First of all, my wife made a fantastic photo collage for our daughter’s first birthday. I warn you, it’s 16 minutes. I won’t feel bad if you don’t watch…much.

I talked to Robert Kirkman about the 100th issue of Walking Dead, Geoff Johns and Jim Fletcher about DC Collectibles and Steven T. Seagle about Batula. My dude Rickey Purdin did such an awesome job with this Street Fighter piece over on the Sketch Attack job that I want it on my wall.

I enjoyed this Robot 6 interview with Kevin Huizenga.

Rolling Stone posted this 2006 feature about Fall Out Boy talking about them rising to stardom. That’s about the time I started listening to it, so it was fun reading it, especially now that they’ve broken up.

Chris Cornell talked to Rolling Stone recently about the upcoming Soundgarden record and the song they created for The Avengers. I really, really like this James Bond 50th Anniversary poster by Max Dalton (who sounds like a Bond character himself).

Get yourself frozen in Carbonite at this year’s Star Wars Weekend!

I’ve been catching up on every episode of The Nerdist Writer’s Panel which focuses on TV writers, so this THR photo batch about show runners was very interesting. Lots of crossover.

I just heard today that Van Halen cancelled the rest of their tour mysteriously. Glad my dad and I saw them when we did. Anyway, before all that Esquire did interviews with Eddie and Wolfgang Van Halen that I found enjoyable. I love these OMFG figures from October Toys.

I have a lot of ideas for a post about MCA’s passing, but while I’m still organizing all those thoughts, I really enjoyed Perry Farrell’s take on things for Rolling Stone. I am fascinated by that late 80s heavy LA club scene, man.

I’m not what you’d call a Gin Blossoms fan by any means, but I found lead singer Robin Wilson’s very realistic and honest take on the 90s nostalgia that he’s a part of refreshing (via Rolling Stone).

One more Rolling Stone link, Living Colour’s Vernon Reid started a jazz fusion supergroup with Jack Bruce, John Medeski and Cindy Blackman Santana. This makes me VERY excited. Oh goodness, Joao Carlos Vieira’s Spaceman Spiff drawing for Ashcan Allstars was AMAAAAAAAZING.

Wired‘s look at an old school fortune cookie factory was pretty darn interesting.

Neil Marshall is great, so I’m excited that he’s working on something called The Last Voyage Of The Demeter, which is about the boat that Dracula rode in to get from Transylvania! Sounds rad.  (via THR)

I will be studying Esquire‘s list of six summer cocktails, but I’ll probably just wind up drinking strange mixtures of whatever I have on hand.

Oops, here’s one more Rolling Stone link, apparently there’s a whole album of Joey Ramone tracks ready to be released called …ya know? I really like Don’t Worry About Me and of course everything Ramones, so this should be interesting.

Finally, Louis CK has some more awesome stuff on sale for $5, check it out!

I actually had no idea what the book was about. I’d never seen the 2002 Hugh Grant film and picked up the book based solely on Hornby’s name (just like I did with A Long Way Down and Slam), but it turns out that a man named Will — who has lots of money thanks to his dad being a one hit wonder still bringing in money long after his dead — trying to pick up women in a single mother’s support group. Will winds up meeting an unusual 12 year old boy named Marcus when his mom Fiona tries to kill herself and Will happens to be out with Marcus and Fiona’s friend (and will’s target) Suzie. After the event, Marcus keeps his relationship up with Will because he likes how Will has life figured out.

Actually, that’s who the book is about, it’s not really WHAT the book is about. The book is about how we all deal with emotions, truth and the world and how pretty much no one seems to get it right. Will is super rich and therefor has no real problems in his life. He also comes from a family that sounds like it wasn’t loving, so he avoids emotions at all costs, until he’s thrown into Marcus’ life. Fiona on the other hand is the kind of free spirit hippy who makes it seem like she’s teaching her son to follow in her own ways, but without explaining to him how the world might respond to that (by throwing candy at it and stealing its shoes). Marcus is the result of someone with really good intentions who also happens to be incredibly unstable being out in the world and not wanting to bring his problems back to his potentially still suicidal mother. Will’s there to teach Marcus how to fit in and be more normal while Marcus is there to show Will what emotions can do to reality. This opens Will up to finally get in a real, legitimate romantic relationship with a woman named Rachel who has a son with his own set of problems.

That all sounds really heavy and potentially difficult to get through, but it really isn’t. I read this book in a handful of sittings which is impressive for me, but that’s really because Hornby writes in a way that really absorbs me. He absolutely nails that interesting time in a kid’s life where they realize that the world of adults works differently than their own and they try to figure it all out. I realized part way through the book that Marcus is roughly my age. When I realized that, it made the reading experience all the more interesting and also reminded me of another favorite coming of age story The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. The way Hornby calls back to childhood is just amazing, but he also seems to perfectly capture the almost-40 playboy Will in ways that I can partially relate to and will probably be able to relate to even more when I’m a few years older.

And that’s what I really love about Hornby’s books: you get different things from them when you read them at different stages of your life. High Fidelity meant something completely different to me when I read it in high school than it did the last time I did. I think I also got more out of this book now that I’m a dad than I would have if I read it right after picking up Fidelity. I had kind of forgotten what Slam was about, but after going back and re-reading my review of it, I’m sure it would play completely differently now that I’m a dad myself.

One more thing I wanted to talk about in reference to Hornby and his books. First off, there’s a direct reference to Fidelity in Boy when Will finds himself looking around Championship Vinyl. I dug that. But more than just directly referencing his other book, you can see the seeds of his other books in this one (and parts of Fidelity recurring in this one as well). The whole idea of an unusual kid growing up was also the subject of Slam as a boy who talks to his Tony Hawk poster accidentally knocks a girl up. There’s also talk of suicide and even doing it on a holiday which is the starting point for A Long Way Down, which is literally about a group of people who meat on the same building they intend to jump off of. I bet there’s also bits and pieces of How To Be Good and Juliet, Naked in here too, but I haven’t read them just yet. Maybe when I’m done with this year’s Ambitious Summer Reading List.

With the first of 12 books down, I decided to move from fiction to autobiography and read George Hamilton’s book Don’t Mind If I Do which was co-written by WIlliam Stadiem who also helped George Jacobs write his excellent book Mr. S. I started it yesterday and even though I don’t know much about Hamilton, I do find his old Hollywood swagger very engaging and think that this will be a very entertaining book about Hollywood in the same vein as Mr. S. The only downside? All this reading is getting in the way of blogging, so sorry about that.

Longtime readers might remember that I tried to tackle a large stack of classic books for my Ambitious Summer Reading List last year. Well, that wound up spreading into the beginning of this year and wound up not being a whole lot of fun. So, this summer, I wanted to try something different and finally read some of the books that have been sitting under my bed for ages. This is a mix of autobiography, mystery, psychological thriller/horror, slice of life, drama, food, music and just about everything else. I started off with Nick Hornby’s About A Boy (review coming soon because I finished it today), but don’t have an order figured out (last year’s was chronological).

The pile includes another Fletch book by Gregory McDonald (Fletch And The Man Who), Stephen King’s Misery, the aforementioned Boy, an oral history of the punk rock and new wave movements called Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, Anthony Bourdain’s follow-up to Kitchen Confidential called Medium Raw, Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake (I loved her book An Invisible Sing Of My Own), Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon which I know nothing about but liked The Lovely Bones, the latest Diary Of A Wimpy Kid installment which doesn’t really count but I want to finally read it, Steve Martin’s autobio Born Standing Up, actor George Hamilton’s autobiography Don’t Mind If I Do, a book about a band I’ve never heard of called Petal Pusher by Laurie Lindeen and Erik Larson’s historical thriller The Devil In The White City.

It’s a pretty eclectic mix, but also a pretty apt representation of the kinds of books I’ve been wanting to read for a while, found for a few bucks at various places or both. I’m hoping that by choosing books I’m interested in, I’ll stick with them a little better. I also admit that the idea of actually focusing on getting through a dozen of the books I’ve been collecting for more years than I can count and either put them on a shelve (or more likely a box in storage) or give away to someone else. I’d much rather store books I’ve read and liked than ones I’m still waiting to get to.

I’m a gigantic fan of Preacher (see my posts on the subject here, here and here) so I jumped at the chance to read one of their earlier team-ups on Hellblazer from the early 90s. I was also curious to read some of the earlier adventures of John Constantine because, as I’ve said before, I’m interested in the character’s printed history. He’s one of those guys who have been around a long time and always seems to be meeting up with old friends and acquaintances, but if you’re a new reader you don’t know if they were actually in the book or not. This books if fun because, while I can’t remember all the people I was curious about when reading other Hellblazer trades, this one features a lot of Constantine’s friends (many of them former these days, I would guess).

The collection features six issues, the first two and last are one-offs for the most part with the middle three consisting of a full story. In the first, John tracks down a guy selling dark magic stuff to his niece. I didn’t even realize he had a niece or a sister, so that was interesting. The next was my favorite as it found our hero celebrating his fortieth birthday with a lot of the friends I mentioned before. The three-issue arc splits its efforts between following a fallen angel dealing with living on earth and his ousting from heaven while Constantine runs afoul of an evil government group working on some shenanigans. The last one deals with Constantine’s girlfriend leaving him after the events of the previous issues.

While this trade doesn’t really act as a Rosetta stone for the character and any of the questions I might have had about him and his past, it was interesting reading these experiences he had that helped create the mean, sour bastard that’s still kicking around these days. Plus, I am always down for looking at Steve Dillon art, even if he’s not quite as crisp in this as he would become.

Hellblazer: Pandemonium (Vertigo/DC)
Written by Jamie Delano, drawn by Jock

I was also excited when I saw this book written by Jamie Delano who wrote Constantine’s earliest adventures in his solo book. I’ve read a collection or two of his issues and was struck by how literary they were (see my brief review for Fear Machine). A lot of times, if I see too many words on the page, I get tired and don’t feel like reading, but when Delano does that, it winds up being really interesting and, well, literary. I’m not saying Hellblazer comics are up there with Dickens or anything, but you get the feeling that he has some measure of respect for comics to use language that might have been considered too smart for the medium.

Delano does the same with this graphic novel that came out in 2009. I was still impressed with his writing style and how engaging it was, but also how well told this tale was. It hit some notes that I’d seen before, but not in a Hellblazer comic before. He basically gets blackmailed into working for the British government to go check out a demon they have sedated in a prison camp in the Middle East as part of the joint actions by the UK and the US in that area. He’s teamed up with a mysterious woman and we see how the story unfolds with a good deal of deserved twists and turns along the way.

Really making the whole package a lot more fun and interesting for me was the artwork by Jock. That dude really has a rad style that works perfectly in the realm of Hellblazer. For all those reasons — and the fact that this really did feel like a long form comic instead of a collection of issues thanks to it’s pace — I really enjoyed this book and will be keeping it in my collection.

As a kind of post script to this reading experience, I want to talk a bit about trade collecting for just a second. Hellblazer is a book with hundreds of issues and I’ve read a handful of the trades and never in order. As such, I’m curious about reading parts from all times in the character’s history and have bounced back and forth between the idea of keeping the books and getting rid of them. At this point, I’ve Swapped a LOT of them away and probably only have four or five in hand anymore. I wonder if getting them all and then reading them in order would add to the reading experience or if this is such an intense book that it’s better to put it in your brain once and not come back to it. At this point, I think I’ll hold on to the trades for now and try to get the ones I haven’t yet read, but that might all change again. Who knows. I’m flip floppy that way, I guess.

What I liked most about the flick is that it does an excellent job of mixing the feel of other kinds of movies while still feeling like a high school flick. The bully’s size and focus make him feel like a slasher, Jerry’s inability to escape adds to the already present in every high school idea of imprisonment.  The final showdown also felt like a cross between a gladiator flick and a western. Heck, there’s even a heist element to the proceedings.

But, at the end of the day, the film rests on the shoulders of some very interesting characters, Jerry’s a good kid in a bad situation who gets along with his level-headed sister. The two of them have to deal with an absentminded and possibly absent mother. His friends try their best to get him out of trouble, using at least one really good method that winds up backfiring. Some of the teachers are painted in really broad strokes, especially the principal who’s a bit reminiscent of Vader from Rock and Roll High School Forever, but I think that’s a bit forgivable considering the film is told from the POV of a kid in high school who probably doesn’t feel the need to examine his teachers for subtle character beats.

There’s a lot of other bits and pieces about this film that I really liked. There are two scenes at the beginning and the end that weave through different groups of kids talking about different people. Each group operates on one story while we benefit from hearing the whole thing. There’s also an amazing scene with Jerry trying to get detention for smoking and flirting with his teacher during a book report. Legendary stuff.

The most obvious film to compare this one to is obviously My Bodyguard, but I think they’re different animals. That movie has a much different and deeper emotional center that looks at a growing relationship over a good deal of time. This one shows what happens in the one day that a kid has to deal with a bully and examines the lengths he will go to get out of it and what eventually makes him accept his fate and face his enemy. If you like one, I think you’ll like the other so give Three O’Clock High a look on Netflix Instant!

The comic finds Hawkeye traveling around on his bike and running into trouble with some locals. Well, he kind of inserts himself into trouble because he’s a rougeish hero, but you get the idea. Anyway, the comic has a kind of super-powered Road House feel to it as the guy who runs the town also has a few superpowered dudes on the payroll. The issue ends with Clint stocking up with gear at a sporting goods store seemingly ready to take care of things. Seeing as how I love Road House and those movies where the hero walks into a town run by a jerk and helps save the day.

The art didn’t really do it for me as it’s a little undefined and muddy. I get that they’re going for a noir-type feel, but I contend that that is a much more difficult thing to pull off in comics than artists or editors do. It’s not bad art, mind you, though there were a few times I wasn’t sure who I was reading about (the downside of reading out-of-costume superhero comics, I guess). At the end of the day, I really did enjoy this comic. I did a little looking around just now and it doens’t seem like these issues have been collected, so I guess I’ll have to look around for issues if I want to see how it ends (I bet he wins, but it turns out to be just a bit hollow).

Unfortunately, Valiant’s X-O Manowar #18 (1993) by Jorge Gonzalez and Jim Calafiore was the book in this lot that didn’t really do it for me. The long and the short of it is that I had zero idea what was going on in this book and it doesn’t help that it’s the third part in a multipart story. I’m sure it’s important if you’re already a fan of the series, but if you’re a new person like I was, you’ll be mostly lost which is the problem I’ve had with every Valiant comic I’ve come across in The Box so far except last week’s Turok, but that was a first issue.

I do want to talk about the art a bit. I’m a big, big fan of Jim Calafiore’s artwork. He first came to my attention on Peter David’s Aquaman and had a really big effect on me as a comic reader. He was one of the first guys whose style I really noticed and liked. He has a kind of blocky angularity that still looks sleek that really appeals to me. However, in this book, that doesn’t really come through. I’m not sure if he just hadn’t developed his signature look by this point or if he was instructed to stick within the house style of Valiant at the time (which seems to be very basic, “realistic” depictions of people colored in a way that makes everything look a bit light). There were a few panels and faces here and there that I saw him peeking through, but otherwise, it wasn’t the Caliafiore I know and love. By the way, he’s a super nice guy in real life too.

The last comic I read for this week’s installment might have turned out to be the most surprising one in the batch. Crossgen’s Meridian #22 by Barbara Kesel and Andy Smith really surprised me by showing me a world that I really wanted to get invested in. The idea behind this book is that a world has flying pirates and that one girl–who has the Crossgen sigil–leads a group of good guys against marauders and other bad guys. I know there’s more to it than that, but that’s what I remember without going back and reading the entire thing. It actually reminded me a lot of Avatar: The Last Airbender where I was equally as interested in the characters as I was in the world.

This issue itself lets me in on some of the main character’s powers and explains some of her relationships. It’s a great taste of what’s going on. It also has a few ties to the larger Crossgen Universe which I obviously didn’t understand but it wasn’t overly distracting.

I liked the book so much, actually, that I ordered a few used copies of the first two trades from Amazon. I haven’t gotten into them just yet, but I look forward to when I’m done with a few other things I’m reading at the moment. That purchase makes Meridian officially the best reading experience of The Box as far as turning me on to something interesting that I otherwise wouldn’t have read. Thanks again to my pal Jesse for sending it to me!

And that’s pretty much what this game is. You’re Cap from the movie running around World War II kicking ass and taking dossiers. I liked that aspect of the game. The fighting mechanic wasn’t overly complicated — or complicated at all, really now that I think about it — so it was kind of a smash em up which was what I was looking for. There’s even a Super Soldier Sense type vision thing that reminded me of a similar mechanic as the Detective Mode or whatever it was in Arkham Asylum. The problem this time around is that the mechanic made everything yellow-ish, which doesn’t make sense when you realize that the things you’re looking at are in a similar color scheme. You don’t really need it much, so it’s not that big of a deal.

There are other parts, where you hit a particular button at a certain point which launches you through the air to a pole or branch or something you swing from to hit something else. It sounds fun, but it’s actually pretty boring because I never once missed. I feel like I’ve played a game with a similar idea that was executed a lot better, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I wished these were more interesting, I also wished there were fewer parts where you have to jam a certain button over and over. I had trouble with the timing a few times, so I’d screw the finishing kill up, but THEN the enemy would get a certain amount of life back and I’d have to beat on him more. So, basically, you had to do these somewhat complex things just to knock a dumb robot over.

So, no, it wasn’t a perfect game, but I had more fun than frustration with it, so I was happy. My enjoyment level doesn’t always rely on that kind of balance, especially if I’m really looking forward to a game, but I literally went into this hoping to throw shields and punch Nazis. Some of the levels were a little more complicated than they needed to be or the save points were in annoying points, but none of those things were SUPER annoying.

I haven’t been writing as much about TV lately because, basically, I’m tired. Between work and watching our daughter all day, one of the last things I want to do is sit with my laptop and watch television. I actually forgot that I used to write about Big Bang Theory and kind of miss it, so maybe I’ll write about tonight’s episode. Anyway, my absolute favorite show of the season has to be Fox’s New Girl starring Zooey Deschanel (Jess), Max Greenfield (Schmidt), Jake M. Johnson (Nick), Lamorne Morris (Winston) and Hannah Simone (Cece). I’ve realized that almost all of my favorite comedies are based around a group of clever friends in their late 20s/early 30s. You’ve got New Girl, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory and Happy Endings in that group. I guess that’s not so surprising because shows basically revolve around work, friend groups and family groups.

It’s not a coincidence that I myself am in my late 20s/early 30s and happen to be experiencing a lot of the same things that characters on these shows are. It also helps that they’re all really, really well written. There is a distinct line though between the shoes of this ilk that I do enjoy versus the ones that I do not like (I Just Want My Pants Back might skew a little younger, but it’s just too cool for school and it’s own good as far as I’m concerned) is that the ones I like are both clever, but not overly clever and have a heart at the center of them. I don’t just like the characters on New Girl, I’m invested in them. I want Schmidt and Cece to be happy because they’re just so perfect for each other. I want the Jess/Nick relationship to be explored more because I am in love with those characters. I want Winston dig his job because I like him and want him to be successful.

I can also relate to all of these characters on a personal level. I have some of Jess’ naivete somewhere deep inside me, that desire to see the good in everyone. My wife has a professed crush on Nick and I hope it’s because we’re very similar. We’re both Midwestern guys who are at best thrifty, at worst CHEAP who try to fix everything on our own without calling for help, even when it might be detrimental to our mental (and physical well being). Nick’s a lot more crazy than me (I hope), but that’s the huge kernel of truth that are inside both of us. I can also relate to Winston’s fear of finding a job he loves after doing his dream job and essentially failing. Yeah, that’s in my wheelhouse. Schmidt might seem like a d-bag, but he’s really just a scared former fat kid who wants the world to realize how cool he is. I’ve got a bit of that ego in my too. Cece’s a little out of my wheelhouse, but she’s pretty and funny and she and Schmidt work well together, so I’m cool with her.

Okay, so on to the actual season finale. I’ve missed a few of the most recent episodes because our daughter has made Tuesdays that nights she freaks out and wakes up right after being put to bed. So, I didn’t realize that Nick was back with the ex that ruined him because I missed that part and didn’t remember what she looked like. When I did realize that, I was bummed out because don’t we all have friends who just kind of give up and go with whatever is available even when it’s not good for them? As a fan of the show, I also have that part of me that wants to see Nick and Jess together, so having Nick be with this other girl AND moving out of the apartment was kind of heartbreaking.

And it did fool me, but not at first. I figured he would wind up back at the apartment, but then the episode brought me back around to thinking that Nick really was moving out. And then BOOM, it got me! Well played, show, well played. I enjoy the show so much that, now that it’s over, I want to buy the show on DVD or see if it shows up on Netflix Instant so I can watch them all again. I think I might still want to get the DVDs though in hopes that there’s a mountain of extra features on there. I bet the outtakes, bloopers and deleted scenes are pretty damn good.