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July 6th, 2009
12:57 pm - She Can Wear Pants
I just read over at The Beat that the editor of Supergirl has decided that maybe it's about time the character realized that skirts aren't the most practical item of clothing when one of your powers involves hovering over people's heads. And its apparently a big enough deal that NPR has done an article on it.
The man in question: DC Comics editor Matt Idleson. The pronouncement he issued was just eight words long, but such is its paradigm-shattering power that it will surely stand one day in the annals of comic book history, alongside "With great power comes great responsibility," "Truth, Justice and the American Way," and "Shazam!"
Thus spake Idleson:
"I never want to see Supergirl's panties again."
And with that, the character of Supergirl — in a stark departure from many years of institutionalized cheesecakery — started wearing red shorts under her skirt.
The article also gives a shout out to Dean Trippe, which I think is awesome.
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09:05 am - Favre Report
From what I'm hearing, it's sounding like Favre is now with the Vikings, but they're putting off announcing it officially until some strategically planned day. Also, its being said that he will indeed be here in Mankato for this year's Vikings Training Camp later this month. If true, I am so tempted to go just to get a few pics of my own of the purple #4 jersey, hehehe. Though it'll probably end up being a circus over here (apparently reporters from all over have already booked hotel rooms just to be prepared).
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June 28th, 2009
11:22 pm - Deja Vu
I was just catching up on where the X-Men are currently at by reading reviews/summaries. And it just struck me that something about this ongoing "Hope" plot seemed really familiar.
The Scarlet Witch casts a spell declaring that there will be "no more mutants." Which for some reason means all mutants will be depowered except 198, an oddly disproportionate number of which are or have been members of the X-Men.
Hope is the first mutant born after the depowering of most of the mutant race. Immediately she is viewed as the savior of the mutant race -- to be protected at all cost -- with no clear reason given as to why they think this, or in what way she will save them.
Over in Battlestar Galatica, Hera is the first human/cylon hybrid born after the destruction of most of the human race. Immediately she is viewed as the savior of the cylon and human race -- to be protected at all cost -- with no clear reason given as to why the humans would think this, or in what way she will save them.
Which has me pondering if this whole event is going to end with ( BSG Spoiler I Suppose )
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June 27th, 2009
06:41 pm - Transformers 2
Y'know, I really had no interest in seeing the movie, because even just the trailers made it look inane...but reading this review almost makes me want to.
Critical consensus on Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is overwhelmingly negative. But the critics are wrong. Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers' worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot.
...
Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.
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June 24th, 2009
08:42 am - "This Is Why I Don't Like Women In The Store"
I normally love PvP, but the last panel of yesterday's strip just baffled me. I get it, the joke is that their being girly. Ha ha. But telling her to her face that he doesn't like women in the store? I'm assuming the next panel is Jade saying, "oh, you don't like women in your store? I'm sorry, I'll help you out then by taking my business elsewhere," and walks out. Because that's what would happen if any clerk said that to just about any woman's face like that.
I know, there'd no punchline then ...but there's no punchline in the actual last panel either, as far as I'm concerned.
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June 22nd, 2009
12:32 pm - Early Green Day
I did not realize this, but it turns out someone with a camcorder filmed Green Day's last performance in Mankato (which actually took place outside a farm house in neighboring St. Peter when a noise complaint shut down the Mankato show early).
Unfortunately, the tape is clearly a high-generation copy. The color has all been washed out and full of static. It looks like an earlier generation copy added titles to the beginning of the video. I wonder if a lower-gen copy exists out there somewhere, and if the original tape still exists.
There are three other parts on Youtube.
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11:50 am - Old Photos
Have you ever tried looking up old photos of a town or city you're extremely familiar with, to see how different it looked before you were born? I've gotten on one of those kicks recently. My home town of Mankato is the biggest Minnesota town/city south of the Twin Cities, so there are a lot of interesting photos of the downtown area dating back to the very early 1900s. It's just fascinating.
It's got me pondering how fun it would be to compile a bunch of these old photos, and then take new photographs of what the area looks like now, trying to match the angle exactly. And then maybe publish it as a book, or an exhibit. What's so interesting is that sometimes the area looks completely different -- what was once the main street of the downtown commercial district is now a mall, an old hotel with beautiful architecture was torn down and replaced by an ugly Holiday Inn, and some streets corners have either slightly moved or no longer exist at all -- and in other cases, the original structure still looks almost identical as it did in the early 1900s, with slight modifications. I was surprised to discover that our post office looks almost exactly like it did pre-1930, except that it had a clocktower on the roof.
Even some of the houses are interesting. There's an old series of "Little House On The Prairie"-style books called "Betsy & Tacy," which were semi-autobiographical stories about the author growing up in early 1900s Mankato, only with the name of the town and all the characters changed. There's a group of now-adult fans who've taken steps to try and preserve whatever's left of several landmarks in the book, including finally purchasing Betsy and Tacy's houses sometime around early 2000. They have photos of the ongoing restoration process, making the houses look like they did when they were built, and it's so amazing to see how nice they looked back then, and then see how they were modified sometime in the late 70s or 80s to look butt ugly. Seriously, it's like people lost there minds around that decade, tearing down or modifying the most wonderful architecture to make it look just awful.
But I think I might look into what it'd take to make a book of then and now photographs. Though not sure how much interest there'd be in something like that outside of people who live here.
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June 21st, 2009
10:13 pm - Father's Day
I'd been planning to just take my dad out to eat somewhere, but one of my brother's came up with an idea so brilliantly obvious, so stereotypically Father's Day-ish, that it hadn't even entered my mind. He suggested we take him to a Twins game up at the Metrodome.
Unfortunately, they lost. It ended up 4-1, with almost all those points being scored in the very first inning. Very bizarre. We were debating in the ninth inning whether we should just go or not, but we decided to stay because, maybe -- by some slim chance -- we would witness an amazing ninth inning where the Twins score three or four points. But no, didn't happen. The second half of the game they kept hitting the ball right to the shortstop or second baseman.
At some point while we were there, I remembered that he best comic store in all of Minnesota -- Big Brain Comics -- is only a short walk from the Metrodome. In fact, as it turns out, the parking lot we were in was only a block or two away. So rather than go through the frustration of trying to get out of this packed parking lot, we asked Dad if he'd be fine if we popped into the comic store. I already knew what I wanted, and had them in hand within 10 minutes, but my brother had been out of comics for a long while, and was looking for some suggestions. I pointed him to one of my favorite features of Big Brain Comics: the used graphic novel section! So while he wasn't actually expecting to do more than just browse, he did ended up walking out of there with a few less dollars in his pocket. Oops.
I bought:
- X-Factor (Vol. 2): Life & Death Matters
- Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 4): Unstoppable
- X-Men: First Class -- Tomorrow's Brightest (Why is this one of the only series Marvel doesn't number on the spine?? I had to look at the indicia to figure out which one to get. And which volumes have the cute back-up stories? Are those in a separate volume of their own?)
I was also going to buy The Umbrella Academy, but they were out. Which is very uncharacteristic of them. It turns out some local animation studio had gotten the job of creating some animated shorts related to the upcoming movie that is being made, and they blew through the comic shop buying up all the volumes they could find. Curses.
But at least that one I can find at Barnes & Noble here...X-Factor and X-Men: First Class are the ones I was having trouble finding there. And if I can't impulse buy graphic novels, I end up remembering too quickly that I really probably shouldn't be spending money on things like that right now, and end up not buying any at all. But having them right in my hands like that, I can remind myself that I haven't bought a graphic novel in...geez, well over a year now I think, so it's okay to have splurged a little. Or so I'm still trying to convince myself.
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June 18th, 2009
09:15 pm - Blonde Jokes
Hey, I have a joke for ya. It goes like this:
A blonde decides she wants to become a superhero. Only, she can't decide on a chest emblem...so she decides to just leave the hole on her costume open. The other superheroes don't have the heart to tell her that all their chest emblems were sewn on top of their costumes.
The sad thing is that this is currently the "canon" explanation for why Power Girl has her boob window, thanks to Geoff Johns. What's worse, he attempted to present this revelation in the form of a serious, emotional confession to Superman:
"People always ask me why I have this hole right here."
Which means that Johns is either really that oblivious to the absurdity of his explanation, or he was having a laugh. Either way, he effectively solidified Power Girl as being the superhero embodiment of a blonde joke.
Not that he was the first, or the last. Here's Jeph Loeb writing his own blonde moment for her:
"How am I supposed to distract..."
And that's why I have such a dislike of Power Girl, and the boob window. It's what the boob window stands for. It's absurd, the writers know its absurd, and rather than fix it they make jokes about it. Which in turn making Power Girl herself -- a tough, strong-willed woman with the strength of Superman -- little more than one big joke.
Even her creation is rumored to revolve around a joke. The character debuted in All Star Comics #58 in 1976. Her earliest appearances there were inked, and later drawn, by Wally Wood. Wood is reported to have told friends that during this run, he decided that he'd make her breasts a little larger each issue, and waited until his editor finally noticed and told him to stop. Or, depending on who you ask, it was the size of the window he made larger.
The odd thing is, a quick look at the issues in question seems to prove both variaions to be apocryphal. In fact, the window instead appears to actually shrink each issue! It starts out roughly the same size as it's drawn today, and then gradually shrinks in size...until it disappears completely! Yet even comics pros as well known as Adam Hughes and Amanda Conner continue pass this story along (they say it was the breasts that were supposed to get larger), so perhaps there's still some lost hint of truth in the story?
No one's entirely sure, either, who was responsible for the window disappearing. Was that Wally Wood's actual plan? But co-creator Gerry Conway states in an Alter Ego interview:
"Actually, closing the circle on Power Girl's costume was [publisher] Jenette Kahn's idea. She felt it was sexist, and she was probably right. I doubt Wally would have had such qualms, given his taste for ill-clad buxom babes."
(As far as who created the window in the first place? No one seems to be 100% sure, but it was either Conway himself, Joe Orlando, Ric Estrada, or a combination of the three.)
But y'know, if the circumstances were different, the boob window probably wouldn't bother me all that much. Want me to quit complaining about Power Girl, and embrace the boob window? There's only two things that I have a problem with:
1) Do not try to imply that the boob window is a stand-in for her chest emblem. That's my biggest problem with it. Lose Geoff Johns' blonde joke explanation and never speak of it again. Keith Giffen during Justice League Europe made a very noble attempt at trying to put a feminist spin on the boob window:
"This costume only shows what I am."
It's almost convincing, even. Yet it's still pretty obvious that it's a guy grasping for some plausible motivation as to for why an apparent feminist woman would wear a costume designed by a bunch of guys for their own amusement. And it still boils down to her breasts being in some way symbolic of her identity. Stop trying to make her breasts symbolic of her identity, and that's half my problem with the boob window gone.
2) Balance things out by either sexing down more of the women's costumes, or sexing up more of the men's costumes. Or a bit of both. Wonder Woman, Power Girl, Supergirl, Black Canary, etc....why do the majority of DC's female superheroes all fight with bare legs? How come so few male superheroes do? I mean, we all know the answer to that...but c'mon!
As a balancing character for Power Girl specifically, Power Boy was very close. But he's still a little too much his own person, in comparison to, say, how Supergirl wears a female version of Superman's uniform. Power Boy's costume should be white, for one thing. Also, where is his red cape? And definitely get rid of that gross chest hair...chest hair hasn't been considered sexy since the '60s (which is why only old guys seem to think a tuft of hair sticking out of their shirt collar is attractive). His arms should still be covered to match Power Girl's look, but he needs to have either his legs or his mid rift exposed (on top of his pec window). That, or let Power Girl cover her legs, and then Power Boy doesn't have to bare his.
Then I will be satisfied. ;-)
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June 16th, 2009
June 13th, 2009
09:32 am - Ummagumma Rough Mix
The amazingness...a copy of some rough reduction mixes from the live disc of Ummagumma were very recently leaked online. Which includes "Interstellar Overdrive," so I finally get the chance hear the fabled Ummagumma version -- which I've been dying to hear ever since I first heard it'd been recorded for the album -- albeit in a rough, unfinalized form.
These mixes also appear to reveal something odd but very fascinating. It's been common knowledge that there was some in-studio tampering and overdubbing on the album, but I don't think anybody realized that all the vocals on the album were done completely in the studio. The theory is that since the only mobile recording equipment back in 1969 were four track recorders, the band simply decided to devote one track to each of their instruments, and record all the vocals later, rather than be stuck with the live mix. So these leaked recordings feature oddities like the UG version of "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" without the scream.
Also, at the end of "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun," there's a hilarious bit of Roger having a laugh while recording is vocal track, that found its way onto this rough mix. As the last note rings out and the applause comes up, Roger launches into some sarcastic "connecting with the (recorded) audience":
"Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I must say, I really enjoyed singing that for you. And I'm a...I'm a Manchester...College of Tech -- or whatever it is that you are -- man at heart.
For my next song -- which I wrote myself -- [cuts off]"
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June 12th, 2009
08:40 pm - The Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA)
"Government currently provides an array of material and other benefits to married couples in an effort to promote, protect, and prefer the institution of marriage.
If [any State] were to permit homosexuals to `marry,' these marital benefits would, absent some legislative response, presumably have to be made available to homosexual couples and surviving spouses of homosexual `marriages' on the same terms as they are now available to opposite-sex married couples and spouses."
Right, we understand that...so what are you getting at?
"To deny federal recognition to same-sex `marriages' will thus preserve scarce government resources, surely a legitimate government purpose."
Oh, so we should support the DOMA because it saves our government money! Wow, I'm sold!
The quote above is directly from the DOMA. What makes it even worse is that, as one political blog has recently pointed outrecently pointed out</a>, it was quoted in a brief just released by Obama's adminstration, as one of many reasons why this administration personally support the DOMA. Click that blog link to view even more absurdly homophobic rationalizations.
*headdesk*
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June 10th, 2009
10:15 pm - Comic Feud!
This sarcastic image is probably funnier if you're familiar with the artists featured, but it cracks me up.
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June 9th, 2009
07:55 pm - Helvetica
I watched the recent documentary Helvetica a few weekends ago. Immediately after the credits rolled, I pressed play and watched it again. I don't think I've ever really done that before.
I'm not sure if the film would be as fascinating to people who aren't as into type, but I'm kind of curious to hear, if any of you have seen it. A great portion of it demonstrates just how everywhere and unavoidable the font is, to a degree that I'm not sure many people think about.
The part that was most fascinating (and most hilarious) to me, was as the film progressed, just how completely contradictory the views of the top designers they were interviewing are. Passionately contradictory. You get the sense that if you interviewed them in the same room together, it would devolve into a shouting match in five minutes or less.
For example, on the topic of why Helvetica is so heavily used, several designers comment that it's simply a very legible font -- albeit plain -- font. It doesn't really jump out at you, but it also doesn't look garish. It's just there. It's solid and it works.
But then you have Eric Spiekerman who very passionately hates its blandness. Why does everyone use it, he's asked? "Why do people eat at McDonald's? It's on every corner, so people don't have to think about food." He attempts to make the argument that the font is the opposite of legible, that the sameness of its letters make it difficult to read. Which...I'm not sure many people would agree with.
There were also a few sections that had me laughing enough that I missed some of what was said, because a few of these people so reminded me of my teachers at college. My teachers were more in line with the schools of thought of Stefan Sagmeister and David Carson. Carson in particular had me rolling. The hubris of typesetting someone's entire interview in unreadable Dingbats because "it wasn't worth reading anyways."
The teacher I would've liked to have had is Wim Crouwel. It's all about the Swiss style. Just about everything he said in the film had me going "hell yeah!" I love the mathematical logic of working on a grid. And he uses words like "clarity." "It should be clear. It should be readable. It should be straightforward." When I would use words like "clarity" and "readable" and "legibility" to describe what's most important to me in design, I'd get these looks from my teachers like I was from another planet. Their thoughts are more in line with Carson, who says (in relation to his Dingbats interview) "don't confuse legibility with communication."
Another hilarious contradiction is when Massimo Vignelli is chuckling about the idea of "expressive" type: "I can write the word 'dog' with any typeface and it doesn't have to look like a dog. But there are people that when they write 'dog,' it should bark." This is followed by Carson later in the documentary looking at a cork board covered with words typeset in Helvetica, pointing at each one and exclaiming things like "that doesn't say 'caffeinated!'" I just kept laughing and shaking my head. I would've killed for a teacher with Vignelli's or Crouwel's outlook on things.
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June 8th, 2009
07:17 pm - Tropic Thunder & A Scanner Darkly
Watched two movies this weekend. Tropic Thunder was actually better than I thought it'd be, being that I've grown tired of Jack Black movies, and am even more tired (and have been for longer) of Ben Stiller movies, and this stars both of them. Robert Downey, Jr. saves it with his fantastic method actor parody. His Al Pacino during the fake trailer at the beginning was so great ("ARRGHHHH!!"). And Tom Cruise was just bizarre...in a different way than he's normally bizarre, y'know.
You might look at me funny for this, but the moment in the movie that got me to laugh and actually sold me on sitting through the rest of it was ( SPOILER )
A Scanner Darkly was fantastic. I admit that the commercials had me reluctant to see it. Mainly because of the "animation," which looked like they just took their whole finished film and put it through some tacky cel-shading filter. I couldn't figure out from the trailers if it maybe had something to do with the story. No, it didn't. Even now, I'm still not sure the decision behind it, since it not only delayed the film (post-production went a year or so overtime, because they actually had a team of artists redrawing/painting over every frame by hand) but also ended up being more expensive than it would have to film it normally. And for what? To create an effect that, even to an artist like myself, looks like the movie was just put through some cheesy filter?
To be fair, the line drawings when not colored actually look pretty good. I watched the behind the scenes featurette, and some of the artists did a really good job of creating comic-styled line drawings over the frames. I think its the style of coloring that really killed it, making it look neither like rotoscoped animation, nor like a comic book...the coloring is what looks like it was created by some Photoshop filter. I could probably even dig up the name of the filter for you, because I'm pretty sure I've played with one once that does just that effect (minus the black outlines). Huge dropping of the ball there. I'm even someone who likes the look of rotoscope, and yet found myself distracted the whole time wondering how this or that scene would've looked without all this junk on top of it.
Thankfully, the story more than made up for it. I loved the story. Especially that it was one of those films where you see things very differently on the second viewing. Those are my favorite. And the hilarious character acting. Robert Downey, Jr. (that guy is everywhere!) as "Barris" and Rory Cochrane as "Freck" chew up the scenery like it's their favorite variety of food. Freck's suicide is one of the funniest scenes in the movie (wait, that doesn't sound right...).
I announce that from this day forth, I am replacing the word "frakking" in my vocabulary with "Frecking."
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June 6th, 2009
01:35 am - Futura Maxi
Warren Ellis wrote a short entry on the prospect of using Futura in comics. Because I'm a dork, I had to whip up my own quick little visual response:
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June 5th, 2009
09:50 am - My Brute Again
The game gives you so little control over the direction of your fighters, and yet I keep wanting to level them up further every day. What is wrong with me?
Also odd is it seems they've decided the perfect time every night to start doing "maintenance" (or is it just using all their resources to run those silly pointless tournaments your character can join?) is at like 7pm Pacific / 10pm Eastern. I get the feeling they might be based in the UK?
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07:47 am - Shiny Things
This image makes my brain feel like it might go explodey.
If you haven't seen it yet, this animation is pretty. Reminds me of the Gorillaz...which is funny because the Gorillaz totally want to be the Beatles.
I'm wondering when they're finally going to release a complete songlist for Beatles Rock Band, especially since one of the people involved commented that there will be some previously unreleased songs (and I thought there there was only one single Beatles "song" still unreleased, so the plural was interesting).
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June 2nd, 2009
08:51 pm - Fight My Brute
This is an odd little game. Sort of tournament fighting Tomagotchi, for people who like to level a character up and see how it develops on its own. Click here to create a Brute and fight mine.
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May 30th, 2009
09:32 am - Local News
Green Day
Some local person/people have started a letter-writing campaign to try and get Green Day to play Mankato, at our little civic center that hold maybe 5,000 people and has not the greatest acoustics.
There haven't been a ton of major acts, but more recently it seems like they're trying to get more bands to come. This year now suddenly they've been convincing popular nu metal bands to play there. In February was an Avenged Sevenfold/Buckcherry double bill, and this month was Slipknot. But Green Day seem to be a harder sell.
Why are they so interested in Green Day? Well, I'm not sure how much you know about Green Day's history, but if you've ever watched the Behind The Music there's a bit where they mention how, back when the band was still just starting out, Billie Joe Armstrong would frequently be like "hey, we should go play Minnesota again," so he could hang out with this girl he'd met. Adrienne Nesser -- now his wife -- went to MSU here in Mankato in the early 90s, and so the band were playing a lot of small shows around here back before they were big.
So I guess the idea is to try and appeal to their nostalgic side (if they have any nostalgia for those days), and ask them to do it for charity perhaps. I had little interest in the nu metal acts playing here, but Green Day is one I'd definitely go to.
Football
I could care less about football most of the time. But this year, I've heard there is a very very good chance that we might actually get Brett Favre (pronounced "Farve"). If you're not familiar with the name, he was the Green Bay Packer's biggest star, and one of the best quarterbacks in the league. The only reason I'm familiar with him is because there's this HUGE Vikings/Packers rivalry, that's difficult to miss if you live in either Minnesota or Wisconsin and know anyone who's into football around here.
In college I had a friend who was a giant Packer's fan, and I developed an interest for a year in paying attention to football just for the Packers. So I could tease him when they lost. I remember one day Brett Favre was injured, and I joked "man, wouldn'tthat kind of suck as a Packers fan...witnessing live the moment your favorite player's career ended?" He was all "THAT'S NOT FUNNY!," followed by "what if JIM LEE broke his wrist? Huh?" Packers fans take this football thing very seriously. ;-)
Which is what makes it so hilarious to me, the idea of Favre (who had a falling out with Packers management) playing for the Packers' biggest rival. If it happens, I will tune in to watch the whole season just for that. ;-)
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