Big work - Short post
*Devout comics newshounds have long been aware of Neil Gaiman’s cunning plan to have people send letters to Dave Sim in exchange for free issues of “Cerebus”. It seems Mr. Sim has been getting quite a few letters (well over 1000 thus far), so he’s been drafting new form letters every few days to send off to whomever’s requests happen to arrive on whichever day. And now all of the Internet can enjoy Dave’s ever-evolving responses with this database of Dave Sim form letters. Marvel at how Dave quickly transforms his polite mass correspondence into something of an ongoing snail mail journal, chatting about his day and the recent town council meeting and how Gerhard’s doing and every little thing, with each entry only being sent to a few key persons! But now Our Internet can potentially reveal the whole picture! So scan in your Official Dave Sim Response Note if you’ve got a new one, and send it in to the database, and soon we’ll all be even cooler than if we got every last “Dinosaurs Attack!” card including the one with the giant mosquitoes which I’m convinced never really fucking existed.
*Read through most of the second “Doom Patrol” trade, which leaves off just before the issue where F**x M*nt*ll* makes his debut. So now we wait. The stories were quite nice, although the three-parter with the drunken ex-Templar was significantly weaker than the rest of the book (and all of volume one to boot); too much of the Doom Patrol running all over the place pulling out miraculous solutions and escapes while the narrator explains things to us. The Brotherhood of Dada arc is quite satisfying though, containing one of my favorite lines in a while (“I'm afraid I can't understand a word you're saying. I don't speak fascist.”), and even a conspicuous dropping of the term ‘manga’ in 1989! Oooooooooh! Not quite as impressive as Paul Pope, who threw in a panel of futuristic young women milling around a comics store that sells only manga in “The Ballad of Doctor Richardson” in 1993. And I’m pretty sure Frank Miller beat them both to the punch in citing Japanese comics as an influence. But still, the foresight is commendable!
*I also got my copy of “Arthur” #12, with the ten page Morrison interview. It’s mostly on the topic of magic (as I believe their Alan Moore interview also focused), but there’s also some bits and pieces of info on upcoming projects (like the fact that the “Pop Magic” book is 150 pages done), and a lot of stuff on how Morrison’s explorations of magic have affected and informed his work (although I suspect a lot of it will sound familiar to the Morrison interview junkie). Still, Grant’s concluding exhortation is too good not to repeat:
“Be beautiful and seductive so that culture wants to eat you up. Be like a prion, an unstoppable replicating germ in the guts of the body politic. Be the little pill that culture swallows, the drug that changes everything and forces new vision. Be the infection that brings shamanic crisis. Be the loving poison that Things As They Are cannot recover from. Be the Holy Guardian Angel.”
*Read through most of the second “Doom Patrol” trade, which leaves off just before the issue where F**x M*nt*ll* makes his debut. So now we wait. The stories were quite nice, although the three-parter with the drunken ex-Templar was significantly weaker than the rest of the book (and all of volume one to boot); too much of the Doom Patrol running all over the place pulling out miraculous solutions and escapes while the narrator explains things to us. The Brotherhood of Dada arc is quite satisfying though, containing one of my favorite lines in a while (“I'm afraid I can't understand a word you're saying. I don't speak fascist.”), and even a conspicuous dropping of the term ‘manga’ in 1989! Oooooooooh! Not quite as impressive as Paul Pope, who threw in a panel of futuristic young women milling around a comics store that sells only manga in “The Ballad of Doctor Richardson” in 1993. And I’m pretty sure Frank Miller beat them both to the punch in citing Japanese comics as an influence. But still, the foresight is commendable!
*I also got my copy of “Arthur” #12, with the ten page Morrison interview. It’s mostly on the topic of magic (as I believe their Alan Moore interview also focused), but there’s also some bits and pieces of info on upcoming projects (like the fact that the “Pop Magic” book is 150 pages done), and a lot of stuff on how Morrison’s explorations of magic have affected and informed his work (although I suspect a lot of it will sound familiar to the Morrison interview junkie). Still, Grant’s concluding exhortation is too good not to repeat:
“Be beautiful and seductive so that culture wants to eat you up. Be like a prion, an unstoppable replicating germ in the guts of the body politic. Be the little pill that culture swallows, the drug that changes everything and forces new vision. Be the infection that brings shamanic crisis. Be the loving poison that Things As They Are cannot recover from. Be the Holy Guardian Angel.”
posted by Jog at 6:06 AM
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