The cover to Mystic Funnies #3 (Fantagraphics) is reassuringly familiar to anyone who’s followed underground comix guru Robert Crumb all these years: a car-choked urban setting where Flakey Foont – Crumb’s whiney everyshlub – is being lectured by a typically statuesque femme. “Out of the pain comes the pleasure, out …
Read More »Bill Sherman
Stephen Spielberg Presents: Taken
As HBO’s Band of Brothers is to Saving Private Ryan, Taken is to Close Encounters of the Third Kind: a mini-series elaboration of themes introduced by producer Stephen Spielberg’s source flicks. On the basis of the preview ep of this new ten-part series, it looks like Sci-Fi Channel may’ve gotten …
Read More »“The Dark Wind Blows On Everyone”
So how does PBS' Skinwalkers stack up against the original book?
Read More »Return Of The Dog Park Tapes
Update: In the preceding episode of “Bark Park Musicale,” Bill and his two leashed companions, Dusty & Cedar, had put away Bill’s Walkman when a chance encounter on the Hedge Apple Trail nearly ended in disaster. With the arrival of fall, however, our hero decided to once more pull out …
Read More »Waco Brothers, New Deal
Even if I wasn’t predisposed toward ’em, I’d probably cozy up to the Waco Brothers’ new CD release, New Deal (Bloodshot), after hearing its opening cut. Set to an insistent country blues rhythm, “Poison” contains what can only be a telling put-down of insular blog life: “You want to make …
Read More »“Am I At A Heightened Stage Of Alert Yet?”
The 2002 collection of Bill Griffith’s “Zippy the Pinhead” strip, Zippy Annual, (Fantagraphics) opens with a sequence that shows the cartoonist at his most playful. In it, a tearful retro comic strip femme – redolent of the kind of kitschy figures Griffy used to parody in his Young Lust underground …
Read More »Does This Mean He’s Not “The Man” Anymore?
The comic sites are buzzin’ about former Marvel honcho Stan Lee’s lawsuit against Marvel Comics: Tuesday, he filed a $10 million lawsuit charging that the company is cheating him out of his share of lucrative movie profits. With the movie versions of Daredevil and X-Men II on the event horizon …
Read More »No Re-order/No Return
Journalista overseer Dirk Deppey has a thoughtful and extensive posting on The Comic Journal‘s blog discussing industry biggies Marvel Comics’ current “no re-orders” policy. Designed to give the once-near-bankruptcy comics line a better looking “bottom line” to potential investors, Marvel’s policy has already angered many comics shop owners & fans …
Read More »“No Such Thing As Uncorrupt Junk”
Superhero comics! Superhero comics! Superhero comics! In snazzy hardbound reprints, no less!
Read More »I’m In Love With My Walls
Ah, Top Ten Lists: is anything more a part of Pop Music? Ever since the first Top Forty Countdown was initiated, pop fans have been conditioned – whether by Your Hit Parade or Casey Kasem – into quantifying their likes and dislikes in list format. Like the gang at Championship …
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