Category: Entertainment

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Leave it to MapQuest to remind you that the nearby railroad actually is the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (and immediately lodge the song into your mind).

Actually, I’m also reminded of a Forbidden Broadway bit on a musical version of Anna Karenina, which finished with the parody, “On the Ashkabad, Tblisi and the Kiev Express.”

Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that we went out to see The Musical of Musicals: The Musical last night at the Laguna Playhouse. (It’s a musical, by the way.) It features a cast of four performing the same melodrama plot five times, once each in the styles of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Kander & Ebb. The musical styles were dead on, the show was hilarious in its own right, and it was packed with in-jokes so if you’ve seen enough of the shows they’re lampooning, it’s even better.

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Neil Gaiman weighs in on the flap over adult-oriented comics in a Denver Library:

It’s been twenty years, and newspaper headlines still oscillate between “Wham! Bam ! Pow! Comics Have Grown Up!” and “OH MY GAAAD THIS COMIC NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN HAS CONTENT NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN IN IT!” articles. Bizarre.

(Ironically, the people complaining don’t seem to care much about the content—they just wanted to get the Spanish-language books off the shelves.)

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Green Arrow 53 CoverI just discovered that this week’s Green Arrow #53 is actually written by William Messner-Loebs. (DC’s website still says Judd Winick.)

Messner-Loebs and his wife have been in terrible financial straits for some time. An article about their plight last January led to fan mobilization complete with donation drives, benefit auctions and books, and—most importantly—a campaign to convince publishers to start hiring him again.

I’ve already ordered The Three Tenors: Offkey from Äardwolf Publishing and Heroes And Villains: The William Messner-Loebs Benefit Sketchbook from TwoMorrows Publishing. Neither has arrived yet, though they’re supposed to have come out last month.

Now I’m off to the comic store to pick up Green Arrow.

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Mnemovore #5 came out this week. (For some reason issue #4 shipped twice—once just before Comic-Con and again last week.) This week’s issue, or at least my copy, has a strange quirk to it. Some of the word balloons are faded, as if a rubber stamp was pushed down with unequal force, or as if someone ran a gradient tool over the text with Photoshop. I’m still not sure whether it’s intentional or just a coloring or printing error.

This scan should be relatively non-spoilery:

Panel showing faded word balloon

At one point I thought they might be the result of coloring gradients applied above the word balloons instead of below, but I could only get a few to match up.

The thing is, it’s appropriate for the book—if maddening to try to read. The premise is that into our information-saturated world has come a predator that feeds on information, eating people’s memories and leaving them amnesiac or worse. In a story about information loss, gaps in information make thematic sense. And there was one panel with the same effect last issue: “They can make it so you can’t…”

Just one issue to go…

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Character collage: Portraits of two women, looking downward to the left and right. Behind each is another woman standing, one regally in an elaborate blue dress with a necklace and hair ornaments, the other in a plain white dress. They are also looking away from the center. In front are three men standing, two in armor with swords drawn. The man in the center is holding up his sword, dividing the image in half. The man on the right is holding his sword pointing downward. The man on the left is wearing middle-ages-looking clothes and balancing the point of a dagger on a fingertip.The first issue of the New Spring comic book was surprisingly good. I wasn’t sure how well Robert Jordan’s writing would translate to the medium, and of course a lot of details are lost, but Chuck Dixon has done a good job adapting the story, and Mike Miller’s art is incredible.

The book opens with a brief description of the world, then a series of splash pages showing the scope of the Aiel War, starting with thousands of Aiel pouring over the Dragonwall. From there it moves to Lan’s story, then to Moiraine’s. Two pages stand out for me: The panorama of Tar Valon, and Gitara’s Foretelling, the latter of which is most effective because it contrasts with the very realistic style of the rest of the book.

Believe it or not, I’d recommend this. Who would’ve thought I’d be excited about The Wheel of Time again?

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