#i wanted to do a classic kris drawing but it did get me thinking which character youre most like 🤔

[good-beansdraws]

Happy birthday @fayesdiary !! I've been having a blast playing UT/DR with you, and wanted to draw something fitting :3

I'm so grateful for all our time together! It's always enjoyable, funny, or just peaceful <3 Here's to another wonderful year -- you deserve only the best ✨️🎂🎉

[hashtagdrivebywrites]

Y'all bear with me on my bad phone pictures and excessive notes lmao, but, uh, ask and you shall receive.

Here's my concept art for Jason in my fic Imprint, where he's a halfa and Danny's biological dad and the king father/king regent? of the infinite realms.

Here's the first ever sketch I did somewhere around chapter 2 or 3:

Featuring larval Ghost!Jason, Pit madness/Lazarus Water and little bitty Ghost!Danny.

I was already thinking about the possibility of a crown but didn't know what to do with it yet so I just left a halo as a placeholder DBZ-style, which you'll see in the next few concept stages until I finish the latest one.

Ah, the oldest concept I had for the Pit is that it laid dormant in Jason's mind and would physically pull itself out of his head, which is why it's kind of half melded with Jason's helmet in this one. And I'm still kind of considering that idea, but I'm leaning more towards it coming from the bulk of Jason's body instead, as we see it in chapter 8 of Imprint when readers get to see Jason's ghost nonsense from an outside perspective. They (the Pit) is definitely more tiger-like now, and you'll catch a glimpse of a sketch dump where I'm trying to get a handle on tiger shape language (?). They'll still be water based and colored like the pits/a lagoon. It may be hard to picture- just trust me.

Uhhh let's see....the "lantern ribcage" is a part of the design that's really important to me so you'll see me consistently playing with it as I go through these early concepts. That's his core nestled in the lower part of his ribs, visible but protected behind the iron cage of his bones.

I wanted to incorporate Jason's helmet and other parts of his vigilante/hero uniforms in his ghost form since that part of his life is deeply personal to him.

I also knew that I wanted him to have a very monstrous aspect to his design- and I can't resist slapping pointy teeth on any of my concepts that deviate from being strictly human. So those aren't going away. Nostrils to breathe smoke and fire so Jason can better emote with most of his face being metal.

Danny's default ghost form, opposed to Jason's will still kinda be the one he has in his original dimension- black and white suit and the classic DP symbol on the chest, but probably better armored and with a bat emblem thrown in somewhere. So thats what I drew him with here- though little kid sized, with an added black streak in his hair to complete the inverse of the Lazarus Pit streak he has in human form.

In ghost form, when Jason needs precision, his go-to weapon will be the All Blades, which I have kinda illustrated here.

I may kinda set the bones of this design aside to use as a more humanoid ghost form that's closer to his living form, but that's still up in the air.

Here's concept 2, which I did on chapter...5? I think? Which is when I decided I wanted to make Jason's most comfortable ghost form to be kinda big and outrageous:

This one's got some notes doodled around it- but I'll type them out in case you can't read my handwriting.

Jason was definitely leaning more toward dragon (and I'm still trying to find the balance between dragon and phoenix that works nicely for him, but we're getting there.)

I decided not to put heat pits on his face recently so that the parts of his head modeled after the helmet are smooth metal armor. I tried to elongate the head but still keep the lines of his helmet in the design.

This is also the first time I started messing with horns- which have been bent in just about every direction at this point trying to make them mesh well with the rest of his design. The uppermost notes in the image mention basing the shape of his horns off of one of his weapons. I thought that the flaming all blades would just be overkill at that point and decided to play with using the Kris knife he gets from the League. Which is....still overkill but it's less fire to draw, so we'll call it a even. There is also a note on my decision to make his horns into a pair only because of being Bruce's second son and the second Robin. (I have put way too much fucking thought into this if you haven't figured that out already).

Tried a different look for the teeth and ended up scrapping it.

I also started leaning more into making his back look as messed up as possible at this point and started thinking of the....mountain range in plated rows like a croc's back.

And here's concept 3, which also starts playing with colors and the all-tail, no-legs look that I decided to stick with:

This is definitely the biggest jump between concepts so far and was sketched up while writing chapter 7, which I think is the first time we get to experience his ghost forms (there's 2 that we saw in that chapter).

So I continued to smooth and lengthen the head and tried a different thing with the teeth- which I kept. I also felt a lot better about the lines from the helmet with this concept. I tried curling his kris knife horns forward, trying to play with their form. Those have changed since.

This is the first time I added hair, but it's hard to see. He, like Danny, has an inversed streak of black at the front of his 'do to reflect the Lazarus stripe.

Again with the halo placeholder because I was still on the fence about the crown. Started trying to make the mountains of his spine more volcanic looking. Don't know if I'm keeping that or not yet.

So the three major differences between this and it's predecessors is the 1) mantle of smoke that is constantly being expelled from his body that is supposed to imitate a kinds cloak/mantle; 2) the tail, which has since been changed into a fiery tail instead of a ghostly one; and 3) I slapped his Robin 'R' from the movie UTRH on him to make this form more...him, I guess, and also to make Bruce cry like a baby.

So the things that I have changed is the ribcage, the shape of the horns, the crown (which finally has a rough design and a name based on the fight he has to win to earn it- yes, I already have that arc scribbled out and will most likely be adding it into the story) and I added some extra stuff to the face to match the written descriptions in Imprint.

SO. -Claps hands together- I'd love to hear your thoughts on everything, and I am always interested in hearing how y'all have interpreted these characters for yourselves.

If this is something you want me to do again with other character designs, let me know and I will. I am working on Jason, of course, and the Pit, Frankie boy, Danny's big long boi form, Gotham and some other odds and ends.

(Whoops forgot tags again)

[sergeifyodorov]

re: ur thoughts on the current trending hockeyblr/ao3 ship and how objectively wild it is that it Is What It Is. what current ships would you nominate in its place? noah fence to sidgeno … but which Classic Teammates In Love HRPF Ships do you think should take over for them? or like, which ships are you surprised AREN'T as popular as oiler/flame-who-isn't-even-still-a-flame?

hskdfjdks okay hm... my super totally unbiased opinions are about to be put into this world... blast me if you will etc

teammates in love ships that should be more popular

sid/letang. i know we're all into the arranged marriage aesthetic of sidgeno and we don't care about "defencemen" in this house but . kris letang is right there... he's a hot girl... he's a bad bitch... he's a supernaturally intense freak which means he and sid could get it on in such wild ways... and most importantly he's quebecois we need more francophone representation in our hockey rpf

steven stamkos/victor hedman. fundamentally we are not taking advantage of wily fox steve stamkos and Giant Conn Smythe Winning Sequoia Tree Victor Hedman who are right there.. they endured so much pain 2gether before winning their cups... they're besties... etc. look at that gifset of heddy lifting the cup over his head and tenderly kissing golden-haired stevie who's hugging him like he built the world. know what i know.

quinn hughes/elias pettersson. they were ROOMMATES ON THE ROAD they are DESIGNATED SAVIOURS OF VANCOUVER together quinn is bedraggled and practical and petey is bald and cunty. i know they're young but if petey sticks around... yknow. it'll get there. with your help etc etc

matthew tkachuk/sasha barkov. i agree i get it machuk is interesting he's an interesting fic character. sasha is right there... he loves him....

other ships that should be more popular

sid/ovi. they're both inchresting characters they're both extremely old men with lots of history they had to go through each other to win the cup EVERY TIME THEY DID IT...

geno/ovi along the same lines. actually my opinion of ovi is that he's a fascinating character ficwise all around... enigmatic, charismatic,,, i don't understand nicke backstrom which is the biggest reason nickeovi isn't on the first list. but sid/geno/ovi is nightmare threesome material and we should talk about it

not a Specific ship per se but we need usntdp fics of the generation BEFORE jhughes/zegras/caufield. i want something that compels you to draw a jeichel/auston/machuk/clay keller web so complicated you need to full-on Pepe Silvia in order to understand it.

jack hughes/nico hischier but specifically me and sol spiceberrie's vision of it

also not a specific ship but Guy That Sucks fic. the good old homosexual self-loathing spiral... yes... Yes... dont do it with machuk though he's too emotionally intelligent. needs to be a total bad-vibes mirror-staring cut-shaving don't-know-how-to-cry situation.

here's MY one-interaction-that-i'll-never-get-away-from enemies to lovers fic that makes no sense: auston matthews/rasmus dahlin. there's one (1) fic in the ship tag and i wrote it. my claim to rarepair fame...

[fycarmensandiego]

A chat with author Melissa Wiley

In 1996, HarperCollins published six Carmen Sandiego chapter books, featuring VILE villains from the then-current "Deluxe"/"CD-ROM"/"Classic" generation of computer games and a new lineup of Acme agents, headed by a Black female Chief (Lynne Thigpen ha impact), and focusing on kid detectives Maya and Ben.

The series included two books each by two writing teams and one solo act, Melissa Peterson. I got in touch with Melissa, who now uses the pen name Melissa Wiley, and she graciously answered some questions about writing the Carmen books and beyond.

To get you caught up to my knowledge before the interview, here's Melissa's website, and here's her bio as printed in the two Carmen books (accompanied by the caricature above):

Melissa Peterson is the author of several books for young readers. Born in Alamogordo, New Mexico, she has lived in eight different states and visited Germany and France. She has never ridden a dolphin, but she did eat a great deal of sour cherry ice cream outside the cathedral in Cologne. [Note: These are both references to plot points in Hasta la Vista, Blarney.] Her research for Hasta la Vista, Blarney included many hours playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? An official ACME Master Detective, she lives in New York City with her husband and young daughter.

FYCS: Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview.

Melissa Wiley: What a fun blast from the past! The Carmen books were my first professional writing gig and I had so much fun working on them.

That's so exciting to hear! With that being the case, how did you get involved with the books?

I was an assistant editor at HarperCollins, working for the wonderful Stephanie Spinner. I started out as her editorial assistant at Random House right after grad school and moved to Harper with her a year later, shortly after [my husband] Scott and I got married. Stephanie knew that I wanted to be a writer, and she often sent in-house writing assignments my way (lots of cover copy). When I left Harper in 1995 to have a baby, Stephanie recommended me for several book assignments, including the two Carmen Sandiego novels. That project had been underway for several months—Harper was doing a tie-in with the game and TV show. There were six books in total; two were assigned to me and four went to other writing teams [Ellen Weiss and Mel Friedman, and Bonnie Bader and Tracey West]. I often joke that I got my first modem, my first baby, and my first book deal in the same month!

I loved working with my Carmen Sandiego editor, Kris Gilson. The two books were a blast to write and a great learning opportunity for me. Ellen Weiss remains a good friend of mine. She's a true gem of a person!

Have your experiences writing the Carmen books influenced your work since then?

With Carmen, I discovered how much I love writing humor. Before that (in grad school), my poems and stories were on the serious side. I had so much fun with the playful, sometimes goofy tone of the Carmen Sandiego books that I definitely shifted afterward to more of a focus on humor in my books. I still find writing from a place of playfulness to be my most satisfying kind of work.

Were you familiar with Carmen Sandiego before writing the books?

I loved the computer game! I'd seen several episodes of the show—it's all a bit blurry now and hard to say which I encountered first—and really enjoyed it, but I especially loved the game. Instant classic!

How much guidance did you receive from HarperCollins / Brøderbund? Were the plots your own, or were you given plot outlines?

We were given the basic descriptions for the two kid detectives, and I had a couple of meetings with the editors and the other writers to flesh out the characters a bit more—give them personalities. I don't think Mel was in the meetings, but Ellen was there, and Tracey and Bonnie.

Then I wrote outlines for my two books and the other writers outlined theirs. I was assigned one "Where in the World" mystery and one "Where in Time" mystery. I think I submitted several plot ideas for each—the big challenge was thinking up interesting objects for Carmen and her henchmen to steal. The Blarney Stone and cocoa beans were my favorite ideas and I was thrilled that they got picked!

How did you research the books?

Those were AOL days, and the web wasn't yet a place for intensive research, so I spent a lot of time in the library. For The Cocoa Commotion, I conducted phone interviews with staff members at the Hershey chocolate factory—lots of fun. But I never did get to visit the Blarney Stone!

What was your favorite part of working on the books?

Researching the history of chocolate! Naturally I had to do a lot of sampling in order to describe it properly. ;)

Your author bio in the books mentions that the scene in which Maya and Ben eat sour cherry ice cream in Cologne, Germany was inspired by an actual experience of yours. Did any other experiences of yours make it into the books? Have you had any other travel experiences that notable? (Note: I'm originally from Northern Michigan, so travel experiences involving tart cherries are a high bar to clear for me.)

Ohhh, that sour cherry ice cream! I hope I get to taste it again someday. Apart from eating a lot of chocolate, I can't remember any other personal experiences that informed the books. If I were to write one today, I'd make sure to set a scene in Barcelona. My husband and I spent a week there in 2008 and it was an incredible trip. The paella! The Gaudí buildings! Art on every corner! I'd love to go back someday.

The bio also features a caricature of you with your baby daughter...

That drawing was made by the brilliant comic book artist Rick Burchett, who was working with Scott on Batman comics at the time. Scott was an editor at DC Comics and Rick was one of his favorite artists to work with. When I needed a bio illustration for the Carmen Sandiego books, we commissioned Rick to draw it. I love that piece so much! The baby is my oldest, Kate, who was born right around the time I started working on the books. We still have the original art!

You've written over 20 children's books for a variety of ages, in a variety of genres. Do you have any favorites among them?

That's so hard to say—I'm fond of all of them and I dearly loved creating worlds and adventures for Charlotte and Martha in my Little House prequels—but The Prairie Thief and The Nerviest Girl in the World are extra-special to me. I grew up in Aurora, Colorado and had a summer job at a wildlife refuge on the prairie, a landscape that served as the setting for Prairie Thief. I loved getting to weave secrets into the prairie setting that means so much to me.

Your most recent book, The Nerviest Girl in the World, was published last August. Can you tell us a bit about why you wrote it?

I lived for 11 years in La Mesa, California, a small town just outside San Diego. While I was there, I learned that in the very early days of silent film, there had been a film studio in town. Eventually the studio moved to Santa Barbara, but it was exciting to discover that before Hollywood was the center of the American film industry, little old La Mesa was a moviemaking place. I began reading everything I could find about the studio, and when I learned that many of the cowboys in those early Westerns were real cowboys and ranchers, an idea for a book began to take shape—the story of an adventurous girl who stumbled into work as a daredevil film actress along with her cowboy brothers.

Of course, I'm legally compelled to ask the question that literally every interview currently includes: how has the pandemic changed your job?

LOL! Yes, it's the question right now, isn't it! Well, I've worked at home since the Carmen Sandiego days, and I homeschool my kids, so in the biggest ways our lives weren't hugely affected by the shutdown. But I used to do a lot of my writing in cafés, and I miss that like crazy! I had to think up all sorts of new strategies for staying focused at home this past year. I'm hoping to get back to the coffee shops this summer!

Something I found really interesting is that you have a Patreon, which you explain you started to help pay for medical bills. How has that experience affected your work as an author?

I've played with lots of kinds of content on Patreon and really enjoy having a space to share behind-the-scenes stories. It's a more intimate and personal space than social media, so I feel free to let my hair down and be really frank.

Thanks so much for these fantastic questions! I had so much fun reminiscing about the Carmen Sandiego adventure!

[danwhobrowses]

AEW Women’s Eliminator Tournament - Full Review

So as of tonight’s Dynamite the winner of the Eliminator Tournament is in the books, either Nyla Rose or Ryo Mizunami have overcome the other to earn the right to face Hikaru Shida at Revolution on Sunday

But now is time to look at the tournament as a whole and review how well AEW’s latest ambitious Women’s Division Project would/should be received

Warning: There will be immediate spoilers for the Winner under the ‘Keep Reading’, if you do not wish to know the Winner do not read until you have

So when the smoke cleared and the dust settled, Ryo Mizunami came out on top having pinned Nyla Rose for the win, claiming the spot at Revolution and the tournament.

Boy was my prediction wrong eh?

After being given the trophy by Shida however, Aniki refused to let go of the champion, trading and inviting blows from each woman until Shida was able to knock Mizunami down and raise the title aloft.

Was she people’s first choice to win? Probably not Is she an unworthy winner? Absolutely not

Mizunami is extremely experienced, her charisma can reach all ages, she has a genuine love for the wrestling (her sunglasses even have ‘I <3 AEW’ on them), she has aforementioned history with Shida and she went through 2 Fan-Favourites, the legendary Aja Kong and finally the previous Women’s Champion and No.1 Ranked Woman to get here.

And while we are on that topic, to the people who immediately condemned and criticized the tournament when Nyla made the finals: Don’t you get tired of being worked so easily? Honestly we had the exact same thing with the Deadly Draw, people don’t want competitor A (Nyla/Brandi and Allie) to win: so AEW put them in the finals so they root for competitor B (Aniki/Diamante and Iveliesse). Ye of so little faith

I also like to mention that it’s quite nice of Mizunami to be this rewarded by AEW and Shida given how she appeared on their first show at Double or Nothing, I didn’t know it at the time of my bracket rundown but apparently Mizunami was about to retire after DoN, but the crowd and energy of the match inspired her to keep going and push to reach a wider audience - which AEW is now letting her achieve.

Get it out of the way - The Negatives Make no mistake this tournament was great, but it doesn’t mean it was perfect. Of course my earliest criticism was that we could’ve had more, a bittersweet feeling I got when I realised the tournament was nearing its close. While yes it would’ve been nice to see the likes of Big Swole, KiLynn King, Allie, Penelope and perhaps even some debuts/returns, we cannot slight AEW too much for keeping the bracket small.

Time however was a bit of a constraint on AEW’s part. Having revealed late that the winner will face Shida for Revolution, the tournament matches started coming out fast...but on Youtube. Personally, I had no problem with the matches being a sole focus stream on Youtube, but I can also understand why not putting at least the entire American bracket on Dynamite would’ve hurt the tournament. If the tournament had more time I do believe that each match would’ve had a Dynamite showing and not a broken BR Live stream (but please note that BR Live were the problem there, not AEW).

A non-AEW criticism as well for Injury screwing over Anna Jay right as she was about to have her match, extremely rude of the world and we hope her shoulder heals up faster than usual.

The final criticism is probably with the BR Live US Bracket Finals video, simply put it was lacking compared to other streams. Madi vs Leva and Leyla vs Alize didn’t shine as much as Riho vs Rosa and the 6 Woman Joshi tag did in the prior stream, we could’ve probably gotten better matches out of that.

Why I loved it - The Positives I will look at anyone who says that this tournament was a waste and meaningless dead in the eye and tell them they are wrong, and they will be shocked to find that I am not lying.

The tournament not only put a lot of attention on the competing women but became a platform for AEW to show that they have some impressive women on their roster. The returns of Yuka, Emi and Riho paired with the stalwart performances of Baker, Rosa and Nyla as well as the bright showings of Madi, Anna, Tay Conti and Leyla shows that AEW still have a really good Women’s Division - I mean I love WWE but you have to admit their NXT women’s division bought many of their stars ready-made; Io, Toni, KLR, Meiko and Candice were already established names before WWE. Stack that on top of impressive performances by Red Velvet and Jade Cargill last night and the ranks of Big Swole, Allie, Penelope Ford, Kris Statlander, Shanna, KiLynn King and Tesha Price and you still have a strong division.

The tournament proved its worth also by the fact that there was not a single bad match on there, we had some bangers on each stage ranging from Yuka vs Emi, Rosa vs Riho, Nyla vs Baker and Leyla vs Rosa, among several others. The tournament succeeded in giving us great wrestling even with different formats of face vs face, heel vs heel, speed vs power, technique vs power, and even some new shades to the women such as heel Sakura and face Nyla.

I cannot praise the tournament without heaping a ton of praise on the Joshi. Shida and Kenny had always been adamant to show that the Joshi can be a revelation to Western audiences and they were paid in kind in that regard. All six Joshi brought out their A-Game to the point where several are asking for them to be signed, Sakura’s heel ‘Killer Queens’ faction rose interest with a fantastic entrance, while VENY dazzled with their gymnastic talent (and their wearing of the late Hana Kimura’s kimono), Mei Suruga and Yuka Sakazaki lit up the room with their speed and fun and Maki Itoh continues to be adored by the wider world into megastardom. The six woman tag as well was a nice cherry on the top to once again showcase the women, including Rin Kadokura who was fed to Aja Kong in the tournament, every bit of energy and charisma from the Joshi landed on the mark, it has opened several new fans to their home brands (TJPW however did kinda give away that Yuka wouldn’t win given how she was booked for one of their shows, but they’re still great) and have us gasping for more of those six and perhaps some extra, Miyu Yamashita for instance? Think about it TK

One thing that can really harm a tournament too is predictability, which this tournament did not have. You have to commend the balls of AEW to set up 5 fan favourite choices to win and have them each be felled and swerve the entire fanbase. It was for the most part good swerves as well, leading up to the Nyla work included, and actually made me feel like this tournament had big stakes for each member. People will criticize its unpredictability but I won’t be one of them, just because it didn’t go how you personally predicted it doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Also a stand out yes for Rosa’s several gear, especially the Selena one against Riho, and Hikaru Shida herself slaying it in the white suit, like lord almighty thank you for this food.

Was it worth it? - Conclusion This is an emphatic yes for me. AEW will always have its critics, fair and unfair, but if you have to wonder whether this tournament is a success you have to simply look at it this way

Were you entertained?

For me yes, there was a 100% consistency in good to great matches in this tournament paired with genuine surprises that got people talking and invested in the tournament itself.

Did it give you something fresh?

A dark horse winner who earned her way to face Shida for the 5th career time and 1st time in an AEW ring through outwrestling, outpowering and outwitting their previous opponents, unique heel/face changes and a showcase of new wrestlers and matchups? I’d say that’s a yes

Did anyone get over?

You ask anyone before this tournament was announced who Ryo Mizunami, Maki Itoh, VENY or Mei Suruga was and you’d likely get blank faces, thanks to AEW they are known and commended by several fans outside of Japan. You ask people if Tay Conti can bring a physical match to Nyla and almost win and you’d get a few murmurs, if you asked people if they though Kenny was valid for his push to bring the Joshi into a wider audience prior to this may’ve said no. Those minds were changed because these women got over. In addition to that the popularity of Thunder Rosa, Riho and Yuka Sakazaki has continued to rise as some of AEW’s top babyfaces, Leyla Hirsch, Emi Sakura and Tay Conti’s stock have rose thanks to the tournament and Nyla and Baker have delivered on strong match performances.

When you consider those three, there is no way you could call the tournament a failure or a waste, people benefitted from it in a good way which means it was a good tournament.

I for one will look forward to seeing Shida take on Aniki and see how it unfolds at Revolution - which I hope to do a review for, I’m also guessing that Paul Wight’s aquisition is either Christian or Okada. Many will of course assume that this is an easy retain for Shida (and act like winning the tournament means you should win the following match as if people don’t win the Royal Rumble/MITB/KOTR/Dusty Classic and lose in their title shot), but how many of those people thought that Itoh, Kong, Yuka and Nyla would beat Mizunami? She keeps on extending the party and coming out on top, you cannot underestimate the tournament winner, Shida produced this tournament, she’s picked her winner now she needs to fight them.

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + The Divine Christmas Annual #1

Spoilers, obv.

There's a backbone of Specials which I consider essential to WicDiv's plot. This is one of the main reasons we've ended up putting the Specials trade into the schedule before the last trade in the series rather than after it – as fractally as WicDiv is structured, this is information you should know before the end rather than after it.

They also work off a weird time-switched aspect – so they're read at the time of publication (for single readers) and also at the latter point in the story (for trade readers). In other words, they're revealing different information and to different import depending on whether you read them as they're released or as they're collected.

Which is an interesting challenge.

The Christmas Annual is the first Special which doesn't work like this. Looking at the schedule, we thought it healthier to add an extra month to the gap between arcs. The next arc is six issues, as is the one after that. We decided to add another special, and then saw what would be fun to do.

This was a boon for me. The problem is never not having enough material, y'know? The difference between something I'd like to do and something that is essential I do is narrow. Jamie had the idea of going back to periods we skipped and showing some of their key moments. I initially kicked against it a little, but when the thing I was trying proved too hard to make work, it seemed the simplest thing to do for me, and seemed a cute gift to the fans in a year that's been pretty fucking brutal.

(That we rarely get happier than bittersweet speaks to me, really. All happiness is tinged with sadness. “I love you” is married to “and one day we will all be dead”.)

But it was also a fun time. We got a gang of our favourite people together and did a bunch of short stories. Most of all, I got to write a bunch of people I haven't written for a while. I've missed them.

How were the stories chosen? Rapidly! The main limitation was not choosing anything which would spoil anything in Imperial Phase: Part Two. The Specials are designed to be spoiler-free for any trade which isn't released when it's released. We also wanted to show a bunch of kissing and similar social activities, as for a book which has as much emotional and sexual stuff driving the characters, there's relatively little on panel.

I wrote 'em, showed them to the gang, and then we worked out who we could ask to draw them. I was expecting I would remove several of them, but they all ended up going in, with tweaks in some cases in the story's focus. In terms of the characters selected, I definitely paid attention to characters who had relatively little screen time – so, Lucifer, Inanna and Tara.

Jamie's Cover

Using a bought Photoshop filter, this actually a lot more work than Jamie was expecting. It is wonderful though. It is to my eternal regret we never actually arranged it as a Christmas Merchandise thing. This is a delight to me. Really, we're aware that Jamie doesn't do many playful covers, so this was an opportunity we grasped with both hands. For all the iconic drama, there's also a playfulness to WicDiv that doesn't always show up on the covers.

Kris Anka's Cover

It's a Christmas Annual in the mode of a British Annual – in that these are annuals released at Christmas rather than having Christmas as a major theme per se. Anyway, despite all that, Inanna and Baal in hot make-out beneath the mistletoe is an absolute joy. I am pleased we get to do this.

IFC

The main editorial note to Designer Sergio was “Tackier! Tackier!”

The photo was taken in North London cocktail bar “Every Cloud.” Jamie is probably drinking some manner of Old Fashioned. I think I'm drinking some kind of Buttered Rum-containing cocktail. Chrissy draped the only decorations she could find over our heads.

1-6

Kris Anka! Jen Bartel helped out on inks on this as well, due to time constraints. Kris is currently on a Marvel Exclusive, so we had to get permission to do this story. Marvel said yes, so thanks to them enormously.

Yes, if you examine the timeline, Valhalla was certainly erected quickly. And yes, “Erected quickly” is a major theme in this story.

It's one of the lighter stories in the issue – obviously delineating what we know about Baal to this moment says a lot, and the same for Inanna.

I tried to write the scripts to the artists, but I also was interested in leaving it open for them to express things in their own ways. Generally speaking, I let the artists choose how to show the characters in a sex scene, as I want to see their own interpretation. It was a delight to see Kris go as far as he did here.

We did wonder whether we'd be okay with showing hard cocks. We're told that hard cocks are fine, but ejaculation is the problematic limit. I'm glad it's not an issue. This is a hot scene, but it's primarily a romantic one.

I love what Matt is doing with the panel on page 5 – the pinks and purples of Inanna here.

Baals expression on the first panel is very funny, as is the confidence in panel 3 of it.

7-8-9-10

There's seven stories, but several were just two pages. We realised the best way to do it would be to group the shorter of the long ones with the short ones so all collaborators get 5-6 pages each. This makes it much easier with trade royalties down the line, and organising 5 artists (plus colourists and flatters) is a significantly easier one than organising 7 (and their associated collaborators).

This is the first of the stories coloured by Tamra Bonvillain. I've never worked with Tamra before, but we loved her work, approached her, and she said yes. Thanks for joining us on this journey.

The artist here is Rachael Stott, who is probably best known for her Doctor Who work, but is about to do Motherland for Vertigo with Si Spurrier, which looks excellent.

There was quite a lot of careful balloon work here, to try and guide the eye and provide the necessary exposition (or really, reminders – all this is building upon or just showing events that have been alluded to earlier.) The eye-guiding is key – for example, due to a minor quirk of the first two panels, the Shard is hidden by the column which means that the view in the second panel feels instantly wrong. We end up disguising the shard with the dialogue so it's far less noticeable.

This event is alluded to by Lucifer in issue 3 of WicDiv.

The penthouse is the one we see in issue 1, which I presume is rented by the Pantheon for their purposes.

Writing Lucifer after all this time was a pleasure. Well, pleasure may be the wrong word. She's herself, and she's always very able to show bits of herself. Lucifer says things that no one else in the cast does, which is obviously one of her huge problems.

Yes, the first panel of page 9 did make me think of an OBJECTION! style WicDiv Phoenix-Wright-esque game.

The panel is also a place where we really had to do the work to put this in continuity – the obvious assumption would be that Baal is pissed off about Lucifer sleeping with Sakhmet, which is only really a minor cause of WTF-ness.

That Lucifer explicitly fucked with Baal and Inanna was hinted at early in WicDiv and made explicit in WicDiv 23. Inanna didn't consider the relationship exclusive, as he doesn't see why anyone would automatically assume a romantic relationship is exclusive. Inanna's great weakness is not always realising that everyone is like him.

The “You're a bad person” ties off why Lucifer and Sakhmet never slept together many times, also mentioned in issue 3. Sakhmet, I suspect, just doesn't like the complications and drama. She is deeply averse to complications.

The last three panels are classic comedy steady-angle shots. That the sprinklers aren't visible led to adding an alarm sound at lettering, to avoid the possible assumption that Baal made it rain indoors or something.

Reading this I find myself thinking about Lucifer in the Special versus Lucifer in the Annual – in the sense that we're seeing her much more humanly, which is leaning into what makes her comic (and awful). The last three panels are not ones you could imagine in The Faust Act, as seen through Laura's star eyes. Nice fucked off expression in the last panel from Rachael.

11-12-13-14-15

Chynna Clugston Flores is just one of my indie comic crushes. Blue Monday is basically one of those key links between 90s and 00s comics. Bryan Lee O'Malley pitched Scott Pilgrim as Blue Monday meets Dragon Ball Z. We pitched Phonogram and Blue Monday meets Hellblazer. She's a wonder.

As such, writing for her was a dream, and I was explicitly writing for her. While this is much more rigid in terms of panel shapes than Chynna would write for herself (the steady angle on the two people in the front seat is very much me trying to write a sort of claustrophobic talking heads kind of set-up) but I'm really exploring a very Chynna type place.

I've been thinking of Dionysus as a “Umar” for a while. When thinking up Dio, the image of writer Umar Ditta leading the Thought Bubble dancefloor was definitely in my mind, and I thought it'd be fun if they share a name, despite being very different dudes. (Not least that Umar could bench Dionysus now.) I asked Umar, and he said yes, so Umar he is. His first comic Untethered has just come out, and is well worth your attention.

This is the second sort of story in the special. One is just showing some key things which impacted the rest of the book, which were usually sexy funtimes. The other was showing some key relationships in the pre-pantheon lives. We've said that Dio was a friend of Baph and Morrigan, but never actually showed what that meant. It was good to get it here.

For those studying the timeline, this is the same day as Hazel become Amaterasu. It would also be the same day Dio takes a photo of Morrigan, and Cameron sits in the tunnel waiting for Morrigan. Busy day!

If I call out my fave Chynna moments, we're going to be here forever. Cameron with his sign on the rain is a joy. Honestly, this is such an odd thing – it makes me imagine what a Blue Monday set in the Midlands would be like.

There was a panic when page 12 arrived and I thought that Chynna had (for some reason) reversed all the seating orders in the car and had the car riding on the wrong side of the road. This is obviously a disaster, because the only way this story works is the characters' speaking order is based upon where they're sitting. But then we realised that the page had been flipped in the dropbox for some reason. Phew.

The quote is from Young Avengers 13, which came out a week or two before this arrived. Yes, I know.

(The question who wrote YA13 in this universe, when Kieron Gillen's career ended with Phonogram: Rue Britannia, is open.)

Page 13 was designed to be a mood break of the lived-in autobio, and Chynna really goes for it, in terms of the leaves and the panel breaking. Not using techniques in the whole piece makes them especially meaningful when they turn up. Tamra also did wonders in the colouring, going for the spooky autumnal reds, teals and purples.

(Tamra and Matt basically split the issue near 50:50.)

This is definitely a more Morrigan way of publicising gigs rather than standing outside shitty clubs and passing out flyers.

The WHAT!? panel is everything I could have hoped for.

The “Oh god. He puns. Morrigan fucked a punner. A wet punner's in my car.” immediately made me feel that I'm trying to channel a Warren Ellis character.

The off-panel MOTHERFUCKER is also a delight.

16-17-18

Emma's one of my favourite people, but I haven't worked with her since a B-side in the second issue of Phonogram: The Singles Club, with a Kate Bush short story. (EDIT: Plus in the Young Avengers Afterparty, which I’d blanked. This is the second time that’s happened to an artist from that. Which, given the time period I was writing that, is unsurprising). So it's lovely to get back with her, and she does some of my favourite work in the Special. Do go and have a look at her Breaks, which she draws and co-writes.

When Tara has had so little panel time, trying to work out how to approach her is key – and Emma manages to find a place which is clearly her, but also informed by Tula's iconic take. Matt also brings us much of those choices to the page in the colours.

It's useful, as this story almost acts as a prequel to issue 13. It's essentially the first time Tara pitches what she wants to do to Ananke, a moment which is at least alluded to in 13.

I wrote the story originally as two pages – specifically, the last two pages. I talked about it with Editorial Assistant Katie, and she noted it's a shame we never actually see Tara happy ever. Which struck me as true, and a problem – at least in part this Special is about showing different sorts and times of happiness. So I added the first page, which is my best pitch for Tara at her most positive. This is the unspoken stuff that's under the surface in issue 13, and Tara talking about the drive is one of her main bits of happiness. I talk about how the cast are all me in different ways? Tara definitely includes the part of me which never feels better than after having written something I think is good. I've certainly done the “if get a disease which means I have six months to live, have I got time to finish writing WicDiv?” maths.

Much like issue 13, I wrote considerably more captions than are used on the first page. You write it like a diary entry and then edit to the core.

I always say that an artist can make the script their own, and that I try to write to the minimum number of panels. Of all the artists in the script, Emma's the one who added most panels. This looks great, and is very much a part of her style.

Quick call-out to Clayton in the second panel of page 17: that tiny string of notes positioned either side of those captions is beyond perfect.

The last page is all kinds of sad. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm pleased with how the masks work on the page.

19-20

Second Rachael story. She's an enormous Lucifer fan, so was very excited to do this.

This is as simple as the stories get, in terms of a tiny yet meaningful continuity insert. This was there already, but I felt underlining it and reminding people of it at this point in the narrative is meaningful for obvious reasons.

(I had things I wanted to do in Imperial Phase II which I never found space for – or when I did find space, felt off and wrong.)

Writing Laura captions again after all this time was definitely a thing which took a while to find again. But I liked it.

(Spangly New Thing has captions to the fore again, for various reasons, so them as a formalist element is certainly on my mind.)

21-22-23-24-25-26

This absolutely was formative Indie Crush mode. Carla Speed McNeil's Finder was one of my initial loves when I came into comics in the early 00s. It's just astounding stuff. I'd suggest starting with Mystery Story, I suspect, but there's two big omnibuses of it, and I'd recommend just getting them. She's continuing doing other Finder stories alongside her work elsewhere.

It was originally 5 pages, but Carla suggested an extra page. I'd deliberately left an extra page space in the issue, in case anyone wanted more space... and Carla grabbed it. Good work.

When writing this, I was thinking of Carla's storytelling... but I also realised that a part of Carla's storytelling is to warp and make her own. Seeing what she would do with my script was a big part. I wanted the Carla magic applied, and she did – the extra page is a big part of that.

Notice how Tamra uses the palettes to distinguish the two different settings. Eleanor in the dark and Hazel in the light seems pretty useful, right?

That Lucifer and Amaterasu were friends and knew each other were one of the elements of the background I never had a chance to really run with, for obvious reasons. In the same way as I wanted to do some Dio/Baph pre-scenes, doing a Lucifer/Amaterasu: The Early Years appealed.

H's fanart was mentioned in issue 15, I believe.

As much as it's a dual story, it's really more about Lucifer. Amaterasu may not even appear to really aware of how much she's been slighted in the story. Or maybe she is? It is Eleanor's perspective. This is also the first dialogue we've ever had as Eleanor, rather than Lucifer reporting Eleanor. The resentment and anger is so much cleaner, the saying the unsayable aspect with less glitter.

Hazel is right. Eleanor is mean.

Adding a page appealed for various reasons, but at least part of it was that it's the only in-story chance to see a Lucifer performance. There was an alternate cover in the first arc, but it's not the same – though it's probably the same performance. We've talked about her Brixton performances before, and this is there. This would be a gig that Laura saw, as previously referenced.

The last page (and final panel of page 5) is a take on a scene that's already on canon – specifically, the story as reported in the WicDiv Magazine Special.

The last-minute panic of the issue was Jamie realising we'd forgotten to have Amaterasu’s facepaint on her in the final panel, so that was a quick patch from Tamra. Phew.

The “I'm sorry” panel is A+.

As an example of the Carla Speed McNeil of it all, the last montage of shots is her addition, which brings a visual closure to the sequence.

27-28

Back with Emma Viceli, with a missing scene after issue 8. The actual core details were alluded to in issue 10, but this actually takes us there. If you remember, at this point Inanna and Baal are no longer in any way romantically involved, but fucking the best friend of someone you were with is almost always drama. The purple and red colouring seems to make that be the subtext there.

We checked Laura's age here repeatedly, to ensure she was 18 in these images. It would be actively illegal if we messed up.

Clearly my fave thing is the call back to issue 4's PLAY IT COOL gag.

This issue's structure came after all the art started coming in. It's a mix-tape curation – in terms of what's the best order to take people on a journey. Things like Kris' story being first seemed obvious – his was the alternative cover after all, featuring Inanna and Baal, which makes it a de facto lead story. That this story is furthest along in the timeline made it a suitable end, plus that we open with Inanna/Baal. The real thing is that it's a story which ends with something resembling a concluding beat. “This is going to be complicated” feels like something that ends an issue in the way that many of the stories don't. I suspect the only other credible option was Chynna's story, with Dio/Baph riding off down a motorway. What feels like it could be an ending? What feels like Closure?

IBC

The titles were all added in the last minute, when we realised the best way to actually discern which story was which for the credits was to actually give them a title.  

SUMER LOVING was miscorrected to SUMMER LOVING at every stage of production, and had to be changed back every time. There is no love for Sumerian humour in the modern comic market place.

Anyway – off for the season now. The Imperial Phase II trade drops in January, followed by The Wicked + The Divine 1923 special in February and the new arc in March.

Thanks for reading.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home And Drive-In Edition August 7, 2020 – AMERICAN PICKLE, THE SECRET GARDEN, THE TAX COLLECTOR, OUT STEALING HORSES and WAY TOO MANY MOVIES!

Holy Effin’ Ess. It’s August, and I’ve been writing this column mainly as a series of capsule reviews for four months now and amassed over 80 reviews, and this week seems to be the most insane week for new releases since COVID hit five months ago. I’m also starting a new job this week (Associate Editor at Below the Line), so I’m not even sure I’ll be able to continue this column to the degree I have been. I guess we’ll have to see how far we get this week, although I’m generally going with shorter capsule reviews this week. 

Seth Rogen plays a dual role in Brandon Trost’s comedy AMERICAN PICKLE, which will premiere on HBO Max this Friday. Based on Simon Rich’s short story “Sell Out,” the film starts in 1909 as Rogen plays Herschel Greenbaum, an Eastern European immigrant living in poverty in America when he falls into a pickle vat that’s sealed for 100 years, the brine keeping him the exact same age. He is put in touch with his great grandson Ben (also played by Rogen) who helps get him acclimated to the changes that have happened in 100 years, but it soon turns into a competition between the two relatives.

Using a fairly wacky take on the Rip Van Winkle-like premise, there’s a good chance that American Pickle will be more for the Seth Rogen diehards, myself included, because you get a LOT more Rogen maybe than ever before. His accent as Herschel might be a bit off-putting at first, maybe because you don’t want to laugh at him as a Jewish stereotype, but what ultimately makes the movie fun is watching Rogen playing two very different characters without being done in a way that the viewer gets distracted trying to figure out how they did it. (I guess ever since Moon, it’s become easier to have actors playing two different roles.)

Also, this is the first American movie in quite some time to shine a light on the Jewish faith and religion in a way we haven’t really seen in a while, going back to The Believer or Yentl. That’s nice to see in what started as a Hollywood release, although I’m just not sure this will connect with Rogen’s younger fans and probably was better off getting an HBO Max release.

Originally planned for theatrical release, STXfilms’ adaptation of THE SECRET GARDEN is instead getting a PVOD release this Friday just like many movies this past summer. Adapted from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 book, it stars Dixie Egerickx as Mary Lennox, as a young orphan who is sent to live with her uncle (Colin Firth) in England. Once there, she contends with his disabled son Colin (Edan Hayhurst) and discovers a secret garden…that is basically just that. A garden.

I’ll make no bones that I was enthralled by the concept of Burnett’s being remade with “Harry Potter” producer David Heyman putting it together because it looked so fantastic at CinemaCon last year. The film is directed by Marc Munden, who has directed a ton of television but nothing particularly significant in terms of film, and it’s a wonderful-looking film but it just doesn’t have the heart and wonder of the 1993 movie. I just don’t see a lot of kids loving this, and this is from the guy who kinda liked Artemis Fowl. By comparison, this really doesn’t have much to keep one entertained as none of the child actors have much personality, and the adult actors (including Julie Walters) aren’t given much to challenge themselves. Maybe this would have played better theatrically but just watching it on my computer? Did very little for me. A generally pretty but ultimately dull kiddie movie.

Suicide Squad director David Ayer returns to the streets with his crime-thriller THE TAX COLLECTOR (RLJEfilms), starring Bobby Soto as David, the eponymous “tax collector” for an L.A. crime family who has to contend with his boss’s old rival, putting his own family in danger. David’s enforcer, played by Shia LaBeouf, goes by the name “The Creeper.”

Like his Netflix movie, Bright, I have a feeling Ayer is not going to get a fair shake by the current critics’ pool since they’ll be writing all their reviews based on previous biases. Nothing new there. Fact is that The Tax Collector is on par with movies like End of Watch and is far better than Harsh Times, showing that the writer of Training Day and the original The Fast and the Furious has improved greatly as a director. (Honestly, this should have been proven by Fury six years ago, but you know how Hollywood is…)

I wasn’t particularly familiar with Bobby Soto before seeing this – he’s a fairly new actor – but he does a decent job carrying the movie and not letting the entertaining character played by LaBeouf completely steal the show. Likewise, Cinthya Carmona as Dave’s wife Alexis does a decent job keeping the film grounded with his domestic life. LaBeouf creates a fairly entertaining character that’s far more subdued than one might expect from LaBeouf.

There is one story decision made that I wasn’t crazy about, and honestly, it almost killed my enjoyment of the movie as a whole. Even so, the reason The Tax Collector works even as well as it does is because Ayer knows his shit, so instead of this being a tired tale of Crips vs. Bloods, it instead becomes one man’s journey, and in fact, he has to turn to his enemy for help in the final act, which is when it turns into more of a straight-up revenge thriller. If you like movies like Training Day and similarly authentic L.A. gangland tales, then The Tax Collector should be right up your alley.

Gillian Jacobs stars in Kris Rey’s comedy I USED TO GO HERE (Gravitas Ventures), playing first-time author Kate, who is contacted by her old college professor (Jemaine Clement) to return to her Illinois Alma Mater to do a reading. Once there, Kate ends up hanging out with a bunch of the students and getting a little too caught up in their lives.

I definitely was a fan of Kris Rey’s previous movie Unexpected (under her married name, Kristen Swanberg), and I was hoping this would be in similar vein, but it just seems like another self-reflexive filmmaker telling a story about a writer revisiting their past. In other words, one of the most overused indie movie plots ever used. Sure, Jacobs is good but not great, and the plot is so predictable, especially the fact that Clement’s professor is gonna be a sleazebag. Sadly, what might have brought more to the movie was getting to see more of Jorma Taccone and his girlfriend, played by Kate Micucci (who was so great with Jacobs in Mike Birbiglia’s improv comedy, Don’t Think Twice). They show up for one brief scene and they’re gone, leaving it up to Jacobs and the otherwise weak cast to try to do something with material that just isn’t particularly inventive. The only one of the students who really has much of personality is Josh Wiggins’ Hugo but again, the movie takes his relationship with Kate to the most obvious and expected place possible. 

I Used to Go Here has some fun moments but when you compare it to the Lonely Island’s other recent production, Palm Springs, it just doesn’t compare, and that’s kind of disappointing, in itself.

Liam Neeson and his son Micheál Richardson star in MADE IN ITALY (IFC Films), the directorial debut of actor James D’arcy with Neeson playing Robert Foster, a bohemian artist from England who travels to Tuscany, Italy with his estranged son Jack to sell the house they inherited from his late wife.

I have to imagine Sony Classics’ Tom Bernard and Michael Barker must be fuming that they’re not releasing this movie, because this is just so much their kind of movie. Listen, I didn’t hate this movie, but I also didn’t love it, and that’s mainly because it was so obvious and predictable, reminding me so much of Ridley Scott’s A Good Year (which I also didn’t hate, mind you).

The real draw is seeing Neeson doing a movie with his son in his such a major role, and they’re both very good with Richardson clearly having gotten his parent’s genes in terms of acting skill. (I don’t really remember him in the revenge thriller Cold Pursuit, but I could see him getting more roles from this.) Unfortunately, D’Arcy decides to throw the guys into a cutesie romance subplot with a local (played by Valeria Bilello), and that’s really where things start to unwind. It manages to recover nicely with a particularly emotional and dramatic last act, but it has to work hard to get the viewer back.

The fact that it took Ridley Scott decades to make a movie like A Good Year (and angering his fans for it), so the fast that D’Arcy can make a movie even comparable on his first foray into writing and directing makes Made in Italy something commendable.

In Order of Disappearance (and its remake Cold Pursuit, starring Neeson and son!) director Hans Petter Moland reunites with that film’s star, Stellan Skarsgård, for OUT STEALING HORSES (Magnolia), an introspective adaptation of Per Peterson’s novel about a man in his ‘60s named Trond, who is reflecting on events from his childhood, including his relationship with his father and the mother of three who lived next door. Skarsgard is great as usual, but the film spends so much time in the past, and it starts to jump around between flashback time periods so much that I can only wish you luck that you can keep up with what is going on with all the characters. It’s pretty obvious this is based on a (presumably) beloved book – hey, it’s been translated into 50 languages! -- and I’m guessing that it probably worked better in that format, since I’m not sure those who haven’t read it will get much out of this film. I really don’t have much more to say about the film except that it looks absolutely gorgeous, really taking advantage of its setting, but it just didn’t do much for me generally.

Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra’s WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS (Samuel Goldwyn Films) may have the most apt title for a movie this week, because it feels like for a good long time, you are indeed waiting for those much-directed “barbarians.”   Adapted by J.M. Coetzee from his own novel (which may or may not be beloved) the film stars Oscar-winner Mark Rylance as “The Magistrate,” who is in charge of a remote outpost in the Gobi Desert. He begins to question his loyalty to the British empire when the visiting Colonel Joll (Johnny Depp) conducts a series of torturous investigations on the detainees. Robert Pattinson also stars in a film that’s very different from Guerra’s previous films, Embrace of the Serpent and Birds of Passage, but mainly because it’s his first film in English.

The Barbarians in the title are the Mongolians threatening the British soldiers who treat them horribly while trying to expand their empire. Due to the sentencing, the movie may remind you of films like Beau Geste or even Lawrence of Arabia without really being as good as either.Rylance’s character is somewhat of a milquetoast, at least compared to the cold and heartless torturer played by Depp, but it’s obvious almost from the beginning that the rebellious nature of Rylance’s Magistrate is going to come back to hurt him, and it does.

There is no question that Rylance gives a great performance, and Depp isn’t terrible, but it takes quite some time for the story to really get to any place that’s particularly interesting. With such a great setting and characters, I was hoping for something just a little more interesting, and in many ways, it reminds me of Scorsese’s Silence where there’s a lot of interesting ideas and gorgeous images, but it just doesn’t come together in the end…. And it does indeed just end.

Let’s get to some docs…

Scott Crawford’s doc CREEM: AMERICA’S ONLY ROCK ‘N ROLL MAGAZINE (Greenwich) looks at the venerable music mag of the ‘70s and ‘80s that offered an alternative to Rolling Stone with its look at punk, metal and non-conformist rock that fit with the nature of its staff, including the great Lester Bangs.

I’ve been looking forward to this doc for quite some time, because while I read Rolling Stone religiously, as well as Spin,every once in a while, some band or musician I liked would be on the cover of Creem Magazine, and I’d buy it. Granted, this was the mid-to-late ‘80s when the magazine was already not as cool, as it used to be but this doc, produced by founder Barry Kramer’s son JJ Kramer does a great job telling the story of how the magazine, originally based in Michigan, managed to shake up the mainstream music scene with its snarky sense of humor.

I was hoping to get more out of the doc, but I did like the music Crawford uses to tell the story of Creem, and there’s some seriously great talking heads along with it, including Thurston Moore, Michael Stipe, Chad Smith, Cameron Crowe, Joan Jett and more.  Maybe not the best music doc I’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely very informative and recommended if you want to know more about music history.

The Russian hockey doc, RED PENGUINS (Universal Home), Gabe Polsky’s follow-up to his 2014 doc Red Army, covers how in the early ‘90s, the Pittsburgh Penguins decided to buy the Russian Army hockey team and how the new owners used marketing to make the Moscow Penguins world-famous – they even appeared in the ‘90s action film Sudden Death – before problems with the Russian MAFIA brought it all crashing down. Also a good doc, maybe not as solid as Red Army but Polsky once again has a lot of great characters to keep the movie entertaining, such as marketer Steven Warshaw and all the Russians who always seem to know more than they’re saying. If you’re a hockey fan, particularly this era in the ‘90s, you might enjoy Red Penguins.

Premiering on Disney+ this Friday is Don Hahn’s documentary HOWARD (Disney+) about the late lyricist Howard Ashman, who wrote the words for many of the popular Disney animated films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin before dying of AIDS in 1991. I really wanted to see this movie because Hahn’s other documentaries have all been fantastic, but I got no response

I didn’t have a chance to watch Marion Johnson and Anne Flatté’s doc, River City Drumbeat, which will be available via Virtual Cinema this Friday, including the Maysles Documentary Center in New York. It follows Edwar “Nardie” White who has devoted his life to the African-American drum corps he co-founded in Louisville, Kentucky thirty years ago, as a new person, Albert Shumake, has to take up the mantle and lead the corps.

The Australian horror film BLACK WATER: ABYSS (Screen Media) is directed by Andrew Traucki and written by John Ridley -- not the John Ridley you probably know who actually can write -- but it deals with a group of friends facing a killer crocodile in the caves of Northern Australia. I normally would love this kind of movie, but this feels a lot like the type of schlock you might see on Syfy but it’s not because the writing or cast are particularly bad, just that it seems like something we’ve seen so many times before from Crawl to 47 Meters Down and its sequel that it doesn’t feel like this has much to offer. The problem is that it spends so much time making it seem like the water itself is dangerous to anyone who goes in it, but we always know that there’s a crocodile involved. Traucki goes so over-the-top trying to make this terrifying but there’s only so serious you can take a movie where people start shouting “Victor!” over and over while Victor is flailing around in the water being threatened by a crocodile we never really see particularly clearly. In other words, you get what you pay for on this one, so try not to pay too much.

After opening in select drive-ins last Friday, Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow (NEON) will be available digitally and On Demand this Friday. If you missed it, I reviewed it last week. It was okay. Also, Sony Classics is returning to theaters, specifically with Guiseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy, which got a protracted release due to COVID but will now open up in some of the movie theaters that have reopened.

Then there’s all the stuff I didn’t get around to seeing…. And hopefully, I didn’t miss something good in favor of some of the mediocre movies above… (sigh)

As far as horror and genre, there’s Daniel Tucker’s Nothing but The Blood (Gravitas Ventures) about a journalist sent to investigate a controversial church. Rudolph Herzog’s How to Fake a War (Vertical Entertainment) stars Jay Pharaoh as a rock star who’s worried his charity concert might fail if peace breaks out in the Eastern European country where it’s taking place. 1091 is releasing the supernatural thriller Star Light, starring Scout Taylor-Compton from the Halloweenremake, and The Stand: How One Gesture Shook the World, which is actually not about the Stephen King novel but is in fact, Tom Ratcliffe and Becky Paige’s doc about Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ decision to raise their fist in solidarity at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, only to receive major fallout for the gesture. (Kind of wish I had time to see that one, actually.)

Uncork’d is releasing Paydirt and Limbo while Midnight Releasing is putting out Invasion Earth this week. All of these could be grand, but I just didn’t have the time to find out. Sorry.

Metrograph’s new Live Screenings series will continue this week with Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway’s Feed (1992) running through Friday along with a 10th anniversary screening of the Bill Withers’ doc Still Bill. Friday will begin the theater’s Satoshi Kon Retrospective, starting with Perfect Blue on Friday and then the equally-classic Millennium Actress starting next Monday.

Available via Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema is Ramona S. Diaz’s documentary A THOUSAND CUTS, that takes a look at the war between the Philippine government and the media after Filipino journalist Maria Ressa receives a guilty verdict in her trial. Ressa’s news site “Rappler” was investigating the government-sanctioned drug war against the country’s impoverished actors that had left the streets filled with bodies after Rodrigo Duterte is elected President in 2016.

Film Movement’s Virtual Cinema will be screening Peruvian filmmaker Melina León’s Song Without a Name about an indigenous Andean woman whose baby is taken from her.

Premiering on Netflix this week is the teen comedy Work It while Amazon Prime has the Scottish coming-of-age comedy Boyz in the Wood and Showtime has something called The Good Lord Bird.  All great I’m sure but this is what happens when you dump so much stuff onto the same effin’ weekend.

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest

[hrsuccess]

Management Lessons from India’s Most Loved Sport ,Cricket

I requested Mr. Ramkumar to present his views on Cricket and Management on The Other View.

He wrote back asking me to write the article myself instead of him. I, at this point in time, felt like Sachin Tendulkar when he was handed over the ball by his captain, Mohammad Azharuddin, in a packed Eden Gardens to bowl the last over of the Hero Cup finals against South Africa way back in 1993. 

Of course I had no idea about what I would write but having been given the opportunity and honour to write, I have made an attempt based on my limited experience both as a fan of the “gentlemen’s game” and of having served three of India’s leading companies: HCL Infosystems, Genpact and ICICI Bank.

Over the past few days I have been thinking about the incredible similarities between management themes, strategies and philosophies in the sports field and in our workplaces. 

Since we are part of a nation where cricket is the only sport, I will focus the discussion on the striking similarities between cricket and the workplace and the key takeaways and management lessons from cricket. For the sake of simplicity, I will leave the readers to draw the parallel to their workplaces in comments section.

Game is all About Winning not Popularity:

The game is replete with instances of successful captains building their teams on the back on unpopular choices and dropping legendary players from the playing eleven. 

This has come at the expense of media bashing and pushback. But more often than not it has led to a meritocracy and a positive competitive environment, which fosters talent and healthy competition. 

Adequate bench strength is critical for continuity and of course to counter exigencies like injury during key series. The game has taught us that it is not possible if we do not weed out people who are not contributing and at the same time take risks with young budding talent.

Good Success Plans always works

The Australian Team is famous for grooming their captains several years in advance and has produced some of the best teams of all times. 

Whether it is the present One Day captain George Bailey (whom I, for one, had not even the faintest idea about even an year back) or Michael Clarke who was groomed for years to take on the mantle. Another credible example in this context is that of South African captain Graeme Smith, and closer home MS Dhoni, who was groomed for a year by Anil Kumble and Tendulkar.

Growth and talent need not be restricted to big cities:

Today’s Indian team has only 20-30% of its members coming from the Top 10 cities of the country which boast of the best cricketing infrastructure. The rest come from the hinterland.  There are many world class stadiums now in these cities whether it is Ranchi or Rajkot or even Dharamshala. This clearly shows that where there is a will, there is a way. 

The Afghanistan Team making it to the World Cup is another case in point. On the same note, it is fabled that Imran Khan used to go to the villages in the North West provinces of Pakistan and scout for boys whom he would turn into ace fast bowlers. Our own Sourav Ganguly was the first captain to break the monopoly of Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Places like Baroda, Najafgarh, Jalandhar, Chandigarh and Ranchi took their place.

Continuous improvement and creation of infrastructure:

Credit goes to the BCCI for having an able system of selection, plenty of domestic tournaments and a variety of formats which bring this talent to the core, and of course new infrastructure which is being created in Tier II and Tier III Cities.

Technology is key to success:

Talent and passion are all fine but we would be living in a fool’s paradise if we did not use advances in technology to our advantage. 

Commentators and conventionalists often mock at the many laptops that now line the dressing rooms and the pavilions, but it is important to use data and analyse it to your advantage and be ahead of competition.

Freedom to take your decisions:

While of course there is always a strategy but at times, it is the bowler who knows best where to bowl and the captain should back him and help with the field placements accordingly. 

Ability to think on the feet by using years of experience becomes critical to success. Remember how the lesser known Joginder Sharma bowled the last over in the 2007 T20 World Cup and how Sreesanth was placed perfectly to take the catch of Misbah-ul-Haq.

Support teams are critical:

Very often we have seen a player getting injured and after the physio’s intervention (the magic spray of course and a couple of stretching exercises) he springs back to life almost immediately. 

They all add up to the final performance as a team. A catch gets a wicket for the bowler and it is the partner running for the batsman’s stroke which gets him the run. One should not underestimate the importance of the bowling coach, the fielding coach and of course in today’s teams the sports psychologist.

Need  both all-rounders and specialists:

A well built and competent team needs both specialists and all-rounders to provide balance to the team. A team full of all-rounders without the right specialists will count for very little. 

So while no one can diminish the fact that Yuvraj’s all round ability contributed significantly to the 2011 World Cup win with 4 Man of the Match awards, the batters at the top of the order and the specialist bowlers (spinners and medium pacers — can’t say fast bowlers because India never produced one) played their well defined roles to ensure the Cup came home after 28 years.

It’s no longer enough to be good in one format – T20, One Days, Test Matches or at home only:

It used to hurt Indian cricket supporters when in the 90’s our team was referred to as “Tigers at home, lambs abroad”. Thankfully, that is a tag we have shed by developing the ability to perform well across formats and across continents. This is what differentiates the great teams from the merely good teams.

The Board decides but the captain has a say:

The boards no longer take the decision solely; they consult with the captain and the coach who pick the best playing eleven because when on the field, it is captain who has to marshal the resources and make key decisions. Hence, rightly the captain has a say in deciding the team composition.

A few bad men don’t take away from the Gentlemen’s Game:

There are always some bad elements who compromise on their integrity for the lure of some quick bucks. But the law catches up with them sooner or later. And they are left with a fall from fame and a lifetime of bad repute. As they say the game moves on without these bad apples.

Fitness is Key: Need I say more here!

Think ahead of time and ahead of competition:

Kris Srikkanth made the most of the first 10 overs through some power hitting much before Kaluwitharana and Jayasuriya made it a strategy.  For that matter, the New Zealand team used the unconventional ploy of starting the innings with a spinner way back in 1991 World Cup.

You may not always have the best team:

India’s World Cup T20 Win in 2007 is a classic case of making do with the resources at hand. Dhoni could have fretted and complained about being given a raw deal with a totally inexperienced team but he used their individual strengths and stitched them into a winning combination. Sometimes, it is good to let go off the baggage and back yourself.

Don’t be complacent, never lose temper:

“A swing and a miss” is an oft used term by most commentators to refer to a senseless stroke by a batsmen made in a fit of desperation or anger that yields nothing but air. It is critical to hold on to your nerves and not let the competition run you down. How often have we seen batsmen giving away wickets after an altercation with the bowlers or fielders? How can anyone forget the memories of Javed Miandad hopping and then Kiran More imitating him when Miandad lost his wicket or Aamir Sohail being bowled over just the next bowl after smashing Venkatesh Prasad to the boundary and showing him his bat in the World Cup match in 1995 in Bangalore?

It’s OK to have a bad day at the “office”, but learn from them:

Of course there aren’t many takers for Ishant Sharma after he made sure the Aussies cruised to victory the other day but in a long career everyone will have a bad day once in a while. 

It’s during this time that the captain needs to back his team and not reprimand severely and finish someone’s career. Of course the errant player also needs to quickly learn from their mistake and be worthy of their captain’s backing. 

I have to conclude with the cliched but nevertheless critical wisdom: “A Leader has to lead by example” as exemplified by our captain — with a captain named Dhoni, there can never be any “unhoni”.

by  Sachin Bhagat

Want to Outsource HR Management of Your business to make your management work smooth ? Look at this Manpower agency in India which is playing well in HR outsourcing industry

[my-queer-collection]

Comic: Runaways

The Skrulls are invading and The Runaways and the Young Avengers both have a Skrull on their team. Coincidence? We think not! Your two favorite teen teams come together again as the Marvel Universe is pushed to the brink!

Title: Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers

Artist: Takeshi Miyazawa

Writer: Christopher Yost

Publisher: Marvel

Format: Digital

Steam Level: Not Steamy

Status: Complete

Volume: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B010E1TGTA/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_b1tJFbE9SF5W2

So So

I really don’t have feelings about this one way or another. You will need to read a Wikipedia article to understand what is going on. You can skip this in all honesty, it doesn’t add to the main storyline at all. The art is nice though.

About Secret Invasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Invasion

The Runaways, a group of friends whose parents were all super-powered villains, must protect one of their own when soldiers from Karolina's home planet accuse her of genocide and plan to capture her for punishment.

Title: Runaways (9-10)

Artist: Humberto Ramos (9), Takeshi Miyazawa (10)

Writer: Terry Moore

Publisher: Marvel

Format: Digital/Print

Steam Level: Not Steamy

Status: Complete

Volume 9: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0785141197/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_NOtJFb79BBYZ1

Volume 10: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1302909118/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_NKtJFb3W03WFR

Skip

I wanted to like this. I had heard so many people say that they adore Terry Moore and was excited to read something by him, which makes this doubly disappointing. I’m used to far out, wacky, odd comic stories but this was just too much. I did not like this story at all and the art isn’t any better. In fact, you can tell when a different artist was drawing because they drew Xavin as female in some issues and male in others (pictured below.) This really ticked me off since they established in the last volume that Xavin mostly thinks and present themselves as female. The only thing you need to know about these volumes to read the reboot is Xavin leaves. Which was total bullshit and felt like it was done for the drama and not because story wise it makes sense or was time for that character to go. Ugh. So disappointing.

Unable to forget the lives and people they have lost, the Runaways confront another challenge in the form of a mysterious aircraft that crashes into their Malibu home, drawing the military and an ominous figure from their past, in a collection that includes Runaways Volume 3 Issues 11-14 and What If the Runaways Became the Young Avengers?

Title: Runaways (11)

Artist: Sara Pichelli

Writer: Kathryn Immonem

Publisher: Marvel

Format: Digital/Print

Steam Level: Not Steamy

Status: Complete (Kinda)

Volume: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0785140395/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_ZVtJFbSM8T31H

Skip

I HATED THIS VOLUME. They made them gritty and jettisoned a lot of their appeal. What little of the storyline we saw was bad and the art as well. I can’t think of anything redeeming about this. I don’t even suggest reading it if you’re all about reading everything Runaways. You don’t need anything from this volume to enjoy the reboot and I’m still annoyed I spent money on it. The reason I put kinda after the complete is that the series was cancelled after this volume. So the story isn’t complete but there will be no more of this. As a Runaways fan, if I had been reading this as it came out, I would have been happy it was cancelled. This is just bad.

The best and brightest teens from all corners of Battleworld are chosen to attend a prestigious school on the planet's capital! But what does the new class do when they discover the school's beloved headmaster is actually a diabolical super villain? RUN AWAY! A SECRET WARS story like none other from the remarkable minds of Noelle Stevenson (Lumberjanes) and Sanford Greene (UNCANNY AVENGERS)!

Title: Runaways: Battleworld

Artist: Adrian Alphona

Writer: Noelle Stevenson & Brian K. Vaughan

Publisher: Marvel

Format: Digital/Print

Steam Level: Not Steamy

Status: Complete

Volume: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0785198822/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_d3tJFbFGJ80Q2

So So

The only reason I’m including this is because I know people are going to see the Runaways part of the title and pick it up. So up front, our favorite gay baby, Karolina Dean, isn’t in this, only Molly. Yup, the only Runaway is Molly, no one else. The story isn’t bad, but you’ll need to read up on this Battleworld to get an idea on what’s going on. The art isn’t okay. You definitely don’t have to read this to enjoy the reboot. This is basically an AU.

To read up on Battleworld: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleworld

Written by New York Times best-selling author Christopher Golden, Runaways: An Original Novel is a fresh take on the Marvel fan favorite. Including the first issue of the revived Runaways comic series written by Rainbow Rowell and with art by Kris Anka, it's easy for fans of the comics, fans of the new Hulu TV show, and first-time readers to all enjoy this new take on an old classic.

Turns out murderous Super Villains don't make for good parents. The Runaways had no choice. They had to kill them. Well, more or less. Now Nico, Karolina, Gert, Chase, and Molly are on the run again, hiding out and trying to regain a sense of normalcy. But kids with super powers don't get to be normal.

The city is overrun with criminals, each faction bent on murdering them for one reason or another. It's only when the Runaways uncover the truth behind their parents' past that they realize the evil isn't just in L.A.

It's everywhere.

Title: Runaways: An Original Novel

Author: Christopher Golden

Format: Digital/Print

Status: Stand Alone

Book: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1484782011/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_APtJFb9Z1A1B7

I have not read this so I can’t say if it’s any good or not. But it exists and has Karolina Dean in it. I do plan to read it in the future

[pwchronicle]

Chikara “Piano Lessons Can Be Murder” - Live Show Report October 13th in Philadelphia, PA

My busy live show schedule continued today with a return trip to the Chikara Wrestle Factory for the latest event. Even before doors opened, myself and others waiting in line were treated to something new: wrestling gear maker and Chikara ally Yolanda coming out to regale us with some tails of recent events involving her, such as Travis Huckabee using her as a human shield at last month’s “It Came From Beneath the Sink.”

- The show opening included ring announcer Preston Blathers stating that Razerhawk was unable to compete today, so a suitable replacement would be found.

1. Cornelius Crummels & Sonny Defarge beat Dasher & Boomer Hatfield when Defarge caught Boomer with a spinning slam for the pin. Nice opener with the wrestlers’ personalities shining through. There was a funny moment late when the Hatfields tied up Crummels and Defarge’s legs with their own suspenders, making them think the Hatfields had them in leg locks, so they crawled to the ropes, and referee Bryce Remsburg did the 5 count on them to break the holds they had on themselves. Dasher was about to lock in an abdominal stretch (how he beat Huckabee last month) onto Crummels, but Crummels escaped by sneezing in Dasher’s face. Defarge caught Boomer in the end as Boomer (looking solid all match) was attempting a dive to the outside.

2. Ophidian beat Frightmare with the Egyptian Destroyer. These two had a heated feud that ended with Ophidian beating Frightmare at February’s National Pro Wrestling Day in a Submission Match, so the feud was revisited here in suitably heated fashion. Lots of strike exchanges between the two, including one where both were laid out by the end. Ophidian hit a powerbomb backbreaker (Project Ciampa) for a big nearfall. Ophidian hit his Destroyer, a flipping piledriver after going “Old School,” walking the top rope while having a hold of Frightmare, and springboarding off. I thought this was one of the stronger matches on the card.

- Still Life With Apricots and Pears came out to talk with Scott Holladay. He ignored and interupted Scott’s question about Ursa Minor in the Night Sky’s whereabouts and talked about how colors are made. He said he was looking for his perfect color, and indicated he would challenge Danjerhawk for the Young Lions Cup at La Lotería Letal in two weeks. With Danjerhawk in action next, he opted to take an up-close seat for the next match. Ring crew rolled out a carpet and set up a chair for Still Life, but he opted to just sit on the carpet at first.

- With Razerhawk unavailable, Remsburg followed Chikara tradition by drawing a replacement from a hat. The name was Mercedes Martinez, but she wasn’t there. The next name drawn was Lambo Miura, not a real wrestler to my knowledge but suitable for the gag, and also not present. As usual, the third name drawn was available: Penelope Ford! She appeared twice before in Chikara this year alongside Joey Janela in tag team matches.

3. F.I.S.T. (Icarus & Tony Deppen) beat Danjerhawk and Penelope Ford when Deppen rolled up Ford with a handful of her trunks. Pretty fun match with Ford stealing the show and Danjerhawk holding his own. Deppen acted quite intense throughout to a pretty cartoonish level, constantly threatening to kill whoever was in the ring with him. In the end, Danjerhawk was knocked to the floor, Ford gave Icarus a German suplex into the corner, and Deppen stole the win over her. Still Life watched the whole thing without getting involved.

4. Lucas Calhoun & Jeremy Leary & Blanche Babish vs. The Proteus Wheel (Volgar & Frantik & Callux the Castigator) never got started. After Calhoun and company made their entrance, but before the Proteus Wheel could enter, the guy in camo pants asking about Missile Assault Man last month came into the ring in a surprise. He said his name was Axel Ford (presumably not related to Penelope), and as he was telling Calhoun that he knew why he was here, but then a hooded figure ran in and attacked Ford. This person revealed himself as Missile Assault Man, back in Chikara for the first time since December. He and Ford continued fighting as the Proteus Wheel came out to fight with Calhoun and company, before a bell could ring. Things were getting out of hand, so the three other refs on the card, and then soon the rest of the roster, came out in an attempt to separate the wrestlers. This only led to the chaos to spread in and out of the ring, looking like a recent segment from Raw. Calhoun was able to get in the ring alone with Missile Assault Man, only for Volgar to clock Missile Assault Man from behind with his chain, laying him out. Remsburg yelled at the Proteus Wheel to leave the building, which they did. The match was thrown out, and I did not see where Missile Assault Man and Axel Ford went.

- They went back to having one intermission this time.

5. Juan Francisco de Coronado beat Cam Carter with the Coronado Clutch. This was my first time seeing Carter; he made his Chikara debut at King of Trios last month. I thought he looked quite impressive. It was kind of funny to me hear Juan call him “kid.” Carter wowed me with two big nearfalls; the first was a high angle German suplex, the other was him running from the start of the entrance way (level with the ring) and leaping over the top rope into a 450. Even after getting stuck in the Coronado Clutch, Carter was able to roll through it for a nearfall before getting stuck in it again and ultimately tapping. There was a small “Please Come Back” chant for him, but Juan responded to it as if it was for him, saying he’s not going anywhere. Juan then went to speak with Holladay who asked about his potential partner at La Lotería Letal. In his attempt to make his answer easy, Juan mentioned Hallowicked and Princess KimberLee as partners he would not want. He closed by saying the only partner he could trust is... Juan Francisco de Coronado.

6. Solo Darling and The Colony (Fire Ant, Green Ant, and Thief Ant) beat The Creatures of the Deep (Oceanea, Merlok, Hermit Crab, and Cajun Crawdad) when Fire Ant pinned Oceanea following a Beach Break. A very fun version of this classic Chikara staple, with everyone holding their own. Twice Green Ant and Thief Ant attempted to launch Fire Ant, and twice Merlok stopped it. Solo almost had it won with Oceanea in the Sharp Stinger, but Merlok broke it up by throwing Green Ant into her. Fire Ant was able to survive after a Muscle Buster from Merlok and a top rope senton from Oceanea A second Sharp Stinger attempt from Solo led to Oceanea getting a nearfall off of a small package. Solo was nearly hit with the Tidal Wave (Oceanea doing a Yoshi-Tonic on Merlok off the top rope to send him crashing down onto an opponent), but Fire Ant pulled her out of the way. This allowed Fire Ant to capitalize and hit the finish.

7. The Regime (Sloan Caprice & Rick Roland) beat The Beast Warriors (Oleg the Usurper & The Proletariat Boar of Moldova) 2 falls to 1 to retain Los Campeonatos de Parejas. I felt this was one of the weaker Chikara main events this year, but I still thought it had plenty of drama to it. Oleg and Boar worked over Caprice’s knee, much to ref Kris Levin’s chagrin since it was two-on-one, leading to Boar making Caprice tap to a Figure Four leg lock for the first fall. Juan Francisco de Coronado came out after this to corner Caprice and Roland. Caprice sold his injured knee for the remainder of the match, relying on Roland to take the lead during second fall. Boar’s arm, injured last month, became a target for the Regime. Eventually, things got so heated for Oleg that he shoved Levin, leading to a disqaulification call and the Regime taking the second fall. Hype Rockwell then came out to lend support to the Beast Warriors. This led to the finishing sequence, with Rockwell going after Juan when he got on the apron. Oleg saw this going down and went to hit a senton off the apron onto Juan on the floor, but Juan ducked and Oleg hit Rockwell. Juan continued focusing on Juan on the outside as Boar gored Caprice, but then Roland caught Boar in a Fujiwara Arm Bar to make him tap out immediately. Bummer, and Rockwell, Oleg, and Boar all left separately after this.

Though I wasn’t as high on the main event, there was a lot of fun action underneath, along with a fairly major angle and return.

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

Puck Daddy Countdown: Fare thee well Jaromir Jagr

Jaromir Jagr, pictured in December 2017, has the second-most points and second-most games played in NHL history (AFP Photo/Sean M. Haffey)

8. Buying a bad website

Darryl Katz just made another Kris Russell-level investment hahaha.

7. The Penguins’ trade prospects

Saw something the other day where the Penguins are looking for a No. 3 center.

Hmm, I feel like I heard about this a while ago, don’t you? Maybe around like September when they didn’t have a No. 3 center? Or maybe in late October when they traded Scott Wilson for Riley Sheahan? Or maybe any time since then, because Riley Sheahan isn’t a No. 3 center or anything close to it?

Yeah.

I guess the good news is that No. 3 centers are probably easy to come by around the deadline and therefore probably don’t even cost you all that much. But man, this was a foreseeable problem and, man, it’s not like it’s hard to find a competent No. 3 at literally any point in the offseason, and for cheap.

The fact that the Penguins are where they are without a No. 3 basically all season is a pretty good indication of their quality overall, but this isn’t a discussion they should be having now, it’s a four-months-ago discussion. Not that you don’t need to have it now, still, but let’s not act surprised here.

6. Being Seth Jones

So Seth Jones is caught up in the latest kerfuffle about the All-Star attendance rules.

This time, he was allowed to play on Tuesday despite missing the ASG with an illness because the league told him not to come. Bruce Boudreau is (understandably) pissed that his opponent will have an elite No. 2 defenseman in the lineup despite the fact that despite the league’s own rules, it should not.

The league, for its part, says the issue is that it told Jones to stay home, which puts Jones in an awkward position where people are mad at him but he didn’t do anything wrong. Just did what the league said to do, and then he’s getting shouted at. Everyone’s goal in life should be to not-get-yelled-at. I just want to shout “Seth is only nice!!!” so everyone leaves him alone.

Wow isn’t it so crazy that the league is doing something that pissed a bunch of people off because it applied some unforeseeable and ineffable double standard without explanation? Very unlike the NHL to do something like that.

5. All-Star weekend

Maybe it’s just me but it seems like everything was kinda dull at All-Star Weekend. Nothing memorable happened except for maybe Erik Karlsson and Victor Hedman dressing as pirates. And that wasn’t the NHL’s doing. Skills competition very meh, and the All-Star tournament itself was vaguely entertaining at times I guess.

People weren’t even really that mad about Kid Rock after all the understandable hubbub. Maybe everyone was just looking forward to the Royal Rumble.

4. Hurricanes fans

On the one hand, it’s pretty cool that you’ll be able to sit basically anywhere you want if you bought a last-row-balcony ticket. On the other hand, the game you’re closer to is Hurricanes/Senators.

No but okay, no joke, this is the kind of once-in-a-while thing every team in a struggling market should do. You can’t do it all the time because everyone would just buy last-row-balcony tickets then get the upgrade, but if you’re not gonna draw anyway, occasionally mentioning the offer day-of seems like good business, does it not? Get people to show up to a game they otherwise would have avoided, etc.

I know people in Canada were probably like, “Oh that’s classic, no one goes to the games down there, so they’re doing a big gimmick here,” but: a) that’s not really any of their business, and b) maybe the Senators could try it. Just something to think about.

3. The Predators

Here’s something crazy about the Preds, who currently sit pretty high in the league’s elite teams: They haven’t had a fully healthy roster at any point this season.

They played basically the first 35 games without Ryan Ellis (an elite second-pair guy) and, right around the time Ellis was supposed to come back, Filip Forsbgerg went down with an injury and has been out for a month. Nick Bonino has missed time as well. Now, Forsberg is pretty close to a return and, unless someone throws a spear through Roman Josi’s chest, it looks like this team could finally be fully powered up for a good chunk of the second half.

And by the way, they entered last night three points out of first in the West with a game in hand on Vegas and three in hand on Winnipeg. I think they’ll be fine.

2. A new playoff format?

Apparently there is an appetite swirling in the NHL to change the current playoff format, which is good because the current playoff format is very dumb.

Ideally they eventually just go 1v16, 2v15, etc. league-wide but for logistical reasons and “not wanting the playoffs to take into mid-July” that probably won’t happen. Still, even just going back to the old “every divisional winner gets home-ice but it’s 1v8 by conference” would be preferable to this nonsense.

I’m glad everyone hates it. Restores my faith in the league a little bit. Not too much, but a little.

1. Jaromir Jagr

The fact that he’s not gonna break the games-played record is a bummer, to be honest.

I still think he can help a team if he’s healthy and they put him in a third- or fourth-line role (or at the very least, help sell tickets and jerseys), but the fact that it didn’t work out in Calgary seemed predestined given all the reticence to sign him in the first place, league-wide. That the Flames are technically keeping him on their reserve list so they can maybe pull him back for a playoff run or something isn’t a bad idea.

My big conspiracy theory here is that the old guys in the league didn’t want Jagr breaking Howe’s games-played record or closing in on 2,000 points (he’s 79 away and wouldn’t have gotten there this season, but y’know.

But anyway, so long you big-assed Czech weirdo. We all love you.

(Not ranked this week: Making pitches to trade targets.

A lot was made of the Capitals trying to convince Mike Green to come back to Washington over the All-Star weekend and it’s like, “I mean I guess.” But it’s not really up to Mike Green in all this, except to say he has a full no-trade for some reason.

And look, I’m all for NHL players being more like NBA players and forcing trades to preferred destinations, but this ain’t exactly Erik Karlsson. Mike Green is fine and he’s kinda-sorta what the Caps need, but the urgency seems, uhh, overstated.)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

[daniel-browne]

Cold Case Logic #21: When I Was Cruel

This one’s been a long time coming. [You can say that again. I started writing this more than a year ago!] I ride hard for a bunch of artists—Dylan, Lou Reed, Brian Wilson, Prince. But there’s only one of whom I can say I’ve heard it all, bought every album (in many cases, more than once), tracked down every B-side and soundtrack appearance, showed up for just about every tour when it came through town. That’s Elvis Costello.

And yet I find the prospect of writing about the man and his music daunting. The essence of his art is harder to pin down than it might seem on the surface. A virtuoso songwriter and a spirited performer, Costello has nearly 30 albums to his credit, give or take, and only one that could fairly be called a dud (I’m looking at you Goodbye Cruel World). He’s never gone through an extended wilderness period like Dylan or Neil Young. That consistency has been to the detriment of his legacy, I suspect. By maintaining such high standards for so long, he’s denied us the comeback narrative we seem to expect from aging rockers. No one ever says his latest album is “his best since King of America” the way it used to be common to say Dylan’s latest was “his best since Blood on the Tracks.”

Another reason he’s so difficult to write about is that he’s written (and talked) so much about himself over the years. Again, the contrast with Dylan is striking. For decades, fans pored over Dylan’s every move and utterance, even his garbage, because they felt they knew so little about him. When his memoir Chronicles was finally published in 2004, it was greeted as a major revelation, even though everyone knew, or should have known, they were dealing with an unreliable narrator. By contrast, when it was announced that Costello would be releasing his memoir, fans speculated that it might be simply an expansion of the extensive liner notes he’d written when his catalog was reissued a decade earlier. He’d already given us thousands of words about his life and work, not to mention a Vanity Fair article in which he listed 500 (!) of his favorite albums; what more was there to say?

With Costello, it seems there’s always more to say. Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink weighs in at nearly 700 pages, not one of them a repeat of those ten-year-old liner notes. As if that weren’t enough, I recently found a post on his website in which he compiled a High Fidelity-style ranking of his own songs. (I can’t seem to find it now, so it’s possible I hallucinated it. The recent Rosanne Cash, Kris Kristofferson co-write “April 5th” came in at #1. I was amazed to see my all-time favorite “Suit of Lights” at #2.) This prolixity, all but unprecedented for a rock star, is both a sign of generosity towards his fans and a strategy for keeping us at bay. Where Dylan has maintained an air of mystery, Costello always seems to be stepping out from behind the curtain to make sure we don’t get the wrong idea. (His 1986 cover of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” went to #33 in the U.S.)

Unfaithful Music was a big event in my life as a Costello fan, partly because of my own circumstances at the time. My son had been born a few months earlier, my wife had just gone back to work, and I was taking over at home, a role I wasn’t ready for. It was an emotionally draining time. If I was lucky, Theo would conk out after his midday bottle, and I’d gingerly wheel him through the cold to Starbucks where the hiss of the milk steamer and the purr of Sinatra crooning Christmas standards served as white noise and I could steal an hour or two to read.

I’d expected the pages of Unfaithful Music to be stuffed with anecdotes and insights about the music, and I wasn’t disappointed. But when I discovered that the book’s main thru-line is Costello’s relationship with his dad Ross, well, let’s just say it hit me where I live. I was familiar with some of the story already. I already knew, for instance, that Ross was a singer in a popular dance band of the ’50s and ’60s. What Unfaithful Music brought home for me was how central a figure he was at every stage of Costello’s journey, both as a man and an artist. Reading the passage in which young Declan MacManus eavesdrops on Ross practicing “Please Please Me” in the front room, itching to get his hands on the record when his dad is done with it, not knowing his course has already been set, I realized the profound responsibility I’d taken on, and I thought about what kind of father I wanted to be. For one thing, I wanted to whisk Theo home and play him something more inspiring than “Jingle Bells.”

And where better to start than with my Elvis Costello albums? I jumped around over the next few weeks, but for some reason I was especially drawn to his recent work. Maybe I wanted to spare Theo’s tender ears the coiled fury of the early “guilt and revenge” years. Or maybe I wanted to continue spending time with the fellow who wrote Unfaithful Music, his edge still sharp but the steel more tempered. In any case, I’ve never viewed his body of work the way many critics do: a “classic period” followed by a series of perverse experiments. My first Costello album was 1991’s kitchen-sinky Mighty Like a Rose (a.k.a. The Beard Album), and even as I explored the back catalog, I kept moving forward with him. I never resented 1993’s string quartet opus The Juliette Letters for not being This Year’s Model. I discovered them both at the same time.

With that in mind, my original idea for this post was to write a paragraph on every album he’s released in the past twenty years or so, from the Burt Bacharach collabo Painted From Memory to the Roots collabo Wise Up Ghost. I quickly realized the task was overwhelming. I needed to pick the one album about which I had the most to say, or more precisely the one that would help me access what I had to say, which felt deep-seated but inchoate. Without really thinking it through I settled on When I Was Cruel from 2002.

Now that I’m sitting down to write, though, even tackling this one album feels overwhelming. When I Was Cruel is a rich text as the academics like to say. Ironically, it’s not among Costello’s most heavily annotated works. It came out after the reissue campaign that resulted in those exhaustive liner notes, and it’s barely mentioned in Unfaithful Music. It does, however, make for an illuminating companion to the memoir. In both, Costello confronts the passage of time and also confounds it, skipping around in time freely, from chapter to chapter, song to song, even line to line.

This skipping around is a typical Costello technique. Linearity isn’t his way. Even when he hatches a group of songs with a unifying topic or storyline, he’ll break them up, obscure his intent. (The Juliet Letters is the only entry in his catalog that could be called a proper concept album.) Half the songs on 2004’s Delivery Man, give or take, are episodes in a Southern Gothic tale about a sinister figure and the women under his spell, but they’re jumbled together with the other half, which are unrelated, and I only know what Costello had in mind because, in his usual way, he explained it in interviews at the time of the album’s release. He even pointed out that the Delivery Man character had already appeared in “Hidden Shame,” which he wrote for Johnny Cash more than a decade earlier. Costello’s own version of “Hidden Shame” eventually turned up on 2009’s Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, along with a clutch of songs from an unfinished opera about Hans Christian Andersen and Jenny Lind.

When I Was Cruel has its own displaced narratives. “Soul for Hire” was written for a little-seen movie called Prison Song, starring Q-Tip and Mary J. Blige, with Costello appearing as both a teacher and a lawyer. (“Soul for Hire” is sung from the lawyer’s point of view.) The origin of lead single, “Tear Off Your Own Head (It’s a Doll Revolution)” is even more far-fetched. If Costello is to be believed, it was meant to be the theme song for a show about singing female spies that he and T-Bone Burnett pitched to the WB.

As amusing as all this backstory is, it doesn’t reveal much about When I Was Cruel. More telling is the odd placement of “Dust 2…” three tracks before its bookend “…Dust.” The crux of the album is what lies between those ellipses. The final words of “Dust 2…” are “Well, I believe we just/become a speck of dust”; the first words of “…Dust” are “If only dust could talk/what would we hear it say?” This is an album about what it feels like to be in the middle of a life and to be living in the middle of history. To capture that feeling, Costello draws on a lifetime of songcraft: fractured timelines, a riot of voices, inexhaustible skeins of wordplay.

Like “Dust 2,” the title track is the second in a series (it’s listed as “When I Was Cruel No. 2”), but its predecessor isn’t on the album. This is an old Dylan trick, nicked from the high art world: “I Shall Be Free” was followed, two years later, by “I Shall Be Free No. 10”; the other eight iterations may or may not exist. In the case of “When I Was Cruel,” no. 1 does exist—it was released as a B-side—but its absence from the album contributes to the sense that we are joining a train of thought in medias res. (Toward the end of the album, “Episode of Blonde” fades out in mid-verse, a train of thought going on without us. This is one trick Dylan never pulled, though the Talking Heads did.)

When was Costello cruel exactly? The title evokes the sneering young man who spit acrid lines like “Don’t ask me to apologize/I won’t ask you to forgive me” back in 1978. The liner notes are seeded with other allusions to the persona forged in his early years. Production is credited to “The Imposter,” a reference to a song from 1980’s Get Happy that Costello has used as a pseudonym from time to time (although in this case, he actually shares the name with three other producers). Two of the three members of his legendary back-up band The Attractions—keyboardist Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas—appear prominently on When I Was Cruel, and Costello would soon announce the formation of The Imposters with bassist Davey Faragher replacing the recalcitrant Bruce Thomas.

Calling the band The Imposters served two opposing purposes: to remind his audience of his brilliant history with The Attractions and to make it clear that this was not The Attractions and could never be. This doubleness of intent is all over When I Was Cruel. Unlike so many of his peers, Costello has never tried to bask in past glories. (He’s struck a defiantly anti-nostalgic tone in talking about his current tour revisiting 1982’s Imperial Bedroom.) Instead, on When I Was Cruel, he takes the temptation to live in the past as one of his central themes. The refrain of “When I Was Cruel No. 2” is “but it was so much easier/when I was cruel.” Several other songs cast a harsh light on the spectacle of people, specifically men, refusing to grow up. From “Spooky Girlfriend”: “I want a girl who’s helpless and frail/who won’t pull on my ponytail.” From “Daddy Can I Turn This?”: “Is anybody acting your age?/You got a girl you keep in a cage.” From “Episode of Blonde”: “She’s a trophy on your arm/a magnet for your money clip.”

The subject of “Alibi” could be either a man or a woman, although when I first heard it, at a concert before the release of When I Was Cruel, I assumed it must be addressed to a woman because it reminded me so much of “I Want You,” Costello’s epic psychodrama of curdled love. “I Want You” and “Alibi” are almost identical in length (6:41 and 6:42, respectively), and both build on the repetition of a simple title phrase rather than a traditional verse-chorus structure. At the concert I saw—Costello performing as a duo with Steve Nieve—“Alibi” achieved some of the show-stopping intensity fans have come to expect from “I Want You.” The studio version is more subdued (as is the original recording of “I Want You,” compared to the juggernaut it’s become on stage). Still, it’s a merciless song, exposing the irony in the past tense of “when I was cruel.”

“Insane, what a mundane Alibi, alibi And you only wanted to be famous Alibi, alibi Sorry, but your mummy doesn't love you Alibi, alibi Stop me if you've heard this.”

As we get older, we all accrue stories, justifications, excuses for the way things turned out. Costello calls these stories alibis because they cover up a crime: our failure to live up to our ideals. We act selfishly (“You did it 'cos you wanted…And you took it/'cos you need it/Alibi, alibi”); we let material comfort corrupt us (“You were happy when you were poor/and more honest and that’s your/Alibi, alibi”); we hurt those close enough to see us for what we are (“But if I've done something wrong there's no ifs and buts/'Cos I love you just as much as I hate your guts”). The “I” in “Alibi” could be the same needy manchild as in “Spooky Girlfriend” (or, for that matter, the jaded public defender of “Soul for Hire”) but then who is the “you”? In Costello’s world, point of view, like chronology, is slippery.

There is one line in “Alibi” I’ve never been able to parse: “But if I've done something right then don't be surprised/There are soldiers who will kill but refuse to die.” As inscrutable as it is, the reference to soldiers is a portal, a glimpse of something larger than one person’s delusions. For if there are stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, there is also another kind of story, the ones that happen to us, in which we are nothing more than bit players.

This larger story is present in the album’s opening lines:

“Bells are chiming for victory There's a page back in history 45 They came back to the world that they fought for Didn't turn out just like they thought”

The song “45” is, among other things, a bravura feat of punning. It refers not only to the year World War II ended but also to Costello’s age when he wrote the song, and to the 45 rpm records that were the defining artifact of his youth. In a sense, “45” is the seed that contains all of what would become Unfaithful Music. Costello makes it clear in his memoir that to grow up in England in the 1960s was to come of age not only with The Beatles but also with the lingering aftermath of the war. And while pop music showed young Declan MacManus the possibility of transcendence (“Bass and treble heal every hurt/There’s a rebel in a nylon shirt”) and reinvention (“So don’t you weep and shed/Just change your name instead”), the collective past makes its presence felt in his own songs. In “45,” it’s an echo in the distance as he contemplates his mortality: “Bells are chiming and tears are falling/It creeps up on you without a warning.”

Personal history and the other kind intertwine on When I Was Cruel until it becomes difficult to tell them apart. “Tart” opens with the words, “Hear silver trumpets will trill in the Arabic streets of Seville,” an evocation of a fallen empire. Later there is a reference to the rationing of nylon during World War II, which led women to create tromp l’oeil stockings with make-up and eyebrow pencil: “Nylon was hung from a peg/And a kohl black seam ran down her leg.” Despite these far-flung allusions, the feel of the song is intimate, sensual. Costello has described it as a reminder to himself not to give in to the dark side of his nature (“it was so much easier/when I was cruel”). So, beneath the impressionistic imagery, a familiar story. Haven’t we all tried to buck ourselves up by thinking about how bad people had it “back then”?

(“My Little Blue Window,” one of Costello’s few unambiguous love songs, uses more straightforward language to explore similar psychological terrain. In this case, the job of bolstering his spirits falls to his companion: “My lovely hooligan/Come by and smash my pane/'Til I can see right through/My little blue window.”)

“Dust 2…,” offers no such consolation. “Could I spit out the truth/Or would you rather just swallow a lie?” Costello asks but doesn’t wait for an answer. His lens never stops roving, abruptly jumping from panoramic view to extreme close-up. In observing the dust caught “beneath the marble fingernails of kings and saints,” he captures both the veneration and eventual neglect of all history’s great men. A snippet of sexual tension (“And then she caught you staring/She knows what you're thinking”) turns out to be just a fleeting moment of privacy before the outside world comes crashing in:

“Here comes the juggernaut Here come The Poisoners They choke the life and land And rob the joy from us Why do they taste of sugar? Oh, when they're made of money Here come the Lamb of God And the butcher's boy, Sonny”

This disturbing verse carries over from “Dust 2…” to “…Dust” (or is it vice versa?). Here, individual destiny and the larger forces of history are no longer even nominally distinct. People are reduced to either casualties (“Why did they dam the land?/How did they flood the plain?”) or collaborators (“You kept your mouth well shut/Appeared to turn your coat/Now there's a name for you but it's stuck in my throat”). Costello ends the song by acknowledging the limits of the transcendence he celebrates in “45”:

“If dust could only gather in the needle track Then it would skip a beat and it would jump right back If dust could only gather in a needle track Then it would skip a beat And all the sense I lack”

We lack the sense, the perspective really, to divine our place in the grand scheme. A love affair can feel as momentous as war. This breakdown in perspective becomes a kind of delirium in “15 Petals,” the album’s most powerful song. “I love you twisted/And I love you straight,” the singer tells the woman he is no longer with.

“I'd write it down but I can't concentrate Words won't obey they do as the please And all I am left with are these 15 petals One for every year I spent with you…” It bears noting that Costello had been married to Cait O’Riordan for about fifteen years at the time When I Was Cruel came out, and while the album (like many before it) is dedicated to her, they would divorce that same year. But “15 Petals” refuses to confine itself to the dimensions of gossip (“words won’t obey me…”). It’s a cracked kaleidoscope, shards of narrative and imagery catching the light for a moment before spinning away again: “Down in the tavern with Mary and Joe…Mussolini highway/There’s a frankincense tree…” The song ends with the lines, “Ein Panzer Kommander with no hair in place/The crooked battalion drilled holes in the square.” The Prince of Peace is born, peace is shattered by madmen. A marriage dies, an ex-husband pines for “useless battles I’ll never start”—around and around we go. The music is an uncanny personification of the mayhem in the lyrics. Acoustic and electric guitar, bass, and percussion (possibly a loop?) lock into a circular pattern; a horn section made up of members of The Jazz Passengers and The Mingus Big Band (both past Costello collaborators) stab through the mix with bleating, staccato commentary. The charts for 1983’s Punch the Clock, Costello’s earlier experiment with horns, sound cutesy by comparison. I’ve quoted and parsed the lyrics of When I Was Cruel at great length both because I believe they reward such close attention and because, as far as I know, no one has bothered to do it before. But up to this point I’ve neglected to mention that the album sounds incredible. Until When I Was Cruel, Costello had worked almost exclusively with big-name producers: Nick Lowe, country legend Billy Sherrill, Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, British hitmakers Langer & Winstanley, New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint, roots-rock illuminati T-Bone Burnett, go-to '90s soundscaper Mitchell Froom, easy listening legend Burt Bacharach. The trio that joined Costello under the Imposter alias for Cruel have comparatively few credits to their names (the highlight of their resumes is probably some work as assistant engineers for fellow Irishmen Van Morrison and U2). And yet they helped him achieve what may just be his most fully realized sound. As Costello tells it, while on his way to a Lucinda Williams concert in New Jersey, he saw a 15-watt Sears Robuck amplifier in a shop window, and, “it just sort of spoke to me, and said, ‘Buy me, I am the sound of your next record.’” I’m no gearhead, so I’m not sure where the sound of that amplifier fits into the aesthetic of the album, but Costello and his production partners do at times flirt with a tinny quality; you can hear it in the unaccompanied electric guitar that opens the album and the shrill organ that rises to the top of the mix once the band kicks in. Far more striking is the influence of hip-hop and contemporary R&B. In the same interview in which he mentions the Sears Robuck amp, Costello namechecks Timbaland and El-P. “Spooky Girlfriend” was written with Destiny’s Child in mind, an obvious inspiration once it’s pointed out, which, in typical Costello fashion, he was quick to do in other interviews promoting the album. He even thanks Def Jam mogul Lyor Cohen in the liner notes. Costello has earned a reputation as an uncanny mimic; he can write a country weeper that’s a dead ringer for a George Jones classic or a torch song that sounds just right coming from Chet Baker. But on When I Was Cruel, he sublimates his sonic reference points into a style of rock and roll that is uniquely his. Unlike Lou Reed, he knows better than to stake a claim to rap music by spitting bars over a drum machine (RIP, Lou). And unlike Steve Earle, he understands there’s nothing intrinsically fresh about turntable beats and wicky-wicky scratches (love you, Steve!). What jumps out at you on first listen is that the album is thick with bass. Attractions bassist and Costello antagonist Bruce Thomas was known for his melodic approach, often playing intricate figures high up on the neck (this is not an original insight—I seem to recall Costello pointing this out somewhere or other). When I Was Cruel was Costello’s first rock album after the definitive dissolution of The Attractions, and you get the sense he felt liberated; the songs take full advantage of Davey Faragher’s meatier attack. (Tom Waits once described Faragher as “a gorilla of groove.”) Other emblematic touches: the skittering dub effect (phased guitar?) in the intro to “Alibi”; the way the piano and drums in “Tart” go from elegant and spare to thrashing and stark and back again, as if two different versions of the song have been roughly collaged together; the sample that drives the title track, a first for Costello. It’s a single syllable (“un”) taken from an Italian pop record O’Riordan played him, and it melds with a heavy looped beat, whispers of vibraphone, and James Bond guitar to create a languorous atmosphere unlike anything else he’s done. My favorite musical moment on the album, other than “15 Petals”’ feral horns, is a subtle bit of singing right at the very end. The voice we hear in “Radio Silence” belongs to a more tragic variation on the self-involved loser who appears throughout the album. He’s barricaded himself in a talk radio station and is threatening to commit suicide live on air; it’s unclear if he’s a listener driven to the brink by the histrionics the medium is known for—or the host, coming to grips with the toxic influence of his own vocation (“it was so much easier/when I was cruel”). In any case, he has an announcement to make:

“From this distance it’s hard to tell the difference Between a king and a jack And a poet and a hack Maintaining radio silence from now on” Costello is one of the only rockers whose range and power as a singer seem to have grown over the years. Consequently, he’s become a bit of a belter in middle age. (He’s in full cabaret mode in the previous song, “Episode of Blonde.”) But he treats these words—the album’s last—delicately, with a sense of resignation shading into tenderness. The sound coming from the radio is of a man who has dropped his alibis. He is, as Pema Chodron might put it, in a groundless state. Society is too frenzied and vacuous to recognize his worth, and from within his own unfinished life, he can’t see himself either. Is he a king or a commoner, a maker of history, or a victim of it? We invent stories to answer these questions, but when our stories fail us, the only thing left to do is stop telling them. There is a more mundane gloss on the song, as well: If memory serves, Costello performed “45” on The Tonight Show before When I Was Cruel was even announced, and in his couch chat with Jay Leno, he hinted at retirement. When I first played “Radio Silence,” I was convinced it was the last I’d hear from him. I took it as a kind of sequel to 1978’s “Radio Radio,” another plaint in which the industry he’s devoted his life to is nothing but an agent of conformity and mediocrity. Back then, he was a young man, raring to “bite the hand that feeds me”; this time, he was giving up with a sigh. I still suspect this was at least a part of what was on Costello’s mind when he wrote and recorded “Radio Silence.” But it’s also clear to me, clearer now that I’ve written this essay, that the song is connected to a set of concerns that Costello has explored in all his work, never more deeply than on When I Was Cruel. If he did intend the song as a definitive, however veiled, statement about his future, then he ignored the truth in the messy fictions his characters inhabit: We can never know for certain what life has in store for us. Case in point: Costello’s retirement didn’t take. Though he still periodically threatens to give up recording, he’s released seven studio albums since When I Was Cruel. The first of these, North, chronicles the end of his relationship with O’Riordan and—surprise!— the beginning of a new love affair with the jazz chanteuse Diana Krall, who would become his third wife and the mother of his twin sons. He even hosted two seasons of a TV talk show, a turn of events I for one didn’t see coming. Later this year, I’ll get another crack at introducing my son to the artist who has been such a constant presence in my life. Costello and Krall will be playing the parents in Pete the Cat, a new animated show based on Theo’s favorite books. Theo is two now, and he’s already lived through four bomb threats at his daycare center. These are the most troubled and troubling times I’ve known (“here come The Poisoners”). I can only hope the worst has passed before he’s old enough to remember. In the meantime, I find nourishment, if not comfort, in When I Was Cruel’s harsh but lucid vision. I’m approaching middle age and there are dark clouds ahead, but if there’s one thing this album still has to say to me after fifteen years, it’s that there’s no going back.

[body-in-revolt]

The catastrophic beauty of I/II/III/IIII

A conversation with Kris Verdonck and Marianne Van Kerkhoven conducted by Kristof van Baarle in 2013

The dance performance I/II/III/IIII emerged in 2007 in the build-up to Kris Verdonck’s ambitious theatre production END. Concentrating images of violence and horror as well as ideas about control of the individual and of the human body, the performance is, paradoxically enough, regularly described as ‘beautiful’. It consists of four successive scenes, in which one, two, three and lastly four women dancers execute the same choreography in succession. Their movements are rarely exactly identical, however, since their performance is obstructed by the harness they are strapped into and which is attached to a rail above the stage and has them afloat. Dressed in short black dresses with their backs bare, the dancers try to execute their movements as synchronously as possible, including pirouettes at superhuman speed. References to animal carcasses in slaughterhouses, the fascistic urge to control the body and the loss of identity and unicity did not prevent viewers, however, from having an aesthetic experience. The somewhat strange fusion of beauty and cruelty or ‘catastrophe’ recurs regularly in Verdonck’s work, as in the post-apocalyptic setting of END (2008), the fire-rain in RAIN (2005) or the firework display in SHELL (2010). In the following conversation with Marianne Van Kerkhoven, Kris Verdonck explores the roots of this catastrophic beauty.

Kris Verdonck: Curzio Malaparte describes in Kaputt how hundreds of fleeing horses threw themselves into an ice-cold lake close to the Finnish front where they literally froze to death and thereby changed into beautiful ice sculptures. These ‘ice horses’ represent the fusion of great horror and pure beauty. In such dreadful situations – as when there’s an accident, a fight or a murder – a certain energy hangs in the air to which our body reacts with utter fascination. Time moves very slowly at moments like these. It is stretched out. Our sense of perception is heightened and everything becomes very intense. In that sense you could talk of the beauty of war, given the increased intensity of everything. It gives a kind of meaning to life, a kick.

Heiner Müller’s view that if you just look at something long enough it will become revolutionary ties in with this position. For me this has to do with the act of isolating objects. If you isolate something, if you cut it off from its environment and then observe it and dissect it, it becomes beautiful in itself because it seems purer. We didn’t reflect on the notion of beauty when creating I/II/III/IIII, but we certainly went looking for this isolation, turning the spotlight on a single element and trying to enlarge it. It seems as though aggressiveness and horror, when they are slowed down as in a slow motion, automatically become beautiful. With a super slow camera, for instance, you can’t really do anything ugly. You can film a tomato, say, being pierced by a bullet, and you will get wonderful footage. These are genuine movements, but enlarged. We used this process for MOUSE, one of the installations in K, a Society (2010).

In his Critique of Judgement, Kant distinguishes between the categories of beauty and the sublime as experiences of understanding, on the one hand, and overwhelming, on the other. It seems as though our idea of beauty has shifted in the direction of the sublime or towards a combination of the intensity of the sublime with the simplicity of the beautiful.

Kris Verdonck: Like purity, beauty is not an easy concept to define. It is equally subjective and cultural and determined in time. Douwe Draaisma claims that when they had reached the end of their lives, people in the Middle Ages longed for the city and not at all for the country. Today we imagine open fields when we think of our life’s end. So there has been a profound change. The average person in the Middle Ages associated the sublime moment of death with the cultural, civilised city. Perhaps there was so much everyday chaos in the Middle Ages and so many events taking place that a civilised, gentle beauty was experienced as exceptional and intense. It was probably their event, their performative moment. Our experience today is completely different. If you pursue this logic, it is a fact that our lives are now so delicate, so comfortable and so balanced – at least here in Belgium – that we have to go out and seek some kind of misfortune for something to occur and then see it as a thing of beauty.

Perhaps the opposite idea of beauty is kitsch. For me the definition of kitsch is still the combination of two things that have nothing to do with one another, like a Mickey Mouse watch or alarm clock. That combination will trigger – for some people at least – an almost immediate ugliness. The moment you start taking things apart you arrive back at a kind of beauty. A drawing of Mickey Mouse alone, with its uniform surfaces, primary colours and the single line that makes up the rest of Mickey’s snout – there’s purity in all that. The philosopher Jean Paul Van Bendegem takes a mathematical approach to definitions of beauty and in doing so he arrives at the unending beauty of the circle as a pure form. The aesthetic experience which he and other mathematicians have when faced with some scientific formulas is in the same vein. You get a sort of purity from a couple of letters behind which lies a wealth of meanings. And that is something you could also see in art, the fact that great complexity lies beneath pure forms or movements.

 Marianne Van Kerkhoven: When I try to reflect on the nature of beauty, I always arrive at the fact that I don’t know what it is. In classicism it has to do with harmony, which we also evoked in relation to I/II/III/IIII. To that one should add the philosophical significance of the numbers. There is the difference between one and two, where two stood for duality, three was the most difficult number and four restored balance and symmetry. These harmonic relations have long played a role in art and are still important to this very day. In my opinion, classicism was dealt a serious blow in the twentieth century and since then it has been very difficult to say what beauty is. The closeness of our ideal of beauty and horror indicates that the intensity of the experience is in fact what matters. As has often been said, extremes meet. Genius and madness are close bedfellows. There is a border somewhere you don’t see and out of that there emerges an experience and this sense of fascination. The sudden realisation that the dancers come together synchronously and then evolve further was a fascination we saw in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich, as well as in I/II/III/IIII.

Kris Verdonck: The unexpected beauty that surfaced in I/II/III/IIII notably has to do with the finishing and the craftsmanship. Craftsmanship also means simplifying and purity, dealing with each element separately and wanting to do so well. Away from any form of nonchalance, I try to make every medium in the theatre functional, terribly pure. Besides the horror of the fascistic discipline, this led, in I/II/III/IIII, to the emergence of another dynamic, one which rather scared me. The Leni Riefenstahl moment – the second when two, three or four bodies are momentarily synchronous – is something we as people find wonderful. A shiver runs through the audience when two figures are neatly synchronous. At times when there was chaos in the movements, you also often had the feeling that people were waiting for them to coincide again. That too was a moment of beauty and purity, but I had never thought of that beforehand.

The slow pace of the machine in which the dancers move in I/II/III/IIII probably has something to do with it. The machine’s structure meant we couldn’t make any rapid movements, so everything fit into an extended super slow motion. We used all the elements we could to increase its speed, but we were really limited, so time itself was slowed down. Pirouettes and other aerial moments were possible, but only in a restricted manner. As always, the technology controlled us. As a result, we tried to deal with it and not force anything, but to let ourselves be forced by the machine. Just like when you let the paint decide how the colour will look or how a block of marble defines the fragile parts of the material in which you can sculpt a hand. Once you start adding and forcing, then you start heading in the direction of kitsch because you are fixing things and so you’re moving away from the simple design.

Because from the start I/II/III/IIII was a lot more about dance, movement, bodies and people than about the machines, one is more inclined to talk about it in terms of beauty. We wanted to evoke the extreme influence of machines on the body but we hid 70% of the machine because I absolutely wanted it to be about the bodies and not the rest. If we had shown the rest, then so many other elements would pop up, like technicians, the machines, the construction. The audience’s attention would never be on the detailed movements of the dancers, but on the men behind the screen controlling the machine. It would be possible, in a sense, to execute the whole performance the other way around, where all you would get to see is three men guiding the dancers, with only a suggestion of what they are doing.

 Marianne Van Kerkhoven: The men’s purely functional movements would have distracted the audience from the desired aesthetic images of the women and that didn’t fit in the intention of I/II/III/IIII. The first part of a later project, TALK (2011), consists of the image of two plasterers working on a wall. That is all the audience gets to see at that moment: a series of purely functional movements in a work process.

 Specific forms and technical interventions such as slowing-down, focus, amplification and simplicity through craftsmanship recur regularly in your work. But let’s return for a moment to Malaparte’s ‘ice horses’ and their inherent beauty. How do you relate such violence at the level of content to an aesthetic experience?

 Kris Verdonck: We can hardly deny that 9/11 contained an aesthetic dimension. At moments like that you’re struck by a kind of disbelief, something larger than life, whereby a kind of ‘god-like feeling’ is not far off, since you could never imagine this, New York as a city with all its connotations of action, and then suddenly an accident. In all those straight lines you suddenly get something organic, and all you can do is stand still. This is again an extreme form of violence, and it can only leave an impression on us – for instance, the purity of the movements of the fleeing people.

 Marianne Van Kerkhoven: This also reminds me of what W. G. Sebald said about the bombing of Hamburg during the Second World War. Photographs of children’s corpses and other horrific things circulated at the time under the counter, a bit like pornography later. It’s not unlike when an accident happens and people look on – it’s that morbid curiosity. It has to do with the impact of these images, the experience they bring about. The extremes of horror lie in the twentieth century: Auschwitz on the one hand, and Hiroshima on the other – the atomic bomb, and the camps. Adorno said that poetry could no longer be written after Auschwitz, but there were also people who, like Imre Kertész, wrote out of the camps and who argued that art was the only way to talk about such things. I believe that that is precisely why art is able to deal with such contradictions and why it can bring them close together.

Kris Verdonck: If an image doesn’t contain enough violence, then it becomes an insipid, soft, quiet picture. In the Bible it is said: ‘So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth’ (Revelation 3:16). It is as though aggression and horror had to underlie images. It’s not that you have to see it at the first reading, but the greater the horror, the greater the chance of it being a thing of beauty, an aesthetic experience. In I/II/III/IIII, we had the almost fascistic idea of letting those perfect beautiful bodies hang upside down for too long and to repeat this so often that their beauty would vanish. We weren’t aiming for a dramatic tension; we only wanted to show really terrible things. I try to extract the humanity from the bodies. At a certain point we will experience that as beautiful but in fact that’s somewhat problematic. I find it striking that horror and beauty apparently need each other. It probably also has to do with the accompanying intensity.

How did you create this intensity in I/II/III/IIII? How can you turn each performance into an experience?

 Kris Verdonck: All the conditions were in place for this to happen in I/II/III/IIII; we only had to struggle against the chaos inherent in the machine. The machine this time wasn’t the one doing the calculations, the one working in a straight line. As the maker our only concern was with this struggle and with showing this struggle so as to arrive at a disciplined individual.

 Marianne Van Kerkhoven: I remember that when you made the first drawings and there was still the idea that there should be a lot more movement, I thought that if we wanted disruptions, we had to introduce them ourselves. But the reverse happened: we had to struggle to retain order. There was nothing we could do against the machine. The girls’ extraordinary command of their muscles and bodies helped steer it a bit, but once they were suspended in the air and started spinning, there was nothing they could do.

 Kris Verdonck: You find yourself in a kind of micro-macro relationship where the slightest hip movement is immediately amplified. It functions like a magnifying glass and that brings us back to isolation and concentration. The event is probably in the small misfortunes we evoked earlier and in the little mistakes, since they shatter our expectations.

 Marianne Van Kerkhoven: Ever since the tremendous rise in scope and impact of the media – especially of television – our sensitivity and attention for the like in mankind has been sharpened. The apparently endless possibilities in the reproduction of material have fundamentally changed our perception. Walter Benjamin already evoked this in his 1936 essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. That also has an impact on the way the theatre audience watches a performance. That’s what amazes me when I watch Michael Haneke’s ‘Amour’, that at a certain point things happen which you wouldn’t expect. And that makes it a lot more realistic, brings it closer to the event.

 Kris Verdonck: It was also often said about END that it was an aesthetic experience. The difference with many other artists is that here as elsewhere, not a single image was fixed in advance. END was entirely random. This is not to say that the snow didn’t have to fall evenly, or that footage of the clouds didn’t have to be shot properly and had to move together with the pulling of one of the performers’ cable, or that superfluous actions weren’t filtered out. In itself each action was finished off with craftsmanship and when we then brought everything together in the performance, we gave free rein to the actions. This led to the emergence of fortuitous aesthetic experiences, but there were days when this was less the case. Some people came to see the show twice and twice saw a different performance, a different story. I never start out from an image, but from a system, an action, a state of being that has to be precisely defined. Everyone involved in the project has to understand this system, whether performers, lighting or sound technicians, or the technical team. I keep repeating the same story to everyone ad nauseam. If you let the ensuing result come together, then it no longer matters what someone does on stage, since it occurs within the same system. It becomes a lot more exciting and interesting than just setting the machine in motion and hoping not to disappoint people. The moment you start forcing things is the moment you lose the battle.

Marianne Van Kerkhoven: As an artist you have to take the decision to let go of certain things and to give yourself that freedom. The counterpart to that is the brilliant artist who has thought it all through in his or her head and tries to stage it like that. If that’s how you work, then it’s a lot easier to aim for a beauty based on order and symmetry than when you start out from the chaos which reality offers. The work is much richer in the latter case since you receive the input of all these people’s imagination.

Kris Verdonck: It’s a bit like the art of organising a party. There are things you need to plan and things you need to let go, things that have to be really good and things that can develop more freely, in the hope that something fortuitous will happen. Whether it’s fortunate or unfortunate doesn’t matter all that much. As long as something happens, that has to do with accident, with terror, with horror.

Marianne Van Kerkhoven: Beauty and misfortune are inseparable from one another. You can walk on the edge and you can fall or not fall. But you have to walk close enough to the edge otherwise it’s not exciting. We ultimately always come back to Kleist. In ‘On the Marionette Theatre’ he tells the story of a young man who strikes a pose which by chance looks like a Greek statue showing a seated fellow trying to remove a thorn or splinter from his foot. When he tries to repeat the same pose, he gets frustrated because it’s impossible for him to consciously execute the same movement again.

 Kris Verdonck: Not getting frustrated about not forcing the event is terribly important to me. You have to resign yourself to it in fact, but the problem with theatre is that you have to do so night after night. So it’s about what elements you have to define, which parameters you have to keep under your control and which ones you can let go of, in the hope that that Kleistian beauty will take place.

  If beauty is not your objective but often surfaces thanks to craftsmanship and the moment, do you not then run the risk that the audience’s attention will be too distracted from the underlying theme?

Kris Verdonck: That is ultimately always a struggle in my work, but the beauty emerges on its own while we never discuss it. In RAIN, together with MAN, PATENT HUMAN ENERGY, DUET and BOX, part of the installation and performance circuit II (2005), we created an installation in which it literally rained fire. This dreadful image from the Apocalypse fascinated the audience and everyone thought that this image was beautiful, although a cruel story underlies it. What then are we to do? Mark Rothko could never understand why everyone always talked of beauty in relation to his work, when for him it contained so much horror and aggression; he described it as ‘serenity about to explode’. I think that the aesthetic experience can sometimes be problematic since it can cover up things. Beauty can conceal the story.

In I/II/III/IIII, END and other projects, beauty sometimes comes to the surface despite what I do or try to tell and that can interfere with the narration. When we first saw the separate sections in II together, Marianne said, and I quote: ‘We have a problem. It’s much too beautiful’. By then it was already too late to do anything about it. That’s why I’m now actually quite happy that, with M, a Reflection (2012), a performance with texts by Heiner Müller in which Johan Leysen takes on his virtual double, we didn’t have an experience of beauty. That was almost a relief. So I do worry about that, about the fact that the craftsmanship and finishing conceal certain things which you then can’t tell.

 Marianne Van Kerkhoven: But isn’t it also the case that we often use the word ‘beauty’ to express something for which we have no words? Something that surprises us, like a kick or a profound experience, for instance, we call ‘genuine’. When our search for genuineness gives us that intensity, we find that beautiful. The problem is that we often don’t know whether something is genuine or not.

  Source: S. Van Laere & V. Wolters (eds.), Margarita Production // Micro, Contact, Strings & Things, 2013, p.106 - 113

Photo: Alwin Poiana

[aion-rsa]

Catching Up with Chip Zdarsky, From Sex Criminals to Spider-Man

Good news, Brimpers: “Sex Criminals” is back on comic book stands today, after an absence of nearly 10 months. The beloved sci-fi sex comedy has been off Image Comics’ schedule as series creators Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky have gotten multiple issues completed, and the book’s fourth arc is slated to ship on a monthly basis.

But that’s not all Chip Zdarsky has going on in an especially busy week for the writer/artist. Since “Sex Criminals” has been away from stands, his profile as a comic book writer has grown, and today also sees the release of two new Marvel issues written by Zdarsky: “Star-Lord” #3, illustrated by Kris Anka; plus “Doctor Strange #1.MU,” a one-shot illustrated by Julián López and teaming Doctor Strange and classic Ditko/Lee monster Googam, in a tie-in to the ongoing “Monsters Unleashed” event.

And, as a tantalizing prelude to his big Wednesday, Marvel announced this past Tuesday that Zdarsky is writing “Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man,” a new ongoing Spidey series launching in June and set in New York City (as opposed to the globetrotting of “the current “Amazing Spider-Man” book), with art from veteran comics superstar Adam Kubert and a focus on Peter’s supporting cast.

CBR talked to Zdarsky about all of the above, including why “Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man” is “personal in a different way” than “Amazing,” unleashing “Sex Criminals” back into the world, the “ludicrous pairing” of Doctor Strange and Googam and the inherent conflict between Star-Lord and Daredevil.

“Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man” #1 cover by Adam Kubert.

CBR: Chip! News broke on Tuesday that you’re writing “Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man” which is obviously a pretty big deal. I’m sure we’ll talk about that book more in depth as it gets closer to release, but what are you hoping to bring to the character that maybe hasn’t been seen in recent months? (Other than, apparently, senior citizens.)

Chip Zdarsky: I don’t think I’ll be bringing anything to Spider-Man as a character that hasn’t been seen lately in “Amazing,” it’s just contextual stuff, really. Dan [Slott]’s telling a big, international story with Peter achieving his potential, but it’s still classic Spidey at the heart! In fact, I’d say it just reinforces what makes the character tick by putting him in new environments and situations.

With “Spectacular,” we’re narrowing things a bit and focusing on Spidey in New York. So it’s personal in a different way than “Amazing,” as it’s about Spidey slightly nostalgic for when his life didn’t involve board meetings and jet-setting. With great power comes great responsibility, and his power’s never been greater, but the increased responsibility can be… look, Obama went grey real quick, y’know? In a lot of ways this series is about recognizing the need to share that great responsibility. Also there are jokes.

But that’s not till June — this week, “Sex Criminals” returned for the first time in nearly a year. I don’t want to say the absence of the book is the reason the last 10 months or so went down the way it did, but the timing is conspicuous. How does it feel to have the series back on stands, and be back on a monthly schedule?

Oh god, it feels so good. I get the idea behind us taking time off to get issues in the can, but being off the stands for that long just gutted Matt and I. Nothing kills your work momentum on a book quite like no one seeing it. Because I’m a stupid control freak doing pencils, inks, colors, letters and design, it means we’re a bimonthly book in a monthly world, and there’s no good solution for that. Having issues 16-20 out back-to-back is going to be great. Especially with where the series is headed. Gasp!

“Sex Criminals” #16 starts with a fun and rather thorough recap of the series thus far. It can be a little tricky for any series to gain new readers mid-stream, so how much of a priority was it to y’all to make this issue as welcoming as possible?

Ha! Yeah, Matt really wanted to do a detailed old-school recap, so we added eight pages to the book! I don’t expect to necessarily gain a lot of new readers with issue #16, though this issue does facilitate that. What we really wanted was to give some help to the returning readers. The issue itself beyond the recaps eases people back into the world with a focus on Jon and Suzie, setting up some big things to come. Our cast is growing, but those two are the heart of it all. Also there are jokes.

“Sex Criminals” #16 cover by Chip Zdarsky

The first issue of “Sex Criminals” since April also means the first time people will have seen new interior art from you since then. As your writing career continues to grow (you’re writing Spider-Man, for goodness sakes), how tricky has it been to balance your time between writing and drawing? You see a lot of creators who do both eventually move to writing full-time — how important is it to you to keep active as an artist, even beyond “Sex Criminals” (variant covers and such), as your writer profile rises?

The goal is always to draw a page a day, and then switch over to writing in the afternoon/evening. I’m not gonna lie, it’s tricky, but I have a certain amount of physical and mental bandwidth during the day for drawing, and so it’s nice to be able to switch back and forth.

And covers are just fun! Doing those are my version of “leisure time,” really. I was out with friends the other night and everyone was talking about their hobbies, their collections, stuff like that. And I had nothing. And then I realized that my hobby is doing comic covers. Is that sad? Am I sad? You can be honest.

“Doctor Strange #1.MU” cover by Chip Zdarsky

Speaking of writing — you wrote a “Doctor Strange” one-shot as part of “Monsters Unleashed,” also out this week. How much fun was it not only writing a doctor who is strange, but also Googam, in what had to be one of that character’s most substantial appearances?

Oh my god it was a crazy amount of fun. Even though Googam and Doctor Strange is a ludicrous pairing, this is weirdly my most serious issue to date, but with one panel that still makes me laugh.

I love what Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo have been doing on the main “Strange” book and it was great to be able to use this lesser-powered version of the character, scrambling to survive. And the art! You’ll be seeing a lot from Julián López in the near future. He’s insanely talented! I want him to draw my life.

“Star-Lord” #3 cover by Kris Anka.

“Star-Lord” #3 is also out this week! It’s a lot of fun to see Star-Lord and Daredevil interacting, as Daredevil is effectively “the” street-level hero and Star-Lord is… Star-Lord. What inspired putting the two together?

Well, first of all, if Star-Lord isn’t in space, he’s really a “street-level hero,” which is something else he struggles with in this arc as he gets used to Earth again. And he’s frustrated by some of the Earth things he’s forgotten about, like basic laws. So it just made sense to have Marvel’s resident District Attorney give him some gentle reminders of how things go here. And they fight! I know what you’re thinking: Superheroes? Fighting each other?? It seems ludicrous, but here we are!

Also, Kris Anka is a beefcake god.

“Sex Criminals” #16, “Doctor Strange #1.MU” and “Star-Lord” #3 are on sale now. “Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man” is scheduled to launch in June.

The post Catching Up with Chip Zdarsky, From Sex Criminals to Spider-Man appeared first on CBR.com.

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