I lost on today's emerald-themed lottery ticket that I got in a greeting card.
*And McDonald's already shitcanned the shamrock shakes! What the hell?!
*It’s St. Patty’s Day, and I am wearing no green. Such things have not been encouraged since that fateful day over 20 years ago when my mother took me out to see the big holiday parade, with all the fire trucks and floats depicting snakes being driven into water and people dressed as dairy products and dogs clad in shirts & hats and paper whales spewing streamers and bubbles - kind of a town miscellany thing more than a St. Patty’s thing, really. Everything was nonetheless going smoothly until some miscreant ‘accidentally’ spilled his drink into my stroller; I imagine the fellow screaming “This’ll shut yer yap!!” then running half-competently down the sidewalk with tears and urine streaming down different portions of his body, and I hope it’s actually a recovered memory.
Anyway, that’s how I turned out the way I am today, and my mother never took me to another St. Patty’s parade again, and actually got kind of irritated whenever my father would play Irish music in the house thereafter.
I hope you all found leprechauns on this beauteous day.
*As for some of the recent comics I’ve read that don’t really warrant full reviews - I have to confess that the Flaming Carrot Special #1 (as it’s called in the legal indicia; the cover bears the more formidable and descriptive Flaming Carrot Comics Photo Comic Special #1, and if that’s not enough there’s also the optional inside front cover title of merely Flaming Carrot #37) taught me something. Specifically, it taught me how important Bob Burden’s art is to the ‘feel’ of Flaming Carrot, his visual style as constant as anything of its temporal sweep in ongoing creator-owned comics today. This issue is done entirely in fumetti form, which is to say the art is composed entirely of photographs (with copious digital manipulation) with word balloons pasted atop. Sam Gaffin provides such images, and they have an endearingly cheesy, low-budgeted and high spirited charm, but Burden’s typical Carrot scripting just doesn’t mesh as well with live actors as it does with his own drawings, which are always infused with his peculiar sensibility. So what we’re left with is Carrot and some friends running around a comics convention while trying to solve the mystery of who’s stolen the pockets from everyone’s pants, and things just seem jarringly out of tune. Still, the cover did have a good gag, screaming that photo comics are “Just like the movies!”
Meanwhile, in a heart-stopping twist, the Garth Ennis-written Fury: Peacemaker #2 (of 6) introduces the WWII-era title character to a grinning British soldier who leads a band of semi-official brigands who exist behind enemy lines and strike at the Germans without regard for bureaucracy or appearance; this immersion into war without the army unleashes Fury’s animal killing instinct as the British fellow smiles that the situation is “More fun than you can possibly image. Chin-chin.” In other words, it’s one of the stock Ennis war story scenarios being rolled out once more, albeit this time to cover a corporate-owned comics character. Not that such things are necessarily bad; Ennis can play this tune in his sleep, maybe, but he still plays it really well, and I'm sure a fascinating essay will one day be written on the differences between a slew of Ennis stories concerning a kill-crazy soul and a more conflicted man of war working and clashing with each other in a time of violence (for added reference, there's two more in the recent War Stories Vol 2 trade). Still, I'm kind of hoping that future issues will explore other storytelling possibilities - it'll be neat of this series turns into something of an index of approaches to war comics.
*It’s St. Patty’s Day, and I am wearing no green. Such things have not been encouraged since that fateful day over 20 years ago when my mother took me out to see the big holiday parade, with all the fire trucks and floats depicting snakes being driven into water and people dressed as dairy products and dogs clad in shirts & hats and paper whales spewing streamers and bubbles - kind of a town miscellany thing more than a St. Patty’s thing, really. Everything was nonetheless going smoothly until some miscreant ‘accidentally’ spilled his drink into my stroller; I imagine the fellow screaming “This’ll shut yer yap!!” then running half-competently down the sidewalk with tears and urine streaming down different portions of his body, and I hope it’s actually a recovered memory.
Anyway, that’s how I turned out the way I am today, and my mother never took me to another St. Patty’s parade again, and actually got kind of irritated whenever my father would play Irish music in the house thereafter.
I hope you all found leprechauns on this beauteous day.
*As for some of the recent comics I’ve read that don’t really warrant full reviews - I have to confess that the Flaming Carrot Special #1 (as it’s called in the legal indicia; the cover bears the more formidable and descriptive Flaming Carrot Comics Photo Comic Special #1, and if that’s not enough there’s also the optional inside front cover title of merely Flaming Carrot #37) taught me something. Specifically, it taught me how important Bob Burden’s art is to the ‘feel’ of Flaming Carrot, his visual style as constant as anything of its temporal sweep in ongoing creator-owned comics today. This issue is done entirely in fumetti form, which is to say the art is composed entirely of photographs (with copious digital manipulation) with word balloons pasted atop. Sam Gaffin provides such images, and they have an endearingly cheesy, low-budgeted and high spirited charm, but Burden’s typical Carrot scripting just doesn’t mesh as well with live actors as it does with his own drawings, which are always infused with his peculiar sensibility. So what we’re left with is Carrot and some friends running around a comics convention while trying to solve the mystery of who’s stolen the pockets from everyone’s pants, and things just seem jarringly out of tune. Still, the cover did have a good gag, screaming that photo comics are “Just like the movies!”
Meanwhile, in a heart-stopping twist, the Garth Ennis-written Fury: Peacemaker #2 (of 6) introduces the WWII-era title character to a grinning British soldier who leads a band of semi-official brigands who exist behind enemy lines and strike at the Germans without regard for bureaucracy or appearance; this immersion into war without the army unleashes Fury’s animal killing instinct as the British fellow smiles that the situation is “More fun than you can possibly image. Chin-chin.” In other words, it’s one of the stock Ennis war story scenarios being rolled out once more, albeit this time to cover a corporate-owned comics character. Not that such things are necessarily bad; Ennis can play this tune in his sleep, maybe, but he still plays it really well, and I'm sure a fascinating essay will one day be written on the differences between a slew of Ennis stories concerning a kill-crazy soul and a more conflicted man of war working and clashing with each other in a time of violence (for added reference, there's two more in the recent War Stories Vol 2 trade). Still, I'm kind of hoping that future issues will explore other storytelling possibilities - it'll be neat of this series turns into something of an index of approaches to war comics.
posted by Jog at 11:59 AM
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