Scandelous, I know. Also, I've already written this post once, but fucking Safari closed unexpectedly and I lost the post. Yes, I am pissed. So, if I seem somewhat brusque, it's because I finished this fucking post and had to re-write. Okay, without any further ado:
March Booklist
-Jason Aaron (Guera, illust.), Scalped, issues one through fifteen.
-Brian Azzarello (Risso, illust.), 100 bullets, issues one through thirty.
-Mike Carey (Jock, illust.), Faker, issues one through six.
-Michael Chabon, The Final Solution: a Story of Detection.
-Billy Collins, Nine Horses.
-Dave Eggers, How We Are Hungry: "another", "what it means when a crowd in a faraway nation takes a soldier representing your own nation, shoots him, drags him from his vehicle and then mutilates him in the dust", "the only meaning of the oil-wet water", "on wanting to have three walls up before she gets home", "climbing to the window, pretending to dance", and "she waits, seething, blooming".
-David Lapham (Lapham, illust.), Young Liars, issue one.
-Grant Morrison (various, illust.), Doom Patrol, issues thirty-six through forty-five.
-Haruki Murakami, After the Quake.
-Annie Prroulx, Bad Dirt: "The Hellhole".
-Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
-Brian Vaughan (Guerra, illust.), Y: the Last Man, issues fifty-five through sixty.
-Brian Vaughan (Harris, illust.), Ex Machina, issues one through ten.
-Brian Wood, (Burchielli, illust.), DMZ, issue twenty-nine.
-Brian Wood, (Gianfelice, illust.), Northlanders, issue four.
-Brian Wood, (Kelly, illust.), Local, issues one, two, four, and six through ten.
There are a few things I'd like to highlight from this list.
First, I've been thinking about Carey's Faker some more. It isn't just the pacing of the first few issues that bothered me, it was the early dialouge. It often felt contrived. Here's an example:
Marky: "You're a sight for sore eyeballs, Sackie!"
Sackie: "Great. Likewise. And speaking of balls, can we please get inside before mine freeze off?"
Unless I've been saying that idiom wrong my whole life--"you're a sight for sore eyes"--this really is as forced as I think it is. But I hold that "I’d hold the last pages of Faker on the level of comics’ canonic works--The Invisables, Transmet, Watchmen." Carey makes good in the back three issues. I swear.
I've started reading Murikami's Kafka on the Shore, and, once again, I'm struck by just how good he is. I'd really recommend checking the man out. If you need something short, get one of his collections, The Elephant Vanishes or After the Quake. If you want something more substantial, try The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Props to Nora for getting me hooked.
I'd also like to highlight Vaughan's Y: The Last Man. I'm with my friend and writer Marc, who thinks its ending is one of the best in any media--inasmuch as its happy without being ex machina (ha ha). Thematically, it isn't that dense, but there's something, I don't know, mesmerizing about it. I'm going to try to re-read in total this month, and give myself a little more time with it. On the subject of Y. It seems that there with be a movie version directed by D.J. Caruso (Disturbia) and starring Shia LaBeouf (Disturbia, Transformers, and Indiana Jones 4). I'm going to suspend judgement. But, please God, let this be good; we really don't need any more bad comics remakes (think: Daredevil). Vaughan is also writing a screenplay adaptation of his Ex Machina. He jokes: "I'm a big sellout now." Ha ha. Just don't fuck these movies up and all is forgiven.
Next up, politics. A couple of sites I've stumbled on in the last month deserve mentioning. First there's The G Spot. She's smart and funny to boot (and, yes, I found her from digby's Hullabaloo, another great site). Here's one of the many gems you can find over there, writing about the problems of using GDP as a measure of economic health:
It's kind of like the joke where you and your friend are the only people sitting at a bar. Then Bill Gates walks in, and your friend states (correctly) that "The average person in this bar is a billionaire!"
If you're in the mood for bile and Democratic idiocy, check out Hillary is 44. This, my reader(s), is what happens when people continue to use an empirically unfit narrative. If you think that Obama is a racist and angry black militant manchurian candidate, then this site is the one for you.
While on the subject of stupid narratives, I just never get tired of the old "Democrats are effeminate" meme. Here's a cute clip from Scarborough, and its worth watching--even just the first couple minutes.
For those of you who are to lazy or at work, here's the transcript, via Hullabaloo, here
SCARBOROUGH: You know, Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it's a man, to be a real man. They -- 1984, I remember Ronald Reagan goes to South Boston. He holds up that beer mug --
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: -- in that South Boston pub, and everybody's like, "He's a real man," and I guess Barack Obama's trying to do the same thing, too.
BRZEZINSKI: Stop it. Oh, come on.
SCARBOROUGH: Awful. Good Lord.
GEIST: He's going to have to try a little harder than he did in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night --
SCARBOROUGH: Oh my God --
BRZEZINSKI: Really?
SCARBOROUGH: Oh, this is awful.
GEIST: -- at the Pleasant Valley Rec Center. He went bowling, and let's just take a quick look at it here. I guess I'll just give you the final numbers. Started out nicely, got the Velcro shoes.
BRZEZINSKI: Looking good, looking good.
GEIST: But then he started bowling. The score you're really after in bowling is 300; that's a perfect score.
BRZEZINSKI: Oh, OK.
SCARBOROUGH: That's perfect score.
BRZEZINSKI: Good, good, good.
SCARBOROUGH: But, you know, if you get 200, you're a good bowler.
GEIST: Sure. You know what?
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. Two-fifty --
SCARBOROUGH: You get 150, you're a man --
BRZEZINSKI: OK.
SCARBOROUGH: -- or a good woman.
BRZEZINSKI: Stop it.
GEIST: Out of my president, I want a 150, at least. Barack Obama bowled -- well, you can see his form here --
[video clip of Obama bowling]
SCARBOROUGH: Hee!
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
GEIST: A 37.
BRZEZINSKI: Oh.
GEIST: That's a three, next to a seven.
SCARBOROUGH: Baby, if you go to Altoona, Pennsylvania, on a Saturday night and you're going to try to bowl --
[video clip of Obama bowling]
SCARBOROUGH: Oh, that's so dainty. Ugh.
I love the serious, hard-hitting political reporting we get from our mainstream media. And if that wasn't enough, here's Chris Matthews adding a racial je ne sais quoi to the mix:
MATTHEWS: You know, Michelle -- and this gets very ethnic, but the fact that he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody, but the fact that he's that terrible at bowling does make you wonder --
FINEMAN: That doesn't surprise anybody either.
BERNARD: Well, it certainly doesn't surprise anybody black, I can tell you that.
MATTHEWS: Is black a bowling --
It's gonna be a long primary season.
Lastly, I know this says something about my generation; also, it's funny--from here via The Lede:
t seemed like an honorable goal: Draft an honor code for University of Texas at San Antonio students to follow, exhorting them not to cheat or plagiarize.
But when students threw a draft of the new honor code onto the Internet for feedback, some noticed a problem: Parts of the code appeared to have been lifted word for word from another school’s honor code, without attribution. Even the definition of plagiarism was, well, plagiarized.
Funny? Sad? I report, you decide.
Oh, and I should mention this from Brian Wood:
The inspiration for DMZ’s “Friendly Fire” came partly from the Haditha killings, where Marines shot up a few houses filled with Iraqi families back in 2005 (it was also partly inspired by a 60 Minutes interview with some of the soldiers involved (Sgt. Frank Wuterich) and the disgusting way Scott Pelley conducted both the interview and himself).
Were DMZ done poorly, it wouldn't matter, but, the fact remains that DMZ is probably the most politically relevant comic I've ever read, and certainly one of the most politically relevant pieces of fiction around today. I'm not going to stop plugging this thing. It's that good.
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