Walking on the Moon

Many comic readers have an unfortunate soft spot for the amazingly bad Super-Hero Hostess Fruit Pie Ads that ran in 70’s and 80’s super hero books.  Wacky trickster Mike Sterling has led me to an enormous collection of them.  Life is good.

This will be a couple weeks’ worth. I’ve been busy…

• Jungle Girl #1 – OK, I’m only human. It was a Frank Cho cover and it promised jungle girls and dinosaurs. And it more or less delivered: it’s full of half-dressed women, dinosaurs, and a land that time forgot. But I’ve seen a lot of lands that time forgot, and this one didn’t grab me as something new. And Frank Cho’s only doing the covers. And I have a full run of his Shanna the She-Devil. I’ll pass on the rest of this. (If you haven’t seen a land that time forgot, you might want to have a look and tell me what you think.)
• Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #1 – Again, I have an uncontrollable weakness for the Freedom Fighters. One of the first Justice League issues I read was the Earth-X crossover that restored them to DC continuity, and I’ve always thought they were interesting for fanboy reasons. I picked up an issue or two of the recent mini-series and kind of shrugged it off. I just can’t leave it alone, though. This has the look of an interesting long underwear story and I’ll probably hang on to see how it goes.
• The Flash #232 – Two issues in and this still hasn’t caught fire for me. The art is gorgeous, but static, which clashes with the speed that’s essential to the title. Worse, the plot’s dragging; these aliens seem like the kind of low-power menace that Wally should be able to polish off in an issue, we’re headed for issue three, and these vaguely tasteless critters are still on the scene. C’mon Mark, find the gas.
• Will Eisner’s The Spirit #10 – I seem to have missed 9. Grrr. This is a pretty reasonable heav-handed satire (in the Spirit tradition of heavy handed satire). The story is a little cramped, in that the various suspects and victims all ran together a bit for me, but even glossing over the plot details, I enjoyed the story. Another enjoyable Spirit romp. Where’s my number 9?
• Captain America #30 – Brubaker’s tense narrative is reaching a climax – Bucky in the hands of the Skull (and he kicks around Sin and Crossbones like the second stringers they are)! SHIELD finally catching up with the Skull’s machinations! Drama centered on Cap’s legacy (in more ways than one)! It’s tough to wait the month between issues. This is a great character-based action series.

It doesn’t sound like much of a contest: bird vs 737.  Have a look at some bird strike pictures.

I spent my morning driving fence posts into some very hard ground.  You’re all welcome.

See?

Over at the Onion’s AV Club, Nathan Rabin has been putting on an amazing show with his feature My Year of Flops. The premise is simple as it is misleading: every week, twice a week, Rabin posts a detailed review of a film that was a box office disaster. So far he’s something like 35 weeks into the year and I think I understand what he’s up to. I’m a slow learner.

If you read a few, you’ll see that he’s doing an admirable job regularly posting humorous, pop-culture-riddled, light essays about some of the worst, most unusual, or plain crazy images and sounds committed to film. He’s engaging, energetic, funny and thoughtful. His audience has been receptive and vocal – the comments section is a delight to read.

Sounds like any goofy blog on the Internet. He’s picked a weird thing to write about and is doing it with elan. But that’s not really what’s going on here.

Nathan Rabin is putting on the most masterful criticism exhibition I’ve seen in some time. He’s doing the critical equivalent of playing a dozen simultaneous blindfolded chess games. He’s deliberately analyzing films that audiences met with indifference – the worst possible reaction to an artist – and finding something interesting to say about each and every one of them. Extracting and inspecting inspiration – even flawed inspiration – from art that the masses have dismissed with a shrug showcases the essence of a critic. It’s a remarkable way to showcase criticism as an art form, not to mention Rabin’s considerable powers in the area.

It would be one thing to lay down a dry analysis of these uniformly flawed films; Rabin is presenting careful, erudite analysis of these with the jaunty air of a world class raconteur holding forth. His infectious enthusiasm is addictive. Even though I know what’s coming, after I read each one I’m ready to sign up with the Boys’ Band (or buy a monorail). And when the dust clears, I realize he’s slipped some intellectual challenges into my pocket while I was laughing at his in-jokes.

It’s a perfect communication of the passion and insight that Rabin brings to criticism. Come on along and enjoy with the rest of us who are hooked.

I think of cholera as the sign of a failing society in the 21st century. We understand how to avoid it, and the requirements for doing so amount to basic sanitation. It’s a big failing for us as a species that we continue to lose people to it.

Of course, cholera has returned to Iraq.

Bruce Schneier points to a post from Eric Urmansky about how terrorism and our reaction to it is putting Iraq back into the 19th century.

Another weird thing in LA: mold-sniffing dogs.

My review of Ralph Steadman’s The Joke’s Over is up at Bell, Book and Candle.

The End of the Line is a photo essay about Bangledeshi salvage of supertankers that has been making the rounds with good reason. Have a look. Amazing quote: “The scrap metal stripped off these vessels supplies 80 percent of Bangladesh’s steel.”