Some Tuesday links.
- Dafna and former employee Kid Chris have finally posted the sixth installment of their Bispectacult podcast…one full hour of funnybook talk with a healthy dollop of swearing.
Alas, it’s not their interview with me that I recorded a few weeks ago…I believe Kid Chris is still trying to beat it into coherence before unleashing my word salad upon the interweb, but that should be up soon. Maybe.
- It’s not due out for a couple weeks yet, but you can see the cover and first four pages of the Groo 25th Anniversary Special right here.
- Thanks to whomever it was what ordered the Heroes DVD set through my Amazon link. Every little bit helps, friends, and that reminds me that I should probably put one of those Amazon ads here:
I caught one episode of the show, about two or three installments in…then at about the halfway point, I finally got into the habit of watching it every week. Fun viewing, if not very deep, and there’s an odd sort of amusement for an old funnybook fan like me seeing some of the old superhero tropes paraded on screen, and knowing that while a lot of it is old hat for me, someone who’s read comics for 30+ years, this is certainly all new to the majority of the viewing audience.
‘Course, the cast really makes the show…I mean, is there anyone who watches Heroes who doesn’t love Masi Oka as Hiro? And the absolutely perfect casting of George Takei as his father? And while the season finale was, well, not quite as climatic as we’d been hoping for, the story over the full season held together nicely and made for good, episodic adventure. Though the makers of the Watchmen flick may be a bit miffed at the show cribbing that book’s climax for one of its major plot elements.
So…um, a lot of you are going to be buying this thing anyway. Why not buy it through that handy link up there and show Mike a little love? Just one click…your mouse pointer, it’s so close, so close, just inches away….
- John at This Is Pop Culture wants you to learn about Hawaii.
- It’s been linked all over the place, but I’ll link it here, too, I guess, since I finally read it…an L.A. Times article (headlined “Holy plastic slab!” of course – the Batman TV show is forty years old now, right?) about the Certified Guaranty Co. and its “comic slabbing” service.
I forget where I saw it, but someone made the point that anyone spending tens of thousands of dollars on a comic is probably not going to read it anyway, so sealing those up in plastic doodads isn’t doing much harm. It’s the new books that, once sealed up, go for stupid money on the eBay that worry me. One of the reasons for the last big comics market crash was the sudden realization of collectors/speculators that they’ll never recover the cash spent on acquiring their alleged “collector’s items.” I wonder if we’re heading in that direction again.
- So long as I’m linking to online newspaper stories…here’s a good editorial on the legacy of Jack Kirby, whose contributions to the comics world are being remembered today, despite Marvel’s best efforts to “disappear” him during the ’80s.
- No link to the auction itself, alas, but the Oxnard Police Department had one of those Silver Surfer statue/movie theatre lobby displays in one of their police auctions…we tried to get it, but were outbid, I’m afraid. Just as well…we’re beginning to get cramped for space as it is. But maybe we could have put him behind the counter, or (I think this was Employee Aaron’s idea) have him up front, holding this weeks’ New Comic Pick of the Week in his hand.
- Bitter Andrew looks at Crazy Magazine‘s hamfisted parody of Dave Berg’s “The Lighter Side of…” from Mad.
