Yesterday was the Monty Python reference, today is the Firesign Theatre one.
So Wednesday I had a customer ask me where he could find the Black Freighter comic book, as seen in the Watchmen film. “Only in Watchmen, my friend,” I told him, but I’m still really surprised no new comic-format tie-ins to the film were released. A “replica” Black Freighter comic would have been kind of neat, and perhaps not as…off-putting to the purists as, say, a Nite Owl & Silk Spectre mini-series. Well, there was that fan-made attempt at reconstructing the comic from its excerpts in Watchmen. But I suppose the Black Freighter DVD that was released made an actual comic book release redundant.
…Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m about a year out of date with this Watchmen movie tie-in talk. Look, I’ve been out of it for about a week, and this guy really did ask me this yesterday. I gotta work with what I got, man.
Also, pal Brandon passed this link along to me, and I was going to put it up as one of my sick day posts, but a quick Googling showed that it already made the rounds on some of the comic news sites. But, eh, what the hell…a song about Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl. It ain’t too shabby.
And in all my griping over the last few days about my painful dental issues, I see I never did mention that poor ol’ Employee Aaron managed to get one of his toes broken. No, no, not as a result of a cruel and unfair punishment meted out by me for violating one of our draconian workplace rules. This time. He was doing something at home, like, I think, saving a bunch of nuns and orphans from a buffalo stampede, when he tripped and fell, and, whoops, there goes the pinkie toe. So Sir Aaron Limps-a-lot is staggering around the shop, I can’t talk to anyone because my cheek has swollen up into a hot, painful lump the size of a Ford Festiva, and Ralph has pneumonia, dengue fever and the yaws…we’re a fine bunch.
Speaking of Watchmen, and not speaking of all us sick crew, as I was trying to find that Black Freighter reconstruction, I came across this photo of (presumably authentic) Watchmen film props for the Black Freighter comic and the Tijuana Bible. The user who uploaded that image has other Watchmen items from the film, including some of the magazines…that New Yorker would be a neat item to have.
In other news:
- So former employee pal Sean‘s band, The Kill Junkies, just released their first album Steamroller which is available from Amazon in that convenient MP3 format. It’s more metal than a really metal thing filled with metal, so it may not be for gentler ears, but Sean’s a swell guy and I’m happy to support his creative endeavors.
- And now…NAKED SUPERMAN AND BATMAN (safe for work, from a Code-approved comic)! I find the jar containing the brain of the Gorilla Boss (visible in one of the panels) to be simultaneously creepy and sad.
- I am slowly…very slowly…almost too slowly…going through and tagging my older posts, and the most recent effort was made tagging most of my Watchmen posts. Now you can more easily find my writings on that particular topic, including the single greatest Watchmen post to ever appear on any comic blog, ever.
Looking for a BLACK FREIGHTER comic? You should’ve sold him LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: CENTURY.
I could be misremembering, but I think Dave Gibbons floated the idea of a facsimile “Tales From the Black Freighter” comic by Alan Moore, and the man from Northampton was kinda peeved.
Dunno why they held the line at that particular bit of merchandise, given all the weird tie-in stuff they did release, as noted on this blog.
They should do a collector’s edition statue of one of the choicest panels from the Black Freighter comic. Maybe the one where he’s dragging the corpse of a fellow sailor along the beach.
I very distinctly remember Alan Moore talking about possibly doing a Black Freighter comic after Watchmen, and mentioning that he didn’t really need to use the “Black Freighter” name if he wanted to do pirate stories. I believe it was in an early issue of the Comics Scene revival – possibly the first (the one with Christopher Reeve on the cover).
Thanks for the link! I suspect that post is going to get a lot of traffic, relative to the rest of my blog. After all, my top post is already a Batman-themed one!
Dunno if it’s been written up here, but in the latest issue of Chew (#14), former Agent Mason Savoy meets secretly in a movie theater wearing a mechanic’s uniform. His name tag reads ‘Hollis Mason’.