Month: March 2006

I don’t like Spam. I don’t like the potted meat nor do I like the dumping onto Peter’s website much less mine. I spend almost an hour getting ride of over 1000 hits trying to get onto our web sites. There is no simple way to do this because of the way that these morons try to get around the various firewalls that have been set up to prevent the site from being flooded with non-relevant information. Unfortunately some other people who DID have legitimate comments to post got held up in the filter as well. I think I have sorted everything and everyone out. There has been no censoring of anyone comments but a cluster “f” that I hope has been flushed.

It’s an IDW kind of week. Part 4 of the five part intro storyline for our angelic heroine, and issue 2 of everyone’s favorite vampire and his decades-spanning rivalry with the vamp lord. Whad’ja think?

PAD

(Updated: I’d been under the impression I’d opened up an X-Factor #5 thread previously. Apparently not. So you can comment on that here as well.)

Well, obviously Bush is learning. In his secret wiretapping program, he threw out the laws, procedures and guidelines in order to do whatever he wanted. And now he, along with his GOP cronies, are simply throwing out the procedures for MAKING laws that all of us learned back in eighth grade social studies. A budget cut of $2 billion that’s going to crucify the elderly and infirm simply bypassed the whole pesky House/Senate voting thing and was signed into law by Bush.

If Bush were truly upholding the constitution as he vowed to, he would have kicked it back and said, “The buck stops here. If you guys can’t do YOUR job properly, I should at least do mine. Vote on it and send it through the proper way, and then I will sign it or veto it, as the Constitution dictates I am empowered to do.”

He didn’t. He is demonstrably, indisputably in violation of his oath. What the hëll kind of country is this where a bløw jøb is an impeachable offense, but a screw job isn’t?

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Spent the weekend commuting to and from I-Con, the convention at Stoneybrook University that, over the course of a quarter century, has grown from taking up one building to taking up about a dozen. My knee, although on the mend, still hurt enough to make the schlep between buildings tedious and tiresome. But the panels were well-attended and, as always, part of the fun of I-Con is hanging out in the green room where I could shmooze with Terry Brooks, Michael Uslan, Greg Pak, George Takei, Bob Greenberger and many others.

Oddly, most of my panels seemed to focus on comics transitioning into movies, or movies into books. One panel, oddly, consisted of only me, talking about the subject as if it were a dissertation.

I begged off the final panel of Sunday afternoon, since it was about Web Comics vs. Print. Since I’ve never written a web comic, have no intention of doing so, and have no opinion on the subject whatsoever, I didn’t see that my presence would add much of anything to the proceedings. I got home, put a turkey in the oven, and am overseeing dinner cooking while Caroline, Ariel and Kathleen all nap.

Also came home to discover that my VCR didn’t fire for some reason and I missed PBA bowling this afternoon. Seriously pìššëd about that. Fortunately it’s rebroadcast tomorrow at 10, but still…

PAD

You voted off Kevin Covais, Ariel’s favorite on “American Idol.” My fourteen year old daughter was right in the wheelhouse of his Long Island boy’s target audience, and she was really pìššëd øff this morning. Kevin, if you’re reading this–my daughter still adores you.

PAD

If I see one more article about Alan Moore being “swindled” by DC or how Hollywood has destroyed his graphic novel, I’m going to go on a vendetta of my own.

Most recently was an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune which ended with the following quote from a retailer:

“If he had been doing novels that were this successful for this long, they’d probably take more care with making movies out of his products. But it’s only comics, you know?”

Aw, c’mon. Putting aside the insanely faithful adaptation of “Sin City,” it has nothing to do with comics and everything to do with Hollywood. I suspect the name “Nathaniel Hawthorne” will be remembered long after Alan Moore, and I, and every other comic book writer are forgotten, and they STILL gave “The Scarlet Letter” a happy ending. Popular movies such as “Oh God,” “Kramer Vs. Kramer,” and even underrated great films such as “The Mighty Quinn,” have huge differences from the novels on which they were based. Disney’s people haven’t met a classic that they couldn’t transform into something else entirely (have you ever actually READ “Pinocchio?” He steps on the cricket and kills it in, like, chapter 2. And P.L. Travers’ “Mary Poppins” is an acerbic, middle aged woman, not the chipper, youthful, dancing Julie Andrews.)

Film adaptations are just that: Adaptations. They often bear little-to-no resemblance to the source material. The benefit of them is that the successful ones put copies of the books into the hands of customers who otherwise might never have heard of the work, much less purchased it.

Alan Moore can refuse all the money from the Hollywood versions he wants, but I daresay he won’t be turning his nose up at the increased royalties such films generate for the books.

PAD

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #6, first part of a two part story, and Untold Tales of the New Universe: Justice #1, in which I revisit an old friend. Whad’ja think?

PAD