Knows The Score
It’s like if the Beatles had come along in 1963 and seen that surf music was dying out, and had made their name by giving surf music a massive revivifying shot in the arm and making albums full of clever cover versions of surf music with reworked lyrics and darker themes and more intricate…
See? What was I just saying about Tom Ewing being good?
As I understand the course of events unfolding after the launch, there had been someone in the audience, whose name escapes me but who is evidently pleased to identify himself as a Batman scholar, who had been offended by Act of Faith and, as people in this branch of scholarship presumably do, he had advertised this fact on social media. In a message that I was shown, his objections to the film became more obvious when he described and summarised it as film about a woman who dresses in ‘slutty clothes’ and then commits suicide. Without wishing to labour the obvious, I fear that this gentleman may have understood the film too quickly. Quite why he should have done this is a question that I have more trouble over, but of that more presently.
Re-reading the Moore interview again, and finding more to be annoyed with*. But this bit above is quite wonderful, albeit potentially unintentionally. I kind of want Overly Polite Passive-Aggressive Alan Moore to have a regular column somewhere where he belittles those in everyday life.
(* A large part of what upsets me so is Moore’s seeming inability to accept criticism, never mind address it; instead, he prefers to deflect it or outright dismiss it out of hand. That, added to a tendency towards exaggeration and obviously faux humility leaves him as a frustrating subject for all but the already converted. I saw someone compare him to latter-day Morrissey today; it’s a worryingly apt choice.)
As already stated, any publishers, friends, artistic collaborators or other close associates of Grant Morrison or Laura Sneddon should not approach me in future. Further to this, any periodicals or institutions which publish or have published interviews with Grant Morrison should similarly not attempt to contact me. To be brutally honest, I’d prefer it if, as with the Before Watchmen re-creators, their associates and their readers, admirers of Grant Morrison’s work would please stop reading mine, as I don’t think it fair that my respect and affection for my own readership should be compromised in any way by people that I largely believe to be shallow and undiscriminating.
It’s wrong that I find this quite as funny as I do, right?
(It’s an Alan Moore quote, from here.)
Writer Notes: Young Avengers Influences
I mentioned this in the letters page for the last issue, so thought I better get this written first. Basically, what follows is a list of comics that was going through my head when thinking about Young Avengers. Some are easily predictable, some a little more obscure. And this is off the top of my head, so I’m almost certainly missing something. May edit it later. They’re all excellent work. If you liked our Young Avengers, you’ll almost certainly love these.
No spoilers for any of the books either.
It’s as if Kieron came up with a list of some of my favorite comics. No wonder I enjoyed Young Avengers so much.
Just Imagine.
I just realized that Warner Bros and DC are most likely going to debut images/footage of Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot as Batman and Wonder Woman at this year’s Comic-Con. It’s a no-brainer – some footage will be available by then (The movie reportedly starts production later this month), and its the one thing that people really, REALLY want to see. What could compare, outside if new Star Wars footage, in terms of impact?
Of course, realizing this makes me feel anxious about SDCC2014 already, six months ahead of time. This year is going to be nuts, isn’t it?
CBS’ Intelligence: What if Chuck Frowned More and Had Wifi?
CBS’ Intelligence: What if Chuck Frowned More and Had Wifi?
CBS’ new techno-thriller Intelligence has debuted – but don’t watch it unless you’re ready to believe that one microchip can give someone superpowers.
I watched the new CBS “What if Sawyer From Lost got Chuck’s Intersect” show for Wired, because sometimes bad TV calls me like a Siren.
It was nothing but a guess – pure speculation and my opinion – and nothing more. Now, many outlets have picked up the “story” and have run it as either me claiming it to be fact or me claiming it’s “inside info/rumor.”
BULLSH*T! I get that people are anxious for BvS news, but this was ridiculous!
The man behind yesterday’s ridiculous “What if all of Wonder Woman’s Amazon’s race were actually Kryptonians like Superman?” rumor tells the Internet that they should be able to recognize rumor when they see it.
The online reaction to this story was fascinating and depressing – it essentially amounted to “Of course I don’t believe it but I can IMAGINE it being done, so I’ll get mad anyway as if it HAD been done!” which is crazy making, to put it mildly.
2013 felt like a year when fan entitlement in response to things published/filmed/etc. became an accepted, even planned-upon part of mainstream conversation. Will 2014 be the year when we see entitlement based entirely on misunderstandings and preconceptions follow suit?
“If I Seem To Be Reckless With Myself, It’s The Fault of No-One”
My iPhone delivered “Little One” when I wasn’t expecting it the other day, the first time I’d listened to the song in years, most likely. From A Basement on The Hill, the posthumous album the song comes from, was one of those totem albums for me for a few years around its release — something I listened to obsessively in the weeks after its release, then hid from for awhile because it felt too weird, too raw to hear following the death of my mother, before returning to with renewed obsession months later. But listening to “Little One” the other day, it was like hearing it anew, noticing all those thing my Elliott Smith worship had kept me from hearing first time(s) around.
It’s one of those songs that was clearly far from finished at the time of his death; it’s not just the shaky vocal — complete with what had to have been temporary lyrics at points (The “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven” line, obviously, but the entire thing seems more disjointed lyrically than songs from his earlier, finished albums. “Even though some can’t sleep/They’ll need some company” rings false, needing a second draft, for me) — but the fact that tracks seem to drop in and out of the music, as well (especially in the lead up to the bridge, for some reason).
Despite all that, though, it’s maybe the most Beatles-y sounding song Smith ever made, with the possible exception of “A Distorted Reality Is A Necessity To Be Free” from the same album, with its guitar line that sounds as if George Harrison dropped in during recording. But this song, though — the heaviness of the bassline, the way it plods along, or the backwards guitar that’s weaves in and out of the whole thing. The imprecision of the backing vocals, as well, adds to the Beatles-ishness of the whole thing.
There’s a melancholy at play that I can’t properly place, Beatles-wise — there’s some Harrison in there, definitely, but I keep wanting to lean Lennon, for some reason. It’s the thing that truly separates this from the Beatles, for me, though; even in their darkest moments, there was some light there to be found, but “Little One” just sounds like the end, a sad and slow surrender that doesn’t finish as much as ebb away. On an album filled with troublesome moments, this remains the most painful of all of the songs to hear, even moreso because of that last line, hearing “I love you” as a final goodbye.