This likely won't mean anything to you non-geeks out there, but the latest super-hero comic book to be slated for production as a movie is DC's "The Watchmen", which has my nerd-ometer all a-twitter.
The original 12-issue mini-series was later collected as a graphic novel, and won Science Fiction's highest honor, the Hugo Award. It was also named by Time Magazine as one of the “100 Best English Language Novels from 1923 to the Present.”
I have to admit I'm a little skeptical that this can be turned into a good movie. The original is so dense, you have to read it four or five times before you really catch everything that's going on. It's a complex, multi-layered work of art, with a crazy number of different plot points, complicated characters, and varied levels of meaning. I don't know how well you can translate all of that into one movie.
Plus, there's just something fundamentally ... well, silly about people dressing up in costumes and fighting crime. The novel addresses this directly and uses it as a major background theme, and it works as told in a comics format. Dave Gibbons' artwork was the perfect blend of realistic and fantastic. But in a movie, you can't get away from the fact that these are real human beings running around up there in tights.
With a franchise like Spider-Man or Superman, it works because they're basically adventure stories. But "The Watchmen" isn't like that. Dare I say it, it's basically a psychological, political thriller. It just happens to feature people in costumes.
It's going to be a real challenge to pull off. It certainly has the potential to be a great production, but only if it's done right, with deliberation and insight. The fact that it's being directed by the guy who did "300" doesn't fill me with confidence -- that was about as two dimensional a script as you can get.
I'll be watching the movie site with interest as production rolls along. I really, really hope it turns out well. Along with "The Dark Knight", "The Watchmen" was largely responsible for launching the more serious, higher-quality, adult-oriented revival of the comic book industry in the 80's. I'd like to see it do the same for comic-book movies.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Watching The Watchmen
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Better Iron Man Trailer
I posted a bad, user-shot Iron Man trailer a while back. The official version of it is now available, though, so go check it out! This actually looks like a pretty good movie, I'll definitely be going to see it.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Devil's Cape
My super-hero dream isn't the only one coming true recently. One of my online gaming friends, Rob Rogers (creator of the "Hero City" Uberworld campaign setting among others), has just announced that his first novel, "Devil's Cape", is going to be published by the Big Daddy of the gaming world, Wizards of the Coast. Even writing an entire novel is an amazing accomplishment. Getting it published is an order of magnitude greater, and getting it published as the result of winning a global competition by one of the premier gaming companies in the world -- well, there's just not a word for how fantastic that is. If you like crime novels, southern fiction, super-heroes, or any combination of the three, then pre-order your copy from Amazon today. I just did, and I can't wait for it to get here.
Congratulations, Rob!
Monday, July 30, 2007
Iron Man!
With thanks to my friend John for the tip, here is the first sneak preview of the 2008 "Iron Man" movie, as presented at ComicCon (apologies for the dark nature of the clip):
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Dwarfbot!
Sometimes when you do a set of illustrations for a client, not all of the drawings make it into the final product. As an example, HERO Games (the guys who make Champions) commissioned a bunch of artists, including me, to create illustrations for their "Aliens" book. One of my assignments was to draw the sale of a robot. Other than that, the details were up to me, so I decided to portray a grizzled space vet purchasing a 'bot designed for mining operations. As I got started, it occurred to me that fantasy dwarves are well known as experts in mining, and so the robot turned into a mechanized version of Gimli. Here he his spotlighted:
I loved the way he turned out. Even today, years later, this drawing makes me chuckle. Something about his little metallic beard and those angry eyebrows -- man, I just kill myself sometimes.
As I said, though, sometimes the complete composition never makes it to publication, and that's what happened in this case. I believe they had accidentally assigned the scene to two different guys, and the other one came in first so it's the one that made it in. As a result, you get to see it here in Nerd Country for the very first time! 
I'm still trying to figure out how to work one of the donkeys into an illustration, I'll be sure to let you know if I manage it.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Spider Man 3 Review - Or, "Son of the Mask"
Am I a bad person if I want to punch Aunt May in the stomach?
We went to see "Spider-Man 3" yesterday, and my basic take on it was put both succinctly and perfectly in 1983 by Berkley Breathed in his "Bloom County" strip (click for a larger and more legible version):
My much more long-winded and rant-filled diatribe of a review is after the jump, however it contains many spoilers. If you haven't seen Spider-Man 3 yet, therefore, do not click on the "Read More" link, it will spoil the movie for you! The rest of this posts assumes you have already seen the film, so you're forewarned!
It wasn't until after the first third of the movie that my flesh started to crawl. Prior to that I was having a pretty good time -- Spidey slugs it out with "The New Goblin" (Worst Villain Name Ever, it sounds like a new mini-car from Hyndai), there's some good character interaction, bada boom bada bing, we got us a super-hero movie here!
And then things started to get stupid.
First, this alien meteorite lands right next to where MJ and Peter are necking in the woods. Do either of them notice a loud explosion? Or see the bright light from the reentry or the landing, even though they're both ostensibly star-gazing? Of course not.
Meanwhile the black alien snot, completely unfazed by forcible, flaming penetration of the atmosphere and sudden impact with terra firma, crawls from its fortuitous landing spot and finds two suitable human hosts. Surely after its long journey and calamitous arrival it's peckish, one would think, being a symbiont and all, but no! Apparently it has super-restraint and super-patience, because it gamely leaps not onto the waiting flesh of MJ or Peter, but instead to the license plate of their motorbike. Foregoing the the doorman and the other five million New Yorkers passed on the way to the apartment, the snot leaps from the plate to Peter's person, but somehow still resists the urge to merge for a number of days, lurking about until juuuuuuust the right moment.
Which is the first time I really started to wonder -- where in the Hell is Spider-Man's spider-sense? It's one of the signature powers of the character, the reason he's able to avoid so much danger and harm; he senses trouble before it hits. So why isn't it tingling immediately when the meteor hits? Why doesn't it go off when it starts creeping up on him? Why doesn't it warn him to avoid getting smacked upside the head over and over and over and over again throughout the movie? At first I thought maybe the producers decided to write the concept completely out of the movie, but later the Goblin makes reference to it. What gives?
In any event, the film abruptly gets taken over by "The Mask" movie, with Peter Parker suddenly channeling Jim Carey, literally dancing up and down the street, fingers popping and hair rakishly combed down over his eyes. The entire sequence (hell, the whole conceit of the "Costume Element Leading to Out of Control Psychoses") is lifted complete from that series, the only thing missing were eyes bugging out comically and a character who could turn into anything. Oh wait, there's The Sandman, my bad -- it is indeed a complete and utter rip-off.
Around this time Aunt May pops in with one of her nauseating, direct-from-the-pulpit sermons, this time about revenge taking over or something, I can't remember because I was consumed with an all-powerful urge to leap through the screen and punch her in the stomach repeatedly until she SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY!! Criminey, I got enough of that crap in the first two movies, why doesn't she just open her own church already and leave us all alone? I'm starting to suspect Uncle Ben got begged to get shot just so he wouldn't have to listen to her hectoring any more.
Speaking of Uncle Ben we learn, through convenient flashbacks and the hiring of a much bigger-named actor that his murderer was really The Sandman, who despite having the ability to change his shape at will seems unwilling to fix his jug ears or get a decent shirt. This is the same criminal who's so stupid he can't figure out how, even given the ability to essentially dematerialize, to rob something that's not already surrounded by guards. Honestly, why not just slide under the vault door of the bank at night, nab the most valuable small jewelry items from the safe deposit boxes, hide as a pile of sand in the corner, slip out when the day shift opens, and walk out in human shape? Or stack thousand dollar bills in his shoes and reform as a slightly taller guy? Or any one of a thousand other things that would occur to even a simpleton after the first ten minutes of thinking about it? But nooooooo, Mr. Sandman (apparently still angry at being named after a 50's pop song) thinks to himself "Hey, there's an armored car surrounded by armed guards in the middle of daytime Manhattan, what a perfect opportunity!"
And if he's so damned sorry and haunted by what happened to Ben Parker those many moons ago, if all he wants is understanding, then why the hell does he throw in with Venom to kill Spider-Man? Shouldn't be be planning a robbery in another part of the state, where maybe there aren't so many super-heroes? Wouldn't that be a more cost-effective way of getting the money to save his little girl than spending a day trying to kill Spider-Man? Couldn't he have just left a note for Spider-Man saying "Hey pal, sorry about offing your uncle, it was totally an accident. Ta! I'm off to rob a bank in a smaller town now."
Look, I'm a simple man, I don't ask much from my super-hero movies. I just ask that they not insult my intelligence. And that the hero not reveal his secret identity to every. Single. Person. He meets. Especially his enemies! Is there anyone in the entire city of New York at this point who doesn't know Spider-Man's secret identity? Or is it only the ones who want to kill him or marry him that are in on it? Honestly, Parker himself at one point is standing on a rooftop above a square filled with people there to meet him, who in turn are surrounded by TV and still cameras, and he's watching with his mask off! Honestly! It's right there on the front page of the "How to be a Super-Hero" manual, don't take your effing mask off in front of an effing crowd if you don't want every Tom Dick and Harry coming after your relatives and loved ones with guns a-blazing!
And then there's the crying. Oh sweet Jeebus the crying. Aunt May tells Peter about when she got engaged, and there's crying. Peter gets snubbed by MJ at the restaurant, crying. MJ gets fired, crying. Harry looks at his father's portrait, Peter beats Venom, Peter loses to Venom, Peter meets Sandman, Sandman meets daughter, a puppy crosses the street, there's been more than five minutes since the last time someone cried, CUE THE WATERWORKS! I can only hope that given Sandman's vulnerability to water that Peter was secretly ramping up the Tear Production for their next encounter, because I swear, if he started bawling one more time I was gonna kill him myself. There was more bawling in this movie than in "Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood" and "Terms of Endearment" combined. I kept waiting for a puppy to get strangled on-screen, the director was so intent on forcing some kind of emotional response out of the audience.
Speaking of the directing, it was so heavy-handed I wanted to scream. Spidey leaps and lands in front of a blowing American flag while a spirited voice-over extols his virtues! New Yorkers clap and cheer their hero! The soundtrack swells with sappy music!
Gag me.
I had just gotten over the blatant takeover of the movie by the spirit of "The Mask" when suddenly "Robo-Cop" intruded in the form of the smarmy television reporter/anchor combo voice-over reporting on the capture of MJ at the end. Who the hell is this Australian chick? Why am I listening to someone report on a story when I was already, through the magic of the movies, watching the very story she is reporting on?! And correct me if I'm wrong, but since both Sandman and Venom know who Peter Parker is at this point, why do they have to resort to television reporters to tell him they've got MJ? Couldn't they have sent him a note? That seems like a better plan -- what if Peter's cable was out? What if he was in the lab all day working on a project and didn't see the news? A gigantic, public spectacle like that is appropriate for when you don't know how to get in touch with your nemesis, but they have his frickin' address. Just drop by and leave a message with the stereotypically freakish foreign landlord.
In short, this movie made me want to hurl objects at the screen. My theory of super-hero movies, sadly, stands confirmed with this release. Namely:
"In any super-hero or sci-fi movie series, no matter how long it is, you only get two good films. The rest will suck."
With the original Superman series, you got I and II for your good movies, the rest were crap. Batman I and II were both good, the rest were crap. Star Trek II and IV were good, the rest were crap. X-Men 1 & 2 good, 3 was crap.
And sadly, the same is true for Spider-Man 3. Too many villains, too many stories, too much schmaltz, and way way way WAY too many tears. I'd like to wind this film up in a web and stick it under a table where it belongs.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Big Worm
As part of my recent transition to working from home (or NOT working as the case may be) I switched computers. In the course of doing that I uncovered some old images I'd thought lost forever, which is kind of like finding twenty bucks in your coat pocket you forgot about last winter. One of my favorites is this black and white ink sketch of a giant rock worm creature rampaging through the scenic downtown of your average Midwest American hamlet.
See, in the same day I get beautiful rainbows and giant rampaging rock worms. Life in Nerd Country keeps you on your toes, that's for sure.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Hog Wild on Iron Man
Apparently I have something of an "Iron Man" obsession, because this is the second random drawing of him I've done lately (here's the other one). 
I actually had a drawing of a guy on a motorcycle shooting a gun, and as I was coloring it slowly morphed into Iron Man on a motorcycle shooting a gun. Why is Iron Man riding a motorcycle instead of using his flight boots? Why is he shooting a gun instead of using his repulsor beams? Because it's cool, that's why. If that's enough of a justification for a multi-million dollar load of codswallop like "Civil War" then it's good enough for this lowly blog, chum.
As you can see it's only half colored. I'm not sure whether I am going to finish it or not; it's taking quite a bit of time and I'm not sure it's sufficiently fun to complete. Maybe if someone can give me a good reason why Iron Man should be on a BMW motorcycle I'll get motivated.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Normal Guy Character Illustrations
Can you be a super-hero without wearing tights with your underwear on over them? After the jump I take a crack (no pun intended) at two such examples.
Technically these two guys are supporting characters in an adventure, and not super-heroes themselves. I bet sometimes they sneak on some tights when no one is looking, though, just so they can feel like one of the heavy hitters. First up was was Harry Kruger, who came with the following description:Harry is a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and usually a little bit of a tan. When he is working at NASA, he will generally be found wearing cotton dockers and a cotton long-sleeve shirt. On cool days, he dons a flight jacket with the insignia of the space plane mission that he remembers fondly.
From that came this illustration:
I like his jacket particularly, the leather pattern overlaying it really makes it pop. And he looks distinctive, too; I've been trying to make my character illustrations different from one another, so they seem like actual people instead of iconic stereotypes.
The next character was Benjamin Mokento:Benjamin is a handsome, stocky man with very dark skin short-cropped hair slowly turning white. Although the muscles of his legs have withered over the years, his arms are quite muscular. Benjamin dresses conservatively, favoring crisply ironed clothes and distinctive ties. His wheelchair has a brown leather back and seat and chrome plating.
With some help from excellent photo reference found online, I came up with this image for Mokento:
This is one of those illustrations that I liked much better in black and white than the final color version. Coloring is a very particular skill, and one that I am still struggling to master. In this case the problem was exacerbated by the character being African, with very dark skin according to the description. I ultimately had to cheat a bit to make his skin a bit lighter, because I really struggled with the darker tones. Getting ebon skin to show up without completely obscuring the ink lines is something I don't know how to do yet, and in the end I am not happy that I had to work around it rather than doing it right.
Once again I am reminded that when a non-artist looks at a piece of art, they see mostly the good things. When an artist looks at a piece of art (particularly his own), he sees only the bad.
Anyway, these were two quick and fun illustrations to do, each with its own challenges. I turned them both around in a day, which is pretty good. The balance between quantity and quality is an age-old one. I've usually been much better at cranking work out quickly, while sometimes sacrificing what could be better quality. But the gap is narrowing, and I am finally getting to the point where I can still work produce illustrations quickly while getting results I'm mostly happy with.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Earth Two
"One of the hardest lessons for an artist to learn," one teacher told me, "is knowing when to stop."
I still haven't figured it out, so after the jump I'm going to post the latest version of my super-hero creation, "Earth".
First, for comparison's sake, here's the last version of the character I drew:
I liked the basic black drawing, but I think I dropped the ball on the coloring. The textures used for Earth's arms and such looked flat instead of contouring along a three-dimensional form. So I recently got motivated to re-imagine the character a bit, in the process changing the human aspect (Gandalf Jones) from a pre-teen to an older man. The nice thing about having done the illustration digitally is that both the human and the creature are complete, separate drawings. That meant I could just delete the young boy and replace it with the older man, while being able to leave Earth exactly the same. Furthermore, since the color and the ink are also on separate layers, I could recolor the black and white lineart without having to redraw it.
Anyway, here's the most recent version:
I like the color work much, much better. I think the chest area on the creature works much better as a solid black than as discrete plates as well -- it's a more dramatic lighting situation, and it echoes the black turtleneck of Gandalf. I also like the glow around the human figure, I think it plays off the creature's glow well.
I also think this treatment conveys much better the concept I was going for, of an ambulatory pile of rocks and dirt, animated by an elemental spirit. I wanted it to seem like he grew up out of the ground, incorporating whatever materials happened to be there where he spawned.
See? This blog's template isn't the only thing I tinker with excessively!
Monday, March 26, 2007
"I Command You to WANK!"
This may be the funniest post on comics I have ever seen on the Internets. Evil Richard at YesButNoButYes.com has compiled some of the greatest accidentally funny comics panels of all time, things that are hilarious today but not in the way the creators intended (except maybe for the Wonder Woman writer, that was one seriously messed up dude). If you only click one link this year, it should be this one. Here's just one sample:
Go to YesButNoButYes now, before I command you to wank again!
Friday, March 23, 2007
Slashdot
I expect to find the occasional bug when cleaning my computer out, but a gnome? That's a little much. Maybe if I post him here he'll quit bothering me.
Actually, this is an illustration I did just for the fun of it a few months ago. I've always wanted to play a gnome illusionist/thief, but never got the chance. I think he's about as cool looking as a two foot tall critter with a big nose can be, but I guess that's not saying much ...
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
"Evil Unleashed", Unleashed!
I used to do a fair amount of freelance work for HERO Games, publishers of "Champions", the super-hero role-playing system. While trying to clean up my hard drive I came across a few illustrations I did for them recently for their "Evil Unleashed" book (for sale here!) and thought I'd share them. 
This is the book where these illustrations appeared. Note that four of my drawings made the cover -- woot for me!
Hammerhead was a big, mean, wall-smashing villain in the grand tradition of The Hulk. I wanted something grim, savage, mean, and powerful looking. The color image was all in browns and murky yellows, but I liked the grayscale version better.
Cahokian, meanwhile, is a more calculating villain, deadly with the crossbow and proud of his Native heritage. The hardest part of this illustration was the crossbow -- it took a lot of attention to detail laying it out in Flash, then fitting it into the character's hands. I can't imagine trying to do it all on one piece of paper like in the old days, trying desperately not to flub anything and trashing the whole drawing.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Character Illustrations - Hero City
While I was combing through my hard drive to upload the "Toxico" illustration, I came across some others I did last year for the same Uberworld campaign, "Hero City", which is based on a team of supers hired by the Walt Disney Company and themed on their characters. The campaign creator is Rob Rogers, a great guy whose blog you can find over on the ol' blogroll. I thought you might like to see some more super-hero-themed artwork, so without further ado I post them after the jump.
"Beast".
"Mister Toad". I like this one because it's fully painted, without the usual black ink lineart. This was my first crack at such a format.
Josiah Gold, head of the training academy. I like this one because he's just a regular guy, which I don't get to draw very often.
Toxico
I just completed another character illustration for Uberworld, the Play By eMail super-hero campaign I'm involved with. I think it turned out pretty well. Toxico is a giant, living pile of toxic waste who rampages around the country destroying stuff.
Hey, not all comic book stories can be "Maus", you know? Sometimes you gotta just blow stuff up in vivid four-color pulp stories.
Anyway, here he is in all his glowy, toxic badness:
To be fair, I was greatly inspired by this treatment of Chemo, a somewhat similar villain from the DC Universe.
Great Comic Book Weapons
For a great Friday chuckle, head to Cardboard Monocle and its list of the Top 20 Comic Book Weapons of all time. I'll put my favorite one below the fold, because it's extremely juvenile and likely to offend those with good taste. I have never been accused of having good taste except when it comes to my choice of wife, fortunately, so I'm going to post it anyway.
3 - The Bowel Disruptor – Transmetropolitan
Spider Jerusalem’s weapon of choice, even beating out a good old-fashioned boot to the groin. The Bowel Disruptor does pretty much exactly what it sounds like it would with settings that include:
Watery
Loose
Prolapse
Shat Into Unconsciousness
Unspeakable Gut Horror
Rectal Volcano
And last but certainly not least, Burning Anal Geyser.
While I don’t think the BD is powerful enough to kill, what it actually does might be worse. Much Worse.
Yes, it's immature. And yes, it makes me laugh. I'm a guy, sue me.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Bad Super Hero Entertainment
I write too much and too long, a point brought home to me after reading my father-in-law's punchier, newsier style on his "Blog of Ages" site. So here's the short version (with thanks to my friend John for forwarding the original "Ain't It Cool News" story to me):
It's so easy to make bad super-hero entertainment that sometimes I want to ban Hollywood from ever trying to do so again. As just one truly painful example to prove the point, I give you this pilot for a live-action "Justice League" television show, which is so awful it makes me want to gouge out my eyes with a spoon:
The long version is after the jump, but really, that clip about says it all: few things are as bad as bad super-hero entertainment.
I didn't go to see "The Fantastic Four" live-action movie when it came out, which shocked a friend of mine who knows my love for super-heroes. "Why wouldn't a fan want to see everything in the genre?" he asked incredulously.
But that's the point -- I love super-hero stuff so much, it's painful for me to watch it when it's done poorly. It's like loving Bruce Springsteen's music and refusing to go to a "Celine Dion Sings Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits" concert -- when you love something, you don't want to see crappy versions of it.
Creating good super-hero fiction, either in comics or on film, is hard. Really hard. It looks easy because hey, it's just guys in tights beating up stuff, but that's exactly where the studios and comics publishers so often go astray -- if you treat it like silly kids' stuff, it's going to suck. Period. The super-hero movies that have succeeded -- "Batman Begins", "Superman: The Movie" and "Superman II", both "Spider-Man" movies, "X-Men" and "X2" -- have done so because they take themselves seriously. You have to understand the genre, you have to love it, and you have to treat it for the unique art form it is.
Classic George Perez "Justice League" style (pencils -- Alex Ross painting)
As hard as it is to do good super-hero entertainment, it's exponentially harder to do good super-hero TEAM entertainment. Off the top of my head, only the live "X-Men" movie series and the animated "Justice League" have gotten it right. There are a couple of others that didn't suck, but they weren't exactly good either ("Teen Titans", I'm lookin' at you).
X-Mean, a team
Justice League, a team-up
Not so with "Justice League", which is more of a social club and branding concept than it is a real team. Trying to invent a reason for Superman to need Batman is crazy -- he's freaking SUPERMAN! Why would Batman, a character whose very core is that of an anti-social loner, spend time in the company of those he would consider to be fools? Green Lantern already HAS a super-team in the Green Lantern Corps, millions of galaxy-spanning heroes of all different alien races who bear the Guardians' rings of power. What the hell is he mucking around with Aquaman for?
"Justice League" is a series not about a team, but rather about a team-up. Team-ups are by nature ephemeral, temporary affairs, which makes it even harder to get a movie-going audience to invest enough emotionally in the characters to accept the fact that they're wearing spandex and capes. Team-ups are based on marketing, teams on need. Team-ups take established characters and bring them together on some pretext, but a team is its own pretext.
Team-up comics were invented by publishers who thought it would be a great marketing idea to put all of their most popular characters in the same book, each established figure brining its own fan base to the table to plunk down their ten cents. It's the "If one is good, ten is better" school of thought, and one that is as irresistible to Hollywood as it was to the original comic books companies who applied the "All Star" concept to their lines.
But sometimes, more is bad. I hope the producers of the new live-action "Justice League" project understand this, and do the hard work necessary to overcome the limitations inherent in the concept. Done well, team-up stories can be extremely entertaining. But done poorly ... well, let's just say I'll have my spoon ready, just in case.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Technology Kryptonite
Even Superman was vulnerable to Kryptonite, so I shouldn't feel shame that I too have a weak spot. In my case, it's not glowing rocks from my doomed home planet that sap my super strength, but rather the simple telephone that destroys my geeky mojo.
When I worked at Dell in Technical Support, I was in "The Swamp", the only (at that time) overnight crew. We took calls on everything Dell sold, from servers to laptops to modems and graphics cards. If Dell stocked it, we supported it. This was in marked contrast to the daytime techs (or "Weenies" as we called them) who could punt all the hard calls up the tech hierarchy and only had to troubleshoot easy stuff ("Yes, the power in the house has to be on for the computer to work, that's not a design flaw").
Hell, I even remember trying to help a guy fix the trackball on his Latitude notebook computer, and I had never even seen a trackball. "Trackball, trackball," I was thinking frantically, searching for an image on the internal web site. "Surely he's not using a piece of sports equipment for a pointing device ... " But I fixed it, along with all of the other calls on equipment I'd never seen before and knew only from spotty and incomplete online tech manuals.
All the other equipment, that is, except for anything involving phones. 
Phones are Evil
My incompetence extends to anything with a phone type of device in it, as well, which has led to some nasty tussles with fax machines. They keep eating my originals, shredding my documents, refusing to transmit, and flash the date at me in defiance of every effort to program them. They're even starting to get proactive on me -- I had a fax machine calling my house every hour for three days once. Tell me that was an accident!
I've learned to accept this chink in my armor over the last decade or so. Just as Superman coats himself in lead to resist Kryptonite rays, or sends a surrogate Super-Robot out to handle the deadly stuff, I too have become adept at negating telephony's nefarious hold. I simply refuse to answer the phone most of the time, under the assumption that if I don't open myself up, I can't be damaged. Letting the cell phone run out of electricity is also a good maneuver -- if it can't ring, I'm at no risk.
Sadly, this entire week I have been held helpless in the thrall of my age old enemy, as the wireless modem we use for Internet access has up and died on us. It took a year for it to figure out it was, in fact, a modem and that it should thus hate me, but it's certainly making up for lost time. In fact its loathing cascaded all the way up the line, knocking out two relay stations further along the chain in an effort to make me buckle. And buckle I have, my friends -- I haven't been able to get online from home in a week now.
I suspect that phones are actually not just my personal technological Kryptonite, but are in fact RED Kryptonite, the variety that has unpredictable effects on the Man of Steel. Once it even made him grow super-fat -- I bet that's what is happening with my phones. Somehow they're not only robbing me of my super tech support abilities, but they've made me put on forty pounds and go bald. If I can blame them for my back hair, too, I'm pretty sure I've got a rock-solid case for a lawsuit against Ma Bell.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
More Caped Lobotomies
I discovered another passage in the "Batman Lobotomy" chronicles I wrote about the other day. Robin is the one who actually broaches the subject with Batman early in the adventure, on their way to the likely scene of the crime. Maybe it's the smell of fresh air that gives Robin the idea in that hip 1970's convertible Batmobile, or perhaps the sound of the wind whistling through those bat ears finally drove him over the edge, but there's something very chilling about that sweet-faced Boy Wonder just spouting "Frontal lobotomy!" out of the blue like that. Very, very strange.
In any event, I scanned in both passages as further evidence that in some ways, reading comic books really can rot your brain. Or at least, can encourage authorities to come and scrape parts of it out.
And finally, to close out this little frontal lobe caper, I give you the lyrics to the immortal "I'd Rather Have a Bottle In Front of Me Than A Frontal Lobotomy", by Randy Hanzlick
But I'd rather have a bottle in front of me,
Than have to have a frontal lobotomy.
I might be drunk, but at least I'm not insane.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Perhaps a Frontal Lobotomy WOULD Be The Answer ...
When I was a kid, I had a couple of combination comic book and record sets -- in the back of the comic book would be a 45 record that had voice actors performing an audio play of the issue you were reading. In retrospect it's a strange idea -- the beauty of comics is the silent word on paper, the juxtaposition of images to create the impression of time, the ability of art and words to create in the reader all five senses, and combining that with an audio record is a bit of an abomination.
But hey, I was seven years old at the time, what did I know?
I recently bought a replacement copy from eBay of a Batman record book I had, and there's a truly appalling bit at the end of it. Here's a link to an MP3 recording of the relevant section, but I'll post the transcript below for those who can't get the link. It's definitely better to hear it, though.
Robin (in authentic golly-gee-whiz voice): I sure hope they put the Joker away a good long while for this one!
Batman (in solemn, earnest, Batman-As-Wise-Old-Cop voice): Robin, knowing the cleverness of this artful dodger, who can say for sure? Perhaps a frontal lobotomy would be the answer. If science could operate on this distorted brain, and put it to good use, society would reap a great benefit. Come, Robin. Into the Batmobile, and home!
I want you to take a moment and listen to, or read, that again. Yes, you're hearing correctly.
In a Children's comic book, Batman is advocating that we should give the Joker a FRONTAL LOBOTOMY!!!
I usually frown on the use of multiple exclamation points, but I think it's well deserved in this case.
A frontal. Freaking. Lobotomy.
Batman, in a grave and Very Serious voice, gently tells the children of America that cutting open a man's skull and removing his frontal lobes is jolly good fun and a sure-fire win for society. I think it's worth remembering stuff like this when we get all misty-eyed about the past and how "pure and innocent" we were back then. Folks, we were ripping out chunks of brain from bad guys in children's books!
Jiminy Christmas, I need to go lie down. What a world we live in. And I LIKE Batman!
