Archive for February 1st, 2003

Finding the Spark

Posted February 1, 2003 By Dave Thomer

I don’t think I fully realized it until last week, but I lost a little bit of enthusiasm for comics over the past year. There was plenty of good work coming out, stuff I enjoyed reading and that I’m happy to have in my collection and on my bookshelf. But there was a spark missing somewhere. The books I really loved all seemed to sputter and fade in 2002. Either they were cancelled due to low sales, or they ran into scheduling problems, or the creators that made them special left to do other books. Even the few new series I did check out were good, but not outstanding. Our trips to the comics store were becoming the sort of thing we did when we got around to it, not something to specifically plan for. Sure, part of that’s because our schedules have changed radically over the last year . . . but in part, it’s because there was never anything we were in a particular rush to get.

Fortunately, I didn’t really realize that enthusiasm was gone until I got it back. Last week was the first Wednesday we made it a point to get to the comics store I could remember. (New books usually arrive in comics stores on Wednesdays.) We made the midweek trip in part to free up our weekend, but just as important to Pattie and me was this: for the first time in over two years, Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross produced a new issue of Astro City. As Pattie’s fond of saying, she nearly tackled Busiek in San Diego in 2001 to find out when the next issue was coming, so it’s fair to say we had built up some anticipation.

You know what? It was worth it. As a reintroduction to the series, it covered some old ground, but I think that just shows the strength of this series and its character-intensive approach. I didn’t mind that the narrator was telling me things about Astro City that I already knew, because he was doing it while telling me about himself. When Busiek’s at the top of his game, he makes the triumphs and failures of the everyday person come alive, and in 22 pages he made me care about a character I’d never seen before. The book looked terrific, with Ross turning in one of the best covers I’ve seen him do. Anderson uses a couple of splash pages to convey different aspects of the city, but he mostly employs a pretty dense panel structure in order to cover a lot of narrative ground and handle the amount of conversation and narration that Busiek writes. (I gotta say, it was nice to read a comic where it actually took some time to read the thing.) Astro City: Local Heroes 1 is a wonderful celebration of courage and compassion, and I am not ashamed to say that my eyes well up every time I read it. It is that damned good, and it reminded me why I love this medium.

When I finished reading the book, one of my first thoughts was ‘Why can’t I find more books like this?’ In the last week, as I’ve done my usual browsing about the web, I’ve realized that it looks like some more of those old favorites like Astro City should be making their returns in 2003. This week, it looks like Christian Gossett and his comrades at Archangel Studios will relaunch The Red Star under the auspices of CrossGen Entertainment. While that series has never gone away, it’s been a while since the last story arc concluded. If I can believe the Archangel website – and I think I can – this relaunch is the beginning of a more-frequent publication cycle, and that has me enormously excited.

Way back in May 2001, Barry Kitson told us that he and Mark Waid would be taking their Empire series over to DC’s Homage imprint. I’ve been checking the news regularly to see when this story of a successful world conqueror would be back on the shelves, and now DC’s website says we can expect it in late summer. Kitson sounds very excited about the return of a series that may as well be entitled Dave’s Favorite Creators Do The Best Work of Their Careers, so that’s one more hint that 2003’s going to be an excellent year.

DC also recently solicited a new issue of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, and Laura DePuy’s Planetary, and even though they promptly canceled that solicitation, they did so with an announcement that Batman/Planetary will ship this summer. To an extent, I’ll believe it when I see it, but I’m in an optimistic mood. This’ll be a great series to have going during the summer blockbuster season.

Jeff Smith’s outstanding Bone series is slated to wrap up this year, and while I’ll be sorry to see it go, I can’t wait to read the conclusion and see what other projects Smith has on tap. Jay Hosler’s Sandwalk Adventures will be collected early this year, which will be fantastic. I’m looking forward to reading both of these books, and the thought that in the next few years I’ll be able to read them to my daughter makes me look forward to them that much more.

More than anything, though, what thinking about all of these returning favorites has done is get me excited about comics in general, which means I’m more likely to go hunting for new creators and new stories and find the next thing that excites me as much as any of my old favorites. I can’t wait.

Filed in Comics

We Shall Call It – The Alan Parsons Project

Posted February 1, 2003 By Earl Green

Originally intended to be the name of a single album and not an ongoing band, the Alan Parsons Project was a bold concession to early 70s art-rock and progressive rock, fusing the expansive (and often lengthy) compositions of such acts as Yes with the conceptual cohesion of Pink Floyd and Emerson Lake & Palmer. And ironically, the idea behind the Project (for the purposes of that first album) was to dispense with the focus on the performers and place the emphasis entirely on the concept. Little did Parsons – whose experience had included engineering major hits with Pink Floyd, The Hollies and Paul McCartney – realize that the Project would become one of the most enduring lineups of the 70s, 80s and 90s.

The Project was the brainchild of Parsons – acting as producer and musician – and Eric Woolfson, a musician, songwriter and vocalist in his own right who was serving as Parsons’ manager in 1975. Woolfson and Parsons, with the help of orchestral arranger Andrew Powell (whose contributions to the Project would span the next two decades), devised a musical suite based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. With several solid rock songs, and almost half of the album written as a purely orchestral work, Tales Of Mystery And Imagination was quite unlike anything else. The Moody Blues, The Beatles and Electric Light Orchestra had fused classical instrumentation with rock numbers, but none of them had given virtually one entire side of an LP over to a session orchestra. The rock numbers were skillfully executed by members of Ambrosia and Pilot, whose most recent album Parsons had been involved with, including the amazing guitar virtuosity of Ian Bairnson, who would also stay with Parsons through the end of the Project’s existence and beyond. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Culture and Media

It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas

Posted February 1, 2003 By Dave Thomer

Bit of a grab bag of topics this time out, but it’s a thematically connected grab bag. Inspired by President Bush’s call in his State of the Union Address for over a billion dollars in funding for research on hydrogen-powered cars, I’ve spent some time trolling the web looking for insights and information on fuel efficiency and other energy-saving endeavors. I don’t think I found any solid answers, but I do think there are several interesting launching points for further discussion.

First, I was disappointed but not terribly surprised to find that Bush’s billion dollar proposal isn’t as impressive as the sound bite might suggest. It actually represents a cut in the absolute funding for fuel-efficient automobiles. During the Clinton Administration, the government funded the Partnership for the Next Generation Vehicle (PNGV) to the tune of about $170 million dollars a year. This ten-year program was a partnership between the government and the Big Three American automakers, whose goal was to have 80 mpg family sedans in car showrooms by 2004, at a price comparable to more traditional cars. In order to make that deadline, PNGV focused on hybrid cars which use both a gas-powered and electric motor, much like the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid that are available today. By shifting the focus to hydrogen-powered fuel cells, the Bush Administration has pushed forward the point at which the government/industry collaboration is expected to produce a more efficient car decades into the future. Setting a more ambitious goal and then cutting the funding earmarked to achieve it does not strike me as sound policy.

It’s also worth noting that, as I said, Japanese automakers already have hybrid cars out on the market. Granted, they serve a very small niche market right now, and they don’t get 80 mpg – more like 40 to 60, which is still nothing to sneeze at. But Toyota and Honda got their cars on the market despite being rebuffed in their attempts to join up with PNGV. There is a certain irony here – a program designed to increase the competitiveness of the American auto industry inspired America’s competitors to do a better job. Sam Roe of the Chicago Tribune argues that there wasn’t nearly enough coordination between the participants, which suggests that there are significant cultural roadblocks to public/private partnership that need to be overcome. Autoweek columnist Kevin Nelson says part of the problem might be the scale of the effort – the government wasn’t kicking in enough money under PNGV to overcome the additional bureaucracy, competition and inertia it created. And if the Clinton program didn’t do much to advance the cause of science, it’s likely that Bush would do even less. As Nelson says, “Federal funding at this level would appear to have no effect on hastening technological progress.â€? Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Public Policy

A Helpful Tension

Posted February 1, 2003 By Dave Thomer

Continuing our discussion of the theoretical questions a democratic reformer in the Deweyan tradition would need to answer:

While reformers will find it a challenge to construct a sound logical case for their program, they may well deem it the least of their problems once they face the task of persuading a skeptical public. A strong argument will help, of course, but the plight of the ‘undiscovered public’ is that its members are ruled by ignorance and passions more than by rationality, so thus will often fail to recognize the wisdom of even the best-argued position. The reformer might be able to sidestep this problem with a rational appeal to a ruling elite, one which would hopefully be more receptive to such tactics and be willing to enforce the reform upon the reluctant public. Unfortunately for the Deweyan reformer, ruling elites enforcing policies from above is exactly what he is trying to prevent. Direct persuasion of the public is the goal, so that the public might create for itself the most beneficial social structure possible. Reformers have no alternative but to confront the would-be public’s resistance to change, especially when such change challenges popularly held beliefs about the justice, morality, and validity of the current society.
The reformers’ best tool in this effort may well be the very social image that is the target of reform. Society forms its beliefs about itself in haphazard, piecemeal fashion, and is often unable or unwilling to develop its new ideas through to a conclusion.
Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Philosophy