Oswald missed Jackie. He'd blown it and even worse, now he was in deep shit with Sinatra.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Embrack Express
The next generation of zombies figured out the image problem. Between drinks this one bit off my trachea.
At the Sky Bar this one took off both my arms and a lung. Same story, didn't run away soon enough.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Book Report: The Lucky Boy
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The Lucky Boy is Seth, the novel covers his youth during the 1960s, his adolesence into the 1970s. He is far from lucky, a misfit born to sociopathically indifferent and cruel parents. In his teens he becomes both a high school athlete and a juvenile delinquent knee-deep in suburban drug dealing and voyeuristic violence. During his only experience of a normal childhood he meets The Girl who becomes his lost dream object. The rest is a road story about the trail of crimes, dangerous encounters with both sides of the law, and an unraveling mental state during his quest to find The Girl. Not giving away the outcome but it's worth the read.
The writing is a peculiar mix of naked simplicity, clinical detail, and literary artsiness that works, often creating a beauty that follows an esoteric biological design:
The voices of the woods soothe his muscles. The pattern of the croaking he can follow, like a score. He holds on tight to the side of the bed, imagining the floor moving up like an elevator. The pillowcase is wet as he cries tears for the dog. The emotion surprises him; he isn’t sobbing aloud, only salt water and meibum from the ducts. To stop the waterworks, he replays the jitter of language he heard in his memory like a distant drive-in movie. The big screen blurs from the shapes of people carrying popcorn in front of his mind’s theater.
Blood flies in an arc. It is a section of a circle flowing. A fountain of shock heat and opaque flames form an ellipse of molten red that dances over the heads of the mob. The pack watching is screaming. A chemical rapidly converts the crowd of individuals into a bobbing river of one force. Then they are a brick of a solid explosive compound. Next, the group transforms emotional gasses that puff into greater volume than one individual human could ever hold in five pints of blood. The substance of the fight’s emotional core flows like holy water from an aspergillum, uniting the crowd. The problem is the font is filled with bacterium. The feeling of a blast pressure effect wave spills outward from the point of detonation. It isn’t a real bomb, just the current of the crowd pulsing out. The violence slams the onlookers together.
The childhood part of this novel has a naturalism not unlike the film The Tree of Life. And its pace. And the novel's ultimate emotional impact has an elusiveness. But whatever this novel lacks it brings the depth for a deeper read.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Milkbox Memoir 2
Just checked. I still have this one, a 1972. In 1972 the word was REVELANT. Pop culture had to be relevant to the issues of the time and it had to be in your face. There was no fucking around back then: either you were Billy Jack or you were Nixon. Even comic books had to be relevant. This Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams series teamed Green Lantern with Green Arrow. Green Lantern was the Establishment, Green Arrow was anti-Establishment. They were Archie Bunker and Meathead with superpowers. The Christ figure guy on the jet wing was an eco-terrorist and colossal left wing guilt-tripper. From the cover you can tell it went badly for Christ Figure Guy and it was no disco for Lantern and Arrow either. But it was the one time I ever had use for Green Lantern, a superhero who has sucked since the 1940s and rebooted sucking in last year's blockbuster. The early '70s for once put him in the believable context of being a relic and a douchebag.
For more on this comic: http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Green_Lantern_Vol_2_89
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Book Report: Felony Fists
None of it reinvents anything and there is zero subtlety involved. Once you get over that, you have a story that puts three good things together: cops, gangsters, and boxing. In 1954 Los Angeles, working for the gangbusting cops known as the Hat Squad, a tough ex-Marine rookie is assigned to take on gangster Mickey Cohen's top fighter in the ring. The writing is lean, smart, and sharp, with enough passion for boxing to own the boxing movie cliches. It reads like a cross between The Untouchables and Rocky and makes that work. Nothing here gets in the way of a damn good quick read.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Milkbox Memoir 1
As a kid I was a degenerate comic book freak. I would walk a mile to get to a drug store with a comic book carousel and once did. I had a collection of hundreds kept in a tin milk box. I was such a comic book freak I even dreaded the age when I would outgrow comic books. In those days it was assumed one day a boy would outgrow comic books; where today comics are only read by adults. I outgrew comic books in the year 1978. Other teenage distractions like writing, reading paperbacks, music, drinking, smoking, and hookers became dominant. In the decades since I've gotten graphic novels and used comics but never a regular new comic book since. The above comic is my last comic book ever and, somehow, I still have it. I think. Let me check. Be right back. Yeah I still have it.
Click the cover to read about that comic at Let's Blog Comicbooks.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Giant-Size Superhero Action
BIG SUPERHERO ACTION is named for back when space age comic books came big. The corner drug store had to give you a bigger paper bag for one of these bad boys. The alternate title of BSA is GIANT SIZE SUPERHERO ACTION.
Monday, April 30, 2012
BIG SUPERHERO ACTION 16: the puzzle begins
“Why are you a superhero?”
“To stop the OGD from its objective of global
domination.”
“Why you?”
“I have the power.”
“Do you like having the power?”
“Yes.”
“Why assume the roles of superheroes?”
“My original intention was to make a new
identity sharing cloning hardware when I discovered the carousel model. My
theory is they are my personal archetypes drawn from the KM comic books I read
as a child.”
Xoir lit a cigarette.
“You smoke at your age?”
“My age?”
“That came out wrong, didn’t it?”
“These cigarettes improve your heath,” she
said. “Breathe the second-hand smoke deeply.”
“It’s weird to think of this city in terms of
years and decades. I have vague recall of how long I’ve been here. Like I’ve
been here forever. Is your memory intact?”
“I’ve restored thirty percent of
pre-2000.”
“What year did you…?”
“What?”
“Move to Brutalia…?”
“I recall 1969.”
“You were a scientist before.”
“Yes.”
“Advanced.”
“Yes.”
“Before ever hearing of Kinner &
Membert.”
“Yes.”
“You came here already an advanced
scientist.”
“Yes.”
“You had already reversed aging.”
“I was close to it.”
“Then you went to work for KM.”
“Yes.”
“We worked together. Us and
Playground.”
“Apparently so.”
“During the 1970s.”
“Apparently so.”
“Until 2000.”
“Apparently so.”
“How much do you directly recall about
me?” The Carousel asked.
“Not much. I see a teenage nerd in a lab coat.
The youngest in our research team. The only black person.”
“Who deleted any record of me? There is no
record of my existence pre-2000. Same goes for Simon Stranko. Kate Birkin came
to the year 2000 with too much notability to erase. Your Wikipedia page covers you back to the 1950s.”
“There are all kinds of record of my life,”
she said. “I can’t get away from my past.”
“Ever remember being in the White House
talking with President Nixon?”
“Yes.”
“What were we talking about?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened after that?”
“I’m unsure.”
“Do you think for some reason the
government erased my record?”
“Possibly,” she said. “But this city
keeps a theorist at work.”
The Carousel turned on his heel, paced
the other way. “What if it was a time hole?”
“The one the Pentagon was working on?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll call that the time hole
theory.”
“Another theory,” he said. ”At KM we
invented the time hole and the rest of this advanced science and technology.”
“We do seem to know it best.”
“KM created superpowers.”
“In inexplicable ways.”
http://www.amazon.com/Superhero-Action-Alien-Comics-ebook/dp/B007BSFMDO/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335772757&sr=1-6
BIG SUPERHERO ACTION 15: the Spider Man theory
He
said, “Let’s start with the city. What is it? Is it a creation of KM labs? Was
it created for the Pentagon in the ‘70s? Or was it built by aliens?”
“First let’s look at the superpower factor.”
“Okay.”
Dr. Playground: “This is a city of
Spider Men bitten by a radioactive spider. The accidental superhero. Everything
is in relation to the city. What if the city is the radioactive spider and we
are the Spider Man? Both spider and Spider Man are transformed entities. If the city is the spider then it was
transformed by the radioactivity. What is that radioactivity? Or what if the
city is the radioactivity? Then what is the spider? The spider is what
transforms the Spider Man. The city would be the radioactivity the spider
transmits.”
“Say KM is the spider.”
“Say KM is the radioactivity.”
Spector: “If KM created the city, what
created KM?”
“The radioactivity. This makes KM the
spider.”
“New theory,” Spector said. “The
cities are extra-terrestrial. The cities are created by extra-terrestrial
beings.”
“Not a new theory, Milo.”
“What if the cities are the beings?”
“That’s a new one.”
“They replicate us. Imperfectly.”
“There would be a lot they don’t
understand.”
“It’s lost in translation.”
“Why the superpowers?”
“They speak in our archetypes.
Superheroes. If they arrived two thousand years ago it would be gods throwing bolts
of lightning. One thousand years ago, prophets who talked to God.”
http://www.amazon.com/Superhero-Action-Alien-Comics-ebook/dp/B007BSFMDO/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335772757&sr=1-6
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