Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mongrel]

Our internet was off for a couple of days at home (modem died, Bell sent us a replacement), so I was re-reading some old comics, including all of The Goon (well, up to volume 9).

I only buy the trades so I hadn't seen this recent issue cover yet, but man oh man...

[Thad]

Yeah, I haven't read much Goon (have the first trade and that's about it) but I picked that one up.  It was fun.

A lot of the jokes are warmed-over '90's refs (and Powell cheerfully admits it) but man-oh-man he sure called the "Everyone is gay" marketing blitz right before it really took off.

[Mongrel]

That DH logo makes me giggle. That and I love "LOOK AT US, MAINSTREAM MEDIA!! LOOK AT US!!"

Also, Goon volume 11 is coming out in a week. I was going to go buy volume 10 (which would have been my first comics purchase in maybe 6 months... I've really fallen off the wagon), but I'm going to wait 'till next month and just pick them both up.

EDIT: Well, falling ON the wagon is more like it. But unintentionally.

[Thad]

Life in Hell ends.  Wow -- the phrase "end of an era" gets thrown around a lot, but seriously, end of an era.

Curious what he'll get up to next.  The EIC at Bongo recently left his position and made some mysterious comments about a new project he's helping Matt with.

Meanwhile, new Futurama tonight, if I'm not mistaken.

[Mongrel]

Oh wow... I haven't picked that up for a long time, but I think I have the first ten years or so in trades.

[Thad]

Yeah, the circulation has dwindled and trades have been fewer and farther between; apparently it's been a money-loser for the past decade (not like Matt Groening can't afford to lose a little money on newspaper comics).  It hasn't been in my local altweekly for a long time, and it's never been available online either.

[Mongrel]

I honestly thought he'd go on with it forever, doing that as other people would a blog. I guess it just outlived it's usefulness in that regard.

[Thad]

Yeah, that's basically what it's been, but per his interview with the The USA Today,

"I love the characters, I love doing it, but it was just time," he told USA Today. "Life in Hell prevented me from doing other projects, because every week I had to go back to the same drawing table. Quitting will open me up to new things, more animation, more stuff. I may just sit and stare into space."

On the one hand, he's managed to do a whole hell of a lot while still meeting that weekly deadline; even granting his diminished role in Simpsons he's still produced hundreds of hours of commentary for the DVD's.

But obviously he ain't getting any younger, and if he can't multitask like he used to I don't blame him.  And given that I haven't actually been able to read a single new Life in Hell strip this century, I'm looking forward to seeing what new thing he's got in mind.  ("More animation" -- I like the sound of that.)

There's more at The Beat and Poynter.

[Bal]

Not to mention that he hasn't actually had to work in, what, 20 years now? Maybe he just didn't love his labor of love so much anymore, and didn't want to become some weird indie Charles Schultz.

[Thad]

So was anybody figuring June 2012 was ripe for a Mars Attacks revival?

First off, last week's Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred #5 (Kane/Hine) was a Mars Attacks homage.  Every page is done as a trading card, a single image with a title and a narrative of a sentence or three.

And then this week came a new actual licensed Mars Attacks series, by Layman and McCrea.

On the whole the Bulletproof Coffin issue was better, because Bulletproof Coffin is fucking amazing, but the actual Mars Attacks issue was pretty great too.

Bulletproof Coffin was mainly memorable for its insane violence.  It's about zombies in Vietnam and it is graphic and legitimately disquieting.  "Graphic and legitimately disquieting" is a pretty good description of most of the series, really.

The Official Mars Attacks book was less memorable.  It's perfectly serviceable; Layman is the perfect guy for this story and, while I'm not familiar with McCrea, his art is totally appropriate.  More, it does a good job of telling a self-contained story while setting up a complete arc, which unfortunately is not a common skill in modern comics.

And, most appropriately, it's violent (not Bulletproof Coffin violent but violent) and it gets us to root for the Martians.  There are essentially two redeeming characters in the whole story -- General Zar the Martian, and Burtie the Hillbilly.  And it's not really much of a spoiler to tell you that Burtie doesn't survive the issue.

The non-Zar Martians are pretty much indistinguishable, while the non-Burtie humans are all reprehensible.  Zar is immediately taken advantage of and abused, and he's clearly the protagonist of the story.  Layman and McCrea do an effortless job of getting you to root for the "kill all humans" guys.

Anyhow.  Both interesting books.  I'm sure I'll be picking up BC:D #6, and I expect I'll pick up Mars Attacks #2 too.

[Niku]

So was anybody figuring June 2012 was ripe for a Mars Attacks revival?

every month is ripe for a mars attacks revival in my eyes

the april fool's joke this year about the mars attack musical cut me deep

[Thad]

Also, while I think variant covers are stupid I think I'm going to have to make an exception for the Mars Attacks ones.  There are 55 different covers, each one an homage to one of the trading cards.

I got #50 (I think), which has a cop bashing a Martian's brains out with the butt of a rifle.  Because they're all great, but once I saw that one it wasn't going to be anything else.

[Büge]

Should You Steal Comics?

[Royal☭]

Reading that article makes me realize how charged the words "stealing" and "piracy" are, and how both are pretty much the language of the larger corporations leading the charge against filesharing.

[Thad]

Yeah, my stance on referring to it as "stealing" is well-documented.

I think "piracy" is a bit less charged because of the rather large difference between how actual high-seas piracy works in real life and how it is depicted in popular fiction.

Aside from the biased language it at least gives some deference to Mark Waid and his comments on the subject.  And ending on a positive note -- that the question shouldn't be whether you should pirate comics, it should be whether you should BUY them -- is a good move.

[Büge]

So then what would you call it when you don't buy every comic that you read but you do buy every comic that you like?

[Bongo Bill]

It's better to buy than to pirate, and it's better to pirate than to just not read. So says I.

[Thad]

So then what would you call it when you don't buy every comic that you read but you do buy every comic that you like?

Probably pretty harmless.

I still spend very little time reading comics on screens.  I don't pirate current stuff; I gravitate toward stuff that's out-of-print and CAN'T be purchased legally (without scouring ebay, dollar bins, etc.).

I've said it before but it bears repeating: Jack Kirby's 2001 will never be reprinted, and neither will Moore et al's 1963.  As such I feel there is a value to preservng, distributing, and, most importantly, reading them.

(Same goes for, for example, MST3K -- I won't download any episodes that are available on DVD or Netflix, but there are plenty of episodes in rights hell that I think it's totally cool to share.  Course, I saw a guy selling bootleg DVD's of them at Con last month and I think that falls under "not cool".)

[Royal☭]

So then what would you call it when you don't buy every comic that you read but you do buy every comic that you like?

Take this concept and apply it to your life before the internet or filesharing.

[Büge]

I don't understand.