Pop Snark Hooligan!

... or, Why it's never a good idea to let your marketing manager get all "creative" on you.

In a maneuver that smacks of one part desperation and two parts mind-boggling stupidity, Marvel Comics has announced they will have a crossover event with the CBS soap opera, The Guiding Light. In better news, the crossover will feature The Avengers, and S.H.I.E.L.D. In even better news, the announced writer for this high profile project will be Marvel's Marketing Director Jim McCann???? You know, I've been reading comics since the age of six. That means I've got 32 years of reading comics under my belt and I have never understood Marvel's propensity for not using high power talent on books that will receive inordinate amounts of exposure.

Here's the thing. Let's say you need a brick wall built, you don't want to do it yourself who do you have do the job? Do you hire a plumber, or an accountant? Not usually, no. You hire a bricklayer, or a general contractor, and he hires the bricklayer. You get someone with the skills and the background to do the job and do it well. Subsequently, if you need a story written that's going to net your company more media exposure than it's ever gotten before, do you hire an MBA? No. If you have unlimited access to Marvel Comics' talent pool, you hire Brian Michael Bendis or Mark Millar, and if it's a comic book, you put one of your top artists on the project, not some newcomer, or second stringer.

Of course, when you think about it, all of this is probably academic anyway. All you have to do is think about the viewing audience for The Guiding Light, and ask yourself how many soccer moms do you know that read comic books. In fact I'll do you one better. How many middle-aged housewives...(or husbands. Let's be fair, this is the new century, and I do catch "Days Of Our Lives", when I can.) (In my defense, I was programmed to be kindly disposed towards "Days" as a small child because Deidre Hall was my all time favorite Saturday morning superhero, Electra Woman.)... do you know that have even a passing interest in comic books? How many of them will see this big crossover as anything more than a week long annoyance?

The worst part of this whole thing is this: This idea could quite possibly work. Here's the thing. Soap operas are simply serial fiction, so they have at least that core concept in common with comics. If Marvel were to produce something in the way of let's say a graphic novel sized storyline, something that does some sort of major reveal for one of the recurring "Guiding Light" characters, keep the storyline under tight control, and dovetail a daily release with one week's worth of episodes or so. You'd have to make the dailies available across newsstands so that it showed up at your local supermarket, or at Borders and Barnes and Noble. Plus you could give comics retailers an incentive to carry the thing by giving them expanded editions to sell with different covers or production art, or something like that, this could work. The important thing would be to make damn sure it was well written, and stay the hell away from the super heroes. It could work, but it won't, because Marvel can't seem to think beyond the superhero genre.

Now really, how many of you out there thought anything more than, "Huh?" or "What the fuck?" when you heard this announcement? If any of you thought this was anything more than a monumentally stupid idea, let me know, and I'll send someone over to rip up your Chris Claremont collection.

I have this thing in my head. It's kind of my own personal version of a computer installation wizard. You know, the one with the annoying little messages that say things like, "Do you want to proceed?" "Are you sure you want to proceed?" "Well, if you're really, really sure..." "Okay, last chance, are you really, really, really sure?" Sometimes the bastard gets stuck and years slip by while the article, story, or review I originally wanted to write sits on my mental back burner, smouldering and burning around the edges. Lately, I've developed some mental pot holders so I can now grab this baby off the back burner, scrape the crusty stuff off the edges, stir it up a bit, and serve it up with some sort of frilly garnish. Yes, tonight I'm giving you all something out of my very own mental crock pot.

Try not to think of it as leftovers, and I'll make it as tasty as I can.


Reviewing Tom Beland's work is a daunting task. He's got marvelous reviewers like Johanna Draper Carlson, Randy Lander, Don MacPherson, and Andrew Arnold who writes the Comics Love column for Time frikkin Magazine Online, planted squarely in his corner. The guy tends to be a perennial critical darling. He's been nominated for the Eisner Award. He's got his magazine coming out from Image Comics now, and a high profile writing gig for Marvel Comics coming up. He doesn't need my little ol' opinion of his work floating around out there. Then again, it never hurts to have one more person in your corner pitching for you.

My composition and rhetoric professor, the man who taught me the Montaigne style essay, and quite a lot about the critical review once told me, "While you're writing, you must remember this one truism. Just because it happened to you, doesn't make it interesting. If you can consistently break this rule you will never fail to entertain."

Tom Beland breaks this rule with marvelous style, grace, and precision. The core story is elegant in its simplicity. Tom meets this girl Lilly while waiting at a bus stop at Disneyland. The two hit it off and this chance meeting quickly turns into a long distance relationship. Lily is a popular morning show radio host in Puerto Rico, Tom is a newspaper columnist and cartoonist in Napa Valley California. After several abbreviated visits and a category five hurricane, Tom decides to move to Puerto Rico. That pretty much catches you up on the story so far.

True Story Swear To God is an absolutely perfect love story at its core. Beland proves himself an impossibly perceptive observer of human behavior. He's introspective to a fault, and he uses that amazingly precise internal eye to splay glimpses of his life onto the comics page. His family is slightly dysfunctional and extremely loving. Tom himself is by turns insecure and mildly neurotic. Only the character of Lily is seen without much in the way of flaws. I suspect that what Tom is doing here is filtering his perception of Lily through that initial haze of new love. Either that or she really doesn't have much in the way of flaws in which case Tom is in real trouble in future episodes.

One of the most amazing scenes is the first time we actually see Lily get angry. Tom and Lily set up a dinner party to introduce Tom to Lily's parents. The planning stages leading up to it are a little slice of new couple's hell wherein everything that can possibly go wrong does. They make it through and dinner goes off without a hitch, and at the end of it all as they're saying goodnight, all Lily's mother can do is admonish her for not wearing earrings. It's a priceless moment. We've all been there with our own relatives and Tom walks us through it all again, deftly giving us his perspective. Lily's reaction humanizes her and Tom's reaction to her makes us love them both that much more.

To sum up the totality of TSSTG by calling it a "chick flick on paper", is perhaps an accurate description. If that label is to be applied, it must take its place alongside classic fare such as When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless In Seattle, and The Princess Bride. Yes, it's that good.

Tom is a fabulous writer. He combines spot on dialogue with some of the most gorgeous exposition I've ever read.

"She's sleeping. Her body's so close, I can feel it move as she breathes."

"Here."

"In my arms."

"I feel a sense of serenity that I've never felt before with others."

"If my feelings are a painting... this moment would be the frame."

Within these five simple, elegant sentences he brilliantly sums up the unquantifiable feeling of being in love.

The artwork on TSSTG is, on the surface, deceptively cartoony. The characters are caricatured simply, but that merely adds clarity to the story. Tom's backgrounds are where he really shines. He gives us super detailed establishing shots to frame the location, then abandons them as the characters take the stage. This has the effect of making the dialogue jump off the page, and draws the readers' eyes to the characters which are the most important parts of the story. It's a visual trick that Dave Sim and Gerhard used masterfully well in Cerebus, and Jeff Smith used to impressive effect with Bone.

Together, the writing and the art make for a story that will have you crying and laughing out loud, often at the same time. It's brilliant, essential reading for anyone with a passion for meaningful human interest stories, chick flicks, or just a damn fine read.

True Story Swear To God is available from any local comics shop that has even a marginal clue. The first and second trade paperbacks are still available from AIT/Planet Lar, along with the 100 Stories collection of Beland's original mini strips. Recently TSSTG made the jump from Tom's own imprint Clib's Boy Comics, to Image. The first issue is out now, and it's a pretty good assumption that future graphic novels will be released with Image as well.

My wife tells me that I don't just jump online and bitch about random stuff enough, so far be it from me to refuse her a rant. Let's see, what to rant about. Hmmm... over saturation of 911 survivor's guilt on all media outlets? Naah. Several friends still stuck in Afghanistan and currently getting chopped to bits by a re-energized, rebooted Taliban based out of Pakistan, who's supposed to be on our side in this whole "war on terror" thing? No. Ooh, I know. I'll rant about Steve Irwin's untimely death by stingray and all the Internet troglodytes that couldn't gather up the self control to let the rest of us mourn the untimely passing of a great conservationist in peace? Or perhaps the fact that Montana gas prices are still sky high, even though we use almost no Middle Eastern oil. You know, the same oil interests which our military boys are currently fighting to protect. Of course, it's kind of confusing when everybody seems to keep calling, "protecting our oil interests", "establishing a peaceful democratic Middle East."

Ah, screw it, Let's bitch about this whole Michael Bay/Transformers Movie scandal. In fact, let's just bitch about Michael Bay in general. Okay, so...Top 10 reasons why Michael Bay can bite my ass.

10. The Rock - Nicholas Cage? Check. Stupid, impossible plot? Check. Weak, embarrassing dialogue? Check. Insipid villain role that not even Ed Harris can salvage? Check. All this and Sean Connery still comes out smelling like a rose.







9. Armageddon - You, go wake up 20 million people and tell 'em this movie has more cheeseball climaxes than Linda Lovelace on a 12 day crack bender.








8. Bad Boys - Blah, blah, blah, Lawerence and Smith blow stuff up, blah, blah, blah.









7. The Island - Okay, so I haven't actually watched The Island, but after the total marketing saturation prior to the theatrical release, I still feel I've seen enough.









6. Bad Boys 2 - Bad Boys 2, Bad Boys 2. Michael Bay's got a crappy sequel for you. Works better if you sing it to the COPS theme song.








5. He's much prettier than I am. Just look at that face. He should be hosting Project Runway with Heidi Klum or something.




4. He can't hold a camera steady to save his life. This weird directorial disease has infected Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, and Michael Mann. If Cameron goes, you're all gonna pay!

3. He's singlehandedly dragged every closet Transformers fan kicking and screaming onto the Internet and whipped them into a rabid bitch fest reminiscent of a day spent with your browser stuck on Barbelith. Here's a clue for all of you. So he changed some of the robot designs. Fucking deal. It was a shitty cartoon to begin with and an even shittier line of toys. To think that Transformers spawned out of Microman toys... *shudder* talk about xenogenesis.




2. Pearl Harbor - Not even gonna touch that one. Sometimes there are simply no words.









1. He keeps making movies, and you people keep throwing money at him. He's like the Terminator. He won't stop, he'll never stop until we're all so lobotomized by loud explosions, witty banter and bad acting that we... oh, wait.

In 1986 Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons came out with a little 12 issue mini-series that promptly set the comics world on fire. The Watchmen re-invented the genre for the next decade, and today remains a seminal influence in the hearts and minds of creators of such luminary status as Joss Wheedon, Darren Aronofsky, and Niel Gaiman. It is widely reguarded as a literary masterpiece, and a natural for film adaptation.

In 1989 Joel Silver, the producer behind The Lethal Weapon franchise, and the Die Hard cash cow, teamed with Arnold Schwarzenegger to try to get The Watchmen movie into production. Armed with no script, and hamstrung by their choice of Terry Gilliam (who has a James Cameron-like grasp of budget, and plays really well with the other children) as director, the movie disappeared in a mess of studio infighting.


Then in 1991, President Regan's evil master plan of matching the Soviet "defense" budget until their economy tanked, effectively ended the Cold War, (at least in the popular zeitgeist.) This rendered The Watchmen's theme of Cold War anxiety effectively impotent, and plans for a movie were tabled indefinitely.

The tragic events of September 11th 2001 sparked a renewed interest in The Watchmen. Plot compression expert David Hayter, who condensed three decades of The X-Men into a passably watchable two hour movie, actually came up with a workable script. In 2002 wonderkind director Darren Aronofsky was given the option to direct Hayter's script. Aronofsky instead chose to take on The Fountain, ending it's tenure in development hell, but condemming The Watchmen to languish a little longer.


In 2005 Paul Greengrass, the brilliant director of The Bourne Supremacy, actually got most of the way through pre-production on The Watchmen movie before the studio pulled the rug out from under him, citing budgetary concerns.

It's now 2006 and Zack Snyder, the brilliant director behind the impressive re-imagining of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, has signed on to see if he can beat the odds. He has a few aces up his sleeve. He knows how to bring in a movie on time and within budget. He's working with Warner Brothers, who own D.C. comics, so they have a vested interest in seeing a successful Watchmen movie. Finally, he's a fan of the source material. Hopefully all these things will combine together, the planets will align properly, whatever, and we'll finally get our Watchmen movie.

Snyder's got his adaptation of Frank Miller's The 300 coming out shortly. I think I'll wait to see how that does before I start holding my breath... again.




Lego Watchmen and Lego Minutemen can be found at David Oakes wonderful online gallery here.

I know what you're all thinking. Some of you are wondering who is this Gail Simone and when did she piss in Dan's Cheerios. Others of you are wondering how I could possibly hate one of the nicest Comics writers on the planet, and some of you Bendis fans are cheering me on to a frenzy of Gail bashing goodness. Well...

Okay, you got me. I really don't hate Gail Simone. I just used that as an intro to sucker you all in here. In point of fact, aside from a somewhat unhealthy obsession with fish nipples, the color purple (that's the color, not the Spielberg movie), Disney stuff, and Canadians, she has always seemed quite congenial to me. I have been told on occasion that she eats live kittens, and that she killed and ate an internet journalist to get her Villians United gig, but the source is highly suspect. Gail is in point of fact, one of the nicest writers I've ever met.

What makes Gail unique is that she started her writing career on the internet, and she still takes great pains to maintain a strong internet presence. Over the years I have been lucky enough to correspond with her. Sometimes at length, other times just a quick, "Hey, nice article," but it's always nice to hear from her. For the record, Gail Simone is endlessly patient with her fans and eternally graceful to her detractors. She's funny, waaaaaay too self-effacing, and if it weren't for that whole internet journalist incident, she'd have long since been nominated for sainthood. So, my children, we gather here today in this small, overly cramped sideroom in the largest convention center in the world, to sing hosannas to the stunning creative talent that is the great and terrible Gail Simone. Beer and kittens are of course optional.

Gail Simone announced her presence on the internet with the authority of a born superhero fan who had the intestinal fortitude to ask a question that disturbingly, no one had really asked before. It was discussed in hushed whispers at the local comics store, and pondered over by the occasional casual reader of comics, but it was never discussed out in the open, and definitely never brought up in front of the potentially limitless audience of the internet. The springboard was a Green Lantern story by the great Ron Marz, wherein the hero's girlfriend ends up dead and stuffed into his refrigerator. Gail posited the question, "Why?" To paraphrase, "Why is it that comic book women always seem to end up raped, humiliated, folded, spindled, and mutilated in a wide variety of strange and interesting ways?" The answers she got to that simple question run the gauntlet from the simply asinine, "As regards the female characters thing, I'm afraid I think it's giving male creators a bum deal. The list does read pretty shocking at first until you think of everything the male heroes have gone through, too, in terms of deaths/mutilations/etc." to the downright disturbing, "Well, I think part of the problem for female characters is that, since our readership is dominated by males, they aren't perceived as having the same economic viability as many male characters." The whole sordid story is hosted for anyone who wants it at Unheard Taunts among other places. It's called Women in Refrigerators, and it's one of the most important essays ever written about the culture surrounding comics.

The next time the amazing Ms Simone crops up is with her ongoing column for Comic Book Resources called, You'll All Be Sorry, or YABS in the common internet parlance. With You'll All Be Sorry, Gail got the opportunity to prove that not only did she have a master's grasp of impressionistic writing, but that she also had some remarkably professional comedic chops. YABS became an internet darling and proved implicitly that Gail Simone could competently skewer every writer, artist, journalist, and fan on the planet, from her dead accurate parodies of icons like Frank Miller and Mark Millar, to easier targets like Dave Sim and John Byrne. My personal favorite is her spot-on parody of Planetary, wherein the three major players unearth the remnants of a certain modern stone-age family. It's written in near perfect Warren Ellis style, and it's absolutely hilarious. The You'll All Be Sorry archives are located on Comic Book Resources, and they're well worth a read or two, or three, or twenty.

At the gentle urging of Scott Shaw, I suspect something involving a flamethrower, wet spaghetti noodles, and a rusty ice pick, Gail submitted a script to Bongo Comics. The script in question was for their Simpsons line, and a writing career was born.

Gail's work for Bongo Comics is a testament to just how strong her writing skills really are. The most difficult aspect of writing a comic based on a popular cartoon is that you do it without the benefit of the voice actors. The readers come to the comic with a pre-set notion of how the characters sound. This requires letter perfect dialogue from the writer, and plotting that doesn't seem "out of character," to the audience. Gail succeeded admirably well with both these aspects, while still remaining consistently funny. Stand-outs from Gail's tenure at Bongo include: "Maximum Bart!" from Bart Simpson #2, "Battle of the Boy Bands" from Bart Simpson #3, and "Tales From The Kwik-E-Mart" from Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror #8 (which will make you think twice about your beloved breakfast cereal mascot. *shudder*)

Her next project was a three issue mini series for Oni Comics called Killer Princesses. Coupled with the phenomenal writer/artist Lea Hernandez, it was a perfect match. The synergy between these two creators is obvious on every page of this comic. To this day, there has yet to be an artist that Gail has worked with that has complimented her writing style as well as Ms Hernandez. Killer Princesses is a wild action movie on paper that oozes with black humor. If you think of the Charlie's Angels movies if they had a creative production team, then smack yourself upside the head with a gold brick wrapped in a slice of X-Men, you've about got it.

One of Gail's fans from her YABS days happened to be Joe Quesada, who obviously knows talent when he sees it. As Marvel Comics editor in chief, he extended her the offer of taking over their floundering Deadpool title. Gail jumped in with both feet, bringing Deadpool a relevant hipness, and a return to black humor, not seen since his Joe Kelley days. Five issues into her run, Deadpool was cancelled out from under her, and she was asked to re-imagine the book from scratch. The result was Agent X, which was fun, but it wasn't the same Deadpool goodness. Gail left the series after seven issues over "creative differences" with the editor of the series. I'm sure there's some juicy dish there somewhere, but Gail has been nothing but gracious about it in public. Though she would return a year later for three issues to wrap up the series which died in her absence, Gail would eventually sign an exclusive contract with DC, and to date she has yet to do anything more for Marvel.

Shortly before she jumpped ship to DC, Gail created The Marvelous Adventures of Gus Beezer. Gus was Peter Parker's nephew, and though he had no super powers, his imagination was good enough. Gus Beezer debuted in a series of three one shot issues, and though it was geared towards younger kids, it still benifited from Gail's multi layered scripting which worked equally as well for adults. Gus would recieve one final one shot before his creator defected to the competition. Any further adventures will probably be directed by much less skilled hands.

Which brings us to Birds of Prey. Gail took over the BoP series with issue #56. She followed the footsteps of Master action series writer Chuck Dixon. With an extremely tough act to follow, and tons of negative press surrounding the horribly inept Birds of Prey television series, Gail slammed into the comic series full force with a story that set the Birds against a criminal mastermind that captured the Black Canary, got the better of Oracle, and nearly defeated The Huntress. Gail's run on Birds of Prey proved to be immensley popular, and she continues her work on the series to this day. Now coming into her fourth year on the series, she continues to deliver consistently excellent stories, occasionally shaking up the status quo, and always maintaining her exceptional sense of humor. My absolute favorite story is her arc from #62-#65. Black Canary returns to China to visit her old Sensi who is dying. Unfortunately, Sensi also instructed master assassin Lady Shiva. Mayhem ensues when Canary and Shiva form an uneasy alliance when they discover their Sensi has been murdered. The story brings together all the great elements from Hong Kong action films and establishes Black Canary as one of the pre-eminent martial artists in the DC universe. (Gail was actually confronted at San Diego con this year by a fan who asked, if Black Canary is the number three martial artist in the DC universe, who is number one and two? Gail gave the standard dodgy answer, but I'll go out on a pretty safe limb here and say one and two are Batman and Wildcat, in that order.)

Gail's other work for DC has included stellar runs on Legion of Super Heroes, Justice League Classified, her Rose and Thorn mini series, a fabulous run on Action Comics, and two issues of Teen Titans which marked the controversial return of artist (and I use the term loosely) Rob Lifeld. She shows no sign of slowing down this year, writing the Villians United part of DC's big crossover event, and its spin-off series Secret Six. She's also starting work on the All New Atom series with her Action Comics artist John Byrne, and she's kick starting Gen 13 for the Wildstorm imprint.

Nearly all of Gail's work for Bongo and DC has been collected in Trade Paperback form, and may be found everywhere from Amazon.com to Borders and Barnes & Noble, and even better from your Local Comics Store. Her Marvel work is a bit harder to get, but with a little digging you can easily turn it up. Gail Simone has established herself as a brilliant and funny writer, with an already impressive comics resume. The best part of all this is that she'll only get better as time goes on. By the time she's been at this as long as Alan Moore or Frank Miller, she'll have long since established herself as their equal in the megastar pantheon of comics writers. Personally, I think she belongs there now, but I'm giving the rest of comics fandom a chance to catch up. They've got a lot of great reads to go through, and we probably shouldn't disturb them while they're deciding on legendary status.

If you want more Gail Simone goodness on the net check out The Gail Simone Index, Gail Simone's Blog: Bloodstains On The Looking Glass, and The Gail Simone Wikki.

So, I was going to post a scathing indictment of "reality T.V." and how gullible most of the viewing public is, but then this mystery blogger who calls himself Kanrei beat me to the punch. Check him out, he's an excellent writer, and his blog is a by turns sobering and uproariously funny. He focuses on politics quite a lot, but he's a firm beliver in the "spoonful of humor helps the politics go down" theorem, so give him a read. Just to make it easier on you clicky impaired he'll be taking up residence as a fellow hooligan from now on, so you don't even have to google him. (Geez I just love using google as a verb. I can't wait 'till Websters catches up with that one.)

Anyways, the site is called The Kanrei Home for Wayward Lemmings and it's one of the good ones.

I sincerely hope that Gore Verbinski's career doesn't end up swinging from the yard arm of what has become his Pirates Trilogy. This franchise, when all is said and done, will end up making more money than any three movies in history, and it will definitely be a life changing experience for him. He'll either end up doing Disney movies for the rest of his life, or he'll beat the odds and end up becoming this generation's Francis Ford Coppola, turning in a string of finely-tuned independent films that make absolutely no money, but are very good anyway. Time will tell.

The first movie was a grand adventure that encompassed three of my favorite things. It had zombies, always good, it had pirates, mostly always good, unless they are in any way associated with Roman Polanski. (Not that I dislike Roman's work, it's just that even he makes the occasional expensive piece of crap.)(Also, while I'm on a roll here with this long sidebar, a special slap upside his pointy little head, and a hearty "What the hell were you thinking!" to Steven Spielberg for Hook.) Anyway, the other thing the first Pirates movie had was the monkey. Best of all, Verbinski had the genius idea to combine all three elements to make a zombie pirate monkey. I was in heaven, the only thing missing from that movie is ninjas.

Of course the monkey is back, and still operating under the curse of the Aztec gold, which makes for some satisfying minor mayhem. Everybody else is back too, for much, much more of the same. Two and a half hours of more of the same, to be exact. Verbinski could have easily chopped 45 minutes out of this film and it would have worked just fine. The principles are all in different places in their lives... sort of. Elizabeth and Will are set to be married... big shocker there, and Captain Jack Sparrow is still... well, he's still Captain Jack. There isn't a lot of character development in this one, and that's a shame. After all the movie was two and a half hours long, plenty of time for some character building. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest seems to know it has a winning formula, and it sticks to it like a barnacle to the underside of a ship. Will is appropriately noble, Elizabeth is appropriately bold and brassy and willing to do what she feels is necessary to save the day, and Jack is... well, Jack.

The action and the special effects are appropriately amped up in true Jerry Bruckheimer fashion. I had problems with the triple swordfight scene, which suffers from a disturbing lack of witty banter, but it's still interesting. ILM takes a giant leap forward in its neverending quest to replace pesky actors, by turning in some of the best motion-capture CGI to date. Bill Nighly joins Andy Serkis as the best actor not appearing in this film, as the frightening, tragic, and completely CGI Davey Jones. The best part of the movie in my book is the introduction of Tia Dalma, the voodoo witch who somehow convinced the Disneyland park rangers that it was okay for her to take up permanent residence in the Blue Bayou ride. (When I mentioned moving in, they just chuckled nervously and asked to see my entry receipt. Good thing for them I don't know any voodoo.) Played by Naomie Harris (who is just as foxy in 28 Days Later, except with better teeth), Tia gets to be the confident and wise sage, and gets to set everything up for the next film. I like the introduction of the voodoo element to the Pirates mythology. I've always felt that voodoo and pirates go well together, and it's nice to see that Ted Eliot and Terry Rossio, the crack commando scriptwriting team, agree with me.

The ramp-up of the Will-Elizabeth-Jack love triangle is just weird. It doesn't play well, mostly I think, because of the actors involved. Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom have an on screen chemistry together that's spotty at best, and unfortunately they're up against Johnny Depp who has excellent chemistry with Orlando, Keira, Naomie Harris, almost all of the incidental characters he interacts with, and the big jar of dirt. Hopefully the third movie will give Will and Elizabeth a bit of time away from Captain Jack, and enough time to work out their issues, or even better kill one of them off. Either way, I have no doubt that once I see the third Pirates movie, I will be firmly convinced that this is most likely the best movie trilogy ever made.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is not the best movie, especially when compared to the first one, however, it is a passable second act of a trilogy. I wasn't happy with The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, Scream 2, The Matrix Reloaded, or Back to the Future 2 either. Trilogies are tricky things and I've found that it's usually best to hold off final judgment until all the dice are on the table. Having said that, I'll give Pirates DMC a big, "we'll see" until after I've seen World's End. I doubt I'll be disappointed. After all, it'll still have pirates, zombies and monkeys. Hell, if they can squeeze a ninja in there somewhere, it really will be the perfect movie trilogy.

In the final chapter of my love letter to AIT/Planet Lar we get to see the Art & Design books, and the non-fiction graphic novels. AIT/Planet Lar has put together a varied and extremely versatile reading portfolio and hopefully, they will continue to do so for years to come. So, here's to you: Larry Young and Mimi Rosenheim for putting together one of the best publishing houses in the history of the graphic medium. May you have many more years of continued success in this business of putting dreams to paper. Kudos, and well done.

The penultimate chapter of my six part AIT/Planet Lar love-in. These are the epic tales, the
ones that deal with long spans of time or larger than life characters. Demo was Brian Wood's grand epic, detailing what would happen if real people got super powers. It was originally published as 12 monthly floppies, and eventually collected into one omnibus edition. True Story Swear to God is the autobiography of Tom Beland , and it is by turns sweet, painful, anxious,
and always entertaining. The book 100 stories is an overview of the original comic strips that served as the impetus for Tom to start writing full-on comics.