Conversations 2010 #14

Conversations 2010 #14



That's the cover to Amazing Spider-Man #101, the first appearance of Morbius and, more importantly for current purposes, the earliest Amazing issue I owned featuring Curt Connors aka The Lizard. In the late 80s I religiously bought every back issue of Spider-man that I could find either at the flea market or at Time Tunnel Comics, long since out of business; the first shop that I had a membership at.

I was a natural comics nerd before I was nerdy about anything else. I've mostly given up on keeping up with comics, but I still love them. My comics interest has gravitated toward older newspaper strips and I love reading Krazy Kat and Thimble Theatre with the girls. Newspaper strips are mostly terrible today. Pickles is the only newspaper strip left that I think is consistently brilliant. There are also a few good online strips that I know about and probably quite a few that I don't.

Jason, it's good to see you back. Facebook sucks.

The pathetic irony of me giving you a public lashing for your absence, then taking an extended absence of my own was not planned. Sorry about that.

I've enjoyed your recent posts and want to see them coming. Notice the addition to the sidebar on the right?

I did read Amazing Spider-Man #632. I bought it because of your printed letter. I was pleasantly surprised to find a decent story and... Chris Bachalo art! I was a huge Shade the Changing Man fan in the early-mid 90's and always loved Bachalo's artwork. I don't think Shade was ever collected in tpb format, so I don't know how easy it'd be to find, but it's worth checking out. Do you like Peter Milligan? I have no idea what he's doing now, but for a while he had a good run on some X-titles including a fairly recent zany series with Mike Allred. I gave all of my Shade issues to Spike a while back. I'm pretty sure they were in the box that was stolen, otherwise I'd see if he'd let you borrow them. [edit: I just checked; there are tpb editions available. Check it out.]

Anyhow, I can't justify the $4 an issue cost to keep buying Spider-Man issues (I do like that they eliminated the other titles and are releasing Amazing more often), but I enjoyed this issue and have been keeping up with the series by reading new issues at the comics rack at Wegmans. Thanks.

This (2nd part of a) Conrad strip reminded me of the Shed storyline...


Have you read any of Peter Conrad's stuff online? Stymied was good and Lou's Garage was great. I've always really liked his work and what he's doing now is still interesting. I first came across a comic of his in Backwards City Review.


Brandon, did I let you borrow Un chien Andelou? I can't find my copy and can't remember who I loaned it out to. Or maybe I just lost it.

I just read Armond White's review of Jonah Hex. Wow! I wish I had seen the same movie as him. Unfortunately, Jonah Hex sucks in spite of White's championing it. His reading of the film is more than generous. It's crazy. The guy is crazy. I don't know what else to say.

I'm sorry to hear about your disappointment with Killer (though it still sounds like you liked it). It was specifically Emerson's defense of the film that got me really excited about it. I'm still excited to see it. The only other Winterbottom film I've seen is The Claim, which was an interesting and visually gorgeous Western based on a Thomas Hardy novel. I remember liking it, but can't remember much about it.

I haven't posted anything lately because I haven't really watched anything.

I got the rest of Breaking Bad Season 3 from my friend Ben and have watched episodes 9 and 10. I'll probably write something when I'm done with the season.

The only film I've seen in July so far is Big Fan. I was a bit annoyed by some of the homo-erotic implications, but I enjoyed the fandom aspect. I don't care at all about professional sports, but I can sympathize with the essential nerdiness of extreme fandom. The film isn't all that interesting visually and some of the editing really annoyed me (for example, the shots of the QB poster, tying into the homo-erotic thing above). Patton Oswalt is great. To be honest, so is everyone else in it. I have some problems with the script and with the direction, but Big Fan is definitely worth checking out. I'd be willing to discuss it more if one of you guys sees it and want to talk about it.