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a few points before the site kicks back into full swing for the new year:
- The images/videos/quotes/linkdump aspect of this blog is going to be moved here for the conceivable future (or at least until I decide that it was a terrible idea). The title is apparently what Quentin Tarantino shouted at Bruce Willis’ agent when he was trying to get him for Pulp Fiction, at least as apocryphally told by Edgar Wright. That’s the kind of thing I find funny. Yes, I am that stupid. Supervillain is just writing and comics work from now on, everything else is going there or on twitter. 2011, the year I caved to tumblr. Bound to happen eventually, I guess.
- The Factual Opinion’s music list for the year is up in its entirety, and was the most fun I had last year. Our individual pieces are here: Tucker -6, 7, 11, 15, 18, 19, 23, 27, 29, 30, Marty – 1, 3, 9, 10, 12, 13, 17, 22, 25, 28, Me – 2, 4, 5, 8, 14, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24, 26.
-Also: I decided to skip the end-of-the-year nonsense this year for supervillain. Because A) the comics I really would like to write about either deserve a lot more effort than to be thrown on a list or have been written about so damn well there would be no point in throwing my two cents in. B) My 2010 was kind of physically and mentally harrowing and I don’t want to spend a lot of time writing about it. I was sick or hurt for more of the year than when I wasn’t, and outside of that I wasn’t having the best time. 2010 was bad shit, worse than it’s ever been. There were some great moments too, but I don’t want to sit here and brag about things that you probably don’t care about. So let’s just skip it. 2010 is over, that’s all that counts.
-The mindblowing Arzak: L’Arpenteur (this is the best work of Moebius’ life and he’s what? 70 years old?) and the fucking perfect King City were my comics of the year**, Carlos was the movie. But you knew I’d say that. Seeing Red Cliff on a big screen was a great, too. Turns out John Woo still has it, and is capable of making a movie that’s as gorgeously violent, nakedly emotional, and awkwardly homoerotic as he was in his prime, just as long as he doesn’t make it English. Red Cliff is the truth. Also the truth: Mystery Team.
-I wrote a few things I’m proud of – the music stuff for the Factual, the cinematic comics piece (which is maybe the best thing I’ve ever written), the thing on Scanners in the middle of the movies list, the Parable piece, the things I wrote for Sequart’s SHOT IN THE FACE book (Edited by Chad Nevett!) coming out way into next year (which I am really excited about), the Frank Miller pieces I wrote for David Brothers’ Booze, Broads, and Bullets week, the Casanova piece I wrote for the Mindless crew, the piece I wrote for Escape from Suicide Wolf Forest, and collaborating with Jog and Seneca. The best work I did this year I did collaborating in some way with other people and that’s definitely going to continue for the foreseeable future (some of it real soon, hopefully).
- I finally got my first comic pages out into the world this year, and I celebrated five years writing about comics. I’m happy and proud about both, but I’ve got to be honest and say that both of them are a little bittersweet and disappointing. Five years in, I think my writing is just getting to a place where it’s ready for public consumption. I understand that even at my most prolific, I’m never going to be able to crank out stuff daily while I’m still in school and trying to do work outside of blogging. The amount I wrote in 2010 dwarfs what I wrote in 2009, even if a lot of that was stuff that no one saw, but I keep thinking that if I was in a better position (or in better health, or less busy with school, or at least getting paid for christ’s sake, etc), I’d be getting so much more done than I have been. As for the FD pages, I was kind of expecting it to have the non-arrival it did. I’m realistic enough to know that it’s the work of two guys starting out and no one wants to read ten pages by people they don’t care about, but I hope it’s clear to the people who did read it, that we aren’t dicking around. Jared and I have a lot more we’d like to work on in the coming year, but each of us have issues we need to work through before that happens.
- Enough about my shit – please go see what my crew is doing. Brothers and Seneca were both interviewed by Tom Spurgeon for his year-end interview series at the Comics Reporter, and their interviews show how smart and hardworking these guys are. While you’re at it look at Spurgeon’s latest interview with Joe Casey. Their conversations always seem to be more in-depth and honest than usual, they have a history and what seems like a real rapport beyond Casey promoting something or Spurgeon using the interview as an example to talk about a segment of the year in comics. Always a great read. I have to congratulate Seneca on one year, you can tell he really lives what he writes, and he singlehandedly scared me into working harder than I was before reading him. The best year-end work for my money were Tucker’s list and Abhay’s new years piece. The two of them, still the best doing it.
- 2011 is the year I’m making no predictions and setting no goals. I’m just going to work harder than I did last year, there’s no way that could be a bad thing. Anything else is wishful thinking or lying to myself, so that’s the plan – get more done, and what I get done has to be better. Fuck 2010.
also please check out David Wolkin’s year-end piece which went up right up after I posted this http://wolkin.com/2011/01/1524/a-year-end-thing/
Sean, currently listening to the Splash Page podcast that you did at Christmas, and thought I’d talk a bit about Jamie Hewlett.
Meet The Feebles ran for a year in the now defunct British style magazine “The Face.” If you look on eBay, you should be able to find the issues. Unfortunately, I haven’t a clue as to when it ran, which may be a bit problematical.
Ironically enough, considering that the first part started with Hewlett pitching the idea behind the strip to the BBC, the BBC actually commissioned a live action pilot called Phoo Action. It was, unfortunately, not very good (as with Tank Girl, any attempt at a live action adaptation of any of Hewlett’s work is doomed because much of the charm is in the art. It’s the reason why the Gorillas work, in my opinion), and scenes can be found at http://www.ovguide.com/tv/phoo_action.htm. The one thing it got right was the casting: Whiey Action was played by Jamie Winstone, daughter of Ray “Sexy Beast” Winstone. It was, while keeping up arcane links to pop culture, written by the co writer/co star of Spaced, Jessica Stevenson. Finally, to overload the arcane connectivity, the pilot that got made into a series instead of Phoo Action was Being Human.
And while checking out little seen Hewlett work, he also drew a promotional comic for Pulp’s Common People single, which may also be available on eBay: I have a copy, and it’s a thing of beauty. Scans can be found at http://www.pulpwiki.net/Pulp/CommonPeopleComic.
Hope I haven’t said anything you already knew, nor bored you with my knowledge of British pop culture– an advantage I have over you as I am British, so Hewlett’s work is easier to come by. I even had a copy of his and Philip Bond’s AtomTan back in the day, but long ago mislaid it– needless to say, Hewlett’s early work was heavily indebted to Brendan McCarthy. In a final round of esoteric connections and coincidences, the third collaborator to Milligan and McCarthy’s Stange Days was an artist called Brett Ewins, who went on to found the early 90′s comic Deadline, home to none other than Tank Girl.
It’s a small world.
Yeah, I actually knew all of that. Sorry – the reason I kept spacing on things in that podcast was because we recorded it at 3 in the morning on xmas eve after I hadn’t slept for a week. Thx anyway!