Heresy

Let me just get it out. I'll bet that no one, 15 years ago or so, would've listened to Nirvana's Nevermind and thought to themselves, "You know who's gonna emerge as one of America's last great rock stars? The fucking drummer."

But, seriously, Dave Grohl is the genuine goddamn article. I've had Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace on a loop for the last four days. It's a beautiful album: hard when it's supposed to be, soft when it wants to be and—here's where the heresy truly comes in—I think Grohl's a better songwriter than Cobain was. Yes, he had more time to mature and ferment, and his doesn't seem to be a life of harsh torment. (And, yes, Courtney Love is nowhere near him.)

You watch the Foos in concert and he is everything a frontman oughta be: passionate, frenzied, and willing to shred his voice to tatters every night. Honestly, I can't think of a band I'd want to see live more than the Foo Fighters. The hardest working bar-band in show business. And when he's not banging away at the guitar, he's playing drums on other folks' albums. (Can you imagine being the drummer in the Foos? Knowing full well that your boss can do your job way better than you can?)

Every drummer pounding away in a shitty high-school band ought to have a temple to Grohl in their closet: he has shown you the way.

Great Moments in Fatherhood

I'm flipping channels this morning, and I come across the first Star Wars (Episode IV, which will forever be known as "the first Star Wars"), right about the part where we first see the Death Star, floating in space. My three-year-old son, Luc, looks at the TV and says "That's a moon."

And I get to say, "That's no moon...that's a space station."

It all comes around.

Out of the Box

I'm going back to Cali, y'all. (I simply cannot resist a little LL plug. A weakness, I know.)

Heading out on Monday, back on Friday. Pitchery is afoot. If I can, I'll keep you updated. But you know how these things go.

So, be good, for goodness sake. And I'll see you when I see you.

Casting to Type

Working, as I do, at the magazine where I work (wow, that's a nonsensical phrase, but I'm gonna keep it in there anyway) for the last 12 years, I've seen a lot of magazine covers. A lot. We're a weekly, after all. Somewhere around 500 issues, give or take.

And when I saw the mockups for the cover of this week's issue...


...two things crossed my mind:

1) It's good to see an Asian face on our cover. There aren't a lot of occasions for us to do that, seeing as there isn't a multitude of Asian movie/TV stars. We cover the business, and it's not our fault if the business doesn't give Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indian, or Taiwanese actors much work. (Yes, I'm sure I left out a whole host of eses. I know. Sorry, thespians on Surinam.) The last time we had Asians and nothing but Asians on the cover was an Oscar Race Begins issue, with Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So, yay for diversity.

2) Masi Oka will have James Gandolfini's career, but with less awards. By that, I mean to say that he'll do great work as one overwhelmingly ethnic character—and never move beyond that. I think Gandolfini probably came to terms with that. Could be what was behind the salary renegotiations: "If I'm never gonna get to do work this good again, I wanna get paid." And everything we've seen him in where he's not playing a mobster has been underwhelming: The Mexican, The Last Castle, All the King's Men. Granted, those movies sucked but, more importantly, you didn't buy him in them. That's the problem with creating an iconic, enduring character: you can never escape it. Will Masi be able to get out from under Hiro's shadow? Would you want to see him playing, I dunno, the romantic lead, or the smart tech dude in a heist thriller, or the gay best friend? He might be able to do all of those, and do them well, but I think we'll always see him squishing his eyes, shouting "Yataaai!"

The Big Question: Clarification

It seems, in tracking what's become the news story of the cycle—and, apparently, it's a slow cycle if The Highwaymen not selling can spur such discussion—people have misinterpreted the events to draw the conclusion that Wildstorm cancelled the book. Which is not the case.

We were engaged to do a five-issue miniseries. Which is exactly what we wrote, what Lee Garbett drew, and what Wildstorm is publishing. Were there conversations about possibly continuing the series beyond those five issues? Absolutely. But doing so was always contingent on sales.

Wildstorm solicited five issues of The Highwaymen, and that's precisely what, to steal liberally from Tina Fey, our dozens and dozens of readers will get.

The Big Question: Part Deux

A lot of people have chimed in, both here and on Heidi MacDonald's The Beat, with their theories as to why The Highwaymen didn't sell.

To sum up:

• No one wants to try anything new, so new characters by new creators...nuh-uh.
• Wildstorm, as a brand, doesn't inspire consumers to buy anymore.
• The wait-for-the-trade mentality + hatred of the miniseries format = no floppy love.
• The retailer incentive for issue #1 didn't extend to issue #2.
• The cover for issue #1 didn't stand out.
• Readers didn't respond to the concept.

Most of those I'll concede, with the exception of the last two. I liked the cover for issue #1 and while the design might've been a little conventional, I'd have thought the name-brandness of Brian Stelfreeze would've made up the difference. And, anecdotal and empirical evidence both point to readers absolutely responding to the concept. And to the execution. I guess we were laboring under the misguided theory that "good will out."

Maybe, finally, the answer to the "why" is: The market just isn't set up to support a book like this because, ultimately, the readers don't want a book like this. If they did, there'd be more of them. There'd be more romance books, and more action books, and more war books, and more straight sci-fi books, and more police procedural books. I'd say it was as myopic as TV, but then you'd have to posit a TV landscape where there were only sitcoms set in a bar.

But the market, with the rarest of exceptions (e.g., Y: The Last Man, Criminal, Walking Dead, Fell, Casanova, etc.), wants superheroes and only superheroes. Especially superheroes they already know. And especially if there's a possibility that they're zombies.

The Big Question

Given the news of the post below, a fella could ask himself, "Why?"

Not, "Why isn't Wildstorm going to do another arc worth of Highwaymen stories." I know why. Because it didn't sell. We moved a hair under 10,000 copies of issue #1. At the time, we were told that was as good a number as one could expect for a book about two characters no one had ever heard of, created by three guys no one had ever heard of.

But issue #2 took a 40% dive—which would be fine if we were a movie; that's considered a pretty good hold in week two. However, we're not a movie. And it's not enough to warrant doing more. I get that.

So, the question is, "Why didn't it sell?"

Did we not spread the word adequately? I'd like to think we did. We did oodles of press, interviews with anyone who asked. Had pieces up on Wizard.com, Newsarama, CBR, Silver Bullet, IGN, and Broken Frontier. Some mainstream press, too, in EW and a couple of news syndicates, which got us into a whole host of regional papers. We did in-store signings and convention appearances, a couple of podcast interviews to boot. DC gave the first issue the better part of a page in Previews, and seeded house ads throughout the bulk of its books the month before it came out. It's possible we could've done more—a cross-country tour would've been nice, but not in the cards...and we all can't have Warren's internet presence, not overnight—but we didn't let it stumble out there without any support at all.

Was The Highwaymen simply a bad comic? I'd almost say that's a more important concern, except for the fact that there are tons of shitty books that do/did better than ours. So quality does not insure sales. But, judging by the overwhelmingly positive response we've gotten from almost every critic who's reviewed it, quality was not our problem.

Was it the subject matter? Were potential readers turned off by the cast, a pair of old dudes, one white and one black? Was ageism or racism a factor? No way to be sure. Though, we've been told, in pitching other books, that black characters just don't sell. Even Blade, with three hit movies behind him, can't keep ongoing-series hope alive.

Can a good action-adventure book that received a decent PR launch about a pair of racially diverse seniors who aren't superheroes fly in today's market? I guess that's the $64,000 question.

And I guess we got our answer.

The Word From the Mountain

From the Jim Lee panel at the Baltimore Comic-Con, via Newsarama:

"The Highwaymen will conclude its arc and then end, Lee said, noting that the series was a great read but hasn’t performed well sales-wise. After the series is over, Lee said that they’ll be working with the creators again."

Well, there you have it. We're glad we got to tell the story we set out to tell. If you find us at a convention bar one of these years, we'll tell you what would've happened...if you buy us beer. And nachos. Definitely nachos.

I Honestly Don't Know What To Make Of This

Two minutes from Southland Tales, featuring a very dirrrty Sarah Michelle Gellar:

If You Thought I Gave Up on the Pimpery...

Johnny Bacardi digs himself some Highwaymen #3:

HIGHWAYMEN #3: Wonder of wonders, we actually get some explanations and answers in only the third chapter, something which flies in the face of normal shoot-em-up comics/movies/TV series of this ilk. Livelier than last issue, to boot, oddly enough, with fewer improbable stunts. I think this one is going to be all right. B+

Wither 'TV Guide'

The news that TV Guide may be shutting down its print edition doesn't come as a surprise to me. What does surprise me is that it took this long.

I have no ill will towards TV Guide; I've got friends that work there. The front of that magazine still reads pretty well. But that's just it: what about the rest of the magazine? The listings?

Well, in this day and age, the listings are useless. The kind of people who desperately want to know what's on and when are the kind of folks that already have cable or satellite TV. And those services come with an on-screen guide, to tell you what's on and when. If the box you're interested in watching gives you the information you want, why would anyone look away from said box to get that information?

I guess that marketplace reality has finally set in. And there no way to support a TV-based magazine these days. Too narrow of a focus. That's what the web is for. TV Guide should've got in bed with TiVo a few years ago...

So I guess it's farewell TV Guide. The me from 1986 will miss you.

20 Better Ways for Owen Wilson to Kill Himself

20. Buy a really expensive car and wrap it around a tree.
19. Skydive without a parachute.
18. Run with the bulls.
17. Donkey show.
16. Head to the 20th Century Fox props room, grab the sandwich board that Bruce Willis wore in Die Hard 3 ("I hate niggers"), and take a stroll around Compton.
15. Take a stroll around Compton.
14. Head to, say, Botswana and have unprotected sex with all of its prostitutes.
13. Move into a Penthouse at The Palms in Vegas, run up as much of a gambling debt as humanly possible, and wait for the mob to come and collect, Smokin' Aces-style.
12. Solo piranha-fishing trip down the Amazon.
11. Firing squad in some Central American squalor-country.
10. Go hot-air ballooning with a box of cigars.
9. Tiger pit.
8. Kumite.
7. Climb Everest. And then jump off.
6. Pinch Mike Tyson's ass.
5. Enlist.
4. Home-made matter collider.
3. Fight club.
2. Strapped to the front bumper of the Lord Humongous' post-apocalyptic dune buggy.
1. Shotgun to the face, Cobain-style.

At the very least, all of them are more becoming of a young movie star. And they bespeak a man who lived life as a man. They weren't kidding when they said that the only men left in Hollywood are teenage girls. At least they flame out in entertaining ways. Sad, but entertaining.

Why am I so glib about this? Why don't I respect his wishes to leave him alone so he can cope with his pain? Because fuck him and his pain. What on Earth could have left him so bereft? Did Kate Hudson leave him? C'mon, dude...she's Kate Hudson, what did you expect her to do? Is his career not on track? I can list thousands of character actors who are currently demeaning themselves in new and interesting ways to get on an episode of fucking Reba.

How is his life so hard that there's no making it better? He's handsome and rich. There's nothing you can't get out of by being handsome and rich. Check yourself into resort-rehab. Go on a ridiculous spending spree. Bankroll a shitty movie your brother can direct. Call McConaughey and go on a Texas-boy Winnebago trip. Kill a Tijuana hooker.

Whatever it takes, get over it. Move on. Don't be such a goddamn pussy. If a single mother can leave her studio apartment with bars on the window, drop off her kid with substandard child-care, take a subway two hours to her first job emptying trash cans at a law firm, pull down a night shift at a diner where the regulars think a boob-brush comes with the coffee, and go over her older kid's homework before getting three hours of sleep, and waking up to do it all again—if people can do that without calling it quits...

No, I don't have any sympathy. No, he doesn't know pain.

EDIT: I've been told to add 21. Get into comics.

We got "Fresh Ink"!

A little love from the G4 network's resident comics doyenne, Blair Butler. (She gets to The Highwaymen #3 right after Black Adam.)

DOWNLOAD FRESH INK HERE

The Freaks Come Out on the 8:05am

There I was, sitting like a good commuter on the train this morning, listening to my iPod. I've taken to buying stand-up comedy albums and funneling them in there. I've already become bored of the 3,200 songs in my library, and don't want to get so involved as to listen to an audiobook. I prefer my books on papyrus. Rolling papyrus.

So I'm listening to Patton Oswalt's second CD, and he launches into this bit about Robert Evans doing the voiceover for these ESPN radio spots. And each one gets progressively dirtier. This train, mind you, is standing room only. I was lucky enough to get a seat, but I'm crammed in with people right next to me, and people standing above me. No one's talking, as we've all tacitly agreed, even with friends and loved ones, not to speak and instead give our brains time to boot up.

The whole time, I've got my arms crossed, and my fingers pressing on the bridge of my nose, trying to stifle the laughs that are starting to build.

And he gets to this passage, where he describes Loretta Swit's pubic hair as large enough to hide a VCR, and I lose my shit. In the cacophonous silence of that metal tube, the sound of my laughter echoed for what felt like a minute.

Of course, I can't tell anyone what I'm laughing at. Because that would be wrong.

And, apparently, you can't cover that kind of outburst by raising a clenched fist to your mouth and pretending it was a hi-LAR-ious cough.

Ain't It Cool News Weighs in

On Monster Attack Network:

This book is a bit of a change from the other books I have read from Ait/Planet Lar, but it shares the same attention to fine storytelling. This drama set in a world where giant monsters attack on a frequent basis was a fun yarn. The blasé way the main characters do battle with these big beasts was thoroughly entertaining to witness. The art is loose and I have to admit, at times, I was a bit at a loss as to what was happening in some of the tighter panels, but when artist Nima Sorat pulls back in the large panels, they are quite a sight to behold. There is a real VENTURE BROTHERS feel to this comic with overly-muscular men and sultry babes battling giant things science and nature shouldn’t have spawned. There’s a lot of fun in between the covers of this book and it’s a welcome change from some of the more serious or fact-based books from Ait/Planet Lar. —Ambush Bug

By the way...

Despite all that highfalutin racio-sequential-art examination of the previous post, I'd have loved to write a totally blaxploitation Black Lightning: Year One book.

If only so I could write the sentence: "Now that's one crazy electric nigger!"

(Which, of course, would never have seen print. But I'd have gotten to write it.)

Heroic Creation Myths

Walk with me for a bit.

Bruce Wayne + Asian vacation = Batman
Lamont Cranston + Asian vacation = The Shadow
Stephen Strange + Asian vacation = Doctor Strange

Now, I know that a good deal of this is a by-product of the era (apparently, there was a great deal of cultural fascination with the Far East pre-WWII), as well as some wanton plagiarism (in the same way that Doc Savage was the Man of Bronze and Superman was the Man of Steel). I guess uniqueness wasn't valued all that highly when creating pulp heroes.

And I was almost thinking that white heroes were the only ones with such a firmly encoded origin—but when you look at black or native american heroes, they've got the same ticks.

Jefferson Pierce + ghetto = Black Lightning
Luke Cage + ghetto = Power Man
John Proudstar + reservation + Vietnam = Thunderbird
Forge + reservation + Vietnam = er, Forge

There are, apparently, no black heroes not from the Hood and no Native American heroes not born on a reservation. While those locales can be defining elements, they're not exclusive. John Proudstar couldn't have been from Santa Fe? Luke Cage couldn't have been raised in the rural south? He couldn't have been the child of freedom riders? Sure, you get your odd men out like Black Panther, ruler of an African Kingdom, or Storm, goddess of the African plains, or Blade (wait...a vampire hunter from the ghetto), every now and again, but they're the exceptions, not the rules.

And, jeez, try finding an Asian character not adept in the martial arts (I'll give you Jubilee, find another one). Maybe that's not entirely fair. I've been combing through the Marvel Universe and pretty much every character is "an expert in various forms of martial arts."

Maybe the get-rich scheme inside the Marvel world is to open a friggin' dojo. In the hood.

Some Newsarama MAN love

Check the technique (scroll a bit):

Monster Attack Network Graphic Novel (AiTPlanetLar Reviewed by Tim Janson): Ever wonder who gets to clean up all the damage crated by the giant monsters in those Japanese monster films? Who rebuilds the cities and infrastructure? Well, it’s the Monster Attack Network. This new graphic novel from AiT Planet Lar shows just how the men and women of the Monster Attack Network deal with giant monster attacks. The setting is the South Pacific island of Lapuatu. Nate Klinger is the group’s leader and we first see Nate coming to the aid of residents who are trapped in their building during one of those attacks. All buildings are built to have special escape chutes to be used when some great beast rises out of the pacific to attack the island. For the residents, it’s as if they live in tornado alley…giant monster attacks are just something they live with. The Team gets a new employee, Lana Barnes who Nate suspects has some secrets in her past that she is trying to hide. Funny thing is, ever since Lana, and an unscrupulous land developer have shown up on the island, the monster attacks have increased in their frequency as well as their intensity. Nate smells something bad and it’s not the stench of rotting monster bodies. For fans of Godzilla films and the like, Monster Attack Network is a blast. Loaded with action and sarcastic humor, this is a wildly entertaining book. The dialog is razor sharp and the black and white art by Sorat is lush and expressive. Giant Monsters have not been this fun in a long time!

Everything's Coming Up Redheads

Two more for the casting rondelay:


Lauren Ambrose, and


Megan Fox (who may come off a tad too slutty).

It has, also, been pointed out that in the coif-tech future we're living in, hair color is infinitely malleable. But while this "film" still exists only in our heads, let's keep it pure.

EDIT: Adding Laura Prepon—thanks, Alex!—who was a much hotter Donna as a redhead:

Stupid Lindsey

I wish that Lindsay Lohan wasn't such a goddamned train wreck. Yes, I feel bad and all, and "what a shame that her parents didn't do what parents are supposed to do and keep their children from fucking up their lives."

But, honestly, she'd have made a great Grace Anderson for the inevitable (if I keep saying it, maybe it'll come true) Highwaymen movie. She's young, a redhead, and can actually act. The list of redheads who fit that bill is, sadly, very short. Isla Fisher. Alyson Hannigan.



Who else, because after that I'm drawing a blank?

EDIT: Now that I think about it, Alyson Hannigan is probably too old. Grace is a college student and Ms. Hannigan (Alyson if you're nasty) is around 32. Though, she plays young pretty well. This, I say, as if we're actually casting the movie.