The Monster Alphabet–Book Review

I received this image of a Faerie as a postcard, which is why you’re seeing it.

The Monster Alphabet is a 26-page board book by Derron Gendron & Obsidian Abnormal, the team behind the very funny webcomic Hello With Cheese, which I will talk about in a future Webcomics You Should Be Reading post. Yeah, it’s an alphabet board book for little kids, but with each letter represented by a different mythological creature. B is for Basilisk, F is for Faerie and so on. It’s a wonderful little book that includes a neat rhyme, facts about the creatures and a great illustration on each page.

My friend turned me on to Dern & O, as they’re known, a couple years ago, and they’re probably my favorite webcomics team out there. Dern’s jokes–and blog posts–are always entertaining and funny while O’s art, as you can see above (as well as his own webcomic Commissioned), is a great thing to behold.

I actually contributed to the book’s making through its Kickstarter page, chipping in at the $12 level, which not only got me the above image as a postcard, but also…

The physical book itself

 

 

A slipcase, which I didn’t even know it would have until it came in the mail.

This really sweet and wonderful poster; sorry for the crappy shot

There’s also a bookmark of 2 images from the book–which I’ll add here at some point–as well as a PDF of the book that I got a month or so after the Kickstarter wrapped.

All this sweet, geeky fun for $12? Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. See you Wednesday!

 

 

 

 

Of Interest

Not that this is gonna unofficially become Bat-Week here or anything, but I do want to address another thing about The Dark Knight Rises.

In case you haven’t heard, prior to the film’s release, critic Marshall Fine posted a negative review on his website and received death threats. From fans. Y’know, the ones that are so rabid about this stuff that they’ll do things like…well, do things like that?

Yeah, that’s pretty insane stuff. After that and a similar incident with another critic, Rotten Tomatoes–the famous review-aggregator website that I don’t personally care for because it distills the fine art of movie criticism to a number–suspended comments from the film’s page. Bravo, guys.

And fans? Don’t do this. Not just for Batman, but anything. People are allowed to have negative and contrary opinions. That’s how democracy works. That’s how freedom of speech works. That’s how civil discourse works.

If you can’t remember that, then just ask yourself, “What would Batman do?”

Okay, his first answer would be probably this:

But his second would be to be civil and respectful. Thank you.

Bat-sanity.

I’ve been living in a nexus of Batman material lately. Bought Batman: Arkham Asylum at the last Steam sale for $7, been watching a lot of Batman: The Animated Series, just started watching The Brave and the Bold today from the beginning, and last week Thursday, I not only saw the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, but all of Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.

My review? Well, to keep it short because there’s other things I want to talk about yet, I liked it a lot. Seeing all 3 films at one time like that–an experience that yielded me another opportunity that I hope to announce very soon–helped me see the threads of Nolan (and his brother Jonathan and David S. Goyer)’s vision of Batman play out fully. Rises is a very well done movie; not as good as The Dark Knight, but better than Batman Begins. The cast is great, the script is great, the score is great, the characters are awesome and the plot is spellbinding.

But while I was enjoying myself, Aurora, CO was experiencing a devastating tragedy. Suffice it to say that this is certainly a heinous, cruel, barbaric act of violence and that all prayers and thoughts should be centered on the victims.

As for the shooter? Well, I fully agree with artist Ty Templeton. Don’t talk about this guy; don’t think about him; don’t give this nut the attention he deserves.

If you want an excellent thought piece on this and the recent Penn State verdict, you can find that here.

To turn to a bit happier news, I reached a milestone at work today, it finally rained around here and I had a great time playing Soul Calibur V last night. Happier post tomorrow!

Neal Adams, put it simply, is one of the legends of comics. I value his thoughts on the movie immensely. I’ll be seeing it at midnight tonight with a friend; full review tomorrow.

Royalty–Childish Gambino–Mixtape Review

Like that last mixtape I wrote about, Royalty is free. 100% free. Right here. Donald Glover, the actor/rapper/wunderkind behind Childish Gambino, made it free. Because he’s awesome.

If you don’t recognize that name, it’s because you don’t watch Community. And if you don’t watch Community, you are depriving yourself. Seriously. Community is the best sitcom on TV, so rush out and buy the first season on DVD or, if you have a HuluPlus subscription, watch it on there. It’s available on Netflix. But seriously, WATCH COMMUNITY.

Anyway…divorced from the show, Donald Glover is a considerable talent in his own right, writing for 30 Rock–y’know, that show that’s won millions of awards but no one you know watches?–doing stand-up, acting and, for a while now, rapping. His rap alter-ego Childish Gambino (the name came from a Wu-Tang Clan name generator) is as witty as Glover’s stand up but still reeling with emotion and insight into what it’s like to be someone like Glover–a self-styled “black nerd”–in this day and age. There’s also a bunch of wonderful insights into the trials of childhood and love.

Royalty, like most mixtapes, is star-studded. My favorite track, “Silk Pillow,” comes courtesy of Beck, who, after 4 years with no new releases, just drops a great guest rap and sets up a perfect counterpoint to Gambino. I don’t know what the lyrics are about but that’s how all Beck songs are to me. Like Beck’s solo music, the brilliant instrumentation sells it.

Some other great tracks are “We Ain’t Them,” the opener in which Glover relays all of his adult life in a breezy, charming manner with a smooth beat and “American Royalty,” where Wu-Tang’s very own maestro the RZA and the Chicago-based Hypnotic Brass Ensemble just jam.

As you might have heard, the final song, “Real Estate,” features a “rap” from Tina Fey, comedy’s “It girl” and Glover’s former boss on 30 Rock, but…guys…it’s just not good. AT ALL.

The whole song is just dumb and boring; the sort of creatively empty boast rap that Gambino is otherwise against. Fey doesn’t even show up till the end, but she has no flow, is painfully awkward, and nothing is the slightest bit funny about it. Guhhh.

But overall, it’s a pretty good mixtape and it’s FREE AND LEGALLY SO. What are you waiting for?

Nostalgia, Ultra–Mixtape Review

Frank Ocean has been in the news a lot lately. Between his coming out as bisexual or gay (which it is isn’t known), his appearing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and then launching his official label debut on Def Jam, Channel Orange digitally, and Target refusing to sell that same album because they–allegedly--think nobody will buy a physical copy, the 20-something R&B singer, best known as the smooth milk that washes down the VERY bitter, very shocking pills that Tyler, the Creator and the other members of the LA hip-hop collective Odd Future give listeners (Warning: that last link is NSFW).

Ocean, real name Christopher Breaux, is actually the oldest member of Odd Future and has the most experience. Some quick Wikiing will tell you that he started out writing songs for, among others, Justin Bieber and John Legend, but wound up signing with the once-mighty, now-tepid Def Jam Records as a solo artist in 2009.

Frustrated with the lack of movement on the label’s part, Ocean, while gaining acclaim recording with Odd Future on various releases, recorded the mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra and released it to Tumblr without any self-promotion whatsoever.

The mixtape became a HUGE hit, finally kickstarting Ocean’s career and forcing Def Jam to actually work with him, resulting in the release of Channel Orange. Of the many accolades it’s gotten, my favorite has to be from A.V. Club, where reviewer Stephen Hyden called the album “dark, playful, a little tasteless, and absolutely riveting.”

That pretty much sums up my own feelings on this. Ocean’s vocals are awesome and his lyrics are like no one else’s in the R&B/rap world right now. My favorite tracks? “We All Try,” a hymnlike creed about perseverance in the face of homophobia and other ills, and “Novacane,” a tale of Ocean’s hooking up with a girl at Coachella and getting high on, well, novacaine.

Plans for tracks from this album to be released as an EP by Def Jam have been scrapped, but luckily you can still find it for free in many places. A lot of them are legit, don’t worry. 🙂 If you, like me, don’t have the money to spend on Channel Orange, but still want to hear some good modern R&B, this is the stuff. Check it out.

Doctor Who: The Complete Sixth Series–Review

Howdy folks, meant to review another CD–technically a mixtape–but I havent finished listening to it yet. SO instead, you’re getting this. OK? OK.

I think you’re pretty hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t at least heard of Doctor Who . The 50+ year old series–this boxset is labeled sixth because it’s the sixth series (UK term for season) since the show’s revival in 2005–is an institution in its native Britain, known in most if not all English-speaking countries, and is now very popular in America.

In fact, a huge chunk of this series’ opening two-parter “The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon” was filmed in Washington D.C. and Monument Valley, Utah, with the results looking wonderful and breathtaking. It is worth noting though that the principal Americans in the 60s’-based story, FBI agent Canton Delaware and President Nixon, are played by the British Mark Shephard and Stuart Milligan respectively.

That opening two-parter sets up a major bomb. The Doctor–the 900+ year old cosmic wanderer played here by Matt Smith–is killed, but his companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillian), Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) and River Song (Alex Kingston) see him alive not long after. They realize that the Doctor they saw die is a Doctor from the future and, tasked with not telling the Doctor of his own future, they let that plot thread linger and build through 13 episodes to an explosive, unforgettable end.

This is the 2nd series of the show helmed by writer Steven Moffat, with Moffat writing over half of the episodes. Moffat is a good showrunner; he builds a propulsive story, but comes up with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing, which is exactly what you want with a compulsive mystery. The non-Moffat written episodes, particularly “The Girl Who Waited” and “Closing Time” are pretty fun as well, and both sides add up to prove that this show is the king of adventure shows.

The acting is great-Smith gets better in every episode, and the three companions and the guest stars–especially James Corden in “Closing Time” are wonderful too, all having great chemistry.

Is this the series you need to seek out to get into the show? I wouldn’t say so; I think you’re better off going back to the previous season and watching Matt Smith evolve his Doctor in every episode. But this is a nice reward when you get to it.

The Amazing Spider-Man–Film Review

One of the most seminal nights of my life was May 3, 2002. I was 9 years old. It was a Friday, and me and my dad went to the nearby theater to see Spider-Man.  It was so full, we had to sit in the very front row, the first time I had ever done so. But I didn’t care about having to look up all the time; from the moment the movie started, I was spellbound.

I remember thinking nothing but “WOW” the whole time, amazed at what director Sam Raimi and the cast–especially Tobey Maguire–were able to pull off. But the absolute best part was afterwards. Leaving the theater on what it turns out was Free Comic Book Day, I was handed a free copy of Ultimate Spider-Man #1. For the record, that comic–the start of a 21st-century universe of the same Marvel heroes but without the years of back-story, at least at the start–is one of my favorite comic books of all time and certainly one of the most influential on me. That movie, that moment, is part of the foundation of why I am who I am today. I’m a nerd through and through, folks. And that movie’s part of the reason why.

So how did I feel,  a decade later, seeing The Amazing Spider-Man in theaters yesterday?

Well, I liked it a lot. And I feel that kids seeing this today will probably have the same reaction I did to the original film. I think this is really gonna bring kids into the comics-reading fold; well, those kids The Avengers didn’t reach…

The film is a marvel, especially in terms of CGI. The webslinging is good, the action is well-staged, and the new costume didn’t bug me like I thought it would. Marc Webb–who only directed ONE MOVIE before this (500 Days of Summer)–has a good handle on this world and while I was annoyed at the way certain characters and subplots tended to just get shoved aside for a while or disappeared altogether, his direction doesn’t make you notice that.

James Vanderbilt’s screenplay–which, according to the credits, was touched up by Harry Potter film scribe Steve Kloves–is rather good, changing up exactly what needs to be changed up and nothing beyond that, although the death of Uncle Ben was handled in an odd way for my taste.

If I had any overarching problem with this movie, it’s the way Peter Parker was handled. The film never seems to settle on just what he is–he’s either a nerd, a hipster,or a skate punk depending on the scene–and as good as Andrew Garfield is in this movie, I got really annoyed really fast at how he kept stuttering and stammering all of his lines. It was just irritating.

Apart from that, he was great. Emma Stone is amazing as Gwen Stacy, Martin Sheen and Sally Field as Uncle Ben and Aunt May were solid, and Rhys Ifans made a pretty effective Lizard, and Denis Leary KILLED as Captain Stacy.

So yeah, is this the best Spider-Man movie ever?  No; Spider-Man 2 still looms large in that regard. But is this a good Spidey movie in its own right? Absolutely; check it out.

The Summer of Sherlock–The Hound of the Baskervilles

It’s the darndest thing, but I feel that ever since starting this series of posts and reading all this Holmes, I’ve become a classier person. Really; I’ve been checking out classical music from the library a lot lately and listening to it, I’ve been paying more attention to news and current events, and I’m eagerly waiting for the 2nd installment of the PBS miniseries Queen & Country.

I feel that same sense of classiness about this novel. Although the plot–Holmes and Watson travel to the southern region of Devon and the perpetually foggy Dartmoor to investigate rumors of a giant ghostly dog that’s haunted the aristocratic dynasty of the title at the request of the latest family member to move in–is the stuff of what Louisa May Alcott called “blood-and-thunder stories” and the pulp fiction that would spring up 20-odd years later (Hounds was published in 1901), it’s above that. It conducts itself with a decorum that undercuts the horror but enhances the mystery and Gothic atmosphere. Make no mistake; Stephen King probably looked to this when writing Cujo. Although allegedly, he was so deep into drugs and alcohol that he doesn’t even remember writing that book.

Anyway, this book is recommended.One more note: A good friend of mine, the Internet comics sensation HdE. actually lives in Devon. I shot him a message after finishing this asking if Dartmoor was that scary and he said it really isn’t, but he still wouldn’t be there at night…something to think about, I suppose.

Because I didn’t post this on Wednesday, you’re getting another post today!

Happy Independence Day!

Well, for America anyway. The rest of you, have a happy Wednesday/Thursday. Review of The Hound of the Baskervilles tomorrow!