You guys and gals get off easy today

I had this huge, idiotic rant all ripe and ready and decided against being that guy. Instead, you get a link or five:

• Techno Tuesdays. I love this guy's humor. And look at that; he ain't such a bad artist neither.


• Go buy stuff at Meathaus's sale. Start with Meathaus Issue 8: Headgames, continue with some Gongwanadon, and finish up with whatever else strikes your fancy.


• Idolator's Top 30 songs for Guitar Hero III. I pretty much agree with most of their list. It has Megadeth's "Holy Wars" at # 2, with Prince, Living Colour, and Guns N' Roses in the top ten as well. They also forgot to include Slayer's "War Ensemble" and Refused's "New Noise" but that's okay.


• Don't ever spend any amount of time skipping around the Marvel Database or UncannyX-men.net. For reasons I will not discuss here, I did just that. What's wrong with me?


• Of Course, Yeah! favorite Earth 2 Leigh is back, but I'm convinced he has been replaced with a version from other alternate earth. I haven't figured out which one that is, though.


• Another, newer favorite of mine, Jason, just hooked me up with some linkage, so I'm going to do the same. By declaring that I will be stealing his recent Anatomy of a Pull-List post as my own some time in very near future. Thanks, Jason!

Go on! Leave me alone already!

What's up with the blog?

• I was all intent to keep my live blogging of Jerry Robinson's excellent The Comics coming at ya on the weekly day basis. Honestly, I was. I still plan to as there is way too much stuff in there that I need to share with everyone, like Alex Raymond's Secret Agent X-9, Ham Fisher's Joe Palooka, the woman's increasing contribution to comic strips as both characters and creators, and those wonderful essays by creators such as Charles Schultz, Chic Young, Hal Foster, and Walt Kelly that are sprinkled throughout the book. They are all coming. I just need to make some time and sit myself down in front of a scanner.
  
  And as of this weekend, I am back to buying comic books on a semi-regular basis so expect an idiotic thought or two on things like muscles and spandex.


• The Forbidden Planet blog has a little bit about the comic adaptation for William Gibson's Neuromancer which was put out by Epic Comics back in the eighties. I absolutely love William Gibson. I first read Neuromancer in 9th grade and have read pretty much everything he has done. The scans are not the best, but here they are.


• After a week or so, I see that I am still on Dick's enemy list. Surprisingly enough, my little rant about kids and continuity somehow failed to make his itinerary of things to "HATE" on. Maybe I should comment further on Civil War? Think that will get him to stomp his feet? Like maybe if I said that the problem with Civil War is Mark Millar's inability to stray away from the overuse of splash pages lead to precious amounts of screen time for character development being left on the cutting room floor. Because really, less character development/explanation and more splash pages CAPTAIN AMERICA FREERIDING THEM F-16 SONS OF BITCHES THROUGH SHIELD HEADQUARTERS is exactly what makes a damn good comic book.
  
  A friend of mine that had the chance to read some of the Civil War scripts early last summer told me how Mark Millar would state something to the effect of "Oi! This Splash page will fetch ye' a fine 'mount of quid! Wot, wot!" Its very gracious for the artist he works with, giving them scripts with one and two page splashs that they can turn around and sell for trillions of dollars. Unfortunately, we seem to have found ourselves with the MOST! IMPORTANT! MARVEL! STORY! EVER! that has left out any possibility at being a decent story so we could have some more Where's Waldo-ish two page spreads.
  
  Now that I got rant out of the way, I can make good on this newfound "enemy" status, because damn it, son, I NEED THOSE HITS.


• Last night my friend and I were discussing the death of Captain America over dinner. In our somewhat stunned, exaggerated reactions to the shocking event, my girlfriend gave us some sound advice on how to deal with such tragedy that I now extend to my dear friends on the internet:
  

  "Oh god! You boys are so stu-pid! You're crying over Captain freakin' America, a fictional character! You KNOW he is going to come back! I mean, come on!!"

  
  It helps if you read it with the same kind of inflection that a girl from The Hills or Laguna Beach would use.
  
  But enough about my significant other. What about yours? Did s/he console you with flowers? Insult you with stupid remarks? Let you buy one extra book at the comic shop because you were sad that Captain America was all shot up?
  
  How have you spent the past few days mourning the loss of an American Legend?
  

Links For You To Click!

I haven't had the chance to get any scans done this past weekend, therefore I'll pass on some links for you to enjoy.

• Isotope, the best comic shop I've never been to, has an eight page preview of Italian cartoonist Gipi's painted Garage Band graphic novel from First Second books. The scans are not the best, but its enough to get me interested. As someone who has played in a garage band in one form or another for the past 9 years, this will definitely get a review from me. If anything, just to dispel the myth that playing in a band does NOT guarantee you copious access to girls' private parts.


• His name is Joseph Bergin, the 3rd and his comics are hilarious. 1 to 4 panel gags that just burst with creative wit and style. Even when Bergin's on a bad day, he's good. If you hate stupid Livejournal, you can see some of his other stuff at his website.


• Today's Inspiration is a great illustration blog focusing on art from the 40's and 50's, that is worth a look.


• Brian + Spider-man Toys = Ha!


• Best. Post. Ever. Really, though. Suck it up and get back to posting, already!


• And here's some music for you to listen to: SOUND Team and fields. Their websites are a mite bit atrocious, but the jams are gooooooooood. SOUND Team has this semi-80s vocal vibe going on that really hits the right spots for me. Kind of like Oingo Boing/Bauhaus-ish, but with a little bit of grizzle to it. Listen to "Born To Please" and hopefully it will move you in the right places. As for fields, that's some straight wuss rock. Jangly folk guitars combined with drum machines, keys, male and female vocals and tales of sad, sad woe made me fall in love. "Brittlesticks" should bring the wuss right out of you.

Updating might be a bit sporadic the next few days for various boring reasons. Try not to jump off any cliffs or anything.

Just cuz'

The Iron Man-Tony Stark doodle/sketch blog has been updated! Only one week late on catching this! Yay!

Go read about some mini-comics that you and I should both be reading! Someone wanna give me a copy of Class Of 2006: Real Quotes From Real Students from Jury Rigged Comics as either a belated Christmas Present or Early Birthday? Just pick a reason, I'm cool with either or.

The one artist that I currently wish I could emulate right now is Nick Derington. Next month, it will probably be Hugo Pratt. Or Sal Buscema. Ima little slutty like that.

Go to Cartoon Brew, watch this video of Uly Meyer drawing, than just kind of hang out and see what else is going.

So, Dave Sim is like this weird guy who has written all kinds of messed up things that I will probably never get around to reading, but Dave Sim reading magazines like the TCJ and Comic Book Artist and then writing about it....I read and liked. Dead on about The Comics Journal, that Canadian mysognist is.

Podcasts! Do you like? Me, too. iFanboy.com and Ink Studs. One is for the "Jon Hex" inside of you and the other is for your inner-Spurge.

I like stuff.

I'm a little slow today, so please forgive my lack of proper blogging enthusiasm. Last night, the band played at a sports bar a couple towns over for a very drunk crowd of 12 at a time when I'm usually yawning for sleep. Considering it was our first show in 3 months and at least 50% of the band was drunk, we did amazingly well and had an absolute blast. One thing to remember for next time is to NOT put my beverages in front of the bass drum because the long hair welding guitar player will kick them over. The night ended with an invite to play another sport's bar, this time in our hometown.

Secret Wars: Rocking your faces while you watch ESPN

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Wong! Rival Hydra Factions! Giant Santa Claus Hydra Robot Rampaging Through New York! A Fin Fang Foom Story That Doesn't Involve Stupid Jokes About Purple Pants!

Marvel making the holidays a little more merrier with this Newsarama preview for this year's Holiday Special...

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I downloaded some podcasts this weekend and I want to give a shout out to everyone's favorite "Ironic Age" blogger, Chris Sims of the ISB for giving us a short but sweet podcast. Two in fact. Could be a little longer in length, but they're fun nonetheless. Check them out.

To celebrate Chris's foray into podcasting, I offer up a picture of Captain America getting his face kicked by some guy named Joe:





In addition to Chris's podcast, I downloaded a few from Wordballoon as well. If you have not had the pleasure of listening to John Siuntres, please do so. He comes from radio and brings with him a very entertaining combination of comic book knowledge and class.

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My friend Ryan just let me borrow the American TPB by Mark Verheiden from Dark Horse and the Jonah Hex Showcase TPB. Leaving for work this morning, I think I made the unfortunate mistake of picking up the American instead of the Jonah Hex because after only a few pages, I feel as if I am going to choke on the late 80s/early 90s not-so-good Grim 'n Grittiness of it all. Help me out here, fellow bloggers and commenters. Should I continue? Is there anything in Verheiden's The American that would a fully involved read?

Yeah, probably not, huh.

The Good, The Bad, and The Links.

The Good!

Brian is celebrating his 100th post in the form of a gala with Modok and Doctor Mayavale as guests of honor. The only thing funnier than that is getting stuck in an elevator with the two. Go, read, click on some of the links and read some more. Brian's got nothing but love for comics and he Modok obsession runs strong.

The Bad!

Chris over at 2 Guys Buying Comics wusses out. After a year of rocking out with their cocks out, Two Guys calls its quits if only because its really down to just One Guy and he just doesn't love us anymore. As a matter of fact, he doesn't even love comics! Its bad enough to post intermittenly, but to give up on it all together? Bollocks! You ask me, I think Chris is giving up because of Civil War. Way to let a crappy company wide crossover beat ya down, bro. See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!

The Links!

• The Playboy Townhouse courtesy of Meathaus. Peep that rotating Playboy Bed that has been "electronically turned on its 360-degree base to take full advantage of a romantic fire." Just one questions, though: where's a player gonna store all his long boxes?


• Jon Hex makes with the funny, detailing what it was like right BEFORE Grant Morrison came onboard. Its a question that we all know the answer to, but Jon makes it funny. Now, if only he could take the time and learn just a little bit about HTML...


• Totally, completely hilarious


• Natural forms!

That's what I call funny. Despite how much you hate or love Civil War, let's just all take a deep breath and remember that its just a comic book. If it sucks, stop buying it and go read something that doesn't.

Thanks goes out to Carla at Snap Judgements for pointing this out. Her blog is a million times better than mine and her love for Marvel is strong.