Wha... huh?

I still try to keep somewhat of an ear to the ground of comics, and often will flip through the trades at Barnes & Noble or wherever. I also fantasize about getting back into collecting, and made a quickly aborted attempt a couple of years ago before realizing it was way too daunting and the price way too high. The last time I regularly read comics was right before the endings to Civil War and The Ultimates Volume Two, if that tells you anything.

Now I know what it feels like to be one of those then-annoying guys who come up and say "I haven't read since blahbittyblah, what do you think?". I mean, from my understanding Batman found his kid, died while killing Darkseid, the DCU is still chugging along after anywhere between two to four criseses because I guess editorial is too scared to reboot the universe and piss off old readers. As for Marvel, Tony was head of SHIELD then not, Skrulls invaded, got their asses kicked, now Norman Osborn is the head of SHIELD and leading an evil-Avengers team-which is way beyond the capabilities of a guy that just started out as a pissed-off middle-aged father of one of Peter's loser friends. At least in my opinion.

Getting back to DC, remember a few years ago when they were all ready to overtake Marvel? It looked like they would have them on the ropes for a little while. They hired away the Kuberts and Bagley, got Geoff Johns, Jeph Loeb and Grant Morrison all exclusive, were going to do a "final" crisis and were starting up an ambitious, weekly comic series that would shake up the universe and explain to readers what had happened. I was really psyched for 52: focusing on cool, but obscure characters like the Question, Black Adam, Booster Gold and Steel? Killing off one of them? Back-up origin stories by the best artists in the biz? Covers by J.G. Jones? Still haven't read most of it and online reviews have been mixed. Definitely not the world shaker I thought it'd be.

But what happened, DC? Dan DiDio was supposed to be your Joe Quesada. Apparently he's just good at pissing off creatives and alienating Ed Brubaker which in retrospect turned out to be dumb, very dumb. Morrison's run on Batman has been met with mixed reviews, All-Star Batman was met with shitty ones. JLA now stars Vixen of all people, completely ignoring Morrison's ahead-of-its-time premise of only big names and only big threats. The revamp of Wonder Woman went nowhere, and she remains a missed opportunity. Obviously things aren't all bad, All-Star Superman is thought to be one of the alltime great Superman stories, and Green Lantern is in the midst of probably the apex of its influence and excellence. Geoff Johns is probably the John Byrne or Frank Miller of Green Lantern.

But nonetheless DC remains in a distant second place, despite having the number two movie of all time based on one of its properties and the financial backing of one of the largest corporations of the world.

Marvel seems to be doing better in some regards, but they have commited a screw-up so godawful I almost think they did it on purpose. You'd have to.

In late 2000, Marvel realized that no one could decipher the complicated and often-crappy backstories of its media-friendly properties Spider-Man and the X-Men, so they tasked two largely unknown writers to revamp them, Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar. Those two became the definitive writers of the '00s and helped usher in the emphasis on scripts over pencils from the reverse situation in the '90s. What's even weirder is that the books were good. Really good. Peter Parker went from a married guy seemingly in his 30s to a nerdy high-schooler again. The X-Men became the older teenagers they started out as, with the added bonus of mixing up familiar tropes, such as Wolverine working as an assassin for Magneto and Colossus being a gay. The Ultimate line became so successful that Marvel soon launched Ultimate versions of the Fantastic Four (which brought us the popular zombie craze) and the Avengers, which brought us the most interesting variations of Cap, Iron Man and Thor in a while before Marvel updated the 616 versions. Of course, all sales on books fall after awhile. Peter Parker talking like a Mamet character loses its shock value, and Marvel certainly didn't help things by replacing Millar and Hitch with (ugh) Loeb and Joe Mad. As for the other books, you'd think they would have continued to try to follow big name with big name, like when Ellis took over for Millar on Ultimate Fantastic Four or when Bendis took over for Millar on Ultimate X-Men. Instead, they seemed to throw a lot of middling-to-unknown/new names on the books, thus losing the cool, superstar "edge" that they once had.

How to fix it? How about rebooting the series that were reboots just nine years ago! We've gotten a total of thirtysomething-to-fortysomething issues with some of these characters, so we already know all we need to know about them! Let's all have them killed in gruesome ways, just to give those fanboys shit! Let's have them all be eaten and exploded and all-around mutilated! Then we can reboot the long, complicated histories of characters and titles that have been around alllll the way back since 2000!

With all due respect... are you fucking high, Marvel?! What the fuck?! Are you gonna find a creative team as talented and in-sync with each other and the zeitgeist of the times like Bendis and Bagley and Millar and Hitch? The Ultimates had two volumes of pure awesomeness and now it's not good enough. Honestly, with these titles that have lost their way, how hard would it have been to do a "soft reboot" and hire new teams to handle the books? Maybe get rid of the repetitive cover designs where every issue looks the same. Make a big convention announcement and throw a few grand at Wizard to get a ten-page advertisement/article. It seems like Joe and Bill and the creative teams spent a lot of time and effort coming up with archetypes, boiling down the characters to their essence, forgetting all the crud that's accumulated and having each hero down to their peak. Tony Stark is an alcoholic playboy wanting to turn his life around after a near-death experience. Peter Parker is an awkward nerd who can't catch a break. Steve Rogers is a man out of time, even more poignant given the greater distance between 1945-2002, versus the 616 '45-'63. Wolverine is once again scary and bad-ass. Creating characters to care about and root for/against for a long, long time.

And it's all getting rebooted. Again. By teams that probably won't be anywhere near the ability of the originals.

Boy I hope they spend a lot of time reading 616 and Ultimate incarnations of super-heroes, so that they can streamline each character in expectation to the big reboot of 2011.

Sigh.

DC might have the most screw-ups, maybe the biggest as far as missed opportunities go, but Marvel by far had the most idiotic.

I hate you, comics.

Parade Of Assholes Part Five

Kirk Van Houten

Wow, okay maybe I wasn't as ready to come back as I thought. Well, what do you want, it's a free blog. On with the show...

This guy literally just popped into my head the other week. I hadn't thought of him in years. I know his real name, but his pseudonym will be Kirk Van Houten. They're both single (presumably divorced) dads and they're both a little sad.

I don't know when Kirk Van Houten started coming into the shop, but I think it was around the time Sarcastro was still working there. Kirk looked to be in his late-thirties/early-forties, but apparently should have been only in his early-thirties when I knew him. He had a classic "grown-up nerd" look to him: wire-rimmed glasses, wide mouth, overall awkward demeanor.

He would come in a lot with his son, who was somewhere between the ages of three to seven. I don't know a lot about kids, but he was young. The kid acted like he had some vague behavioral or attitude disorder. He was just really loud and seemingly out there. I don't want to call anybody's young kid an idiot, but he definately didn't have the spark, charm or wit of some of the other kids that I would see occasionally.

Kirk was also cheap. He was notorious for spending vast amounts of time, sometimes north of an hour looking through the alphabetically organized discount boxes. It was always a huge pet peeve when someone would come in around the time I wanted to eat, so you can just add fuel to the fire when that someone was obviously broke/poor/cheap and not going to spend an amount equal to what you were buying your lunch with. I would've rather put a Lincoln myself in the register and spared myself the aggravation.

But what really makes Kirk "asshole worthy" was the fact that he was indeed an asshole. He would constantly sigh when looking through comics one-by-one, as if he was above it all. If only the industry could write and illustrate to his standards, so he wouldn't have to endure the mundane indignity of looking through such dreck. Hey, here's an idea! Get a real fucking job and you'll be able to afford some higher quality comics. He wasn't too proud to not play Sarcastro's Dreamcast when he left it hooked up one day, either.

I remember talking to the filmmaker that worked there just before me and he mentioned Kirk as well. Said he used to come in every...single...week and ask if League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #6 was out yet. I suppose this was before the internet was in wide use. My friend said that when the comic finally shipped, he wanted to look out for him in the parking lot, then rush the door, throw it open and toss the book at him. "Here"!

Once again, a guy all to happy to perpetuate the stereotypes of comic fans. Sigh.

The Return Of The Horrors!

Okay, so it's only been, what... five months, right? Not too bad.

Alright, where was I? School, folks. Going to school. Not doing all too much other than that. This semester was a rough one, albeit one of the more memorable ones. On a personal note, I actually wrote a play. This marks the first time in my personal history of ever that I've written a complete creative work, and somewhat of a viable one at that. I'm currently sending it out to trusted friends in order to ascertain some honest feedback, and then I'm sending it to every able-bodied producer in the US. The sooner I can get paid doing what I love, the sooner I can lord it over my many enemies.

Was I so busy that I couldn't even update a lousy once a week or month? Well... no. But I decided to take a break, although I'd be lying if I expected to take such a long one. Mostly I was just getting burned out, in addition to being slightly disappointed at a lack of involvement for the blog. I was kinda bummed at making a rapid series of posts with few comments. I understand not everyone has something to say about everything, but for right now it's the only measure I have of who's reading. And while that contradicts my earlier notion of mainly doing this for myself, it was quite a headrush and ego boost to have followers.

But no matter. I am back, and while I can't really see myself making one post a day like I was at my peak, certainly I'll manage better than twice a year.

For those of you wondering where the picture comes from, it's the cover to Superfolks, the best comic story you've never read. It's so good, in fact, that Alan Moore stole from it for three of his best known tales, Watchmen, Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? and Marvelman! Grant Morrison apparently wrote a column in the early '90s talking about it. I'd love it if some ambitious journalist removed his mouth from Alan Moore's penis and asked him about this influence. Because in my opinion Alan Moore is a very lucky man. In another world, Robert Mayer is better known and Moore is looked at with suspicion. I'm honestly surprised there wasn't any lawsuits. I'm not saying Moore is not talented, nor do I intend to piss on the Holy Grail of comic creators... but read Superfolks and see if you don't take the hero worship down a notch or twelve.

Why am I embedding this clip? Well, because it has the song "Return Of The Mack" in it. The downside is that Entourage is the douchiest show in the history of television, and the guy who uploaded it is one of the douchiest guys on YouTube, so be sure and give him shit in the comments section of his video.

Even Kevin Smith Gets The Blues

I am a moderate-to-big fan of Kevin Smith. I think his comics are generally pretty good, although the wait for Daredevil/Bullseye: Target and Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil Men Do was unforgivable, and upon reading the comics not really worth it. However, his run on Green Arrow was pretty damn good and about as good as that title ever got (at least since Mike Grell was on it, allegedly). I'm more of a fan of his movies. Clerks was the movie that made me realize I want to pursue creative endeavors for a living (still waiting on that). Dogma was great when I first watched it, but grows more irritating every subsequent viewing, mainly due to Linda Fiorentino's horrible performance and the frequent preachiness of the dialogue. I'm not really making a good account for him, but suffice to say I thought Clerks II was really well done. It got a lot of flak online, although that's no big surprise. Smith has always been a huge lightening rod for people. He's basically the everyman, slob, "my movie is your life" industry figure. You can make honest arguments about his subject matter choices, his style (or lack thereof) in directing, and his frequent habit of putting his wife in his movies, which is new and very unfortunate. She seems like a great, smart gal but an actress she is not. But people seem to hate him now, which seems weird to me. He doesn't take over beloved franchises like Transformers or X-Men, or even fondly remembered franchises like the Spirit or Green Hornet. He does his own stuff. No one forces you to watch any of it. It's there if you like it, and if you don't then it's cool, too. I think a lot of the shit that gets thrown his way is a result of envy. Normally I'm very skeptical of this. I believe you can disagree with people like Barack Obama or Jesse Jackson without being racist. I think you can disagree with Hillary Rodham Clinton or PETA without hating women or animals, so the accusation of being a "hater" doesn't really fly with me. However, I think the glove fits in this situation. I think a lot of people, even if they don't want to make the exact type of movies he does, i.e. "I had the idea of doing a blue collar comedy on retail, dammit!" or "I was going to do a romantic comedy in the new zeitgeist of amateur porn, fuck!" People (me admittedly being one of them) would kill to make very good money in order to tell whatever stories they have inside of them, to be able to work when they want, buy what they want, lie in bed playing online poker and eating take-out without showering for days if they want. Instead, most of us are forced to attend expensive schools in order to learn things we don't care about so we can work jobs we don't want to with people we don't like so we can pay debt that we will never be free of. So the idea of Joe Nobody from New Jersey going from college dropout and register jockey to LA director living in Ben Affleck's old crib probably turns people green with sick, sad jealousy.

Which is a shame because Kevin seems to be free of pretention and self-absorption. He cheerfully admits that he's not that great of a director, and that he's not even as famous as Marty Allen, a comedian I had literally never heard of until the latest SModcast. It's SModcast that I think he really shines. He's a naturally gifted conversationalist and storyteller, and here he plays entirely of his strengths (witty words) with none of his weaknesses (anything dynamic or visual). There was a guy that commented on here a couple of times that hoped for some SModcast-like stories, but now I can't find his comments. I will say that if you enjoy this, or you think you and I might have similar pop-culture tastes, I highly encourage you to download SModcast. It's free, there's 70+ hours of material for you to listen to while cleaning the house or typing at work, and you can listen to debates on whether people would drink semen if it meant losing weight, how a giant Scott Mosier with black bat wings and the knowledge of old-timey boxers would take on a giant warrior kung-fu Jesus with heat vision on the orders of the UN, and hanging around baseball fields at night hoping to have high school seniors stick pickles up your ass.

One of the things talked about on SModcast is the fact that Smith owns two comic book stores called Jay & Silent Bob's Secret Stash, named after two of his most famous characters. The one on the east coast in Jersey is run by his longtime friend Walt Flanagan, and the one on the west coast was run by another friend, Bryan Johnson, until Johnson had enough of it and quit. You get some interesting insight in how even comic shops relying on celebrity get the same exact frustrations as ones run by the everyman. Even Walt Flanagan, who has drawn comics and appeared onscreen at the cineplex has to deal with bullshit customers. I'm going to link to a couple with known comic shop talk for you to listen and enjoy-

SModcast 72

SModcast 59

SModcast 50

State-er Of Affairs

Alright, there's been some big changes to this blog, in addition to more and more followers. I figured I'd give the personal recollections a rest and do another catch-up to anyone new.

Hello. I am Seethe Rogers. Actually, I am someone else, but my internet nom-de-plume is Seethe Rogers. I'm an angry ex-employee of a (probable) ex-comic shop. See how clever my name is now?

So, as for the changes?

Paypal/Amazon

I have become a whore. I decided to set up a link to donate via Paypal, and a link to my Amazon wish list because frankly, it's free to do so. I wouldn't want to enter into an agreement that would place pop-up ads or anything that would ruin the site, but I can put two little links up knowing that people can ignore them if they want to. I know the economy is about one coke-fueled Wall Street sneeze away from utter collapse, and that now that school has started back up my posting frequency will be once a month (not really, but maybe), but I figure if someone, some anonymous person out there is doing really well or is secretly an industry person, then if they want to give me even a buck in which to buy a fruit-and-yogurt parfait at Mickey D's, then who am I to stop them? If you, like me, are a broke college student, or a broke family man, or just broke and at the library using free internet... then by all means don't click. But at least the Amazon link will give you some idea of what I'd be reading if I was still reading.

YouTube

I decided to put one foot firmly in anything over the past three years and spiced this blog up. I had been thinking of videos that would connect with my posts somehow. Some of the humor is subtle, as only Heroclix players would get the significance of Rick Ross talking about "pushing it". Not all are music videos, as when I somehow found a video on not getting raped by tentacles, and put it on the post about the girl who probably wanted to get raped by tentacles. I think the ones that I found (and I'm still looking) are pretty awesome, so play away!

Reruns

As time goes by, I remember more about things from the past, and if I've already blogged about them I will go back and add to them. Just my way of expanding this baby out and getting it to a place you might visit again and again. And as I have no method yet of making money or even calibrating visits... know that my intentions are altruistic.

This post looked somewhat awkward for a while as for some stupid reason I could not get the font to work. Also, as previously stated my full semester has started up so start settling in for some long-ass waits. But then again you folks stopped commenting, so how do I even know someone is reading this? Well, BFM will. Hey, BFM! You're one of my BFFs!

Finally, to Derek Coward and Dave Slusher- self-masturbatory totally works. Now, you might not be the two most sexually experienced fellows on the block, but I'll clue you in. If some partner (to be PC) massages you in the bathing suit area, that can be considered masturbating you. Now, if you masturbate yourself, or self-masturbate, you're doing something of no interest to anyone else. Indeed, it is something to get sick over. Unless you're a hot lady. So when comic creators do self-masturbatory stories, they are writing for them, and no one else. I look forward to people barely sitting through my posts. Or fucking themselves. Whichever they might like better.

Actually, that sounded harsh. I'm just giving you shit. Feel free to tear me down on your blogs and twitters and friendfeeds and podcasts all you want. We're all just asshole nobodies on the interwebs anyway. Take it sleazy!

Just for the hell of it. This was funny. Not everything has to connect.

Parade Of Assholes Part Four

Chunk Jr

There once was a boy with no knees. It was pretty messed up. The end.

Chunk Jr was an interesting sort. Evidently he started coming into the shop around the age of ten or eleven. He was short, even for his young age. I know next to nothing about children or their development, so just trust me on this. He was also as wide as he was tall. You know on those talk shows where they interview people in real bad spots? He could've been one of those people. He had to have equaled my weight. He didn't walk, he waddled. He walked like he had no knees. He never wore shorts (thank God) so none of us knew if he literally had no knees, or if he was just so big that his shins buckled under the weight. Point was, wasn't pretty. The owner remembers overhearing Chunk Jr telling his sidekicks that he couldn't feel anything in his legs, and subsequently watched as they all took turns walloping him something Sasha Fierce. He could tell that it hurt him, but damned if he wasn't too proud to admit he lied.

He would come in with his grandmother. By all accounts, she was a saintly lady who doted on him, which was probably to the detriment of Chunk Jr. When you indulge the young'uns, they don't know enough to get off their fat ass, turn off the Playstation and trade in the double cheeseburger for a carrot. I have no idea about his relationship with his parents, but the grandmother would intimate that they didn't really care for him. His parents were big people, but not morbidly obese. He had a somewhat normal sized sister. One of the guys who worked at the shop took a shining to him, Sarcastro actually. This was surprising as up until he got married Sarcastro was as black-hearted and cynical as they come, unafraid of cutting to the quick friend or foe. But yet he would watch out for this little tub. I'm sure he had his reasons, whatever they may be...

Chunk Jr was a weird little kid. A bit "off". He would request comics like Lady Death and Evil Ernie, and when the workers would balk at selling them to him, the grandmother would just come in and pay for them. He liked metal, and would probably be seen as a modern day "hesher" of a sort. I really need to do an urban dictionary update for this. He played D&D, listened to metal, didn't get outside a whole bunch, ate crappy foods, probably got lackluster grades, and basically did everything you stay up all night worrying about your own kids/kids today doing. He seemed to have a decent intelligence, and had a little wit to him sometimes. He even had a group of guys around him to do his bidding. Hell, he had more lackeys than I ever will. He did have a somewhat annoying habit of repeating catchphrases, particularly "feed us, don't eat us", which at the time I swear sounded like "fetus, don't eat us". Neither really makes sense, though the latter gets points for surreality.

I remember one time my two filmmaker friends were at a party for Sarcastro and wondered out loud on his condition, and being surprised that he was even still with us. "Wow. Good for him," seemed to be the reaction. His grandmother eventually passed on, owing us about a hundred bucks for a case of Mech Warrior she bought and took home while only covering part of the cost. Sigh...

He never particularly bothered me, and labeling him as an "asshole" might be a little strong, but that's the category I made for the customers I had. If anything, I kind of worried about him. But not too much. Frankly, I figure he's either alive somewhere leading a much improved but forever hampered life thanks to earlier health problems that might have been preventable, or he's in a very big coffin worrying about other creatures eating him.

Wow that was dark.

Look Back In Apathy: To Live & Die In Comics

This is the blisteringly exciting tale of one of the few times I worked there that somebody started some shit. They didn't know that I wasn't no ho, though.

There was this dad that would come in with his kid, and he forever wanted a bargain. Nothing could be for what it was marked. I've always been fascinated by this. I've always wanted to go into the Golden Arches and say "you know you've got some Big Macs that have been sitting out for a few minutes... how 'bout letting one go for 75 cents, huh?" Or to Best Buy and say "this DVD of Cool Runnings has a dinged corner. You might as well dollar bin it, and you might as well let me pick it out of said bin and buy it for said dollar." Anywho, I remember this guy wanting a deal for the then-white hot Pokemon tins, and the owner let him have one for a few bucks off, but I still charged him tax and got a thrill when I could tell through the miracle of peripheral vision that he furrowed his brow at the amount. He looked normal, a guy in his mid-40s, glasses, with a kid probably around nine or ten.

He came in one day with his kid and looked around, oblivious to the way I crumpled up a piece of paper on seeing him. He took a look at some sort of Pokemon merchandise that for the life of me I can't remember what it was or how much it cost, so we'll just say it was a box of cards and cost $20 each. He said to me as casual as an elevator companion commenting on the weather, "how about doing 2 for $30 on a Friday afternoon?" Okay, there are so many things wrong with this I don't know where to start. One, you are asking me to knock down an item in price. A significant amount. Our profit margins skewed small to begin with. Two, you are asking me to knock down a popular item in price. This wasn't a back issue of Youngblood: Bloodstrike Deathforce edition. This was something that was going to sell out anyways. That's like going into Wal-Mart and saying, "I see you've got some Kevin Costner movies in the discount bin... how 'bout coming down a third on that Nintendo Wii?" You will get your ass kicked by the reanimated corpse of Sam Walton himself. Lastly, what the flying fuck does it being a Friday afternoon have anything to do with it? I'm obviously still at work, you obviously are not. So... why am I in a good and generous mood? Dumbass. Needless to say, I told him essentially "nice try" and he sheepishly admitted he had to try in case it worked.

They looked around and the guy brought up a Pokemon box and I rung him up. He then pulled out a couple of twenties that looked a little odd. Now, I might have had all the attention and care of a heroin addict in a poppy field, but I could spot this from a mile away. Normal money looks (or looked) dark and light shades of green. This looked jaundiced yellow and black. I pulled out this counterfeit pen that we had. If you marked something and it came up clear, it was good to go. Black, and we had a problem. I was supposed to check high bills, mainly hundreds and up. In all my years, nothing had come up black... until now.

I said something on the line of "uhhh, I don't think these are any good." He furrowed his brow and mentioned something about coming directly from the bank. I told him what the counterfeit marker did, and that if he had come directly from the bank then he had better go directly back because they gave him fake money. He pulled out some other money he had (surprise, surprise!) paid, mumbled something and got the Hell out of Dodge. I can't really remember seeing him again, at least with any frequency.

Looking back, it would have been fun to pretend to have to make a call real quick, and dial the cops. Some of you might think that he was a counterfeiter. Maybe not a professional one who makes flawless copies of Benjamins, but someone who tries to make some twenties to pass around local businesses in order to avoid spending his own income, but I honestly don't think that's the case. I think he was just a weaselly guy who got handed some bad money as change somewhere, and then upon finding out tried to pass it off on a gullible comic shop employee. My man just ended up with the play money still on him, less real money and a near heart attack after narrowly avoiding the Secret Service putting a bullet in his ass.