This week in comics (03/23/2011)

Every week or so, I stop by my local comic book store and pickup an assortment of what has been fairly recently released. I don't pretend to be an expert, often my choices are very subjective and I'm rarely enthusiastic. Why do I keep doing it? Because occasionally I strike gold. Let's get on with this week's selection.

Li'l Depressed Boy #1: This first issue promptly sold out and was sent back to press for a second printing to be released March 23. I'll admit, I knew nothing about it and picked it off the shelf without even thinking or opening it. Clearly the selling point was the cover. Checking the first print, I understand why I overlooked the original run.

This does nothing for me but make a John Cusack/"Say Anything" reference and you've got me! Yes, I am that shallow.

Li'l Depressed Boy, a not too distant relative of Sackboy, meets a yet to be named girl at the local dinner. They talk video games, meet again at the laundromat then go out on a date and kiss. The end... at least for this first issue. Throughout the pages, pop culture references abound with a predilection for music and video games and on the surface this story of boy meet girl could be dismissed as a knock-off of Scott Pilgrim but not so fast!

Sina Grace's art and S. Steven Struble's coloring could not only be more completely different from Bryan Lee O'Malley but Li'l Depressed Boy is not so much about the destination as it is about the journey. It's a sum of subtle life moments we can all (or most of us anyway) relate to.

Look familiar? I thought so, we've all been there. If you've clicked on the page above you now know what I ignored until doing some research for this post, Li'l Depressed Boy is a web comic and the published first issue starts here but I don't think I'll read it online because I enjoyed it enough I want these guys to make money if I can help it. I'll keep buying the print version.


Issue #2 was published March 9, #3 will be released April 13.


LI'L DEPRESSED BOY #1 (DEC100434), a 32-page full-color comic book for $2.99, published February 9, 2011 (second print March 23, 2011). Published by Image Comics, the comic is available online at www.lildepressedboy.com.

Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth #1: Axe Cop like Li'l Depressed Boy is a web based comic that made it to print with a couple of significant differences. This three issues mini-series is an original story never published on the website or anywhere else for that matter and the online stories have already made it to print last January with Axe Cop Volume One 

It is the somewhat unique product of two brothers' work. The pencils, inks and lettering are by Ethan Nicolle and the story is by his kid brother Malachai who happens to be 6 year old. Added to this dynamic duo for colors is Dirk Erik Schulz, German comic artist who's only Internet presence appears to be on DeviantArt.

I had a couple of concerns going in.  First I was worried I might suffer from Axe Cop fatigue. A comic written by a 6 year old can easily be a one trick pony and second it's the first Axe Cop in color. I was quickly reassured on the colors front. Dirk Erik Schulz plays off a nice beige/brown/green pallet with some deep blues and purples for the bad guys and flashes of red when things blow up.

 
On the story front however, it took me more time to warm up. It makes as much sense as it ever did. Axe Cop hangs out at a restaurant with his partner Dinosaur Soldier (he used to be flute cop, read the web comic, I promise it's great!) when a planet appears in the sky. Our heroes have a hunch it's a bad guy planet but need to take a picture of it to take it back to the lab for analysis. All of this would be easy if only the real cops stopped hassling Axe Cop at every corner. The story started a little slow for my personal taste or maybe I was missing the punch in the face/WTF effect of the first web comic but from the point Wexter the T-Rex shows up it turns completely mad and I was laughing out loud in the subway reading it. They've also managed to strike the right balance regarding the previous adventures of Axe Cop. Having read them is not necessary to enjoy or understand this comic but it makes it a more enjoyable experience if you have with the inclusion of familiar characters like Uni-Man (I'm hoping we'll see the return of Uni-Baby at some point) and recurring gags like the cat suit Axe Cop wears when he goes out at night.


I loved these news adventures of Axe Cop and I'm sad thinking that it will only be for a limited run of 3 issues.

Issue #2 will be published April 6, #3 will be released May 4. 

AXE COP: BAD GUY EARTH #1 (76156818445700111), a 32-page full-color comic book for $3.50 published March 2, 2011  Published by Dark Horse Comics, and other Axe Cop adventure are available online at www.axecop.com.

Ghostbusters Infestation #2: Let me start by saying I didn't particularly like the first issue so why did I come for seconds you might ask? Well for one thing I'm an optimist, I thought it might get better. That wasn't a baseless crazy notion mind you, this mini-series is part of a larger Infestation cycle and I quite enjoyed their spin on Star Trek but didn't bother with the Transformers and G.I. Joe stories. I never cared for Transformers (too old I suppose) and I played with G.I. Joe's as a kid ("Action Joe" in France) but was never into the comics or animated series. I still find the Fenslerfilm take on the old PSA ads hilarious though but I digress.


What is it about? The premise of the entire series is a crossover of known franchises (Star Trek, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Ghostbusters) with zombies. This is how it is introduced: "In a different dimension, a zombie hive-mind takes over the body of a covert vampire soldier code-named Britt. Aiming to spread the zombie apocalypse to all dimensions using magically enhanced technology. Britt is able to open portals to four different dimensions before she is stopped." Whatever, zombies are fun.   


The artwork is by Kayle Hotz, a 20 years veteran who has worked for DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse and IDW. It's pretty good and I suspect his work on The Zombie and Man-Thing landed him this gig. It is also well served by Dan Brown's colors another veteran in the industry so it's clear that IDW brought some  professionals on board and if the artwork is not mind blowing it's really good.

The artwork is not the issue here, Erik Burnham's writing is. The first issue felt like a lot of laborious exposition and technobabble but I hoped that it was to get it all out of the way and move to some serious action. I was mistaken. This second issue goes for more of the same. By page 6, I didn't even want to try to understand why the villainess from another dimension, Britt, wanted the Ghostbusters to capture some of the Destructor's essence. Even now, I'm not even sure why it mattered.


Oh well.


Ghostbusters Infestation #2, a 32-page full-color comic book for $3.99 published March 23, 2011 by IDW.


In other news, I have ordered from Amazon the Finder Library: Volume 1 and the Deluxe edition of Starstruck. I'll be impatiently waiting by the door now.
  

Free Music from Spin.com, April issue

I decided to celebrate Houdini's 137th birthday with an epic magic trick: Free music! Fine, It's not really magic or epic since Spin magazine has been doing it every month but still, it's free music so what are you waiting for?

Besides featuring Starfucker which explain the Lichtenstein-esque image above, it also has French Band Yelle's addictive song "Safari Disco Club". A music video well worth checking.

Expires April 30, 2011

Doctor Who news roundup

Pictured above is the Prospect Heights bar, The Way Station featuring a TARDIS as their bathroom. How cool is that?

Kate Beaton of "Hark! a Vagrant" fame posted a hilarious Doctor Who comic even though to her own admission she has never seen the show.

Doctor Who experience opened in London last Sunday and will run until May 29. Sadly, I don't see any possibilities of making it.

Nicholas Courtney who appeared in Doctor Who over the span of 4 decades as Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart passed away this week. Here is his obituary at The Guardian.

And finally to end on a positive note, according to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, BBC Worldwide has announced a Doctor Who MMO developed by indie game company Three Rings, best of all, it would be free to play! I couldn't find any trace of the announcement on the BBC website but on the homepage of the Three Rings website:

“One of our less secret projects is a recently announced Doctor Who online world that we're jolly excited about!”

Phew! That will be enough Doctor Who for now.

SiriusXM Internet Radio timeout, a simple workaround

SiriusXM offers their radio stations online on a browser based interface for an additional $2.99/month. Great! What is not so great is the timeout for inactivity after 90 minutes or so. In other words if you are not interacting with the player's window for a period of an hour and a half, the music stops playing.

There's a slew of third party applications out there but all of them stopped working when SiriusXM redesigned their website on February 4.

I've seen suggestions out there to use AutoMouseClicker but it works only for a while as SiriusXM will still log you out after a while so I went back to third party applications to see if one of them had an update that would work and found XMTuner. The GUI is very basic but it seems so far to be doing what it is suppose to do with at least one cool feature.

All you really need to do is enter your XM or Sirius username and password (make sure to check the "autologin" box), the channels allowed on your subscription will then populate the channels window. Right-click on a channel and hit play. You're done.

I suppose where this piece of software really shines is for an application I don't need it for at all; it can serve SiriusXM radio to other computers and devices on a network. It can even convert the stream to other audio formats like wav or mp3 if you install the third party application TVersity.

As of today, this is the best solution I've found. I thought it was worth sharing.

Star Wars news roundup

Demo for LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars just landed on XBox Live and since we are talking about LEGO Star Wars, take a look at this nifty ad campaign created by students of the Cuca Escola de Criativos.

Brought to you by Holy Cool, 15 cool stuff every Star Wars fan must have. Sadly, the cufflinks were a unique set and were already sold by the time I got to the Etsy page. [Update: I was able to buy another set from the same vendor]

Finally, Lucasfilm Animation is having its 3rd annual benefit art auction this week with some pretty cool items put on the auction block like the LEGO Ahsoka at the top of this post.

Happy Presidents' Day!

New John Williams recording available!

A first recording of this Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was released 10 years ago on the Treesong album. This welcome new recording is the second of three exclusives with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra directed by Leonard Slatkin. The first release back in October was a Horn Concerto requiring some comparison shopping. Currently the best option is on iTunes at $4.99 with an exclusive phone interview of John Williams and Leonard Slatkin.

For this Concerto for Violin & Orchestra however, Amazon is the way to go at $5.99 in MP3 format, encoded at an average variable bitrate of 224 kbps. iTunes is at $9.99 with no exclusive or bonus content.

This album is available in the U.S. only.

The summer of all bores

Looking at the list of movie releases this summer, I have the same sinking feeling I had back in May of last year when I saw the fall TV season lineup, that little voice whispering in my ear there's nothing there for me.

It's tempting to blame it on aging but before I dropped cable, I faithfully watched 8 seasons of 24, 6 seasons of LOST, 4 seasons of Battlestar Galactica and I still watch Mad Men. The same goes for summer movies. I was looking forward to Iron Man 2, Toy Story 3 and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World last year and was curious about Robin Hood, the A-Team and The Last Airbender (So much for curiosity, I want those hours of my life back!). It's not like I'm sitting here  remembering how much better movies and TV series were in the 80s. My point is, I like independent, smart, brainy movies but I also like when things blow up. Yet, this year's offering from Hollywood leaves me completely cold with the exception of Harry Potter. I have some mild interest in X-Men First Class, Super 8 and possibly Cowboys and Aliens  but besides that, my opinion on these movies range from laughable to offensive.

I never want to see another Transformers or Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Thor, Captain America and Green Lantern don't even pass the giggle test, even Pixar had to go with a sequel of their only movie I don't particularly care for: Cars.

I guess I'll catch up on reading and watch Game of Thrones.

Free Music from Spin.com, March issue

This nice feller here is Darwin Deez, one of 19 artists featured in this month's playlist from Spin.com. It's free, it's legal.  Thank you spin!

Expires March 31, 2011

Time to hit the history books America!

According to a Gallup poll released yesterday, Americans appear to be under the impression Ronald Reagan is the greatest U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln coming second 5 points behind.

I had difficulties believing the results at first but looking at historical scholar rankings on Wikipedia, Ronald Reagan seem to have been consistently climbing in the ratings since the beginning of the 21st century. Now, I could start a lengthy post about the issues I have with his presidency and what I consider inflated claims by today's conservatives but what would be the point? I'll instead take a quick look at some of his predecessors.

John F. Kennedy: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Space Race.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: The Interstate Highway System.
Harry S. Truman: The Marshall Plan, the founding of the United Nations and the use of the atomic bomb on Japan.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: The New Deal, Social Security. World War II.
Theodore Roosevelt: Youngest President at 42, instrumental in the completion of the Panama Canal, first American to win a Nobel Prize with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese war.
Thomas Jefferson: The separation of Church and State, the Louisiana purchase
Abraham Lincoln: the Civil War, the Gettysburg address, the abolition of slavery.

And if none of these mattered, George Washington who as the first President of the United States defined the presidency as we understand it today.

I'm not implying Ronald Reagan had no accomplishments during his terms in office but what exactly did he do that easily tops putting a man on the moon, abolishing slavery, leading the nation through the greatest war the world has ever known or through a civil war? What gut wrenching decision did he take that came remotely close to the use of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or writing a response to Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile crisis?

This poll shows a terrible contempt for history and I find it troubling.

Flashkus thumbdrives

I love the idea of media storage being beautiful yet highly disposable.

Art Lebedev Studio via Today and Tomorrow.

Tintin by Moebius

Moebius, Giraud

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (born May 8, 1938[1]) is a French comics artist. Giraud has earned worldwide fame, not only under his own name but also under the pseudonym Moebius. He is the creator of Blueberry.

He said about Hergé:

"Drawing comic strips is repetitive, mechanical work that naturally leads to the development of artistic tics. Few authors can escape this process yet Hergé, thanks to the fact that he managed to create such a far-reaching work, managed to free himself from it entirely. On the other hand an artist like Franquin, despite his obvious genius, represents the archetype of someone in the grip of this artisitic mechanisation."

« La bande dessinée est un art répétitif mécanisant qui amène forcément la création de tics. Peu d’auteurs échappent à ça. Hergé parce qu’il avait réussi à créer une œuvre tellement aboutie, a pu s’en dégager totalement. Mais pour Franquin, par exemple, qui, aussi génial soit-il, représente vraiment l’archétype du dessinateur pollué par la mécanisation ».

(Source : Vincent Bernière, Moebius, le double Je, Beaux-arts, n°209, octobre 2001, p.74)

Via.

All your base are belong to us

10 years ago today, All your base are belong to us was posted at Newsground starting what would become one of the first classic Internet meme.

John Williams is back in town!

For a night at the movies with the New York Philharmonic. Woohoo! Tickets are on sale now and cost between $75.00 and $295.00.

The Hobbit media conference

The press conference was held yesterday in Wellington. This is the full video. Via.

John Williams news roundup

John Williams is featured in Andrew Zuckerman's book and documentary Music.

So are a few other artists I care about like Danny Elfman, Philip Glass or Joe Jackson. The book is $7.29 on amazon (a $50 value) and includes a download code for the documentary.

A little more Williams in the "Behind the Scenes" video.

In other news, John Williams' Horn Concerto is now $4.99 on iTunes or about half price from when it was originally released back in October. I'm sure glad I waited on that one!

Finally, producer extraordinaire Mike Matessino gives a new interview about John Williams to Pop Dose.

“On a more controversial side, Williams has been believed by some to be too “influenced” – they’ll cite Holst’s “Mars, The Bringer Of War” as a direct relative of “The Imperial March.” Now, quotation has always played a part in film composition, so is it fair to level that charge against Williams?

Musicians use existing music the way painters use existing colors; they just look for interesting ways to blend them. I don’t think it’s fair to criticize the Star Wars scores for their musical influences since the whole point was to bring a mythical, archetypal quality to the proceedings while recapturing a feeling of an earlier era of the movies. Williams reached into the collective unconscious, probably by seeing what pieces of music came up in his own mind, and then evoked them in what he was writing in his usual deft manner. In this way, the package sort of becomes clearly marked and when the audience is (perhaps unconsciously) reminded of Holst then he or she looks at the movie differently… Star Wars becomes something no longer about the Empire and the Rebellion but about every war between good and evil ever fought or that ever will be fought. Williams really hit the ball out of the park with Superman in this way… he didn’t just score the movie, he score the myth itself. You can’t do that without reaching back into past expressions of this idea.”

Steampunk Palin

This was an instant buy. :)

This product saved me $600

I dropped my HTC Incredible and shattered the screen. I was informed by Verizon that I had the extended warranty but not the insurance. Their suggestion? Buy a new one at full retail price or $599.99... Right...

I'll be honest, I am technically inclined and it still made me nervous to take my phone apart even with those handy instructions: [...]

It took me a couple of hours but I was able to take it apart, replace the screen and put it back together. Words of advice:

. If you're all thumbs, have someone else do it.

. Make sure to disconnect ALL ribbon cables before removing the motherboard. Be especially mindful of the small ribbon cable going through the track-pad's hole.

. You will spend most of your time removing the glued-on shattered glass from the frame so you'll want to have a waste basket near by and possibly a small vacuum.

I rated the product 4 out of 5 stars because of the lack of adhesive to hold the screen in place. Clear double sided tape works fine but I still feel it should be included.

Nevertheless my phone works flawlessly and looks like out of the box for $35 and a couple of hours of work instead of $600.

What more can I ask for?

Review posted at amazon.com

First notable album of 2011: Abigail Washburn, 'City Of Refuge'

The album has been available to listen for free on NPR since December 26 but will not be released until January 11 on amazon and iTunes. I'm not what you would call a bluegrass or even a country music fan but Abigail Washburn's Janis Joplin voice and the Chinese influences in her music makes it a totally enjoyable listening experience.

I highly recommend it.

Happy New Year!

From Jean-Pierre Melville's "Le deuxième souffle"