To show my age, I’m going to admit that reading the last volume of Minoru Toyoda’s Love Roma (Del Rey) gave me something of the same bittersweet feeling as watching the final episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
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I’ve always been suspect of the argument that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. This anecdote from Matt Thorn seems to confirm my suspicions.
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Brigid’s interview with Fanfare’s Stephen Robson is illuminating, but all I could end up thinking was that my copy of Kan Takahama’s Awabi damned well better show up at my comic shop. I’m a short-sighted, selfish bastard.
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If kids don’t love comics, they’re sure wasting a lot of energy pretending otherwise.
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I don’t think attention automatically confers prestige. Sometimes attention is just a convergence of novelty, nostalgia and good timing. Here’s the teaser caption for the local college newspaper’s story on this week’s big spandex news: “Marvel Comics kills off one of its oldest superheroes in a political statement.”
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I was reassured by my trip to the comic shop this week. When I was checking out, the clerk mentioned that she liked Welcome to Tranquility (Wildstorm) but would like it better if more attention was paid to the elderly characters instead of their angst-ridden heirs and well-intentioned caregivers. I thought that might have been an age-specific complaint, but she’s roughly the same age as the comic’s twenty-something whiners. In fairness, she might get her fill of self-styled outsider poseurs, given that she works at a comics shop in a college town, and not need any of the fictional variety.
We agreed that the driving mystery is pretty nifty, though.
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False economy story problem: Is it worth coping with the aggravation of the local shopping mall to make use of my personal shopping day at Waldenbooks? I hate to admit it, but the store does have a more varied (if smaller) selection of titles than the local Barnes & Noble. And does navigating a sea of ‘tweens burn enough calories to justify consumption of a jalapeño pretzel?
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The ground squirrel that lives around our house came out of hibernation just in time for the season’s first real blizzard. That seems like a metaphor for something.