I was taken aback when I saw Scott Ian's post recognizing that Persistence of Time came out 35 years ago yesterday. I mean, I remember buying that cassette like it was yesterday. Persistence was my first Anthrax album, and I bought it the year it came out, 1990. Since then, it has always remained my favorite of the band's records.
Watch:
I rewatched Michael Sarnoski's Pig this past Saturday night. What a fantastic film!
First, Cinematographer Pat Scola photographs the Pacific Northwest in a way that really sends me there. You can practically smell the trees and feel the misting rain. Even the neighborhoods come alive with an extra dimension - the brief scene where Cage's Robin revisits his old home really put me there, on the sidewalk along the side of the house, into the backyard.
Alexis Grapass and Philip Klein provide a score that is wondrous - it moves through the different scenes of the city and moods of the characters in a way that really enhances the performance without ever dictating emotion. And emotion is where Nick Cage comes in. There's something starkly beautiful about his sorrow and persistence. Robin is motivated by love and loss, and I feel that so acutely that my eyes harbor tears for most of the film.
Alex Wolf and Adam Arkin are no slouches, either. Both have an arc that moves me in a secondary way to Cage's story, so that it all comes together in one of those simple films that feels so robust, as though it can encompass every emotional state of the human experience.
I finally pinned down Simonson's first issue as Writer and Artist and started there, snagging a copy of #337 off eBay a few weeks ago. I wasn't sure how this would read to my eyes in 2025, but I needn't have worried; Into the Time Stream is a fantastic jumping-on point, as well as a great example of Simonson's art and writing complementing each other. The issue is heavy on the 80s Marvel time-travel talk, but honestly, it all sounds very modern. The terminology reminded me a lot of reading Grant Morrison circa 2000. And the thing is, Simonson's art matches that heady, scientific approach perfectly!
Read:
With secondary hype from the Fantastic Four film I'll probably never see, I'd gotten back around to thinking about the mid-80s Walt Simonson run on the book. I didn't read it at the time, but I was very aware of it all throughout my burgeoning comic book-collecting years, which really hit hyperdrive in 1986, the same year Simonson took over "The World's Greatest Comics Magazine."
As I said on a recent Drinking with Comics, I was a total Marvel Zombie as a child, and I bought into the hype on the FF even if I didn't have the allowance to venture into reading it. So over the years, while I've grabbed an issue here or there, I've never had a concentrated plan of attack for going back and reading some of that stuff.
Until now.
I feel like, when you stop to consider the image above, you see how adept Walter Simonson is as an artist of the abstract. This image really sells the "mumbo-jumbo" Reed Richards spouts in this issue, and helps us 'buy into' the weird, fringe science as a reality because, hey, we can see it right there. Similarly, I love this panel as well, where the FF and their Avengers counterparts enter the 'time bubble' from an unknown future that has jeopardized their present.
Even though I didn't read his run on FF until now, Walter Simonson's art was among the first I marveled at outside of 80's G.I. Joe comics because he did a big stint illustrating his wife Louise's run as writer on X-Factor, the first X-Book I picked up. I dug a few of those out this weekend as well. It's cool to really dip back in on his 80s work - both what I know and what I don't - and celebrate one of the artists that made me the comic fan I am.
Okay, that's pretty vague from the outside looking in, but I'm picking up what these 70s Wizard cards are putting down. To fight a good fight, keep emotional responses from poisoning logic.
Playlist:
Deftones - private music
Testament - Infanticide A.I. (pre-release single)
Testament - The New Order
Testament - Titans of Creation
Walter Rizatti - House By the Cemetery OST
Sam Cooke - One Night Stand! Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963
Anthrax - Persistence of Time
Baroness - Stone
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Blackbraid - Blackbraid III
The Veils - Total Depravity
The Ocean - Fog Diver
Revocation - The Outer Ones
Deftones - Entombed live 8.22.25
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Page of Swords
• VIII: Strength
• Six of Swords
When attacked on Earthly grounds, the Strength of Science will be the best defense.
Okay, that's pretty vague from the outside looking in, but I'm picking up what these 70s Wizard cards are putting down. To fight a good fight, keep emotional responses from poisoning logic.
No comments:
Post a Comment