Dan

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Posts posted by Dan

  1. Hype! (1996): Documentary of the Seattle music scene of the late 80s through the mid 90s, and specifically the rise of grunge from the local punk scene. Truly fascinating stuff, as this came very shortly after grunge had pretty much flamed out, and a lot of the people involved are kind of aware of this but haven't really totally wrapped their minds around it yet, and so there's still a lot of resentment about how their cool little thing was co-opted by the big corporate machine and turned into carefully prepackaged teenage rebellion, and how a lot of interesting bands were left behind when the labels and MTV came looking and grabbed a handful of younger artists. Interviews with artists are plentiful but generally kept short enough that there isn't a huge amount of "Yeah, rock is awesome, corporations suck, man", and most give a lot of insight (one major exception is Eddie Vedder, still very embarrassed about how successful he had become, and who is being extremely careful with his words and talking a lot without really saying much). I could listen to producer Jack Endino tell stories and philosophize pretty much all day, and the most enlightening stuff tends to come from people who work at labels and industry insiders (Jon and Bruce at Sub Pop Records very much come across as the Stan Lee of indie music, as they joyously and wittily promote themselves and their label, and never once mention a single band they represent).

    Also, a shit-ton of great music.

  2. That reminds me of an awesome story I heard at a convention a couple of years back. By the time Byrne was at DC working on Superman, he was a monster. Just an absolute drizzling shit of a human being to be around and to work with.

    One day he submitted a script that had a scene involving the quick melting of an iceberg or something similar, and one of the characters said, "Look at all the liquid water!" Now water is, by its very definition, liquid in nature, and the editorial team saw that and realized it was a terrible line and really ought not to go out like that.

    However, at this point, you did not call John Byrne and tell him his script was anything less than perfection and suggest changes, and you certainly didn't take it upon yourself to just go ahead and fix it in editing, because either of those moves would result in an hourlong phone call where Byrne would hurl threats and verbal abuse at the assistant editor unlucky enough to be given that role. However, at the same time, they knew that if the line went out as written, Byrne would look like an idiot.

    "So, the choice is to either get it fixed and get obscenities screamed at us or we let it go and he becomes publically humiliated and why are we still even asking ourselves which one we should do and let's go to Bennigan's and the first round's on me."

  3. The only way this works is if Luthor feigned his anger and disbelief in order to make his assistant (who believes the computer's analysis) not believe it, that way only he would know the truth about Clark Kent / Superman. But, to my knowledge, it never plays out that way down the line.

    It does not.

    I remember that issue very well, and as a kid I remember enjoying it, until that last page. This was the point where John Byrne was at pretty much the pinnacle of his fame, and DC was far less inclined to edit him than even Marvel had been by this point, so his very real deficiencies as a writer were coming through loud and clear.

  4. Spidey's been in there, so I assume they're cool advertising Homecoming. The calendar has been noticeably heavy on Netflix and Inhumans characters, so although overall the mix has been decent they're obviously pushing their media properties.

    And I do get it. Disney doesn't want them to promote another studio's films. Still sucks.

  5. I have a Marvel page-a-day calendar on my desk, where every day they highlight a different character for a few days. Like, for three days you'll get a Luke Cage, then an action shot, then a cover. The last couple of days it's been the She-Hulk, and specifically from the Sensational Byrne-era. The cover they used is the famous first issue, where she looks at the reader and threatens to rip up all your X-Men comics if you don't buy her book.

    Except they photoshopped it so that the book she's holding up is a copy of Savage She-Hulk #1, and they changed the dialogue to a threat to just rip up all your comics.

    Then I realized that we're a third of the way through the year, and there hasn't been a single X-Man or member of the Fantastic Four in this.

    We did, however, get three days of Karnak the fucking Shatterer.

    Goddamnit, Ike Perlmutter.

  6. Arthur was a cool guy and bought Little Caesars for lunch and basically had me put the Superman family comics in order of their continuity numbering (remember that?) as opposed to title and issue.

    Triangle numbers!

    I KNEW you would know! Hahaha!

    Superman was basically a weekly book back then, with Superman, Adventures, Man of Steel and Action coming out one per week (with Man of Tomorrow for any month with five Wednesdays in it), and without those triangle numbers following the story was fucking chaos.

    Yeah, I had to organize three months of new releases into that order and then I was like "phew! That's done!" Then Arthur was like "ok, now work on the back issues." Hahaha! I think I numbered only about a year and half at that point (as it was 1992) but man, it felt like a Herculean Labor.

    To be fair, X number of copies of a year and a half's worth of comics (75 issues, give or take?) would have been a fair amount of work for a 12 year old kid being paid in crappy pizza.

  7. Arthur was a cool guy and bought Little Caesars for lunch and basically had me put the Superman family comics in order of their continuity numbering (remember that?) as opposed to title and issue.

    Triangle numbers!

    I KNEW you would know! Hahaha!

    Superman was basically a weekly book back then, with Superman, Adventures, Man of Steel and Action coming out one per week (with Man of Tomorrow for any month with five Wednesdays in it), and without those triangle numbers following the story was fucking chaos.

  8. According to CBR, Zoe Saldana may have let the name of the fourth Avengers movie slip accidentally while promoting GOTG2. Feige's been treating the name like a huge spoiler for Infinity War, so into tags it goes:

    She referred to being called back to film "Gauntlet", leading to the assumption that the one after

    Infinity War will be Avengers: Infinity Gauntlet.
  9. Finished the main campaign in Mass Effect: Andromeda. By almost every standard, it's a step down from the first trilogy, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. The combat is much simpler and as a result I found it to be somewhat more fun, even as the story itself was kind of meh. The first couple of planets you land on are quite dull, and the main story takes a looooooong time to really get moving, but the side quests and loyalty missions are fairly entertaining, enough so that I was still on board once the main storyline got going. The game has a lighter touch as well; there's a fair amount of humor amongst the squadmates, who really do seem to like each other, and Ryder is much more personable and, frankly, likable than Shepherd ever was; she (I played as a female) has a personality, and is fairly funny and even kind of dorky. There are a lot of "I have this copy of Chopping Mall on VHS that needs to go back to the video store, can you swing it by the Blockbuster on Havarl for me?" type of side missions, probably too many (although not quite as pronounced as Dragon Age: Inquisition), but overall the balance was pretty well done. I enjoyed.