Comments | noscans_daily: " American love, the kind that comes in green glass bottles...the kind they don't make anymore"

volksjager in noscans_daily

" American love, the kind that comes in green glass bottles...the kind they don't make anymore"

Mar 03, 2009 14:35

- still waiting for UPS to deliver my leather and I noticed that the Yahoo toolbar is a count down to the opening of "Watchmen ( Read more... )

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Comments 38

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volksjager March 3 2009, 20:09:18 UTC

riff ?

cmdr_zoom March 3 2009, 22:35:29 UTC

"riff" is a music term, usually in the context of guitars - a certain recognizable series of notes, or one musician's interpretation of another's work. (Combining the two: you hear someone play a line of a song, and you come back with your own slightly different version of it.)

queenanthai March 3 2009, 22:49:48 UTC

It's also used in the context of "joking about," "parodying," or "making fun of." For example, RiffTrax.com is a place where the guys from MST3K release mp3s of themselves "riffing" on popular movies. You play the track alongside the movie and you get a hilarious experience. (It made Daredevil watchable. I swear.)

Thread 6

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aaron_bourque March 3 2009, 21:03:43 UTC

It's revolutionary in context. Mid 80s for superhero comics were a very mixed bag, and even the best still had a feeling of being disposable entertainment for teens and preteens (which isn't a bad thing, but when the whole of your business and art is failing to make an impression on anyone who's had sex, there's something maybe wrong with your public relations), and then DKR and Watchmen hit, like a one-two punch to the American Comics landscape, and it was like everyone looked at them and went "WHOA! Comics don't have to be about childish pissing contests! They can have DEPTH and TEXTURE and HIDDEN MEANINGS, JUST LIKE ALL THOSE OTHER MEDIUMS OUT THERE!!!"

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; of course, it also had the side effect of creators trying to prove that comics weren't just for children, and that attitude lasted way too long.

sir_mikael March 3 2009, 21:11:07 UTC

"Watchmen was a good read but nothing revolutionary. And I'd been raved about it so much by my American friends that I must have expected too much."

You know I felt much the same way and really thought about that (which is why I felt like I'd share this in a comment:P) until maybe the last two chapters. I mean reading it before that I really got how well made it was. It was definetly solid work, no doubt about it. The characters felt extremly real and complex in a way that's not commonly seen. I get that it might have been revolutionary in the light of what was around before, but there was nothing particularly mindblowing or genius about it that I could see today. And frankly it dragged a bit in the middle.
But still clearly a work of great craftmanship. Then the last few chapters stepped it up a notch and for instance that cliff-hanger... My mind was blown.

sir_mikael March 3 2009, 20:53:27 UTC

My brother bought it in compressed form at a fair maybe a year or so ago, and I knew that I'd eventually have to read it too (a geek's gotta do what a geek's gotta do) but was never really tempted to actually get it done ( ... )

melisus March 3 2009, 20:54:46 UTC

Watchmen was the first comic I ever read, though I guess sadly not in issue form but in compilation. It was when I went with a friend to see the Iron Man movie (another story about my intro to comics in and of itself) and they showed the first teaser trailer for me. My friend started ranting and raving about "OMG THEY'RE MAKING A MOVIE HOLY CRAP HAVE YOU READ THE COMIC IT IS SO AWESOME" and I had the money so I caved to his ranting and bought the book.

It was the summer so I spent a few days reading it. I found I had to pause at the end of every chapter, just to sit and try and take everything in. I enjoyed the art, I enjoyed how intricately everything was woven together, and I was completely blown away by the ending (making Ozymandias the greatest Magnificent Bastard that ever was).

Unfortunately, I probably set the bar very high for myself when it came to comics in general... but then again, I do keep buying Amazing Spider-Man probably in the blind hope that I will be there when it finally turns itself around.

aaron_bourque March 3 2009, 20:56:51 UTC

I'd been sort of out of the comics "scene" for a while, having lost almost all of my dad's collection of mid-70s to mid-80s comics when my mom decided they should just be thrown out. I still had a few comics here and there, mostly Batman the movie era Batman comics, some Spider-Man and X-Men pre-90s stuff. My older brother had Cerebus, and eventually got a The Dark Knight Returns/Year One omnibus with a Frank Miller drawn Christmas story, and an essay about the importance of DKR and providing endings by a chap named Alan Moore. It was an interesting essay, and it had some good points. I remember reading that whole thing several times when my brother wasn't around--because he would've hurt me if he found out I was reading it--and that, and my sister's Disney comics, kept my love of the genre alive, but my own stash of comics grew in fits and starts (mostly related to Star Wars, or Batman) over the dozen years between the Great Comics Trashing in about '84 or '85 and when I started getting serious as my second decade came about ( ... )