Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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#MusicMonday: “Hot Stuff” – Donna Summer

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One of my favorite things about attending my friends’ weddings is dancing with a group of people with whom I would typically never share the floor.

As E can tell you, my typical first concern after the couple has their first dance is, “when do the fast songs start?” I want to get some dancing in before the entree arrives, and for at least an hour after. Anything less constitutes a failure, no matter how beautiful the venue or good the food.

While I am not typically a musical Luddite eschewing new stuff for golden years, when it comes to dancing most newer tunes (Gaga aside) simply can’t get my body moving on the floor like oldies. I’m not even talking about the 80s. Motown and disco, that’s what makes me want to shake my groove thing.

The wedding we attended last night featured a seven-piece rock band. I typically don’t like wedding bands, because they have cheesy singers, nothing is in the right key, and everything turns into a medley. However, this was a real rock band, and when they played something funky the band got downright dirty.

I’m known for being an uncontrollable freak on the dance floor to begin with, but last night when the band medley’d out of “Disco Inferno” into “Hot Stuff” it was like someone flicked a switch in my brain. I went into berserker mode. I was breaking out moves I probably last saw my mother do in our living room in 1984 – things that always seemed to defy the laws of anatomy and physics. It was like I was Neo in the Dance Matrix.

As great as almost all Donna Summer songs are for dancing, re-listening to “Hot Stuff” makes me realize it has something more. It’s not just that scorching riff, but the overall rock stomp of it. It’s disco, but it’s heavy.

(Also? Extremely satisfying to hear a live band seamlessly segue from “Express Yourself” into “Born This Way” as if the latter was written for that specific purpose.)

DC New 52 Review: Justice League #1

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A schedule of all 52 debut issues due from DC Comics this month. Click through for a full-size version.

This month DC Comics is relaunching their entire line of comics – 52 issues #1s in a single month!

Not only is every series starting fresh, but the relaunch also represents a “soft reboot” of the DC comics universe. That means characters could have a new set of history as they re-debut, including breaking up iconic relationships or being suddenly de-aged back to a more-relatable 20-something.

I am not a DC comics fan, and have never been a regular reader of any of their titles aside than Wonder Woman – so why not try to read and review as many of their new 52 as I can in one month?

Sounds like a plan! The month starts with DC’s biggest gun – Justice League #1, with DC co-publisher and debateably best-penciler in the industry Jim Lee on art, and DC superstar Geoff Johns scripting.

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DC Comics Justice League #1, released August 31, 2011.

Justice League #1

Rating: 2.5 of 5 – Okay.

In a line: “You’re not just some guy in a BAT COSTUME, are you?”

140char Review: Justice League #1 – Solid art and interactions between Bats & GL, but the quick-to-read debut kinda falls flat. Not the big gun you’d expect

Plot & Script

DC’s reimagined Justice League are … The X-Men? The issue starts five years in the past when Green Lantern shows up to save Batman from a superhero kill squad in hot pursuit, and you’re hoping against hope the explanation will be something more deft than “because they hate and fear us.”

Yet there we are.

Yes, I suppose hating and fearing people with super-powers makes a lot of sense, but that schtick has been cornered and bludgeoned to death by Marvel. Also, it’s annoyingly dissonant to see these classic characters in that position. Sure, Batman is a wacko vigilante and Aquaman might have a bestiality problem, but is the government really going to chase after The Flash?

The conceit is that five years ago in the new DC universe was effectively year zero, with heroes meeting each other for the first time. Apparently they weren’t too popular with law enforcement (or, at least, Batman wasn’t). We’re treated to Batman’s introduction to and subsequent chafing at Green Lantern, who is as brash as Bats is brooding. GL gets one funny line after another. It’s clear that John’s is used to writing him, and that they’re playing up the Ryan Reynolds aspect of him as much as possible.

Both Batman and Green Lantern art scripted well, and the trickle of exposition from them is just enough to capture the imagination of a new fan. Yet, there is just barely enough plot here to call it an issue. Jim Lee isn’t exactly the fastest penciler in the world, you’d think Johns would write a little more script.

Instead, we get a brief tussle and several episodes of exposition, followed by a blah four pages with kid Cyborg. Also, note that the cast of characters are cynically the two heroes with the most recent movie, plus Superman – because, well… you know.

Artwork

Lee’s action is bold but always easy to follow. What is unexpected (for me, at least), is the wild sketchiness of his shadows. Maybe it’s the doing of inker Scott Williams leaving more of Lee’s original pencil work intact, but the effect reminds me of 70s comics (a good thing).

Lee relentlessly knocks the opening Batman scramble out of the park from the first, deliberately un-iconic shot of Batman. Note all of the random insanity he has Green Lantern creating – a fire truck and giant bats!?

The single page of Superman is intriguing. He’s definitely boyish, but not as much as on the cover. And, though he is lacking his red underpants, the underpants are still sketched on – just colored the same as his legs.

The primary Jim Lee cover is expected, if not classic. Unsurprisingly, his Batman is outstanding (he’s penciled him before). I immediately am annoyed whenever GL wields a gun. Lee’s posing of Superman is strange, so that his eyes are obscured and he looks very boyish. (The Finch alternate is creepy – Superman looks like he should be wielding puppet strings, and Wonder Woman’s head is too big for her shoulders.)

CK Says: Consider it.

Justice League #1 is too quick a read with too little happening along the way.

I don’t mean to grade a comic merely on expectations, but when the words “Justice League” and “Jim Lee” are connected you can’t help but hope for something on the scale of 1991’s all-time best-seller X-Men #1.

Instead, we’re building up the origin of the Justice League from square one – and you could do a lot worse than that! I’d argue that the first issue of your flagship team should either introduce everyone, be a huge blowout, or do both. This sort of expository story belongs in the individual character books, or – at least – explored after you’ve got your hooks in new readers.

X-Men Hardcover & Trade Paperback Review, 8/30 Edition

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Marvel Comics is the purveyor of a mighty list of comic book heroes, including my favorites – The X-Men.

If you aren’t the comic-collecting type you might think your consumption of said heroes are limited to every kind of media but print. Not so! Marvel releases collected editions of almost every one of their newly released issues. These handy tomes make it easy to keep up with comics without being a issue-by-issue collector.

It’s a big week for X-collections, with my favorite X-book so far this year out in paperback! Plus, an overview of Marvel’s other new books for the week.

If this list isn’t enough to satisfy you, catch up on every X-Men book collection ever in my Definitive Guide to Collection X-Men in Graphic Novels, which address the collection(s) of every X-issue ever printed. Also, if you’re new to this whole comics racket, see my recent Intro to X-Men (on a budget) post.

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Collection of the Week:
Uncanny X-Force: The Apocalypse Solution TPB
Collects Uncanny X-Force #1-4 and material from Wolverine: The Road to Hell.

CK Says: Buy it! If you like X-Men and know who any one of Wolverine, Psylocke, Deadpool, or Fantomax are from other media, check out this book! It’s the best X-Men has been in the last two years. I read it three times consecutively when it first arrived in hardcover earlier this year.

New-to-X writer Rick Remender not only nails Wolverine and Fantomax and has a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of X-history, but writes the best Psylocke of all time. Seriously: ever. Meanwhile, artist Jerome Opena contributes some of the most lush interiors any X-book has seen in some time, with vivid, painterly colors.

The plot? Wolverine puts together a top-secret kill-squad to deal with the return of major villain Apocalypse. The team has to go through his deadly horseman to confront him, and they’re in for a surprise when they do – one that will cause them to rethink joining the team. (Available for just a few dollars more in hardcover)

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There are three more X-books out this week, but you should avoid one of them like the Legacy Virus? Which one? [Read more…] about X-Men Hardcover & Trade Paperback Review, 8/30 Edition

#MusicMonday: “Chemmie” – Joan as Police Woman

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At this point shuffling the unheard songs on my iPod can turn up anything. My collection is approaching 25,000 tracks, with three thousand I’ve never listened to before, with entries running from 70s AM Gold to 80s hair rock to new LPs out this year. Knowing I added something to iTunes has no bearing on when I’ll eventually hear it. It could be months.

Given the vast unknown that is my unheard playlist, sometimes it turns up random gems that wind up on repeat for hours at a time. That was the case when Joan as Police Woman‘s “Chemmie” came on last week.

First, I have a undeniable soft spot for songs with any of the key words “chemical,” “communications,” and “crisis,” so I was bound to pay attention from the first chorus. Second, this song is sexy as I don’t know what. It’s like a slouching, indie-rock take on “Let’s Stay Together.” It would definitely go on my candlelit-baby-making mix tape, if such a thing existed.

Instant five-stars!

I’m definitely growing a soft spot for Joan as Police Woman, whose music trends to resembling a sulty, low-key take on the Pretenders’ best moments of simmering funk groove. I’ve stayed willfully ignorant of what the band moniker actually represents, but for the purposes of this post peeked at Wikipedia just long enough to learn that it’s the one-woman band of Joan Wasser, who – much like Chrissie Hynde before her – is an American with a decidedly UK sonic bent.

“Chemmie” is from Joan as Police Woman’s 2011 LP The Deep Field.

Crushing On: Twitter in a Crisis

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I know, “duh,” right?

Let me explain.

With the vast majority of everyone I know battening down their hatches in preparation for Irene to blow through their area, I felt as though I had to choose a hurricane-related thing to crush upon.

Could it be the local farmer’s market, still appearing on schedule this morning so we could stock up on healthy food to carry us through the potential apocalyptic conditions? Perhaps it should be my handy pair of camping lanterns, holdovers from my 2006 trip to Bonnaroo? Or, Roman & Sons, who replaced all of the rickety 90-year-old windows on the first floor of our house earlier this year?

I’m crushing on all of the above, but the thing I’m really in love with at the moment is Twitter.

Something I excised from yesterday’s mammoth anniversary post was a paragraph about 9/11. Were you online that morning? All of the news sites went down. For a brief period there was no information, anywhere. Then, an amazing thing happened – blogs(including CK) started acting as a distributed network of information, reporting details more accurately and succinctly than the television coverage. People on the ground in NYC posted photos and eye-witness accounts, while everyone else helped to connect and cultivate that information.

In the intervening ten years, the world has realized that centralized news in a crisis is only effective when the crisis is affecting only a very small group of people. A hostage situation, a plane crash – traditional news excels in communicating information about this kind of news.

When it comes to revolutions and acts of nature, centralized news becomes less effective. Everyone is experiencing the same earthquake, hurricane, or plague of locusts. We are all nodes of information, we all want to know what’s happening as close to us as possible, and we all want to know what’s happening to our friends.

Twitter does all three. Tonight I’ve been broadcasting our status (so far the only casualty is a screen door), searching for mentions of our area and the local roads (the main road north of us is flooded), and keeping up-to-date with our friends (all safe!). I know Nan is fine in NC, where to find our nearest emergency shelter, and that I might need to drive our Shop Vac down the block to help with the baling at Cecily’s house.

Oh, and then there is the intermittent tornado warning/watch. I’m debating if I should remove some of my guitars from the attic.

I might be on pins and needles at the moment, but so is everyone else. We’re on pins and needs together, sharing stories and anxieties and laughter, and knowing that makes it less frightening and confusing.

Plus, no Fail Whales in sight!

Stay safe and dry, friends.