Dang ol' Superman

Dang ol' Superman
Originally uploaded by thechrishaley

Want to hear me talk about Superman and Wednesday Comics?
www.letsbefriendsagain.com/2009/07/31/i-am-terribly-vexed/

It's never been like that..

“When I was in high school, I didn’t have a parent figure. I didn’t have a sense of being cared about,” Waid said. “In January of 1978, I went to see ‘Superman: The Movie’ – it changed my life.”

Waid said that the film’s message of hope had a profound impact on him. “[It was] the single most transformative moment of my life.” A misty-eyed Waid then said that Superman was important because he “was someone who cared about everybody,” regardless of race or class or any other determining factor.

- via CBR

A confession..

Autumn got dark..

A friend of mine just emailed me and told me he'd finished Scott Pilgrim Vol. 4 last night and that he'd really enjoyed but that Scott's stupidity almost got to be too much at points.

Immediately I thought, "Wait.. Scott's not stupid.. is he?"

I think it's not that he's stupid, it's that he's equal parts naive, obtuse, and self-involved. On a different character, those characteristics would make him the villain or completely unlikeable, but Scott is endearing because he doesn't engage in any of the acts that reveal those characteristics intentionally.
Sure, he's a selfish jerk sometimes, but it's not because he means to be. It's that he just has a hard time seeing the world beyond his world.

What do you guys think?

That is a lack of oversight..

Oh, Shocker Toys, who the hell are you trying to kid?
More here.

I wish I could do better..

If the whole of Australia has to catch on fire for pictures this cute to be taken, so be it.

I don't want to look at any pictures now that are purporting to be cute unless they are framed within the context of Australia being on fire.

He is professional..

Man, I have been a terrible blogger as of late.
If you're reading this, then I think you know this is totally unlike me.

Apologies.

I know I've said this before, but the fact of the matter is I just have most of my free time wrapped up in Let's Be Friends Again.

Speaking of which, here is a preview of today's yet to go up new strip!

Doesn't that make you want to read more, tell your friends, and send us money?
I bet it does.
After our foray into reality-altering, Grant Morrison enamorizing comics that few understand, we're back to weird, dark, "funny" comics that few understand.

Joking aside, I'm really amazed and thankful for the level of success we've had with the comic in such a short period of time, and I know that's due in no small part to you (the person who is reading this) and people like you who have been kind enough to check us out and tell others that we're worth their time.

That is a thing which is awesome, and I hope it continues.
Making comics with Curt continues to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, but knowing that what we're making is making other people laugh or smile or whatever is a specific kind of good feeling that's hard to describe.

When I was a child..

My (spoiler free) thoughts on Final Crisis #7 :


You said it.

This comic (with it's one penciller and SEVEN inkers) really illustrates what a difference an inker can make.
I'm not sure who inked which parts, but I do know that while the whole thing essentially looked drawn by Doug Mahnke, the quality shifted wildly from inker to inker.
I know that has nothing to do with the story itself which is what people really want to talk about when it comes to Final Crisis (right?).

Well, as far as the story goes, I liked it.
Would I have liked to have seen more of some characters or to have had a little expansion of some of the scenes? Yes. Very much so. But I know that's not the kind of story Grant Morrison was trying to tell, and having read all of the interviews he's done about the book, I understand and appreciate what he was going for, so I can't fault him for the choices he made.
Well, I could, but I won't.
Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that I think Grant Morrison knows what he's doing a lot better than I do. I mean, I'd never even heard of "superluminal" speeds before Final Crisis.

Timothy Callahan has done a fantastic analysis of the entire series here, and if you're interested in intelligent comic discussion I definitely think it's worth your time. I generally feel that way about everything Timothy Callahan writes though, so maybe I'm biased.

The most pressing question on my mind now is how will DC follow up on all of the ideas Morrison introduced or concluded in this series. While I think that not running with some of the balls he was playing with (this was a terrible choice of metaphors) would be a huge waste, the idea of writers of a lesser quality or vision mucking up his ideas (read : Countdown) seems just as bad.

So where does DC go from here?

Thoughts?

We didn't have much time..

I think this is the best explanation of Batman R.I.P. I have read..

Grant Morrison is trying to make a few points when it comes to Batman in my opinion. The point of RIP wasn't whether he killed Batman or not nor was it whether he killed Bruce or not. Instead it was asking the question about Batman, if you take it all away is he still Batman. If you make it that the parents that he fights for were maniacs and whores, if you make it that Robin, Nightwing and Alfred leave him, if you make it that all the money makes no difference, if you make it that he has no gadgets, no jets, no cars and no Justice League and all he has is his body and his training and his mind, Bruce or no Bruce, is Batman still Batman. RIP showed that he is. That no matter what you do to him and no matter what you take, he is and always will be Batman. - from xelas5674's comment on a review of Final Crisis #6 over at Newsarama

A murderous distraction..

Would you see this?
I mean, it's not happening, this is just some decent Photoshoppery, but would you buy her as Wonder Woman?

This is what I believe.

This seemed like an important day to post this.

I know this is going to seem silly to some of you and like too much information for others, so bear with me. I'm not trying to tell you what to do or how to think, I'm just telling you about myself.

Whether you've known it or noticed or not, I'll tell you that I've been going through some "stuff" lately.
And to be honest, there are times when it seems that my entire life has just been a series of "going through some stuff" moments.
The details aren't really important, and the full extent of these "moments" are unknown to even those closest to me.
There have been times when these "moments", or what amounts to the "contents" of my life, have left me with a kind of sadness that I would not wish on anyone.

But..

I have always found my way out of those times, and I am very thankful for that.

More than anything else, there has been one constant in my life, that, in my expert opinion (as I am the world's foremost expert on myself), has instilled in me an unshakable belief that no matter how dark it is or how bad things seem, there is always a way.
That there is always hope.

For my 28 years, that constant has been Superman.

I've tried, ultimately in vain, for years and years to explain what it all means to me. Not just what the character or idea of Superman means, but what he represents to me.

It hasn't been until these last few months that I've really started to understand what I'd previously only felt.
This is due in large part to the work and words of the first person I've ever heard who I feel like understands exactly where I've been coming from all these years.

I've basically pulled the most personally important (to me) quotes from Grant Morrison's recent interviews with Newsarama and strung them together in the way that I feel my brain has retained and latched onto them. (All bold emphasis is mine, not necessarily Grant's.)
I hope you'll take the few minutes to read it.
Last time for a while, I promise..



I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.

...if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine ? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it.

So we can choose to be the astronaut or the gangster. The superhero or the super villain. The angel or the devil. It’s entirely up to us, particularly in the privileged West, how we choose to imagine ourselves and conduct our lives.

My own work has been an ongoing attempt to repeat the magic word over and over until we all become the kind of superheroes we’d all like to be.



It’s a pretty high–level attempt by some smart people to do the Superman concept some justice, is all I can say. It’s intended to work as a set of sci–fi fables that can be read by children and adults alike. I’d like to think you can go to it if you’re feeling suicidal, if you miss your dad, if you’ve had to take care of a difficult, ailing relative, if you’ve ever lost control and needed a good friend to put you straight, if you love your pets, if you wish your partner could see the real you...All Star is about how Superman deals with all of that.

In today’s world, in today’s media climate designed to foster the fear our leaders like us to feel because it makes us easier to push around. In a world where limp, wimpy men are forced to talk tough and act ‘badass’ even though we all know they’re shitting it inside. In a world where the measure of our moral strength has come to lie in the extremity of the images we’re able to look at and stomach. In a world, I’m reliably told, that’s going to the dogs, the real mischief, the real punk rock rebellion, is a snarling, ‘fuck you’ positivity and optimism. Violent optimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the Alpha form of outrage these days.

I have a desire not to see my culture and my fellow human beings fall helplessly into step with a middle class media narrative that promises only planetary catastrophe, as engineered by an intrinsically evil and corrupt species which, in fact, deserves everything it gets.

Is this relentless, downbeat insistence that the future has been cancelled really the best we can come up with? Are we so fucked up we get off on terrifying our children? It’s not funny or ironic anymore and that’s why we wrote All Star Superman the way we did.

What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled.

That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colourist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance.

And think about how that experience, the simple experience of interacting with a paper comic book, along with hundreds of thousands of others across time and space, is an actual doorway onto the beating heart of the imminent, timeless world of “Myth” as defined above. Not just a drawing of it but an actual doorway into timelessness and the immortal world where we are all one together.



My grief over the loss of my dad can be Superman’s grief, can trigger your own grief, for your own dad, for all our dads. The timeless grief that’s felt by Muslims and Christians and Agnostics alike. My personal moments of great and romantic love, untainted by the everyday, can become Superman’s and may resonate with your own experience of these simple human feelings.

In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time, the Only time, honouring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end.

This is what I believe in.
And that's why I voted for Barack Obama.
Because I believe in Superman, and because I believe in him..
I believe in myself.
I believe in hope.
I believe that we can be the people we've been waiting for.
I believe that if we're willing to, that every one of us can make a difference.

That's what makes us...

Pretty much exactly how I felt.

What I'm trying to say..

I immersed myself in Superman and I tried to find in all of these very diverse approaches the essential "Superman–ness" that powered the engine. I then extracted, purified and refined that essence and drained it into All Star's tank, recreating characters as my own dream versions, without the baggage of strict continuity.

In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We're all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own "Bottle Cities" that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I'd really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That "S" is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.

Batman is obviously much cooler, but that's because he's a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy's Superman day and night.

Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That's actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman's peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell. He's much more of a working class superhero, which is why we ended the whole book with the image of a laboring Superman.

He's Everyman operating on a sci–fi Paul Bunyan scale. His worries and emotional problems are the same as ours... except that when he falls out with his girlfriend, the world trembles. - Grant Morrison via Newsarama

My reason for sharing this with all of you is that I feel like Grant Morrison is not only giving you an excellent explanation of why Superman is the best and greatest superhero, but also because he's bringing up the themes that I was trying to come to terms with and expound upon in my Responsible Adult = Secret Identity post back in July.

It is my belief that if something I was thinking on my own is lining up with something Grant Morrison thinks, then I am doing something intrinsically right in the universe.

Code monkey have every reason..

Okay, so, I could not stop laughing when I saw this.
This picture is hilarious to me.

Something being gay, by which I mean literally homosexual, is not funny.
Something being unintentionally gay, on the other hand, I think can be very funny.
This photograph is the latter.
I mean, if I can paraphrase Meatwad they definitely look like boyfriend and boyfriend.
And for some reason that is making me giggle.
There's something about how they look more airbrushed/Photoshopped than Britney Spears' last album cover... like, JJ Abrams or Entertainment Weekly wanted so badly for you to think the two of them were very, very pretty.
Spock looks like a Precious Moments statue and Kirk looks fresh off the set of Dawson's Creek.

It is important for me to explain that this is only funny if it is not the intention of the filmmakers/magazine editors.
It is my assumption that Kirk and Spock are not gay, much less lovers in the new Star Trek movie.
That is why it is funny to me.
If Kirk and Spock ARE gay and/or lovers in the new Star Trek movie, this photo is no longer funny... it is now COMPLETELY AWESOME!

"What do you mean?" I hear you ask your monitor.
What I mean is that I really don't give a rip about Star Trek, and if Kirk and Spock are gay in this new movie I am way more excited about seeing it.
I know that's probably not the case, but if it is I'm going to get in line for tickets now.
I know that that would probably really upset the Trekkers.. Trekkies?.. Star Trek fans, just as much as it would have upset me if in JJ Abrams' script for a new Superman movie (pre-Superman Returns) he had made Superman gay, but since I don't care about Star Trek I don't care about that.
I guess I'm a bad person.
Anyway, for more on the new Star Trek movie check out all this business over here.

Not when I need it..

It's funny how when I don't really have anything to talk about, I can find a million things to blog about, but when I have big things going on or a lot of exciting things to talk about I get what amounts to "blog-fright" (Note to self : Get Curt to get the lawyer to trademark that phrase).

I just end up feeling like the task of organizing my memories into coherent thoughts and those thoughts into interesting word-collections ("sentences") is hell of daunting. Or that I'm never going to be able to re-tell my adventures with the same kind of incredible adventure-y-ness that they deserve.

And then I keep putting off doing any regular blogging as well because I keep telling myself, "Dude, you really need to get on that SPX report." And now I've got this Post-It note on my desk filled with post ideas I need to get to, but can't until I get the SPX report out of the way.

So having said that, I should say that SPX was really awesome.

I mean, really.

It's where we need to be.

There is no way Curt and I (and thus, Let's Be Friends Again) will not become a permanent fixture of SPX.

I don't have everything scanned or uploaded yet, so I can't post all my pictures, but there are pictures forthcoming.

I will tell you in advance I own the two greatest things Bryan Lee O'Malley has ever drawn.

Oh, and before I forget, the above art was a 2 minute coloring job I did on a panel from page 5 of Let's Be Friends Again #1 which is being syndicated in it's entirety over at (you guessed it) letsbefriendsagain.com!

As today is Thursday (and Tuesdays and Thursdays are the days we've deigned fit to bless you with new content), there is a new comic/page up as well as insightful writer's commentary from Curt.

Please go check it out, subscribe to the feed, and tell a few dozen of your friends so that we can be friends with them too.. again... for the first time. 

So cool in that new Camaro..

Okay, so Terence Stamp is my hero.
You'd think being General Zod would be enough, but he's also written three memoirs, a novel, and a cookbook.

Plus he was mentioned in the Kinks song, Waterloo Sunset.

Lightning shot from the sky..

All I'm trying to say is that is a fine looking movie poster.

You're trying to pull me back..

I think putting the quotation marks around the word actors would be more accurate.

I did it again last night..

Circa 2002-03

Those of you who've known me long enough (or have been coming around this particular part of the internet long enough) will know I'll always have a special place for this guy (Butch Walker if you're not familiar), but I think this guy has basically got him pegged cold.

I wore a jumpsuit..

I've always been against goofy ringtones and whatnot, but for some reason I've had it stuck in my head lately that I want, nay, need to download a song to be the ringtone for my cellular phone.

Why is this?

What do you make of this?