I call this meeting of Comic-Book Club to order! Today we will be discussing "The Unwritten" by Mike Carey and Peter Gross, published by Vertigo. But of course, we end up talking about much more than just "The Unwritten," as any good book club should.

Download Episode 2 (54 minutes, 19.7 MB)

The Incomparable Participants: Lisa Schmeiser, Jason Brightman, and Jason Snell. The Incomparable Theme Song composed by Christopher Breen.

Prominently mentioned in this Incomparable episode:

• "The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity" by Mike Carey and Peter Gross.

A list of other mentioned stuff is forthcoming. Check back.

Our friend Jimmy J. Aquino at the mighty Fistful of Soundtracks blog has begun a new series of posts he's calling "Lacuna Matata." His mission is "to preserve the fading memory of TV shows (or in some cases, comic books) that no one except me remembers watching because the networks somehow Lacuna'd these things from everyone's noggins." Part one deals with the short-lived Fox series, Tribeca. Part two is everything you would ever want to know about Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Check it out.

I love film music. Love it. One of the first LPs I ever bought with my own money was a John Williams soundtrack (although I'm embarrassed to admit which one.) I'll often buy soundtracks to movies I haven't seen or have no plans of seeing anytime soon. Carter Burwell's score to Twilight, for example. 

So it was only a matter of time, I suppose, before my collaborator Joel Mathis and I did a podcast about movies and their soundtracks. We had a lively and wide-ranging discussion this weekend with Washington Times critic/Denver film maven Christian Toto and Fistful of Soundtracks host, blogger and fledgling comics writer Jimmy J. Aquino. I read Toto's reviews religiously and I've been a fan of Aquino's Internet radio show for years, and so it was a real treat to talk to them both. Among the topics we discussed:

• Whether Drag Me to Hell is suitable for toddlers and why Sam Raimi should be admitted to the Overrated Artiste Club;
• How the symphonic tradition up and moved to Hollywood and whether soundtracks deserve more respect than they get;
• Why Ed Asner should be made into an action figure and Walter Matthau was a great if unlikely action hero;
• Who deserved to get the Matthau role in the upcoming Taking of Pelham One Two Three remake;
• "And much, much more!"

Alas, none of us had seen UP when we recorded this episode, but if we had, I might have confessed to bawling through half the movie. Because I'm a sap. But I would also have made the point -- as if it really needed to be made -- that much of what makes UP so memorable and poignant, especially in the film's opening scenes, is Michael Giacchino's score. Giacchino, of course, gave us the music to the Star Trek reboot. And he also did the soundtrack for the upcoming Land of the Lost. (Ah well, two out of three ain't bad.)

After you've listened to the podcast, I hope you'll visit What Would Toto Watch and A Fistful of Soundtracks. And graphic novel fans may want to check out Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology, which feature's Aquino's story, "Sampler."

So I saw this fan trailer for “Green Lantern” on YouTube, which is basically an “Oh, Nathan Fillion, you’re so heroic!” love letter, and to each their own, but man, oh man, please do not make “Green Lantern” as the cult of Hal Jordan’s personality.

Comic movies as origin stories are played out and boring, and I really think any Green Lantern movie should take a cue from J.J. Abrams’ rebooting of the “Star Trek” franchise, toss all eleventy-billion decades of backstory out the window — fanboys, simply knowing all this minutiae is reward enough — and make a straight-up action flick. Call it “Lantern Corps” And make it thusly:

Hal Jordan (Dennis Quaid) and Guy Gardner (Bruce Campbell, playing the comic relief for sure) are tasked with training Earth’s two newest Lanterns, Kyle Rainer (Josh Hartnett) and Jon Stewart (Tristan Wilds). Kyle is, of course, an artiste and super-sensitive and oh, how he sees Hal Jordan as a respected father figure. Jon is straight out of the stint in the Marine Corps he planned on using to pay for architecture school. He is not so jazzed to be a Lantern, and unfortunately, Hal doesn’t know how to get through to him.

Even more unfortunately, Hal doesn’t get a chance to figure it out, because Sinestro (Clive Owen) kills him. All the new recruits know is that Sinestro was the guy who trained Hal. And if Hal couldn’t take his old teacher what chance do they — incompletely trained by the perpetually hung-over Guy — stand?

And so the movie unfolds. Extraterrestrial Lanterns come in to help out (including Kilowogg, as played by Duane Johnson), Kyle keeps his girlfriend from getting stuffed in a fridge, Jon eventually comes around because he’s secretly one hell of a guy, there’s a big battle with Sinestro, and at the very end — we have two new Earth Lanterns who have managed to hold off Sinestro Corps. Perhaps there’s an Easter egg at the very end of the movie where we see both Lanterns walking into a Justice League meeting.

(The sequel gets called “Green Lantern” and it tracks Kyle and John’s falling out. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

My main point here: a movie is not a comic book. It’s not a validation of years of fandom and storytelling, it’s not a multimillion-dollar valentine to the fewer than one million people who read comics in the U.S., it’s not a chance for the self-reinforcing nature of fandom to impose its taste on a wider audience. It’s not repeating the same old story over and over again. A movie is a chance to pick up some of the best beloved aspects of a story from another medium, and to make them dance within the confines of a finite running time, gilded by the sheer gigantic scope of special effects.

So let go of the past. You have nothing to lose but your inherently contradictory continuity.

My son and I finally got to the comic store where I picked up Savior 28 and The Amazing Spider-Monkey (as per an earlier post) and he bought Amazing Spider-Man 590 and 591. And, wow, they were lame. Poor story and really mediocre art. All the characters look like 12-year-olds -- really skinny 12-year-olds -- and the layouts entirely lack excitement. I mean, when Susie looks off-panel and says, "I think I'm looking at a Frazetta painting come to life!" and then the revealed scene looks more like a cheap Heavy Metal knock-off left in the rain for a year -- you know, not even that good. At least a Heavy Metal knock-off would have some character.

And while I'm here complaining for no good reason, let me offer this panel, showing one of what I consider to be the most egregious misuses of the comics medium I've been suffering through for at least the last decade:  The color hold.  I may be misusing the term, but you all know what I mean:  Those characters or things that are printed without the usual comic book outlines, like our buddy the Human Torch here.  (He's blue, incidentally, because he's in the Macroverse.  If you wanted proof that making a new dimension really cool-looking -- which guys like Jack Kirby could do in their sleep -- isn't easy, then you should check out the Macroverse as depicted by the team of Kitson/Farmer/Cox in these two issues.) It just takes me right out of the comic to see this ghostly thing floating around in it when everything else has decent black outlines.  I know what the artists are trying to do, but, guys, it ain't working.  It almost never does.  Give it up already.  The old-fashioned Torch with his liney lines and all?  Much better-looking, even if your Photoshop-addled eyes can't see it.  Trust me.

However, let us not complain overmuch; nay, let us sing the praises of those comics of noble mien. Yesterday Reilly showed me a recent copy of Thor. The cover would've sent me running from the store it's so bad -- who knew Goldilocks lived in West Hollywood? -- but the inside looks really good -- colors by Laura Martin, who I loved on Astonishing X-Men, pencils by Olivier Coipel -- and the story's by J. Michael Stracynzski, so it's got potential. I think I'm going to look into it. I haven't bought Thor since Walt Simonson and Beta Ray Bill.

I just wanted to make note of some good comics on sale now that I think everyone should hear about.

I've mentioned my studiomates before, as well as some of the people working in the studio around the way. I'll probably mention them all again, too, because I honestly feel privileged to know these guys and see them work. The building my studio is in will, I think, be one of those places you read about twenty years from now as being the center of great things. People will marvel at all the talent assembled and read about the creative energy crackling in the room, the way today we read about the old Marvel Bullpen or the studios of Paris where Pablo met Henri, or maybe the Cedar Tavern where Willem punched Clem. I really think it's going to be that important to the world of comics. Great things are ahead!

Of course I don't have anything to do with the great things. I feel as if I'm indulged, like a stray dog who wandered into the building. Because these are artists who work for a living, doing something very challenging, while I'm just goofing around with my "fine" art. (For "fine" read "pointless and masturbatory".)

But these guys, they inspire me, with their talent and their work ethic. They're really brilliant. They also have taught me a few things about the world of comics.

The first thing they've taught me is that the creators don't give a crap about the actual comic books. I've been breaking the habit of treating comic books like valuable objects -- so many of the ones I bought over the years turned out to be slightly less valuable than toilet paper -- but the way these guys toss the books around, it's actively painful. I'm reminded of Brodie from Mallrats: "Hey, I tried to teach you how to handle comics in the sixth grade, but oh no, you wanted to play little league instead." They write 'em, they draw 'em, but they don't care about 'em. At least not the physical manifestations of 'em.

The second thing they've taught me is that the creators don't give a crap about the actual publishing. They're all excited to talk about what they're working on now but just try and get them to tell you when you can actually buy their books. They don't care. They forget. They get confused. It just doesn't occur to them. I can't explain it but I've said more than once to more than one of them: "Let me know when it comes out." I might as well say, "Let me know when that monkey flies out of your ass."

So this is where this post comes in. I want to let you know about a couple of comics you can buy right now (April 2009) by a couple of guys I know.  First up, here's the monkey that flew out of Reilly's ass.

Reilly Brown is the penciller on the absolutely fantastic Amazing Spider-Monkey one-shot. I have no idea what's wrong with Marvel these days, with the Ultimate Dark Noir Zombie Monkey 3D X-books, but Reilly says it has something to do with some study that was done showing what covers best sell comic books, and monkeys always sell. Also, he thinks, the color purple. The point here, though, is that I watched over Reilly's shoulder as he worked on some of these pages and the art is terrific and far, far better than any primate-based story deserves. (Reilly didn't do the cover, by the way, but I can't find any interior pages online.)

Currently I've been looking over his shoulder and seeing the Inhumans and the Shi'ar, so you can look forward to that, but in the meantime, get your Reilly with apes.

If monkeys aren't your thing, though, then you might like my second recommendation. One of the first guys I met from Deep Six, the studio around the corner, was Mike Cavallaro. He gave me copies of his lovely two-issue story Parade (with Fireworks). Lately when I've seen him he's been working on Savior 28 which I only accidentally found out is on stands now when I introduced Mike to my son and Mike showed him what he's doing. Savior 28 sounds like a good project and Mike is working with some serious talent: the book is written by the great J.M. DeMatteis, who I remember from a run of Kraven stories in Amazing Spider-Man back in the mid-1980s, and of course from the fantastic Justice League books around Crisis time. If that's not enough, the legendary Joe Sinnott inked a cover, and I think Mike Zeck did, too.

I don't get to peer over Mike's shoulder as much as I do Reilly's, but from what I've seen, Savior 28 is going to be pretty excellent, also. I can't say anything about the story since I haven't read it yet, but I've always liked J.M. Should be worth the four bucks, anyway.

So there you go: Something to buy next time you're in the comic store. Hie thee hence!

[Edit:  If your local comic shop is one of those that puts titles up in alphabetical order, then look for The Life and Times of Savior 28, which is apparently the official title.  It took us ten minutes or so to find it, and the helpful comic person at the Joker's Child had to go through their incoming comics list one by one looking for it.  It's like the publishers don't want you to buy comics!]

Marvel Comics is clearly making comic collecting as hard as possible. My son bought Amazing Spider-Man #588 a couple of weeks ago. Today I wanted to see when the next issue would be out and I can find...#592 on April 22. With a variant cover! What happened to issues 589 through 591? Who knows?

Click on "Spider-Man" on the Website and you find Amazing Spider-Man 588 (got it, thanks!) followed by Spider-Man: With Great Power, Sensational Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Girl (Zombie Variant), Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Girl, Spider-Man Fairy Tales, Amazing Spider-Man #544 (Djurdjevic Variant (!)), Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, and absolutely no sign of Amazing Spider-Man 589.

Do not under any circumstances attempt to use the search function. Even if you think that by unchecking "Trade Paperbacks", "Digests", and "Hardcovers", and then putting "amazing spider-man" into the search box, and narrowing the release date to April 2009, even if you think by doing all that you'll somehow find what you're looking for; don't do it, because the results will lead off with Ms. Marvel #40 followed by Spider-Woman #1. The cover of which is creepy -- how does one get a superhero costume with a navel? Those crazy unstable molecules!

What the hell is wrong with Marvel Comics? Oh, wait, the answer's right there on the bottom of every Web page, where you can find prominently linked "Corporate Information & Investor Relations".

Speaking of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I found out that the Blob is being played by Kevin Durand. You probably remember Durand as the bad-ass mercenary from the fourth season of Lost. What you probably don't remember is Durand being enormously fat. (He's apparently really tall, though.)

This bothers me. Couldn't the producers find an authentically fat actor to play the Blob? I can't believe no one was available. Having a mesomorph play one of the few superpowered ectomorphs is insulting to fat people everywhere; they might as well get Sylvester Stallone to play Luke Cage in blackface.

It's the sad fate of fat actors in Hollywood: Sure, they're fine to play the bodies of fat characters in movies like Shallow Hal and Norbit, but as soon as we need a face, we're getting a real thin actor in there, like Gwyneth Paltrow or Eddie Murphy. How crappy must that be, to have your body used as the cellulite-ridden jiggly butt of a movie full of jokes with someone else's head stuck on it? Your thighs and gut put on a great performance, but keep your fatty face to yourself, meatball! Then there's Simon Pegg starring in a movie called Run Fatboy Run. Simon Pegg is not a fat boy. How did he sit next to Nick Frost for at least two movies and still think he qualified for the fat guy role?

And does anyone besides me remember Dom DeLuise in Fatso? I saw a few minutes of that movie on some obscure satellite channel a few months ago and was horrified to discover that I'm at least twice the size DeLuise was then, and that I'd kill to be as small as he was. He'd probably kill, too, considering he's about nine hundred pounds these days. Did DeLuise retire or did his craft services costs get too high?

Is that why they didn't get him to play the Blob?

Yesterday I was in the studio I share with Reilly Brown, erstwhile Cable & Deadpool penciller, and Chris Irving, comic book writer. Reilly said something about the upcoming movie Wolverine having been pirated and already released online, and both Chris and he were saying things like "What kind of jerk would do such a thing?"

I jumped in because, with these guys, I'm not afraid of sounding like an idiot. They already know I'm an idiot. "Who cares?" I asked.

Reilly's opinion is that now the movie's box office will be ruined. "Most comic fans have seen the trailers already and know it's going to suck, so they're only going to go so they can see how bad it is. And now they won't have to, they can just download it."

"And think of all the creators who worked on the movie, what about them?" added Chris.

As far as that goes, I'm pretty sure all the gaffers and best boys and hot-gluers got paid already.

As far as Reilly's point, though, I think it's amusing, because I'm a comic fan, and an old-time X-Men collector, and this is the first X-movie I've actually been interested in seeing. Comic fans of my acquaintance really liked the first X-movie, and the director Bryan Singer gained a lot of cred in comic circles -- where he was even forgiven for the aggressively mediocre Superman Returns -- but about the best I could say about it was it was better than I expected. Since I expected it to be the worst superhero movie of all time, this isn't saying much. The second X-movie was less good, and I never bothered with the third one. I just didn't need another two hours or so of underlit cranky mutant angst and blurry CGI, not even for brief shots of Rebecca Romijn essentially naked.

But Wolverine looks pretty cool. Not, you know, great or anything. I mean, isn't Liev Schreiber just too limp-wristed and sensitive an actor to pull off a feral villain named for a giant prehistoric carnivore? Maybe part of why it looks good to me is none of the characters aside from Wolverine had really gained prominence before I stopped collecting. Chris said, "I really want to see them do Gambit well." Who? Name rings a bell. Wasn't he one of the New Mutants or something Art Adams used to draw? Do we give a crap about him now?

In any case, I can't imagine the pirated version making a difference to the movie's bottom line. If anything it might help by generating even more buzz, although the damned thing's being marketed so strongly I can't imagine squeezing any more out of it. Still, Reilly eventually became sanguine about the financial damage: "Fox deserves whatever it gets for how the movie ruins Deadpool."

Who?

You may have heard that in March, the movie “Watchmen” came out. And comic book geeks everywhere had a great, big freak-out. As did the unsuspecting public who walked into the film expecting to see a quirky romantic comedy about night watchmen.

We’re on the geeky side. Which is why we ended up debating the merits of “Watchmen,” in film and in graphic-novel form, on our little private mailing list that you aren’t invited to. Here’s a glimpse into the discussion.