Marvel, Manga, and Moore
I loved this:
Marc
Singer's hilarious (and very thorough) takedown of the bad
philosophy underpinning John Byrne's old FF story, "The Trial of Reed
Richards." Some might call it overkill, but I think poor
reasoning needs to be soundly trounced wherever it occurs, even if it's
in "just a comic book." In fact, allowing it to go unchallenged
in popular/low culture might be particularly insidious, since the
philosophical underpinnings of a story may be subconsciously accepted
so long as the surface level is entertaining.
Jeff
Chatlos found some Amazon listings for upcoming Essentials of 70s
Marvel comics. In addition to
Essential
Iron Fist, which is available for pre-order next month, it
looks as though Marvel plans to release
Essential
Super-Villain Team-Up and
Essential
Defenders. Jeff lists some other Essential series he'd
like to see and I'm right on board with him: For some reason, I
like the obscure, goofy characters and comics more than the
established, popular ones.
Comic Readers has its "Hundreds of Pages of Huh" features up, which
offer pre-ordering recommendations for
mainstream
comics,
manga,
small
press, and
collectibles.
They point out several books I'd overlooked (such as
Jim
Woodring's Pupshaw & Pushpaw #1) but I'm trying to buy fewer
comics, not more, dammit.
Also at Comic Readers:
Interviews
with several winners from Tokyopop's most recent Rising Stars of Manga
competition.
I thought for sure
Augie
De Blieck Jr. would comment on the incestuous relationship between
Jeff and his sister Rexa in
Smax,
especially since Alan Moore has Rexa voice complaints about laws
prohibiting what only comes naturally to animals. Heck, I'm
surprised
I haven't seen any liberal commentators complaining that Moore's
apparent defense of incest could undermine similar arguments for
homosexuality. Perhaps the lack of outrage on either side of the
political spectrum simply means that not many people read this
series.
Myself, I thought it was an interesting thought experiment, but I
strongly doubt incest occurs as neatly in our world as it did in Jeff
and Rexa's situation.
