Colbert vs the Gay Lobby

Advance warning: this is hilarious and a satire, please don't take him too seriously, just laugh at the kind of American he is impersonating.

part 1

part 2

Spirit #12

The new Spirit, that is, not your daddy's spirit. Although with each issue it's proving to be every bit as beautiful, diverse and daring as the original.

This issue was highlighted to me by LYSAD reader Gregory Guity who submitted the third of the following panels for the POTW voting. As I usually tend to go for funny (deliberately or not) panels in the votings, I didn't feel the panel would fit in, and there was this feeling of... something missing from the little one panel story. Having finally read the story today, I've figured you need all three panels to grasp the full strengh of the last one:
The same page offers what could be the essential Spirit panel. It's an acclaim for Darwyn Cooke that he packs such intensity and iconic essence in a single panel of a six-panel grid page, and generally invests so much energy - thought into making every panel in his Spirit comics worthy of framing and studying on a gallery wall.
And since we're in the process of killing bandwidth, a brilliant wallpaper from the issue's opening splash page:


The issue follows The Spirit tracking down his childhood sweetheart Sand who has fallen in with the wrong crowd and become involved in the sale of a new lethal substance. Sand apparently originates from Will Eisner's Spirit stories, and Darwyn Cooke went as far as approximating Eisner's palette and ground-breaking page layouts for the sake of the flashback sequences detailing the story between Sand and Denny Colt.

While the plot feels confined in the single issue format, the story still packs an emotional whallop, culminating in the first three panels in this 'review'. A must read.

9/10

January '08 H-O-T Grade

Each month, the H-O-T Grade is my absolutely subjective view at what you absolutely can't miss reading:


1. Y THE LAST MAN #60 (Vertigo)

2. ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #118 (Marvel)

3. ASTONISHING X-MEN #24 (Marvel)

4. THE SPIRIT #12 (DCU)

5. THE TWELVE #1 (Marvel)

6. THE ORDER #7 (Marvel)

7. UMBRELLA ACADEMY APOCALYPSE SUITE #5 (Dark Horse)

8. CROSSING MIDNIGHT #15 (Vertigo)

9. TEEN TITANS THE LOST ANNUAL (DCU)

10. PROJECT SUPERPOWERS #0 (IDW)

Bendis' Ultimate Spidey is the big surprise this month, starting off the tribute to the Amazing Friends line-up with a light-hearted high-school reunion sort of crossover with every Ultimate title! It still wasn't stellar enough to overthrow the long-awaited conclusion to Y the Last Man, while Whedon's dependably excellent Astonish X-Men closes up the Top Three.

The Order, Crossing Midnight and Umbrella Academy are regular contenders every month, while other faves Wonder-Woman and X-Men were pushed out of the ten by a narrow margin. We'll be talking more about the new arrivals The Twelve and Project Super-powers soon.

BKV - Bristol 2007

In response to Tom Daylight's incessant (albeit justified) year-long nagging, here's Brian K. Vaughan in the photos that will haunt him 10 years down his career:

(source: Bristol Comics Expo May 2007)

Wolverine & The X-Men trailer

from the upcoming new animated series. Looks and sounds at least as good as X-Men Evolution (and is it a direct sequel?), so let's keep our hopes up!

Be Kind Rewind and Rewind and Rewind and...

It's the new movie by Michel Godry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), about two guys reshooting every movie in the video store themselves after they were accidentally magnetically erased.

Here is the movie's excellent trailer, starring Jack Black

and here is Michel Gondry reshooting the trailer by himself after the original copy was destroyed:

Can you actually make a meta comment on meta comments? Won't this affect the worldwide psychic balance of the population?

Why I Want to be a Writer!

The Writer's Life, according to Scott Lobdell:



Sign me up!