Get In On The Ground Floor

It's Wednesday, which means New Comics Day, and I noticed a couple of #1's on the shipping list that I thought I'd mention.

First, there's FRANKLIN RICHARDS: SUMMER SMACKDOWN! # 1. For those not familiar with the Franklin Richards, Son of A Genius one-shots that Marvel's been putting out (of which this is yet another entry), think Calvin & Hobbes if Calvin were the son of the world's smartest man and Hobbes were his long-suffering robot nanny. These things are always a lot of fun and I look forward to them whenever they come out. Given the regularity with which Marvel puts out these Franklin Richards specials I have to assume they sell pretty well. I'm glad that's the case, because they're lots of fun and will hopefully continue for a long time to come.

Next is the relaunch of Spider-Man loves Mary Jane with new series writer Terry Moore. I'm sure I put my tenuous claim to masculinity at risk by admitting my fondness for what can best be described as a relationship comic, but I don't care. I loved the original incarnation of this series by original writer Sean McKeever and who better to continue the story than Terry Moore of Strangers In Paradise fame.

While it's always dangerous to recommend something sight unseen, I feel pretty confident in these two books being good. So, if you find yourself around the comic store today I'd suggest giving them a look.

You Can't Please Everybody

In Rich Johnston's always interesting Lying In The Gutters column this week, he includes a bit of commentary from Brendon Connelly explaining why he didn't like "The Dark Knight." (Scroll to the section with the heading "THE DARK KNIGHT REGURGITATES")

Wow. He really didn't like the movie, did he? I'd love to refute his arguments on why he thinks it's a bad movie, but I've got too much of an emotional attachment to the material to be able to objectively address his problems. I sort of wish I didn't have that attachment so that I could better evaluate how reasonable or unreasonable his complaints are. I tend to think he's wrong pretty much across the board, but I recognize my own bias here. That said, the fact that he seems to think that the 60's Batman movie was superior tells me that we're unlikely to agree on anything film-wise.

Still, I kind of know where he's coming from. Sometimes when you dislike something that the rest of the world is praising loudly, the dislike can be amplified a bit. I know I'm guilty of amplified and overblown dislike when it comes to certain movies. "Pulp Fiction" comes to mind. I didn't particularly like it, and under ordinary circumstances that might have been the end of it, but I seem to be the only one in the world not to like it. What's more, everyone else seems to regard the film as some kind of masterpiece, which I find irksome, and which amplifies my "just not my cup of tea"-level of dislike to "if it were a person I'd reach into its chest and pull out its still beating heart"-level of hatred. Not sure why that's the case, it just is.

So, while I disagree with Connelly on every level, I have to say I sympathize with him as well.

Random Video featuring Eater's Digest

Call For Recommendations

I love my iPod, I love it to the extent that I don't really listen to the radio anymore (aside for the 2 minutes or so it takes for my clock radio to wake me up in the morning). The upside of that is that I don't have to waste my time with the crap music and annoying DJs that seem to permeate commercial radio. The downside is that I feel like I've closed off the primary channel for discovering stuff I haven't heard before, that I'm just listening to the same old stuff that I already know I like over and over again. So, to anyone who happens upon this post, if there's any artist or song or album that you particularly love and think I should listen to, then let me know in the comments. Don't worry about genre, I'm pretty open minded musically; I've just got an itch to discover some new stuff.

Scent of Kindergarten

This got a mention on a segment on The Colbert Report tonight and I just refused to believe it was for real. One Google search later, however, and I find that it is.

Play-doh cologne?

I'm honestly not sure if I think that this is the most ridiculous product ever or the most awesome. I suppose the smell of Play-doh does have pleasant associations for most people. I'm not sure what occasion the Play-doh cologne would be appropriate for, though.

Brightest Day or Blackest Night

How am I only hearing about this now? From Blog@Newsarama:

The current edition of Production Weekly lists Warner Bros.’ Green Lantern movie as in active development (that’s not exactly news), and provides a broad description that seems to stay true to the character’s origin: “Each sector of space is protected by a Green Lantern, possessing a power ring that uses a powerful green energy to do anything within the limits of the user’s imagination and will power. When the Green Lantern assigned to this sector of space finds himself dying on planet Earth, he tells the ring to find a suitable successor. The chosen replacement, hot-shot test pilot Hal Jordan, finds himself with a new job he never expected.

I'm at once excited and nervous about the prospect of a Green Lantern movie. Anyone who's let me go on about superhero comics for more than ten minutes knows that Green Lantern was the first superhero I discovered as a kid and he remains my favorite character (especially now that his comic has such a great creative team on it), so I'd love to see a great movie with the character. I see two problems, however. First, he's a character with a very complicated mythology and I don't know that you can strip much of it out without damaging what is so cool about the character. I'd be a little disappointed if I went to see a Green Lantern movie and didn't at least get a passing reference to the Guardians of the Universe and the Green Lantern Corps. Second, there's the name. Now, I don't have a problem with the name Green Lantern, but then I've been reading about the character for a couple of decades now and am steeped in comic lore made up of characters with similarly absurd names, but when I look at it from a regular guy point of view I can see how it would be difficult to take a character seriously that's named after an inanimate object. If you're not used to the name, it just sounds kind of goofy.

The good news is the writers that are currently involved, Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim. I'm quite fond of their TV work (particularly last season's Eli Stone), and Guggenheim has done some good comic book work as well, so I'm optimistic about the script. I certainly feel better about the prospects for this version than the proposed Jack Black comedy version that was in development a couple of years ago. >shudder<

200 Words: "Timelapse" Part 1

Jim was a little disoriented when he woke up that morning. It wasn't totally unprecedented for him to wake up in unfamiliar surroundings, but he usually had at least some shadow of a memory of how he got there.

"Where am I?" he groaned quietly, to himself. Instinctively, he reached out and his hand found his glasses on a desk by the bed.

His vision now clear, Jim took a good look around the room. It was a familiar room. He realized, suddenly, that he had lived in this room ten years ago. It made no sense; how could he be in his college dorm room? The building had been demolished in 2004. Stranger still, how did his stuff get back here?

"Must be dreaming," he thought. Jim hated these flashback dreams. They always ended in some inane twist like showing up for class naked or having to take an exam in a class he'd never attended. He wasn't in the mood for any of it, so he took his glasses off and settled back into bed.

THWAP! A battered paperback copy of Webster's New World Dictionary impacted with his head.

"Ow," he said, rubbing his head. "What the hell?"