Wizard World Chicago '08 (with bonus Legion bleg)

I spent the day Sunday in the Petri dish that is the Donald E. Stephens convention center in Rosemont, Illinois -- and have spent every day since with a sore throat, thank you very much, my germy fellow fans. Next year, I'm going in costume as Dr. Decibel just so I have an excuse to wear a surgical mask all day. Notwithstanding my cold, though, it was a pretty fun con.

At the Middle of the Year

Well, we're several episodes into The Middleman, and the quality and quantity of entertainment has remained high. This show is now quite solidly a recommendation.

About the only thing I'd remark on that I didn't touch on before is an element of the directing, where it often seems like there's a pause between ridiculous things, where the characters let the anticipation of the next ridiculous thing sink in before they leap into it. That acknowledgement of ridiculousness is a difficult thing to pull off. Jack Benny and Bob Newhart built a solid chunk of their careers on that pause, but they were (mostly) the straight men around whom ridiculousness swirled; it becomes much harder when you have to be able to both acknowledge and partake in the ridiculousness.

I dunno. I could be reading into it too much. It could just be the characters catching their breath between extended rapid-fire speeches. Which I love, by the way, all that verbal acuity, all that elaboration of phrasal structure; this is to, say, Two and a Half Men as Pei's Bank of China is to a tract house.

I also love the motif of repeating exposition, e.g. "the illegal sublet Wendy shares with another photogenic artist" or this week's description of the Pirate Chest, repeated every time the Pirate Chest was referenced, in dialog or in captions.

Marry Me

Marry Me is a fun little 91-page romantic comedy graphic novel with an appealing art style.

Writer Bobby Crosby is upfront about his screenwriting ambitions, and it's not hard to imagine this story translated into film. Like most romantic comedies, it's light on opposition, being driven mostly by personal issues pointed out by occasional key events. Like good romantic comedies, it works because we want the characters to be happy and we're willing to let the story take us there.

Crosby likes to come into a scene just after (or leave a scene just before) the most dramatic thing has just been said or done, trusting that the audience will be wiling to reconstruct it, and trusting that we will trust him that a dramatic statement or a dramatic act isn't really as important as how the characters lead up to it or react to it. It's an ambitious kind of storytelling, and while it's not executed entirely without awkwardness, it's still effective, and in particular, it adds enough interest to the storytelling to overcome our cynical ennui that we've seen all this before or even that there's not all that much actually happening.

Artist Remy "Eisu" Mokhtar does a superb job, with excellent and expressive character design and clear storytelling. That's short and simple, but there's really not much more to add: The art is excellent with negligible room for improvement.

Recommended. You can read the whole thing online, and the collection will be out around SDCC; you can pre-order now.

How can they call it "Final Crisis" when there are five more issues?

Sit down, everyone, because I have some exciting news. I've managed to obtain a copy of Grant Morrison's script to Final Crisis #2! What follows is Grant Morrison's pure, unadulterated vision for Final Crisis #2. Spoilers within, and prepare yourself for the wonder that is Grant Morrison:

Will Tomorrow Ever Come?

I finally got a copy of IDW's first Little Orphan Annie volume, covering the first three years or so of Harold Gray's strip. The book was delayed and delayed again, listed and delisted and relisted at Amazon. IDW's website barely acknowledges its existence and certainly had no apparent interest in updating its status. So, y'know, just a stellar marketing experience, I'm sure it's going to break sales records.

I really shouldn't like this strip. It's consistently easy--the good are good, the bad are bad, and there's no doubt who's on which side. Annie herself is an early archetype of Mary Sue, possessed of every virtue, skill, and improbable talent, and unconditionally loved by all worthwhile folk and animals. The stories are scene-chewing melodrama, full of long speeches and sermons on self-righteousness.

But, may reason help me, I like it. Since it's so unchallenging, it doesn't engage the critical faculty; it's easy to just sit down and read and let the experience wash through you. It's brain candy.

Boy, I'm doing a good job selling it, aren't I?

The thing is, it is entertaining. Watching bad guys get what's coming to them is fun, and watching good people get unexpectedly rewarded is just pleasant, and the constant moral lessons about hard work and caring for others are at least moderately inspiring. Like other golden age newspaper comics, the art is interesting and far richer than today's newsprint fare. While it may have been a contemporary feature when it first appeared, today it's historical, and its view on pre-WWII America is tremendously instructive, even filtered through Gray's beliefs and preoccupations.

The collection itself is a handsome, hefty volume, like other recent classic comic reprints. I'm disappointed it omits the majority of Sunday strips. There's a wide range in strip reproduction quality. Some strips are from syndicate archives, some are reproduced from other sources, either the original 1920s reprint volumes, or actual newspaper pages; either way, they're substantially blown up, with significant effect on the line weight. (Harold Gray had a notably thin line.)

Overall, I'm mostly pleased. If it's the sort of thing you'd like, you'll probably like it.

In Which I Am Sarcastic

Marvel's planned Avengers film lineup: Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and Iron Man.

Half of the world's population had no comment, as they were busy trying to get out of the refrigerator. You are also reminded that if you see a costumed character who's not descended from northern Europeans, they're not a superhero.

The Knight Life

FYI, Keith Knight of The K Chronicles apparently has a new daily strip, The Knight Life, being syndicated at comics.com. It started on May 5th.

The зеленый фонарь корпус

Ah, yeah. Just in case you weren't aware of the absurdity of the polychromatic Lantern Corps, I will go ahead and mention two things.

Convention Season

No, this isn't an announcement for the next Curmudgeons Con. The June CC had some logistical and scheduling issues, so we weren't sure whether we were going to keep it on our normal second Saturday of the month or reschedule it until literally the night before. We'll be more diligent in announcing the next one.

And yeah, I know that convention season's been going on for a while, now, but that doesn't mean we can't take this opportunity to get organized for what's left of it. Was anybody at Heroes Con over the weekend? How did it go?

Wizard World Chicago is coming up this weekend. There will be at least a couple of Curmudgeons hanging around there somewhere, so if anybody wants to arrange a meet-up and possibly lunch or dinner, we can certainly do that. I'm wondering how well attended it's going to be. The Chicago show has always felt like a driving show, with vendors and audience coming by car, and I have to wonder whether gas prices this year will keep a few people away.

And San Diego is a little more than a month away. Who here is planning to take on that one? If you're going to San Diego, you have to plan so far ahead that I'd be surprised if gas prices have much of an effect on this one. It also feels like most attendees (unless they're already in Southern California) fly in rather than drive.

Dragon*Con is coming at the end of August, and then Baltimore follows at the end of September. Which other cons should we be paying attention to?

Comics I read

Quite a stack this week (though, to be fair, it also includes last week's books), so let's dive right in.

Crisis at 1700 Broadway

Prominent hollywood blogger Nikki Finke is reporting that the Powers That Be at Time Warner are none too happy with what's going on at DC Comics. Will Dan DiDio be out of a job by San Diego? Nikki suggests he might. She also suggests that Joe Quesada's old partner Jimmy Palmiotti might wind up in the corner office. Interesting stuff.

Stuck in the Middle with You

So, anyway, The Middleman premiered Monday night. There is ample promotional material out on the web for you to get a sense of its convoluted pre-production history and what it is and what it's about, or you can read the Wikipedia page; I won't waste your time.

It was entertaining. The stars are watchable, the characters skate up to the edge of annoying but step back, the story is very arch but fun. I will watch the next few episodes, at least.

Note: If you do not think that a superintelligent simian wiseguy-wannabe is its own justification, you may not be the correct audience, because the show isn't interested in more than the possibility of waving at narrative plausibility from the beach the next county up the coastline or anything.

Comics I read last week

Have you been to your local comic book shop this week? I have! And here's what I bought:

Sunday Song Lyric

Once again, I'm a day late with this post. I have a really good excuse. I was listening to the new Weezer album over and over and over.

A Point or Five About Lagrange

It's kind of a shame that comic book writers often do such a half-assed job of research for their pseudoscience. From Final Crisis #1:

So if you know a little bit about astronomy, the only sensible response to the Guardian's instruction is "Which Lagrange point?"

Frightening Amounts of Sudden Literary Respectibility in Easily Folded Form

John Hodgman, of Areas of My Expertise, Daily Show, and "Hi, I'm a PC" fame, wrote a four-page column on comics for the June 1, 2008 New York Times Book Review.

No defensiveness; no "but of course these aren't really comics"; no shame of the four-color world--he dives in the deep end of the superhero pool with The Fourth World Omnibus series and Kirby: King of Comics, and then also covers in some depth Age of Bronze and Y: The Last Man, taking them all seriously and on their own terms.

Okay, there's one brief moment of apology:

In one moment, Highfather of New Genesis turns to one of the young boys in his care. "Esak," he asks, "what is it that makes the very young -- so very wise?"

"Tee hee!!" Esak replies. "It's our defense, Highfather -- against the very old!!"

This is probably the only passage in the English language containing the words "tee hee" that has actually moved me.

An apology with propers. Now that's canon.