Irredeemable

So i finally read the Mark Waid comic where he destroys Singapore.

But don't you think Plutonian looks a tad bit like Miracleman?

There's a spin-off, Incorruptible.

I got Waid to autograph my copy of the Legendary trade at SWF which he was embarrassed? to do and no one seemed to know about the book.

New Comics

I can't believe this.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/showbiz/43278-men-in-white-in-a-lighter-graphic-format

Get this Little Busters doujin instead.

http://www.collateralds.com/2009/05/04/project-announcement-little-busters/

David Levine's American Presidents

Definitely one of the best buys of this year although it came out last year.

But my favourite is not in there. It's here:

http://www.nybooks.com/gallery/866

The Strange Deaths of Batman (2009)

Many years ago, I read one installment of 'Where Were You On The Night Batman Was Killed?' (serialized in Batman #291-294, 1977) The cover was all the arch-villains standing over the grave of Batman. There was a sense of finality looking at the cover. Of course, Batman did not die.

Now I can read the conclusion to this story.

Pictures That [tick]

Talking about Dave McKean, Dark Horse has just reissued the above in softcover. A limited hardcover edition was published by Allen Spiegel Fine Arts and Hourglass in 2001, which I might have somewhere in the archives.

Go get.

Bob Dylan in Comics

Just got this from Kino.

http://flavorwire.com/50269/bob-dylan-revisited

The 'songs' by Dave McKean and Lorenzo Mattotti are great.

In the meantime, get the new Dylan X'mas album. Don't be a scrooge...

p/s: 2 others to get - Forever Young, a children's book adaptation of the Dylan anthem by Paul Rogers and also Johnny Cash: I See A Darkness by Reinhard Kleist.

Azumanga Daioh by Kiyohiko Azuma

Picked it up at Prologue. Def inspired Loti.

Sembawang RIP

Reported a few weeks back that Sembawang Music Centre has closed shop. I remember travelling all the way to Sembawang Shopping Centre in the late 1980s to check out the shop. That was the original before they (over) expanded all over the island. Sembawang had picked up the reputation of selling CDs at a good price because they parallel imported their stuff, even cheaper than the local labels which were charging $30 per CD. Sembawang was instrumental in bringing CD prices down in Singapore. They pre-dated Gramaphone.

The CD I bought - Screaming Trees Anthology: SST Years 1985-1989.

Those were the days when CDs came in long boxes.

Globalisation (Tower Records) has done in Sing Records, Song Ching, Disc Dynamics (Thomson Plaza), and other mom-and-pop shops. Sembawang, Gramaphone innovated and expanded to seize the market share. The survival of the fittest. But globalisation itself was done in. Tower closed down and HMV downsized.

When Sembawang SC revamped last year, Sembawang didn't even make a comeback to their place of origins. It was a sign.

Last men standing: Gramaphone (which has grown and shrunk and now stabilized), That CD Shop. There's still CD Rama, but is Music Junction still around? There is still a shell of Valentine Music Centre somewhere in Selegie Centre. And the Attic at Novena.

Three cheers for Roxy then. And Memphasis Music in the same building at Excelsior SC. (formerly Thomson Plaza and a branch at Ikea Alexandra) Da Da at Funan started selling VCDs and DVDs and sold the business some years ago.

We have not seen the last of the fallout.

The Revelator

There's just so much to learn. One of my fave LPs of all time is Gillian Welch's The Revelator.

Surfing and found a reference to Blind Willie Johnson's John The Revelator. Gillian took her Revelator from there.

To really write about western music, you need to know the Bible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPmacnYVb6A&feature=related

To know the blues, you need to know the Bible.

Life long learning.

p/s: go get Nick Cave's new album with Warren Ellis - White Lunar.

Detective Comics

The best mainstream comic book right now. This has possibly the most innovative page layouts I've seen in a superhero comic for a long time. It's amazing how far JH Williams III has come since Promethea. Go to Google Images and check it out.

Start with Detective #854.

New book out - Freedom Love Forever

Check it out.

http://kenfoo.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/freedom-love-forever/

www.waylandsmithprojects.com

There is some sick shit here:

http://www.kenfoo.com/cuts/Measure/measure.htm

and the childhood years:

http://www.kenfoo.com/

Mr A

Recent events have reminded me of Good Omens and its protagonist. Mr A have been appearing in the comic books. He's the hero in Garth Ennis' Wormwood and looks like he will save the day as well in Ghost Riders: Heaven's On Fire. The angels are the bad guys in this story arc.

A far cry from the 70s when Tony Isabella's (creator of DC's Black Lightning) fought with Jim Shooter over a Ghost Rider storyline he wrote in the late 70s.

http://www.worldfamouscomics.com/tony/back20050927.shtml

More details here:

http://www.popthought.com/display_column.asp?DAID=65

This event was mentioned too in Brian Cronin's Was Superman A Spy?

Since we're on the topic of biblical tales, do get Robert Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated, which makes a great companion piece to Basil Wolverton's Agony and Ecstasy and The Wolverton Bible.

Happy Sunday.

Bestselling Comics at Kino - Oct 09

1. NARUTO VOLUME 46
by MASASHI KISHIMOTO

2. VAMPIRE KNIGHT VOLUME 10
by MATSURI HINO

3. JACK OF FABLES VOLUME 6
by BILL WILLINGHAM

4. UMBRELLA ACADEMY VOLUME 2
by GERARD WAY, GABRIEL BA

5. FABLES VOLUME 12: THE DARK AGES
by BILL WILLINGHAM

6. ULTIMATUM PREMIERE
by JEPH LOEB, DAVID FINCH

7. SKIP BEAT! VOLUME 19
by YOSHIKI NAKAMURA

8. NARUTO VOLUME 45
by MASASHI KISHIMOTO

9. FULL METAL ALCHEMIST VOLUME 21
by HIROMU ARAKAWA

10. FINAL CRISIS
by GRANT MORRISON

Got a beer for Gaiman

...during his 3 hour long signing at the Arts House on Saturday, but found out he's not a beer guy. (actually it was the pink barracuda who bought that round of Archipelago)

Which reminds me of my beer story when I first met Eddie Campbell in Singapore some years ago. He was in transit and I brought him to the Zion Road market for beer and makan. The drink seller came by with a bottle of Tiger (Eddie wanted to try that) and two glasses filled with ice. That threw Eddie into a fit.

"They're diluting the beer! That's against the law!"

I explained to Eddie that's how we drink beer in Singapore. Our beer gets warm very fast, especially if we're drinking outdoors. Eddie said that you get arrested for diluting beer in the UK. We both learned something new that night.

So what does this got to do with Gaiman? Sometime later, Eddie alerted me about "Green Lantern/Superman: Legend of the Green Flame", an old Gaiman script for DC Comics that finally got drawn and published in 2000. Eddie drew the framing sequence for the story involving a very drunken Blackhawk.

Amanda Palmer drank the beer instead. Yam seng.