And it's not even a movie.

Honestly - if you're gonna do a post-Next Gen thriller about Romulan politics, brisk action, and cold blue vengeance, this is how to do it. And if Abrams' flick is literally half this good, it'll be the best Trek flick since '91 by a country mile. What's really odd about Countdown is how well it seems to fit: it doesn't ignore or undo the Next Gen movies in any way (except for bringing Data back from the dead); it fully absorbs their emotional temperature and extends it, as if to say "yeah, those stories sucked. But the world is still viable for storytelling." What I'm about to say could not possibly have been the writers' intent, but... it actually even eats away at the logic of rebooting the Trek franchise altogether. Why go back in time, when the stories in the existing continuity can be this good? Ever forward, as the guy who played Chang said in that Dragnet movie.

Well frick. I'm all kerfuzzled now.

On the other side of the nerd spectrum I finally got around to watching the second episode of Dollhouse, in advance of this week's ep which is reputed by all to actually be "the one that is good." Well it better be. The premise remains as baffling as last time (why do these clients need the dolls? why?), but I'll tell ya what the real missing link is here: this is the first Joss Whedon series (actually, possibly the first Joss Whedon anything) without a single bit of humour about its own idea. There are comic characters on the show and the occasional one-liner, but there is absolutely no self-importance-deflating self-reflexivity around the ridiculousness of the concept. I can buy vampire slayers and space cowboys, as long as they occasionally realize how lunatic their concept is. This crew? Boring as a trip to the dentist. At this point I feel a fascination coming on - I am downloading further episodes, even now - but for now it's the fascination of seeing how and what and frick is going on here, that something this lackluster made it to air.

Man. When television was good. Remember? X-Files and Buffy and Six Feet Under and E.R.? And now True Blood and Dollhouse and... E.R.? (OH MY GOD, THE REUNION EPISODE. OH MY GOD.) I'd take a warmed-over episode of Alias over this shit any day.

Posted by tederick at 5:59 PM in comix & joss & tv
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Headache, maybe because it’s so grey today. Is my head “me gulliver?” Anyone know what a gulliver is? Clockworks reading this? Well I’ve got a pain in it, whatever it is.

In times of heightened work activity, I rescind the no-scone rule, and read comic books on my commute, because they are easily digestible (like stomach lining). Quick, tactile pleasure-experiences are more approachable psychologically than long-term storytelling or higher-brain analysis. I get up in the morning or get home at night, and Porno Guy is still watching porno… how did we never notice this? This much porno, this much of the time? though now he has drawn his blinds; they block about 45% of the porno, which still puts a generous 55% porno out into the world. Like a beacon for smutty superheroes, called forth by video images of penises on a screen large enough to make them the size of rotweilers. To the pornomobile! What do porno-superheroes fight – chastity? Or even worse depravity? I guess they could do both. They hold the middle ground.

The headline of today’s Metro (Toronto’s free transit rag) is simply “Math questioned.” I suppose the idea that the entire concept of mathematics was brought into doubt is amusing enough, but I rather prefer the notion that someone did away with Geography, and Math was brought into the station house for interrogation under the hot lights. But they let Math go (there was no motive). Math’s reputation is not what it once was but until Math does it again, Math goes free. This is justice?

Let the right one in… to your home! Last year’s vampire classic (last year’s only vampire classic) comes out on shiny blu today. Own it before that Cloverfield guy remakes it. Me, I’m gonna snap it up after drinks & apps with the work folk at Kelsey’s (yes Kelsey’s), and then go home and watch Yet More Lost, which is the other only thing my brain can handle in times like these.

Posted by tederick at 7:44 AM in 1701 & comix & jedi antics & sex (theoretical) & shinybludisks
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Dropped Mighty Avengers, as soon as it changed writers. I hadn't been enjoying it for a year anyway. Of the 20-odd that Bendis did, I'd say only the first 6 or 7 issues were really effective, and now who knows what that book's even for.

Picked up Dark Avengers, not sure if I'll keep it. Watching these things get set up is interesting and there's also some value in having a book that is about little more than dishin' teh smack, but it's not the main book, and times are tight.

I will, however, give Dark Avengers credit for presenting, legitimately, the first superhero pin-up I would actually pin up. Yow.

Bendis/Maleev Spider-Woman solo comic cannot come soon enough.

Posted by tederick at 10:56 AM in comix
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I picked up Batman #686 this week and then promptly yanked the Dark Knight from my pull list altogether; I am so goddamned glad this whole mess is over. Between R.I.P. and Final Crisis, all Morrison achieved was to utterly obliterate any kind of artistic integrity in the non-Green Lantern DC titles, making last year's Marvel One More Day fiasco look relatively well-thought-out in comparison.

But, at the end, with "What Ever Happened to the Cape Crusader?", we're going out on a high note. Here's Neil Gaiman, pinch-hitting for the now certifiably bugfuck crazy Grant Morrison, to remind us how comics are meant to be written, and how they're meant to be read. "What Ever Happened" is posturpedic support for the Morrison-weary, a comfy training bra for raw and sensitive minds. It undoes nothing, retcons nothing, and yet it stands as such a stark "here is how it's meant to be done," with casual formalism, beautiful art, and genuine enthusiasm for the storytelling process, that it reads (rightfully so) like Here Is Writing, And Fuck The Rest Of You. And as such, is much-needed.

We gotta wait till March 18 for the second part, in Detective Comics where it belongs, rather than the main title. I'm rather excited about that, which is nice.

At the same time, the misbegotten Angel series both came to an end this week, and did not; I must admit that issue #16 last month did an appreciably good job with the climax of what had been a dozen issues or so of utter garbage, but issue #17 sorta queers the deal by being so clearly a This Book Made Money, So We're Keeping It Going. Lord, IDW has to work on their property management, or Joss Whedon has to work with Dark Horse exclusively, or something. What could have been a terrific 6-issue story got teased out into a 17-issue-with-two-spinoffs mess. Greed: it's a deadly sin for a reason.

Posted by tederick at 12:16 PM in batman! & comix & joss
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My evening:

Silver Snail sold out of Scott Pilgrim: FAIL. Grimlock sighting. (!) (!!) Stairs: STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP. Girlfriend: hug: cute! Feel better. Fish taco. Buffy. Cold cold cold cold cold cold subway cold cold cold cold, 1,000,000 Comix, I HAVE THE PILGRIM (holds sword aloft)! SO GODDAMNED SHINY cold cold cold cold cold. Under covers: Zam (fat. warm.) Couch. Laptop. Beer. Book. Would like to do a little writing, a little something else. Soon enough.

Posted by tederick at 7:46 PM in comix & jedi antics
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Laserdisc is eulogized here. Funnily enough, I read that line in the last paragraph as "I'll always associate you with evenings of passionate love-making," and my brain didn't even flag it; of course laserdisc and great sex were related. I have no idea how: I was ten. But then, I didn't understand the sex in A View to a Kill, either. I just knew that it was important. When I was a fledgling(er) cinephile, I heard rumour of things like the Blade Runner director's cut or the three-disk Frighteners special edition; I had no means to ever see or encounter them, but I knew they were important, too. Porting all that shit to a DVD seems cheaper somehow. Laserdiscs are buried in the collective unconscious.

For Christmas I got Acme Novelty Library #19 from my mom; that is an utterly outstanding piece of art. The entirety of it can be read in a single day, and yet it wrecked me six or seven times. I want to read it all over again right now, and maybe make a movie of it, and maybe read it to my kids. Big, sad, and scary. How do people do that? Fuck, he marveled.

I owe about four emails back, though in the wake of last week's computer failure I am even more solidly committed to letting email go, altogether. People keep pinging me on BlackBerry messenger; I'm more certain than ever that there are more than enough ways to become instantly in contact with me, thank you, and the world needs no more. Solitude, clear-mindedness, the ability to think for eight seconds. These are the commodities now, though we're selling everything else instead.

Winter, man: it works its ass off to getcha. Something as simple as forgetting my security pass came close to unseating my entire day. Mindfulness, though; concentration; and don't let the door catch you on the way out.

Posted by tederick at 8:21 PM in comix & movies & poetical & shinydisks
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THEY MOVED LOST OFF CTV AND IT'S ON SOMETHING CALLED CTV A AND WHAT THE FUCK IS CTV A AND NOW I CAN'T WATCH IT ANY MORE AND I HAVE TO DOWNLOAD IT AND WAIT TILL IT'S DONE AND EVERYBODY'S GONNA HAVE SEEN IT BEFORE ME AND WHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Boy the best day ever turned into the worst day ever in a hurry, huh?

Well anyways. I was sick today. I lay in couch-bed and watched movies. I watched Madadayo, Man with a Movie Camera, and Une Vieille Maitresse. All foreign films. This forced me to keep my eyes open and not get lazy. And I was quite pleased to enjoy Maitresse just as much as I did at TIFF last year, for sometimes your festival experience can fool you. It really is quite good. I'd recommend it to anyone (who would enjoy startling sex scenes and an enormous amount of drawing-room conversation en français).

I read Dark Avengers #1 today, and I'll say this for Bendis (in addition to all the other Bendis-suck I regularly perform): man knows how to write the first issue of a new Avengers book. Every single time he has to do a "let's put together the team" issue (which, by my count, he has now down forty-six zillion times), he not only gets the pomp and circumstance all juicy and nice, but he somehow manages to trick the shit on its way out. Like how all but two of the people on page 4-5 of that issue aren't who you think they are. That's dark.

(I assume this means, btw, that Mighty Avengers is kaput. I mean I know Dan Slott's writing it now, but based on the New Avengers vs. Dark Avengers fold-out poster that my comic book guy put in the bag for me, it doesn't sound like the M.A.'s gonna be terribly relevant in the coming months.)

Anyone who spoils anything from tonight's episode of Lost, before I get to watch it, will be shot. On the spot. Actually, I'll probably just stop answering the phone and checking Facebook or engaging with the world in any way until I know what the funk went down. (It was rather adorable, today, watching over half the Facebook statuses become Lost-related before the end of the day.)

CTV A. Ugh. CTV A, I ask you.

Posted by tederick at 9:52 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & comix & movies
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Superman IS Todd Ingram, and other casting news. Honestly since Zack & Miri, it's become clear to me that I'll pretty much sign up to see Brandon Routh do anything. Not because I'm necessarily onboard with him being a good actor, just because I seem to find him oddly mesmerizing. Unfortunately, the casting news for Pilgrim also puts a nail in the fact that Sarafina will not be playing Kim Pine (and will therefore not get to slap her sticks together and shout WE ARE SEX BOB-OMB!!) in the film. But that's okay, she's more my Ramona V. Flowers anyway.

I am sick today, and would like to go home. I tried to "feed a cold" by eating everything on all four buffet tables at the Mandarin last night, but it didn't work. Nonetheless I wouldn't trade these midwinter Mandarin trips for anything. They're having a dumpling festival right now! A festival! For dumplings! In the middle of winter when it's nasty out and the subway almost takes you right back home without even going outside! I got home, collapsed on the couch-bed, and fell asleep to the sounds of Superman and typing.

Posted by tederick at 9:45 AM in comix & foodin' & movies
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Take your ease, people of the earth. George W. Bush is no longer President of the United States. At least not in any significant way. (Which differs from the past 8 years... how?) Obamabia (I spelled that wrong but I kinda like it like this) reaches its zenitharack tomorrow, and then who knows what happens. At what point in the week do you reckon they take Barack in the back and tell him about the proof of the existence of extraterrestrials? Do they wait till Thursday, then take him on a tour of all the downed spacecraft and alien corpses? Or do they just show him Crystal Skull on the weekend, and when he looks over at them quizically, they nod and say "yeah"?

Weird that at some point in the last year, and in spite of its suckitude, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull became the definitive treatise in my mind on the American relationship with extraterrestrials. Huh.

EDGAR WRIGHT IS MAKING SCOTT PILGRIM IN TORONTO STARTING REALLY SOON! I know we knew that already, but with day-and-date pix of the director standing in our current blizzardscape, it became scarily present in my mind. I pretty much don't agree with any of the casting, at all. (Mary Elizabeth Winstead? What? The?) Though i can certainly see a Culkin as gay, slat-eyelidded roommate Wallace. The last few weeks, though, have made me realize that if they ever get off their ass and make a Runaways movie, I'll probably have to just leave the country.

So after 2 weeks of near-nonstop computer troubles, I arrived at work today (sick, sad, tired) and found that THE GODDAMN THING WOULDN'T EVEN TURN ON. I'm on a loaner right now while they re-install Windows. The loaner has all the functional capacity of a brick of soft cheese. I can read and reply to emails, maybe. If I try real hard.

I think the next time I am sick, sad and tired, I am gonna read the damn tea leaves and stay on my damn couch. Damn it.

Posted by tederick at 12:27 PM in comix & dr. jones & goddamn politics & j-o-b & movies
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Yup, today was one of those days where, when checking my BlackBerry on the way out the door, I thought I was looking at the wrong day's emails because no way could it possibly be Wednesday. It's Friday! Clearly it's Friday.

Is it Friday?

It's not, is it.

The nice thing about the blistering cold happening in Toronto right now is the sheer number of things I can achieve without ever leaving my building. Last night, Sarafina and I had dinner at Windows, the restaurant in the hotel. It was not bad, given that it's hotel food, American-sized, and expensive. Today I might try ordering room service and seeing what they do. I can also:

• Get a haircut
• Go for a massage... potentially with extras but I haven't explored that
• Book travel plans for Asia
• Sample exotic beers
• Rent a car
• Steal dinner mints.

Switching tracks, I read The Sinestro Corps War in its entirety, and am absolutely obsessed with how good it is. For a run and jump superhero story, that sorta feels like the biggest widest grandest most ambitious most exciting thing I've read in years. When Coast City lit itself up green at the beginning of the climax in the last issue, I was sorta beside myself. I fell ass-backwards into this thing just in time for this whole Blackest Night dealie that is supposedly coming, and before that I don't think I'd even had two thoughts to spare about Green Lantern since I was playing with his action figure when I was eight. Now I'd say it could even be my favourite thing I'm reading. Really, really impressed across the board.

Posted by tederick at 12:05 PM in 1701 & comix & foodin'
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Last night I had a dream that I went back to 3QF, and found out that half my DVD collection was still there, along with Chris and Human Rights Lawyer, who were a) living there together in connubial bliss and b) surprisingly athletic. (This dream could not possibly be related to current anxieties about career, life planning, or the end of the world). The fact that I can remember this dream seems to demonstrate that I did in fact sleep, which does not tally with my recollection, but there ya go. I do recall shoving my now-22-minute Guy in the Sky assembly cut into a kind of rough order before retiring to the bedroom in a spectacularly bad mood, and after that there was a lot of tossing and turning and accidental punching of Zam. Which is fair, given her behaviour lately.

I watched Rhapsody in August the other day, which I rather enjoyed, and puts me within a single movie of getting to the end of Akira Kurosawa's rather significant body of work. (I do then have to do some back-catchup thanks to that Eclipse set of the postwar years that Criterion released recently.) I also redirected some Christmas Chapters money towards The Sinestro Corps War, which is shiny and absorbing and much more enjoyable than The Silmarillion which, Beren and Luthien aside, just ain't any fun any more. I also, after a treat of a date with my ladyfriend the other day, finally found that goddamned Joker, so I can stop prattling about that. I still wouldn't mind finding myself a pair of the socks, though.

Today, I am trying to ride out what has been a spectacularly frazzling work-week with a modicum of grace, before fading into the weekend. I may walk home.

Posted by tederick at 8:54 AM in 3QF & books & comix & dreams & j-o-b & movies & shinydisks & socks & tederick films & toys! & zam!
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"Every day I smoke two hundred cigarettes and one hundred cigars and drink a bottle of whisky and three bottles of wine with dinner. And dinner is meat." - General Dirk Anger, Director of H.A.T.E.

“It’s never as bad as it seems. You’re much stronger than you think you are. Trust me.” - Superman

Best overall: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

What was better - the arc where Buffy had salty, wet-dream-inducing lesbian sex with Satsu the Vampire Slayer before going army à army with yakuza bad guys on a roof in downtown Tokyo while giant Dawn matched roars with giant Gojira robo-Dawn... or the spinning Fray reboot arc where in the midst of cruising the deathly wastes of her own legacy and handing Dark Madwoman Willow her final smackdown, Buffy made apology to the entire English language? There's no escaping the numbers on this one. Every issue of Buffy that dropped in 2008 hit.

Best ongoing: Ultimate Spider-Man

Given a fresh face by Stuart Immonen's you're-the-only-male-I-currently-want-to-have-sex-with artwork, Brian Michael Bendis's reliably enjoyable tales of Spider-adolescence became one of the few titles I legitimately treasure month to month. The iconic Spidey-stories might have been told in the first hundred issues, but with them behind us, this year's work got to be more character-driven, narratively elliptical, and deceptively badass. Resurrect Gwen? Kill Harry? And confront, in the first two pages of the annual, why our recklessly-in-love, horny-as-jackrabbit 15-year-old heroes haven't yet had sex? Ultimate Spider-Man looks simple, because it is. To stay simple and still be this good, though, is nothing short of amazing.

In which our super man, knowing he is days from solar-irradiated death, undergoes his final labours... which, because he is Superman, he does even faster and kinder and better than ever before. A surprisingly canny meditation on mortality and legacy, on the evolution of the icon, and on our own inner strength, wrapped up in a clockwork narrative structure that only Grant Morrison could make sensible.

Other shit what was great: Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, New Avengers, Powers, The Boys, Brian Azzarello's Joker

Fallen from grace: Astonishing X-Men by anyone else, X-titles generally, Immortal Iron Fist, Hellboy, Angel: After the Fall, Runaways, Mighty Avengers, and the rolling non-event EVENT! called Secret Invasion

I was late to the party: Scott Pilgrim, Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., and Y: The Last Man, the first comic book that actually made me cry.

Posted by tederick at 9:51 AM in comix
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"What, just because you're not there doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm mates with a telepathic fish, you practically dated a dragon, let's move on." - Spike

Lemme tell ya something about Angel: After the Fall: after a suck so massive that I actually stopped reading the comic altogether, (I obviously started reading again, and) suddenly it's just stupendous. OK, the middle was bad. Really bad. Embarassingly, everything-that-can-go-wrong-with-a-comic bad. Let's not discuss it (more). But issue #15 (released yesterday), that's how you wrap up a story, right there. The voices ring true, and each beat drops like honey. Where was this for, say, issues 4-13? What a wildly uneven slap-ride this has been.

But wait, there's more: if you order now, you get the flavour injector ABSOLUTELY FUCKING FREE.

This morning, high as a fucking kite on paint fumes and awesomeness, I stumbled around the house nude trying desperately to open a single can of tuna fish, while Zam screamed at me for her cut. It took me 5 minutes to get into that tin, no exaggeration. The evening prior had been spent moping about the contents of the display window at the Silver Snail, and contemplating a short script titled A Girl Enters, Bleeding From The Head, based on a nearly-true series of events that took place at Carlton Court on my way home. I have run completely out of time, pre-Christmas. I'll wake up and it'll be December 29th.

I am still reading The Silmarillion but more importantly, I am currently reading Beren & Luthien, and that is a fucking story, my friends. They should give up on this Hobbit movie jive altogether and just do that. Tolkien's (well, whoever wrote it)'s prose is distant and sullen, but there's a goddamned evocative little story in there, with a hundred thrilling nooks and crannies, and it's ages long and decades wide. I love it. I want more of it.

I'll be done when I'm done, dammit.

Posted by tederick at 11:26 AM in comix
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I am now Facebook friends with Dorothy Zbornack, and I am going after Blanche Devereaux.

I could do without these 5 a.m. wakeup days when my brain instantly goes into "spin" and I end up with no better solution than to answer work emails. I'm sure this is only temporary, as my work life (along with everything else) is about to go into that gentle 3-week sleep. For all the ways it is damned inconvenient, I do love my city under snow. I stood in my living room at 5:30 this morning just watching it, and watching the steam from next door wash over the skycraper canyon in front of me. It's beautiful. I digitized aboput half of the Guy in the Sky footage yesterday - if nothing else, it's gonna look tremendous.

Still breaks my heart.

More Dan Aykryod news: in addition to his largely indigestible wines, the man has vodka available in crystal skulls. Now that's a quirky conversation piece I could get a handle on, if it didn't cost fifty bones (get it?) for a small bottle. I like that Dan Aykryod's career now basically revolves exclusively around mystical boosterism and the shlepping of booze. Relationship? Maybe?

I read Brian Azzarello's Joker on the weekend; on the whole it has been a year for Joker interpretations. Miller's tattooed dragon, Morrison's super-persona trashing and reinventing itself time and again, and of course Heath Ledger's dog chasing cars, which is not so much an interpretation as a wholesale revision, and far and away the most useful such revision ever done to the character. Azzarello's is somewhere in the middle. He's playing in what is essentially the Nolanverse crossed with the traditional comic world, and to reasonably good effect, all of the characters grounding more successfully than they do when Killer Croc is actually a giant crocodile. Plus, we get the first Nolanish appropriation of the Riddler, which one can presume is the first of many. It was like with the Joker genie out of the bottle in Dark Knight, Riddler secretly went from abysmal bottom-tier joke to "Next Interesting Villain" in everybody's subconscious minds. Hell, I've even got a sketch of him in my back pocket, which I doodled in the Annex the day after Halloween...

I feel better today than I have in many days, which might be denial or it might be grim acceptance. I'll take it, whichever it is.

Posted by tederick at 8:58 AM in batman! & comix & foodin' & j-o-b & miscellaneous crap
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Lord god, writing that thing for blogTO put a B-Boyz craving in me that could carve wood. The good news is, after what I would call a disappointing run of maybe 5 or 6 months at this place, the large chicken I laid hands on tonight was actually the best burrito I've had in a year. I wish it had been twice as long and three times as fat. I woulda eaten it all night.

I suppose that means I am officially going with Ian, who is opening another Burrito What (working title) in the Annex soon. I can't for the life of me think of a good new name for the franchise, though. Burrito Girlz makes the most sense, because... I mean, well, let's be realistic here. But I suspect that ain't gonna work for reasons both moral and legal. It wasn't till I found out you can forego the $500 prize for the equivalent value in burritos that I really started trying to think of something, anyway. Now I'm probably humped.

My work life is bleeding into my home life, by way of the BlackBerry. It took about 8 months but I am fairly well addicted to that thing now. It's tough times at the j-o-b and the result is a sense of always being "on," which is slowly frying my brain. Still, could be worse; my boss went to a 7:30 meeting today. On the day they send me an invite to a 7:30 meeting, I am firing myself.

In retaliation against all this, I am going to make egg nog. I am going to fully engage the spirit of the season by way of the mixing of eggs with creams and rums. I tell you this: I make a mean egg nog. And I might just sip at it, looking out the window when all the world's gone quiet.

After an 8-issue storyline, I give Secret Invasion a miss. Ultimately it just wasn't enough story to be worth all the falderal, and the endless tie-ins and also-rans in the other titles was enough to drive me clean out of the thing for 2008. Weirdly, I'd call the DC megavent more interesting to me overall than the Marvel one this year. I still don't have a sweet clue what actually happened in Batman RIP, but it kept me more engaged, which is more than I can say about any other DC title in five years.

I want that Joker. I want a lot of things, actually, which is most of my problem. Some nights, I get to sit on the couch and spitball some jokes with my lady. And that - that's all right.

Posted by tederick at 5:52 PM in blogTO & comix & foodin' & j-o-b
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I ain't gonna spoil Batman for ya. I'm gonna spoil Buffy.

Issue 19 is not the best issue of the comic series so far, but it's the issue where the comic became great - not great as in superfantasticwondertime!, but the other great, the great of scale, and purpose, and power, and meaning. And if it didn't damn well happen when Buffy had to kill her best friend, it sure as hell happened a few pages earlier with something as simple as Gunther saying "surf" where the rest of us woulda said "turf." Like my own personal Giles told me a few times back in the day, it's in the words. It's in the language.

It's a sloppy piece of comic bookery, three months too late and obviously drawn in a hurry, but damned if it ain't the piece of the story where, sorta somehow kinda, Joss and his folk proved to me that this whole Season 8 thing actually needed to happen, after all. That it isn't just an also-ran, and that it isn't just a piece of the story, but that it actually has the capability to be something a bit more. That it had to happen here, not on a TV show and not in a movie, but right here in the funnybooks, to be the thing that it needs to be.

Think about what we've had so far that could only ever have happened in paper and ink:

• Giant Dawn fighting Giant Mecha Dawn in the streets of downtown Tokyo
• Willow's power, and where it comes from
• The final, anguished moments of Renee's life, told from her fading point of view
• and, of course, Sarah Michelle Gellar getting her lesbianic freak on with her first, best lieutenant.

And then sweep all that aside for a 4-issue mini arc in the distant human future when the entirety of our characters' actions has been shown to be a trivial blip in an otherwise uninterrupted ongoing churn of regular, mean-spirited old life; think about the last thing Willow says in issue 17 - "only time" - ; and sorta shiver a little bit, when Erin is cradling Fray in her arms on an unchanged rooftop on the last page of issue 19.

This story takes some fucking chances, man.

p.s. is Xander in love with Dawn?

Posted by tederick at 8:18 PM in comix & joss
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DID! YOU! KNOW! that Umbrella Academy Vol. 2 starts today with issue #1 of Dallas? I wonder if that's city Dallas, TV show Dallas, or captain of the Nostromo Dallas. (Speaking of which: working lights!) I guess we'll find out in a few short hours.

I messed my hair up a bit this morning in an attempt to look emo like Gerard Way or Spider-Man Three, but my hair doesn't work like that. I did, however, spontaneously dance.

Also, today is the day that Batman theoretically either dies, retires from crimefighting, or turns into a giant elk or moose. I'm betting on the latter because Batmooseman is not only a great idea for a comic, but is also the name of a city in Turkey.

For those interested, Michael Crawford's review of the Sideshow Indy figure - which looks in some ways better than I expected, and in some ways worse - is here. I cancelled my order on this a few months ago in a fit of pique, because after all, toys are for little kids. (Still no word on meltyface Toht, by the way.)

And that's yer geek news for today.

Posted by tederick at 12:49 PM in batman! & comix & dr. jones & toys!
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I would like to offer a retraction: if you actually read it all at once instead of pieced out over months and months, and if you really concentrate and maybe write a few things down and then read the whole thing a second time, Batman R.I.P. is not incomprehensible. Actually it's not a bad bit of story. It's still being told in way, way too elliptical a manner to really be enjoyable, but it doesn't suck. It was interesting enough to make me look up some Morrison interviews about the run online, and he was interesting enough to make me cash into Final Crisis, and that's interesting enough to make me look warmly enough on the whole affair. I'm all up with the DCU, suddenly. To everyone to whom I owe an Animal Man lender copy - I will try to get that done this week.

Posted by tederick at 3:44 PM in batman! & comix
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Maybe it's not my place to say, but there's something disastrously funny about watching this reporter presume Joaquin Phoenix is completely full of shit when the actor announces that he's giving up acting in order to pursue that oh-so-artistic musical career we've all heard about.

Droolworthy, one: Sam Mendes will direct Preacher.

Droolworthy, two: Mark Millar's neck-to-nuts 10,000-year Superman trilogy. I mean I like Bryan Singer, but DAMN.

Finally, this Mamo goes down like a well-poured scotch.

Posted by tederick at 4:52 PM in comix & movies & podcastery
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I closed an email to a friend of mine with that line a few years ago, and it has lingered in my mind since as the moment where I inadvertently defined my entire personality.

So I've been fairly successful in the no-coffee thing. The real goal (at least for now) has been to stop having a Starbizzle on my way to work every day, which was the main source of my environmental worry, and which proved surprisingly easy. I had a couple cups on the weekend and one over dinner last Thursday night, but that's about it... sure, it almost certainly contributed to the headache from hell (even my doctor commented on the boldness of my timing choices) but whaddayagonnado.

Meanwhile, as the world adjusts slowly to the environmental apocalypse, the economic one continues apace: I bought something for my apartment today - the piece de resistance, really - and was smartly slapped in the face with how meteorically the Canadian dollar has fallen in the past month. My last Amazon order went in with the dollar in the mid-to-low nineties... and now, a forty dollar auction cost me sixty damn bucks. It's like 1992 all over again! Oh well. I cancelled my pre-order on blu-ray Firefly, and died inside a little bit.

Somehow, Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves slipped under my gaze. But no longer. It's quite rare that four awesome things end up in the same title.

Posted by tederick at 2:37 PM in comix & foodin' & miscellaneous crap & the apocalypse
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I know better than to go into The Labyrinth these days, because I always come out either having spent a hundred dollars, or wanting to. But I stopped by to pick up the new Ex Machina trade because it seems only fair, and

I WANT THIS SO MUCH.

I first got into Benjamin's art a couple of years ago when I was trying to write Snapdragon, but I only ever had tiny digest-sized bandes dessinées to look at. This book is goddamned huge, nice and oversize, every page is a single portrait, and they are heart-achingly gorgeous. And among other things, that guy really knows how to use the colour green. Oh man.

New Ex Machina and me will be in the corner, moping.

Posted by tederick at 6:05 PM in comix
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My friend and comic book guru, Sean, is not someone whose advice I should easily dismiss: every time he turns me onto a book, I end up loving it. He recently fished me back onto the Boys bandwagon after my suicidal plunge into pull-list decimation, and a few months ago he also put the second or third issue of Kick-Ass in my hands. In the case of the latter, I took one look at the Romita nastiness and said "no thank you," but I was foolish. All that shit you've been hearing about Kick-Ass? 'Tis true. The book kicks ass. I finally got into it this week and downed issues 1-4 in rapid succession; I'm even starting to like the art in spite of myself. Jury's still out on Matthew Vaughn's career, but it doesn't take a genius to see that this will make one hell of a fucking movie, if they can keep the violence and gangster-skewering superchildren intact. I was about three pages into issue 3 when I mumbled "This is gonna be the next Fight Club."

Speaking of Fight Club, here's Whack the PM, where you get to hit our country's leaders until they stop being so annoying, thereby consolidating your voting choice. Unsurprisdingly, I only ended up hitting Harper.

This photo mural, purloined from blogTO, actually pretty much says everything you need to know about the candidates:

Stéphane Dion: Rolling up his sleeves to look like he wants to work hard.
Stephen Harper: OH MY GOD HE'S GOING TO EAT THE CAT
Jack Layton: A man's man; a ladies man; in every way: a man.
Elizabeth May: I AM SO FUCKING HAPPY TO BE HERE
Gilles Duceppe: Not pictured.

I'm in kind of a dead riding anyway, because I have no Tory candidate at all. No matter who I vote for, the Tories don't win; Bob Rae wins, which doesn't make me feel stupendously better, but I guess it's better than nothing. I have a Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada candidate, though. Who knew? BEARS RULE!

Meanwhile: turkey!

Posted by tederick at 10:10 AM in blogTO & comix & goddamn politics & movies
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If they ever make portable cell phone jammers with even a 30m active range (as opposed to ten), I am buying one. Good god damn, to be able to block BlackBerries in movie theatres. I'd be like the Batman of irritation.

Speaking of the Batman of irritation, the goddamned fucking Dark Knight blu-ray is gonna flip-flop between IMAX framing and letterbox framing after all. HOW FUCKING ANNOYING IS THAT. On the whole I am stupendously unimpressed with all this IMAX crap and consider it Nolan's single major mis-step on the entire project. It was distracting enough in theatres; the idea of watching my aspect ratio pop around the screen like a crack-addled episode of 24 is almost too much to bear.

(Can you believe I made that segue work? I'm like the Batman of... something. Point is, I'm Batman.)

P.S., Bill Hunt, your site design was archaic in 1999. The rest of the planet knows how to allow a direct-link into a dated post. Why can't you?

I've only read the first chapter of Orson Randall and the Death Queen of California, but so far, I pronounce it "excellent." Not bad for an issue I almost didn't buy.

Posted by tederick at 2:56 PM in batman! & comix & shinybludisks
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Only one comic ever made me actually cry, and that was when Ampersand snuffed it in the last issue of Y: The Last Man. The rest of the time I remain comfortably bemused, but if anything else was ever gonna give me the misties, it was Deena Walker going off into the Caribbean sunset in Powers this month for no other reason than that she went batshit insane and killed a bunch of people but it all came out all right in the end. Powers remains sort of the gold standard of all the comics that I read - not that I actually like it the best or even think it is the best, just that it's the one that hip-checks any posers in my pull list clean out the door. Everything should be this singular, or be not worth my time. From day one, this thing has had a clear, intelligent, daring, artful, and personal voice. Powers will be the last man off the boat, when I'm done.

On the other hand, you've got the sheer bugfuck awfulness of Runaways vol. 3, and a train crash of the like I have not seen in lo these many years. Ramos is utterly abhorrent as an artist for this material, and Terry Moore does not appear to have one sweet fuck of a clue who he's writing - a bit of nice stuff for Karolina and Xavin in issue 2, but he can't write Molly or Klara to save his life, and his Niko mostly just acts like a pissed-off gym instructor. I love Runaways so fucking much, gave this abortion of a series 2 tries instead of abandoning ship at the end of vol. 3 issue 1 as every single neuron in my body was telling me to do. But there's no way home from here.

Which brings us round to Lady Bullseye, who debuted in - I think - probably the best Daredevil issue yet written by Brubaker. Strip-mining past characters is dodgy at the best of times but so far, the lady with the targets all over her damn self is interesting enough to be entertaining... but it's the storytelling itself that is the real winner here, every frigid sexy moment of it. Classy stuff, this.

Posted by tederick at 11:21 PM in comix
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I bought Adam a Yoda toy yesterday and in return he kicked me in the fucking shin!!:

Jerk.

Over here, Moriarty calls foul on that favourite fanboy watchphrase, "George Lucas raped my childhood." He's right: inarticulate losers reaching for an ugly overemphasis of their hurt feelings through violent sexual overtones are not doing the world, or the discussion, any favours. Moriarty, though, has become the film criticism community's biggest pansy. He has been so completely spun by the birth of his child and the "development" of his middling screenwriting career that his reviews have gained an imperious, "I'm seeing this from a higher level than you" level of smug that is simply useless to both his direct audience (AICN fanboys) and film criticism in general. And the fact that both of those changes in his personal life have softened any ability on his part to look at a piece of film objectively without either going gooey-eyed over how the flick speaks to his h opes and fears for his child, or rose-hearted about how it's just so hard (sniff!) to make it in tough-ass Hollyweird, means that his opinions have become useless to me as well. Sigh of frustration. When Roger Ebert kicks it (and they're taking him down in chunks, these days), film criticism will die.

For a few months I've been remarking that I really have no idea what's coming out, movie-wise, next summer. Well, others seem to have noticed the tentpole gap in summer 2009, too, because following Star Trek into a release delay is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, bumped from a November '08 show-date to July '09 to run riot over the relatively limited field of box office competitors next year. I'm not particularly disappointed, if only because my overall interest in the Potterflicks has dwindled precipitously since Order (even though, as blog-memory serves, I liked that one), and this gives me the opportunity to build a bit back up again. They'll never go down as the biggest cinematic contributions to my life, but there's something reflexively nice about going to a Potter movie with Rebecca and just magically freaking out a bit. And with five down and three (!) to go, I do also have an appreciable sense of the scale of the thing, once it's all finished.

So I'm ploughing through Y: The Last Man for the second time, sort of like when I read all the Potter books consecutively since this time, I don't have to wait for subsequent volumes to be released and can treat it as one big story. In addition to all the other stuff Brian K. Vaughan is doing, I am really enjoying the degree to which the story gets to be about the way men think about women. All the myths, misconceptions, psychological fracture points, broken chivalry, noble (and not) ambitions, outright needs, subconscious lacks, complete and utter raging misunderstandings... just so eerily, pleasingly accurate. What 13-year-old boy hasn't stared into that gaping chasm of proposed femininity and refused to take more than a tentative step into the dark cave, out of the sheer unknowable otherness of it all? We can be so patently bad at knowing ourselves when it comes to sex, love, and our position on the gender coin; one of the best things about Y is the way that fully selfish and immature male-ness (which is now too happily fostered in modern North American life) just tracks for Yorick through the story, into a genuine process of maturation and change until he does become, like Jung woulda said, a fully individuated person. It'd be nice if this could happen to everyone, or at least, me. I kinda wonder if Vaughan has actually Figured It All Out, or if he's just a smart enough writer to know that he can just parlay his own experiences of relating to women throughout his life into a reasonable psychological arc for The Last Man, and let the arithmetic work itself out. Either way, it worked great.

It's chilly. It's actually chilly. Fall is coming.

Posted by tederick at 9:07 AM in ADAM & comix & galaxy far & movies & toys!
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"I will take you outside and fuck you in the street!!" - Ed Begley Jr.

"That is spicy. I don't think that's for cats." - Adam

I love that photo a lot.

Sarafina and myself went to the Pineapple Express movie last night, and ate fish burritos, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I would say there are at least six things in that film that are outstanding, four things that are just really pretty, and the rest is overall very well done. Additionally, I read the second neo-Fray arc issue in Buffy, and was so goddamned thrilled that I almost didn't know what to do with myself. Actually, I probably embarrassed myself in public spaces with my near-constant glee. The densely-woven futurespeak is new (I suppose we can presume that in the previous self-contained storyline, we were seeing "translated" futurespeak, as we would see translated Chinese in an issue of Iron Fist) but very well done. And as for the spoiler... well yeah. I fell for the Dru fake-out rather nicely and was aptly rewarded at the end, but the bones of the thing now are just gorgeous to look at. Something happened in this issue that never happened before - the modern-day Buffyline just gained a fuck of a lot of context, a place in the world. It's not limited to Sunnydale any more, it's not even limited to the naughties any more; with the past and present accounted for and the future now added in, the Buffyverse feels dense. I like.

This crazy son'bitch built the Batman Beginsmobile. There was a phantom DeLorean that lived somewhere between my ex-girlfriend's house and my parents' place, back in the day... you'd be driving along at night and it would just appear behind you, and you (meaning I) would freak right out. Imagine how you (meaning I) would feel if the motherfucking Batmobile started tailing you instead. Holy cow.

Finally, for everyone who (like me) is still having trouble sliding the oily oyster that is "Quantum of Solace" down their gullet, there's a Joe Cornish fake theme song floating around YouTube that's quite enjoyable. They had me at "great big man-tits."

Posted by tederick at 3:48 PM in ADAM & batman! & comix & joss & movies & youtubery
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The selling-shit-off thing actually worked out better than I expected. I'm down to just two or three items left and they aren't exactly the ones I expected to fly off the shelves. I cannot believe someone is actually taking the TV: that thing is so HEAVY. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my soul.

"How was your long weekend?" Well, it was fine. Not long enough. Sarafina and I had a pretty decent day of just lazing around doing nothing on Saturday, which we haven't had opportunity to do in a good long while (and probably shan't again for a while yet). But I coulda done with more of it. Actually all in all I'm in a very "nesty" mood these days. I wish it was winter, because I seem to crave little more than bed and vidja games, but it's just too goddamned hot at 3QF to accommodate my need. I am forced to go outside, where parasites are choc-a-bloc and the radiation ball rules. Is a little self-imposed agorophobia really so impossible to achieve in August in Toronto? Apparently it is.

Speaking of August: Brian K. Vaughan's meticulous re-work of the 2003 blackout within the fabric of the Ex Machina storyline is really rather breathtaking. As Shortbus pointed out, there's a unique relationship between 9/11 and blackout '03, and also a lot to do there in terms of massaging our own fond recollections of the night the lights went out (vs. the morning CNN would not go away). In narrative terms, the summer of '03 also makes for the middle of his storyline, doesn't it? I am liking that title more and more with each book that comes out.

Sockvivor continues. I've thrown away my lucky socks - I guess sixteen years is simply too much. Things are getting lean around my place - more and more stuff siphoned off to 108, to friends, to the trash heap. I feel cleansed, for the first time in forever.

I have a fondness for Star Trek III that is disproportionate to its worth.

Posted by tederick at 4:17 PM in 1701 & comix & miscellaneous crap & socks
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...but it looks like the X-Files movie turned out pretty bad.

Myy relationship with review aggregators has become interesting over the past year or so. There was a time when I would have resisted the very notion of aggregators, and on a basic theoretical level I suppose I still think they're an even more flawed approach to film response than thumbs up / thumbs down (a reduction so gross that even Roger Ebert has said it is specifically responsible for destroying modern film criticism). And yet, there's little denying that any movie I'm even slightly "on the fence" about, I'll go to RT and see what the critical consensus is before deciding whether I should give it a try. Money and time being as finite as they are right now, I lean on the rapid data snapshot - which I suppose by default must also mean that I no longer think my critical taste distinct enough for the masses that there is a better-than-average chance I will like something that the majority does not, i.e. even if using the aggregators is a massive generalization on my likelihood to like a movie, the odds are still in my favour that I'll come out above par by just following the herd. And this from the guy who liked The Phantom Menace. Ah well. If only movies (Dark Knight notwithstanding) weren't so crappy right now.

Comics being in a similar state of blah, I went all Five Families on my pull list Wednesday night - chucked the Avengers, the X-Men, the Boys, the Hellboys, the Angels, and came damn close to chucking Iron Fist thanks to the unannounced (at least to me) switch to an entirely new writing/art team. WTF? Fraction and Brubaker abandon sweet IIF awesomeness for Uncanny frickin' X-Men? Grrrrrrr.

Speaking of Five Families, all the stolen bike raids are making Toronto feel like The Untouchables this week! You know, like when Sean Connery walks across the street and knocks that door down and there's all the jamokes in there? Exciting.

Posted by tederick at 9:40 AM in blogTO & comix & movies
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Oh, I'm gonna be mighty pissed at myself if it was that obvious the whole time.

Posted by tederick at 2:16 PM in comix & joss
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If one were to approach culling one's comic book pull list by simply dropping to a single title per author, the numbers would disintegrate nicely. Like,

Fraction: Immortal Iron Fist, culling Invincible Iron Man
Whedon: Buffy, culling Angel (I know he doesn't write the latter, I'm just dying to cull it)
Brubaker: Daredevil, culling Uncanny X-Men
Vaughan: doesn't publish any more, but I'm known to buy an Ex Machina trade now and again
Morrison: All-Star Superman, culling Batman
Ellis: Getting culled clean off this list unless AXM improves substantially in the next five seconds
Ennis: sucks

The problem is Bendis. Stupid dumb writes sixty comics in a week Bendis. I'd never trade off Powers or Ulrimate Spidey (that's Ultimate Spider-Man's Cantonese knock-off, for those not in the know), because they're both the sort of books that make me, y'know, want to write books. I s'pose I could axe yer Secret Invasions and yer Avengerses, the latter of which just hasn't been that great lately anyway. But I gotta admit Secret Invasion #4 was pretty tight, even if the whole Jessica's-a-Skrull thing is potentially the worst "it was all a dream" narrative cop-out since One More Day. Bendis is a goddamned annoyingly competent motherfucker. I should throw an egg at his head for foiling my pull-cull master plan.

Posted by tederick at 10:18 AM in comix
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