Month: March 2004

If George W. Bush was running five points ahead (or more) three days prior to the election here, and God forbid there was an attack accompanied by terrorist warnings that this was reciprocity for Iraq, would it turn the election around for the less popular party (as it apparently turned the election around in Spain)…or would it cause Bush to win by an even wider margain?

PAD

I thought it used to be that winter came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. Lately it seems to be coming in like a lion and going out like another lion, and the lamb is off being shishkabob somewhere. As I write this, snow is coming down hard and steady, and shows no immediate sign of slacking off. Terrific.

At least it’s happening today instead of Thursday, when Julie Schwartz’s memorial service will be happening.

PAD

Season 8 of “South Park” debuts this Wednesday. I know exactly what I’d love to see them do at some point, since it’s such a gargantuan target. I’m putting it onto extended entry just in case, by some unlikelihood, I happen to be right.

Continue Reading “New Season of South Park” →

I endeavored to post the following at the dccomics.com message board in response to a criticism one reader made about “Fallen Angel #9.” To my astonishment, it was repeatedly flagged as containing language that was in violation of terms, and it wouldn’t post it. Keep in mind the word “Hëll” is quoted from an already existing post. I tried to e-mail the board overseers but, guess what? Their e-mail doesn’t work.

Does anyone have a clue what the posting below could possibly contain that got me an automatic message scolding me? (Remember, the quote part is from the previous poster, and the rest is from me):

“Dislike: The dreaded Hëll Hound. I think it took up too many panels and I didn’t care for the obligatory smash to death. Sometimes this title is too “mature” for its own good. Showing blood and violence all of the time doesn’t make for a good story. In fact, I think it tends to take away from it.”

Well, the fight only took three pages, an average of 2-3 panels a page. To me, that was minimum; otherwise he wouldn’t have seemed like much of a threat. As for the blood and violence–have you ever been in a fight? Or seen someone in one? The blood pumping, the adrenaline rush…it’s not like in comics where people are in a fight and then back off the moment the foe is down. In real life, the adrenaline keeps surging, and you’ll watch as people will go after a fallen foe until either their energy wears out or someone pulls them off (look no further than Bernhard Goetz, who walked up to a man he’d already shot and was no longer a threat, and shot him again.)

For all its fantasy elements, the watchword for “Fallen Angel” is “realistic.” It was realistic for the Angel to be so pumped with adrenaline after the fight was over that she had to do something with it, including pulping the creature that had just been trying to kill her. Her emotions were real, and the blood was real.

If you go back and do a real panel-to-incident count, I think you’ll find there’s less violence in an average “Fallen Angel” than many other books. But when it does occur, I don’t clean it up, make it all nice and sanitized. There’s enough titles already doing that. In this one, blood and genuine streaks of human cruelty–when they are presented–are shown in their unvarnished ugliness.

PAD

I’ve had good times in Spain. Met lots of charming, enthusiastic comics fans there during my several sojourns.

And now people are getting blown up. Initially 170, and you just knew that number was going to keep climbing, and it is. I keep worrying one of the smiling folks I met are just dismembered corpses now. And even if it’s no one I knew, that certainly doesn’t make it “better.”

Yet it was “comforting” somehow to think it was Basque separatists, because then it wasn’t “our” problem, it was Spain’s. Except now, with even separatists distancing themselves from the blast, Al Qaida is claiming responsibility…ostensibly to punish US allies over the attack on Iraq. Which leads me to wonder if people who were yelling that there were Iraq/Al Qaida links are perceiving this as a good thing (“Proof!”) or a bad thing (“Oh, right, people got killed.”)

I would stop short of saying that the blood is on Bush’s hands. Madmen don’t need rational reasons to kill others. Iraq was just another excuse for the acts of madmen, who might well have committed the same atrocities in Spain while putting some other spin on it.

And yet, if it is Al Qaida, we will be blamed for it. Don’t doubt that. The Spanish government backing the US was a spectacularly unpopular move. We went into a war searching for non-existent WMDs and, a year later, Spanish civilians are being turned into pinatas with that action being cited as the cause for it. Yet another reason for yet another country to hate us.

The insanity is just escalating. Blood on our hands? On second thought, Hëll, why not. In the horror show of escalating terrorism, where the only answer for violence that so many people can come up with is more violence on top of more violence, there’s enough blood for everyone.

PAD

A rare opportunity to use the high school trick of getting people to read something with a provocative title, and at the same time it’s actually relevant.

Brandy Hauman, spouse of Glenn, is participating in the Revlon Run/Walk for Women, a charity walk to raise money for breast cancer research.

It’s a worthy cause and 100% of monies donated go towards research. If you want, the link to donate is here: https://www.revlonrunwalk.com/ny/secure/MyWebPage.cfm?pID=142293

This has been a public service announcement.

PAD