Up on Den of Geek since yesterday, a review of 4×09 - “The Shape of Things to Come” - the first episode back after the season break. I’ve also reviews the previous episodes of Season 4 on DoG, so keep a look out!
This week’s Alternate Cover column went up today! Since the Iron Man film is out today, it’s a quick refresher on the Top 5 Iron Man stories you should read, as well as the 3 you should avoid at all costs!
I’m been messing around with the site to create seperate workblog and personal blog feeds in anticipation of slightly greater separation of this sort of thing in the future, largely so I don’t spam my friends with articles they already know or don’t care about. All being right with the universe, workblog posts will only show up on my website in the workblog section, and everything else will appear on my personal blog, on facebook and livejournal.
If you’re reading from RSS, then assuming it all goes to plan, you might want to add this feed for personal posts only, and/or this feed for workblog only, of keep using the general feed if you want posts about both - livejournal and facebook users, you’ll be defaulted to the “personal” feed.
Everything should work fine, but it’s equally possible that RSS readers everywhere are about to go into meltdown. Cross your fingers people.
Guess where I went today. Not my finest piece of writing, but cut me some slack! Transcription is an utter bitch and time was of the essence. Going into Claridges was one of those moments I occasionally have where I feel like I’ve somehow sneaked in the back door of life into an area reserved for proper grown ups. I wonder if that feeling ever stops coming? Hopefully not, anyway. On my way out I nicked one of the bottles of coke they were giving out. Coke in a glass bottle is one of life’s precious, untaintable luxuries.
My plan to ask Jon Favreau a question that started “In issue #127…” using The Simpsons’ shop-assistant teenager voice was unfortunately scuppered by a paucity of questions from the floor. Maybe next time. Oh, and Gwyneth Paltrow looked ridiculously amazing in person, given that I don’t really find her attractive on-screen. I remember having similar feelings about Amber Benson when I first saw her in person. As Josh says, that’s why the call them “the beautiful people.” Can they quote Buffy episodes with pinpoint accuracy though!? If that’s the price of beauty, they can KEEP IT. (In retrospect, Amber Benson of all people probably can. COMPLETE FAIL, James.)
Once again, I am in Micro Mart this week, giving my “top 10 freeware” choices. The feature’s mentioned on the cover and everything. There’s one more article I’m expecting to see (next week?) and I’m also waiting for Simon to get back to me on three more pitches I sent in, which are thankfully more diverse because I think I exhausted a decade’s worth of Windows knowledge over the last three. Let’s hope he’s interested in ‘em.
With Dead Rising thoroughly in the can and GTA IV still a few days away, I have taken to trying to beat Hexic, aided by a soundtrack of In Rainbows and Crystal Castles. It only improves the game, let me tell you. My copy of GTA IV was shipped today, in fact, so it shouldn’t be long now until it arrives. It’s going to take some serious willpower to fit my work around it, but I’m confident I’ll manage. My current rule is to not play any games before 5:30pm, and while I’ll probably relax that rule the day I get GTA, it will otherwise be religiously adhered to. Please be prepared to see me utterly backtrack on this statement next week, though!
Gmail’s “9 reasons to press the archive button” successfully makes the case for archiving rather than deleting, but I’m still confused as to how it makes more sense than, say, leaving the mails in your inbox. I can’t be the only person who doesn’t archive every mail after I’ve read it, can I? And, let’s be honest, if you need to run a blog post to tell your users that they should be using a feature, maybe it’s not them who need correcting…
It’s a good day for the many fans of my writing. First off, my first proper full-length feature, entitled “Best Kept Secrets” can be found in Micro Mart’s landmark 1000th issue, which hit the shelves this week and will be there until next Wednesday. I’ve got two more articles queued up there, as well as a few more pitches to send off so there’s a good chance you’ll see me in that with fairly decent regularity. I received some incredibly kind words from the editor there regarding the quality of this piece which has encouraged me no end, and thanks are also due to Sarah (who also writes the excellent movie-blog, Sarah Hates Your Movie - which she often does) for entertaining my various newbie questions over the last few weeks.
Second, after starting at CBR as a reviewer, I’ve successfully sold them an article I wrote on spec about the Jack Kirby talk I somehow blagged my way into at the ICA on Tuesday, entitled “Live at Kirby Plaza“. Did I ever mention how much I love living in London? Probably not, actually. I love any city in which I can find myself sitting in a room full of a couple of hundred people talking about Jack Kirby (though I’m kind of annoyed that the Frank Quitely talk is in Edinburgh…) If you’re interested, the average Jack Kirby fan (at least, the average one that turns up to this kind of talk) is about 40% balding, 85% male, 15% wearing a business suit and .5% Paul Gambaccini.
Speaking of comics, I’ve also got my weekly column on Den of Geek, let’s not forget. This one’s on Crossover Fatigue, and to be honest, I don’t think it’s my best. A crowded weekend forced me to go with a weaker idea, and I think it suffers because I wimped out on my original intention of screaming doom for the industry, and instead came out with something that carries all the weight of a sternly-worded parental warning sticket. It’s a curse that I’m sometimes unable to shut down the more moderate sections of my opinion-making brain-centre. If I had a movie blog it’d probably be called “James wasn’t a fan of your movie but he understands what others might see in it.” Ah well. Still, not everything can be our best work, I suppose. Keep an eye out anyway because I think I’ve got a good one lined up for next week’s (which you will find goes up on Monday)
Lastly, I’m getting sick of updating the “Writing” page on my website, which has, thankfully for my career, become quite unwieldy of late. I know it hasn’t been long since the last site overhaul, but I’m going to tweak some more things substantially, I think, though I haven’t decided exactly how yet. Separate personal and work RSS feeds? Quite possibly. I also wonder if I shouldn’t go back through my many years of entries and tag/categorise them all. I’ve been writing this damn thing, in varying degrees of believability, since Jan ‘03, you know? There’s something I can do to kill time…
I’m quite pleased today to see that one of the occasionally-coherent rants that I call my column, Alternate Cover, on Den of Geek is currently burning up after enterting the blogosphere at speed. This one was on the subject of “licensed comics” - I was trying to articulate my dislike for them in an article, as I have previously restricted that rant to my long-suffering friend Ian who doesn’t even read non-manga comics. Though he’s picked up the Warcraft manga, so he’s clearly not a stranger to the crushing disappointments that licensed comics can bring.
Anyway, Karl sent me a link to my article posted on Whedonesque (picked up because I use the Buffy and Angel comics as prominent examples) and then when I showed Sarah, she pointed out that Blog@Newsarama also linked to it. Pretty nice! Reading the comments is interesting - nothing I’ve written has had this much of a reaction for some time. McKelvie once told me that one way to make it in the comics industry is to get along with everyone, and if those Newsarama comments are any indication, I may have upset Brian Lynch. Ah well. Hopefully he doesn’t take too much notice, because I also had a fair old slice at the latest issue of Angel on CBR. Oops.
The only disappointing thing is that the discussion doesn’t really engage with many of my points. It’s to be expected, of course, being the Internet, but (and I will just paste what I e-mailed to Shaun a moment ago) there are some good replies in the midst:
Someone does question the exact value of canonicity, which is absolutely something worth debating. Personally, I NEED IT. I can’t understand how some people are happy to read, say, an X-Files or Buffy novel or comic knowing that it “didn’t happen” and can therefore not contribute to the overall development of the plot or characters - but obviously, plenty of people don’t care about that. Why is that, and what’s the value of canon? Those are points worth looking at.
Someone else also asked why you would make a comic if you’re not going to use the benefits of the medium (addressing the “no budget” point) and again, that’s another thing worth talking about. For me it places a problematic distance between the medium being adapted and the adapted material. If you wouldn’t have Angel riding a dragon in the TV series, it’s not going to fly (haha OH GOD) in the comics, because it’s just too ridiculous. It’s not the same world or characters once you start doing that.
Anyway. Food for thought. Overall, I’m pleased that I’ve managed to bring DoG some traffic, justifying the many review copies of things they’ve sent me, and I’m obviously pleased that people are actually reading what I’m doing and taking the time to respond. Even if they are doing it on other sites than the one I wrote it on.
Today I got my reward. Tesco has finally, after christ knows how many years of ignoring its existence entirely, started selling Vimto.
Not too long ago I “completed” Dead Rising. Zombie killing has never been that fun, or frustrating. Still, with the plot out of the way, I can hopefully go for some actual murdering of the undead in my own time.
The Go! Team are at Latitude. Finally, I get to see them. Those who have been closely following the life of me will know that that simple task has proven improbably difficult in the past. As long as they don’t clash with someone excellent, I’m home free.
I spent almost the entirety of today working solid. More than when I was ever at Yahoo!. We’re talking more than 8 hours, well past the point where I should’ve gone to buy comics or given up to play Dead Rising. Awaiting karmic reward now.
Took it’s sweet time getting here, but as promised, here’s my big ol’ announcement:
As of today, Comic Book Resources, one of the comics industry’s “big two” news sites, has been relaunched. That’s what I was waiting for to announce this, because the interesting part to those of you who don’t read comics but do care about me (shut up, I know there are some of you) is that I’m one quarter of the new review team. That’s right, my years (months) of hard (easy) work (not work) have paid off. While some of you might not understand fully, this is a big deal for me. I’ve been reading CBR for almost as long as I’ve had an internet connection, so I’m incredibly pleased to be able to give something back. You know, in return for money.
Heaps of praise in the traditional manner should most definitely be to Jamie, who made this possible by passing my name to Andy, who passed it to Jonah, who called me up in the small hours of last Tuesday morning to chat, read my work and then welcome me to the team as one of his dogs chewed up a comic in the background. I look forward to providing the same amount of objectivity, wit and insight as ever (IE - none) only in a more sold-out way.
Note that I’m not going to be leaving any of my other sites - all my work on Den of Geek, Comics Daily and Crudely Drawn Naked People is free to continue, and certainly will, though I am going to try not to duplicate content (a few pre-existing reviews backfilled into CBR database not withstanding) Frankly, there’s enough of me to go around.
As ever, leave any questions, comments and sarcastic witticisms after the beep. Beep.
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