Where the Heck is Barton? #1

11/03/2014 1 Comment

Where the Heck is Barton? #1

Okay. This looks bad.

For November, I am going to run with a meme series that I have been thinking about, “Where the Heck is Barton?” It’s a reference to the fact that in the Marvel movies since The Avengers, Clint Barton – Hawkeye – has not shown up at all. Supposedly this will all be explained in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but in the mean time, I’ll be exploring a few of my theories on where he’s been.

This one is from Hawkeye #1, which if I were going to recommend a fun comic to you, this one might be the one. Every issue opens pretty much exactly like this.

Filed under Meme Monday Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Prioritizing

10/07/2014 7 Comments

Hi all, sorry I have taken a step back from my Features for a moment. I’m re-prioritizing. I’m turning 30 this week. It seems an appropriate time to reflect on what I’m doing, and whether and how it’s helping me with my goals. For today, it’s what I’m up to with blogging and writing!

Blogging

As we mentioned recently on Comparative Geeks, we’ve taken a step back from our full posting schedule. We had been posting six days a week, three each, since the blog started. Even if they were short posts, even if they were late and posted on day seven, we kept that schedule. And even after announcing it, I almost posted something just to keep it at six for that first week. It was hard to let it go.

Our hope was to be able to do four solid, purposeful posts a week, and then a fun post on Friday – a poll or alignment grid or something like that. That way, the sorts of things that had maybe been our “filler” posts can have a specific day – Friday – and we have been motivating around doing our four posts.

I still have another solid post a week I am writing – over on Sourcerer. Lately, I have been blogging over there about comics, where I’ve done a four-post series on making comic book movies. Taking a step back from that, I’m going to do some single-comic reviews or series reviews in the coming weeks. This has been fun, and I have been trying not to duplicate content on Comparative Geeks – my series was perhaps informed by my writing on CG, but was not a duplicate.

My first thought when scaling back on CG was that I could use all that extra time for writing more here! Which is maybe a lovely dream, but is not really the plan. The point was that we were trying to reclaim our weekends, now that I am not working six days a week (something I’ve done for a large part of Comparative Geeks’ history). There are things to do. Read more of this post

Filed under Introverted Tagged with , , , , , , ,

We’re All Hooked on a Feeling – Guardians of the Galaxy

09/11/2014 Leave a comment

The next of my music posts – this time on Guardians of the Galaxy! If you’ve seen this movie – and the box office figures suggest you have! – you know the music is an integral part.

I suggest some reasons that the way they used music were really something!

CompGeeksDavid's avatarSourcerer

If you haven’t had a chance to see Guardians of the Galaxy yet, might I suggest checking it out? I have been blogging on Sourcerer about 2 things: comics and music. This movie is a perfect combination of those two things.

Previously, it seems like it’s Zack Snyder who had a hold on good use of music in comic-book type movies, especially Watchmen and Sucker Punch. But those movies were a lot darker: Guardians of the Galaxy has great music, and used it to generate a sense of fun, as well as emotional depth.

You can see some of how they use music in the first trailer, with the now iconic use of Hooked on a Feeling. I also think this is a perfect sort of character: it introduced the characters, the movie, and left it pretty much there without giving much away. I avoided other trailers after…

View original post 860 more words

Filed under Judging Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Wordless Wednesday 13

09/10/2014 4 Comments

Merlin Reading The Dark Knight Returns

Filed under Wordless Wednesday Tagged with , , , , , , ,

G – Graphic Novel

04/08/2014 6 Comments

GOkay, comics have been around a long time. Even shows and movies about comic book characters have been around a long time, though they are proliferating and succeeding today like they’re the new thing. However, the graphic novel – a longer story form than just a comic, but definitely more comic-styled than novel-styled – is a newer sort of medium. There is a strong blurring of the two, really; many graphic novels are set in the comic-book worlds, many comic story-arcs have been turned into graphic novel collections; and many graphic novels today are coming out episodically as comics.

However you want to look at it, and whether I am really just talking about comics, trade paperbacks, collected editions, or graphics novels… together they are a growing, and exciting, force and trend. For someone like me, who is a slow reader, the addition of the visual storytelling, and the reduction of the text down to essentials, lets me get through far more content. For someone even more visual than I am, I could see this being even more of an excellent artform.

There are some great storylines being written in what can either be described as graphic novel or indie comic form coming out today, and you should check some out if they interest you. Horror stories like Locke & Key, space operas like Saga, alternate histories like The Manhattan Projects. And then there’s all of those graphic novels that have been adapted for film – Red, 300, V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Kick-Ass, and more.

And there’s part of me, as I enjoy reading these graphic novels so thoroughly, that really thinks that maybe this is the genre and medium I want to write for. That this is how I want to structure and tell my story. At least one. And I have a couple of friends looking over my world and ideas now to consider it.

Because I don’t think this is a fad, and I don’t think graphic novels are going away. A couple of reasons. One is, you now have a bunch of young people who are getting into these and are going to carry this on into adulthood. But that’s always the case with things. The other, however, is that I think that comics and this visual medium have found their perfect delivery method: the tablet. I am on the fence about e-books and e-readers versus their physical counterpart. I am completely sold on digital comics. Whether you use the guided view, that takes you panel-by-panel, or read one page at a time, I think this is the right device for reading comics. My top two activities on my iPad are absolutely blogging, and comics reading. So the future for comics is really only just beginning.

Filed under Intuitive Tagged with , , , , ,

Newer posts →