Seven Days in May | Week of 3 July 2022

What I've Been Listening To

I'm still listening to the same Ocean Blue album from last week, but this week I started a new Echo and the Bunnymen album: Reverberation. It was a surprise.

As much as I love Echo from younger days, I wasn't familiar with their career after around 1987, including that lead singer Ian McCulloch left the band for several years. While he was out, the remaining members recorded Reverberation with new singer Noel Burke. Burke's voice is intentionally different from McCulloch's, so it caught me off guard when I started the album, but he has a cool, gothic quality of his own. And it still has Will Sergeant on guitar, so there's some continuity there. 

I like the album and would have listened to more from the group; it's just jarring that they called themselves Echo and the Bunnymen. I get why from a marketing point of view; but it raised questions for me about when is it okay for a band to retain its name after a lineup change. Is the band a collection of specific, particular individuals? Or is it like a corporation that keeps going under its legal name regardless of who's in it? Are some members more exchangeable than others? 

What I've Been Reading

I made progress on the couple of novels I'm currently reading, but the only book I actually finished this week was Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard, Volume 1. After David Petersen finished his Mouse Guard saga (or the first couple of volumes in the trilogy anyway; I forget the exact timing), he brought together some of his favorite cartoonists for an anthology of stories set in the Mouse Guard world. 

Petersen wrote and drew a framing sequence about a storytelling contest in a tavern, which is an effective, simple frame to put these stories in. I like how it gets around the question of whether or not the stories are canonical since the rules of the contest are that each story has to contain some element of falsehood as well as an element of truth. Like with any anthology, I didn't love each story equally, but I love how curated the collection feels. Petersen clearly invited artists whom he liked and respected and several of them are favorites of mine, too: people like Mark Smylie, Guy Davis, Ted Naifeh, Jeremy Bastian, to name just a few.

What I've Been Watching

The second season of Rutherford Falls dropped all at once, but it was only eight episodes and I binged through them in a couple of days. The first season came out around the same time as Reservation Dogs, another comedy show focusing on American Indian characters. It was impossible not to compare them and I loved Reservation Dogs while enjoying Rutherford Falls a bit less. 

Reservation Dogs is about life on the reservation as seen through the eyes of a group of teenaged friends who've been through a recent tragedy. It's hilarious, but also eye-opening and heart-breaking. The first season of Rutherford Falls tells its story mostly from the perspective of its white lead character, Nathan Rutherford, played by Ed Helms. It's still trying to do the honorable work of giving its audience insight to the lives of American Indian characters, but it's Nathan who's holding the spotlight on these lives and the issues important to them. It's a well-meaning show, but Reservation Dogs is better (and funnier).

Rutherford Falls Season 2 makes a couple of needed adjustments, starting with decentralizing Nathan himself. It does this very intentionally and organically, which is great. Nathan learned some things in Season 1 that put him into listening mode rather than always trying to make himself understood. I love that growth as much as I love that it gives some of the other characters a chance to do more. 

Most of the time that works. I love non-binary character Bobbie Yang who gets a major plot arc this season. I also feel like we get to know Michael Greyeyes' Terry Thomas better this season. He went from being a nicely layered villain (or at least antagonist) in the first season to being just a plain ol' complex character in the second. Unfortunately, the one character that's not working for me is the other lead (besides Nathan), Reagan Wells. I enjoyed her in the first season when she was a history nerd trying unsuccessfully to get a cultural center going, but this season she's achieved most of her goals and is annoyingly perfect. She needs some new flaws to make her fun and interesting again.

I'm enjoying the show and think it's headed in the right direction, but I'm really looking forward to the second season of Reservation Dogs starting next month even more.

I finished Obi-Wan Kenobi and didn't love it. I actually don't have a lot to say about it. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that I enjoyed seeing some familiar characters and the action was all pretty good. But the story was unnecessarily convoluted. Characters seemed to be making decisions not because they were smart or even made sense, but based on what surprise revelations or other cool moments they would eventually lead to.

What I've Been Recording

Planetary Union Network took the week off for US Independence Day, so we'll be having a double episode next week to catch up. The only other podcast I was on this week was an After Dinner Lounge episode of After Lunch. This time, highlights of the rambling conversation included Henry David Thoreau's Walden, the history of the Nerd Lunch podcast, Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, and Paper Girls by Brian K Vaughan and Cliff Chiang.

What I've Been Thinking About

Our Fourth of July holiday was pretty low key this year. My parents and one of my brothers came over and we grilled some steaks, but that was pretty much it. I've never been super celebratory about the Fourth, but was feeling it even less than usual this year. I love the ideas that my country was founded on, but we've never figured out how to make them reality and we still have so much work to do. I'm optimistic that we can do it. It's just that this year's anniversary came so very closely after some disappointing setbacks.

Elsewhere... Best Comics of 2010

Hm. I should've done this yesterday to follow up the movies posts, but bucking years of tradition (and contrary to my earlier prediction), I came up with a list of my ten favorite comics from 2010. I share that link with the other Robot 6eteers, so there are lots of great comics to be discovered there. And for even more comics recommendations, check out Comic Book Resources' Top 100 list. I got to do a few of the write-ups for those too.

It's kind of interesting, I guess, that not all the books I picked for Tom Spurgeon's year-end Five for Friday made it into my final list, but there are a couple of reasons for that. First is that Five for Friday's rules require fast thinking and I never do my best thinking quickly. But I also took to heart Spurgeon's criterion that we simply list five books that we liked without having to take into account their quality relative to everything else we read during the year.

Anyway, you can easily guess my Number One pick and I did a full review of it for Robot 6. I also managed to squeeze in another critical favorite before the end of the year, Charles Burns' X'ed Out. And to start 2011 off, I questioned how much of the Silver Age should really be a model for adventure comics today.

One final piece that I'm pretty happy with is the interview I did with Archaia's Editor-in-Chief Stephen Christy and the creators of Mouse Guard (David Petersen) and Return of the Dapper Men (Jim McCann and Janet Lee) about the sell-outs of Dapper Men and the Mouse Guard spin-off, Legends of the Guard. As I say in the interview's intro, I usually ignore press releases about sell-outs, but Archaia's a great company and at their C2E2 panel I was impressed with how honest and forthcoming they are about their business strategies. Enough so that I felt like this was an opportunity to learn more about what selling out really means - at least for them as a small publisher - and what they did as a company and creators to make that happen. They were even more open and helpful than I hoped and I learned a lot. Hopefully readers will find something enlightening and interesting in the interview too.

Elsewhere... A CONTEST is inspired!

Five for Friday: Rogues

Last weekend's Five for Friday assignment was to Name Five Members Of A Rogues Gallery NOT Batman's, Dick Tracy's Or Spider-Man's And Don't Identify The Hero. Mine were:

1. The Brass Bishop
2. Deadly Ernest
3. Pink Pearl
4. Dreamqueen
5. The Master of the World

A free, signed copy of Cownt Tales to the first person who correctly identifies whom these villains fight.

What Are You Reading?

A short review of Vernon White's Birdhouse.

Flick Attack!



I watched the direct-to-DVD sequel to 30 Days of Night and here's what I thought.

Food or Comics

In this week's Comics on a Budget column, I mentioned the new Atomic Robo, Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard, and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc Sec. Among others.

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs



This week I looked at the first volume of Black Metal.

Elsewhere... Some Gorillas Rode Some Dinosaurs

I've written a couple of Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs columns that I haven't told you about.

What Looks Good for September



The best-looking adventure comics for September include new Mouse Guard, Firefly, Good Neighbors, Atomic Robo, new printings of Alison Dare, and a Frankenstein pop-up book.


Atomic Robo vs. the X-Men in… “The Time Topic”



I'm doing something new with Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs lately. Rather than just do straight reviews, I've been focusing on specific elements that make comics awesome and talking about how to do them right (while soliciting readers for their own ideas). It's a lot more fun and interactive now, so if your eyes usually glaze over at my comics reviews, I hope you'll give the column another look.

I started this by talking about stand-alone issues a couple of weeks ago and this week it was all about time-travel.

Comics News: Dino Fighting and Dragon Punching

Heralds



Marvel certainly is serious about spotlighting their female heroes this year. Heralds is a mini-series coming in June about She-Hulk, Valkyrie, and others fighting a former herald of Galactus. And apparently some zombies and dinosaurs. [Robot 6]

Dragon Puncher



I said in this morning's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs column that Frenemy of the State was probably the best title anything would get all year. I'd clearly forgotten about Dragon Puncher about "a cute but ruthless kitty in an armored battle suit, dedicated to defeating dangerous dragons wherever they may be. The Dragon Puncher and his would-be sidekick Spoony-E (a fuzzy little fellow armed with a wooden spoon) confront a gigantic, drooling dragon and have a ridiculous, hilarious brawl." Coming from Top Shelf in July. [Robot 6]

Boneyard, The Good Neighbors, and Mouse Guard after the break.

Elsewhere on the Internets...

Here's the rest of what I've been up to online lately:

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs



My last column for 2009 was about both volumes of Mouse Guard, but I spent more time on the more recent one, Winter 1152.

I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to talk about this week. Not that anyone’s called me on it yet, but I usually talk here about stuff that I enjoy and I know that that can give the impression that I like everything, which simply isn’t true. In fact, I just read a book that I didn’t like so much and contemplated talking about it instead, if only for variety’s sake. But is criticizing a mediocre, small-press book really how we want to end the year? As Tim O’Shea reminded me when I expressed my indecision on the subject, there’s a lot of bad material out there. Why spend a whole column focused on that when there’s good stuff that can use a larger audience? Mouse Guard may not exactly be an underground comic, but until it hits #1 on every Best Sellers list in the world, I’m considering it under-read.

The first thing you’re struck with by Mouse Guard is how beautiful it is. I was reading Winter 1152 in public the other day and a woman stopped and asked me what it was. As much as I try not to make assumptions about people from their appearances, I’m guessing that this immaculately-dressed businesswoman doesn’t have a large comics collection at home. But she saw David Petersen’s highly realistic, stunningly detailed, and lushly colored artwork and was attracted by it enough to want to know more.

But Mouse Guard is about more than the pictures and the seasons in the title dictate more than just Petersen’s color palettes. There’s a deep, compelling story at work with human characters – mice though they may be – and powerful themes that reflect the time of year they’re set in.

Read the rest here.

Incidentally, Mouse Guard: Winter 1152 topped by my list of favorite comics for the year. You can read the whole list (as well as those of Robot 6's other contributors) here, but I should admit that mine is flawed. I'm embarrassed that I didn't even consider webcomics when I made it, so - as I said in the comments - I'm ticked at myself for not including at least The Abominable Charles Christopher. It's as good as anything else on the list.

The 30 Most Important Comics of the Decade





This was a huge group effort by all the Robot 6ers. I wrote the entries for 30 Days of Night and Flight, Volume 1 in Part One (#s 30-16). I didn't contribute to Part Two (#s 15-1), but you should read that too. A lot of interesting stuff to think about in both sections.

The Awesome List: Meet the Jerichos, Josh Ortega's She-Devil, Plan 9 the comic, and Mouse Guard the game.

Meet the Jericho cast

The Los Angeles Comicbook and Science Fiction Convention's being a little secretive about exactly which Jericho castmembers will be appearing at their show on February 17th, but they have some coming, and producers as well. If I knew for sure that Skeet was going to be there, I'd already have my ticket.*

*Not really.**

**But I do love Skeet.

Josh Ortega on Red Sonja

Josh Ortega (Necromancer, Death Dealer) is one of my favorite comics writers, so I think it's very cool that he's writing an issue of Red Sonja. Hopefully it leads to more.

Plan 9 from Outer Space: The Comic

It's so crazy it just might work.

Mouse Guard: The Board Game

I'm so getting this. As long as it has little plastic Mouse Guard characters and David Petersen's illustrating the board.