6-6-06: Blogging about blogging is even more of a sin today.
I apologize for the quick ‘n’ sloppy weblogging for the last couple of days…my time has not been my own lately, and this “having a life” thing tends to get in the way of the important stuff: the funnybooks.
Anyway, you may have noticed that the sidebar links on my site and pal Dorian‘s has been sporadically up and down over the last couple of days. As I write this, Sideblog appears to be having some expired domain name issues which I certainly hope will be resolved soon.
So, um, anyway…how are you all doing?
A conversation I had with a good customer of ours over the weekend:
CUSTOMER: “Hey Mike…how do you like this All-Star Batman and Robin comic? I’ve seen on the internet that people don’t seem to like it.”
ME: “All those people are wrong. The comic’s absolutely fantastic.”
And as some of you longtime readers will remember, I wasn’t lying to make a sale (something I never do anyway)…I genuinely enjoy this comic. HISTORY WILL VINDICATE ME.
(I’m also so tired of hearing about that “I’m the gosh-danged Batman” panel. IT’S EXPLAINED ON THE VERY NEXT PAGE. AAAAARGH!)
Anyway, that was a good customer. If you want to hear about a few bad ones, I talk about them in my new “Behind the Counter” column for Comic Book Galaxy.
This doesn’t really have anything to do with anything, but I was Googling up some info for something I was working on, and found myself on the old Journalista weblog. I ended up rereading a few of the entries there, which made me really miss that site. Man, Dirk Deppey did some good work there. Plus, he plugged my site here a handful of times, helping it blossom from the tiny seed into the obnoxious weed-infested shrubbery that it is today. So now you know who you can thank/blame for my still doing the daily weblogging thing after 2 1/2 years.
2 1/2 years of doing this every day. There must be something wrong with me.
As Mr. Spurgeon would say, “Not Comics:” the trailer for The Wicker Man remake is out. It looks like they took the original, brilliant film, flipped the lid up, poured in a whole boxload of stupid, closed the lid, shook it a bit, and are about to put it into theatres.
Employee Nathan: “So are all comic book writers heavy-set guys with beards?”
Me: “Yes. It was either write comics or program computers.”
Oh, relax, I was joking…some are scary bald guys. And I hear tell that there are (gasp) wimmen who do comics…I’m pretty sure that’s just a rumor, though.
Anyway, for some reason that started a discussion of Doom Patrol #45 (July 1991), featuring a story entitled “The Beard Hunter” by Grant Morrison (look, another bald guy), Vince Giarrano, and Malcolm Jones III.
The Beard Hunter is a Punisher parody who, as is probably obvious, kills people with beards. He’s hired by a high-ranking official of The Bearded Gentlemen’s Club of Metropolis, despite the club’s mission being at odds with the Beard Hunter’s own goals. However, this official believes B.H. has the necessary skills to kill Niles Caulder, the leader of the Doom Patrol, and bring back his beard, as punishment for Caulder’s refusal to sell his beard to the organization.
Yes, it’s all completely nuts, but there’s a specific panel I wanted to point out:
That panel has stuck in my mind all these years (particularly the evident futility of his attempts at criticizing Caulder), and of late, it’s morphed into a weblogging gag between me and Dorian. Any slight against us, our sites, or even other folks could be met with “I’m going to write a poem about this on my blog,” said in our best Comic Book Guy voices.
Yeah, I know.
Batman with Unix commands animated gif. “#!BASH”
