Kyle Garret's Blog, page 14

Best Albums of 1996

I'm having some trouble getting into my writing tonight.  The difficulty stems from a short story that I would like to revise, but I think I might still be a little too close to it.  I love the writing and I really love the main character, but I don't know that I'm sold on the story.

I've been procrastinating by looking at Facebook and someone on the Mid-90's page posted some excellent videos of a band called Lincoln.  The Mid-90's page is more or less devoted to punk/hardcore/emo/indie/underground/whatever music from, duh, the mid-90's.  And since that's what I was mostly listening to back then, it's pretty great to follow.

It made me go back and look at the albums that my Windows Media Player tells me came out in 1996.  Here are, in my opinion, the stand outs:


The Crownhate Ruin -- "Until the Eagle Grins"

Jawbox -- "Jawbox"

June of '44 -- "Tropics and Meridians"

Karate -- "Karate"

R.E.M. -- "New Adventures in Hi-Fi"

Team Dresch -- "Captain My Captain"

Texas is the Reason -- "Texas is the Reason"

Universal Order of Armageddon -- "Universal Order of Armageddon"

Unwound -- "Repetition"

Weezer -- Pinkerton

That's pretty impressive for just one year, and I left some good ones off in an effort to keep it at 10.  The R.E.M. album stands out from the rest in terms of style of music, but it was probably the last R.E.M. album that I would consider great, and it was coming on the heels of one or two mediocre attempts.

Weezer's also a bit of a sore thumb, although Weezer always had this bizarre "street cred" about them so "indie" kids didn't really care that they were on MTV a lot.

Unwound, UOM, and The Crownhate Ruin were are probably the most "punk rock" of the albums on this list, although I suppose Team Dresch could give them a run for their money.

June of '44 and Karate were both math/jazz/smart rock.  I never really embraced math rock to the extent that I thought I would, given my own propensity towards overly complicated art.

The Texas is the Reason album was something of a modern classic.  It was all over the place.  Everyone was buying it, from hardcore kids to emo kids.  It's still held in fairly high regard in certain circles.

Jawbox's self-titled, final album was an instant classic for me.  While lacking the raw sound of their previous major label release, the song writing overall is stronger on this one.

Top 3 for me?  I'd have to R.E.M., Weezer, and Jawbox, in that order.

What a great year for music.

Television vs. Writing

Found here http://morningmorning.deviantart.com/ It's a fairly common refrain among successful creative types: If you want to produce the best work you can, then stop watching TV.

It's not an unreasonable position.  There are only 24 hours in a day and most of us have to work for 8 of those, and those 8 are sandwiched by time spent getting ready for, going to, and coming back from our jobs (plus the obligatory hour in the middle for lunch).  Throw in the need for sleep and food, and the number of hours available for writing in any given day becomes pretty small.

I've found, though, that the advice given out isn't "only watch a little bit of TV."  It's usually "stop watching TV" or even "get rid of your television."

I appreciate the problems with watching TV.  For one, it's addictive as hell.  That's the whole point of television shows.  If they don't get you addicted, they're generally canceled.  They need you to tune in every week so they can sell you more things.

Most television is brain candy, brain candy that has the same basic effect as the kind you chew.  All that sugar is going to do some damage.  The vast majority of the programs on television these days requires absolutely no brain power.  It's entertainment, sure, but other forms of entertainment, like books or even video games, make certain intellectual demands that just aren't there for the average television show.  Creative people (hell, all people) should try to avoid shutting off their brains for long periods of time.

The problem I have with this mandate that television is to be avoided at all costs is that there's a certain amount of snobbery involved.  I realize that "Sharknado" is never going to be considered the work of a genius writer, but storytelling is storytelling, and it's unfair to dismiss the medium of television all together.

I fully admit that I used to be beholden to television in an unhealthy way.  It wasn't until a year or two ago
that I finally decided to cut back on what I watch.  The advent of the DVR made it much easier to watch a lot of television, simply because now I could watch it on my schedule.  But it was still sucking away hours
and hours of my life.

Fortunately for me, there was an opening for me to cut back on my addiction.  A few of my favorite shows were canceled, and the added free time made me realize how much more I could be doing with myself if I spent less time on the couch.  My criteria for television shows changed; I raised the bar.  The handful of shows I watch now are all extremely well written.

Which brings me back to my main point.  Storytelling is storytelling.  While I realize television writers have the inherent advantage of not having to rely upon their audience's imaginations to fill in blank spaces, characters are characters and plots are plots.  There's a lot to be learned from good writing no matter the medium.

I think I currently watch about a dozen TV shows, only a handful of which air during the same months (aka, I half of those shows are on HBO or Showtime).  Whatever time I lose watching them, I gain in creative stimulation...despite the fact that it's on TV.

A blog is born! (or, SEO MesSEO)

My day job, the one that puts money in my pocket and food on the table, involves SEO, or Search Engine Optimization for those who really don't care.  It's basically about getting Google to list your web site high up in their search results for any particular thing.

I do this for a large company and for a lot of different web sites.  I have never tired to optimize this blog.

The problem is that this blog isn't about anything in particular aside from, well, me.  And kylegarret.com ranks #1 for Kyle Garret.

But only ranking for my name is only going to get me so much traffic, not that it's a big concern for me at this stage, because it isn't.

If I look at the visits I get to this site, a very clear pattern forms: my posts about comics kill.  I mean, there's absolutely no comparison between my comic book posts and anything else I write about (okay, that's not entirely true, I once posted an entry titled "Brand Building or, "Porno Bantering" and, as you can probably imagine, I got a lot of traffic).  The #1 entry for this site was about DC's New 52.  It's gotten more than twice as many visits as the next entry (the aforementioned Porno Bantering).  Three of the top ten entries are about comics and another three get traffic completely unrelated to the entry itself (not unlike Porno Bantering).

I even once had a post retweeted by Ksenia Anske, who has quit the following online, a following cultivated by her passion for writing.  I got a nice bump in traffic, but that article didn't even crack the top ten all time.  I think I've picked up some traffic going forward because of it, but not a ton, not so much that my posts abou
t writing come close to my posts about comics.

The thing is, I don't want this blog to be about comics.  I freaking love comics, but I don't write them.  Comics, for me, are a hobby, albeit one I'm very passionate about.  Writing is something else all together.

I think it's fantastic that I can get traffic for my blogs about comics.  I've got over 1700 visits to my New 52
article.  That's awesome.  But I don't want comics drowning out the rest of my blog.  I also don't want the non-comic book people who sometimes pay this blog a visit driven away by content they have no interest in.

And so, Slouches Towards Comics is born.

About 2 years ago, I had a blog about comics called Destroying Comics, but I felt like it was too negative.  Slouches Towards Comics gets its title from The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats.  I didn't realize that the line from the poem is more often than not misquoted so that people are actually referencing the 1968 book of essays by Joan Didion.

Anyway, it seemed apropos because I think, ultimately, that The Second Coming is meant to suggest that there's a positive takeaway from the end of the world (let's ignore that it requires you to be a True Believer).  I also think it works because I slouch.

I've moved some of my past posts over to Slouches already.  All future comic book related material will be found there.

As for this blog, I'm hoping to get it back on schedule.  Don't worry; I have plenty to say that isn't about comics.

Clutter

As anyone who has been reading this blog knows, Nicole and I inherited the house we live in from her parents.  It was left to her and her brother, so we basically got an amazing house in a great neighborhood for half price.

It probably goes without saying, but there is nothing about this house that will ever make it worth what the actual cost was.  When people find out that we got this house, that Nicole quickly found a job at Pixar when we moved up here, and that the company I worked for in Los Angeles just happened to have another office up here that I could work at, they are just blown away by our good fortune.  And, sure, it is impressive that all of those things have happened.  But no matter how much good fortune we have, we're still in the hole.  No amount of good fortune can make up for the bad fortune that left us this house to begin with.

It is impossible to overstate the emotional difficulties that come with inheriting your parents house, particularly when a) those parents died far too early and b) you grew up here.  This is what Nicole faces every day.  I can't even comprehend how difficult that has to be.  The hope is that time will make it easier, and I think it has, but there are new problems around every corner.

We've recently started making some larger changes to the house.  We'd already redone the master bedroom, the office, and one of the bathrooms, but these were areas that Nicole didn't really spend much time in, anyway.  Sure, they meant something to her, but they weren't gathering places; they weren't places she spent time in even after she graduated from high school.

The living room is a different story.  Making changes to the living room has been very hard for her.  It's not unlike a Band-Aid, really, except the wound hasn't really healed.  We're trying to take it off slowly so we don't make it worse, but at the same time that's dragging it out.  Pulling it off quickly would probably be too much.

As we moved everything out of the living room for the painters, I had a small pang of regret.  Nicole's parents filled this house with stuff, the necessity of most of it being debatable.  But it's stuff they accumulated over years of living here.  They moved in with considerably less, and filled it as their lives went along.  Maybe not every room had everything it needed right away, so maybe it was pieced together over time.

We inherited all of that.  Every room is full of more than enough furniture.  Need some tools?  There are probably two or three of whatever you need in the garage.  We've lived here for a year and a half and we've yet to buy trash bags -- there are just that many here to be used.

It's the clutter of their life, clutter that filled an empty space.  I feel like Nicole and I are missing an important part of growing up.  This house was never empty.  We never had to budget out how long it would take us to fill it with furniture (although replacing what's here is another story).  We will never accumulate clutter because the clutter is already here, and it's not of our making.

It sounds silly, I know.  But it's a rite of passage that is meaningful.  It's a rite of passage that I enjoy.  I've always loved moving into a new apartment, seeing what fits from the old place, adding new things to make it all work.  I like starting from scratch, building from the ground up.  Here we have to move back to move forward.

The new paint job has already made a big difference.  It has quite literally given us a clean slate (the walls were covered in wallpaper before).  It has made me, I think, overanxious to do more.  It has, I think, made Nicole apprehensive to do more.

I'm sure we'll find a middle ground; we usually do.

The New 52 Is Temporary (or, Grasping at Straws)

I have a new, ridiculous theory: the New 52 was never meant to be permanent, and we will eventually see a return to the pre-New 52 continuity, albeit with changes.

Yes, a lot of that is rationalizing, because I want the DCU I loved back.  But this rationalizing actually came about because of real things.

1) "The New 52" banner

We're almost at the 2 year mark since the big DC reboot, and all of their books still have the "New 52" banner on them.  These titles are neither new nor 52.  I can't imagine the brand holds any sway anymore.  I'm not even entirely sure why it's still there.  If anything, it only serves to draw attention to the fact that these titles are different from the decades of comics DC published before (and it's not like we saw a "Post-Crisis" banner on DCU books for two years).

So why is that banner still on every book?  To make us think they're all connected?  I suppose that might be an effort to get us to buy all 52ish, but that clearly hasn't worked beyond the first few months.  When else do you see branding like that on comics?  When each comic is supposed to be part of the same story.

The banner remains to let us know these books are a part of the New 52...what happens when the banner goes away?

2) The Outsider

Justice League of America has brought us our first alternate reality character (I think -- I could be wrong on
that point) in the New 52, and he's not just from any alternate reality.  No, the head of the Secret Society is from the Flashpoint universe, as evidenced by the fact that he knows the Martian Manhunter and that he says he's from a dead world.

Don't forget that the Flashpoint universe was just an alternate timeline of the old DCU.

So what's the point of introducing The Outsider?

You could argue that this is just a case of Geoff Johns being Geoff Johns.  He's a writer who likes to throw things like this into his work just to get a rise out of them, and I don't think there's really anything wrong with that.  But it would be possible to introduce The Outsider without giving so much meat for the conspiracy theorists.

Look at it this way: not only is The Outsider from the Flashpoint reality, he remembers it.  You know who else remembers it?

3) The Trinity War

Pandora.  The next DCU event is the Trinity War which focuses on the mysterious character who not only showed up when the 3 DC universes merged in to the New 52, but was in every single first issue of the reboot.

Now, I really doubt the Trinity War will have anything to do with my theory, but it's at least worth noting that there is another character running around who knows about the previous incarnation of the DCU.


4) Marvel

A funny thing happened pretty soon after the New 52 launched: Marvel retook the top spot in almost all categories.  You don't make a drastic move like DC did because you're okay with being in second place all the time.  You make a drastic move to change the game.

That didn't happen.

I'm a guy who prefers DC characters and a guy who can't stand Marvel's core editorial direction.  Yet when Batman, Inc. ends I won't be buying a single DC title, as opposed to the 3 I'm buying from Marvel.  Funny enough, my reasons for not really caring for any of DC's current books fall in line with my overall theory -- all of their titles have to fall in line.  While Marvel has room for free agent type books, DC does not.  Every title must be a part of the New 52.

Here's my guess: 2016 will see another Crisis and the creation of a new DCU, one that restores 75 years of history while incorporating the best elements of the New 52, as well as the characters they brought over from Wildstorm and Vertigo.  We'll even see a return to the original numbering, taking a cue from Marvel and adding up all the issues to give us milestone issues.

So...am I crazy?

Why Is Brian Michael Bendis' Writing Popular?

Believe it or not, that subject line is not meant to be inflammatory (but will no doubt be read that way).

With the release of the final issue of "Age of Ultron," and the ensuing beat down the finale and the series have gotten, it seemed like a good time to figure out why Bendis is such a popular writer.  He's arguably the most popular comic book writer today; he certainly has the sales numbers to back that up.  And while the internet might have us believe that his work is polarizing, that's obviously not the case.

The rain of criticism coming down on "Age of Ultron" is well deserved.  It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good story.  I realize that these things are subjective, but this could be one of those cases where on the delusional will claim they felt like their $40+ was money well spent.

"Age of Ultron" ultimately broke down into three different stories and, in Bendis' defense, he's said that it was his intention to flip preconceptions of the story half way through.  Here's what we get:

1) Post-apocalyptic story
2) Time travel adventure
3) Marketing book

I don't find any one of those stories problematic, to be honest.  I love a good post-apocalyptic story, "Lost in Space/Time" from West Coast Avengers is one of my favorite comic book tales of all time, and I can't fault Marvel wanting to generate interest in other titles with the end of their big event.  The problem is that none of them are fully realized, so when combined, none of them really work.

Personally, I feel like there's one very big reason why this is the case: Bendis was the wrong writer for this story.

(I would add that Hitch was the wrong artist for the first half, and Pacheco the wrong artist for the second half, but let's stay on topic here)

Ideally, I'd start talking about Bendis' work by go over his early, creator owned stories, but let's be realistic: Bendis became immensely popular because of his work for Marvel.  So if we're digging into his popularity, we should start there, specifically with Ultimate Spider-man.

One of the Bendis' two biggest strengths as a writer is humanizing his characters, and we saw a lot of that in Bendis almost single handedly reframed mainstream comics or, more specifically, reframed Marvel comics to what they were when they started: stories about regular people in extraordinary circumstances.
both Ultimate Spider-man and Daredevil.  His focus has always clearly been on character over plot which, particularly when he made his splash with Marvel, was a huge deal.  Remember, Ultimate Spider-man #1 came out in October of 2000.  The comics industry was still recovering from the swath of destruction that had been caused by the 90's boom.  For a good 8 years, we'd gotten nothing but extreme comics that were focused entirely on action, with little attention spent on characters. 

It was hard not to love Ultimate Spider-man, particularly over the first few years.  The changes Bendis made to the mythos weren't drastic, or, if they were, they were tempered by the fact that there was another, 40 year old Spider-man book for the purists.  Ultimate Spider-man was the perfect book for Bendis and it shows.  Yes, it was eventually weighed down by decompressed and redundant stories, but Bendis always seemed able to save it by focusing on the characters.  Ultimate Spider-man #13 was an instant classic.

The other side of the coin to Bendis focusing on characters is the fact that all of his characters sound the same.  It's actually a fairly delightful way of speaking, particularly when coming from teenagers, but it is absolutely not how every single character in the Marvel universe talks.  The frustrating thing about it is that it's a simple fix, and something that the editor should always catch.

Bendis' run on Daredevil was the first time we saw his second biggest strength: he's not beholden to convention.  Look at it this way, while Didio and Johns were busy taking the necessary steps to recreate the Silver Age at DC, Bendis was outing Daredevil and reforming the Avengers with characters fans considered to be anything but Avengers material.  Sure, his decisions often defy logic, but at the very least he's willing to take risks.  Serialized superhero stories thrive on the illusion of change, but Bendis has gone farther to produce long standing change than perhaps any writer working for the Big Two in the last ten years.

At a high level, you never really know what Bendis is going to do next.  There's a certain degree of unpredictability with his writing.  A lot of that is undercut, however, by the fact that these unpredictable stories take far longer to play out than they should.  The momentum gained by upending convention dwindles when that change is the extent of the story for months.

Perhaps it's because of the difficulties with telling a decompressed story that Bendis often resorts to cliffhangers.  Sure, that's pretty much standard for monthly comics, but the problem is that his cliffhangers are often not very good.  They either a) aren't suspenseful or b) have resolutions that are unfair to the reader.

The perfect example of the latter is an early issue of Ultimate Spider-man.  Peter gets home late after skipping class and Aunt May is understandably upset.  He's vague about where he's been and seems to be clinging to his backpack.  Aunt May takes it away from him and opens it up.  Now, we've seen in earlier issues that Peter often keeps his Spider-man costume in his bag, so this is a big deal.  Aunt May opens his bag to find...

...a book.  It's Peter Pan.  Apparently, it's Peter's father's book (note: honest to god, I'm having the hardest time remember if it's really Peter Pan or not and I can't find any confirmation online, so I'm going with it -- I'll update it later if need be), and Peter has been going off by himself to read the book.  It's a wonderful character moment, full of emotion.  But it's also a cop-out.  We follow Peter around constantly and we've never even seen a hint that he spends time alone reading this book.  The resolution of the cliffhanger is unfair to the reader.

The perfect example of a bad cliffhanger comes at the end of Age of Ultron #4, when the hellicarrier crashesUltron, since it's quickly erased.  But there had to be a cliffhanger to end the issue, so that's what we got.  This is what happens when you spread four issues of story over ten issues.
into New York.  The problem is that this is a story in the future, and only a possible future, at that.  We also know that this future is going to be rewritten over the course of this series.  There is absolutely no investment in New York being destroyed.  Why would a reader care?  Nothing in that scene is going to impact anything.  In fact, it barely has an impact on Age of

Which brings me back to the fact that Bendis was the wrong writer for Age of Ultron.  He doesn't do action, he does interaction, it's why his stories worked on New Avengers but fell flat on Avengers; the former was focused on his hand picked team of characters and how they interacted, the latter focused more on big, plot driven superhero battles.

Bendis obviously has his strengths as a writer, and when he's telling a story that plays to those strengths, his work is really quite good.  But when he doesn't...

Well, we get Age of Ultron.

Why Batman is the greatest superhero character ever (even better than Spider-man)

It's interesting to me that this is a debate.  No, I'm not saying that I think people debate this isn't without, because it certainly is.  I just find it interesting that this is the debate, that when it's all said and done, it comes down to these two characters.  Superman may have been the first, but when the votes are tallied, it's Batman and Spider-man who show up in the run off election.

Chris Sims over at the wonderfully alive Comics Alliance recently wrote about how, even though Batman is his favorite comic book character, Spider-man is the best comic book character.  And while I appreciate the fact that he's able to make that distinction, I respectfully disagree (on that last part -- can't disagree on the first part, obviously, as it's a matter of personal taste).

I would also take issue with Joss Whedon's recent comment that Batman is a Marvel character in the DC universe.  Sorry, Whedon, I love your work, but that's a statement made by someone who hasn't read enough DC comics.

Here are a few of the reasons why I think Batman is the greatest superhero character ever:

He's a Reflection of Society
I talk about this a lot, I think, but one of the things I love about Batman -- and one of the things the character does better than any other comic book character -- is that he changes with the times.  He's a reflection of what our culture is like at any given point.  Each decade of Batman is different and the fact that one character can have so many different interpretations and still have a solid core is fantastic.  It makes his 74 year history wonderful to dig into.

You don't get that to the same extent with any other character, not even Spider-man.  While Spider-man stories dabbled in issues of the day, the character has been portrayed in roughly the same way his entire history.  Maybe he got a little groovy in the 70's, maybe the black costume reflects a darker time in the 80's,
and maybe the Clone Saga reflected the trend in comics in the 90's.  But the depth of the social reflection has never been as great as with Batman.  There's a very good reason for that.

At his core, Spider-man is about angst.  He is the ultimate Marvel character.  And, to refute Whedon's claim, Batman is not.  The amount that Batman's angst matters has fluctuated over the past 7 decades.  At times it is essential to every story being told; at other times it's an afterthought.  The Batman of the 50's treated his parents' deaths as just another plot point that got him to where he was, and now it was time to put on silly costumes and exchange jokes with a teenager sidekick.  Spider-man has never fluctuated like that.

Which is fine.  It speaks to how powerful Spider-man's core concept is that he has ostensibly been the same character for over 50 years.  But it doesn't make him the reflection of society that Batman has been.

Gotham
I love fictional cities.  I love the hell out of them.  Part of the reason why I love them is because, even though they're fictional, they make the suspension of disbelief much easier.  Putting all of your superheroes in New York City is kind of a hard pill to swallow when you've got thousands of characters.  The ratio of people to superheroes in NYC has got to be crazy by now.

Not that Gotham doesn't have it's problems.  At this point, you'd have to assume that the damn place would be cleaned up.  Why would any criminal work in Gotham?  And after all this time, why hasn't Batman's war produced any real change?

Still, placing Batman in a fictional city allows the city to become its own character without concern for stepping on the toes of reality.  Writers don't have to worry about parts of the city changing in the real world and upending their stories.  Crime Alley can always be ground zero for crime and poverty as long as the writers want that to be the case.

Gotham also allows creators to fill in a fictional history complete with its own bizarre stories.  There's no limit to the world of Batman.

His Villains Are Awesome
 Let's just be clear on this: Batman has the best villains of any comic book character.  With each new Spider-man movie, fans argue over which villain is iconic enough to oppose him.  That's never an issue with Batman.  The latest trilogy of movies never gave us the Penguin or the Riddler, two well known Bat-villains, and that was after something like 8 hours worth of movies, all of which had multiple bad guys.

The Green Goblin just doesn't have the same status as the Joker.  There's no competition.  Even Batman's second tier guys are better.  They're scary and interesting and, after up to 74 years of storytelling, complex characters.

They're also diverse.  Batman's villains aren't always an extension of him; sometimes they're just really cool characters with specific motivations that don't relate to Batman.  Even those villains who are a reflection of Batman reflect different facets of his character.  If Batman is order and the Joker is chaos, then Two-Face is half of each.  The Penguin is old Gotham money gone bad vs. Bruce Wayne's old Gotham money gone good.  The Riddler is the opposite to the Dark Knight Detective.  Catwoman is the criminal who crosses the line into heroics, just as Batman is the hero who sometimes blurs the lines into villainy.

Even after that impressive list, how do you define Mister Freeze or Poison Ivy or Clayface or Killer Croc?  They're not extensions of Batman or Bruce Wayne.  They're simply really cool characters.

(And I haven't even mention Ra's al Ghul, Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, Dr. Hurt, Mr Zsasz, Black Mask, Hugo Strange...)

The Bat Family
Even if you want to make the argument that post-50's Batman became a Marvel character in the DC universe because of the emphasis on his own psychological and emotional issues, you'd still be ignoring one of the most entertaining aspects of the character, one shared by other DC superheroes but hardly any Marvel characters: family.

Family has played a big enough role in the DC universe that they even published comics around them, like Superman Family and Batman Family.  Sure, these characters are now basically ways of expanding a brand, but they started off innocently enough.  Robin wasn't created to expand the Batman line and cash in on the Batman brand -- if he had been, they'd have called him Batboy (Kid Batman?).

While the New 52 has screwed the pooch on families, I'm going to pretend it never happened.

Batman has had 5 Robins now, 4 of whom have gone on to expand the family as Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, and Batgirl.  There have been 3 Batgirls, two of which went on to become Black Bat and Oracle.  There have been two people calling themselves Batwoman.  Heck, there have been 3 people calling themselves Batman.

I love the fact that Bruce Wayne has created a family to replace the one that was taken from him at a young age.  I love how each character has a complex relationship with each of the others.  This large Bat-family creates a wonderful dynamic that's not present for any other character, even those that have their own families (sorry, Superman).  It also emphasizes how Bruce Wayne has changed over the years, from young, solo vigilante, to father figure to a group of superheroes.

I love the hell out of Spider-man (although my favorite period is the end of his college days to the first few years out of school, and those years seem to ignored by most fans and creators).  He was my favorite character when I was younger (Wolverine was #1 for a while, but Spidey eventually unseated him).  But if forced to choose, I'm going with Batman every time.

My Awkward Assocation with Punk Rock Part 3

I ostensibly moved to Atlanta because the drummer in my last band had moved there a year early.  He, however, had a job at CNN lined up, whereas I had nothing at all.

Not long after I moved, one of the bands from my hometown came to Atlanta to play a show.  I went to said show and got to see a few people I went to high school with that I'd now known for nearly a decade.  The band, Party of Helicopters, was pretty well known in the "scene," if you will, so their show was a big deal.  It was at this show that I met the king of the scene.

I don't know if such creatures exist anymore, now that we have the internet.  I mean, we had it then, too, but most people I knew were still on dial-up, so it wasn't exactly the go to way of staying in touch or getting music.  I honestly don't remember what the king of the scene in Atlanta's name was.  For some reason, I want to say Matt.

Anyway, we met at that one show and he was nice enough and since I was new in town, it was cool to have someone to talk to that was into the same things as me (or, in this case, one thing that I was into).

Not long after that, another band from my hometown came to Atlanta to play.  This was a little bit different because I was no only friends with these guys from high school, they were also some of my best friends.  They came to my place before the show, we all hung out after the show, they stayed at my place while they were in town.

There van ended up breaking down when they tried to leave, so they stayed a few days longer while it was getting fixed.  The king of the scene even managed to set them up with another show.  I think the Party of Helicopters was there again for that show, so afterwards it was this fairly big group of "indie" people hanging out.  At this point, the king of the scene seemed to assume that, since I knew all these bands from my hometown and I liked a lot of the same music, I was going to be a part of the "scene."

I distinctly remember having a conversation with the king about some upcoming event.  Honestly, I remember it as being a phone conversation about an event that was either that night or the next.  I told him I was going to miss said event and I don't believe I had a reason for missing aside from the fact that I just really didn't care.

He told me that it was the type of thing that I "had" to go to.  I remember him saying that much.  I don't remember how direct he was, but at the very least the implication was that if I wanted to be a member of the "scene," then I had to go to "scene" based events.

Needless to say, that was my last experience in the "scene."

There's something to be said for the timing of that.  It happened the summer of 2000, and I was spending
more and more time online.  It was the heyday of Napster.  I didn't need to go to shows to discover music.  Hell, I didn't need to know anyone to discover music.

Two years later, I moved to Los Angeles.  The first few years were difficult for me with regards to music.  I met a lot of people and made some great friends, but none of them listened to the same things that I did.  I began going to shows by myself, which ultimately wasn't nearly as pathetic as I thought it would be.

During those years, my tastes began to change, aligning with where I'm at now.  I still listen to the recorded in a basement, angst and anger punk rock, but it's not my go to music.  It's music of a mood.  It's no longer my every day music.

These days, my music has softened.  I'm indie rock.  That's probably the best way to put it, as much as that might pain me.  I listen to earnest rock music by bands that don't have mainstream success.  The songs are more accessible, but still challenging, probably more so, even.  I listen to more singing than yelling, although I still enjoy some quality yelling.

Slowly but surely, I met people who were into at least some of the same bands I listened to.  Nicole quickly came on board with a lot of my music.  We started going to shows.  We started going to shows with friends.  The Troubadour was the greatest place on earth.

Even this started to tapper off after a while.  I got old.  A show that went until 1 AM on a week day was exhausting.  My feet hurt from standing.  I wasn't the angry young man I was two decades ago.  And I'm fine with that.

These days, I listen to Pandora and Soma FM to hear new music.  My friends on Facebook talk about their favorite new bands.  I share with Nicole the bands I think she'll like and keep the others to myself.  Every once in a while, if it's a band we both really like a lot, we'll make the drive into the city to see them.  We'll stay up late.

I'm not punk rock.  I don't know that I ever was.  But I had fun dabbling.  I had fun dabbling and it got me to where I am now.

It was worth it.

Man of Steel is Responsible for the New 52

It's something that's always been in the back of my head.  Maybe I'd just read Watchmen one to many times.  But when it comes to DC's "New 52" initiative which has seen a lot of old fans end up on the outside looking in (and a lot of old characters no where to be found), I started to wonder: who benefits?

That germ of an idea, which I'll explain in a minute, was given validation in a recent NY Times article profiling the career of Karen Berger.  The article discusses the fact that DC is no longer interested in experimenting with titles ala Vertigo; they want to produce titles that can reach a wide audience.  From Dan DiDio himself: "That’s not what we’re in the business for,” he added. “We have to shoot for the stars with whatever we’re doing. Because what we’re trying to do is reach the biggest audience and be as successful as possible.”

We've heard for a long time that the point of the relaunch was to bring in new readers, although circumstantial evidence would suggest that most gains in readership came from lapsed readers.  Regardless, there's some interesting information to check out over at the Comics Beat's sales break down for DC for March.  

DC has now gotten to the point where most of their titles are selling at below pre-New 52 levels, and those that are still higher than they were 2 years ago are losing sales every month.  Batman: The Dark Knight sold a little more than 54K copies in March, and even at that number is down 23.7% from 2 years ago.  It's also trending downward.

Green Lantern is one of DC's flagship titles, the core book in a franchise that was left alone for the relaunch because it was doing so well.  Issue #18 sold just under 70K, which is a great number.  But guess what?  That's still 8.5% less than two years ago.

I'm picking and choosing a bit here.  Books like the Justice League, Batman, and Detective Comics are
doing much better than 2 years ago.  Here's the downside, though, as Frisch points out: There are only 3 DC comics with positive gains over the last six months, one of which was a new #1 for Constantine.  Only 5 books are up over the past year, the aforementioned Constantine, Scooby-Doo, and 3 Batman titles.

All the Green Lantern books are down versus pre-New 52 numbers.  The Batman books are split.  You could argue that the Justice League books are up, but there's only one to compare it to, and the creative team change had a lot to do with that.  Plus, Vibe is already below cancellation level after only two issues, even though it has the Justice League brand on it.

The one franchise that is up almost across the board?  Superman.  Only Superboy is down versus his pre-New 52 numbers.

That said, all of that information is more context than anything else.  Because here's the thing: Warner Brothers does not own DC because of the money that Action Comics brings in, just as Disney doesn't own Marvel because New Avengers is making them millions.  They own these companies because the characters can make them money in other outlets.

The most lucrative of those other outlets lately has been movies (movies which then also translate into licensing).  And it's no secret that DC has been far behind Marvel in this venue.

Which brings us to The Man of Steel, which opens this month.  Warner Brothers has a lot riding on this movie.  The Batman trilogy is over.  Green Lantern was a bomb.  Wonder Woman can't get off the ground.  It's all or nothing for the Man of Steel.

Not that movie versions of comic book characters are ever beholden to comic book versions, but with an iconic character like Superman, whose image is already all over the place, there has to be some kind of connection.  Look at it this way: when Warners licenses the movie version and a kid has a choice between a t-shirt of the comic book version of Superman or the movie version, that kid is going to pick the comic book version.  Why?  Because it's timeless.  The red swim trunks are timeless and they're everywhere.

Cue the New 52.  The red swim trunks are gone and the comic book version of Superman is surprisingly similar to the upcoming movie version.  No trunks?  Check.  No longer married to Lois Lane?  Check.  Lonely and mysterious?  Check.

Look at it this way: Green Lantern and Batman didn't need any help with sales prior to the relaunch (and GL has now lost readers).  The Flash is basically the same book as it was prior to Flashpoint.  The Justice League has gone up in sales, sure, but look who's been working on the book.  The same idea applies to Aquaman.  But Superman, Superman needed help.  Superman needed broken down to the basics and updated for the 21st century.  And as goes Superman, so goes (most) of the DCU.

Will the new Superman bring in new readers when the movie comes out?  I honestly don't know.  It might move a few more graphic novels, but a) those would be pre-New 52 adventures and b) that doesn't translate into monthly sales.

But in the interests of giving Superman a leg up in time for the movie, DC has thrown a whole lot of babies out with the bath water.

My Awkward Association with Punk Rock Part 2

I mostly ordered records from Subpop and Dischord, since I knew I liked the Afghan Whigs and I knew I liked Jawbox (although I'd first heard both bands on major labels).  Seven inch records cost between two and three dollars, which wasn't much of an investment to try out a band I'd never heard of.  I stuck some money in an envelope, stuck the envelope in the mail, and a few weeks later I had some vinyl goodness.

Once I discovered that Jawbox had their own label, DeSoto Records, I got a little crazy.  I don't think DeSoto released a 7 inch that I don't own.  Seriously, I'm looking at their web site right now and I'm pretty sure I own all of those.

From 7 inch records I went to compilations.  I was in love with compilations.  It was a great way for me to discover new bands, particularly if some of the tracks were by bands I already knew.  There was the Simple Machines 7' series compilation, the first Jabberjaw compilation, Dischord's State of the Union comp, all those Kill Rock Stars compilations, and endless records put out by tiny labels in every town in America featuring bands their friends were in.

And then there were the 'zines.  Listen, I'm not much for "real" or "true" definitions of labels, like the whole fake geek business.  But if you were actually involved in underground music at all back in the day, you read 'zines.  I mean, you just did.  The internet wasn't the place it was today, so you had to get all your information about upcoming shows, upcoming records, etc. from 'zines.  And some of the bigger ones would even release compilations of their own.

This was all going down during my sophomore year of college, my first year at Ohio University (after leaving
a very small, very conservative school in the middle of the state).  I'd been playing guitar for over a year by this point, so I was actively trying to find people to be in a band with.  I actively sought out people by the music they listened to.  It was all that mattered to me.  It was horribly close minded, but I'm nothing if not committed.  I dove in.

I spent five years at Ohio University, three finishing my undergrad, two in grad school, and during that time I became a bizarrely active member of the "scene."  I put that in quotes because I didn't think such a thing existed, but often found myself in situations where I was planning shows that my band wasn't even playing in.  The younger kids were really into creating a community, which was great, but I've always been a misanthrope, so going out of my way to organize social functions was very strange.

There weren't a lot of "indie" rock bands at OU back then, and by default my first band, Middle Kittanning, became this strange kind of figure head.  A lot of that probably stemmed from the fact that we had a PA that other bands could borrow.  It also probably stemmed from my aforementioned involvement in the "scene," as it were.  As if to firmly cement myself as part of this strange sub-culture, I got a job at a local record store.  Now I was that guy in that band who also works at the music store.  I was defined by all of this.

I realize all of that sounds pretty arrogant and I don't mean it to be.  We're talking about a couple of dozen people in this so-called "scene," at least at this point (it seemed to get larger as the years went on).  And Middle Kittanning really only filled a void left by the graduation of a band called Mr. Hand, who were a stark contrast to a lot of the garage rock that was going on at the time.  I was nothing special.  I'm just trying to make it clear at how completely submerged in this I was.

The kicker came in grad school when I moved into a house with other like minded individuals.  We had a basement full of musical equipment.  We were all in bands of one kind or another, if not multiple bands.  We had shows in our basement which bled out into parties in our house.  We became that house.  Every town has one of those houses, where the loud angry bands play through shitty PA systems and boys with patches and girls with pixie hair get drunk and awkwardly try to make out with each other.  We were that house.

I remember a really nice kid from Memphis, new to OU, setting up a meeting with myself and another member of the house, to discuss the upcoming punk rock events.  I'd suddenly been roped on to the underground social committee.  A band once showed up at our house to play a show, but no one had told us (or anyone else).  They were on tour, so they just hung out.

Eventually, we even had recording equipment in our basement and a audio production major who could use it all (two, really).  Records were now being recorded there by bands from other towns.  It sounds arrogant to say that the house was a hub of some kind, but it really was.  I don't remember there being a house like ours in the years previous.

A funny thing happened while my head was buried in all these things at OU: the music scene in my hometown of Kent, Ohio hadn't become a big deal.  Okay, that's relative, but it seemed like every punk rock crowd in every town in America knew about the bands from my hometown.

I mention this because it became important when I finally left the nest, graduated from OU, and moved to Atlanta.