everyone hates comic sans
With Kriston in Chicago as well, the nerd contingent finally had numbers on Catherine, and the three of us ended up making a trip to the completely awesome Chicago Comics (conveniently located just a few blocks from Catherine's apt).
Thanks to Tim I've been jumping back into comics recently — he set me up with some Sandman and Transmetropolitan torrents, and I'm slowly working my way through them.
I have to say that I don't really get the appeal of Sandman. And it's not just that I'm tonedeaf to this stuff — I dig the mythical mystery, and I enjoyed American Gods. But so far the series just seems to be about a pale, skinny sliver of humorlessness who spends a lot of time on concerns related to faeries and the dreamscape. It's like some terrible, terrible Trent Reznor/Tori Amos collaboration. I'll stick with it, but so far it hasn't hooked me.
Transmet's considerably more enjoyable, even if Ellis's writerly narcissism isn't actually dismissed by his constant winking in the way he seems to think it is. Also, it provides another excuse to link to a photo of Julian's awesome Spider Jerusalem Halloween costume. And I think it might provide a comprehensive alternate philosophy of journalism for Catherine, should this Medill thing fail to cover all the bases.
I added to these at Chicago Comics. Kriston bought a bunch of incomprehensible but cool Marvel alternate universe thingamajigs, and a mixed bag of DC trade paperbacks. I stuck with my tried & true formula: volumes 7 and 8 of Powers (and 9's out already!? w00t) and a Hellboy spinoff that's not quite as awesome as solo Mignola, but still pretty satisfying in a "former Nazi scientists' hubris unleashing unspeakable supernatural horrors" kind of way. And that's one of my favorites ways.
So yeah — dorking it up: recommended.
Comments
How far are you into Sandman? The first book didn't do that much for me but it does get much better. It's one of those things like Harry Potter where I thought "OK, this is good and the author is pretty creative" but wasn't completely blown away at first but as I got further into it realized OHMYGOD this person totally knew what they were doing from book 1 and had the whole thing set up just right.
Hmm. Well, I'm only two or three books in, so yeah... I'll stick with it. I'm ready for awesomeness.
I can't conceive that a Reznor/Amos collaboration would be anything but awesome.
Back when I was kicking around thematic castings for Hamlet: the Rock Opera, it was obvious who Hamlet and Ophelia would be.
I really should have left you my Preacher books while I was away. Its a series that's abundantly worth getting into if you haven't. Also, I enjoy Y and Fables. Heck, Vertigo in general does some damn good work.
I know Kriston has some Y books, and sings their praises -- I'll have to check that out. And I've heard good things about Preacher (it caught my eye on the rack this weekend, too). Haven't heard of Fables, though -- what's that one about?
Tom, I still think I can sell you on the Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely books. I'm going to give you The Authority next. You might also enjoy Planetary.
Maybe Barney/Bjork can understudy for your performance, Ben.
Y is good, but like that Rising Stars book I was telling you about, it would have been better if it had stuck to its mission. Both were intended to be finite, limited series, but when both proved to be very popular, the caps were lifted, and subsequent plot arcs suffered for it. Kind of like Twin Peaks, now that I think about it.
I thought Preacher was overrated.
On the Barney/Bjork front, they had some works from Drawing Restraint up at SFMOMA today and I (gulp) actually kind of liked them. Damn you, Matthew Barney! If I have to eat crow over hating him, I'm going to be pissed.
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