It’s a milestone of sorts for Blueshift Studios: Narbonic, vol. 2 officially sold out of its initial print run a couple of months ago and went back for a 2nd printing.

Up next: now that I have all the materials for volume 4, I need to spend the next couple of weeks putting together the new book and covers. Volume 4 includes what I consider the best of Narbonic‘s storylines, “Dave Davenport Has Come Unstuck in Time,” the lynchpin of Shaenon’s overall six-year story arc.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

HBO hears word, brings ‘Preacher’ to small screen

HBO has seen the light and is bringing “Preacher” to the small screen.

The pay cable network is developing a one-hour series based on the popular 1990s Vertigo comics series. Mark Steven Johnson, the writer-director behind comic adaptations “Daredevil” and the upcoming “Ghost Rider,” is writing the pilot, while Howard Deutch is attached to direct. Johnson and Deutch will executive produce along with Michael De Luca, George Agusto, Chris Bender and JC Spink.

“Preacher,” which ran from 1995-2000, told the story of a down-and-out Texas preacher possessed by Genesis, a supernatural entity conceived by the unnatural coupling of an angel and a demon. Given immense powers, the preacher teamed with an old girlfriend and a hard-drinking Irish vampire and set out on a journey across America to find God — who apparently had abandoned his duties in heaven — and hold him accountable for his negligence.

The series was created by Irish-born writer Garth Ennis and British artist Steve Dillon, who will serve as co-executive producers.

Preacher was one of the comics (along with Sandman) that got me into comics in the first place. It still ranks as one of my all-time favorites.

The fact that the team behind Grumpier Old Men is handling the adaptation does not inspire confidence, but HBO’s involvement gives me a great deal of hope — as does the thought of it being a series instead of a feature film. HBO does adult drama better than anyone, and this will let the full story play out over time instead of being compressed into two hours.

From my comments on Batman Begins in mid-2005:

Batman even does some detective work! Yes, the longtime star of Detective Comics actually solves a crime by following clues. Next thing you know, James Bond will start doing some spying on other countries.

Which is kind of hilarious, because the feeling I got from Casino Royale this weekend was that the Bond producers saw Batman Begins and said, “Let’s do that!”

Casino Royale reboots the series and fixes everything wrong with its last 40 years: the gadgets are believable, goofiness is dropped in favor of realism, the action is brutal rather than campy, the plot flows believably, and every character has at least a basic level of cleverness and observational skills — even the bad guys.

Sure, the story seems to embark on a random tangent at the 3/4 mark and stalls the movie like a Ford with a bad clutch, but by the end you’re rewarded for your patience and you understand why the filmmakers made that choice.

I actually want to watch it again just to savor some of the dialogue. When was the last time Bond movie dialogue was anything but tolerated?

Every so often, I go on a new-music spree and try to expand my music collection with stuff I haven’t heard before. At the moment my focus is mainly (but not totally) on filling the enormous gaps in my knowledge of good 80s music.

Here are the albums I’ve procured through, um… various means over the last couple of weeks. Some of them are so new I haven’t even listened to them yet:

• Various Artists, Left of the Dial – A 4-disc collection of mainstays of alternative college radio from the 80s. Normally about $60, but let’s just say I spent slightly less on it. Notably includes tracks from Original Goth-sta artists The Cure, Depeche Mode, Siouxsie, Sisters of Mercy, and Bauhaus.
• Depeche Mode, Music for the Masses
• The Smiths, The Queen is Dead
• Marilyn Manson, Mechanical Animals – Yeah, I know. I own an Insane Clown Posse album, too, so shut up.
• Weezer, Blue Album and Maladroit – With my new emo glasses, I felt the need to expand my Weezer collection. What other emo-punk groups should I look for?
• Brian Wilson, SMiLE
• Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
• Handsome Boy Modeling School, White People

So which tunes are turning your crank these days? Any new bands you’re into? What about old bands you’re discovering for the first time? Give me recommendations in the comments.

(Won’t it be embarassing if nobody responds in the next couple of weeks? It’ll mean either no one reads my blog, or none of my friends have been grooving to new music lately…)

Thanksgiving is upon us, and almost everyone I know is out of town, has guests IN town, or works retail and is therefore dead to the world. So — aside from a very pleasant dinner hosted by friends of Roseann last night — I’ll have to find ways of amusing myself for the rest of the weekend.

I have no shortage of distractions.

There are no fewer than four movies in release that I want to see: Casino Royale, Tenacious D, The Fountain, and Stranger Than Fiction. I could almost spend the whole weekend at the theater.

Or I could watch season 1 of The Shield on DVD, on loan from Ron.

Or I could play GTA: San Andreas or Indiana Jones on XBox, or Advance Wars for Nintendo DS.

Or I could continue reading John Kennedy Toole’s classic novel A Confederacy of Dunces. (The etymology of novels is beginning to intrigue me — Andrew Fox’s Fat White Vampire Blues is obviously influenced by the New Orleans-based combination of Dunces and Anne Rice’s vampire books.)

Hell, I could even try to write something.

Instead how have I spent my day so far? Blogging and surfing MySpace. Typical.

Today I discovered that someone got pissed off at my decal of a dinosaur eating a Jesus fish and ripped it off the back of my car. I’m not sure when or where it happened, but it must have been within the last couple of days, because I definitely remember seeing it over the weekend.

The vandal was most likely some good evangelical, patriotic Christian who broke one of the Ten Commandments (“Thou shalt not steal”) in order to take away my First Amendment right of free expression. God Bless America!

I think James, who was the one who first noticed the missing decal, is probably angrier about it than I am. Frankly, I’m surprised the decal lasted this long. Modern mainstream Christianity — although I’ve met many tolerant Christians who reject the dogma — is built on a superiority complex combined with a persecution complex fed by pastors and pundits. Some moron who believes the Secular Liberal Conspiracy wants to take away his Bible, cancel Christmas, and force him to marry a homo decided my decal was a personal attack and went ballistic.

It’s actually kind of satisfying to piss off someone like that.

Besides, every time someone rips off my dinosaur decal, that means the people who make them get even MORE money. I bought two more — in case this happens again, I can immediately replace it and blow some poor, violent Christian’s mind if he sees my car later that day.

Another Special Comment from Keith Olbermann, this time about Bush’s visit to Vietnam. Go and watch.

The money quote:

“We’ll succeed unless we quit?”

Mr. Bush, we did quit in Vietnam! A decade later than we should have; 58,000 dead later than we should have; but we finally came to our senses.

The stable, burgeoning, vivid country you just saw there is there BECAUSE we finally had the good sense to declare victory and get out!

The Domino Theory was nonsense, sir. Our departure from Vietnam emboldened no one. Communism did not spread like a contagion around the world.

And most importantly — as President Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State Lawrence Korb said on this newscast Friday — we were only in a position to win the Cold War BECAUSE we quit in Vietnam.

We went home. And instead it was the Russians who learned nothing from Vietnam, and who repeated every one of our mistakes when they went into Afghanistan. And alienated their own people, and killed their own children, and bankrupted their own economy, and allowed us to win the Cold War.

Why is a former sportscaster the only “news” personality with the cajones to say things like this on the air? It’s working for him, too — his ratings have almost caught up to O’Reilly’s, which have been in freefall.

A week without a blog post? Oops. I have no excuse except I’ve been busy, then sick, then busy again.

In fact, I still don’t really have anything to talk about — not publically anyway. Even political news has been kind of slow, post-election.

So instead, I’ll fill out a meme posted to Karen’s LiveJournal about the 50 Most Significant SF/Fantasy Novels from 1953-2002. Meme follows after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

I posted the photo of my full Goth Boy outfit to the Flickr pool. Also, some random person whose name I don’t recall put together this massive collection of Blessing party pics.

Despite my initial misgivings, Ron, Vern, and I downloaded and watched the Rifftrax version of Star Wars Episode I last night, and… sweet jesus, I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. I stand corrected — that was worth three bucks.

“Is Lucas four years old? That’s the only explanation.”

“It’s the Arc de Completely Failed Slightly Less Than the Other Side.”

“It’s every fanboy’s dream — take Natalie Portman up to your room and show her your robot.”

“He looks like the guy the other Jedis go to when they want weed.”

(during Qui-Gon’s explanation of midichlorians) “*cough* bullshit! *cough*”

“I never thought I’d say this, but I miss Mark Hamill.”

And I’m not even remembering the really BIG laugh lines. Whenever Kevin Murphy spoke for Artoo, I was rolling.