State of View From The Cheap Seats

It just occured to me that I’ve been meaning to do this post for a while now but haven’t gotten around to it. As you may have noticed around here lately, things have been kind of quiet (well, maybe you’ve noticed that.) In some ways the band has broken up but at the same time, we’re still together.

The podcast will endure, it’s just a question of when we can get together to actually record. Since I moved last year, it’s been tougher and tougher to get the time to get together and record podcasts. Our last couple of scheduled recording sessions have gotten postponed due to various things. But we should be getting together sometime this week and may actually bang an episode or (dare I dream) two out.

On the blogging side of things, we’ve all set up our own blogs and talk about our varied interests. (rss)

Wednesday’s Haul (Scott) covers comics primarily but has lately been delving into some TV and movie talk.

Boxwatcher (Ty) on the other hand primarily covers movies but lately has experimented with comic reviews. (rss)

Replay Factor (Brad) talks music. He has delved into little else. (rss)

And if you don’t want to check out three different spots to see us blather on about Bon Jovi, Transformers, Max Gail or Harry Potter (and, oh, the Harry Potter talk is coming,) you can always check our amalgamated feed here at View From The Cheap Seats (or our feedburner RSS feed). For the near future, VFTCS will exist to bring all three of us together under a nice little banner.

Wednesday’s Haul– THE WEBSITE!!!!!!

Well, I’ve spun Wednesday’s Haul off to it’s own website.  For now, you can find it by going to www.wednesdayshaul.com/wordpress.  There’s not much there now but I’ll be building on it over the next couple of weeks.  It’s pretty much a solo project and mostly comic related.  Please stop on by.

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Originally uploaded by scottced.

Wednesdays Haul 5-16-07

Reviews of Elk’s Run, Phonogram and a number of FCBD offerings. 

Help a Geek Out

So, I kind of denounce one letter writing campaign and here I am supporting another.

I’ve known Marc from Pop Syndicate for a while now. He owned and operated Mediasharx for a while and is now one of the editors at PS. I guess he’s trying to get on Beauty and the Geek. Here’s Marc’s reasons why he should be on:

1) I watch 33 active TV shows right now. Not all are in season simultaneously, but a bulk of them are. That doesn’t count old TV shows that I will still catch when I can like The Wonder Years or old Star Trek.

2) I have 35 podcasts I listen to every week. I’m no Rob Walsh, but I try.

3) I’ve written movie, TV, music and comic book reviews for two pop culture websites and owned a third for the last 6 years. Plus I did all the tech stuff for the first two.

4) I currently have 2222 songs in iTunes spanning every genre.

5) I used to play Cloak and Dagger occasionally and I enjoyed it. It’s like LARPing.

6) I played trombone well. For 7 years.

7) I have two podcasts and have a hand in a third.
I have three full longboxes of bagged and boarded comics and need to purchase a fourth.

9) When I went to NYC, I cared more about getting to Midtown Comics than seeing Empire State.

10) When I go to Las Vegas, my main goal isn’t blackjack; I want to go to The Star Trek Experience.

11) Speaking of Star Trek, I’ve read the Star Trek Encyclopedia cover to cover three times.

12) I read sci-fi books during the commercials for TV shows.

13) I’ve had one girlfriend and kissed one girl. And I’m 26.

14) I’m extremely awkward and socially inept around girls I like. Somehow I always make an ass of myself.

15) I’m a programmer and have been paid to write things that people use in classic ASP, VBScript, VB.Net, C#, ASP.Net, Cobol and JCL.

16) I get mad when I see that people don’t know the spelling difference between possessive and plural.

17) I skipped school in high school three times to get tickets to the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy in theaters, and I stood in line by myself for 10 hours to get tickets for The Phantom Menace.

18) I pay more attention to Digg.com, Arstechnica, Geek Brief TV, This Week in Tech, etc than I do regular news.

19) I collect digital pictures on my computer of the casts of shows that I love because, “Someday I’ll need them.”

20) I own a Mark Hamill cardboard stand-up.

All that and the show is saying Marc is too normal to be a geek. So he’s asking everyone to write to the CW trying to get him on. If you want to help out, here’s who you should write to:

Paul McGuire, CW Executive Vice President, Network Communications
Paul.McGuire@cwtv.com

Jeff Tobler, CW Publicity
Jeff.Tobler@cwtv.com

CW TV Feedback
feedback@cwtv.com

A nice email might read like this:

Subject: Get Marcus from Frisco, Tx on Beauty and the Geek!

Dear CW,

With the upcoming fourth season of Beauty and the Geek, I think you’ve already auditioned a great contestant in Marcus from Frisco, Texas. He may not be your stereotypical geek, but he’s a geek nonetheless.

Put him on your show!

I think I’ll be doing a lot of emailing tonight to help Marc and Comic Foundry out.

What does Diamond owe Comic Foundry?

So, Diamond rejected soliciting and carrying The Comic Foundry? I’m having trouble figuring out why I should care.

I’ve seen this plastered up and down the internet today. This is the same thing that happened last year when Diamond refused to carry Rebecca Kratz’s House of Sugar from Tulip Tree Press. Publisher Hope Larson made an appeal about the book and eventually it was picked up by Diamond. But that was a comic. This is just another magazine.

It’s hard to judge the worth of what the magazine Comic Foundry is. They were previously a web site that tried to be an online magazine as opposed to just another comic website. Like everyone (Pop Syndicate included,) they had some stuff that worked well and some that didn’t.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Diamond’s main reason for rejecting them was:

I called Diamond for more clarification and spoke with Tim Huckelbery, who let me know the news in the first place. He said, among other things, “When I was looking though it and reading a magazine of that type, which is about comics, which has lots of images of comics characters, that is looking to be timely and topical, I was expecting color. That, just for me, is how my brain is wired.” So, to be a timely magazine with topical content (and feature images of comic characters) it has to be in color? I’m sorry, I’ve thought about this all afternoon, and I don’t really see how this makes sense. What about The Comics Journal or Comics Buyers Guide? Neither of those are full-color, right?

O.k. Now that just seems silly. Color doesn’t make Wizard good just like b&w doesn’t make the Comics Journal bad. It sounds like Comic Foundry was judged more on Diamond’s preconceptions of what a comic magazine should be rather than on the strengths and merits of the magazine itself. That’s just not right.

So people are encouraging letter writing campaigns to Diamond and I’m not too sure what to do. I’ll probably end up writing a letter tonight but instead of demanding that they distribute the magazine, I think Diamond needs to re-evaluate the process of how they treated Comic Foundry. Are TCJ or CBG grandfathered in? If not, it seems like there’s the precedence here for a B&W comic magazine.

Wednesdays Haul 5-9-07: This is What They Want

It’s a rambling episode where Scott talks about what he’s read over the past two weeks, his thoughts on Spider-Man 3 and FCBD and a rundown of books coming out on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007.

Links:

Comics Podcast Network

Pop Syndicate

Direct download: Wednesdays_Haul_05_09_07_1.mp3

Wednesdays Haul 5-9-07: This is What They Want

It’s a rambling episode where Scott talks about what he’s read over the past two weeks, his thoughts on Spider-Man 3 and FCBD and a rundown of books coming out on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007.

Links:
Comic Podcast Network
Pop Syndicate

Civility is over. Now it’s time for the Hulk to show everyone what war means.

Review of Incredible Hulk #106

Even before the war can rightly begin, sides are already being drawn and Jennifer Walters, Bruce Banner’s cousin, needs to decide what side she’ll be on when the real fighting begins. During the recent civil war, the choice was simple for the lawyer– she needed to fight on the side of the law and with Iron Man. The only problem is that she didn’t know everything that her “allies” had done. She didn’t know what they did to her cousin. And now, she doesn’t know that the Hulk is returning, seeking only revenge. When she does find out that Iron Man, Reed Richards and the rest of the Illuminati rocketed Bruce Banner into space, she “Hulks” out, attacking Iron Man until he turns her powers off and abandons her in New Jersey.

In Jersey, Jen has two “conversations,” one with Amadeus Cho, a mysterious and powerful boy who idolizes the Hulk and knows what was done to him, and Doctor Samson who argues on behalf of Reed Richards, trying to justify the Illuminati’s actions. Jen is caught between the side, forced to decide between her family and her friends. What’s fascinating is how the two sides present their arguments. Cho sits down and discusses everything over donuts and coffee while Samson immediately goes for a physical battle, attempting to disarmed an unpowered opponent without thinking about any potential collateral damage (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?)

To read the rest of the review, click here.

No dream is truly safe.

Review of Elk’s Run Graphic Novel

We all want shelter. We all want protection. So it is easy to understand the comfort a town like Elk’s Ridge offers to its citizens. The people of Elk’s Ridge voluntarily isolated themselves from the world over 30 years ago. Seeing the ugliness and hatred in a post-Vietnam America, they took up an offer to settle in a mining town and almost totally cut themselves off from the rest of the world. Other than monthly supply trucks that provide the bare necessities, Elk’s Ridge shuns the outside world while protecting their own little piece of paradise. At least, that’s what they tell themselves.

The unthinkable happened when someone actually wanted to leave Elk’s Ridge. That was the beginning of the end. A wife leaves her husband, taking her children with her. When the husband tries to follow, he accidentally kills one of the town’s children, ending the remaining innocence that may still exist in Elk’s Ridge. John Kohler Jr., an Elk’s Ridge teenager, figures out that nothing is what he thought it was as he watches his father lead a lynch mob to kill Arnold Huld, the man who killed the child. When the state police come looking for Huld, reported missing by his estranged wife, the town’s delicate structure collapses as the secrets of Elk’s Ridge and John Kohler’s father are exposed.

Elk’s Run is a fantastic American gothic horror story, building on fears and insecurities that have always existed in the back of our minds. Writer Joshua Hale Fialkov creates a sincere dream (a truly old-fashioned American small town) and then proceeds to twist and butcher the idea. Elk’s Ridge offers everything you could want in a home; protection, good neighbors, a solid support structure and security. Maybe a few small personal sacrifices have to be made (such as you can never leave) but aren’t they worth it? Thirty years ago, they were to a small handful of visionaries, building a new community, but Fialkov doesn’t let them go that easily. Visionaries turn into fanatics as John’s father, one of the original citizens, fights to protect the sanctity of the town from the outside world even when it may mean killing his own son.

To read the full review, click here.