Bif! Bam! Pow!

Long overdue.

Since moving to Austria I've started reading comic books again. I am trying to learn some German by reading comics, it's much easier to follow a story with text and visual narrative. But slowly I've been picking up a few new superhero comics. Yes, superhero comics. Why? I picked up a copy of Seth's "It's a good life, if you don't weaken." And was bored silly. The protagonist (the Author) was so self-absorbed, uptight, and unlikable, I sort of gave up on "indie" comics right then and there. And the last issue of Eightball was a superhero comic, which leads me to believe that most of the people doing "indies" grew up on a steady diet of Marvel and DC.

I recently picked up DC's Jonah Hex Showcase, which reprints a bazillion stories from the 70's. There is some fantastic artwork and some great stories with a weird and almost supernatural twist. Jonah Hex is pretty closely based on the Clint Eastwood character from the Sergio Leone "Man with no name" trilogy. But Jonax Hex is mean, I mean, he's really nasty and mean. I think the basic definition of an Anti-hero is a character who's both bad and good, but the good they do outweighs the bad. (Usually the Anti hero tries to do good but has some serious personality flaws) Jonah Hex's good deeds barely overtake his bad, by a very slim margin. D.C. has recently relaunched a new Jonah Hex series that is every bit as weird and crazy as the original, from reading the first issue, it looks like a winner.

The 80's Justice League was my favorite comic book of all time. The writers turned second stringers into some really strong and compelling characters, and the artwork was always top-notch. They managed to blend humor with action, and always had smart and witty dialogue that would put Quentin Tarantino to shame. I still find myself using some of their lines in my own conversations. Recently the creative team (Keith Giffen, J.M. Dematties, and Kevin Mcguire) reunited and brought back some members of the team and made two brilliant books, "Formerly Known as the Justice League," and "I Can't Believe Its Not the Justice League." I like the fact that the characters acknowledge the fact that time has passed since their tenure in the Justice League International, and their new team (The Super-Buddies) isn't anywhere near as grand as the Justice League.
The same creative team have recently done a few other projects, a "Defenders" mini-series for Marvel, and although I am less familiar with Marvel Comics, I have to say it's pretty darn good. I was laughing out-loud reading the first issue. And they have creayed the highly-acclaimed Hero-Squared, which looks pretty interesting: a superhero meets his secret indentity in a parallel universe, a parallel universe without superheroes (I can't find this in Europe, so I'm gonna have to get in in the USA.) Bwwahahahahaha!

Of course, after the two reunion books, D.C. would then take three of the main J.L.I. characters and kill them off. First, Sue Dibney (the wife of longtime Justice second-stringer Elongated Man) was killed off in the almost-great "Identity Crisis." (Written by mystery novelist Brad Meltzer) and Blue Beetle and Max Lord both have been killed off in D.C.'s newest crossover fiasco, "Infinite Crisis."
To be fair, Infinite Crisis has started out pretty well, it's a sequel to "Crisis on Infinite Earths," and it reads like a meta-narrative about what has happened to the D.C. universe and comics in general since the mid 80's. It mentions how "dark" everything has become in comics, and how the characters have lost a lot of their heroic appeal. There is a great line; Batman tells Superman, "The last time you inspired anyone, was when you were dead!"
Which, at least to me, seems to acknowledge the way in which a lot of readers feel about how the characters have been treated (and how bad a lot of comics had gotten in the 90's.) It will be interesting to see how this plays out. And I like a lot of the dark comics that have come out since then, like The Dark Knight Returns, Batman:Year One, and Kingdom Come. And it was sad to see the Blue Beetle get killed, sure, he was a second stringer, but if you ever read the JLI you know he was the heart of the team. At least the character went out in a blaze of glory, and his last story was one of the best he ever had.

And I'm not just reading D.C. One of my new favorites is Alan Moore's TOM STRONG. Alan Moore is considered one of the best comics writers around, and he certainly has done some great work in the past. Tom Strong is Alan Moore's idea of what an archetypical superhero should be. Alan Moore borrows heavily from the very first Superman comics, and early heroes like Doc Savage to come up with an interesting and compelling hero. Tom Strong does have super-strength and some high-tech gadgetry, but (and this is what's great about Alan Moore) Tom Strong's real superpower is his incredible intellect, he usually manages to get out of a situation by using his brain but usually not before a few punches are thrown. Alan Moore has envisioned a utopian world which is filled with what he calls "Science Heroes" (and of course you would have evil geniuses which are the science-villains) and Tom Strong happens to be Millenium City's number one hero. Alan Moore uses a lot of references to comics history (who else would have a story featuring a life size Sea Monkey?), bizarre cutting edge science, and some really clever narrative techniques to keep the readers interested and on their toes.

There are many more discoveries I have made, and some new comics that I still want to read, and I wanted to talk about the mythological aspects of a lot of characters, but for now that's enough! Excelsior!

Ring a bell

I am so overdue, I am way too overdone for posting an update.
It's been so long, I've just been really busy with the MOTMOT shop, the web-store should be up and running any day now, just in time for after X-mas. I wanted to write about comics, but instead this has turned into a music entry.

I managed to catch the Constantines live and they were fantastic! They had one of the best guitar sounds I have ever heard, with rented equipment nonetheless! The triple tambourine assault! I could say that recorded their live show doesn't quite translate. But after seeing them I think their records somehow make sense.
A band that are still making good "indie" post-hardcore-whatever. They have a Jawbox/Drive Like Jehu guitar dynamic thrown in with some AC/DC and The Replacements.
Great sounds, great energy live!

Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt of the Sea and Cake also played here recently, it was cool to see how they toured, they walked with their guitars to the club. No backing band, just two guitars. It was great to hear the simplicity, and to realize what a weird variety of sounds they can make with just two guitars. Afterwards I was talking to Archer about comics, and the current state of comic booking, and of course the big exhibition at MOCA.. All of you living in Los Angeles and surrounding areas, should go, Now!

I would do a top 10 list except that I wouldn't have a top 10 from this year, and 10 is such an arbitrary number.

Here's what I've been spinning.
1. The Harder They Come sound track. The best reggae cd, ever, hear where the Clash got their sound.
2. Later period Husker Du, stuff off of Candy Apple Grey, and Warehouse. (Which incidentally were some of the first punk records I ever heard, getting them from the Cerritos Public Library, ages ago. I remember being way too young to go see them on their farewell tour. I think I still owe the Cerritos Library something like $17 in overdue fines!)
3. The Constantines: see above. I should add that when they played, I bought a couple of Cds from them. I try to support bands when they come to town, and it's usually cheaper than the record store here.
4. The Marked Men, play some great punk rock. They have all the good things I like about punk music, and none of the bad stuff, that is now associated with "punk." I hear that Swami records is releasing their next record, and the Swami himself is recording their next long player. Should be awesome.
5. Volcano Suns. Hey the Volcano Suns are on Myspace! They're posting MP3's of some of their songs, they look like they have more myspace friends than they had fans the first time around,(just kidding, sort of!) And alot of their new fans are beautiful 19 year old girls! The Volcano Suns are a sort of missing link between early 80's punk, and later-noisy-post-hardcore-whatever.
6. Despite all the hype, and despite the fact that the singer sounds a little bit like the guy from Modest Mouse, I'm digging what I'm hearing from Wolf Parade.
7. This guy has a crazy record collection, he has some impossibly rare, obscure, and out of print punk and hardcore records. It just reveals that there is a whole other world of stuff you've never heard of.
8. Nuggets 2 Box Set. I actually bought this nearly a year ago, when I was in So-Cal. It's taken me nearly a year to digest this four disk juggernaut of a box set. Some great 60's punk, psych, and pop. But it's highly unlikely you've heard of more than a handfull of the bands on this set. You probably know about the Small Faces, and you might know about The Creation or the Pretty Things, but who's heard of the Winston's Fumbs or Q' 65? A great thing about this set is that it features bands from the U.K. and around the world, who would have thought someone was making great 60's garage punk... In New Zealand?

O.K. I only made it to 8, but I left out new books, comics, art, radio, etc... If I would have included all that stuff, I would have made it to 10 no problem, maybe even 11!

Rock on folks!

Pat Robertson warns town of God's wrath

I think Pat Robertson is a hypocritical and corrupt douchebag. And he makes crazy statements like this all the time (like the time he called for Hugo Chavez' assassination, or when he said the ERA would turn women into witches and lesbians!) For the last few years I have been paying close attention to this whole intelligent design "debate," and I am glad to see the people of Dover stood up for common sense. In light of the recent horrific disasters that have struck the USA, I am shocked, but not surprised by this religious zealot's reaction.

It's really sad because intelligent design is, basically, creationism in a pseudo-scientific guise. It's an attempt to indoctrinate children into a certain religious worldview. Furthermore, it's really bad and shoddy theology, look up and carefully read Genesis 1 and 2, they tell the creation story differently!
The Bible is a sacred book, but it is NOT a biology textbook! This kind of strict literalist thinking shuts off any kind of critical biblical scholarship.

But still, if they teach Intelligent Design,
I'll be supporting THIS designer.


(I've edited the article for brevity, but you get the idea-Steve)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them on Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city," Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, "The 700 Club."

"And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there," he said.

In voting on Tuesday, all eight Dover, Pennsylvania, school board members up for re-election lost their seats after trying to introduce "intelligent design" to high school science students as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

seven rings for Saturn

O.K. in these chaotic days I realize that not very much science is being discussed. And whatever science is being discussed is this ridiculous notion of "Intelligent Design." Ugggh, get over it people, get your detention outta my recess, and get your religion outta my science class.

But I digress, the real point of this post is to point out some of the amazing pictures being taken by the Cassini probe that has been sent to Saturn. Some of these images are so amazing that they seem almost unreal. Especially the recent images taken of Saturn's moon Dione. Dig that picture with Saturn huge in the background.

ciclops.org

battered old bird

To anyone reading this, my irregular readers, I apologize for being so late on any type of update.
The month of October, is really the beginning of Autumn, which means it's cold. This may seem obvious, but when I think of Southern California, I think it's still wildfire season. The burning days of perpetual indian summer that is Southern California.

With that in mind it's slow at the MOTMOT shop. But that doesn't mean we're not busy, in fact we have more work than we can handle. And that's why I've been so bad about making any updates. (Today I spoke with a Japanese tourist, who told me that MOTMOT means original in Japanese, which I think is a nice bit of serependity.)

I've got a few topics that I've been mulling over for a while, especially COMICS, and the Viennale film festival, and I plan on writing a long entry, as soon as I get the chance. (I guess those serious bloggers do this for a living or something, but I am really just a journal keeper.)