{"id":29,"date":"2006-06-27T16:53:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-27T21:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/2006\/06\/odds-and-ends\/"},"modified":"2006-06-27T16:53:00","modified_gmt":"2006-06-27T21:53:00","slug":"odds-and-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=29","title":{"rendered":"Odds and Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry we missed a day blogging. I ate too many <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ahamburgertoday.com\/archives\/2006\/06\/burger_party_mission_report.php\">burgers<\/a> this weekend, and kind of needed a break. (Green-chile cheeseburgers are amazing things, but should be eaten in moderation.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I still haven&#8217;t come up with the energy for a really well-considered post, so here are a few random things I thought worth noting.<\/p>\n<p>1. The week before last in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/\">New York Times<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.areasofmyexpertise.com\/\">John Hodgman<\/a> wrote a really nice <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/06\/04\/books\/review\/04hodgman.html?ex=1151553600&#038;en=6d560ff38e31d047&amp;ei=5070\">review<\/a> of recent comics, including <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">MOME<\/span>, <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Ganges<\/span>, et cetera. (Most of you probably saw it.) I don&#8217;t agree with everything he has to say, but it&#8217;s thoughtful, informed, and it isn&#8217;t patronizing. This isn&#8217;t the first smart comics review Hodgman&#8217;s written in the <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Times<\/span>, and with any luck, it won&#8217;t be the last. Maybe other writers for big-time newspapers and magazines will even follow his example.<\/p>\n<p>2. Last week, on his invaluable <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreporter.com\/\">Comics Reporter<\/a> blog, Tom Spurgeon advanced an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreporter.com\/index.php\/please_shut_up_about_civil_war_now\/\">argument<\/a> about superhero comics addressing hot-button political issues that happens to more or less, kinda-sorta parallel one of my own recent <a href=\"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.blogspot.com\/2006\/06\/bunk-starts-here-or-ground-well-trod.html\">posts<\/a>, albeit in a much more focused and coherent manner. Marvel Comics&#8217; own Aubrey Sitterson wrote in to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreporter.com\/index.php\/briefings\/letters\/5367\/\">disagree<\/a>, mostly using straw-man tactics.<\/p>\n<p>I was going to write more about all of this, but ultimately decided against it, as I don&#8217;t want to bore readers by talking about superheroes too much. But suffice it to say that Sitterson is only able to think of one modern superhero comic that actually supports his argument, and it&#8217;s <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Watchmen<\/span>. As usual.<\/p>\n<p>I forgot to mention it earlier, but maybe the fact that none of the characters in that book are used to sell Pez dispensers has something to do with <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Watchmen<\/span>&#8216;s artistic success.<\/p>\n<p>3. Many of you may already be aware of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americancomicarchive.com\/\">Big Fun<\/a> magazine, but if you&#8217;re not, and you&#8217;re a fan of classic adventure strips, I highly recommend that you seek it out. The included strips are fairly hard-to-find elsewhere, and they&#8217;ve been extremely well-reproduced. Leslie Turner&#8217;s <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Captain Easy<\/span>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tcj.com\/242\/i_sickles.html\">Noel Sickles<\/a>&#8216; <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Scorchy Smith<\/span>, and Warren Tufts&#8217; <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Lance<\/span> are all currently being serialized, and the artwork is simply fantastic.<\/p>\n<p>More, and better, entries later in the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry we missed a day blogging. I ate too many burgers this weekend, and kind of needed a break. (Green-chile cheeseburgers are amazing things, but should be eaten in moderation. Anyway, I still haven&#8217;t come up with the energy for a really well-considered post, so here are a few random things I thought worth noting. 1. The week before last in the New York Times, John Hodgman wrote a really [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,112,260,537,691,751,771,927,959,972,1248,1314,1362],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-moore","tag-big-fun","tag-comic-strips","tag-hamburgers","tag-hodgman","tag-huizenga","tag-l-turner","tag-mome","tag-nyt","tag-sickles","tag-superheroes","tag-spurgeon","tag-tufts"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}