Don’t worry, Bloggers: at the end here comes a great bloated garish Santa.
Boy, I have been working on this for a while.
Hope you like it when it gets here!
Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
Where You And I Will Be Spending The Rest Of Our Lives
Published September 22, 2009 Uncategorized 3 CommentsHola, Bloggers. Just wanted you to know what was coming up in the next two weeks or so, here on “A Trout In The Milk”…and, “TBH” (as the Brits say) wanted to make sure I remembered it all myself…
So here’s what’s in the pipeline:
1. Indiana Jones and the Comforters of Job: or as you might call it, “House” 101.
2. Sex, Psychedelics, and the Single Superhero: BIFF! BAM! Classics Illustrated presents the works of D.H. Lawrence, now with extra fannish genital-strapping.
3. Im In Yur Wheelhouse, Reding Yur Seaguy: a response to Sean Witzke, four months late.
4. I’m Bruce The Shark, Dig-A-Lig-A-Lig-A-Lark: “Jaws” as the first great SF comedy movie. And this will be a MEME, people…!
5. “You Can’t Script This!”: in which Plok gets PLONED, DUDE…!
And further on into the fall, these titles too:
Forgotten Comics: Fantastic Four
The Importance Of Being Victor Borge
Death Wish For QWERTY
The People You Fleece In Dreams
…And a couple I can’t reveal just yet, but I hope to have it all done by January, in time to clear the decks for whatever new obsession Panel Madness is bound to mutate into this February. Sean W. will tell you I’ve been beating my brains out about what it should be…forgetting that the last time it all came in as pure starlit inspiration, and so it’ll have to come in that way again this time around, if it’s to work as well as the last one did.
In other words, you can’t force it!
But now, folks…I left three posts out, of all that list. Two ought to be obvious for people who’ve been reading along for six months or so…and one is newer, but obvious if you just think about it.
First one to name all three gets RAB’s home address for purposes of Hallowe’en pranking!
Or, if RAB gets it first…he gets to pick one of YOU for the same thing!
Oh, let a hundred flowers bloom.
(And by the way, I just want to point out: over on Geoff’s blog, Andy the Fourth World reviewer may’ve said some things I don’t agree with, but you know what else he said? That “The Pact!” was awesome.
I got really excited about that. Because often we’re all coming from different places, different perspectives (maaaan): but it cheered me immensely when he said “I care about Izaya now!”, and with the “Darkseid Thing” looming, I just wanted to acknowledge his great reading of that crucial story. I think Kirby would’ve been pleased to see that even if everything else in his saga lost affect over the years, that story’s still got the power to move people. Because that was a really personal one, eh?
That, and “The Death-Wish Of Terrible Turpin!”
…And while I’m here I’d also like to say what no one else seems to be saying, and God knows why they aren’t (WHAT THE HELL!?!): that David Aja’s MAGNIFICENT story in Daredevil #500 has a wonderful callback to Krigstein’s “Master Race” in it. I think that guy reads his Eddie Campbell. Honestly I truly and sincerely could GIVE A FUCK about Matt Murdock: “Daredevil” at this point…I am not interested in reading any more Miller-derived DD stories EVER. Just don’t care about ‘em. No Kingpin story is ever going to match “there is no corpse”, in words or pictures…no story of DD going through the belly of the beast is ever going to touch Mazzucchelli. It’s honestly time to move on. It is.
Except I LOVE!!! David Aja’s work, there. And if you see what I mean, it makes me not give a shit about the story. The story could just be random typings. I don’t disparage Ann Nocenti, she was my very favourite Assistant Editor for God’s sake, I wanted her to move up to full-on scripting…but in terms of old tired mood, old tired atmosphere, old tired post-Miller DD…I think Aja shows the way, and the script could easily just be “jkjlthbgfkktessweh…kklenxbatyejfndfi…!!!”. And if it’s going to be done, then bloody well DO it. This is Marvel’s “Batman And Robin”, and it has a nice awareness of influence…and now it’s over, which is a shame.
…But oh Lord, how I do go on.)
This is embarrassing. I hit the wrong button.
Damn it!
Click in haste, repent at leisure. Honestly, one of these days that post is gonna make it up, and stay up.
Gah!
That post isn’t dead, in other words; it’s just sleeping. Needed a bit of refinement.
It’ll be back before long.
Man, I’ll tellya: sometimes this apartment’s like a trap. So many things to not do, and so little time to not do them in…wandering around in a…well…
However I will very shortly be on the hop, and then I think we’ll start to see some action. Got a post I wrote yesterday pretty much lined up and ready to go…a post I began on Friday trickling down soon after, I trust. Though it may take a little while longer for that one, because it’s all about how I finally laid my hands on all of Seaguy 2, and then scoured the Internet for commentary, but then got tired and went to bed.
Spine-tingling stuff!
Okay, time to jump. More directly, Internet.
Okay, Bloggers…rather stressful time these days at Chez Plok, so I’ve decided to blow off steam in the most ridiculous and most extravagant way possible, that is on the Internet. That is, I want you all to tell me who your favourite comic-book characters are, and why, and how come you love them…but, you know, I’m not looking for the answer “Spider-Man”, right? I’m looking for the characters that grabbed you personally, that made you feel like you were represented in this fantasy world, and not forgotten. Don’t say “The Thing”…he’s everybody. Heck, I’d say the Thing too..
But it wouldn’t be accurate…
Because I’m Vance Astro in Steve Gerber’s Guardians Of The Galaxy. Peevish. Intelligent. Lucky. Lovable. A dick. Kind of a stumbling fool. Always fucks things up for himself, somehow. Key to everything; but kind of a dumbass.
That’s me.
Who’s you?
Why, hello there…!
I’ve been busy. With “a mighty work upon the anvil”, as Hume said of Smith. Actually, two. Well…three. Pulling ten-hour days at the keyboard with the flu, secret projects, attempts to get paid, a starved wish to one day get back to the ever-dwindling clutch of stories I feel sure will one day provide a tiny annuity…if they don’t get staledated by the march of time, first. Also: comic scripts.
Comic scripts!
And songs for three albums, one with a brand-new (sort of) writing partner. And It’s all very exciting, but I have no time: as well, I still owe you Bloggers a Dark Knight review, two Games, and in the other room of this apartment sits a computer languishing, languishing, waiting one day to be hooked up…and the place is a mess, to boot.
And, my vacuum’s broken.
And I can’t find any clean socks.
So, pretty much business as usual, then. One good thing is that I’ve managed to stop writing about Dollhouse…because I don’t believe there’s much point writing about it anymore. Look, here was a very interesting situation where Joss Whedon wrote a show that…well, who knows what it might’ve been, but he wrote a show that simply couldn’t bear up under the kind of interference that he ought to know damn well Fox TV is prone to dole out. I thought it might’ve been his Questor Tapes, but it’s turned out less than that…I thought this might’ve been Whedon 3.0 we were going to see, but the fact is we’ll never know. Five episodes of nuttin’ in a twelve-episode run is a hell of a hurdle to overcome, and the question was only really “can he pull this dogshit into some kind of shape, or can’t he”, not “will this make it over the goal line”. Well, as it turned out he could pull it into some kind of shape, and he did, but it’s really too late now anyway, and besides it’s cancelled. So, what’s the maximum good outcome here? I guess that would be if the remaining episodes just threw caution absolutely to the winds, having nothing to lose, and just simply tried to burn a hole in my brain with something I’ve never seen before, never expected and never even knew I wanted. Something over-the-top mindblowing, a final highlight-reel go-to-hell goal, you want to see a messed-up science-fictional concept put on a TV screen I’LL SHOW YOU ONE…but though I’ll confess I don’t know beans about how they make TV shows, I think I’d be willing to bet that that’d be not only a Herculean task, but probably a Sisyphean one as well. He’s actually, if you look at all the little bits and pieces of dangling threads form episodes one through five, done a quite remarkable job of making sense from a lot of stuff I thought was just about beyond sense-making…there is really somewhere this show could potentially go, now…except there are only three episodes left, and the story hasn’t even really properly started yet, and so what do you do? I feel for the guy, and I’m definitely going to watch it through to the end because you never know…but there may not be much left to say, here.
But in other news…Seaguy 2 came out. My God, can you believe it? Something Nina Stone said struck me about this: she found it impenetrable.
And, on careful reexamination…wow, that’s just what it is!
Now this is a real testament to the Morrison/Stewart team, because who knew — WHO KNEW?! — that all that Seaguy 1 stuff would’ve so efficiently downloaded itself into my brain that I now just automatically go “yup, Am Dek Eye…Walt Disney, The Prisoner, and Crisis On Infinite Earths…xoo milk and monkey butter and half an animal on a stick, all perfectly straightforward stuff, nothing to wonder about, here…” Once, I blinked at Teknostrich. But no more. This stuff’s become natural to me. Good job, lads!
Hmm, lessee…what else can I talk about, as cover for slipping away from work…
Well, maybe I’ll just go away and try to think of something.
Posting to resume shortly.
Out of a group of 150, I’m at 61, and Chris Sims is at 146.
I am not quite understanding that, am you?
I mean they seem to be saying that the closer to #1 you are, the more…
…I don’t know, BORING you are?
You tell me. I don’t understand these linkables at all. It’s for money, I guess?
Christ, to imagine there’s sixty whole people on the Internet who’re more boring than me…!
Clearly, I’ve got to up my game.
Stayin’ up to watch Barack…I should really be in bed, but it’s just too much like when I was a kid, and my parents would haul me out of bed at four in the morning to watch a rocket go up.
Also it gave me a chance to watch TDK again — a very curious concoction on second viewing! — and also to get that first Mindless Ones interview up, I don’t know if you noticed but it’s really quite lengthy.
Okay, coffee and muffins. …Where are my dress pyjamas?!?
An interview with the Mindless Ones…!
The thing we call “Panel Madness Week”…!
The Blog-Game of Mike Loughlin (sounds sinister, don’t it?)…!
And the annual Entry Into February…celebrated as usual by my inability to keep my gums from flapping. If the beer’s not ready for bottling, I’m afraid you’ll just have to drink it out of the bucket.
Welcome Holly; swift recovery RAB; RIP McGoohan.
