It’s good to be reminded that all viewers have exactly the same tastes, so that all entertainment can be judged on a single basis. Of course you can compare “House” to “M*A*S*H,” “24″ to “The Simpsons,” “Gilligan’s Island” to “The Wire.” They’re all TV shows, so therefore they all have the same tropes, the same context, and the same audience. Thank you, New York Times, for reminding us of this simple truth.
Namely, in this article by Mike Hale, wherein he analyzes the aesthetic and commercial appeal of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” and finds it somewhat wanting. Not compared to other Web content, of course, it’s fine there, a diamond in the muck. But when compared to television, it needs “beefing up.”
If the comparison is with television, the answer is murkier. On that scale “Dr. Horrible” falls somewhere between an amusing trifle and a dramedy that won’t make it to the 13th episode.
[...]
…you may prefer the slacker aesthetic of “Dr. Horrible” to the formulas of network television, but even in the summer doldrums, 45 minutes (after commercials) of “The Closer” or “Legally Blonde the Musical: The Search for Elle Woods” is a superior piece of craftsmanship. (And even on its own anti-mainstream terms, “Dr. Horrible” has a ways to go to catch up with “The Sarah Silverman Program.”)
Really? “The Sarah Silverman Show” is the anti-mainstream bar all shows must strive towards? Maybe if “Dr. Horrible” had more poop jokes it would have passed muster.
I have no problem with people criticizing the show on its own merits and faults - there are plenty of both. But condemning it because it’s not as good as “The Sarah Silverman Show” or “The Closer” - two more different shows you’ll be hard-pressed to find - is ridiculous. Although actual criticism may be tricky and require more than 15 minutes, I’ll have to ask.
“Prominent gay subtext”? Really?
So I bought a copy of “Hi-Fi Color from Comics,” in the hopes that my newly rediscovered suckiness at drawing with a graphics tablet would benefit from some pointers. And it is indeed an excellent book, by Brian and Kristy Miller. Remember all those wonderful “Strangers in Paradise” covers? That was Brian.
The book doesn’t go in much about graphic tablets per se - I’m just going to have to get the first few thousand crappy drawings out of the way so I can start to learn how to use this thing right - but it does give you some excellent tips on coloring lineart in Photoshop. Tips on organizing your work, using layers and channels to best effect, painting with light, all sorts of cool tricks. And it comes with a CD full of scripts and brushes and sample artwork (Terry Moore art to play with! Woo hoo!) that will have me occupied for weeks. Except…
In the beginning of the book it stresses the importance of calibrating your monitor to get the best duplication of what you’ll see when you print. And I tried that, using their suggestions. And I hosed my monitor royally. I suspect it’s because I have the monitor settings as well as NVIDIA’s color management going, and changing one around screwed up the other. Only I couldn’t get back to where I was, even with multiple Resets, and everything I tried made it worse… Also tried Adobe’s Gamma calibrator, which added a third layer to the mess.
After an hour or so of tweaking back and forth, my computer doesn’t look quite so much like it’s on Ecstasy any more, and I can make out subdued colors, so I’m going to stop there.
All of which means: if my artwork has a glaring, garish color quality from now on, it’s, it’s… a new school of art! Yeah! The F-ed-Up-Gamma school. Very popular with the college students, and people who just close their eyes and poke at the Contrast button.
Disney hass announced that their new imprint, Kingdom Comics, will revamp existing Disney products in the hopes of bringing them to new readers. The happy folks at RevolutionSF helpfully compiled a list of suggestions, and damn if I wouldn’t read every one of these…
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Neil Gaiman, writer / Bernie Wrightson, artist
It is 1940, and war has come to the sleepy village of Pepperinge Eye!
Ms. Eglentine Price, an apprentice witch still learning the mystic forces, assisted by Prof. Emelius Browne, a flim-flam man and three orphan East-End gutter snipes, must seek out and discover the secret to Substitutiary Locomotion to combat Hitler’s Third Reich.
From the smoggy streets of London, to the mythical island nation of Namboombu within the Realm of Dream, they travel to find the fabled Star of Astaroth, the only force able to combat Heinrich Himmler and his supernatural army of Ubermenschen, marching on England behind the Spear of Destiny.
With the words Trecuna mecoides antrecorum satis dei, war will begin, greater even than the war engulfing Europe; a war which threatens to unravel the very fabric of our world.
Includes “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes” by Grant Morrison and Ted McKeever, “Freaky Friday” by Terry Moore, the hilariously newly violent “The Apple Dumpling Gang” by Joe Lansdale and Tim Truman, and more.
The massive onslaught of Dr. Horrible-related coolness has begun, with this tie-in comic about his arch-nemesis, Captain Hammer called “Captain Hammer: Be Like Me.”
Written by Zack Whedon and illustrated by Eric Canete and Dave Stewart, it’s a civic-minded piece that serves to instruct children in the straight, narrow, and violent.
It’s also free, part of this month’s Dark Horse Comics “MySpace Dark Horse Presents.”
Cool? Free? The new paradigm is working! Joss, where can I send you all of my money?
At mythadventures.net:
Robert Asprin (1946-2008)
On May 22, 2008, Bob passed away quietly in his home in New Orleans, LA. He had been in good spirits and working on several new projects, and was set to be the Guest of Honor at a major science fiction convention that very weekend.
He is survived by his mother, his sister, his daughter and his son, and his cat, Princess, not to mention countless friends and fans and numerous legendary fictional characters.
He will be greatly missed.
The first issue of “Serenity: Better Days” came out yesterday, one of the three.
I’ll avoid spoilers, but it takes place before the movie (and before the last comic). Everyone’s alive, everyone’s on the ship, and it reads more like a Firefly episode than the last one. Written by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews, drawn by Will Conrad.
You can check out some sample pages here.
Bleah, bleah, bleah. One of my favorite books has been Hollywoodized to hell and back.
The worst part, in my view, was this: I expected changes. I even gritted my teeth and tried watching it as a movie with the same name and no other connection, tried to view it on its merits, and it still failed because there wasn’t a single person in it I was rooting for.
Davy? Shallow, womanizing, doesn’t pay attention to details or consequences and can’t come out and tell the love of life anything at all but is willing to risk her life.
Griffin? Closer. But still, he shows no humanity or concern, and apparently has no problem killing normal people in the fight against paladins.
Roland? One dimensional. He’s a human terminator, with no more thought processes than a robot. Jumpers = Evil, so kill ‘em and anyone around them, end of story.
Millie? I came the closest to rooting for her, but she didn’t really do anything besides go along with him and be bait. Yeah, he saved her life, but only after getting it threatened in the first place and wrecking her apartment in the process.
The characters in the book were rich, multi-layered, complex. These are cardboard cutouts, stuck in to act out a cops and robbers game with bamfing added to make it cool. No one grows or changes in the movie, no one. At the beginning, when Davy is watching TV and they make mention of the drowning victims with no one to help them, and he walked away unconcerned, I thought that was a foreshadowing of the growth he would make later on. Nope.
There was no one to like in this movie. So there was no reason to like the movie. Go read the book, and teh sequel, and forget this ever happened.
Steve Gerber, creator of the brilliantly subversive comic “Howard the Duck” — the comic, not the crappy movie — has died.
The event we’ve been waiting for all year has finally arrived! This weekend will be filled with partying, thousands of large people in similar T-shirts, autograph hunting, the purchasing of many collectibles, a certain amount of beer, and the eager fascination in seeing celebrities up close.
What? No, not the Rolex 24. I’ll be over at FX Show 2008, the science fiction/horror convention in Orlando, where my inner geek can breathe freely. (My inner geek looks exactly like my outer geek, but with more movie tie-in buttons.)
Science-fiction conventions or “cons” are not just for social outcasts or dangerously introverted 37-year-old bachelors, of course. That’s just a cliche perpetuated by people who have gone to a convention. It’s very much like a trade show when the trade in question is imagination, and scantily clad alien girls. It’s a place where fans of TV, movies, books, and comics can gather together with the people who create them, along with a massive roomful of fellow fans who share their interests and are ready to violently argue about them in an entertaining manner.
If you’ve never been to a con, here’s a quick rundown of what you can expect.
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October is zipping along, and that means only one thing: Christmas decorations in Wal-Mart! Also Biketoberfest, Halloween, Breast Cancer Awareness… OK, October means a lot of things. But mostly it means that very soon it’ll be November, time to crank out another novel for National Novel Writing Month, and that means preparation.
Not preparation for the novel itself, of course. That would startle my creativity, which is a timid creature that must be coaxed and wheedled out into the open like a tiny fawn. Sudden movements startle my creativity, causing it to bound back into my mental bushes and hide, cowering, behind my Christina Ricci fantasies. No, I need to prepare my Writing Environment.
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