Something I was wondered whilst watching War of the Worlds, was how long it took everyone (if they managed to put it together at all) that aliens were attacking the Earth.

You never quite get the feeling that everyone knows what's going on. I know, that's supposed to be part of the story's paranoia, but when you think about it, as a culture, we are so inundated with tales of alien attacks, abductions, flying saucers, robots, time travel, multiple dimensions, artificial intelligence, and Evil Secret Government Programs, that's it's hard to imagine Tripods coming up from the ground and everyone's first reaction NOT being, "Holy Shit! It's giant robots piloted by aliens!" Seriously, I think in real life we'd put the reality of an alien attack together within minutes, thanks to all the training movies and television have given us for how to act in such situations.

In honor of our nation's glorious, virginal birth, I'm reading this book.

It's good. They should make it a movie. Or better yet, I should make it a movie. (Of course, in my version, the British will ride atop tripods.)

I hate to treat Grant Morrison like the font of all that is modern mainstream (DC) comics, but reading today's Flash I realized that the new Zoom is basically the in-world version of Morisson's depiction of himself in Animal Man. If that sentence baffles you, then suffice it to say that Zoom's motivation as a villain is to do horrible things to Flash in order to make him a "better hero." This, as a plot device, is eerily similar to when good ol' Grant wrote himself into his own comic and explained to the hero that all of the horrible things that happened to him (like the brutal murder of his family) were simply so Grant could tell a better story.

In other comics news: OMAC Project is really cool, and makes me wish they would collect Rucka's Detective run all on its own, and I'm not going to buy Green Lantern. No more buying issues of decompressed books. This may spell the end for Teen Titans as well.

Wickerpedia

I first heard about E.E. "Doc" Smith's Triplanetary series in some blog or another, possibly the now defunct Long Story, Short Pier, and decided to check it out. Why? Because it's apparently regarded as one of the great space operas of all time, a magazine serial collected into book form in the 40s that served as the inspiration for everything from the Green Lantern Corps to Star Wars. Shockingly enough, I haven't been dissapointed in the least.

First off, I read the introduction and realized that Lucas was meta-inspired by these books. You see only volumes 3-6 were part of the original serialized publication. The first two volumes (Triplanetary and First Lensman) were written when Smith got his book deal, in order to provide a "History of Civilization." Originally the story began In Media Res with the third book, Galactic Patrol, and careened towards a surprise reveal, for both characters and readers, that is totally blown by these new books. Sound familiar? The introduction even goes out of its way to warn you how middling these first two books are, but that its worth it to get to the good stuff. I can only imagine this is how people will discuss Star Wars in 100 years.

And sure enough, Triplanetary is goofy fun, but not all that great, most of the way through. The basic concept is that the Arrisians (good) and the Eddorians (bad) have been manipulating the entire universe in a secretive galactic struggle for dominance, occassionally collapsing empires like Atlantic and Rome in Ra's Al Ghulian display of sheer evil and/or hope for the future, depending on which race you're listening to. This is all pretty morally immature stuff. Especially when you grit your teeth and rush through the sort of obvious social darwinism. Plus the labor minister for the Arrisians is named "Marxes." Subtle stuff here.

Then there's a really great chapter that doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything else that's just about E.E. Doc Smith during World War II.

Then we get to the space battles. The loving and lengthy descriptions of force fields and laser arrays. Plus the villain, an Eddorian disguised as a pirate named (feel free to laugh, I did) 'Roger' has a giant death moon called "The Planetoid." And while trying to escape our intrepid heroes, who have only robots to go up against, note that they wish the robots had uniforms they could steal to disguise themselves. After this, Star Wars practically writes itself.

Apparently as the series progresses the Arrisians bust out their master plan, to create an order of galactic guardians known as the Lensman. Sounds like the Jedi/GL Corps to me.

But I'll review each book as I read them, because they're fun, and I keep pulling out parellels. And now, because this shit is too good to waste, I leave you with selected chapter titles from Triplanetary:

Pirates of Space
In Roger's Planetoid
Fleet Against Planetoid
Worm, Submarine, and Freedom
The Specimens Escape

BoxOfficeMojo.com has a nice article examining why Batman "failed to begin" as Asa put it. God, BB's underperformance makes me sad. I mean, is Batman really a lesser pop culture figure than Spider-Man? I'll never accept that. Never!

The new approach led to a meditative marketing campaign that was light on dazzling action and effects. Sure, the trademark darkness was on display, but moments of levity and shots of the toys, like the new Batmobile, were muted or overwhelmed by the serious tone. This was in stark contrast to the original Batman, which had a trailer going back and forth between the spectacle and the one-liners (mostly from Jack Nicholson as The Joker).

Reason has a cool article up about EC Comics and the psychiatrist who did that whole witchhunt against comics. Ironically, the guy was an arch-socialist with Marxist leanings. A Marxist witch hunter?!

When psychiatrist Frederic Wertham began his crusade against comic books, EC was one of his targets. Wertham was a leftist influenced heavily by Frankfurt School Marxism and by Theodor Adorno in particular. Comics were the products of mechanistic, capitalist production, he argued, and could therefore affect children's minds mechanistically. Confusing anecdote with data, he argued that all of the juvenile delinquents he studied read comics, and that comics therefore were responsible for their delinquency. Horror comics, he felt, were especially insidious.

Wow, that's strange. Anyway, read it for the EC stuff.

Sitcom writer/political writer Warren Bell has an interesting tidbit on the whole reality story editors/WGA/producers imbroglio.

The WGA has similarly pursued unionizing of animated shows for years, and actually killed off the first incarnation of "Spongebob Squarepants" some years ago. Basically the union convinced Paramount that the show fell under WGA jurisdiction and put the screws to them -- so the studio decided to cease production rather than continue under the union pay scale. Nice going, WGA! Only the show's enduring appeal (and more accurately, its genius) allowed it to survive and resume production some years later. (This is not hearsay, by the way. I was told this version of events by a WGA official.)

But, Spongebog is a monstrously successful property. Why can't its handful of writers get good money for making Nick/Paramount billions? Hell, Spongebob is more successful than most live-action scripted crap. The only reason I can think of to explain why Spongebob might not be as valuable as say, Friends, is that its advertising money isn't that great, seeing as how it's kiddie. And maybe there's something screwy with merchandise money, where it doesn't all go to the same place and blablabla. Also, there's no money in rebroadcast rights, seeing as how Nick's not going to syndicate to the highest bidder. (And really, the syndication/rebroadcast money is what makes scripted writers rich).

Anyway, Warren's obviously an establishment-type, old-school guy, so he's against unionizing reality story editors. But he's Spongebog anecdote is definitely interesting.

I recently finished this.

It's good, if short. Seriously, it's like 240 pages. You could write an encyclopedia examining American militarism (or lack thereof). It's such a messy, convoluted subject and I wish this book was more authoritative. It has precious little to say about pop culture and the military, regional identity and the military, and American nationalism vs. globalization.

Anyway, I nevertheless recommend the book. It makes for interesting reading coming off this book (which I also enjoyed.)

Oh, andthis is my next big read.

Box Office Report is saying that estimated 5 day total for the B-man is $71.1 million. Let me the first to say how incredibly dissapointing that is. Sure the last Bat-movies were stinkers, but it's been 8 years, and all the reviews have been great. This should have been bigger. Presumably word of mouth will keep next week strong, and I'm sure it will make enough to merit a sequel (if Tomb Raider got one...), but still, I bet the folks at Warners are not happy right now.

Poor Batman.

Not as bad as Galactus.

Everybody's lost but me.

Brandon Routh (Superman) and that Skinny Blonde Girl Hollywood Tried Shoving Down Our Throats A Couple Summers Ago are both on the cover of EW. Routh looks good, but I've got to say, they look less like movie stars and more like WB stars. And really, what's the point of casting a Superman movie if it's simply going to look like Smallville+ at the end of the day?

* * *

In other Supe Stuff...

Here's some cool info culled from a marketing study done on the Superman logo and brand.

Superman generally is perceived the same across all markets.
Kids and adults see him as the original hero and embodiment of good

I think EW gets it right when they write:

Here in the golden age of the superhero flick, there has been no shortage of princes. Spider-Man. Batman. The X-Men. Yet all are mere pretenders to a long-vacant throne. On June 30, 2006, Warner Bros. gives us the return of the king — otherwise known as Superman

You know, I would seriously support celebrating Superman's birth instead of Jesus' every 12.25. And judging from the above-described marketing report, such a switch would probably work.

Wow, this Dean-scream video-remix is well over a year old, but some how I missed it. Anyway, it's pretty funny, with solid editing/production values, so that's why it gets a posting.

Baseball player Carl Everett made mainstream news a few years back when he admitted that he doesn't believe in dinosaurs and evolution. Now he's at it again. This time, he doesn't believe in "being gay."

Everett has had gay teammates, whom he has accepted, but: "Gays being gay is wrong. Two women can't produce a baby, two men can't produce a baby, so it's not how it's supposed to be. ... I don't believe in gay marriages. I don't believe in being gay."

Hahahah. I'm sorry, but if you know baseball, this is really funny. Gay people aren't born that way, they're not made that way...they don't even exist!

For being so close to perfect and then fucking it all up at the end.

Also, never ever let me prep for a Batman movie by watching the Animated Series ever again. They'll never come closer to hitting the core of the character and its best to just go in clean and let whatever new interpretation they throw at you stand on its own.

Verdict after a day of thinking about it: Better than Batman, in many regards better than Batman Returns and Phantasm, but for a variety of reasons (mainly good dialogue) I think I still hold them in higher regard. The look of Batman Begins is flawless, but it has nothing even close to the Batman/Catwoman relationship/freak romance throughline of Returns. That shit fucks me up every time.

I have to go see Begins again, I know I do. And I'm going to really hate making myself do it. Want to go, Alex?

That's how I'd rank Batman Begins in the Bat-Movie-Pantheon. For a full discussion you can check out the Begum thread, but here at ol' Mastodon City I'd like to make a vbery specific comment:

I like my Batman operatic. Graveside vows and the "world's greatest detective." I don't have a whole lot of interest in Batman necessarily being believable as a person, any more than Superman has to be believable as an alien, and so I don't give Nolan as much credit for that feat as most people seem to. More importantly, for a movie so obsessed with Batman being a legend (first 20 minutes: "fear fear fear, become a, fear fear, a legend, fear fear fear") they seem to systematically remove most of the points of his origin that make him legendary/larger than life. Parent's murder? Solved! Decision to fight crime? Not made for a very long time. Genius? Not really. Detective? Not at all. Realization that fear is his greatest weapon? Made by someone else. They take every opportunity to cut away the more mythic aspects of the character, which makes me really sad.

I'm posting it here to force myself to do it. That's right, you heard it here first, Cash Milliondollars will be back, starting this Thursday, and he will be glorious.

Boy, I'm glad Andrew Sullivan is back blogging regularly. His peculiar politics and views on U.S. culture always perk my interest. Anyway, his article on Jacko is a must-read (yeah, who would have thought?)

Michael Jackson has more support among Japanese teenagers than American blacks - and for understandable reasons. He looks more like a character from a Japanese anime cartoon than anything resembling a black American male. He is not Tiger Woods, declaring himself post-racial. He is far more retrograde and repulsive figure: a person who has become a reverse minstrel, a black man finally reincarnated through surgery as a white androgynous waif. He is therefore a racist in the most profound sense - and one that neither blacks nor whites want to claim.

Sullivan's notes on Tony Blair's mini-resurrgence (well, maybe *relative* ressurgence is more like it) are of note, as well.

The honeymoon is over. Novak is, of course, over the top, but the truth is that Blair is deadly serious about aid to Africa and resuscitating Kyoto. He's working on Putin, already has Europe in his pocket on this one, and is shoring up his standing at home by taking on the French on the EU rebate. I wonder if the president knows what's coming at Gleneagles.

Uh, he doesn't.

I'd also like to point out that you know there's a leadership vaccuum in Europe when a guy who was barely re-elected and has no discernible mandate among the *political middle* of his own country remains the preeminate politician for an entire continent. Methinks the books written on Blair in 30 years time will be very interesting.

Dean keeps making "gaffes." And I love every one of them. He's so good. And frankly, for all the sound and fury over how 'controversial' he is, I think it does the Democratic Party a world of good. When I was in the airport on Wednesday they had CNN on, and a whole big thing about Dean and the "Republicans are non-inclusive white christian jerks" statement. The funniest part was when, about half way through, someone said basically "all the polling and whatnot backs up Dean's statement, but don't you think he was awful rude?" Hilarious. I'd have to say Dean was right because I can't think of anything except not wanting to be called racist or theocratic what keeps all those people saying they're Libertarians when they're obviously nothing of the sort.

Anyway, whenever they cut to a clip of Dean the lower third said "Howard Dean: Not Backing Down." If there's one sentiment that desperately needs to be attached to a Dem these days, that's it.

Sadly that's more of a battle cry than an identification. I'm back, Mom in tow, and ready to rumble, by which I mean work for Psychic Bunny some more.

In the meantime, I leave you with this thought: While in Seattle hanging out with Sarah's design friends they were all talking about Supermodernism (some, it seemed, more jokingly than others). I'm not actually all that concerned with what Supermodernism is, but it sounds like regular Modernism but warmed over and slightly updated for the current state of the world. That's all fine and good, and certainly better than post-modernism, but I would really appreciate it if people would start coming up with new schools of thought rather than just adding prefixes to the old ones.

For the record, that Supreme Court "no more medical weed!" decision yesterday was completely logical (as all their decisions are), but completely terrible (as some of their decisions are). Clarence Thomas' dissent is quite good, actually.

A few weeks back myself and others got angry with DC changing their logo. Well, not so much the change (change is fine, when done right), but with the fact that our tastes didn't exactly match with those of DC's graphic artists. Anyway -- and I'm sorry I missed this -- three weeks back, DC's Bob Greenberger posted that DC WILL NOT be changing the spines or format of the classy (but overpriced) DC Archives line. This makes me happy.

As Richard Bruning mentioned over at Newsarama this week, we've been looking at mockups of the Archive design with the new logo, with the old logo, and with some other variations.

After much debate, the Powers That Be have decided to leave things exactly as they are. The archive design will remain as is.

One of these does not belong.

So, anyone who reads this blog (you, you, and...that guy in the back) probably know that Asa is among the world's busiest men. Why, Asa probably spent just one weekend on his ranch in Crawford ALL OF LAST YEAR. The man's a hard worker, folks. But, I think I speak for those in attendance now when I implore Asa to please create another Cash Milliondollars comic. I miss that guy.

Cash that is. Frankly, I'm over Asa.

If there's any doubt that New Media (blogs, message boards, talk radio, podcasts) are setting the news cycle in fast (and humorous) ways, take note of the fact that NYTimes has dedicated an entire article today, to Tom Cruise's insane musings last week. The article is comprehensive, but woefully post-buzz.

Last week, after recording our most serious political discussion yet for Mosquito Circus (Now online!) Alex and I got to talking about Marxism. The general conclusion I came to was that Marx had good ideas, and wouldn't have approved of Communism. Given that he was thinking as philosopher more than a revolutionary he wasn't thinking in practicals necessarily. This all came out of a talk about MArx and the founding fathers, and how well balanced and practical a revolution they managed to put on. Anywho, Digby says "He diagnosed the illness, it was his prescription that wasn't so hot."

I'd say that's about right.

And, just to spur discussion, I'd like to provide this little theory with regards to socialism vs. market love ...

Extreme Market bias=Conservatives
Moderation=Liberals
Extreme Socialist bias=Marx/Socialists

Or, in lovely sentence form, I think that modern Conservatives/the GOP is just as extreme, wrong headed, and ignorant about human nature, in its trust of the free market economy to somehow right social wrongs and make the world go round as Marx was in his trust of Socialism.

One of the many reasons Asa is a Liberal.

This site is just really great, and people should check it out: BAGnewsNotes

They're obviously liberal (sorry Alex) but all they do is analysis on photojournalism and advertising. Very interesting stuff, and a rather crucial facet of understanding our current media-saturated world.

Bonus! Current feature on really awful Ah-nuld spot.

In this post about how NASCAR is kinda liberal it gets mentioned that NASCAR doesn't publish its rules. Really? Isn't that odd?

Also, wouldn;t it be funny if the NFL never published its rules and people just had to figure them out by watching? It would be like Egyptian Rat Screw on a grand scale.

Am I the only one who's dissapointed with the real Deep Throat? Some dude I never heard of. What a let down.