Comic Books – Page 81 – Prattling Before the Pratfall

McCloud Computing

Scott McCloud, creator of the independent comic book series ZOT! and author of the book Understanding Comics, has created an online comic book for Google, explaining the new Chrome browser.

Chrome sounds interesting, mostly because of its independent tabs, but I’ll wait a bit before jumping on it. Computerworld’s review of Chrome is very good. Ever have a page in one tab lock up, resulting in a crash of the whole browser, or forcing you to crash it? Sure you have, so if you have at least a gig of memory you will like independent tabs.

McCloud, who grew up in Massachusetts, changed the spelling of his name from McLeod when he started working in comics. I know this because his mother’s apartment happens to be around the corner from my mother-in-law, in the retirement community where they live. I assume Scott wanted to avoid confusion with comic book artist Bob McLeod, who was already established in the business at the time McCloud came on the scene.

A Few Minutes With Jack Kamen

In memory of comic book artist Jack Kamen, here are a few minutes with him from the DVD Tales from the Crypt: From Comic Books to Television.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/AUG/JackKamen.flv 440 330]

Jack Kamen, 1920-2008

Inventor Dean Kamen‘s father Jack has died. He was one of the illustrators of the notorious EC line of comic books in the 1950’s. At the first link you’ll find my Kamen-related items, including an example of Jack’s work.

O.K. EROK!

Erik Salholm in Ireland, whose blog is called O.K. EROK!, has linked to my “In Search of Steve Ditko” posts, and I’m going to link to his “Little Superman in McCay Land” post.

Another Secret Project

This secret project is very different from the other secret project. All I’ll say about that one is it involves TV. This one involves comic books, and it relates to the header I just put up. I’ll put it here too, for later when the header has changed.

I don’t know yet when this happen. It involves D.F. Rogers, and Paul Howley it involves you too, so write and I’ll tell you what’s up (no, you don’t have to do anything, it’s about something you did ten years ago).

Watching the Watchmen

Comic book fans have been full of talk about the Watchmen movie for quite a while. Time.com just put out an article about the Watchmen preview at the Comic-Con in San Diego, going on right now.

This sort of coverage represents a validation, approval and acceptance of comics that was unimaginable to me as a kid. The catch is, today’s comic books hold no interest for me, in part because I felt when the Watchmen series came out it was the final word on the super hero genre. Writer Alan Moore had succeeded in extracting everything there was to be said about costumed heroes.

The best place to see the Watchmen trailer is the official site, but I’ll post it here for convenience, if you want to avoid all of the Flash animation that’s typical of movie sites.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/JUL/Watchmen.flv 640 272]

Overall, it looks very promising, but the Vietnam scenes have a fake appearance, and Dr. Manhattan isn’t quite as convincing as he should be. Rorschach’s voice is too similar to Christian Bale’s Batman. But all of this can be fixed in post-production. I’m also a bit concerned that if the big climax in the story isn’t handled just right, it will be unintentionally humorous. We’ll know in March.