Heidi MacDonald, a longtime journalist and editor who runs comics site The Beat, coined a great phrase several years ago: “satisfying chunk”. More than ever that’s what I’m after when reading new material, with issues costing 3 to 4 bucks
a pop — not just a steep price on the face of it but one that suffers in comparison to copious collections of recent material that easily best the per-chapter price of single issues and usually throw in extras to boot. There’s also a wealth of archival material now available nearly impossible to even imagine a couple of decades ago.
I greatly appreciate series that compel me to reread often, too, and reward my doing
so in different ways:
This post is currently down for maintenance.
We got a new trailer for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice last month to coincide with the sprawling media crush of San Diego’s Comic-Con International.
I’ll admit that the movie looks impressive on its own terms. While Man of Steel had potential as a riff on the superhero genre with a heavy sci-fi bent, however, it was a terribly misguided Superman film. Based on the footage and conversations regarding its sequel, Zack Snyder continues to be at least as far off target in translating DC’s oldest, greatest icons from page to screen as he was in adapting Watchmen a half-dozen years back. (Read my non-spoiler post or my longer review of Man of Steel, and my detailed review of Watchmen, for more.)
Snyder et al. have jumped right to Frank Miller’s Dark Knight — a possible future extrapolating from the comics of the time in which a weathered Batman comes out of retirement and tangles with a godlike Superman whom he views as too powerful and too simplistic in the embrace of justice and the American Way — by setting up that dichotomy in the characters’ first meeting absent the weight of their history together. Huh?
One tiny spoiler for Ant-Man coming up after this odd image…
According to a time.com headline on Monday, “The Supreme Court Just Quoted Spider-Man”.
If you had the trifecta of this, upholding the first African-American President’s expansive health-insurance plan, and ruling that marriage is a right inclusive of same-sex couples under the Constitution in your latest United States Supreme Court Actions Your Ten-Year-Old Self Would Never Believe office pool, I really gotta hand it to you.
One small quibble with the article is that the immortal line quoted here from its debut is “spoken” in that original story by the narration rather than by Spider-Man or Peter Parker’s dear Uncle Ben.
Related: Board Now • The Amazing Spider-Man Minus
Andrew Garfield Plus Garfield • See You Next B'ak'tun
I didn’t have the exact 21¢ in change in my pocket earlier tonight that I’ll usually make sure is on me when I go to Chipotle, where I know my sofritas bowl is $7.21 with tax, but I did at least have a penny. The cashier apparently thought the penny was too in-significant to ring up, however, because I still got $12.79 in change for my twenty-dollar bill (and single penny). So not only wasn’t I rewarded with the “How did you do that? You-- You’re a warlock!” look of wide-eyed wonder I’m used to in today’s world when the register displays round change, I’m now out a fricking penny.
Related: Cold Beans • A-Ha Moment • Razor Burn
