Hear Ye, Yearly!

I've been writing for Time Out Chicago for a minute now and you can check out my year-end video game list on their website. I tried to do something a little different. I hope GLaDOS likes it as much as I like her Christmas screen. I also did some quick hits in the same vein for Entertainment Weekly.

A for Effort

A few weeks ago, while reading another blog, I stumbled upon the fact that the Washington Post compiled a list of everything that has gotten an “A” grade over the course of 2007 in the Media Mix grid of their Sunday Source section. I’ve been writing about video games and comics for this section of the WashPost for about four years now (I think) and this seems to be the first time that they’ve done something like this.

It’s kinda jarring to look back and see what games and comics offerings I stamped with the first letter of the alphabet. For the most part, I don’t have much Reviewer’s Regret about much of these grades. Out of 52 weeks of the year, I gave out 14 A grades, give or take. (These ain’t super-reliable numbers, since some weeks MediaMix doesn’t run and other weeks I’ll do two reviews or no review.) I did go on to give Rock Band and the Captain America Omnibus A-minuses a week later, so that works out to be a little more than a third of the time. I’m sure somewhere out there someone is grading my grading. It’s what the intarwebs was made for!

Devilishly good

Continuing on the theme of “Stuff Evan Should Be Up On But Isn’t,” I finished reading eight volumes of Hellboy a few weeks ago. I don’t know if it’s everything that’s in print but it seems like it’s the bulk of Hellboy-related material. My first memory of seeing Mike Mignola’s work was either on Marvel’s Alpha Flight or the house ads that were running in Marvel Comics for the Rocket Raccoon mini-series in the eighties. I remember thinking that his blocky, ink-heavy style immediately stood out from other prevailing sensibilities at the time and it still does more than 20 years later.


Hellboy’s a demonic spawn summoned to earth who winds up working as a paranormal investigator. The premise essentially riffs on the Entity That Should Be Evil But Isn’t idea, which probably goes back a long ways. (Of course, now I can’t get the Son of Satan, Marvel’s 1970s-era character of my head.) The thing I’ve grown to love about the Hellboy character is his almost-blasé, workaday attitude when it comes to dealing with bizarre creatures or macabre revelations about the Dark Forces of the Universe. He’s like a shit-talking, gun-wielding plumber (with the Right Hand of Doom, of course). Slimy, tentacled Elder God about to breach the borders of our reality? For Hellboy, it’s just time to make the donuts.



Maybe it’s because I inhaled the bulk of it in a short span but it’s pretty striking how much Hellboy is its own thing. In the trade paperbacks, Mignola’s not shy about citing influences and sources but he manages to make them into a singular experience. There’s a real sense of mythos here that you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else in comics nowadays. All throughout the collective work, Mignola’s lean plainspoken dialogue really lets the moodiness of his art emanate from the panels.

I’ve never seen the Hellboy movie but loved Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, so I’m looking forward to renting the DVD and seeing what kind of job Ron Perelman does as the big red guy.


If this two-page sequence makes it into the movie, then I'm there opening day.

"Find the Haitian"

If anybody’s still checking this blog after a woeful six-week absence, then please accept my sincerest apologies. I’ve been busy with lots of things. One of them was finally watching the first season of Heroes.


To everyone who ever said “Oh my God, how are YOU, of all people, not watching this show?”: You were right. I was cynical at first. The initial episodes were slow and I kept waiting for a misstep, for the threads to go awry and fall apart. But the mix of unapologetic superhero trappings, strong emotional performances and generous screen time for a large cast of characters won me over.

For a long time comic nerd like me, the fun was in catching references, seeing where inspirational material peeked through and what the show’s writers did with that.

Claire’s dad Noah Bennett seems to a version of Henry Peter Gyrich, the government agent in Marvel Comics who’s always trying to keep mutants, the Avengers and various other powered types in line. I love the way they deepen the motivations of that character type. I also love the ethnic mix on the show. I haven’t watched the second season, but I hope that they continue to dodge the tokenism that plagues so much speculative fiction.

Something about the universe the show creates–either the implied stakes of the action or the metaphorical significance of the characters’ powers–makes emotional moments in the show ring unexpectedly true. It could be the simple fact that we get to watch the actions and consequences play out, as opposed to reading between the lines of still images. There were a lot of moments where I was watching the show and thought, “That wouldn’t have worked on the printed page.”


I also love the way the first season played with conventions of the superhero genre: secret labs, the blessing/curse dichotomy of having powers, the way they play around with the idea of secret identities. I saw the ending of the finale coming a mile away and thought it fell a little flat. But, that doesn’t matter. The best thing about serial fiction is that, if you’re clever enough, you can continually build on a mythos to keep it fresh. The best thing about Haitians? Everybody thinks we’re spooky.

Hip-Hop, Ya Don't Stop?

One of the challenges I'm facing in coming up with ideas for the book is how to talk about hip-hop. The time period that the book covers is essentially the entire life span of hip-hop. However, I'm struggling to find unique angles that haven't already been put forth in the many great books about rap music and its surrounding culture.


I've been turning to my favorite rappers for inspiration and had a few random thoughts. It could be that MF Doom has succumbed to the fantastical dementia that his lyrics hint at. The greatest strengths of his musical conception is that it creates a whole alternate universe for listeners to visit. But, it's been three years since his lat album and I worry that he will have totally squandered the groundswell of attention and goodwill sparked by the DangerDoom project. Is this a case of reclusive genius or an MC too caught up in his own hype? (And, yes, I know about the health problems but the question still remains valid.)

On the other hand, Doom's former running buddy MF Grimm seems to be garnering accolades for Sentences, his first graphic novel. I wrote about it here. After re-reading it, I realized that if Sentences was a song, or more appropriately, an album, I don’t know that I’d be that enthused by it.


The unapologetic sentiment of the book's early chapters would've been hard to pull off in a rap lanscape where harder-than-you is still the order of the day. (Exceptions only seem to made for Ghostface, and God knows he earns 'em. All that we need is YOU, Tony Starks.) Something about the art on Sentences reminds me of graffiti, too, with its emphasis of elasticity and the way it eschews figurative literalness.

Sentences mostly triumphs by presenting some of the best aspects of hip-hop in a non-musical form. That strikes me as ironic in an age where rap music is the weakest selling point of hip-hop culture.

All this has got me thinking about the way hip-hop creates a worldview for its faithful. Nowadays, it seems like MCs act like hip-hop owes them something. Straight out the gate, they carp about being hated on. MF'ers (no pun intended) need to realize that you're gonna get hated on; after all, no one gave rap a free pass when it started to bubble up from the streets. There's a real dearth of what I call “just happy to be here” rap. Dave turned me on to Blu and Exile's CD and the thing that grabs me is that dude just sounds like he's having fun. When did that become such a rarity?


So, let's look at this particular moment with regard to the two aforementioned MCs: one seemingly trapped in a world he made and the other possibly escaping boundaries by re-inventing the very thing that took away his mobility. We could be talking about either MF, right? There's gotta be somethere I can use...

Black Machismo

Meet my new favorite wrestler. Jay Lethal works the ropes for TNA and he's the current champ of their lightweight X Division. I got flown down for the federation's announcement of their first-ever video game, which coincided with their Bound for Glory pay-per-view event.

Jay's a big nerd and we were going back and forth quoting lines from Frisky Dingo
before the night was over. He loves Gears of War but sadly, I didn't get his gamertag.


The best thing about Mr. Lethal is that he's currently working a Black Machismo gimmick that has him doing a spot-on imitation of the great Macho Man Randy Savage.



Sheer brilliance.

Halo, is it me you're looking for?

My piece for GameDaily (fka AOL Video Games) about other publishers trying to counter-program Halo 3 went live late on Thursday. It was kind of a logistical pain-in-the-ass, to be honest, and someone really needs to teach game developers how to give good quote.

Somewhere, the bells of the Apocalypse are getting ready to toll...

because someone went and found Larry Stroman. CBR's got the scoop.

It's funny because dude has created this air of mystery by his very absence, kind of like how people used to wonder about whatever happened to Sly Stone. Maybe Mr. Stroman was inspired by Sly's recent Grammy appearance and Vanity Fair article?

Stroman's popularity wasn't all mystery and hype, though. Dude could put serious burn on the page. Honed by early work as a caricaturist (if I'm remembering correctly), his style's never been really imitated or aped. Hell, even his influences are hard to track, though I'd guess that he studied some Michael Golden and/or Marshall Rogers back in the day. He always applied interesting layouts to both individual panels and whole pages, and used strong constrasts and sharp design sense to make even older characters seem fresh.


I first encountered him on Alien Legion from It always seemed like his work held a special significance for black nerds like me, because one could suspect--based from certain anatomical, er, proclivities--that the guy drawing Peter David's mid-90s run on X-Factor was a brother. Say what you will about essentializing conclusions with regard to artistic technique, but he knew how to draw curves on women in a way that differed from the more egregious T&A art. People who read his independent book Tribe know what I mean.

Well, I liked the Rise & Fall of the Shiar Empire, Brubaker's intial arc on Uncanny X-Men, so Stroman's art will give me another reason to pick this up.

Haitian Sensation interviews Asian Persuasion

My profile on cartoonist Adrian Tomine runs in the latest issue of Time Out New York. It was way long when I turned it in but, despite the cuts, I think it turned out pretty well.

Halo, can anybody hear me?

For your viewing pleasure, Mr. Scott Jones and I hold forth on Microsoft's rampaging juggernaut way too early on a Monday morning. (I'd like to think that I at least bend the rule--if not break it outright--that says no one can look cool while being filmed playing a video game. You readers--who are an admittedly harsh lot--can be the judges.)




Eventually, the Halo frenzy will lead to this:

My sister gave it to me...

so, y'know, blame her. The part about cleverly placing it on the inside of the door so it's already too late by the time you see it? All me.

Sonny, Like He Is

On Tuesday night, I went to see Sonny Rollins at Carnegie Hall. While it wasn’t my first time seeing Sonny play live, it was my first time at Carnegie Hall. The gig also marked the 50th Anniversary of Sonny’s first Carnegie appearance, so I was pretty amped. Even though I got there early, I had to wait almost an hour to get inside. There was some combo of human and computer error that kept folks waiting even longer than I did for their tickets.

I guess I wasn’t paying attention as the run-up to the concert was happening but it turned out that Gil Noble was the host. Mr. Noble and Like It Is, his long-running public affair show on WABC Channel 7, is one of the reasons I became a journalist. I remember coming home after Catholic mass and turning it on and learning about black people in ways that I wasn’t getting in school.

You can get some insights about the show here and here. For my part, I thought Sonny was in fine form. His tone sounded more full-bodied than the last few times I saw him live, when his sound was more astringent and bracing in the upper registers of the horn.


Thankfully, I managed to catch the last two songs in the trio format. Man, Christian McBride just smokes on the bass. I think I’ve seen him before but it’s been long enough to forget just how good he is. This was my first time seeing Roy Haynes ever and it’s stunning to think that he’s 82 and still playing the drums. Stop and think about that for a second… dude’s been sitting on a stool banging out rhythms for upwards of 60 years. I kept on thinking, “How are your hands NOT a painful arthritic mess?” I didn’t know that they’d publicized the set list for the trio portion of the program beforehand, so I was really happy when the band launched in Moritat. I was humming that while waiting in line and Sonny amazed me with the way he’s still able to do those nimble little noodle-y bits that he plays really fast, as if to clear a whole bunch of impulses from his brain.

I’ve occasionally been on those people who hates on the electric bass in Sonny’s band. (Yes, I know that Cranshaw plays it because of his bad back, but it doesn’t move me the way upright does. Sorry.) But, the difference is really striking when it’s directly contrasted during the same night. Nevertheless, I like the stuff the sextet played. Lots of people complain about how much calypso stuff Sonny’s latter-day ensembles play, but I’ve gotten used to the fact that if you’re going to see him play in 2007, you’re gonna hear that stuff.

The thing about Sonny is that he carries the weight of history and legacy on his shoulders. He knows that and I think he knows that his audience knows that. It’s a lot of pressure and the fact that he manages to play and exist gracefully in the midst of it is pretty inspiring. When I think about it, three of the men on stage –Gil Noble, Roy Haynes and Sonny–continue to do the damn thing way past retirement age. Just something else to try to live up to…

All Those Who Oppose His Shield Must Yield

I was in a bit of funk tonight. Weird, dissolute bad mood just floating all around me. Talking with my sister and Marty helped a little bit, but it was still clinging to me. One comic, however, cut through the miasma and just made me feel good.


I generally read my comics in ascending order–meaning the ones I want to read most are the ones I read last–and lately Captain America's been going stratight to the bottom of the pile.
Ed Brubaker and his various artists have been putting together a defining run on Cap. It mixes in themes from 1970s political paranoia thrillers, makes excellent use of the current post-Civil-War Marvel Universe landscape and never forgets to give us action to cut through all the angst.



Brubaker really gets the characters and makes the motivations driving the heroes clear. The art tells the story exceptionally well and the coloring does a brilliant job of creating a moody, shifting tableau. It's getting so I don't even know if I want Steve Rogers to ever come back.

Can it be that it was all so skinny then?

This is what happens when you clean out your closet. (Peace to the philosopher, Eminem.)

Listen to your feelings.

In New York, public transportation's response to the Bush Administration's candy-colored alert status code has been to tell bus and subway riders "if you see something, say something." (The MTA says that the slogan originated in 1993, which could be the case since the first WTC bombing happened, but it seems like the ad campaign only really ramped up after 2001.)

Since I'm out here in California, the following signs jumped out at me for the contrast that they prove to the See/Say slogan.

This first one is from the BART system. (Bay Area Rapid Transit is the closest thing to New York City's subways.)

Things I thought when I say this PSA: dude looks like the bag really smells something fierce; the wording's kinda similar to See/Say; are they trying to appeal to latent Jedi or closeted mutants with that "Trust your instincts" line? Really, it's the instincts line that mosts gets me because with the quantity and quality of the Bay Area's crazy-ass street people, it's just seems like that phrase would encourage them to act all kinds of fool. "Well, Mr. BART tole me to trust muh instincts so I'ma pee on your leg."


This other sign can be seen on the CalTrain system, kind of like NYC's Long Island Rail Road. (Forgive the janky camphone shot, I only noticed it as I was getting off on the wrong stop of the train.)

It's got a pleading "we kinda don't know what we're doing" subtext to it that they're trying to disguise as some "we hereby deputize you" tomfoolery. I love how this one doesn't really invoke the spectre of any real threat, too.

Maybe it's because the messaging in the NYC one is so direct, but the CalTrain and BART PSAs seem to stoke the kind of vague, wanton paranoia that characterizes much of America's mindset after 9/11.

Cross-country Flight

The latest volume of Flight has been sitting on my bookshelf for a little while now. I reviewed the previous one for the WashPost last summer so I picked it up the new one to read as I headed to San Francisco for video game stuff.


At a time when my enjoyment of the major interconnected superhero universes is becoming seriously compromised (subject of a future post if I can summon up the intestinal fortitude), these sharp, crystallized short stories remind me why I like comics so much. Lots of them are spare, wordless affairs; all of them feel intensely personal. It seems like Michel Gagne’s serialized “The Saga of Rex” continues from an episode in volume three, but I can’t remember the specifics of the previous installment.
Still, it delivers a full story with too-cute drawings and expressive characters. (A particular triumph: the orange amphibious creatures clearly all belong to the same race but Gagne is able to make them all look distinct, with different sizes of eyes, head shapes and other stuff that I can’t quite quantify now.)

[Side note: Gagné’s working on a video game called Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. This looks like the kind of thing that’d be perfect for the PlayStation Network or Xbox Love Arcade. Hopefully, Gagne and his team will seal a deal to bring this to the masses soon.]



I also love Thomas Herpich’s “Farewell, Litle Karla” for the way it uses science-fiction tropes to parallel the tensions of going out into the world on your own. “The Forever Box” struck me with how sweet yet brooding it was and “Roomie-Pal,” “The Rabbit Mayor,” and “Igloo Head and Tree Head” made me chuckle loudly on the plane.

Flight doesn’t have a unifying universe or concept like the 24seven comics anthologies do, but neither architecture is inherently right or wrong. (It does seem like the idea of raising children or coming-of-age are unifying motifs this time around, though.)

The creators who do 24seven stories all take the robot-as-dominant-life-form conceit to such different places that they may as well be disconnected efforts. And, that’s a good thing, because the world that arises as a result feels all the more rich by virtue of these varying visions. Flight’s aggregation of aesthetics make you feel like any idea can be expressed with pictures and word balloons.

‘Shock and Awe

I don’t know if it’s too soon to call BioShock a hit, but it’s definitely a success. I’m not going to be writing a longer review than my Washington Post blurb, so I wanted to put my thoughts on this Xbox 360 game out there.



Before the game came out, I was sitting on the fence as to whether to attend the launch party in Boston. Then, I played it. (I’d played in a demo session two weeks prior, but everything’s different when you don’t have watchful PR and developer eyes taking in your reactions.) After logging some alone time with it, I had to, as Mr. Scott Jones put it, “be in the same room as the people who made this game.”

The one thing I’ve been repeating in conversations about it BioShock is that it’s like Orson Welles made a video game. The design direction channels an Art Deco aesthetic that feels period-perfect and the setting and lighting create a portentous mood that permeates every frame of the action.





The curious thing about BioShock is that its innovations don’t necessarily come from gameplay. Control-wise, there isn’t a lot to separate it from other first-person offerings. And the overarching play dynamics (ethical decisions, mix-and-match strategies and multi-level inventory systems) have been done elsewhere, too. To me, BioShock’s big victory comes in delivering a story in a breathlessly taut way. The audio recordings that you’ll find scattered throughout Rapture form a connect-the-dots narrative, compelling you to explore the environment to find out how this bright, shiny city full of promise crumbled to pieces.

The excellent voice acting in BioShock reminds me of a 1940s radio play and I’d daresay it rivals the performances from the God of War franchise. Part of BioShock’s emotional impact comes from the fact that the player’s fighting for his life in a failed utopia. The splicers who menace you were probably well-heeled snobs when Rapture was in its infancy and now they’re scrounging just to get by.

All of this is to say that it’s story, not exponentially more powerful plasmids or artillery, is what’s driving me to finish this gameUnfortunately, that’s not often the case in video games. (And no, I haven’t finished. A brother’s trying to savor Ken Levine’s script like a fine wine. Red wine, of course.) BioShock draws on universal themes like man’s obligation to his fellows, whether societies can thrive without new cultural infusions and moral consequences of unchecked ambition. Hell, when was the last time a game riffed on pre-WWII era American isolationism? . The primacy of the story is one of the reasons that I’m glad Irrational didn’t shoehorn any kind of multiplayer into the title.

I may re-visit these thoughts once I finish BioShock (don’t hold your breath) but I already know that I’ll be looking at the rest of the high-profile games coming out this year like they’ve got a little more to prove.


“You call that a porterhouse?,” indeed.

We Insist!

When my friend called me a week ago to tell me that Max Roach had died, I yelped in disbelief. When we hung up, I cried for about 15 minutes. I fought valiantly but I couldn’t stop those tears. I knew WKCR would be launching one of their indispensable memorial broadcasts, but honestly I was nervous about turning it on, knowing that the force of Max’s genius (and the emotions his playing always managed to stir up) could overtake me like a tidal wave.

To be honest, I don’t know as much as Max Roach’s discography as I do other jazz artists. Max laid down rhythm for lots of my favorite recordings, from propulsively driving Sonny Rollin’s solos on Freedom Suite to being part of the famous all-star concert that spawned The Quintet - Jazz At Massey Hall recording. His tenure as a co-leader in the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet produced sharp, sophisticated tracks and he lived his whole life embracing innovation. I’ll leave it to far more knowledgeable and talented folks to run down all of Mr. Roach’s accolades.



There’s a funny moment from a WKCR interview from the late 70s that aired during the memorial broadcast. Max is talking to the interviewer about how he find good places to eat when he’s abroad. He simply goes to the places that are packed and have long queues. When he comes back Stateside and goes to the movies using the same method, he finds himself watching Jaws. Poor Max can’t deal and eventually walks out. When you think about his disgust about seeing Jaws, it seems to follow that he must’ve been well into his crotchety-old-man phase. But, this same guy worked with rappers later on in his career, which, to me, points to an artistic openness that judged things on their merits. (And, he could've just hated sharks, too...)

The thing that moves me about the giants of jazz music was that their lives were surrounded by artistic and existential struggle, but their music came out as fiery, dignified, tenacious and resolute. You can hear that willpower on the famous Freedom Now Suite – We Insist! recording, led by Max in 1960.


I have a phrase in my head that I associate with my favorite jazz tunes: “the unending sound of modernity.” To me, the best of this music never sounds old. The feelings that songs like “Jordu,” “Giant Steps” and “Parisian Thoroughfare” generate create their own context in the here and now. Put more simply, they create an electric current that energizes the moment that the listener’s hearing it. That dynamic is why Max Roach will never die. Isn’t it a rule of physics that energy is never destroyed, it just changes form?