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Most of you’ve probably already heard the news elsewhere, but for those of you who haven’t, the serialized version of Cold Heat has been discontinued.

See the details here.

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I want to quickly apologize for linking to that incredibly lame video last night. (I’ve since deleted the post, but here‘s what I linked to, if you’re really curious.) When I found the video, I kind of muttered “ha ha” to myself in a monotone, and posted it without even thinking. Then I forgot all about it.

But at 4:30 this morning, I dreamed that I received an e-mail with the opening line (heard by me in a God-like voiceover), “Don’t start posting that kind of crap.” I woke up with a start, and couldn’t get back to sleep until I’d pulled down the post. Because the voice was right, and I don’t know why I ever linked to the video in the first place, other than a misguided attempt to put new content up here at least semi-regularly. I wasn’t even amused by it myself, and barely made it through watching the whole thing. I sometimes think bloggers do little besides trading links to things that don’t really interest anybody, including themselves, and everyone just kind of agrees to pretend that they’re half-way entertained, in a vain attempt to keep away the realization that we’re all slowly wasting our lives. I don’t want to contribute to that any more than I have to, so I’ll try to be a little more selective in the future.

The only aspect of that video of any real interest is the banal and obvious point that many in the comics community are able to fixate on particular characters, themes, and tropes to a possibly unhealthy degree. (Did you see that site Abhay Khosla found the other day? [Via Deppey.] That’s it to a tee.) I sometimes don’t know whether to pity or envy people who can do that. It must be kind of comforting to wake up and know, This is what matters to me. This is why I am here. I need to collect Wonder Woman merchandise. Or, I like looking at pictures of superheroes holding women in their arms. Of course, the downside is that you might alienate yourself from ninety-five percent of your fellow humans, but maybe it’s worth it, just to have that sense of purpose.

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The new designer for Comics Comics, Mike Reddy, has started a very bookmarkable new blog where he’s posting mostly illustrations of various movies he’s recently seen.

Here’s one he did for Planet Terror (from Grindhouse):

And here’s one for The Grudge 2:

Mike also did one of the illustrations for the Peter Bagge essay on Spider-Man for Comics Comics 2, and he’s posted a couple of the alternate illos that didn’t end up getting used. I like them.

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A liberal activist group is urging Republicans to repudiate a comic book being touted by conservative evangelist Jerry Falwell that portrays Michael Dukakis as a supporter of witchcraft and bestiality.

Falwell is urging his followers to paper the political landscape with copies of the 30-page book, titled “Magical Mike: The Real Story of Mike Dukakis.” Among other things, it depicts the Democratic presidential nominee in a dress, wig and pearls.

“The last thing the Bush campaign, the Republican Party and the presidential campaign need is the distribution of 10 million copies of a comic book that’s chock full of enough intolerance to offend just about everyone except Jerry Falwell,” John Buchanan, chairman of People for the American Way, said Friday.

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He‘s also sent a nice recent strip to New Bodega.

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1. I don’t want to turn this blog into an all-Lauren Weinstein, all-the-time promotional vehicle, but it’s been a good month for her. First, there was the new Believer interview, and now she’s mentioned in the same breath as the great Daniel Clowes in a New York Times review of Ariel Schrag‘s new anthology Stuck in the Middle. Which is too awesome not to mention.

2. I also don’t want to turn this blog into an all-Patrick Smith, all-the-time promotional vehicle, but he is apparently the 146th greatest cartoonist of all time, which is also too awesome not to mention.

3. I enjoy Sean T. Collins’s blog quite a bit, but I don’t really agree with this sentiment from a recent post:

The thing that most irks me about [Alan] Moore’s work, even his best work, even his work I enjoy a great deal, is how ostentatiously writerly it is–the way his Godlike Authorial Hand shows in every move machination of his clockwork-precise plotting. And the thing is, to employ a criterion frequently used to lambaste superhero comics of a very different sort, what does this say to you about life, anyway? I think it’s awesome that there’s a completely symmetrical of issue of Watchmen, but it has sweet fuck-all to do with the way the world actually works.

First of all, who said art has to tell you anything about life? Who says art has to tell you anything about anything? This is not a criterion I use to evaluate comics. (I realize that not everyone will agree with me on this.)

Secondly, whatever a person might think of Alan Moore’s work in particular (I mostly like it, especially in the work from his pre-ABC years), this kind of complicated, thought-out, formalistic art has a very long and healthy pedigree, and I for one find discovering the hidden riddles, subtle thematic symmetries, and multiple levels of meaning buried in a well-conceived example of that kind of work to be one of art’s primary pleasures. It’s why I like the books of Nabokov and Borges and Gene Wolfe, the comics of Ware and Clowes, and the films of Kubrick. This kind of art may not reflect “the way the world actually works”, but it can certainly reflect the way the artist’s mind works, and can provide a readerly pleasure otherwise unavailable. A comic or movie or whatever that really reflected the way the world works would be as chaotic and unformed and nonsensical as life itself, and very difficult to understand.

Which isn’t to say that I disagree with Collins’s larger point: art doesn’t have to be so deterministically planned out to succeed, and certainly more improvised fictions also have their particular charms and effects. (And it would be foolish to deny that over-plotting can be stifling, and that Moore’s comics sometimes suffer from that.) But both strategies can work, and I imagine most artists use a little bit of both as a matter of course.

Also, I have to say that judging from the recent mainstream comics I’ve read, it’s simply not the case that writers are over-thinking their comics’ formal aspects.

UPDATE: While I was writing this, Collins put up another post, clarifying his problems with Moore, and making his argument a lot more supportable. I don’t really think Moore is quite as guilty (in terms of leaving “only one way to skin the cat” of his stories) as Collins does, but it’s certainly a fair point.

4. On a somewhat related note, a Jon Hastings post referenced by Collins does a really good job of explaining one of the more common problems with current mainstream comics. (I’m referring to part II of the post.) This argument seems a lot more convincing and specific than the standard complaint that the problem is just “too much continuity”.

When I read superhero comics as a kid (and I didn’t read very many, other than the odd issues my mother bought me for long trips or on days when I was home sick), the references to past events and other comics titles were often the most exciting parts. They indicated that there was a whole big world of this stuff to explore, Iron Man and the Hulk had had tons of previous adventures, and if only I could track down Avengers #89, Hulk #55, or whatever, I could follow along. (I never actually went ahead to do that, and left the mysteries unsolved by continuing to read superhero comics only very sporadically, but I may have enjoyed the ones I did read all the more just because of that. I never spoiled my imagined versions of their incredible adventures by actually reading them.) Which is all just to say that I think Hastings is making sense when he explains why comics “continuity” references doesn’t always work that way anymore.

5. And now the bloviating ends.

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Has this already been on all the blogs? I don’t know, but I thought I’d post it all the same: the animated version of Jules Feiffer‘s Munro, directed by the great Gene Deitch.

I can’t seem to figure out how to post videos on Blogger anymore, so here’s the link: Munro.

(via ScreenGrab)