Showing posts with label Spider-Man. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spider-Man. Show all posts

Thursday, October 20, 2022

The Days of Swine and Roses

 

I'm sure I've posted this particular MLWTTKK track here before, but it bears repeating. So much awesomeness. 




31 Days of Halloween:

10/1 - Trick 'r Treat
10/2 - Barbarian
10/3 - Hellraiser ('84)
10/4 - Phenomena
10/5 - Hellraiser (2022)
10/6 - The Dark Backward
10/7 - Sick/The Beyond
10/8 - Werewolf By Night
10/9 - Something in the Dirt
10/10 - Let the Right One In Episode 1/Lux Aeterna
10/11 - My Best Friend's Exorcism/Grimcutty
10/12 - Smile
10/13 - Monstrous/VHS (Amateur Night segment)
10/14 - Halloween Kills
10/15 - Halloween Ends/Ed Wood/Plan 9 From Outer Space
10/16 - Spider Baby/101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments/Night's End/Behemoth
10/17 - Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/18 - Random Acts of Violence/Two Witches/Let the Right One In Episode 2
10/19 - 976-EVIL




Read:

After finishing Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt on Friday, I surprised myself by digging out Todd McFarlane's sequel, the first five issues of his short-lived fourth Spider-Man series first launched in 1990 at the height of the artist frenzy that led McFarlane, Leifeld and a bunch of other in-demand zeitgeist artists to split off from Marvel and start Image Comics. 


"Torment" is a thinly written and now artistically dated sequel to Kraven's final story, wherein a villain named Calypso uses Voodoo to control Dr. Kurt Connors' deadly reptilian alter-ego The Lizard to attack Spider-Man. It's not terrible, but it's kinda close to terrible, especially the way Todd makes every issue start with narration that leads into the phrase "Rise Above it all" on the opening credits-splash. By issue two this gimmick felt forced, by issue five I could barely keep my eyes from rolling out of their sockets. Not to be a dick; this was McFarlane's first job as a writer, and I think that shows and was done better than a lot of first-time writers would have done. What doesn't help things is how busy his art is. Yes, it's awesome in terms of style, ideas and proportions, but there's just so much going on with each page that often, I just read the words and flipped to the next page instead of giving myself a headache trying to ascertain just what impossible contortion Spidey or the Lizard were in as they fought across a good half the pages in the overall arc. 


The first two arcs in this series had a huge impact on me when they first came out, however, for the most part, they have not aged well. That said, it's been at least 30 years since I've read these, so I figured why not? I'll probably go directly into the Wendigo/Wolverine storyline that follows Torment in issues 6-10. that was my favorite. I'll report back if that one holds up better.
 


Playlist:

Various - Every Day (Is Halloween) Chicago Industrial Playlist
Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror
Sisters of Mercy - Floodland
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Here Lies Lucy - Heaven or HLL EP
Fantômas - The Director's Cut
The Soft Moon - Exister
The Cure - Pornography
London After Midnight - Kiss (Club Mix) single
Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.


Loud and clear. I have already realized that I've constructed a bit of a creative trap for myself lately, and a lot of it has to do with what these cards are very visually, on-the-nose saying: I'm drinking too much and it's tying my hands on my creative pursuits. I need to chill and get back into the routine I had going in September: Wake up by 8:00 AM so I can punch-out by 4:30 PM, then head out and spend at least an hour-and-a-half writing.

Friday, July 23, 2021

New Zeal and Ardor!

How long do we have to wait until this new Zeal and Ardor album drops? The correct answer is too f*&king long! 




READ:

This has been a strange year, because over halfway through, and I've read very few actual novels. Instead, all my reading time is spent reading comics. Not a bad thing, and this certainly isn't the first time this has happened, but between starting the A Most Horrible Library podcast, and the brief resurrection of Drinking with Comics, I've fallen back in love with the medium in a way I haven't felt in years, specifically Marvel Comics, which I thought I'd left behind me after the 2015 Secret Wars event tapped us old-timer Marvel Zombies on the shoulders and whispered, "The old continuity you cling to is gone. Rest easy, this is for a younger generation now."

I've been digging in back issue bins for the first time in at least 15 years. I've also been seeking stuff out on eBay, both in attempts to fill in long-forgotten gaps in series I'd thought I'd given up on. It's made me realize I've come to regret giving away or selling back so many comics over the years. And I've been re-reading a bunch of old-school series as I acquire these missing pieces.



I remember seeing a full-page ad for this book back when I was a kid and thinking it looked troubling. A mutant kid killing one of his friends/teammates? Wow. I only read New Mutants here and there as a kid, so a lot of the character development was lost on me when I did pick up the book, and I never quite understood how Fallen Angels fit into the overall continuity of the ongoing Mutant Books, most penned by my beloved Chris Claremont still at that time. Now I know.

Fallen Angels was a New Mutants spin-off mini-series that ran back in 1987. A couple years ago I found issues 5-8 somewhere and picked them up, but it wasn't until two weeks ago I tracked down 1-4, and now completed, I've finally been reading this weird little adventure that features Roberta DaCosta AKA Sunspot and Warlock - always a character that made me go "WTF?" when I was a kid. Like a lot of comics from this era, this is a bit over-written, however, once you adjust to the difference in style, it's pretty fun.


This is a more recent title. A five-issue series by Jason Latour, Robbie Rodriguez and colorist Rico Renzi. Robbie and Rico are the visual team responsible for the short-lived but fantastic Vertigo series FBP, aka Collider. I fell in love with their style on that book, and when they came up with the initial design for Spider-Gwen - a character I shouldn't have really cared about at all at the time based on my reading habits - I gushed. 

I love this character's design. 

At the time of the series, and when it came out, I bought issues 1 and 2 and then stopped. Recently, I found 3-5 in the bins at The Comic Bug and started reading through it. Pretty cool alternate universe set-up, where Peter Parker is dead, Gwen was bitten by the radioactive spider, and Frank Castle is a cop! Also, MJ and Gwen play in a band called, what else? The Mary Janes, and have a hit song called "Face it, Tiger."

I don't know that I'll go back and read anything after this small series, but these five issues are bringing me great joy at the moment, so who knows?


With my recently reestablished love of Spider-Man, I've been going back in and just snatching rando issues from the three 80s series I would read off and on, and which I'm realizing I am missing so many issues I once had. In particular, I've been finding quite a few issues of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man, most issues in the 130s and 140s. Here's a recent acquisition that ties together several other disparate issues I had, so I can now read a short little stint. Remember: back in the 80s and before, trade collections were next to non-existent, so the editorial edict for these books wasn't for the creators to do 5-issue arcs. What we'd get is one-offs, larger threads that played out amidst the monthly stand-alones, and, in Spidey's case, arcs that ran across all three of his titles at the time (Web, Spectacular, and of course, Amazing). 

The good news is, almost all of these books run between $2.99 and $3.99, so it's not like I'm breaking the bank. And sifting through the back issue bins has been a strangely calming routine. I can get all stressed out at work, stop by the bug and spend 30 minutes flipping through issues, and all that bad shit is gone when I walk out the door.


Also, motivated by the "Book Club" section on the latest episode of the Marvel's Pull List podcast, I decided it was finally time to re-read Grant Morrison's New X-Men run, so I dusted off the first of my three hardcovers and blew through the first arc E is for Extinction, as well as the 2001 annual that introduced Xorn. Oh, reading this is making me remember just how much I love Morrison's take on the X-Men.




Playlist:

Anthrax - Among the Living
Dio - Holy Diver
Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 (single)
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
King Woman - Celestial Blues (pre-release singles)
Jethro Tull - Benefit
Ministry - Animositisomina
Godflesh - New Flesh in Dub Vol 1
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Mastodon - Crack the Skye 
 



Card:


I'm back on the journey into Shadow Play, Book Two, and for the first time since last year about this time, I am IN! The book is occupying a lot of my thoughts and time, and what's more, I finally found the voice for a new element I'm adding. Also, there is way more written than I thought, and it's way better than I remembered. So while I'm still letting a new nosleep series idea percolate, my main focus has finally shifted back to where I need it to be!