Posts tagged nerd

You Are What You Eat - 2011

Earlier in the year I posted a quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.” Makes sense. Here’s what shaped and fashioned me this year:

Early in the year I discovered Film Riot - an internet video podcast starring Ryan Connely and his crew of misfit filmmakers. Every week they dissect film making techniques - often by tackling requests sent in by readers to figure out how to reproduce big budget effects on a DIY budget. They never fail to be entertaining or useful.

I also found Vimeo’s Video School to be pretty useful. The information there can be a little elementary at times, but since they seek to address aspiring filmmakers at every experience level, that only make sense.

Moving from the web to television, Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations was essential viewing. I’ve always loved the show, but this year, in it’s seventh season, it took on an almost religious significance for me. It started with the Haiti episode. There was just something about the scene where Bourdain tried to buy food for a bunch of hungry kids and inadvertantly caused a minor riot - his willingness to show how a seemingly benign act of philanthropy could spin out of control, that our actions, no matter how pure hearted, do not exist in a contextless vacuum. It felt like journalism. It felt like a man making television with nothing to prove. If you can take that kind of honesty and couple it with food porn that’s good TV.

This year also saw the release of a second show from Bourdain called The Layover. It’s presumably filmed on Bourdain’s actual layovers as he travels the globe filming No Reservations. It features Bourdain telling you the best places to eat, sleep, and drink in various cities. It’s No Reservation’s less heady, less serious little brother. I wasn’t hooked by the first episode (Singapore). No problem, I thought, I still have No Reservations. No sense being greedy. But the second episode featured Bourdain in New York, his home base, and it was awesome. It was a Bourdain we rarely see; smiling, comfortable, almost giddy. The best part was him arguing with some poor schlub in hamburger joint about whether you could get good sushi in New York. Hooked.

The Layover features a very different editing style from No Reservations. One I stole from liberally (though poorly)

Moving from the small screen to the big one - I saw a lot of movies in the theater this year - but not nearly enough for my liking - and not nearly enough that really blew my socks off. Here’s what I saw that I liked, though:

Thor and Captain America were both childhood dreams come true, Hanna kept me glued to the screen and looked nice doing it, X-Men: First Class was a nice way to re-imagine a dull franchise, Horrible Bosses was genuinely funny (instead of genuinely grueling like The Hangover 2), True Grit was the western we’ve all wanted for a few years now, and Driver was unexpectedly stylish, compelling, and sad (it’s larger here by random, not because it was my favorite movie by any means).

Musically, I had a lot of favorite bands release new albums this year but none of them truly stood out for me. Instead the highlights of my year musically were all live. First of all there was seeing The Mountain Goats live for the first time at Mercy Lounge in Nashville. Sara loves John Darnielle but had kind of a bad night so out of respect of her, I won’t go on and on about this one:

Next was discovering local boy made good, Vandaveer. Sara and I had a front row table for his show at Natasha’s back in the summer. It was the perfect way to experience a perfect show:

Later in the summer my friends Dan and Jen and I sat with about 30 other people at The Green Lantern and got to hear These United States rehearse a bunch of new songs before taking them into the studio. As far as good shows go, you can’t get much better than that:

Finally, my buddy Paul had his birthday party at Cosmic Charlies at the end of the summer on the same night that one of his favorite bands, Ha Ha Tonka was playing. The band not only sang Happy Birthday to Paul, they let him get on stage and mumble into a microphone for about the minutes while they played. Nicest band ever? Quite possibly:

Oh yeah! I almost forgot! This was also the year that my favorite local band, Sunday Valley, released their first new material in years. It was a great album and cause for celebration:

I watch a lot of TV, see a lot of movies, and listen to a lot of music in a given year - but more than any of those, I read comics. All kinds of comics. What did I read this year that I loved? Glad you asked. 2011 saw the release of the first new issues of Casanova in years. Issue 2, by creators Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba, in particular was comic book magic:

Fraction is my favorite writer in comics. As such, he created more than one book I really liked this year. For instance, his third issue of Mighty Thor was probably the best comic I read all year. It had it all: Norse Gods in space armor, Galactus, naked sword play, Silver Surfer saying cool stuff, Olivier Coipel. That’s a comic!

Other things I loved: Supernatural western, Sixth Gun from Oni Press

Mini comic Wolves from Becky Cloonan:

Weird fantasy book Orc Stain:

There was tons more, but space is limited.

What about books without pictures?

Anthony Bourdain makes good TV and writes good books. This year I read and loved his memoirs Medium Raw:

I also thoroughly enjoyed Blood, Bones & Butter, by chef Gabriel Hamilton:

Notice how both the books I mentioned were more or less about food? I love food. So it only make sense to mention some of the great meals I had this year. Cooking is as much of an art as writing or creating music or films after all.

This year Sara and I discovered Nick Ryan’s Saloon in downtown Lexington and had the best braised short ribs ever:

Our other great discovery was Nicaraguan Latin Grille, a little whole in the wall that blew out socks off:

We also went to Azure, home of local culinary star, Jermy Ashby, and had an incredible seven course meal. Below is just one of the delicious plates:

Then there was Hawaii. We had a lot of great Hawaiin food. Too much to get into, but suffice to say, I now have a deep abiding appreciation for macaroni salad:

There were tons more from tons of great restaurants like Cheng’s , Pho BC, Sam’s Hot Dogs, Planet Thai, Ramirez’ Taqueria, Local Taco, Doodles, Rossi’s, Ramsey’s, Winchell’s, Marikka’s, and El Rancho Tapitio.

Well, that’s it. That was what I ate in 2011. That’s what I loved, took in, digested, and was shaped by. Except for the dozen or so things I will think of as soon as I hit the “post” button.

On to 2012!

Flex Mentallo

Thanks to the digital age, there are very few comic books out there that I want to read but don’t’ have access to.

One book that does fall into that category, however, is Flex Mentallo.

Flex Mentallo was a four issue mini-series that spun-off of Grant Morrison’s run on DC’s DOOM PATROL comic. It featured the adventures of a character based on Charles Atlas. Though this early collaboration between Morrison and artist, Frank Quitely was published in 1996 with little controversy, years later Atlas’ lawyers later filed a copyright infringement suit against DC comics. The suit was dismissed, but DC has since seemed hesitant to republish the mini-series in America.

Until now.

Earlier this year, DC announced they would indeed be re-releasing Flex Mentallo as a hard cover collection with bonus materials. It comes out next month! Here’s the cover:

It’s been a long time coming, but my body is ready.

My First X-Men Comic

Way back before there were X-Men movies, back before Wolverine was a household name, I was 11 years old and my grandmother bought me my first X-Men comic book from Smith’s grocery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.

It was Uncanny X-Men 187. It looked like this:

In it, Storm (Halle Berry in the movies) has a mohawk and has lost her weather controlling powers. She and an old Cheyenne shaman break into a high rise, and shoot a bunch of aliens in order to save Forge, Storm’s lover and the man responsible for her losing her powers. Based on that short description alone, it’s better than most of the comics I’ve read this decade. Here’s some panels from it:

It is nothing like any X-Men comic that has come out in the past ten years. Wolverine only appeared in a two panel flash back. The whole thing blew my mind. Writer Chris Claremont and artist John Romita Jr are the X-Men to me.

Wizard Buys A Hat

They come out to Broadway and they look for me
I’m on the red steps smoking a cigarette
Easy to recognize
Black bandages on my eyes
This is the church, these are the congregants

-Wizard Buys A Hat by The Mountain Goats

The music references get more complex in Casanova: Avaritia

DC Comics and The New 52

My friend Dave suggested a couple of months ago that I blog about DC Comics and their complete relaunch of their comics line with 52 new series and a rarely tried new strategy of making digital copies of a book available for purchase on the same day the physical copy is available in stores.

I kind of held off on writing anything. I’m not sure why - I think because I read a lot of comic websites and commentary and in my mind, had nothing new to offer a conversation that has been pretty well beat to death. But since most of my readers here (Hi, you two) aren’t that into comics, I suppose it’s safe to assume anything I have to say on the topic is new to them/you.

So, this’ll get kinda nerdy and a little inside baseball, so if that’s not your thing, feel free to move on to something else. It’s a big internet and I’m sure there’s something on it you’ll like (might I recommend this in particular).

So as I said above, DC is relaunching their entire line. That means they’re cancelling all of their books (in some cases, books that were closing in on 1000 issues of uninterupted publishing), and restarting with 52 individual series, some brand new titles and some relaunches of pre-existing books. Most of the existing characters have been redesigned (a lot of them by fan-favorite artist Jim Lee) and tinkered with to be more relevant - and hopefully attract new readers.

I’ve got a few thoughts about the above strategy:

1. I’m in favor of trying to attract new comic readers. Comics have been limping along for decades now, not quite dying, but definitely not healthy. There are lots of theories on why this is and how to fix it. It feels like a pretty insurmountable task. You’d think if blockbusters like Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies and Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man couldn’t bring attention and new readers to the hobby, nothing could.

2. While I’m in favor of trying to attract new readers, something about this particular attempt seems a little… off? Desperate? I think it’s the need to make the books feel relevant. The only thing worse than not being relevant is trying to appear relevant. Relevance, to me, seems like one of those things that is inherent in a character or the voices of creators or it’s not. You can’t really force it. And if you could force it, it wouldn’t be by getting a 50 year old artist to attach armor, collars, and flanges to pre-existing characters. I loved Jim Lee in the 90’s. He’s a talented artist, but his aesthetic feels overdone and uninspired. How many younger, more vital feeling artists are there out there that could have really brought something new to these designs?

That being said, not every redesign seems quite so cloying and cynical. Grant Morrison and Rags Morales take on the early career of Superman in Action Comics looks incredible. Morrison is harkening back to Superman’s early 30’s roots as a crime-buster and working man’s champion. And the costume? No armor. No flanges. No collars. Just a t-shirt, dirty jeans, and a little cape. It feels like a fresh take - like a re-imagining that acknowledges it’s past but strives to say something new.

3. Renumbering is probably a good thing. Maybe. There’s a tiny little part of me that hates to see Detective Comics (home to Batman) get relaunched with a new #1 when it’s only 120 or so issues away from 1000. That being said, that kind of milestone is special to long time comic fans and probably a little intimidating to new readers. The idea that you’ve missed that many issues of a book and might have to “catch up” in order to understand things is daunting to the say the least. So, a new number one provides a jumping on point that is possibly mentally easier to swallow. That being said, I kind of feel like books need to be written so that any issue is a decent jumping on point or at least catches you up enough so as not to be lost. Because, five years down the line, Dectective Comics will be up to 60 issues and to a new reader, trying to be convinced of the medium’s accessibility, that might as well be 1000.

4. Relaunching books and rebooting characters is fine - as long at the spirit of the character is maintained. I’m not a purist. Sure, I have my own little personal bugaboos, like the neckline of Superman’s costume for instance. It should look like this:

Never this:

But aside from that and a few other minor issues, I’m not against re-imagining characters and stories - even characters like Superman that have been around for over 70 years - as long as the spirit of the character is maintained. Want to mess around with Batman and say Robin is his son or something? Okay, fine. Go for it. But do something, say, like make Batman a cold blooded killer? That doesn’t work because it betrays the essence of the character. There are a lot of comic fans and professionals who don’t like the DC relaunch because they consider continuity to be sacrosanct. That’s fine. I’ve just never been that guy. Continuity is a good tool and a terrible master.

So there you go: four rambling, near-meaningless thoughts about the relaunch, which can be summed up, I suppose, as I’m not against it, I don’t love all the choices being made. But at the end of the day, who cares what I think if it brings in new readers. Because, ultimately, that’s what I want. I like the old DC characters that I grew up with, but I love comics. The medium is bigger than Superman and questions about his uniform or origin story - and while the paradigm will eventually change, for the time being a healthy DC means a healthy comic book industry (relatively speaking). So good luck DC. I hope it works.

Casanova: Avaritia preview

Yay!

Click here for a six page preview. BEWARE! DIRTY WORDS!

Heroes Con 2011

Last weekend I jumped in the car and drove six hours to Charlotte, North Carolina for a comic book convention called Heroes Con. I’ve been to a couple of comic book conventions, but not for several years, and never to Heroes Con.

I went, specifically, so I could mark one more name off my “People I Want To Meet” list; namely, comic book writer, Matt Fraction:

Fraction was really nice. We got to talk for a few minutes about Grant Morrison, Casanova, and The Mountain Goats. I asked if I could get a picture with him and he said, “Yeah. Okay, I’m gonna slurp on my coke and pretend to eyeball you.” Which he did. I got the kid in line behind me to take the picture. In hindsight, I should have given him a little tutorial on my camera first:

I also got Fraction to sign my Casanova: Luxuria hardcover:

I got a chance to do some other neat stuff while I was there. I bought a mini-comic from Becky Cloonan that’s only available at cons right now. I got to watch comics legend, Michael Golden, sketch a picture of Batman, and I got to basically walk around for four or five hours immersed in a hobby that I love.

My haul for the weekend included two of Stuart Immonen’s sketchbooks, a Paul Pope mini-comic, and the aforementioned Becky Cloonan book, Wolves:

When I wasn’t at the con, I got to try some different restaurants, my favorite of which was a braised pork cheek sandwich with pickled vegetables from a farm to table place called Blue Harvest Grille. I also had some good soul food at a place called Merts, and some mediocre sushi at a place I won’t name.

It was a good trip, but probably my last con for a long while.