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Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Man-period

man pe·ri·od

  1. A brief period of time, typical 3-5 days, in which a male experiences a sense of displeasure with the day to day activities such as work, blogging, drinking, socializing, and reading comics, for no apparent reason at all, occuring on a quarterly or bi-annual basis. I don't know what's up, I'm probably on my man-period.


I have no clue where that came from, but we'll just blame it on a bad comics week and move on. Oh, there was also that little bit with having to leave the Broken Social Scene show early because The Girlfriend was sick from her flu shot. And that dumb party, but I won't bore you with the details. Many thanks to a Monday night that consisted of a really good band practice, The Girlfriend being her usual cute self, and hanging out with an old friend. And of course these very nice words of encouragement.

Speaking of sissy la las, I found this interesting quote from Joe Casey at yesterday's Basement Tapes:

On my last year of writing ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, I made a conscious choice to portray Superman as a superhero pacifist. Sounds kinda' high and mighty, but the way I approached it was with a very simple rule for myself... I didn't have Superman throw a punch for twelve entire issues.

Now, had I just stayed with that and just let the stories play out, there would've been no problem. But I took it one step too far... I had Superman say he was a pacifist. Out loud. Well, the Super-fans weren't too keen on that one and I can see why.

And here we were blaming all this on the Voltron-like monster that formed when Dan Didio, Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, and Judd Winick decided to take over the DCU. It was Joe Casey! .

It kind of makes you wonder what an emo, pacifist Superman would be like. Was he just hanging out on the top of Skyscrapers will listening with his super-hearing to his Appleseed Cast cd back at his apartment? Was he painting pictures with trees and tractors? Was there lots and lots of lamenting about how life was so much easier BEFORE he found out he was Superman? Did the dialobical Lex Luthor show up, proclaiming his sinister plan to take over the world only to have Superman shrug and say "whatever"?

Then again, I've read Infinite Crisis # 1, so I guess that solves that mystery.

Joe Casey is an alright guy. After listening to his interview at Word Balloon(which is a very entertaining podcast hosted by John Siuntres, a radio personality whose 15 years of on-air experience definitely show), I have decided that Joe Casey is not so bad.

I've never been a big fan of his work, as he has always been a creator that seems to live in other people's shadows, at least to me. Picked up his Uncanny X-men, however it did not provide the same level of "Wow-ness" that I got from Morrison's New X-men. I was very much interested in his Wildcats 3.0 for a few seconds, but then quickly realized that I was only hanging around because of my nostalgia for an earlier version of the team and Dustin Nguyen's art. Casey's slow pace set along with the concept that should have just been a painting on the wall instead of the whole room really did not help. And Earth's Mightiest Heroes came in the middle of a time when a writer I really liked at time, Brian Michael Bendis, was starting his run on Avengers. That, in addition to my ability to physically only consume one Avengers book a month, I decided to pass. If the reviews are true, I definitely made a bad choice on that. Then again, Youngblood Strike File was better than Avengers: Disassembled. An ex-girlfriend once bought an issue of Automatic Kafka that was a little bit interesting, but I left it at that. With somewhat lackluster runs on Uncanny X-men and Wildcats 3.0 Mr. Casey really had no chance.

And besides the comics, well.....I once saw his band, the Sellouts, open up for Pinback. Not my kind of music for sure, but whatever. However, Joe Casey's performance as a lead singer/guitarist? It made me laugh out loud at numerous points during their set. On top of some not so great Joe Casey comics, I was writing the guy off for being a little bit cheesy on stage. Sometimes I just can't help it.

After listening to his interview, I have decided to give him another chance. I've always enjoyed the Basement Tapes, even if it can seem a little too self-aware of itself. There's no other columns like that on the internet right now that I can find. And that's what comics need. Go listen to his interview when you get a chance. The guy's funny, intelligent, sensible, down to earth, and clearly in love with comics just like the rest of us.

...

But I do have to ask: Werewolves? On The Moon? What the fuck's up with that?

3 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

You missed nothing. Disassembled was bad. Earth's Mightiest Heroes wasn't bad, but it was pointless and stupid, and ugly, and $1.25 more expensive, with just as many pages, and just as many ads.

I think there were somewhere around three good panels in the whole series.

Spencer Carnage said...

Scott Kolins art was never something that I really liked. But everyone and there mother says its the best Avengers story in a long time, which isn't saying much considering who's worked on the book in the past few years.

Reid said...

I find that the man period pops up ever 3-6 months for a couple of days when single. It's less prevalent when lady'ing is done on a regular basis. Just google for "man period" and you'll see what I mean.

Reid