11/27/2005

All jammed up.

*Now, obviously I should have expected traffic on the roads seeing as how it’s the end of Thanksgiving weekend and all. Still didn’t stop me from getting annoyed at moving about twenty miles in just under an hour. It really tossed my plans out of line (sorry Jason!) and I’m still kind of catching up. Basically that means I had to move some of the stuff I had planned for today on this site over to tomorrow. I’ll probably get it up earlier tomorrow than I’m getting this up today, at least.

*Someone mentioned to me a while ago that Entertainment Weekly doesn’t give an awful lot of negative reviews of comics; I agree, though I generally see EW as knowingly utilizing their (very) limited review space to toss some light on comics that their editorial staff finds deserving of exposure to the wide readership that the magazine enjoys. Negative reviews only seem to follow visible releases that require some sort of comment - you’ll see She-Hulk getting an ‘A’ this issue (#852), but I don’t know if you’d see it getting a ‘D’ - more likely you’d simply never see it. The last really negative review I recall EW handing out was to Posy Simmonds’ Gemma Bovery, a fairly high-profile Pantheon release (of course, the extremely small spaces allotted to reviews makes negative critique a more difficult task, especially when dealing with a work that‘s been getting some acclaim - I recall my chief reaction to the Gemma Bovery review as wishing that the writer had more space to explain his or her reactions).

So that’s why it’s interesting to see this week’s ‘C-’ appraisal of the Oni release Capote in Kansas. It’s a fairly withering piece (critic Gillian Flynn notes that artist Chris Samnee’s design for the title character resembles “a cross between Harry Truman and Bobby from King of the Hill”), but perhaps it’s just as well taken as an indicator of the access Oni has obtained for its titles, a greater breaking into the media at large. Other reviews include Seth’s Wimbledon Green (‘A-’) and Strange Detective Tales: Dead Love (‘B+’) from Jesse Bausch and James Callahan.

Of course, the real comics feature of the issue involves Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett, whose artwork is all over the bonus music section Listen to This which has a feature story on Gorillaz, that animated musical collective visually designed by Hewlett, who also heads up their music videos.

I’ll confess that I was sort of distracted by the news that Grizzly Man (best film of 2005 thus far) apparently didn’t even clear the first level of nomination candidacy for the Oscar for Best Documentary, falling behind no less than fifteen other films. Oh well, it’s not like Crumb was nominated either, just over a decade ago - no respect from those bastards!