The Coldest Blood

My good friend Jens H. Altmann has released his latest work, THE COLDEST BLOOD, for the Kindle at Amazon and Amazon.uk. Worth your time - get it.

EDITED TO ADD: Sorry about the link problems from earlier this morning - fixing them now.

Thoughts: Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore

Finally got to read Alan Moore's prose book, Voice of the Fire, and I'm just going to give a few random scattershot thoughts, because when it comes to Alan Moore, I'm not sure I'm in a position to offer a review on this work.

-The first chapter of this book is one of the most challenging things I've ever read in my life.
-The "fires" are those of lust, of avarice, of fears and insecurities, and how they consume us.

-It's a book about Alan's hometown, given a pantina of fiction and drawn through thousands of years of development.

-Ultimately what probably holds me back from truly enjoying this work is that while I acknowledge Moore's insane level of talent, I don't care for his bleaker, darker tales - I acknowledge that this is probably a failing on my part and an inability to separate Moore's darkness from the nihilism of the "grim'n'gritty" modern corporate comics landscape that aped all of his tricks without any of his heart or brains.

-It is a book that questions everything, even itself

-It is a story about a place, and how people create their environments, and their environments in turn create (or destroy) them.

So, that's what I have to say on that. I do recommend the book as a challenge or for people who really really want to try to understand the properties of fiction the way Moore does. As for me, I think I prefer his more lighthearted stuff (such as Tom Strong above).

REQUEST WEEK BEGINS! - What if we lived in a Comic Book Universe? part 21

Sorry for no posts on the weekend, but I had been scanning the San Diego Comicon news feeds trying to find some choice images/stories to mock and posterize. Unfortunately, nothing of relevance seemed to bubble up.

So instead, from now until Friday, I declare this REQUEST WEEK! In which I will be listening to YOUR requests, to know what YOU want to see in new posters and blog topics. What you like, what you don't, and if there are any choice themes and images that are begging for motivational treatment.

So, go forth and comment!

Watchmen Posters!

It's going to be a long work-filled weekend for me, so I'll try to make up for my lack of substance with a crapload of posters. Tonight's theme: WATCHMEN. These are probably the only Watchmen posters I will ever do, simply because I don't feel that anything from the actual comic requires additional commentary. Movie images, however, as SOOOO fair game. Enjoy.

Wacky Wednesday Writer's Round-Up

OK, first up: J. Michael Straczynski no longer Marvel Exclusive

Yeah, this one was easy to see coming. After the "One More Day" Fallout, you could see that JMS was really being "farmed out" to the fringes of Marvel just working on a few side projects here and there. Unlike most of the Newsrama comment crowd, I don't think this automatically translates into a DC project; Lest we forget JMS still carries a grudge with Turner Broadcasting and Warner Brothers in general over the termination of "Crusade". Honestly however, I've long since lost interest in Straczynski's writing; the parts that don't feel cribed directly from Harlan Ellison don't seem to inspire or entice me. It seems to me he's still largely living off of his "Babylon 5" appeal, even going so far as to take every given opportunity to remind people he's a "Hollywood writer". But, like with all things Hollywood, it isn't your history; it's your current portfolio, and his is rather sparse, I think.



Next up, Comicbookresources has an interview with Peter David. It's the usual X-Pablum, of which I won't bore you on, but for me the salient details were towards the end where he discusses matters of the WGA and trying to start a similar organization in the comic industry:

I was part of a group some twenty years ago that attempted to form an
organization of comic writers and artists. It wasn’t even about forming a
labor union so much as it was trying to get a sizable enough group together
that would get affordable health care. We couldn’t even manage to get enough
writers and artists together to attain that simple goal; we were greeted
with either suspicion or indifference from the creative base.

Wow. That says a lot to me. And it's sad, because everything you here from the Steve Gerbers on down makes a pretty damning case for these guys to stop living in what amounts to the 1920's labor environment. I guess some people never learn.


Saving the Best for Last, we have ALAN MOORE:

Moore on "HEROES":

Moore: I was persuaded to watch it by people who said it nods to Watchmen
but God, what a load of rubbish! It's a late-70s X-Men at best and full of
terrible ideas and characters who've all been done to death. Beyond death. And
the writing shows such contempt for the viewer. The climax, a man who is going
to explode is carried off into the air by his brother... did anybody bother to
compare the effects of a groundburst with an airburst nuclear explosion? I'll
take the former over the latter, thanks. This is supposed to be the sort of
thing that superhero stories are good at. I tell you, if we are ever threatened
with a scenario like that in real life I hope the superheroes aren't American
because we'll be sunk.

Now, I like HEROES, but I can't blame the man for being absolutely dead-on in his analysis; there is hardly a new idea in the show that a good comic reader couldn't find in 70s and 80s comics.

Moore on Frank Miller

Moore: Frank Miller, I haven't been able to read him for some time. Have
you seen his latest idea? It is - and I can hardly believe this - Batman vs Al
Qaeda. What can you say to an idea as absurd as that? This is our response to
thew Iraq war? Miller's trapped in a teenage world of macho violence. Look at
Sin City. Every woman is a bloodthirsty, semi-naked whore; every man is a
indestructible killing machine. It's nasty, misogynist, Neanderthal Teenage, but
it sells.

Now, at the risk of earning a lynching from the comic blogosphere, I have to point out that Moore's history with well rounded female protagonists is hardly exemplar, with far too many of his female characters being thoroughly cast in the "victim" mode. That said, my god if only we could get that kind of regular dismissal of crap ideas like this in the comic industry, we'd all be much better off.