The Bait Box Is Dreaming
May. 21st, 2008 07:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllSome time since I've said what I've been up to, isn't it? In brief: Fitzrovia pub full of indie celebs, partying on the roofs of Holloway, much pizza, and an unexpectedly good Tuesday night on which more anon. But I shall pause to note that until further notice, the decor, the food and the (free, quality) jukebox have conferred upon The Mucky Pup the status of New Favourite Pub. Although fair enough, I imagine the company helped.
Two fascinating, flawed creators are breaking their silences this year. Neal Stephenson has a new book coming in September; having taken a well-deserved rest since finishing his magnificent Baroque Cycle he looks to be returning to SF, although the cover looks rather coy about implying anything of the sort. Meanwhile, there's Dave Sim's Glamourpuss. If you don't know about Dave Sim, I'm not sure I can summarise him for you; let's just say that as a comics writer and artist he's first rate, and as a letterer he's simply the best, but over the course of 26 years devoted wholly to his self-published magnum opus Cerebus, he understandably went a bit strange. In some ways, though, it's better not to know that, and just to read Glamourpuss, a remarkably sui generis comic* which combines fashion mag satire, art criticism, and Sim's commentary on his own progress as attempts to emulate the photorealist style of old comics artists he admires. I have no idea who he thinks is going to read this, and I find it glorious that he doesn't care. It's not something which would normally interest me, even, but he's good enough that it does.
I have no interest in seeing the film 21, but I've become somewhat obsessed with the soundtrack. Well, let's be more specific. The sleeve of my copy says only that it begins with the Rolling Stones' 'You Can't Always Get What You Want', failing to alert me that it is in face a desecration of as they are currently known a 'remix', one which I have since learned is by the ever-execrable Soulwax, our era's enthusiasm for whom will one day be considered in the same damning light as Jive Bunny's record sales. Nor have I ever got past The Aliens' contribution, which is exactly the sort of pleasant psychedelia one expects from them. But in between...well, you've got Peter, Bjorn & John's 'Young Folks', and that's always good to hear when the sun is shining. A couple of pleasantly unnerving pop-dance tracks. A fairly strong new effort by LCD Soundsystem - nothing on the level of 'All My Friends', but given how much of Sound of Silver sounded like a band suffering from that song's complaints rather than making them, welcome nonetheless. And more than any of these, MGMT's 'Time To Pretend'. This is exactly the kind of smug, hipster pop I normally loathe, or at most tolerate as background music, but here the serene arrogance wins me over just like it's meant to. "I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, I'm in the prime of my life. Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives"...and I just think, yeah, sounds like a plan. I don't even mind that it's a clean radio edit.
*Like Alice in Sunderland or Black Dossier, Glamourpuss is another nail in the coffin of that absurd combination of marketing speak and cultural cringe that is the term 'graphic novel'. Whatever these are, and whatever they are is great art, they are sure as all the Hells not novels.
Two fascinating, flawed creators are breaking their silences this year. Neal Stephenson has a new book coming in September; having taken a well-deserved rest since finishing his magnificent Baroque Cycle he looks to be returning to SF, although the cover looks rather coy about implying anything of the sort. Meanwhile, there's Dave Sim's Glamourpuss. If you don't know about Dave Sim, I'm not sure I can summarise him for you; let's just say that as a comics writer and artist he's first rate, and as a letterer he's simply the best, but over the course of 26 years devoted wholly to his self-published magnum opus Cerebus, he understandably went a bit strange. In some ways, though, it's better not to know that, and just to read Glamourpuss, a remarkably sui generis comic* which combines fashion mag satire, art criticism, and Sim's commentary on his own progress as attempts to emulate the photorealist style of old comics artists he admires. I have no idea who he thinks is going to read this, and I find it glorious that he doesn't care. It's not something which would normally interest me, even, but he's good enough that it does.
I have no interest in seeing the film 21, but I've become somewhat obsessed with the soundtrack. Well, let's be more specific. The sleeve of my copy says only that it begins with the Rolling Stones' 'You Can't Always Get What You Want', failing to alert me that it is in face a desecration of as they are currently known a 'remix', one which I have since learned is by the ever-execrable Soulwax, our era's enthusiasm for whom will one day be considered in the same damning light as Jive Bunny's record sales. Nor have I ever got past The Aliens' contribution, which is exactly the sort of pleasant psychedelia one expects from them. But in between...well, you've got Peter, Bjorn & John's 'Young Folks', and that's always good to hear when the sun is shining. A couple of pleasantly unnerving pop-dance tracks. A fairly strong new effort by LCD Soundsystem - nothing on the level of 'All My Friends', but given how much of Sound of Silver sounded like a band suffering from that song's complaints rather than making them, welcome nonetheless. And more than any of these, MGMT's 'Time To Pretend'. This is exactly the kind of smug, hipster pop I normally loathe, or at most tolerate as background music, but here the serene arrogance wins me over just like it's meant to. "I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, I'm in the prime of my life. Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives"...and I just think, yeah, sounds like a plan. I don't even mind that it's a clean radio edit.
*Like Alice in Sunderland or Black Dossier, Glamourpuss is another nail in the coffin of that absurd combination of marketing speak and cultural cringe that is the term 'graphic novel'. Whatever these are, and whatever they are is great art, they are sure as all the Hells not novels.
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Re: Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms
Date: 2008-05-21 07:09 pm (UTC)I was thinking specifically in terms of recent works - not through any particular belief that it's a new development in the field or anything, just because those two had come out so close together, and were both such clear Graphic Novel Of The Year contenders, except for the whole 'not being novels' bit. But yes, I'd go with that 'best single issue' bit, definitely. Even if I do increasingly fear that Morrison's at least temporarily lost it, that Superman story was quite a last hurrah.
As for the petition - I've not followed all the ins and outs you detail, but I am aware of it. The best response I've seen is the one in the Page 45 mailshot, have you encountered that?
Still, better than Black Summer numbers? That's going some. Doesn't that mean it's basically the bestselling non-Big Four, non-licensed title except The Boys, which started at DC and so is cheating?
Re: Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms
Date: 2008-05-21 07:29 pm (UTC)Morrison - it's mainly the Authority sulk which is bugging me, but neither DCU0 nor the first part of Batman RIP gave me the OH MY DEAR HEAVENS WOW! reaction which I expect from a Morrison first issue.
If Sim does excommunicate Page 45, then obviously I shall have to reconsider. But unless and until, I'm still giving him the benefit of the doubt, because I do think some of the witch-hunting by Heidi M and others has been such as could push anyone into some extreme behaviour in correspondence/online which they might not display in person.
Re: Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms
Date: 2008-05-21 07:42 pm (UTC)Re: Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms
Date: 2008-05-21 07:46 pm (UTC)DCU0 is somewhere between a trailer and a pre-credits sequence, and a bit of a baffling product all round. But that just made me wonder if DC were now at that ITV stage of being so far gone that even projects which really should work get brought down by the ambient crapness. But if anything, the voiceover was the bit I liked!
Re: Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms
Date: 2008-05-21 08:11 pm (UTC)Re: Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms
Date: 2008-05-21 08:51 pm (UTC)The sketchbook has quite a lot of Morrison words, because it's basically a collection of cocktail napkins that JG Jones and Morrison scribbled on when they met to brainstorm sometime last year. Some of the words have been cleaned up and put in captions, and others you have to peer at the drawings a bit to see.
Re: Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms
Date: 2008-05-22 10:32 pm (UTC)Re: Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms
Date: 2008-05-21 08:10 pm (UTC)That's the second mention of the Sketchbook. I'll have to see if any are still available, or is all this likely to appear in the comics proper too?
That doesn't sound great, does it? Silly, cantankerous old bastard. And genius with it, but still.
I'm interested as to how the whole fascination with a certain vision of female loveliness in Glamourpuss is being taken in certain quarters of the hysterical blogosphere - you know, the ones who consider a zombie Mary Jane to be evidence of comics' intrinsic misogyny, rather than a sign that Marvel have already zombified every other iconic image they could think of.
OK, I say 'interested', clearly what I mean is that the idea amuses me but I can't face searching the reality even for car-crash value.
Re: Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms
Date: 2008-05-22 10:28 pm (UTC)Surely the professionally outraged generally make a point of reading things they know will upset their tender sensibilities? Obviously it's a terrible trial for them but, just like Mary Whitehouse sitting down to some TV filth, they have their duty.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 08:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 08:25 am (UTC)More news from nowhere
Date: 2008-05-22 01:16 pm (UTC)Speaking of which, you can't get more smug hipster pop than the Ting Tings, but, f'dammit they are so catchy. B@stards. How did they do that?
There is so much good music now.
Re: More news from nowhere
Date: 2008-05-22 10:30 pm (UTC)Even loving this MGMT song, I find the idea of a whole album a bit much. I think this may be the fault of the Teenagers - I quite liked one of theirs in spite of similar reservations, and then found the album was a major case of diminishing returns.
I really don't get that thing about freebies inspiring less care and interest, though. Perhaps in so far as they imply more other stuff clamouring for one's attention, but in and of itself, if anything I start off better disposed towards something that's cost me 0p.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 11:03 pm (UTC)Re: Soulwax/2manydjs
You are so, so wrong.
Love,
Jo
no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 11:12 pm (UTC)Where Soulwax's talent, if we're being generous, is represented by Mercury*, and Guillemots' by Rigel.
*I speak here only of their remix/DJ career. As a band, they're OK, if nothing special.