Guns work here. Magic works there. Sketches work everywhere.

Courtesy of Johnny Bacardi, who recently took requests for a sketch meme on his blog, here is the finished product of my request: GrimJack (of course!).


Very, very cool. Thanks, JB!

Dave Campbell is neither a camp nor a bell. Discuss.

Please join me in welcoming back to the world of non-profit blogging Mr. Dave Campbell, whose new blog is called, modestly enough, The Society for the Advancement of Dave.

To give you a quick f'rinstance of what you might expect to find there, one of his first posts declares the Greatest Christmas Song Of All Time to be a tie between Andy Williams and the Pogues. Enjoy!

Separated at birth?

MO WILLEMS, children's book author and creator of my niece's favorite book, Knuffle Bunny, and...


DORIAN WRIGHT, author of my niece's second-favorite blog, Postmodernbarney.com.

At the very least, I think they shop for facial hair at the same store.

Both pictures found at Bully's blog, by the way, as though you couldn't guess.

I want Daddy to go away on a trip

For today, a link to another site you will enjoy: Tiny Art Director. It's a blog recording the pictures an artist has made for his daughter, and her scathing rejections of them.

Por ejemplo, the tiny art director requests a drawing of a monkey:


Her critique: "Stupid ugly angry monkey. I hate him."

This site is a bundle of cuteness in an adorable wrapper. (Though it might make you happy you don't have such a harsh critic living with you!) It gets to where you want to cheer when the daughter actually accepts a drawing. Check it out.

Why would women talk about anything other than men, anyway?

Inspired by Johnny Bacardi (who was inspired by elsewhere), I want to take a crack at this meme-type thing regarding women in film.

It involves the not-at-all pretentiously named Bechdel-Wallace test, which assesses how inclusive a film is towards women. In order to pass, a film must contain:

1) At least two named female characters,
2) ... who have a conversation,
3) ... which is not about a man.

So the deal is, pick five of your favorite films. How do they fare in the Bechdel-Wallace test? My suspicion is not very well. Let's see!

Johnny already did Citizen Kane (FAIL), so I'll start with...

1. Casablanca: The film has three named female characters, Ilsa, Yvonne, and Annina (the woman trying to get an exit visa from Renault), but I don't believe they ever speak to one another. FAIL.

2. McCabe & Mrs. Miller: I'd have to rewatch to confirm it, but I'm pretty sure Mrs. Miller has talks with her prostitutes (including Ida, played by Shelley Duvall) which aren't specifically about men. Not that a madame and her passel of prostitutes is necessarily the progressive representation of women this test is looking for, but still. WIN.

3. Chinatown: I believe that Evelyn and Katherine have at least one exchange, if brief, while packing to flee town, but I'm not 100% sure on that. UNDECIDED

4. Unforgiven: Prostitutes again, but they speak to each other several times -- mainly about hiring a gunfighter, yes, but I don't think that that counts as "about a man" in the way the test means. I'm calling it a WIN.

5. The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy and Glinda the Good Witch have a couple of chats, as do Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West (which I'm counting as a named character: last name West, first name Wicked Witch of the), and Dorothy and Auntie Em, and Auntie Em and Miss Gulch... this one is all kinds of WIN.

Well, that's three out of five, but in two of those films just about the only female characters are whores, so that probably violates the spirit of the test, if not the letter. I've only got one real slamdunk here, and it's a children's movie.

Now that I think about it, not a lot of movies would pass this test, and certainly very few big releases. I mean, let's look at the movies I've seen this year and see how they stack up.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: FAIL

Iron Man: FAIL

The Dark Knight: FAIL

Hancock: FAIL

Step-Brothers: FAIL

Pineapple Express: FAIL

Tropic Thunder: FAIL

Hell, even in Waitress, which I recently reviewed, the majority of the conversations among the rich and interesting female characters revolve around men in some way. Dang, good thing I'm allowed to see movies that fail this test, or I'd never go to the theater!

When You're In Need Of Moral Guidance...

Just ask yourself:


Apparently I have different ideas regarding appropriate problem-solving behavior than Chris and Kevin do.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Holy craparoni. Chris Sims linked to me in his big Previews post yesterday night/early this morning, and I literally have gotten five million more hits than I usually do. Literally five million.

Literally.

Okay, not literally. You know how much I hate to misuse that word. But it was a lot. Thanks, Chris!

And it's only led to one ignorant homophobe leaving a comment on that post so far. (The same one who trolled in Chris's comments.) But... fingers crossed!

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Edited to add:

Here is an illustration of what scholars now refer to as the Sims Bump.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold

Note to Dorian:

I can never tell if I'm way behind the curve on this type of thing these days or not, but I understand R. Lee Ermey is going to be the voice of Wildcat on the new Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon.

Maybe you already knew about this, though I don't think I've noticed it on your blog. If you didn't know about it, well, for some strange reason I suspected you might be interested in a butch older gentleman who has no problem playing gay voicing Ted Grant's alter ego. Just a crazy hunch.

Note on the rest of the show:

Looks like this could be a lot of fun. Diedrich Bader as Batman is an interesting choice, but I like Bader and he's done a ton of cartoon voices before, so I expect it will work out well. I don't care for the CW's current (I assume -- it's still going, right?) The Batman animated series, which somehow manages simultaneously to be darker and yet tamer than the classic Bruce Timm animated version. This Brave and Bold take appears to be consciously choosing to go with a retro look and a lighter tone with more humor than anything we've seen from a Batman cartoon for a long time -- though the creators (in the interview linked above) still emphasize their freedom to mix the humor with the edge we've come to expect from the Dark Knight.

Plus, check out some of the guest characters: the Huntress, Wil Wheaton as the Blue Beetle, John Di Maggio as Aquaman, Tom Kenny as Plastic Man, and the resident Green Lantern of this series: Guy Gardner. Very nice! Looks like this is set to debut November 14 on the Cartoon Network. Be sure to check it out!

Baghdad by the Bay

Jeff of Stuff Running 'Round My Head is currently posting a series of photos from his recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area.

As I have often mentioned and demonstrated on this blog, such as in this series of posts (the last three of which were written in the style of a Zagat's Guide review of my last visit there, for reasons that seem less hilarious to me in retrospect), San Francisco is my favorite city in the world. I wish on that last trip I had had an adequate camera to capture the beauty and oddness of The City and its surroundings, but since I didn't, you'll have to check out Jeff's photos instead. And maybe you'll get an inkling of what makes S.F. so wonderful.

For example, here's a shot of the outside of Vesuvio, a weird and cool little bar in North Beach (the exterior of which was also featured as the beatnik-poetry club in So I Married an Axe Murderer, though the interior was a set). Here are a couple of posts on Chinatown. (Forget it, Jake... oh, wrong Chinatown.) Here's the Stockton Tunnel, at the top of which is the Tunnel Top bar, which I "reviewed" in this post, and which was great. Here's Union Square, the setting of the crucial conversation in Coppola's The Conversation. This is a beautiful shot of the Transamerica Pyramid, and these are a couple of other very nice middle-of-the-street pictures. And this one includes a shot of Top Dog in Berkeley, at which I purchased countless bratwursts and Polishes and so forth late, late at night during my college days, since this was the only place to get food after the bars closed. Yum!

Man, I'm missing that city again. Nice photos, Jeff! Keep 'em coming!

Orson Scott Card is a fucking lunatic

Dangerously insane sci-fi writer advocates overthrow of government as reasonable response to gay marriage.

Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.... How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

This kind of hate for gays is nothing new from Card, but this is certainly a new extreme for him.

Damn shame. I really used to love Ender's Game.

POTPOURRI

Two notes about links first. #1, I got a hit from whatevs (dot org), which seems like a site I will enjoy, now that I know about it (I especially like their insanely detailed reviews of every Saturday Night Live show of the season) -- but I can not for the life of me figure out where a link to my blog exists on the site. How did someone click to my site, when there is no link to be clicked?

And #2: damn. I knew Mike's blog was popular... or I thought I knew. I mean, he's linked to me before, and I've gotten a decent amount of traffic from it. But with one four word link to my Smallville post from Saturday, "Jimmy did what now?" (that is the entirety of the link), I got a veritable avalanche of hits. And they keep coming. It must be over 200 click-throughs so far, with no sign of abating. Wow. People like Mike. I think the mystery of the link helped -- Who's Jimmy? What did he do? -- but I was, and am, just floored by it. Well, greetings to all of you! Unless you never come back. In which case, Good riddance! Who needs you?? I'll be fine here by myself. All alone. In the dark. Going blind....

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I hate Michael Medved.

I've hated him for a long, long time, because, well, his taste in movies sucks. In later years, I grew to hate him even more, as his reviews became a blatant conduit for his extreme right wing political/religious agenda, all but devoid of any genuine cinematic critique. Sometime in the last few years, in fact, he abandoned altogether any semblance of being an impartial critic when he became a right wing radio commentator in the mold of Rush Limbaugh. But his recent affront against the movie-going public is simply beyond the pale.

Roger Ebert writes about what Medved has done at his site. But before I give you the link, a warning: he discusses in detail Medved's misdeeds. What Medved has done is to spoil the plot of Million Dollar Baby out of pure, unmitigated, unprofessional spite, because it conflicts with his reactionary worldview. To even suggest that there is a spoiler in Million Dollar Baby is perhaps a spoiler in and of itself (as Ebert acknowledges). But the rest of the article really spoils it. So check it out only if you've already seen the movie, or are aware of the plot.

Here is the link.

Limbaugh is guilty of the same crime, but that's less shocking, because Limbaugh is well known to be a big fat idiot. But Medved was once, supposedly, a pro. He allegedly possessed a modicum of journalistic integrity. He clearly does not now, if indeed he ever did. Would he deliberately spoil a first-time viewer's experience of Citizen Kane, or Psycho, or The Sixth Sense? Presumably not. But he has no problem doing so with Million Dollar Baby, has no qualms about revealing every single detail of the plot on Pat Robertson's 700 Club, because his religious and political views are so unreasonable and extreme that he can not settle for anything less than ruining the movie for anyone who might be unlucky enough to encounter his diatribe disguised as review. Here is how around the bend Medved is: his website (which I will not dignify with a link) -- motto: "It's cool to be conservative" (seriously) -- proudly features a link to James Dobson's lunatic attack on Spongebob Squarepants and the We Are Family organization.

The punchline to all this, of course, is that the film is produced and directed by and stars Clint Eastwood, who is a Republican. When Clint Eastwood isn't right wing enough for you, when a guy who recently threatened to kill Michael Moore (jokingly or not) is too liberal for your liking, well, buddy, you are beyond the point of no return.

It baffles me, it really does, the behavior of today's right wing. As Christine Todd Whitman -- a Republican I can respect -- will gladly tell you, in 2005, it's not enough to simply be Republican. Now, you have to be on the extreme right of the extreme right -- or you're as much an enemy as the Democrats.

Well, this got off on more of a political rant that I'd intended. Suffice it to say: Michael Medved sucks ass.

POTPOURRI

TV: Celebrity Poker Showdown is back on Bravo, and host Dave Foley is as drunk as ever! And that to me is funny. During his first season with the show, he was so drunk he routinely slurred words, and often had trouble focusing on the camera. I guess the producers had a word with him, because all through the next series of games, he seemed to have sobered up. But with the new season, which started this week, the cork is out of the bottle! He's back, baby!

As for the poker -- oh, man. I've watched a lot of cards on TV over the past couple years, and I have never seen the best player at the table beaten time and time and time again by sheerest, stupidest luck as Sara Rue was this game. And did Sara not look cute as all git-out? (And by "cute," I mean "smokin' hot.") Boy, she's lost some weight since she played last season. Not that she wasn't hot before; I'm just making an observation.


Yeah, she's just adorable. But adorable don't cut it, because Brad Garrett was pulling cards out of his ass. Sara's got two pair? Brad fills the straight on the river. Sara's got a straight? The board gets the same straight, meaning she and Brad split the pot. She should've knocked him out of the game about 87 times, and he just kept winning. It was brutal. And great TV. Good start to the new tournament.

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MOVIES: In all my Oscar foofaraw, I neglected to mention the Razzies, which also announced its nominees on Tuesday. This may be the first year I haven't seen any of the films nominated for Worst Picture. I tried -- I saw Butterfly Effect, after all. And The Grudge! If those movies aren't bad enough to make the list, then I ain't never seein' Catwoman!

Wow, they hate Ben Stiller. He got nominated as Worst Actor for a record five films: Along Came Polly, Anchorman, Dodgeball, Envy, and Starsky & Hutch. (I think when they nominate someone, they just name every film he's been in that year.) Now, come on! He was kind of good in at least two of those films. I mean, I've grown sick of Stiller's frequently repeated nebbish-who-gets-caught-in-humiliating-situations roles, too, but at least he was doing something different in Dodgeball and his cameo in Anchorman. I thought he was great in both of those.

And the Razzies went after Dubya, too! Multiple nominations for his appearance in Fahrenheit 9/11. My favorite: Worst Screen Couple, for "George W. Bush & EITHER Condoleeza* Rice OR His Pet Goat." I never thought I'd say this, but: he's got my vote!

*It's actually spelled with two z's guys, but that's okay; it's a tough name, and it's not like she's been in any news stories recently that would allow you to check the spelling.

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The second I talked up I Read the Comics So You Don't Have To, Josh goes and changes the name to The Comics Curmudgeon. Man! Now I have to change my sidebar links again!

While I'm being all self-referential, I'd like to thank Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings and Augie De Blieck of Various and Sundry for throwing links my way. Now, Augie is a fairly conservative fella, with, presumably, a majority of fairly conservative readers, where I, on the other hand, hate America. Oops! I meant, "am liberal." Oh, what a giveaway! My point is -- and I'm not saying the one thing has anything whatsoever to do with the other -- the thing is, the total elapsed time between Augie's link, and the first ever really bitchy political comment left on my blog, was two hours and fifty-three minutes. That's a funny little coinky-dink, innit?

Links update

Updating my sidebar links. Added:

--Online magazine Forces of Good, at which I have one article published (there's only been one issue so far), and will soon also have an ongoing pop culture blog. Kind of like this, only... well, no, exactly like this, probably. Only over there. Maybe primarily about TV. (You've seen me write about TV. You know I've got enough crap to say to fill two blogs.)

--A couple of glaring omissions, which I could've sworn I had already linked to, but nope! Dopey me! Those would be Brian Hibbs' Savage Critic, Will Pfeifer's X-Ray Spex, and Dave Carter's Yet Another Comics Blog. My bad, guys.

--I Read the Comics So You Don't Have To, which I just wrote about.

--And a number of other new or newish (or just new to me) comics and/or pop culture blogs, namely Todd Murry's Comics TV Blah Blah, Dave White's Different Package (you'll probably have to click on the archives for December or earlier; there's nothing new up so far this year), Phil Parr's Hey Grown Ups -- Comics!, and RobB's Blog o' Stuff.

And it took forever for me to make those changes to my template, so for crying out loud, click on all of them, and make it worth my while! I personally guarantee hours of entertainment at each and every link!*

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*Not a guarantee.

COMICS: They read the comics so I don't have to

I've said before that if I had more time -- and more importantly, if I still got a daily newspaper -- I'd like to carry on the tradition of the Baltimore City Paper's Funny Paper column. Funny Paper was a weekly column which humorously summarized and commented on the previous week's comic strips, ripping on repetitive themes, comedic errors, and just plain unfunniness. For example, from the April 18, 2001 entry:

"CATHY: Monday: Cathy is obsessed with food. Tuesday: Cathy is ignorant and incompetent at tax time. Wednesday: Cathy is ignorant and incompetent at tax time. Thursday: Cathy is ignorant and incompetent at tax time. Friday: Cathy is ignorant and incompetent at tax time. Saturday: Cathy is ignorant and incompetent at tax time. Sunday: Cathy is ignorant and incompetent at tax time."

Or, in a trademark fit of pique, dated October 8, 2003:

"KUDZU: Monday, Doug Marlette dusts off the old '668' joke. You know--668: The Neighbor of the Beast. Only Doug Marlette doesn't make it that elegant, opting to render it, '668 is the sign of the guy who lives next door to the Beast.' Doug Marlette doesn't make the jokes; he makes the jokes worse! Die, and go directly to hell, Marlette, you worthless sack of joke-stealing garbage."

Anyway. If I were ever going to get off my ass (or, I guess, spend a great deal more time on my ass) and create a blog in the Funny Paper mold -- well, my window of opportunity has passed. Because Joshua Fruhlinger's I read the comics so you don't have to is doing the job quite nicely. Damn it.

In an early post, Fruhlinger insists he'd never heard of Funny Paper before starting his blog, even though the title of his blog is almost exactly the same as Funny Paper's motto, "We read the comics so you don't have to." Okay, I'll take his word for it. But there's no mistaking the similarities*, from the title/motto, to the unconcealed hatred of strips long past their expiration date (Fruhlinger: "Tune in tomorrow as I call for the death of whoever it is who draws Marmaduke, and possibly for the death of Marmaduke himself"), to the similar permutations of the Phantom's nickname ("the Ghost Who Walks") as a commentary on the strip's art or story (Funny Paper: "the Ghost Who Can Single-Handedly Commandeer a Nuclear Sub," "the Ghost Who Is Never Properly Lit;" Fruhlinger: "the Ghost-Who-Ruminates-Aloud," "the Ghost-Who-Watches-Television-In-His-Hotel-Room"), to the pointing out of similar gags in different strips on the same day, to... oh, lots of stuff that's probably unavoidable if you set out to do something like this.

Where they primarily differ, I think, is Funny Paper ran short items about every strip for the week, whereas Fruhlinger runs longer items on a single strip daily. But where they again draw similarities is in the way they both make me laugh, they both reflect my obsession to analyze comic strip minutiae, and they both make me wish to hell I had done it first.

I read the comics so you don't have to is great. Funny and incisive, it makes me wish I knew the author so I could discuss the comics with someone else familiar with both their triviality and their importance. Good, good stuff.

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*Including, as further research reveals, the fact that the creators of both sites get their comic strip fixes from the pages of the Baltimore Sun! How's that for a coincidence?

TV: Tilt

I finally was able to catch the first two episodes of Tilt, ESPN's new poker drama. Which was harder than it sounds. ESPN is making it a bitch to catch an episode (as Augie will also attest to... twice). The first time I tried to TiVo the pilot, it ran long (due to, what else, a sports program that didn't finish on time) and the last five or ten minutes got cut off. The second time I tried to record it, ESPN promised me Tilt, but then just decided to broadcast something else instead. Thanks, ESPN! Good thing you didn't spend any money on Tilt, and therefore clearly don't care if anyone is able to watch it or not!

I finally got the complete pilot episode by programming the TiVo to add fifteen minutes to the recording time. But then I tried the same thing with the second episode -- and this time, it was late by thirty minutes. So I missed the ending again. Jesus, why even bother? Seriously, why say you're going to air a show at a certain time when you clearly are unable to meet that commitment? Why air the show at all, when it's obviously such a low priority?

I was able to catch a repeat of the second episode by setting TiVo up to record an hour extra. So now I've seen the first two shows. After all that -- was it worth it?

Surprisingly, I think yes. Michael Madsen has always been such a wonderful, brutish, intimidating actor, and he's certainly all that as Don "the Matador" Everest, the most famous poker pro in Vegas -- one who's gotten where he is by cheating. But Everest is more of a background character. The three real leads of the show are Eddie Cibrian, Kristin Lehman, and Todd Williams, as Eddie, Miami, and Clark, three young players who were all cheated by the Matador, and who have teamed up to take him down. I'm not familiar with any of those actors, but I found them all genuinely likeable, and I'm interested in their efforts to either win bankrolls big enough to challenge Everest, or to con their way into his inner circle.

A couple things I'm not wild about so far: one, the Matador's daughter, Dee. She's draped in furs, living high on life, rolling in riches provided by daddy, yet it's her ambition to strip for one of the local clubs (which her father uses his connections to prevent). Yeah, that's believable. Anything to get a strip club in the show, right, ESPN?

And two, the poker players aren't very good. As Nat has correctly pointed out, "The winners win because every hand they're shown playing, they have the best hand. Yawn." Anyone can win with the best hand. (And even then, only a good poker player will still get the other guy to bet.) A good poker player wins when he's got the worst hand. And we haven't seen that yet. (In the second episode, Everest wins with the worst hand, but only because Eddie intentionally throws away the best hand to let him win.)

It's worth it right now for me to jump ESPN's scheduling hurdles to see Tilt. I'm hooked enough to care what happens next. But it's not a must-see show just yet, and if ESPN keeps screwing with me -- hell, Kenny Rogers taught me to know when to walk away.

Some TV obsessive I am

From TV Gal:

And most of you caught that Driveshaft's single "You All Everybody" was playing in the background of Sydney's party on "Alias." Who's Driveshaft, you ask? Charlie's one-hit wonder band on "Lost."

I didn't! I did not catch that! I'm a big fat fan of both Lost and Alias, and I'm bitterly disappointed that I didn't catch this wonderful in-joke between J.J. Abrams' two shows. My belief in my television watching prowess has been shaken to the core.

Dammit! I may have to surrender my TV-viewer license for this.

Hey, this means Lost and Alias exist in the same TV universe (kind of like Homicide: Life on the Street and The X-Files -- remember when Richard Belzer appeared as Det. Munch on The X-Files? Anyone? Come on, don't leave me hangin'!). Maybe Sydney and Vaughn will rescue the castaways! But wait, that doesn't explain how Greg Grunberg is a spy on Alias, but was also the pilot who got eaten in Lost. Maybe they were twins. Or clones. Or perhaps time travel was involved? Now my head hurts.

CONTESTS!

I've been extremely lax about linking to contests being held throughout the blogscape*. Here's my stab at rectifying that lapse.

Comic Book Galaxy is running (in conjunction with Slave Labor) an insanely generous Street Angel contest. Multiple winners will get Street Angel issues 1-5, plus a rare Street Angel mini-comic, plus their local comics shop will get the same. Plus one grand prize winner gets some original Street Angel art! Sweet! This was one of my favorite new comics of the last year; in fact, Street Angel #2 is one of my favorite issues of any comic, ever. Enter by February 28.

Scott at Polite Dissent is giving away three copies of Nikolai Dante: The Romanov Dynasty. Three books, and three different ways to win! Enter by January 31.

Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog's Laura is offering a copy of the Colonia trade paperback, as well as a page of original art! I bought the Colonia book last year, and it was one of my favorite new discoveries of 2004. A really funny and creative adventure comic. Deadline is January 20, so get cracking!

Ferret Press is giving away a copy of the first Strangehaven TPB. I don't see a deadline date, but I assume it's the end of the month.

DougBot of Giant Fighting Robot Report has a copy of America: The Book up for grabs. So very very funny. You must have this book. And the contest ends tomorrow, so get moving!

Cats & Dogs Living Together Dept.

Yesterday Fred Hembeck featured this little ol' blog as his link of the day. Thanks, Fred. And yay for me! I wish I could figure out how to link to that particular post, but I can't, so here's a link to the front page of his blog. One problem, though -- Fred mentioned me in the same post as his pwecious widdle kitty-cats. Doesn't he know cats and dogs don't get along?! Plus, I'm allergic. AH-CHOO!!

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*I'm trying out new words to replace the incredibly dopey, semi-official term "blogosphere". We'll see if anything sticks.

TV:24 and Committed, yet again

Writing about 24, Bill Sherman at Pop Culture Gadabout has jarred my memory about something that was bothering me in the first episode this season. Bill writes about how the ep's reference to Michael Moore (a slam against him delivered by Secretary of Defense William Devane) detracted from the show's believability rather than enhancing it.

It bothered me, too, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Bill makes a good point about the show's timeline (as you know, I'm a stickler for television timelines), but that wasn't quite it. Then it suddenly struck me: in the 24 world, George W. Bush was never President!

When the show began in 2001, it was in the middle of the Presidential campaign, which immediately established it as outside our reality. In the following season, we saw Dennis Haysbert had been elected President, and was serving his term during the time when Dubya would've been President. Now, we have Geoff Pierson as President, during what would be Dubya's second term. (If it actually is 2005 in their world, and not 2008 or 2009, as Bill postulates.)

No Dubya means no Fahrenheit 9/11. Which means that Michael Moore's prominence would be greatly diminished from what it is currently in our world, where he is the go-to liberal target for conservative pundits and politicians. Prior to that movie, conservatives were somewhat aware of Moore, but he hadn't become the omnipresent object of all-consuming hatred he is to them now. Devane's knee-jerk snipe against Moore makes no sense in the world 24 has established for itself.

Yes, this is the kind of thing that I think about.

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I've also been thinking about: have any of you people who threatened to watch Committed when I was bagging on it gone through with it? An episode was on last night. Have you all become fans of the show? Or do you instead now realize: Tom is always right. We must not question Tom. Make the pain stop, Tom.

POTPOURRI

I've been going very slowly through the Essential Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 6 collection, because, despite the fact that I think these stories may represent the height of Spidey's comic book popularity, encompassing many landmark events (like Gwen Stacy's death and the introduction of the Punisher), and may well be the era during which most long-term comics fans were first introduced to the character (I know the first issues I ever read as a kid are contained in this book)... where was I going with this?

Oh, yeah, despite how popular and iconic these issues are, they are just horribly, horribly, horribly written. Gerry Conway has to be one of the very worst writers in the history of comics. And I say that even with the painful memories of Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man still poisoning some small corner of my mind.

But what's worse, the way Conway writes Spider-Man, Spidey comes off as a world class asshole. He's always snubbing his friends, insulting Mary Jane when she's trying to cheer him up, abandoning his best friend Harry, who's in heroin withdrawal and whose father has recently been killed. But what's more, rather than stopping crime, he exacerbates it, actively preventing super-villains from curing themselves of their powers.

In two comics released the very same month (cover dated June, 1974), Amazing Spider-Man #133 and Giant-Size Super-Heroes featuring Spider-Man #1, Conway's Spider-Man stops Molten Man and Morbius (respectively) from obtaining the potential cure for their conditions.

In the former, Spider-Man basically pieces together what the Molten Man has been trying to do (gather ingredients needed to recreate what originally made him the Molten Man in an effort to halt the radioactive decay of his body -- radiation which, by the way, is far more deadly than he ever was in his pre-decaying state), but still engages him in battle, endangering police and other innocent bystanders along the way. (In one scene, Spidey actually clobbers two policemen who confront him, sending them into unconsciousness with, "Pleasant dreams... creeps!") As the Molten Man's death approaches, he cries,

"I only needed time--! Time to reverse the deterioration-- but Spider-Man wouldn't stop hounding me! [...] Now you've attacked me, when I was so close to success! I had all the elements I needed to cure myself-- all but one, and that one I stole this evening--! If I'd escaped, I could have rediscovered the formula that created this accursed golden shell... I could have saved myself if it hadn't been for--"

And what is Spider-Man's thoughtful response? "Sure you could have, Raxton-- and my name's Santa Claus!" What a Spider-Dick. Oh, by the way, in the ensuing fight, Spidey throws the Molten Man's precious ingredients into the river, which the Molten Man dives after; upon hitting the freezing water, the Molten Man explodes. Nice. Real nice.

In Giant-Size Etc., Morbius, "the Living Vampire," is trying to reach Professor Ward, a hematologist who has "developed a process to completely replace a person's blood". Clearly, Morbius is seeking a cure for himself. When he enters the professor's lab, he says, "I've been in Hell, Professor Ward... and I've come to you to release me!" Enter Spider-Man, who jumps in, fists swinging, rather than letting the completely non-threatening, non-violent Morbius use the prof's knowledge to help himself. In the fight, the professor's lab equipment is destroyed, leading a stricken Morbius to lament,

"Ward said that without it, his experiment was useless-- [...] You've caused me to destroy what might be my last chance, Spider-Man..."

And Morbius flees. But it turns out the professor's equipment is not destroyed; Spidey switched out the real stuff with spare parts. He planned not only to prevent Morbius from obtaining a cure, but also to make him lose all hope that a cure might ever be found. And then he blithely allowed Morbius to escape. In fact, he must have expected Morbius to escape; if he thought he could capture him, the elaborate ruse wouldn't have been needed. Dude! What is the point? Rather than cure him, or catch him, you deprive him of hope and set him loose? That won't cause any trouble, I'm sure. Dumbass.

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In the past couple days this site has been getting scads of hits from Johanna's Cognitive Dissonance. And I can't figure out why. I assumed she had linked to me (possibly to my year-end TV roundup, which seriously, that took a long time, do me a solid and at least skim it if you haven't already, and what, are you allergic to commenting?), but nope. No link, other than the sidebar. I guess she just gets a ton of traffic that also visits her sidebar links. Well, regardless of the reason: sweet. Hell, why don't you go check out her site when you're done here? Very nice comics reviews and links to be found there!

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I'm a little hesitant to continue the top ten lists this week, because for one thing, other than TV, I'm not sure what other field I could really make a definitive list for. I could go through all the movies I've seen this year (like Monty just did), but 1) I haven't seen all that many, and 2) I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I mostly saw mainstream, blockbuster-type fare. Even Fahrenheit 9/11 was a blockbuster of sorts.

Books? I doubt I've read many more than ten books total this year. (Exclude children's books, like the Lemony Snicket stuff, and I'm probably down to single digits.) I've been very lax about my non-comic reading. I still haven't read that last damn Dark Tower book! I've only been waiting for the conclusion to the series for twenty years; what the hell is keeping me from getting to it?

And speaking of comics, I guess I could cobble some kind of list together, but I think I don't read as wide a variety of comics as I should to make a very interesting list, and I don't really have the recall to single out specific issues or landmarks from longer than about a month ago. I could name Street Angel and Eightball and American Elf and She-Hulk and Ex Machina and Girl Genius and Fables and We3 and Scurvy Dogs (and indeed I will, should I crack down and get to that list), but I can barely remember what happened last month in Y: The Last Man, let alone recall comics highlights from January. I'm a poor excuse for a comics fan.

Hey, I think I may just have written my top ten comics list, right there. Counting Y... yep, that's ten. Welp, that was easier than I thought! What, I should maybe do more commentary on those titles? Okay, maybe I will have a list to post tomorrow, after all.

Links update

Added a few new links to the sidebar:

Infinity Weblog joins the Mighty ACAPCWOVCCAOE!

Dorian pointed me toward Beaucoup Kevin and Fortress of Blogitude, which will either be wonderful additions, or I will hate Dorian forever. I'm a patient and tolerant person.

Pete of I Shoot With My Mind (great Gunslinger reference! Which reminds me, I need to finish that damned final book) and Lyle of Crocodile Caucus (who could not be more wrong about Sex and the City [insert smiley face here]) have recently left interesting comments. As probably many others have, yet I'm too lazy and dopey to single them out. If you're deserving and I've overlooked you, I'll find you eventually. I'm slow but steady, like continental drift. You could always remind me, by leaving a comment again!