Weblog | I don't like the word blog, it's ugly. Anyway, new content happens here. (Swedish dito)

About me and the site | Twenty-something male who likes text. Obsessed with things such as books, reality, communication, and one or two tv-shows.

Archives | Things written here since... well, 2001. Some of it is good, some is utter shait.

Books | Books read, not books written. So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.

Photo | I like my camera and it likes me.

Links | Outwards, away, flee.

e-mail | J. Nicklas Andersson

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Joss Whedon's X-Men

Astonishing X-Men #1 discussion on Barbelith. Sure, it’s inane fan-boy and geek-whining at times but that’s not a problem here. However someone said “I hope it is Kitty, I’ve never really read anything with her in.” Poor sod, never read a X-comic with Kitty Pride is like... I don’t know, eating hamburger without the meat. The funny thing, everyone is bitching about the preview art and not the real thing. I’m fairly sure Whedon will do something unexpected with it. The art might be reminiscence from the bygone era, but the story will change stuff around. At last.

Jenny Everywhere

Jenny Everywhere is clearly a the Invisibles/Jerry Cornelius-inspired
comic character. Not too strange considering the Barbelith Underground origin.

From their FAQ:

The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

While we strongly suggest you read through the rest of this site before you begin on your story, all you really need to begin is found above. It is absolutely necessary that this one condition be met, so that the spirit of this project will be continued. Thank you.

Joss and X-men

Joss Whedon could very well end up writing the New X-men comic. He has confirmd this himself. So I might have to start buying the comics again.
[From Whedonesque]

Road Waffles

Read Road Waffles. It’s not Goats, but sometimes not even Goats is Goats so there. Road Waffles can however come awfully close at times. It’s irrelevant, weird and doesn’t always follow the rules of a comic strip. Read it now — I do.

The Yearly Goats Entry

At times Goats takes a plunge into the shallow boring end of the comedy pool. Boring in the relative sort of way, Goats never fails completely. But always, it soon goes back out there into the deep end with a lopped of shotgun shooting the bystanders.

Diablo wants a offspring to inherit his estate of Evil. “And for this unholy child I will purchase an Ikea bedroom set” and “I figure if you’re going to make a baby it needs to be made from high-quality parts” creates a disturbing image. (Perhaps not as disturbing as the ironic discussion between Jon and Philip earlier this year — but I hope it will be just as funny.)

Oh, and Goats now has an RSS feed. If I could be bothered to get a decent RSS-reader I would be ecstatic. Or perhaps not. Call me old-fashioned or retro-fascist if you like, I still won’t go crazy over this stuff.

Morrison speaks

This is really more something for Boo’s Swedish comiclog, but since I’m on a Morrison-binge I might as well continue. There is an interview with him where he talks about what he wants to do next and the comic industry in a rather cocky way — which of course is why we like him. (And of course he’s wrong about some of the things.)

But why is it that Comicon.com has everything — news, articles and interviews like these — an a messageboard? They’re not the only one either, as some other comic-sites does the same thing. It’s ugly and rather pointless.

(Interview found at Barbelith Underground)

Cor-nel-i-us

Lots of Jerry Cornelius things right now. After the latest book in the book group’s reading list, Åka became inspired to do a fanzine in with the same sort of structure and then I saw that Grant Morrison had created an excellent rip-off in the Invisibles: Entrophy in the UK with the character Gideon Stargrave. Everything is there, almost anyway. The party bit is missing. Morrison succeeds in making the comic more fun than the original books. And I can’t help to wonder about the truth about the lawsuit.

– I didn’t want you to miss all the fun. It’s the dawn of a new age, Gideon.
– Christ, I hope not. We only just got rid of the old one. Still, how about a toast, sis. To chaos.
— Grant Morrison, Entropy in the UK, trpd, page 79

Learn to be invisble

After he’d seen the ghost of John Lennon (later Godhead) down by the river and been saved from the Harmony House, Dane askes “Where the fuck are we?” to the crazy Tom. Later the old man he asked says “When you dream, what makes you think it’s not real?” and even later “If you want to make it work you’ll have to tell me about Jack Frost...” and then they jump of a building and Dane meets the others and Tom’s gone. When the Myrmidons come, the room is empty and the handgranade with the newspaper cutout-letters S-M-I-L-E glued onto it explodes and I says “this is really good.”

I’ve become addicted to the Invisibles. Next stop is trpd no. 3: Entropy in the UK and Morrisons Doom Patrol: Crawling from the Wreckage.

No nowhere girl this year

No! Chapter three of Nowhere Girl has been postponed, again. Boo doesn’t didn’t previously join my raves about the series, but what does he know about comics anyway? that was just a matter of time since he know stuff about comics. Justine Shaw has too little time — obligatory South Park ref: she needs more time, we have to to transplant some — and is therefore unable to work on it right now. The release date is somewhat uncertain, but it’ll hopefully be next year. Late next year. In happier news, she has two other comic projects in the go.

Not a plain vanilla comic

Rediscoveries are something of a mixed bag depending on how long it’s gone since it was “forgotten” or how you saw things the first time around. At times, the old premise that you can never go back holds on to you and will not let go no matter how much you shake and crawl around on the floor. I can, for instance never really go back to reading some newsgroups. The old cabal withered away and left, some remained but it was never the same. New people had of course taken their place, but it was a trade down for me. It wasn’t worth it.

Other times, there is a warm mirth inside. It is just like before. Everything just clicks and it is af if nothing really happened, that the time without it was just a bad dream with horrible and evil maimed children in. Goats is like that. Unlike other online comics — I won’t mention Sluggy Freelance — it never went stale. (Right now, Jon The Half-a-genius is in the middle of a Twix-story, something that can get tedious for non-fans.) Just remember: no-one knows why there are babies ducttaped to the ceiling.

Philip: What’s the layer of earth between the crust and the core called?
Toothgnip: Vanilla.
Philip: I thought it was the mantle.
Toothgnip: No, that’s a baseball player.
Philip: So you’re saying that there’s a thick layer of vanilla-coated baseball players under the ground?
Toothgnip: They come out at night to do product endorsements.

What was i thinking?

Somewhere in the murky and seldom seen directory nestings on my computer, there is a folder called “comic sketches.” It does contain a lot of crap, some quality work and a few things that I just can’t explain. I spend a few hours a day devising comics, both the offline and online variety. A feeling that I’m not good enough to transform the images in my head to paper as well as being a fair amount more lazy than I should be make sure that I don’t get further than the mental planning bit.

This is one of the things I can’t explain. There are no notes what-so-ever on this subject anywhere and I can’t even remember drawing the picture.

(Right now, about 35 minutes until Buffy on TV4. “Amends” I think, which is a filler episode. Good, but not even near the excellence later on.)

Best storyline in a long time

At the most excellent comic strip Goats there is right now one of the most hilarious storylines I’ve seen in a long time.

I can’t even contemplate what it will do to Mr Rosenbergs personal life, as those people which he writes about is not firmly roted in the real world.

But go Goats, go.

Superhero Academia

Now that they have mapped and compared the social networks between real life and the Marvel Universe (link via Platicbag.org), what’s next?

Why the Marvel World is obsessed with Spandex uniforms? The genetic structure of Bruce Banner pre-Hulk to decide why he reacted to gamma-rays the way he did? Or, best of all, genealogy on the Summers-clan in X-Men?

Killingspree

Harsh times are ahead. The company with a de facto monopoly in publishing comicbooks in Sweden are canceling several titles. This is serious. This is horrible, and it is one of the resons why I’m against monopolies in any form. Without competition, it is far easier to cancel quality and keep the cheap crap, as no one else have the possibility to pick up the thrown away gems.

This explains why no one nolonger translates and publish DC/Vertigo-stuff or why no one even bothered looking at the production from Slave Labor Graphics. No, instead we only got stuff for smaller children (which is fine by me as I started out as one myself) but nothing for those over twelve (which is not fine by me).

In the end, the only comic book that will remain is probably Donald Duck, and lets face it: Carl Barks and his high standards are deader than ever before.

Missing pieces

You know that you’re out of touch with the important things in life — which as we all know by now consists of comics, movies, books, and music — when you let gems such as this slip you by.

– Confidence.
– Women dig confidence like Robert Downey Jr digs the crack pipe. They can’t get enough of it. Confidence is very sexy.
– So I get confidence by... um... giving crack to Robert Downey Jr.
– That’s not the most efficent metod, no.
-- Diablo and Toothgnip in Goats

"I reserve the right to bitch and moan."

The kind and gentle man at Goats, Jon Rosenberg, shares his thoughts on said comics site. And what thoughts that is. A book. Filled from page one and forwards with Goat-strips. Sheer genius I say and about time. I know nothing about which story arch’s is to be included, but anything would be fine. More than fine, it would be great. Imagine, a book, with Neil and Bob and all the others. A book.

Oh, the joy of filled mailboxes

Things to arrive in my mailbox as of next week:

• Michael Moorcock: Mother London
• Edward Savio: Idiots in the Machine
• James Blaylock: Homunculus
• Dorothy Parker: Collected Prose and Poetry

At the end of next week my first semester of English starts, and before that I’ll have an Semiotics-exam and a new story arch on Doctor Who. Pffth, and they said nothing new ever happens in my life.

It the Dorothy Parker-book I await the most. That and the two Flash Girls records, but the cds will probably take somewhat longer time, being ordered from the other side of the big pond.

Oh, and the bookstore seem to have received some of the works by Chuck Palahniuk, Brenda Clough and Emma Bull as well. This means that in the next couple of weeks I’ll be in a state of constant euphoria.

And on the comic front, there’s this interview with Matt Wagner on Sequential Tart where he talks about his many projects as writer, cartoonist and as a painter coverboy.

“Stayed in faceless motels and just tried to get back into the Kevin Matchstick headspace. The last night, I stayed in a slightly nicer place that had large glass doors that faced onto the beach. A fierce storm struck the coast that evening and the sight of this yawning darkness that battered and shook the only barriers between me and it was quite an inspiration. It figured heavily into the series’ conclusion. Mage is draining, but I’d say any self-examination should be so. I always come out of it feeling stronger and saner than when I began.”
-- Matt Wagner about Mage

Which I think proves that the human mind was not made to work correctly in hot and beautiful weather — beautiful in other people’s terms, my definition of good weather is rain. Rain and about 15 degrees C. Hardly anyone else agrees about this though, but their opinion is inevitably wrong.

The knowledge of forgetting should be forgotten

If I may be so bold, I would once again start of with an expletive. Bloody fucking hell. When I ordered the last batch of books — which of two where out of print and none of the other has been shipped yet — I knew I’d forgotten something.

Today, after catching up on some posts in rec.arts.sf.written I knew what was forgotten. Alan Moore. Sure, League of Extraordinary Gentleman so far only exists in hardcover and not in trade paperback — although a cloth edition would be nice, nice and too expensive right now. But there are others. From Hell, Promethea, Tom Strong and why not the audio book as well. Anything as long as it’s by Moore.

But, oh no. I just have to go the other way and simply forget he even existed for a few minutes. There is no end to my stupidity and this means I really need a job instead of a student loan from the evil empire of csn. Now that I think of it, I need those last three sandman-books as well. Bugger all this to damnation and back.

But right now the choice is between Promethea and From Hell. But the League is damn tempting as well. Anyway, I think I’ll clickity-click shop later when I’ve made up my mind.

Tomorrow comes, just as last week

By all standards, Tom Tomorrow is amazing. Sometimes he goes a bit to far, but satire is supposed to bite. This Modern World is fun despite being political. Which is a good way of showing that politics does not have to be boring, just as I’ve said before elsewhere in the flesh time.