Birthday Month

Birthday month has come and gone, and it was eventful.

October 20 was Jumper's birthday.  She turned 5 years old, and I got her some watercolors and a paint set.  (So the kind you mix and the kind you don't)  Jumper's a really artistically inclined girl, as she can draw, at the age of five, recognizable cars, planes, dogs, bikes, and other such things, sometimes even with a mouse.  I can't wait to see what she'll be drawing when she grows up.  About a week later, we went to High Street for some trick or treats.

November 2 was Tristan's birthday, and we spent it at the mall playing video games.  For him, I got George's Secret Key to the Universe, a book written by Stephen Hawking and his daughter, Lucy.  It combines a straight-up fictional story with hard scientific facts, and Tristan loves encyclopedias, fact books, and documentary channels, so I thought this may be the perfect gift for him.  And I was right, as he finished it in two days. He's 11 now - his youth is officially half done.

November 4 was my brother's birthday, which was highlighted, as always with Nilagang Baka, and my mom and I gave him a mic for Christmas.  We watched GI Joe: Rise of Cobra, which sucked great big monkey balls, and then midnight hit, and Peachy went home, but not till after I'd greeted her a happy birthday.

Peachy turned 26 on November 5, and we met up after work and I treated her to steak.

After the steak, I gave Peachy her present, which was in a shoebox, so I tried convincing her it was a shoe. (Not a pair of shoes. Just one shoe.) But the first thing inside was a letter.

This was followed by a DVD burner.  Peachy's DVD burner had not been working for a couple of years, and so she had nothing to view DVDs with and was reliant on her flash drive.

I won't tell what the rest of the present is - it's Peachy's to tell, but it may have been the first gift I got her that required more effort than just money (although, in my defense, all the "money" gifts were perfect at the time), and one I'm afraid I'll be hard-pressed to top.

And it worked like a beauty, because I got the following reaction:

Afterward, we hung around for a few hours and then went home, a year older, a year wiser, and a year happier.

I love you, baby.  Happy birthday again!

Random Comics Stuff I have to catch up on.

Planet X Comics had a sale where they took 50% off of single back issues and 20% off of TPBs and GNs.  (Or, as I like to call them, really big comics)  I got Peachy a couple of Sergio Aragones comics, and for myself, I got Seven Soldiers #1, which features JH Williams III at his best, working in incredibly different and diverse styles throughout the entire comic, ranging from a Kirby pastiche to hyper-realistic paintings to a newspaper. Yes.  A newspaper.  Unfortunately, it also showed Grant Morrison at his worst, where the story just screamed, "LOOK AT ME!! I'm GRANT!! And I'm a GEEEEEENIUS!"  But that's what makes Grant, and I knew the risks going in.  And besides, any comic that has art this gorgeous is worth it.  JH could draw a comic about a rock and I'd buy it.

I think people often forget that comics are a visual medium, and they think in this day and age that a great story makes for a great comic.  But the art carries the story; a comic with good scriptwriting and bad art is like a movie that's well-written with bad actors -- the quality of the story gets diminished.  There was a time when comics were bought mostly for the art, and I think that in their desire to be taken seriously, the comics medium has suffered art-wise, just a little bit.  Comics isn't all about writing or all about art; it's about the mix of both, and I think a lot of people miss that these days.


That having been said, here's another comic I bought, with nothing spectacular about the art, but with pretty damn good writing. Amazing Spider-Man 267.

This is a Spider-Man story written by Peter David and drawn by Bob McLeod. It starts off with Spider-Man chasing a burglar, who manages to get away to Scranton, in suburbia. Spider-Man chases him the next day, and, well, it's just a regular burglar.  It should be easy, right?

Nope. Spidey can't swing from anything, and to add to that, no one in the little town takes him seriously. So if you want to see a comic where Spider-Man webs up a dobie, breaks a tree, has to deal with a neighborhood watch, and rides a bus, this is the comic for you.

But the absolute gem of my loot this weekend has to be Brian K. Vaughan and company's The Escapists.

I won't mince words.  This is gorgeous. Remember what I said up there about comics being a mix of words and pictures? This illustrates that perfectly. Set in the same fictional world as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Escapists focuses on three friends - Max Roth, Case Weaver, and Denny Jones - and their attempts to revitalize Kavalier and Clay's Golden Age character, the Escapist, for the new generation. So there are scenes in the real world, drawn all cartoonily, and some scenes set within the Escapist comic book, drawn all realistic, which illustrates something that's been immortal about comics and I'm sure you could write a thesis about it.  There are techniques that are Watchmen-like and Chris Ware-like in terms of combining words and pictures to create a third meaning, or to accentuate what's going on, and everyone knows I'm just a sucker for that kind of formalism.

But at the heart of it, The Escapists is a story with genuine characters, characters you root for, characters you want to win.  And it's damn good characterization, too.  Michael Chabon even wrote the foreword, so you know he approves.

At the end of it, I am proud to put The Escapists next to Kavalier & Clay, my all-time favorite prose novel, on my bookshelf.  Highly, highly recommended.

In other news, I have no idea how I missed this Brian Azzarello project where Batman crosses over with a bunch of old, Golden Age pulp heroes, but I absolutely love the concept.  Batman, Doc Savage, the Spirit, Rima the Jungle Girl, the Avenger, and new versions of Black Canary and the Blackhawks?  SOLD!

Cupcakes

Yes, yes, I know my blog needs an update. Birthday month has come and gone, and I'd like to talk about it. But the new job has my concentration for most of the day.

So I'm going to shill right now.  SHILL!  Here are awesome, awesome cupcakes made by my mom. If you'd like to give it a shot, call the number in the pictures.  Trust me, they're tasty.

Gail Simone is Awesome

I really like Gail Simone.

Here is an interview with Gail Simone.

Here is an interesting thing from the interview with Gail Simone:

ROBERT JONES, JR. asked, “Some writers have stated that Wonder Woman is an inherently political character. Do you believe that’s true? What, if anything, do you believe is political about Wonder Woman and how do you deal with it if you deal with it at all? What do you think feminism looks like in the 21st century and how does Wonder Woman play into that? What do you think about the ways in which Wonder Woman and gender politics gets addressed outside of the main title–like Frank Miller’s take in All-Star Batman or the Wonder Woman animated film?”

I think it’s the opposite. I think it’s that Wonder Woman is a mirror, and the READERS are inherently political. In other words, people regularly bring elements to her character, for good or ill, that have nothing to do with her origins or how she is actually portrayed. One person sees her as a champion of gay rights, which has been so far, mostly subtextual if there at all, while another might DISlike her because she’s ‘constantly preaching that men are bad,’ something she ALSO never does. You would never convince these people that it’s their own beliefs they are imposing on the character, not in a million years. But I see it every day, in the way each new story is so wildly interpreted.

But the thing is, I kind of love that. I think comics can be a lot more interactive than they are. Moreso than film or prose, even, because comics is a set of still images where the READER is forced to supply all the moments between those images. You guys have to fill in what happened between panels one and two. I love that, and when it’s really cooking and the writer knows what he or she is doing, you become so engaged that you end up hearing the voices and imagining the sound effects and seeing all the action unfold. It’s tremendously imaginative for the reader and I believe that’s why some perfectly smart folks simply can’t read comics. They don’t have those tools for whatever reason, that all comics readers seem to have.

(snip)

I haven’t read any Frank Miller for a while. Respectfully, because he’s done some glorious work, I think he’s got a pretty unhappy view of women as whores, bitches and victims, and…I’m sorry, it’s all so juvenile. I can’t be offended because I can’t read it without laughing at how stupid it all is. I don’t have any anger at this stuff, there are people who find it ‘edgy,’ or whatever. I think you can do a pretty fair Wonder Woman satire in that style, maybe that’s his intention. But his track record on this stuff is so oogy for so long, I haven’t really kept up. I look at the Jim Lee art and move on.

SHAZAM! part 2

I realized I omitted a couple of franchises in my Shazam! post, where I named some of the most prominent Captain Marvel knock-offs. While one may be easy to miss, I really have no excuse for missing the other.

Bananaman is a British superhero who acted as a parody of other superheroes. My one exposure to Bananaman was a kids' book I was given for some reason when I was a kid, although my brother attests having seen the animated series. Essentially, young Eric Wimp found a banana one day, which so happened to be laced with "Saturnium," and ever since then, whenever he ate a banana, he would turn into the superhero, Bananaman, with your usual set of powers, including "The muscles of 20 men and the brains of 20 mussels." However, when he came across a moldy banana, he'd be weakened.

What I enjoyed most about Bananaman was the creator, John Geering's blatant abuse of the banana motif, to the point where his capes, gloves, boots, and horns are all banana peels.

I have no excuse for missing this other franchise, especially since their TV shows were produced by Lou Scheimer, the same guy who produced the Shazam and Isis TV shows in the 70s.

What makes it all that more inexcusable is the fact that it was one of my favorite cartoons as a child, and I would say the one franchise on the list who is currently definitely more popular than Captain Marvel. (Thor may be more popular, but it's not really a definite, and I say "current" because no one but no one was more popular than Captain Marvel in his prime. Okay, fine. Superman was. But that's it.)


Prince Adam of Eternia was just a regular, uh, prince. Of Eternia. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to him the day he held aloft his magic sword and said "By the Power of Grayskull! I have the power!" He became He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe!

His transformation involves magic lightning, too! It's kinda like Shazam meets Conan, for kids.

Years later, He-Man would find his twin sister, Adora, who herself had another magic sword. She would say "For the honor of Grayskull! I am She-Ra!" Then magic uh, glitter, comes down from the sky to change her into She-Ra. Because she's a girl.


I'm not so sure why She-Ra's magic phrase was so crappy; it's not like Adam says shit like "I am He-Man," but at least she had a flying horse and a much, much cooler sword than He-Man's. Where He-Man's sword was just an all-powerful sword, She-Ra's was a communicator, a mirror, AND it could turn into whatever she wanted it to.

I know He-Man was a hit among young boys; I'm not sure if She-Ra was as big a hit among young girls (which was the intention), considering that He-Man has a complete DVD set of his cartoon while She-Ra only has a "Best of" DVD featuring I think 10 episodes and The Secret of the Sword, the special in which she first appeared.

He-Man was remade later on in 2003. Some changes were for the better and some changes were for the worse, but it just shows you can't keep a good idea down.

I'm wondering if I've forgotten any other franchises here.