WWVMD?

[alexsarll]

Anyone know how to find the Search toolbar in Mediaplayer? I didn't even know there was one, but having seen it in action I want it, yet am experiencing IT Fail in finding it. Hurrah for pressing random buttons.

I was unaware until I happened past it on Tuesday, but there's a new Book & Comic Exchange branch in Soho, just up from the MVE on Berwick Street. Which isn't quite so bursting-at-the-seams as Notting Hill yet, but I still got a pretty good haul - the Spider-Man's Tangled Web collection with the Garth Ennis/John McCrea and Peter Milligan/Duncan Fegredo stories for £3, the one issue I was missing from the Morrison/Millar Flash run (a rather lovely Jay Garrick one-shot, 'Still Life In The Fast Lane'), and an issue of Warren Ellis' Doctor Strange run. Except it turns out he only did plot, not script, and what's the point of a Warren Ellis comic without inventive insults? The whole thing is a bit of a mess, though, even with some of the art coming from Mark Buckingham; it was part of the Marvel Edge line, which was Marvel's attempt to get some of that Vertigo action, which is here represented by such cringeworthy details as Strange's cloak being replaced with an Overcoat of Levitation...
I was in that neck of the woods because I'd been invited to lunch at a health food place in Covent Garden. Accepting which, and then being off the sauce all day, was clearly foolishness, because last night I was quite as ill as I've been in years. I choose to believe that I was not in fact vomiting blood, and that it was just the strawberry jam I'd had on toast for tea and/or the pomegranate juice I had with lunch. But still, even the fleeting possibility is not what you want to see, is it? And of course, when your time's your own then sick days lack even the compensatory charms they hold for workers.
Before this kicked in, though, I also had chance to make my first visit to the Wallace Collection, which I think maybe made a better home than it makes a museum. The stuff they have is generally the sort of stuff which makes for a good background, rather than something I wish to stand and contemplate - although the gender balance amuses me, rooms of arms and armour balanced by all that froofy Rococo stuff.

Won the pub quiz jackpot on Monday, but only just - we were exactly as far off the tie-break as one other team, and then in the tie-break tie-break, which was essentially guessing a random date, we were only one day closer than them. Perhaps it was the tension of that which undid me last night? Nah, I'm still blaming the so-called healthy living.

edit: More comics news just in - DC Announces 'After Watchmen - What's Next?' Program? And it has been amazing me how the Watchmen trade is now *everywhere*, although that is a mainly happy amazement as opposed to some people's reaction, so this is a smart move. So what comics are DC suggesting as the next step?

• SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #21 SPECIAL EDITION

Well, that's the first US comics saw of Alan Moore's ability to dismantle and then retool superhero comics, so yes, fair choice.

• TRANSMETROPOLITAN #1 SPECIAL EDITION

Bearded Brit offers a witty, scabrous vision of the collapse of the American Dream? Sure. Though if they persevere they will, like many before them, realise that Transmet falls apart halfway through.

• PLANETARY #1 SPECIAL EDITION

Hmmmm. Watchmen is mired in comics past, but in such a way that if you don't know that, it doesn't matter. I'm not sure if the same can be said of Planetary. Also, is it wise to get people reading a comic where we don't even know whether it's finished or not?

• PREACHER #1 SPECIAL

Bloody good series, if a little puerile for the sake of it at times. I would have said Sandman might be a better Vertigo option, but this isn't a bad one.

• IDENTITY CRISIS #1 SPECIAL

A comic rooted in decades of DC Universe continuity, and which centres on the rape and murder of superheroes' wives. I don't think it deserved *all* of the stick it got, but is this seriously meant to get anyone dabbling their toes in the water into reading comics? Whenever I think DC might be regaining some small fragment of the plot, they pull a stunt like this.

Comments

[suicideally.livejournal.com]

I adore the Wallace Collection, though you are correct, it's more of a home than a gallery. Apparently they do tea there, which sounds like more of the thing.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

If you could take it in the rooms then yes - that central court (which was doing duty as the main cafe yesterday) felt a little bleak in comparison.

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

That is the main cafe. They do a fabuloous afternoon tea, though.

And you are the third person on my F'list to go down with food poisoning in the last two days. Hmmm...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm guessing slightly as to the cause...but if the others were also in Covent Garden, or on the lentils, it would start to look more like a pattern.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

See, that was the reason I would have told you to care, so I got nothing. It is shocking me how much almost everyone seems to be looking forward to the film, though - I expected it from the geeks but we appear to have peer-pressured the rest of the world into caring too.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I possibly cry more at comics than at any other artform, for reasons I have never really been able to articulate.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

This is true, but since the gays and the geeks won, what of it?

[diamond-geyser.livejournal.com]

"Now. That's the last of the paintings hung. What is missing from this room?"
"I know! I know!"
"Are you going to suggest ANOTHER statue of Mrs Herakles being carried off by a rapey centaur?"
"No! Well. A bit. It's just we've got LOADS..."

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

In fairness, sometimes it's Herakles himself carrying off an animal instead. And those are only rapey if you really squint.

[diamond-geyser.livejournal.com]

How did you approach the displays then, good sir? Would this be a reasonable approximation?

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I suspect that Sandman has reached escape velocity by now: there are enough people for whom it's the only comic they read that the collections don't really need the boost.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It's crossed over, sure, but it hasn't crossed over to the same degree as Watchmen is now - displayed on the front table in bookshops, or by the counter in HMV. Of course, I am going here by UK examples, so either of them might have a different degree of market penetration in the States.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Because Watchmen is actually a brilliant story/work of art, and Sandman is, like most of Gaiman's work, an ego trip aimed tangentially at pulling vulnerable self-harming Goth chicks. (With, admittedly, occasional flashes of genius.)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You are Lawrence Miles AICM5UKP.

Gaiman is, yes, only the third best comics writer in the world, and that does mean occasional lapses into...even pretension is too harsh, but a little heavy on the bookishness, perhaps?

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

That's true; given that comics readers have such ready access to Morrison and Moore, it's a bit harsh to then slam Gaiman for "only" being a pretty competent writer instead of a constantly live, sparking genius. As you imply, though, it's a bit wearing watching him steal something out of the Faerie Queene or whatever wholesale for the 403rd time and pretend he's being brilliant: if copyright laws held firm for more than a few centuries, Gaiman'd be completely f*cked.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

But if there had been copyright laws in the 16th century, Shakespeare would have been even more fvcked.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I liked Planetary. It's about time they wrote some more.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I liked it a great deal at first, but past about halfway it fell victim to the interminable delays and the obsession with pet subjects which often afflict Ellis comics (the camgirl-as-Dr Strange issue was especially embarrassing). And that we don't even know whether the last issue was meant to be the final issue, or when any subsequent issue may arise - what the Hell?

[azureskies.livejournal.com]

There is meant to be another issue coming. Fvck knows when. I'll buy it when it comes out, but mainly out of a sense of duty. The blasted thing stopped being essential when it abandoned the done-in-one vignettes and moved onto a slightly boring resolving-its-own-mythology story.

Still looks lovely and has lovely moments, but... the main story only lasted about ten issues, spread out over about five years. It's hard to really care about what was actually happening.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Likewise. And there were just little bits increasingly creeping in which indicated to me that it wasn't just Ellis losing interest, but the artist too. Like the Galactus issue, say, where the scale of the corpse was changing radically from one panel to the next. I spotted something similar in the later days of Transmet too, where that once madly detailed Darick future seemed increasingly blank of background just as the plot was increasingly fixated on the boring, implausible Smiler.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

What would... Veronica Mars do?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Vic Mackey!

I'm told I would like Veronica Mars, but I've never seen it.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Veronica Mars seasons 1, 2 and 3 are the Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Neil Gaiman respectively of seasons of TV shows featuring feisty, wisecracking teenage blondes.