Of course, crafting a good script from that heady perfect mix is another thing entirely. One only needs to look at the shitstorms that are Desperate Housewives or Grey’s Anatomy to really see that there’s more to entertainment perfection than hot chicks with awesome lives surrounded by death. Some quick fixes I would propose:
-On Desperate Housewives, Teri Hatcher should be a vampire. Not some vampire-lite crap either. I mean a hardcore, wolf-shapeshifting, hypnotizing, murdering-ass Dracula Vampire. All the weird and boring suburban backdrop can stay, but the main plot line of the show is about Teri Hatcher secretly trying to take over the world. And succeeding.
-On Grey’s Anatomy, it can still be a teaching hospital, but now it’s involved in all kinds of twisted genetic experiments and occasional occult happenings. So instead of drug addictions and lupus, it’s all reanimating the corpses of dead soldiers or stitching up an injured demon who had its arm cut off in a fight with an angel. An example scene:
After failing to save Katherine Heigl’s life, McDreamy seals her soul into a terrible onyx stone that binds her ghost to his will. His requirements are twofold: That she always be wearing a bikini most excellent, and she be a fantastic guitar player. The first scene of McDreamy exercising his unholy control would be him sprinting through the hospital, wild-eyed, baseball bat in hand and blood pouring down his mouth, decking everyone and everything in sight as a translucent Heigl tears through the guitar parts of Van Halen’s Panama.
See how easy that was?
-Still planning on doing the comic subscription plan, I swear, but I’ve waylaid myself a bit with over-thinking my purchases. I’ve been wondering if it’s more valuable to subscribe to a live ongoing title like USM or Daredevil, or if I should start collecting hardcovers of stuff that I know is awesome. Boring I know, but I have this persistent library-building fantasy in which I build the most amazing collection of books over the course my life that I’m sure others out there share. I’m thinking about starting with either a full hardcover collection of Y: The Last Man or grabbing Walking Dead, Invincible or early Runaways volumes. Thoughts?
Spider-man: Web of Shadows for the DS is okay. It does play very much like a beat-em up version of Tony Hawk (Thanks Activision!), but it’s definitely no Castlevania. So far, the bosses are easy, enemies much less exciting, and the lack of a grided mini-map is really annoying. And the combat, while fun and slickly acrobatic, is also fairly repetitive. I’m not super-far into the game yet, so I’ll give an update when I finish it.
Went to Warped Tour this weekend. Weird, I know, since I’m a 26-year old marketing writer and not a 17-year old girl who loves eyeliner and sneaking cigarettes. Still, it was fairly excellent. By far my favorite act was the wonderful rapper P.O.S., who actually did his whole set off stage and encircled by the crowd. It was utterly amazing, and anyone who likes things that are awesome should check out these songs: De La Souls, Stand Up, Music for Shoplifting, Ants, Goodbye and Optimist. Music for Shoplifting is probably my favorite, but Goodbye is a new song that is really good too.
<3 Mike
If you’re only subscribing to a couple of series, you’re talking about an expenditure on the order of $10-12 a month (including shipping), which is less than the vast majority of trades; it is not, therefore, unreasonable for you to consider subscribing to a series or two that you are interested in, _and_ beginning your library-building activity as budget allows. I share the same library-fixation, and said combination has been my method for balancing the desire for new and interesting reads with ownership of personal favourites and seminal works.
If you’re interested in P.O.S. (The only worthwhile artist working Warped Tour this year, as far as my glance at the list has said), you might dig a dude who goes by Astronautalis. He’s worked with P.O.S. on a few tracks and word on the street (or rather, the underground hip hop railroad?) is that they’re stringing a whole album together at some point. At least, that was in the plans as of Astro’s last album.
Check it out, I suppose: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCNSKOScxVs . That’s off of his latest album; he’s bounced his style around a lot but all of it’s good — especially his freestyles — so I encourage abuse of YouTube’s bandwidth to hear as much as possible.
Wow, I never expected I’d get to proselytize indie hipster goodness here. Anyhoo, good comic as always! Looking forward to more.
WR Davidson, WE DOIN’ THIS! I picked up a subscription from Marvel for the new Ultimate Spider-man title (5 bucks cheaper than HeavyInk), and a back issue of Ultimate Spider-man from HeavyInk to see how those bad boys ship. I also picked up WE3 from HeavInk since it’s something I’ve never read, and I’m curious A) how they chip trades and B) how they deal with back orders of rare books.
HeavyInk seems like a neat site, with space for a blog and uploading our own stuff besides, so I’m really grateful for you pointing it out to me. I’ll take some more time to review the site later, but right now it seems like it could be a rad thing.
Thanks again (and for continuing to read besides!),
Mike
@JBonymous: I’m listening to Astronautalis right now, and I have to admit that my feelings are a little mixed. What I love about P.O.S. is that so much of his stuff is angry and desperate, it makes me feel like I have super powers and can do basically anything. Astronautalis sounds good, but also a bit too much like Jason Mraz, which makes me kind of want to punch the nearest baby animal. However, that doesn’t mean he’s bad or anything, and I’ll admit that I’m writing as I listen to him, which is not the best way to listen to rap music (pushes everything into the background in my opinion. I need to hear and feel all the words). I will give Astronautalis a few more tries, but no promises. Right now I’m just rocking off his myspace, so if you had any particular song recomendations, let ‘em rip.
I agree with your assessment of Warped Tour. I was disappointed by NOFX, who has been my favorite band for years, and once again was bored by Bad Religion, which I also happen to like quite a bit. I didn’t care about any of the 40+ new bands that I’d never heard of, which is weird as I’m sure at least a few of them were good.
I was talking to one of my pals after the concert, and we were comiserating over how much we don’t care about new music anymore. They were selling Warped Tour comps at the festival at five bucks for like 50 songs, which is an awesome deal by any standards, and my reaction was pretty much “Fuck that, not interested.”
Dana likes to tease me about how I only like 90’s punk rock, but it’s basically true. There are some exceptions, like The Misfits, but for the most part I have this weird mental niche for 90’s punk. Weird (and possibly lame) I know.
Thanks for continuing to read, and for spreading our comic around the net. You don’t have to worry about re-hosting or comics (at least I think), because we’re pretty hooked up in the hosting area. And it’s not like I’m going to complain if the site crashes from traffic (at least the first time it happens). Thanks again, and it’s always cool to meet another P.O.S. fan. I push him on basically everyone I know, but with little success.
-Mike
Ah, if it was the anger and desperation, then there’s not much Astronautalis can do for you. Two or three tracks an album is the most — and hell, I’ll list ‘em off: Tightrope and I’m Never Right from You and Yer Good Ideas; Astigmatism and Down And out in the Bold New City of the South from The Mighty Ocean & Nine Dark Theaters; The Dogs are Always Faster from Seven Freestyles in Seven days (And note that a healthy amount of his freestyle work is similar); and finally Brighton Damn Park and Now and Never More from A Round Trip Ticket to China. That’s all you’re really working with, and he’s got a hefty library.
Note that many more of his songs feature hints of forlornness and longing, but that’s only related to desperation, y’know? His MySpace is a fairly poor cross section of his work, because it is missing his freestyles, which call back to a completely different style from his days as a battle rapper, and because it is heavy on his most recent album, which is quite dissimilar from the previous two — his earlier albums have a much more schizophrenic feel to them, kind of like listening to the voices in his head while he falls apart. On the MySpace, the only songs that I would consider par for the course Astro fare are The Unfortunate Affairs Of, and Oceanwalk.
If you like anger and desperation in your hip hop, try a guy called Busdriver. His stuff is a mashup of punk, electro and clever rapping that essentially showcases his dissatisfaction with status quos in the music industry and society at large. In key with that, a guy out of the LA scene who goes by Nocando. He’s a bit unheard of, but his myspace has some solid pieces on it.
I agree that it’s always cool to meet another P.O.S. fan. Hell, it’s usually pretty exciting just to meet somebody who’s heard of a hip hop artist that isn’t gangsta-gat-ho-crunk bullshit.