we're going through changes

so, as of this week, everything changed.

except some of it didn't.

not that i'd know too much about it, having just finished reading Battle For The Cowl and still not having touched Blackest Night and Brightest Day yet, let alone Flashpoint.

yeah, i'm talking about comics!


not only was the 31st of August 2011 an important day in my household, being the first anniversary of getting the keys to the house and going in and cleaning everything before settling down for a pizza and a night on an air mattress, it was also the day that followers of the DC universe may or may not have been waiting for, as the comics company swiped away a whole bunch of history and began re-numbering issues from #1, starting with JLA #1, ahead of 51 other other titles that shall be following shortly

i won't be clamouring to pick up a whole barrage of number 1 issues, to be honest, i doubt i'll actually buy any, there won't be much on offer to me as a comic book fan other than the chance to get slightly obsessive and delve back into the addictive world of buying monthly issues of comics, that i left behind some 11 or 12 years ago (not counting a slight blip buying the english reprints that got me hooked on Grant Morrison's run on Batman)

if there are stories worth reading that evolve from this 'new universe' than i shall consider stumping up for the collected trade paperbacks to find out why Superman doesn't wear his red pants anymore, why oh why can Barbara Gordon walk again and will Green lantern devise anymore crotch-mounted artillery?


these are comics tho, and i wonder how long it'll really be until the real reasoning behind a new universe is revealed, or how long until whatever changes are made are reversed, or rewritten, or forgotten or maybe just borrowed from in the next big shake up that will inevitably follow at some point or another.

but if i'm losing you... perhaps hear this guy out and see just why these changes are so important...

facing another crisis?

ok

so what exactly is going on with the DC universe then?

i'll have to admit one thing, for the amount of people that the 'reboot' has got riled up, i dare say that all of them, plus a few more, will be curious to see exactly what's going on with september's relaunches

like i said yesterday, i'm hardly up-to-date on current events in the DCU, i'm aware that the latest mass-crossover-type-thing is called Flashpoint, and that it involves The Flash

and word is he's been dipping his toe into the timestream and sodding things up considerably

the fact that Flashpoint concludes just before these massive changes get underway is unlikely to be a coincidence

and news has already leaked that Superman and Lois's marriage will no longer have happened as a result of Flashpoint

which raises a couple of bigger questions

how much will we see undone? and are DC establishing a new status-quo for their universe?

personally, i can't imagine that they would.  whenever comic book stories hit a massive turning point it is usually assumed that a year down the line practically everything will be as it was before, unless you're a second string superhero, in which case the usual guarantees don't apply and you'll likely be usurped by a younger hero taking the same name, i'm sorry, but those are the breaks

but the big hitters?

Superman?

Batman?

yes, we've seen massive shifts (better known as cross-overs or money makers) in their lives before, but if you just go re-setting their careers by a number of years, what would that mean?

would Superman never have faced off against Doomsday and died?

i'm more of a Batman fan myself, so perhaps Knightfall would have been erased from history, but would we go further back?  would Tim Drake ever have become Robin, would Jason Todd? is Dick Grayson still the Boy Wonder?!

no matter how DC plays this, and it could prove very interesting, i can't imagine that we'll see a complete striking of the DCU's complicated continuity from the books, not only would it be insulting to long-term readers, but it would be a complete about-turn from a company that have always seemed to embrace it's rich history (even if it does shrug off or ret-con portions of it on a whim)

people that have complained that the books have become too complicated to follow, and this is mostly down to the fact that massive cross-overs of late seem to have been drawing the world closer together, with knock-on effects that occur through-out an entire universe and run through multiple books, instead of allowing character their own threads that only occasionally tangle together, which may seem a great idea to get people interested in other books they don't usually shell out for, but isn't particularly easy on the wallet or on more casual or first-time readers

i for one, had always been fascinated by DC's past that i had missed out on, and enjoyed reading stories that referred back to them and would treat myself to back-issues or collected trade paperbacks as and when i could, it made the history richer when i could witness it all for myself firsthand

i don't view it as a messy continuity, i prefer to see it as legacy, and believe that there are writers out their such as Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and James Robinson that will draw upon DC's rich tapestry of past goings on and almost forgotten characters

and even rebooted, how long could a 'simple' universe last before someone starts to complicate things, comics will continue to be published monthly and stories need to be told

perhaps we do need new comics that welcome new readers, but lets do it without alienating readers that have already dedicated their own time to following the lives of superheroes

Never Ending Story

ok, so i missed my own personal deadline of having afew more things finished by christmas and the end of the year, my own album seems to have stalled while i work on SoundArt and afew other bits, SoundArt itself is getting a little behind schedule and there have been a handful of other tracks that i was hoping to have had done by now.

so as we start next year i'm gonna post a couple of works in progress, pieces that are in an unfinished state for one reason or another.

and i'm also looking ahead to a bundle of things that i want to cover in my new Enfield Advertiser articles, the next of which should start dropping through local letterboxes from this wednesday... so finding the time to write and blog and create music is a real juggling act

along with that i intend to have my head stuck in some comics for a little while, either ones that i have bought and haven't got round to reading yet and also afew new ones that i got for christmas, i'm realy looking forward to getting my head round some Grant Morrison shaped weirdness!!

and there are also DJ sets to plan for!!

and never enough hours in a day, nor days in the week!

part of the queue

i didn't expect to be in Bristol this past weekend

i didn't expect to be stood in a queue for three hours and forty minutes either

but this was what was necessary if you wanted to get into the Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibition that is running until the end of August

we arrived early enough on saturday morning and thought the queue looked reasonable, until we realised it was being filtered and actualy snaked back and forth on itself in an adjoining road, and didn't end there either, crossing the road and trailing down a further, longer road

luckily my girlfriend who had planned the surprise trip had also heard horror stories of three hour waits so we were fore-warned, so, stood on the end of a ridiculous queue we formulated a plan to pass the time, we passed up on the idea of taking it in turns to sit on our own drinking in the wetherspoons opposite the museum while the other held our place in the queue and instead she let me wander off to an oxfam bookshop i'd spotted on the condition that i left her my generic mp3 player and brought back a trashy magazine detailing the latest woes of Jordan, Cheryl, Posh, et al

another thing i didn't expect (and neither did my girlfriend) was to find a Forbidden Planet store on my little wander so when i returned i was in possession of a couple of reduced graphic novels and a copy of reveal

despite the horrendous waiting time everyone seemed to be in quite good spirits as we basked in the midday sunshine, kids waited patiently, old men made hats from newspapers to shield their balding heads from the searing sun, a strategically placed ice cream van took a small fortune as practically everyone grabbed a lolly or an ice cream as the queue passed it, and i got half way through a Grant Morrison penned JLA story (which was a bargain at £4, was published just after i quit reading comics - including JLA - and carries straight on from the Aztek graphic novel i recently read) before we got to the entrance of the museum.

and once inside, the ground floor of the museum has been thrown over to Banksy with room full of a large display of stenciled canvases in Banksy's usual style and used stencils from works that have graced the streets over the past few years and another room full of disturbing 'living' creatures including a monkey, a rabbit, a number of fish and sausages and some newborn chicken McNuggets that all need to be seen to appreciate the true unsettling horror of Banksy's twisted vision and social commentary.




but the whole three story edwardian museum needs to be explored to get the full experience as a number of the sculptures, paintings and displays have been tampered with to bring them to life and give them a modern slant, all just sitting cheekily alongside the museum's usual exhibits, i still don't know if i managed to spot it all but my favourites of the ones i did find include the dildo standing proud among the stalactites and the stuffed beaver awarded a fishing trophy.



i've intentionally not mentioned absolutely everything i saw so that anyone thinking of going can experience it for themselves but i'm sure there are a number of sites that document the exhibition in greater detail, including this one i found

You Are Here

So perhaps it's time for a little update of where i am and what i'm doin, and for the most part everything is generally the same, filling up my time with photography, reading and trying to make music.

to break it down a little more tho:

i think the stray sofas project has been coming along nicely and have recently found a few new additions, including possibly the daddy of all stray sofas on my way to The Northwestern gig on tuesday, all of which will be making their way onto the blog in good time.

i also seem to have been gorging myself on Alan Moore graphic novels in the past couple of weeks, ploughing through The Killing Joke, Swamp Thing and two volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen... I'm ready to move on tho, perhaps a Grant Morrison binge next...

and musically? its mostly been SoundArt taking up my time. a re-edited SoundArt5 will be making an appearance once i've completed re-jigging it, SoundArt6 shouldn't be too far from the horizon, although i do need to spend some time beefing the track up so i'm entirely happy with it. I'm also gonna be juggling the production of SoundArt7, since its predecessor is nearly complete and i'm trying to play catch up.

unfortunately, all this hasn't left much time for my remixes and my own album tracks, which have fallen by the way-side a little while i try and balance all of the above and everything else in my life, but the SoundArt project is helping me to experiment and develop a sound which should ultimately be a benefit to everything else i do.

graphic content

how long has it been since i last gushed about comics on this blog? long enough i think!

and while i've been trying to keep my nose out of books recently so that i perhaps spend a lil longer working on music instead of constantly findin time for an extra chapter or racing head-on towards the ending of another book i have instead been sticking my nose back into graphic novels, or books about comics, and indeed not spending enough time on music...

anyways, various reasons for me mentioning this

first; you remember back in march when i mentioned my little brothers sci-fi short stories? he has been influenced to tackle his fantasy world in a slightly different medium, with a single page comic that once again delves into his distopeian scrapbook

(click on the image for a larger view)



secondly; ok, i was only joking about writing a story about some vampire dogs, but i'm actualy quite into the idea of scripting a superhero story as i mentioned last week and have aready begun drafting afew ideas that cover the over-all direction of the story and handful of key plot points along the way

it's all very rough right now but hopefully i'll stick with this one and continue fleshing out my ideas until it becomes a fully formed mini-series worthy of publishing and bring me a little closer to following into a legacy of writers i admire, such as Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison

2008: Year of the Bat. part 2

Thanks to Hollywood, it seems to me that geek is a lot more fashionable than it ever used to be, perhaps actually being a geek still carries the same stigmatisms but with so many comics being appropriated by film studios and sold back to a wider demographic, it certainly seems acceptable to dig superheroes.

In the last year alone I’ve accumulated 3 pairs of Batman boxer shorts, 3 Batman t-shirts (at the beginning of 2008 I had none of either), I am also the proud owner of a Lego Batman key-ring and the Lego Batman video game, seen The Dark Knight at the IMAX twice (and they still haven’t stopped screening it there yet, even tho the DVD is out now) and treated myself to a number of graphic novels. My Dad even found my old Batman key-ring down the back of his sofa that I had lost as a kid and gave it back to me.

I remember the re-runs of the old ‘60’s Batman, possibly my first exposure to the character, as I progressed from the Beano I remember picking up the Fleetway Editions reprints of the American Batman comics, possibly around the same time as the first Tim Burton film was hitting the cinema, I remember the first American imports I found, as Knightfall was just getting started as Mr Zsasz was holding hostages in an all girls school, as Batman was feeling weary and run down by a mass breakout from Arkham Asylum, orchestrated by Bane, a dark and shadowy figure that I had no knowledge of. These American comics seemed so dark and their bleak slant was a whole world away from what I had been used to reading.



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