BBXX By Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman 335 pages, Andrews McMeel Publishing, $35
In the early days of 1990, a brand new comic strip debuted, perfect for parents of young children and universal in its humor. Coming from veteran writer Jerry Scott with art by Rick Kirkman, Baby Blues was a pretty quick hit, still running in hundreds of papers. Now in its 23rd year, Andrews McMeel recently celebrated the success with the release of BBXX: Baby Blues Decades 1 & 2.
Unlike a lot of strip collections, this comes with extensive commentary from both creators, annotating and riffing on what prompted particularly strips, gags, characters, and visuals. As a result, this becomes an interesting look back at the development and evolution of a strip that went from two parents and an infant to a five-member family. It caught fire quickly, earning the Ruben Award for Best Comic Strip of the Year in 1995.
Looking back, Kirkman’s early art for parents Wanda and Darryl is simple, emphasizing oversized heads for the bodies with exaggerated features, notably noses. He provided more background detail at first and has simplified his work to the point where there are now just suggestions of background detail.
Each generation appears to create its own family strip with the Nuclear Family of post-World War II represented by Hi & Lois and Family Circle while today we really have Zits! and Baby Blues. All four continue to run, the former two out of inertia while the latter two remain relevant with their contemporary humor. Scott and Kirkman are devoted to focusing on what it means to raise children from birth through toddler-hood through the addition of siblings. The strip opened in 1990 with the birth of Zoe while brother Hammie was added in 1995 with Wren arriving in 2002. As a result, the parents have aged very slowly, from 20-somethings wondering “Now what?” to 30-somethings trying to juggle three distinct personalities and overflowing schedules.
Over the course of the nearly 800 strips in this collection, the last of which is from their 19th year, 2009, you can watch subtle evolutionary changes. Not only in Kirkman’s art but in the gear parents tote around, the technology being used and the children’s fascination with ever grosser objects or fears. The one constant has been their minivan; the same model has been used from the outset. We also get a hilarious breast milk gag that was done to amuse the creators and which was accidentally sent to the editor, who was out that week so it went out to the newspapers. The gag raised nary an objection, much to their surprise. The Los Angeles Times, though, asked for a substitute strip which is reprinted here for the first time.
Hammie was added largely because Scott finally had a child and Kirkman was experiencing the tribulations of having a second child. “There’s a noticeable shift in the strip that began to take place when Hammie arrived. The characters started to become a little more complex, and the situations, broadened.” This is another reason why the strip grew, endured, and remains entertaining after two decades.
Scott notes in Chapter Three, the period when Wren was introduced, as showing the parents had actually learned a few thigns along the way, making new mistakes instead. He noted “as with real parenting, things inevitably even out to a steady DEFCON 3 or 4. At least until middle school.” We can hope they allow the characters to reach that level and see what happens next.
The book contains some great insight into how the strip and its characters were developed with interstitial Scrapbook sections throughout this entertaining collection. The final chapters look at their critics and the creation process so you really get a nicely rounded look at this universal family and their place in the comic strip world.
I’m on the West Coast, Mike Gold, ComicMix’s Editorial Director, is on the East Coast and that’s the reason there is a good chance this piece won’t even run today.
My articles run on Tuesday so I try and get them to Mike no later than Monday morning East Coast time. Most times Mike gets them over the weekend but this one will show up to Mr. Gold after 9 p.m. Monday evening because… I’ve got nothing.
I drew a complete blank as to what to write about this week. I kept thinking something would pop into my head but nothing did. So what follows is not in any way a well thought out essay, it’s simply a rant on an industry event and the actions of those clueless individuals who, well, are just clueless.
The San Diego Comic Con sold out in two hours this year…duh.
Every year the biggest pop culture event in the world gets bigger so that should not be news to anyone, but as always people take to the net to bitch about how they could not buy tickets or the only ticket they did could get was for Sunday.
All you people, who think your inability to attend Comic Con is somehow the fault of Comic Con, grow the fuck up. A couple of hundred thousand people got tickets and as always the event sold out.
You simply lucked out. How is that Comic Con’s fault?
Duh.
The same goes for people who get tickets but can’t find a hotel room. There are only so many hotels in San Diego and once those hotels are sold out, you are assed out.
You can solve both having a ticket and getting a hotel room by simply becoming a major playa in the industry or building your own hotel.
Crazy? Bad joke? Unrealistic? Stupid thing to say?
Not as stupid as blaming Comic Con or the city of San Diego for your lack of ticket or hotel because they sold the fuck out.
Over on their Facebook page, Pulp 2.0 Press shared the work in progress from artist Jim Craig for the upcoming AGENT 13 Trilogy by Flint Dille & David Marconi. AGENT 13 (c) 2013 by Flint Dille and David Marconi. Published by Pulp 2.0.
After years of being vaguely aware that there exists a movie in which Christian Bale is the star and the most ridiculously-named martial art ever, “Gun Kata,” is also a thing, I finally sat down to watch Equilibrium last weekend. (Netflix is responsible for many of my viewing decisions these days, for which I am unashamed. The very minute I saw they’d added this, it went in my queue.) From beginning to end and even after the credits rolled, I found myself saying, “This movie is awesome.”
If by awesome, of course, you mean at times both grandiose and sublimely ridiculous. I may also have been laughing hysterically when I said it. I may have even slapped my knee. I may have then gone to Twitter and posted, “OMG you guys, Equilibrium is the craziest movie. The craziest.” Regardless of all of that probably not being the reaction writer and director Kurt Wimmer was going for, I thoroughly enjoyed this film.
Equilibrium is about a post-WWIII future in which some doofus the citizens refer to as “Father” decided that the way to avoid a fourth World War (which it was postulated humanity could not survive) was to eliminate human emotion in the population, and apparently everybody else was just A-OK with that. The movie’s government “eliminates” emotion by a) administering a mind-numbing drug (Prozium) that citizens are required to take at regular intervals; and b) destroying anything remotely artsy or multicolored, and killing those who have tried to keep it because they are guilty of having feelings, which in this film is called a “sense offense.” (I love the way that sounds. “What’s his crime? Sense offense!!!” It’s so dramatic.) The government enforces its will with “Clerics,” who go wherever anyone is, as the Internet would say, “having feels” about something, and, you know, shoots them in the head, efficiently and martial-artsily. (This is where the Gun Kata comes in.)
John Preston (Christian Bale) is the Mary Sue Cleric who is super amazingly good at knowing (one might almost say sensing) when someone is having the feels, and at killing them in various efficient and emotionless ways, and burning art and stuff. There’s also a plot that includes Taye Diggs and is actually supposed to be a driving part of the main storyline, but it pales in comparison to watching Christian Bale a) kill people and burn things in various dramatic ways; and b) manage to somehow get his acting point across while being completely “emotionless.” He’s actually very good at it (and when he finally quirks a tiny smile it’s fantastic). I also suspect this role was superb practice for calm and methodical Batman.
Anyway, actual plot aside, the movie is mostly about what happens when Mr. Mary Sue goes off his meds. Hint: it involves a lot of gratuitous violence. The script has some interesting points it’s trying to make, but they never quite land, and I think it’s because the suspension of disbelief required is just too much. The audience is asked to believe that everyone just acquiesced to this silly “no feelings” rule as the best way to eliminate war; and then the few at the top of the government (who obviously must be having, as the internet says, “all the feels,” while the population gets none, because I doubt they could run the government while on Prozium) use ultraviolent war-like tactics anyway to wipe out anyone who’s still feeling; and so we know the government is corrupt and doesn’t believe its own message; but then we never see any benefit the few government folks who are running the Clerics and everyone else actually get except at one point when we see that the head dude, Dupont, has a nice office (with art!); and, and, and…what exactly is the point being made here? That it’s important to feel things? That art is good? That people will try to repress you using shoddily thin reasoning just for the hell of it? I think it’s trying to say something about free will, but I’m not 100% sure, because the movie never exactly gets wherever it’s trying to go in that regard.
There’s also the fact that none of the people who are supposed to be “not feeling” are that good at it. For instance, Taye Diggs’ character Brandt is a Cleric who keeps saying he’s going to “make his career” with Preston; so he’s ambitious. Which, one would assume, is one of the “feelings” the government would be most keen on eliminating, because ambition can sure cause a lot of war and stuff, eh? Nevertheless, one of the main “unfeeling” characters is practically blazing with ambition throughout the movie. He also shows a tiny bit of (sadistic) humor. Is he off his meds, too? Why would he be? It doesn’t seem to really advance the government’s plans for him to be feeling. It’s a total contradiction. And then there’s Sean Bean’s Cleric, Partridge, who has been on and off his meds and just pretending to be an unfeeling bastard for about two weeks when the movie starts. And William Fichtner’s underground fighter, who is not on meds but forcing himself not to feel so he can help the others who do. And then we find out there are even more characters who somehow suddenly decided to stop their mind-numbing meds and are just pretending. So clearly the Prozium doesn’t work that well, and the government should have fallen long before Superstar Cleric John Preston decided to rebel. It’s all just a little hard to swallow.
But putting all of that aside; oh the fun of this movie! There is a lot to love about it despite the contradictions and leaps in logic, including that it seems to actually be taking itself seriously. (Also that Kurt Wimmer apparently “invented” Gun Kata “in his back yard” Hah!) This is a movie that’s trying to be at least four movies at once – it’s got the serious “dystopian” message; the visual aspect that reminds me at times of an art film (like the scene with Preston at his bedroom window); the “emotional” journey of a lead character; and the amazingly gratuitous violence of a Bruce Willis/Vin Diesel/Jason Statham/insert-other-action-hero-here film, all snuggling up with each other to somehow produce a decently cohesive film.
The dystopian message, while hopelessly muddled, is at least somewhat interesting. Visually, the movie is pretty darned cool. The stark uniforms and buildings; the (hit-you-over-the-head metaphor) contrast of Bale’s black and white outfits; and the way they make the “feeling” underground area a mix of great art and graffiti that contrasts with the colorless overworld are all appealing. Amazingly, Christian Bale’s acting in a movie which for the most part is supposed to be showing people not feeling at all kept me interested, in that kind of “fascinated scientist/trainwreck-watcher way, in what was going to happen next. And the action, while insane, is fun to watch; from Bale taking out a roomful of guards in seconds in a pristine white suit, to the bit where he apparently pushes a button or something and nail-heads suddenly jut from the bottom of two gun barrels so that he can use the guns to more effectively smash guards in the face. (Seriously, who even thinks of that? Or is that an actual real-life thing for some reason?)
Look, I’m not even going to pretend that Equilibrium is a “great” movie, nor that I enjoyed it in the way Wimmer intended. It is ridiculous and violent, with pretensions of grandeur and thinkiness. It’s a little bit Boondock Saints-ish, but with less of a linear point being made, and even more gratuitousness to the violence. It takes itself so seriously that it comes out the other side and becomes slightly cheesy. But the combination of action and attempts at making a grand statement make for a movie that at least kept my attention, and it has the right amount of cheese to make it enjoyable to watch. Despite having only one outright humorous line in the whole film, I laughed a lot. Plus, of course, Christian Bale is smokin’, and we get Sean Bean and William Fichtner acquitting themselves well, too. (If only Oliver Platt had played the government leader Dupont instead of Angus Macfadyen, the casting would have been perfect.) I’m not saying Equilibrium is for everyone; but if you go into the movie for the words “Gun Kata” and “Christian Bale” you probably won’t be disappointed.
So if you’re looking for a movie to watch this week and have streaming Netflix…well, you know what I’d recommend.
On his website, New Pulp Author Win Scott Eckert shared the cover reveal for the upcoming release of Philip José Farmer’s Sherlock Holmes und die Legende von Greystoke.
The new edition, Sherlock Holmes und die Legende von Greystoke (Sherlock Holmes and the Legend of Greystoke), is forthcoming in Spring 2013 from Atlantis Verlag (German version). English translation: Atlantis Verlag.
I’m very happy to report that the afterword I penned for the Titan Books reissue (The Peerless Peer, June 2011) has also been translated and will be included in the German edition. The foreword is by Christian Endres and the new cover is by Mark Freier.
This season, NBC’s PARKS AND RECREATION has been focused on the big wedding of Leslie (Amy Poehler) and Ben (Adam Scott), but was that game changing episode a “jump the shark” moment for the show? Amy, Adam and producer Michael Shure all explain to us why that isn’t the case. Plus the FANTASTIC FOUR movie reboot moves forward and Mark Hammil says “Yes”, “No” and “Maybe” on STAR WARS
Austin, TX— Monday, February 25, 2013 — Mondo, the collectible art division of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, is partnering with HBO’s Game of Thrones for a poster series and gallery event running March 8 – March 14, 2013. The gallery will be open to the public on March 8 from 7:00 – 10:00pm with regular hours to follow for the show’s duration. The Mondo Gallery is located at 4115 Guadalupe St. in Austin, TX.
Last year, Mondo and HBO’s Game of Thrones collaboration at San Diego Comic-Con was a huge success and this series takes that partnership to the next level with a wide range of spectacular original works and poster art from dozens of Mondo’s world renowned artists including Craig Drake, Daniel Danger, Jason Edmiston, Horkey, Jock, Phantom City Creative, JC Richard, and Ken Taylor. This special gallery event will also launch a Mondo poster series for the acclaimed HBO series, with 8 limited edition screen prints that will be available for purchase. The exhibit will feature the first two posters in the series along with original fine art. Following the gallery exhibit, two posters will be released digitally each week leading up to the Game of Thrones Season 3 premiere on March 31, 2013.
“Game of Thrones is a favorite of ours at Mondo. The gallery event is intended to honor the show’s attention to visual detail and the beautiful world that George R.R. Martin has imagined and series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have brought to life. After the success of our San Diego Comic-Con initiative with HBO in 2012, we thought this was a perfect fit. We hope the fans feel our work has done justice to the show,” says Mondo CEO Justin Ishmael.
The gallery event will also see the premiere of Brewery Ommegang’s new Game of Thrones beer where attendees, 21 and older, will be the first to taste the new beer. Launching in tandem with the season three debut on March 31, Iron Throne, a Blonde Ale, is the inaugural beer in the series and the result of a creative partnership between Ommegang and HBO. The collaboration is focused on developing unique beers that tie into themes and nuances of the medieval-like fantasy realm of Westeros. Iron Throne is a delicate, but piercing Golden Blonde Ale with Noble hops, a nod to having a Lannister currently on the Throne. The beer will be nationally available on draft and in 750ml bottles, for the suggested retail price of $8.50 per bottle, beginning in mid to late March and will be followed by the launch of additional beers.
In 1984, The Terminator was a relatively low budget ($6.5 million) action-adventure film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, hot off Conan and Linda Hamilton pre-Beauty and the Beast. Written by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd, it was a fun little science fiction film of a potential future that needed to be avoided. Things blew up and Arnold stoically told a cop and the audience, “I’ll be back.” No one knew at the time that the film would trigger such an enthusiastic response, giving us sequels, comics, novels, and a television series. Suddenly, SkyNet, John Conner, Sarah Conner and the Terminator T-800 model would become a part of the social fabric of pop culture.
It also got Cameron sued by Harlan Ellison, who successfully argued that the story lifted a lot from the classic “Soldier” story penned for The Outer Limits.
Little wonder then, that when Blu-ray discs started showing up, it would be among the first from Sony in June 2006. Since then, it periodically gets dusted off, cleaned up, and rereleased, most recently in 2011. Now, 20th Century Home Entertainment assures us the latest edition, out now, is “the ultimate high-definition experience”.
Looking back, the film feels small, just as it did then, hinting at the apocalyptic future and tossing around concepts and elements that would be explored later. This was all about Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) traveling back in time from 2029 to find and protect Sarah Connor (Hamilton) from the android killing machine. We’re told the machines have taken control of the world and humanity is fighting for relevance and survival. Connor, a single waitress will give birth to mankind’s salvation. Also in the mix are police detectives Lt. Traxler and Det. Vukovich (Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen, respectively), trying to stem the mayhem.
The film is definitely a product of the early 1980s as seen in the wardrobe and hair styles, but that makes it all the more charming in some ways, when 2029 seemed so awfully far away.
The Terminator‘s transfer compared with the 2006 release shows that a fine improvement with better contrast and black levels so the film’s visual clarity is superior. The film, surprisingly, was shot with a mono track so only so much can be done to improve what was there so Cameron went back and remixed it later. And it is that soundtrack in DTS-HD MA 5.1 that we find yet again.
Included on the disc are special features matching the 2006 release: Deleted Scenes, the short piece on Creating The Terminator: Visual Effects & Music, and Terminator: A Retrospective. The fun pieces that were included in the 2001 DVD version, such as the Other Voices documentary, remain AWOL, meaning this is not quite “ultimate’ at all. Still, if you don’t have it in your library or have not seen this in a while, the new edition is well worth your time.
In the early days of 1990, a brand new comic strip debuted, perfect for parents of young children and universal in its humor. Coming from veteran writer Jerry Scott with art by Rick Kirkman, Baby Blues was a pretty quick hit, still running in hundreds of papers. Now in its 23rd year, Andrews McMeel recently celebrated the success with the release of BBXX: Baby Blues Decades 1 & 2.
Over the course of the nearly 800 strips in this collection, the last of which is from their 19th year, 2009, you can watch subtle evolutionary changes. Not only in Kirkman’s art but in the gear parents tote around, the technology being used and the children’s fascination with ever grosser objects or fears. The one constant has been their minivan; the same model has been used from the outset. We also get a hilarious breast milk gag that was done to amuse the creators and which was accidentally sent to the editor, who was out that week so it went out to the newspapers. The gag raised nary an objection, much to their surprise. The Los Angeles Times, though, asked for a substitute strip which is reprinted here for the first time.
