The Monday Blargh on Tuesday
Sorry guys. I’m a little overwhelmed and I kind of forgot all about the blog. Like a car that is buried by the municipal snow-plow, I can get my motor running, but I can’t seem to get moving. I’m a little overwhelmed with all the things I need to get done before we move in June. The “POD” is reserved. Now we just have to start getting rid of all the crap that won’t fit in it. I see yard sales dominating our weekends in May. I haven’t been down to NYC to work on the attic art studio in many, many weeks. Number 3 Son got the rewiring job done, but as I predicted, this project involved one step forward, and three steps backwards.
The latest issue? Even though they make 23″ wide insulation to fit between the rafters of our 100yr old house, no place sells it. It seems to be one of those things that only contractors can get in bulk. I have this problem with art supplies sometimes and it’s fucking annoying. My money is green. Give me your shit. Anyway, so Dave and Randy are working that out. God bless them. It’s also been determined that a contractor is needed to put the drywall up. Not because we can’t do it. But, like the insulation, there are certain things we can’t gain access to. Like a drywall delivery place that will bring a little propane-powered crane to put the very heavy and messy drywall through the attic window for us. Guess who has those? Yup. The fucking contractors again.
Basically our project is too small, and we are punished for this by being denied access to the very basic materials that would make this a rather fun little home improvement project, instead of the fucking horror that it’s devolving into. Not that I want to screw the contractors out of work. But screw you contractors, in this case, I want to screw you out of work.
Sigh.
I’ll be wrapping up Atomic Robo Vol.4 this week, and getting started on a pair of commissions that have been patiently waiting for several months now. One of them is a recreation of Captain America #1, with Cap facing off against Hitler. Except Cap is replaced with Robo. The other involves John Constantine. On wait. And a Karate Kid commissions. A . . wah? . . .really? The ‘Kid? Alright Ralph Macchio, lets transform and roll out.
Oh and I feel like I owe a couple of old Oeming Board buddies an Optimus Prime/Snake Plisskin team-up. Maybe riding unicorns. Not sure about that last detail yet.
FCBD 2010 is fast approaching and this year, I won’t be appearing anywhere to celebrate the Festivus of Geekdom. Because my wife is running her first ever 5k race that same day. She’s been training very hard for it, and I would be a horrible husband if I didn’t tag along to support her in this. But I’ll see everyone at FCBD 2011. If you haven’t already, you can check out a preview of the 2010 Atomic Robo story here. And by “preview” I mean every single page of the story, except the last. I was fairly baffled by this, but i think I’ve worked out that everyone basically gets the same number of preview pages, and since Robo is part of a FCBD Red5 anthology it’s just dumb luck that most of the story gets revealed in the preview.
In other news, I’ve really got a hair across my ass about all the flack Brian’s Avengers & The Infinity Gauntlet is getting from the jackass Fanboy community. The criticism comes in two flavors: Why does Marvel prove it sucks by revisiting old stories instead of producing new ones, and Marvel Adventure books are pointless because they exist outside the murky and impenetrable continuity of the mainstream 616 Universe material.
Both of these lines of protest demonstrate one thing. That these assholes don’t have a fucking clue what the Adventure and Ultimate universe imprints are all about. Both aim to accomplish the same goal; introduce new readers to the Marvel Universe. Ultimates is aimed at geezers like me, who want more grit and adult themes in our superhero stories (alone the lines of POWERS), and Adventure titles are aimed at superhero comic’s original audience -kids.
Neither of these alternate universe lines is aimed at pandering to the already existing Marvel audience, though I know plenty of old Marvel readers who have embraced one or both of these imprints because when you break it right down, they are just plain good. By revisiting classic Marvel stories a whole new generation of readers can be introduced to the material, and share in the collective history of Marvel’s world. But for the big man-boys they are seen as somehow robbing them of writers and artists who by all rights should be making 616 books exclusively for them.
Well listen up douchenozzles, you can eat a bag of dicks.
I’ve been reading snippets of Brian’s story as he’s worked on it. This is some of his best material. It’s full of action, adventure, and some really solid humor. Even if you read Infinity Gauntlet back in the 80′s this is such a different take on that story that it will feel like something completely new. Like Nextwave, Patsy Walker: Hellcat, and other non or nearly non-continuity mini-series it’s a breath of fresh air in the often stale grind from one massive multi-title spanning Event to the next.
I can’t wait to see this in print.
