Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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you’ll get older too

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This morning I drove the farthest I’ve driven by myself to go to a viewing by myself for the first time.

I don’t know how to do these things. Well, the driving, I suppose I remedially know how to do that. But a viewing? I don’t know.

I dressed how I thought I should dress and wore a white shirt, which I never wear, and I smiled wanly and kept my hands clasped. As the line neared the family I wondered, am I supposed to cry? I felt the valve of tears loosen behind my eyes. I had cried at work when I found out, just for a moment. Then it was too late, and I was crying, and what do you say when you’re the one crying about someone you’ve never met before and the family is hugging you? I don’t know. It’s sad for everyone there, but you’re all there together.

I guess that’s the point.

Now I am seated in bro’s college apartment, talking about the best daytime mixed drinks and the hour it is most appropriate to begin drinking them.

I always think of bro as my slightly-younger peer, but his roommates seem impossibly young. Were Erika and Lindsay this young when we moved in together? I don’t know. Maybe because we were all only children we all grew up as tiny adults, so when we moved in together we were adults, only smaller.

Now I am seated at their kitchen table and I am that old guy, with his laptop and his car keys, whisking bro away for a day of family time.

But I know this context. It feels familiar. I could day drink with them all day. Or, at least, I have. I don’t know if I could any more.

The girls are making apple sauce at the counter. We’re headed outside. Guitar shopping. Another context where I never know who I am.

I wish there were more rules, but then I remember I don’t like rules. I’ll just be me. That should work.

30 for 30 Project: we’ll be right back!

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My 30 for 30 Project of video cover songs from each year of my life resumes tomorrow! I’ve been holed up in the studio all day working on songs, and I can say without exaggeration that this week will feature some of my favorite songs and most unusual performances – ever. For example…

Come on, just try to tell me you aren’t wondering what that ridiculousness is about.

Point your browser at me tomorrow afternoon at 12:30 ET to see what I have in store from 1988.

DC New 52 Review: Men of War #1

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When I was a kid, I was obsessed with G.I. Joes. A lot of kids were. They were three dollars each with a seemingly infinite amount of new line-ups to collect.

Except, my obsession was slightly different – my G.I. Joes were superheroes. Each one of them had a special power, and they formed teams and went on missions just like comic book superheroes. In fact, I even kept a binder outlining all of their story exploits, including issue summaries, origins, and deaths.

(Yes, I was an intense kid.)

Since my playtime was more about building narrative than mashing pieces of plastic against each other, I wasn’t shy about playing with G.I. Joe’s straight into high school. The toys allowed me to be a sort of writer/director, visualizing plots that found their way out of my imagination and later into short stories.

All that is to say, though I loved G.I. Joes, I never particularly cared for G.I. Joe as a concept. I don’t love war stories and gun violence. That put DC’s new war anthology on shaky ground with me, unless they managed to power it up, a la my erstwhile 3 3/4″ friends.

Men of War #1

“Joseph Rock,” written by Ivan Brandon, art by Tom Derenick
“Navy Seals, Human Shields,” written by Jonathan Vankin, art by Phil Winslade

Rating: 3 of 5 – Good

In a Line: “Anyway, I got out of the Peace Corps ‘cuz it made me realize – if you want to do good, it helps to have an assault rifle.”

140char Review Men of War #1, hard-bitten war anthology w/slightest twist of super. Not my kind of comic but I can’t deny it was well-done, esp terminology

Plot & Script

The scripts of both stories are beautiful things, in their way. Word balloons are stuffed with armed forces acronyms and special ops lingo, and they help to transport you into the world these characters inhabit without much prior knowledge.

The plot of first story about Sgt. Rock is solid but strangely unfilling. We’re treated to the grimly stubborn infantryman Rock, promoted to a special ops squad thanks to countless acts of unspecified badassness. Then he heads into an unnamed region filled with unseen insurgents, witnesses an unidentifiable super-being
wreak havoc, and watches his team die an ignominious death (not really a spoiler, since we see it in the first panel)

While all the dialog is ace, I feel as though the vaguely-detailed story depends on some foreknowledge or affection for Sgt. Rock. Without that, it’s a one-and-done tale about a brave soldier being decimated by a superior force. I don’t see much point in a second issue.

I liked the Navy Seals tale much better. We get the personalities of a core cast of characters in short order as they deal with a high pressure situation. Vankin does a great job differentiating the team in limited panel time, giving each man a smattering of personality to go with his call name.

Despite not caring for army comics too much, I found myself investing in the outcome of their story. I cared if the wounded guy died, was frustrated by the impulsive actions of Tracker, and was genuinely shocked and sickened by the story’s climax.

Artwork

The problem with army books is that everyone starts looking the same.

In the Sgt. Rock story this is a major problem for me – not so much because of the pencils, but the colors. It was like military-grade sepia tone. In a series of lowly-lit situations all of the shadowed faces begins to blend together.

While I liked the line art and colors in the second story much better, the lack of differentiation was actually worse. For white army dudes in the same uniform, and you only give one of them facial hair to help us tell them apart? The dialog does a decent job, but I wouldn’t have minded a minor visual differentiation, even if it slightly shattered the perfect adherence to real-life army code.

I love the fuzzy cover with its subtle phoenix image in the blood and gunfire – I missed that detail on the small preview image.

CK Says: Consider it.

Men of War is an anthology collection that delivers 100% on the promise of its title, with an ever-so-slight superhero skew of existing in the DC Universe.

Fans of old Sgt. Fury comics and The Hurt Locker alike will probably enjoy the on-the-ground glimpse of infantry and Navy SEALS.

For superhero junkies, the outcome is more hazy. While this is well-written and full of action, it’s less Captain America and more G.I. Joe.

Crushing On: You Know What I Hate?

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A few weeks ago I was cruising my Facebook feed and I noticed a link to a blog post entitled, “#32: People who confuse karaoke night with American Idol auditions.”

Being that person, naturally I clicked through.

Unfortunately, the post I discovered was not on a blog titled, “Stuff That Makes People Awesome.” Nay. It was called “You Know What I Hate?”

I bristled, awaiting the salvo against my karaoke perfectionism. You know what happened instead? I laughed. I laughed because the post was right-on, and it wasn’t only about me wanting to sing one song well at karaoke – it was about people who consider themselves performers due to their karaoke prowess.

Also, it was really fucking funny.

I kept reading. The author doesn’t just hate annoying people (like #15: People who are good at running) – her biggest category is actually moments of intense expectancy violation; times where she isn’t sure why something is happening or how she should react.

Her writing swerves from confrontational second person to babbling interior monologue, all delivered as a stream-of-consciousness with a delightful, seemingly-compulsive frankness. Even when the thing she hates is something I endorse (#19: Expensive first dates, for example), her argument is still so salient and caustic that I can’t help but agree a little bit while giggling. I found myself heading back to Thing #1 so I could read her entire screed in one go.

Last weekend I lucked upon the opportunity to meet the reclusive blogger – and it took some digging to get her to admit her authorship. Once I had dragged a confirmation out of her and confessed my major crush, she asked to me deliver a dramatic reading to her small crowd of friends of a draft in-progress with the title “#34: Not knowing what to do when you wake up in someone else’s bed.”

In my shameless attempt to get you to read You Know What I Hate?, please allow me to present a recording of my reading of said post.(NSFW content, but language is clean)