Happy anniversary to me!

Two years ago today, my Livejournal was born.

That means that this journal has lasted one year and 364 days longer than any paper journal I ever attempted.

iTunes note: Yes, I bought the damned exclusive Green Day cover of "I Fought the Law" (from the Pepsi/iTunes Super Bowl commercial). I like pretty much any version of that song (although I'm still partial to the Oysterband's version).

Grr

The "Reverend" Fred Phelps, best known for secretly giving rimjobs to Dick Cheney protesting everywhere (including Emory a few years back, with all six of his followers in tow) with anti-gay signs, is up to his old tricks.

Graphic Novel Goodness

Got a nice shipment of near-free stuff (thanks to gift certificates, of course) from Amazon yesterday. That included three nifty graphic novels:

Animal Man Volume 3: Deus Ex Machina: This, to me, still stands as Grant Morrison's best work (in fact, I think he peaked about ten years ago, but that's a whole other post). His revamp of Animal Man, as minor a character as they get (he was actually a member of a team called The Forgotten Heroes, which says everything you need to know), was one of the Big Five books that fed into the Vertigo line (although Grant, and his successors, Pete Milligan and Tom Veitch, were all gone by the time the line emerged). Nowadays, every writer gets a little postmodern, but back then, no one had told this serious a tale that also dealt with the nature of comics (and the problems that Crisis on Infinite Earths had caused), and certainly nothing that had been set in a mainstream comics universe (Giffen and Fleming's Ambush Bug, and later Byrne's She-Hulk, both took a humorous look at these themes, though). In a way, this is the DC answer to Duck Amuck. And hey, anything with the Inferior Five in it gets my seal of approval.


Brat Pack: Another groundbreaker, this time from Rick Veitch (famously departed from DC after attempting a Swamp Thing/Jesus Christ crossover). This is a dark and twisted poke in the eye to DC (primarily) and the concept of teen sidekicks. Pretty much everything Wertham suggested is taken and amplified beyond belief. The teens are manipulated and controlled, the adult heroes, having beaten everyone, are now merchandising themselves, and the entire world is just plain twisted. Definitely not a happy story, but a brilliant one. They kept Neil Gaiman's intro from the original 1992 printing, but there's no new material for folks who still have their original (mine's long gone).

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Vol 2: Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a sucker for many things from the Silver Age, and the JLA are one of my favorites. This book, in a way, is a bookend to the Animal Man book, with the continued crossovers between Earth 1 and Earth 2, and the development of Earth 2 folks like Black Canary and Red Tornado as Earth 1 characters. All of these team-ups are fun, if less substantial than you might expect in a contemporary story. And hey, lots of beautiful Dick Dillin art. As a bonus, there is a letter column at the end, reprinting letters about the stories in the collection from various fans who went on to become pros (including Gerry Conway, who was the original writer on JLA/Avengers, for the trivia buffs).

Yeah, I'm happy with these books. You should read 'em all, too.