Now Ed Cunard’s got me going on about books… without pictures. I ask you!

I’ve found some of my favorite authors through National Public Radio, actually, Sedaris being one of them. Naked is probably my favorite of his collection of essays, but that’s like picking the best slice of pizza. Since that time of year looms, Holidays on Ice would be an excellent diversion from all of the pesky love and good will, and it has a pretty good audio version. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have Julia Sweeney’s reading of “Merry Christmas to Our Friends and Family,” but check your local NPR listings to see if they’re re-broadcasting “A Very Special Sedaris Christmas” from This American Life. (The show’s site seems to be on the fritz, or I’d link to it. It has a pretty good audio archive.)

Another frequent This American Life contributor is Sarah Vowell, who also provided the voice of the daughter in The Incredibles. She’s a fine essayist, judging by Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World. (She can get a little grad studentish when she talks about subjects like Sinatra and the The Godfather, but even her weak essays still have some great material in them.) I keep meaning to pick up The Partly Cloudy Patriot, her second collection.

Last, but not least, is the woofy but clearly disturbed Augusten Burroughs, author of Running With Scissors: A Memoir. I can’t begin to describe that book to you, but it will make you feel a lot better about your own childhood, take my word. Exciting as that collection was, I think Dry: A Memoir is a lot better. It’s much more focused, with a better control of tone. He’s got a new collection out, too, called Magical Thinking: True Stories. (It’s on the list.)

The Pickytarian talks about the perils of laughing out loud on public transportation. I was on a plane once reading Naked by David Sedaris, and I entered that state where you realize you’re making a fool of yourself laughing while everyone else is trying to sleep or keep a grip on their sanity in the face of profound personal phobias or not strangle the flight attendant who insists your messenger bag isn’t stowed securely under the seat in front of you. That state, of course, moves on to the next phase, trying not to laugh out loud while still enjoying the thing that’s making you laugh in the first place, so you look even more like an insane person, shaking and grunting. Had this been a post-9/11 world, the plane would have made an emergency landing and I would have been detained.

This also happened to me at a the wedding of an acquaintance. The event itself was extremely heartfelt. And, as you might suspect, I’m not good with heartfelt. When the maid of honor got up to sing Bonnie Raitt’s “Nick of Time,” accompanied by the best man on guitar, I just lost it. Not because she was a bad singer, mind you, but she was precisely the wrong kind of singer to attempt a Bonnie Raitt song. She had this high, reedy soprano with lots of vibrato. And I’m hearing Bonnie Raitt sing this in my head while “I played Jenny Lind in the senior production of Barnum!” is singing it in front of me, and that was just the end of it. I mean, I’m sitting here in some twee country church at the wedding of someone I barely know who’s just trying to pad the gift haul by inviting me, and I found out beforehand that the reception was going to be dry, so it all came crashing down at once. I was attending the wedding with my sister, and she’s even more caustic than I am, and we were very glad we’d arrived late and had to take seats in the back.

Oh, man, then there was the time in college when I got roped into helping out with a video project. (It happened a lot, the curse of the communications major who took acting classes.) We met with the director, and she’s giving her vision for the piece, and she’s telling us the theme is about how men oppress women in our society, and something just clicked in my head that this was going to be scored with Pat Benetar’s “Love is a Battlefield,” so I leaned over to a friend who’d been roped in, too, and told him my theory. (We were going to be playing brutal cops. Can’t you just see it?) So, then she says, “and the music will be ‘Love is a Battlefield.'” And, again, that was the end of that. Eyes watering, body shaking, the whole nine yards.

On the subject of things I’m ashamed to laugh at, have you seen Drawn Together on Comedy Central? I’m usually not one for gross-out, low-brow comedy, but this show makes me laugh the laugh of shame every time I see it. I’m particularly fond of the psychotic, violent Pokemon-ish character, Ling Ling. And my pets are sick of me looking at them and singing, “Go (insert pet’s name here)! It’s your birthday! Not for real-real! Just for play-play!” I shouldn’t like it, I know, but I do. My partner, who hates cartoons of every stripe except for maybe Spirited Away and The Incredibles, loves it too, which is unsettling.

Unrelated to any of the above, except for the fact that both of these gentlemen make me laugh often, Mike Sterling wants to know what your favorite currently-published comic book series is. (I went with She-Hulk.) Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Graeme has returned to the Rampage, and he’s hit the ground running.

I can’t resist a good nitpick when it comes right down to it, so I’m going to drag you through Avengers Finale in terms of who remembers what (and whether it makes any sense). First, I should say that I thought the highlights were chosen well. They offer a nice cross-section of significant Avengers moments.

We start with Iron Man recalling the founding. That’s perfectly appropriate, particularly in light of how much of his personal fortune he’s invested in the team over time. Next, the Wasp identifies the discovery of Captain America as a seminal moment for her. This is fine, too, considering the lasting impression Cap made on the team.

Things get a bit odd from here. Hank cites the Kree-Skrull War, despite playing only a marginal role in it. A better choice for that peak moment might have been Rick Jones, who probably would have attended the last supper, when I think about it. He was the thematic linchpin of the story in many ways, and it had to have been a highlight of his career as a super-heroic hanger-on.

Wonder Man mentions the wedding of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, despite his being in suspended animation at the time. It’s also odd in that he routinely undermined the relationship. When the Vision was deprogrammed, Simon declined to restore Vision’s personality. Simon also pursued a romantic relationship with the Scarlet Witch on a number of occasions, only vaguely cognizant of how his “brother” might feel about the turn of events.

The Beast might have been an interesting choice for this, even though he wasn’t yet an Avenger, and he could have easily cited the marriage of the couple as opposed to their wedding. In terms of being an out-and-proud mutant and public figure, Wanda beat Beast to the punch by several years. It might have been inspirational to the Beast, having just recently left the mutant ghetto himself for Avengers membership, to see a mutant finding happiness on her own terms and serving the public without evasion or apology.

Unfortunately, the Beast gets to recall the battle with Korvac, in spite of the fact that he wasn’t present for it. (He had gone to rescue the missing X-Men from Mesmero and was later kidnapped along with the team by Magneto, resulting in his absence during the last half of this arc.) Again, a different, more appropriate Avenger is right on hand. This was Warbird’s first significant adventure with the Avengers (in her days as Ms. Marvel). Beyond the scope of the event itself, it could be portrayed as a liberating, legitimizing event in the early days of her heroic career.

Maybe the clumsiest of the lot is Jarvis fondly recalling the Siege of the Mansion. It’s not that I don’t think the choice is right, but there’s something about his tone as he describes the event. I remember those stories, and it was a significantly traumatic event for him. He was badly brutalized by the invaders, hospitalized, almost lost an eye, and almost quit service to the team as a result. His “you sure showed those ruffians” retelling is rather odd and seems to trivialize the experience.

Apropos of nothing, the Falcon harkens back all the way to… um… Ultron Unlimited. He wasn’t present for it, hadn’t been an active member for some time, and hadn’t yet returned to active membership in volume three. It’s also one of those world-saving moments that generally make him uncomfortable or at least reaffirm his commitment to street-level super-heroics. The problem with Falcon, though, is that he’s served very short stints with the team, usually in the in-between periods. He could have nicely talked about the team’s evolving relationship with longtime pest Henry Peter Gyrich, as Gyrich forced Falcon’s introduction to the team and later worked closely with Falcon to redeem himself.

This isn’t to say that Ultron Unlimited wasn’t an appropriate inclusion to the “Best Of” list. A finale without reference to Ultron would be odd, to say the least. But why not give Hank his moment? (Even Falcon wonders why Hank didn’t choose this turn of events.) Or bring in a hero or two who were actually there, like the Panther, Firestar, or Justice? (It was Panther’s first outing with the team after a fairly serious interpersonal rift, and it was the point at which Justice and Firestar truly found their footing as members of the team.)

Ultimately, I think Avengers Finale was reasonably well intentioned. Some thought went into it, but I do think there was plenty of room for more. When relevant characters are available and would be motivated to attend an event like this, it doesn’t really serve any purpose to exclude them, particularly when they can carry a moment better. I’m not saying everyone from Firebird to Stingray should have attended, but if you have a list of points you want to make for the sake of resonance and closure, why undermine them with utility casting?

Okay, I could have thrown this in with the earlier post if I weren’t so scatterbrained, but there you go. Two new links in the sidebar!

The Pickytarian appeals not only to my appreciation for incisive comics reviews but to my rural fascination with efficient public transportation. (He reads comics on the subway, which I would totally do if I lived someplace that had a subway system.) Take a look at his review of Ocean 2.

I have no idea what a Trusty Plinko Stick is, but it hasn’t stopped me from enjoying Bill Doughty’s blog of the same name. Hm… maybe I’ll pop by the Internet Anagram Server and see what comes up… I think I like “sick list punky trot” best.

Great, now I feel compelled to do my own… Figures. Gibberish.

Ahhh, now that’s a Wednesday at the comic shop. Oddly enough, my giddy joy comes from titles that have been out for a while as opposed to anything new, but who cares? It came, I bought, I smiled.

I can’t say enough good things about Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life from Oni, and hopefully I’ll be able to narrow the list down to a manageable length when I get around to reviewing it. (In the meantime, why not take a look at what folks like Rose Curtin, Greg McElhatton, and Kevin Melrose had to say?)

The only downside to the Pilgrim love is that it’s kept me from perusing the latest volume of Sgt. Frog. All things in time, though. I laughed out loud at the cover, which looks like nothing so much as a snapshot from a Manga Archetypes High School Reunion.

Also showing up late (Diamond shorted the shopkeep) was the second issue of DC’s Adam Strange, which I liked even better than the first. Andy Diggle has such a fresh take on the character, while taking the best of his foundations, and art by Pascal Ferry is glorious and perfect, from the slums of Gotham to the remote reaches of outer space. (And no prior appreciation of the character is required for admission. Just ask Paul O’Brien.)

And, okay, it was really self-indulgent of me, but it’s my birthday and I needed something to counteract the autopsy, so I bought myself the second volume of Girl Genius, too. Besides, who needs food? I could stand to lose a few pounds.

Did you ever find yourself taking forever to finish a book? Not because you disliked it, and not even for any reason you could really pin down? That’s been my experience with Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

And it’s a really wonderful book, don’t get me wrong. It rests in some weird territory between Jane Austen and Neil Gaiman, which is an interesting place to find yourself. At times, it’s ramblingly anecdotal. At others, the plot moves forward with lethal purpose. It can go from archly satirical to tragically romantic without pausing for breath. (Okay, it’s almost 800 pages long, so there’s room for shifts in tone and pacing, I guess.)

It’s also a triumph of style, as Clarke assumes the pose of a period novelist/historian, complete with archaic usage and footnotes (similar in flavor and function to those found in the Discworld books, but with more of a straight face). She’s gone to great pains to place it in the early 1800s, and the period detail alone is fascinating, focusing on the shifting nature of what is and isn’t fashionable, and having her characters memorably cross paths with Wellington, Byron, and others.

I suppose I should throw in a plot summary: it’s the story of two magicians of entirely different dispositions and motivations trying to revive English Magic after a long, fallow period. Along the way, they encounter war, politics, social treachery, faerie machinations, and their own shortcomings, which have painful consequences for both. Great, dense stuff.

It’s also interesting to view through the prism of current events, as two factions, with seemingly antithetical world views, thump up against each other in every way on every subject. Watching those world views evolve and seeing the various forces that drive them gives the book some real resonance.

Wowzers, there’s a lot of stuff coming out today (including soccer-themed Smurfs, of all things), much of it worth a look.

DC offers Fables, Gotham Central, and the collection of the almost unanimously adored Superman: Secret Identity. There are also critically admired but underperforming titles like Bloodhound and Firestorm, though I haven’t tried either yet.

From Marvel, District X begins its second arc. (I thought the first arc had a weak ending, but I’m still intrigued by the concept.) New Thunderbolts might be fun, though writer Fabian Nicieza often indulges in ridiculously convoluted plotting. Warren Ellis takes over Iron Man, if that’s your sort of thing (Spec: this issue, Tony Stark checks his e-mail… with nanobots!). And She-Hulk gets collected in Single Green Female. (If you haven’t tried the book, this is a perfect opportunity, though it’s probably the easiest book in the world to pick up without feeling lost, so nothing should stop you from sampling one of the monthlies, either.)

Viz has a new chapter of Alice 19th, the seventh, which makes me wonder how I managed to miss Vol. 6. Hm. Tokyopop may or may not have two or three titles I follow, but they front-load their listings at the beginning of the month, and it’s anyone’s guess when the newest Sgt. Frog will show up in specialty stores.

Maybe this will be the week I try Demo, from AIT/Planet Lar. Those are stand-alone stories, aren’t they?

It’s a special week for grim-and-gritty fan-baiting, too. Members of the JSA conduct an autopsy in their latest issue, tears flow like a babbling brook in Identity Crisis 6, and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes get boozy and maudlin in Avengers Finale.

This just in: everyone’s leaving everything.

This can’t be right. Marvel has actually lured someone away from DC with an exclusive contract. (Running tally: Marvel, 3; DC, several thousand.) This time, it’s Michael Lark, gifted artist of the wonderful Gotham Central. It wasn’t that long ago that writers Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker were saying in Newsarama interviews how integral lark was to the title, so how will they go about finding a replacement? Here’s Rucka’s take:

“At the end of the day, and if we’re lucky, the decision is going to be a joint one between Ed, myself and [editor] Matt [Idelson], and it will be someone we all agree on. I’m honestly less concerned with somebody who will be able to replicate the stylistic as much as finding someone who was as killed as Michael with the acting, and the subtleties that required.”

How about Sean Phillips? Or Steve Epting?

Maybe there’s some kind of Newsarama curse at work. Not long after Christopher Priest sang the praises of Captain American and Falcon artist Joe Bennett, DC lured Bennett away with (wait for it) an exclusive contract. Priest, unfailingly decent, optimistic, and unlucky, has a request:

“But we are begging you, retailers, to not cut your orders. There’s no reason to. The book will go on, but at some point Sam [Falcon] will shove Steve [Cap] under a bus and take over the title in some fashion.”

I really enjoy the way Priest writes the Falcon, so I’m hoping this comes about. Maybe comic synergy will assert itself, and Lark will end up drawing the title.

When he isn’t busy backfilling plot holes in Avengers: Disassembled (which he might have done prior to publication), editor Tom Brevoort is explaining what’s going on with critical darling She-Hulk. The short version is, the current run will end with the 12th issue; a couple of months later, Marvel will re-launch the title. Brevoort earns a tiny bit of good will with the following remark:

“She-Hulk was launched during a period in which we started up dozens of titles, so it’s no surprise that it got lost in the mix.”

The series will start up again in May with writer Dan Slott and, miracle of miracles, a concentrated promotional push from its publishers. (I remain unconvinced that Marvel, given its track record, won’t launch another glut of superfluous books at the exact same time. You need only look at the summary of Marvel news from Wizard World Dallas to see how much they have in the pipeline.)

Wedging Jessica Jones into virtually every corner of the Marvel Universe apparently takes a lot of time, so Brian Bendis will be leaving Daredevil a year from now. (I kid, though she does seem to be slated for a lot of face time, considering her appeal is that she’s a rough-edged fringe character.) Mark Waid is about to leave the Baxter Building, but not to worry. Marvel knows that three Fantastic Four titles (four, if you count the Marvel Age book) just aren’t enough to meet rabid demand, so they’ve got a Joe Casey mini-series (Fantastic Four: First Family) on deck and what appears to be a villain spin-off (Ed Brubaker’s Books of Doom) on deck.

How do you translate a cinematic experience to a graphic novel? “Widescreen” storytelling has become common enough, but what about the subtler things that movies can achieve? That’s one of the artistic ambitions behind Oni’s original graphic novel The Awakening, and the results are intriguing, if mixed.

The cinematic genre at hand is a school of Italian horror known as giallo. According to Awakening author Neal Shaffer, “the thing that distinguishes these Italian works is that they are more about a sustained mood and atmosphere than a quick edit and loud shriek.”

Shaffer and artist Luca Genovese have certainly achieved a sustained mood of helplessness in this piece. A circle of friends at a posh private school are being murdered one by one. Francesca, a newcomer to the clique, survived an attack, but it’s left her in an almost catatonic state. She has visions of the next killing but can do nothing to prevent them in her uncommunicative state.

Landis, the detective investigating the brutal killings, faces his own frustrations. The school’s administration is obstructively secretive, the only witness can’t share what she’s seen, and Landis has no other useful leads. A popular teacher is under suspicion and unable to help his students cope with their grief and terror. There’s an almost surreal inevitability to these events, a pervasive sense of doom.

The down side to the creative team’s commitment to giallo’s conventions – the primacy of atmosphere over a detailed narrative – is that it doesn’t hold together very well for me as a story. Shaffer and Genovese are less concerned with specifics of plot, and while the story is coherent enough, it’s beyond minimalist in terms of detail. The killer’s identity is ultimately irrelevant, as motives aren’t ever fully explained. It’s eerie, but it’s weightless.

And that may constitute a criticism of the genre more than of this specific work (provided I understand giallo’s conventions correctly). They’ve obviously translated the feel well from screen to page, but my tastes run more to the conventional mystery than a style-over-substance mood piece. (I like the drawing room scene at the end where all is revealed.)

That said Shaffer and Genovese have done a marvelous job of finding a cinematic style of visual storytelling. Establishing shots of the various settings, eerie moments where the “camera” seems to linger on an object as the action moves out of the frame, progressively tighter panels irising in on a subject… it’s all tremendously effective. Genovese is an extremely talented visual storyteller. His work reminds me of Sam Kieth’s on books like Four Women, combining the mundane and the surreal and the horrific.

Reading through Oni’s The Awakening the first time was actually a bit frustrating, as I had next to no knowledge of the giallo genre. On subsequent readings, after some web research, I was better able to appreciate the book for its ambitions in regards to its source material. But am I really that unusual for my lack of giallo literacy? I wonder how many casual readers will be a bit baffled by the book because they’re unaware of its inspirations.

Ultimately though, The Awakening is a laudable attempt to expand genre horizons in graphic novels, even if the genre in question is more interesting to me in concept than execution. It may be style over substance, but it’s certainly got style.

Newsarama has a great interview with Peter David about upcoming developments in the excellent Fallen Angel. Look for guest appearances from characters from an Epic mini-series David did with George Perez. Wait… Epic? Creator-owned Marvel characters in a DC book? How did that happen? David explains:

“DC was very resistant to investing the time, energy, cost and manpower for what they perceived as little-to-no return. I mean, it’s one thing to clear the hurdles for a DC/Marvel crossover that’s going to sell a hundred zillion copies, but this? I had to do a lot of talking, up to and including offering to pay the legal fees involved.”

I’m continually impressed by the lengths he’ll go to for this title. It’s just exciting to see that kind of tenacity from a creator.

Marvel wants to know which of its characters needs a revamp. (I’ll pause for a moment while you all provide your own punch lines.) I voted for Scorpion, largely because it’s my sign. I hate to see my fellow Scorpios represented even by implication by a dumb thug who hasn’t changed his underwear since the 1960s. We’re “deep, mysterious, and magnetically attractive.” Just ask Kevin Kline, k.d. lang, Bjork, or Owen Wilson.

Johanna at Cognitive Dissonance has found a really interesting interview with Devin Grayson, where the writer talks candidly about the state of women in the comics industry and the uncomfortable role of pioneer:

“And I’m delighted to be able to expand their perceptions of what females can do in the world, or to be in any way a part of generating interest in this incredible medium among my gender peers. But all of this was the last thing on my mind when I began, and an uncomfortable thing to be lauded for. It’s just a happy accident, but sometimes I feel like I’m supposed to be content with my achievements in a pioneering context, rather than in a creative context.”

(If I were a very small person, this would be the point where I’d suggest being discontent with Grayson’s creative context is entirely reasonable. Wait… I just did. Drat my smallness!)

The latest Comics Remix is up at PopCultureShock. The montage page is depressing and hilarious… mostly hilarious.

Tom the Dog loved The Incredibles. I saw it with the hubby this weekend, and I thought it was… okay. It was entertaining overall, and some of the sequences offered really spectacular action, but I found some of the voice work grating, the tone a little muddled, and the pace a bit lagging at points. Of course, I could watch an entire movie about the costume designer, Edna Mode.