of the Dark Knight once upon a time.

It’s difficult not to feel disappointed at Secret Seven for featuring something like six pages of George Perez art in the first issue with the rest of the series filled out by what looks like either an assistant or an imitator, but even if the wrapup was more of the same-old-same-old wholesale killing of alternate versions of familiar characters that typifies these stories, at least there’s a nice gesture for fans of Milligan’s old Vertigo Shade the Changing Man series buried in there, so that’s something anyway.  Maybe this book will turn out to have a whole bunch of hints hidden within about the New 52 status of these characters, maybe not, I don’t know. And maybe if Perez had drawn the whole thing I’d be enticed to reexamine the book later on, but all in all I’d characterize it as disappointing — and I’m someone who read enough of Ostrander’s Suicide Squad to actually care about these third-tier characters, so I can’t imagine most people finding this essential reading.

I’m enjoying the DC Retroactive specials (probably disproportionately to their quality, honestly) but one thing they really reinforce is how temporary any particular interpretation of these characters are, particularly once you get below the A level. I mean, a villain like Abra Kadabra is generally only going to show up once every four or five years anyway, so when the relaunch cycle tightens to the point you have four Flash relaunches in five years (not an exaggeration) every appearance of the character becomes essentially a new reimagining by an entirely different creative team. It’s a good perspective on the flexibility of serial characters: don’t bother get too worked up about whatever way they screw up in any relaunch, because whatever doesn’t sell will be canceled, everything that’s taken out now will be reinserted later by someone else, and whatever doesn’t work will be forgotten — except by continuity detail obsessives, who are clearly not the target audience for these things anymore. If something as dumb/disturbing/outdated/all-around WTF as Comet the Super-Horse can’t be successfully and permanently removed from the DCU without someone eventually putting it back, nothing can.

Also, who chose the reprint stories for the Retroactive books? Because if there’s one story the audience for these books has already read about eighty times and almost certainly has at least three printings of already, it’s “No Evil Shall Escape My Sight!” which was stuck in the Green Lantern 70s book for some reason. That’s not a bonus. It doesn’t even make sense thematically since main artist Mike Grell didn’t draw it. Fortunately they picked a great reprint story for the Flash 80s book — in which the main story was enjoyable, if hampered by a shitty coloring job that somehow managed to be both garish and murky along with error-ridden — but missed the trick by not including the killer cover by current Flashpoint artist Andy Kubert so I addressed that omission by putting it at the top of this page. (You’re welcome.)

Art inconsistencies kept the Wonder Woman 80s issue from resembling a product of that era even slightly — definitely not up to the standard set by the Gene Colan work in the reprint — but it’s good to see some things never change, like Roy Thomas compulsively taking a page and a half in every issue to recap old stories no one but him and Mark Waid give a crap about. This issue was a minor pleasure at best, but I have to admit chuckling when I saw the selected reprint was the story right after Diana got her new halter top.

Admittedly I’ve always been a DC guy who buys some Marvel books and DC has really grabbed the spotlight with the relaunch lately and blah blah blah but truth be told, I’m finding it really hard to give even the slightest shit about the mainline Marvel Universe right now. Fear Itself as one of those incoherent non-story crossovers has subsumed the line within a really groan-inducing cover treatment and really seems to bring nothing to the books it derails other than the typical “There sure is a big planetwide tragedy happening right now!” immediacy. I’d been enjoying Avengers Academy but the recent “War is hell, even comic book war” issues, while well written and drawn, are just too steeped in the false drama and pathos of Fear Itself to describe as enjoyable. I’m hoping the book gets back to what it was doing (well) soon.

Marvel’s recent ‘Big Shots’ branded second-tier relaunches would seem to be more up my alley, although I’m already completely bored with the Bendis/Maleev Moon Knight after four issues. I can’t really blame them for trying a different approach to the character after three or four relaunches by different writers across the last several years have all failed to light up the sky, but correspondingly they can’t blame me as a reader for finding that different approach idiotic.  They should have gone all the way and titled the book “New Avengers Solo” because it’s basically just more of the oft-mocked talky-talky-talk found in Bendis’ other Avengers books, only here the novelty is that the chatty-cathy talking heads are all in the main character’s head so the chatter isn’t punctuated by Big Important Fight Scenes.  The problem is, since it’s all internal that also means the chatter very very rarely does anything to advance the action. Throwing in a guest appearance by the number one Bendis-pet character no one else in the world gives the slightest fuck about doesn’t do a lot to relieve the tedium. This will probably outlast Bendis/Maleev’s similarly boring Spider-Woman series, but I can’t see them sticking with it past a year. I certainly won’t be.

Fortunately I found Mark Waid’s Daredevil #1 enjoyable and pleasantly free of the pervasive “every book must reflect the same view of the Marvel Universe at all times” approach, with sharp art and a less crushingly tragedy-suffused approach than the book has seen of late. It feels a lot like Waid’s Legion of Super-Heroes relaunch actually, which keeps me from getting my hopes too high as a number of Waid’s books seem to start off strong and then drift as they go (Irredeemable has felt that way since the first year, I’m afraid) and I’m not enough of a Daredevil fan to read the book when it’s not all that good (I dropped it after Brubaker quit) but based on Daredevil #1 I’m cautiously optimistic. Keep the art this sharp and I’ll stick around, but if they start subbing out Rivera and Martin for less skilled draftsmen within the first year it might be a problem.

I find myself feeling much the same about Greg Rucka’s parallel Punisher relaunch: I have high hopes for it, but then I’ve had high hopes for every Punisher comic I’ve read since Garth Ennis stopped writing them and those hopes are rarely rewarded. The premiere issue seemed fine, even promising, but I felt like it barely got things rolling — admittedly it’s difficult to show something we haven’t seen in a Punisher story before without going to the FrankenCastle extreme, but I felt like all we really got here was the basic premise of people shooting other people and then getting shot by the Punisher for doing so, without a lot of indication of where Rucka plans to take the series. His approach seems solid enough though and he’s usually dependable working within the crime milieu so I’m on board for the foreseeable future, especially considering how plagued with delays Jason Aaron’s Punisher MAX book has been. In any case Rucka’s approach seems like a good fusion of the hardcore Ennis approach into the less adult Marvel Universe setting, without going to the “let’s have Punisher fight Stilt-Man” extreme of some previous volumes. As Punisher #1′s go, it wasn’t the best (what are we up to now, Punisher v9? v10?), but I’ll put it top five, easy.

Finally: month after month both Zenescope and Antarctic Press continue to print comics and somehow the cover of practically every single issue makes me shudder to think of the people buying them — and even Zenescope and Antarctic can console themselves that at least they’re not Bluewater, duping creators and readers alike with substandard, barely comprehensible garbage produced for miniscule or nonexistent wages.  I guess unsold WTF back issue bin fodder has to come from somewhere, but following in the footsteps of Todd Loren and George Caragonne seems of dubious wisdom and I just don’t get why anyone would bother to put the effort into publishing something guaranteed 1. to be shit and 2. not to make a lot of money.  As the comics industry continues to contract I wonder how long these tiny niche-market publishers can possibly continue to justify printing and distribution; after all, there were many Marvel and DC series that not even 5000 people in the country were interested in buying, and I have to imagine the audience for these indie books is exponentially smaller than even the lowest-selling Marvel/DC book. (Okay, maybe not Street Poet Ray).  Still, as shoddy as these books are — and without any intention of ever reading any of them — I will mourn the day they no longer carry such material on comic shop shelves because comic shops used to be a refuge for weirdos, outcasts, and odd ducks everywhere, and frankly a visit to a comic shop without seeing at least one cover on the rack that makes you shake your head in wonder and disgust isn’t really a trip to the comic shop. Rest in peace, counterculture.

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From Skymall catalog:

Poorly-edited copy aside, I find it difficult to believe that either hypothetical character in this paranoiac scenario could ever manage to send the message depicted without tacking some sort of emoticon on at the end — most likely, the ever-salacious winking smiley face. Going out of the way to capitalize the W in ‘Wanna’ really sells the desperate yearning and insecurity underpinning this pitch though, and for that I doff my hat to you, ad mockup graphic designers who have apparently never actually seen a working BlackBerry.

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