Back (sorta, kinda)

Well, my computer is back from Florida, which is the good news. But the bad news is that they decided it would be a clever idea to reformat the hard drive without bothering to tell me.

This, despite asking on two separate occasions whether the HD would be safe and protected (I suspect I actually worded it to ask if the HD was physically OK... but, damn, you'd think they'd double plus underline that reformatting is SOP there)

So, while I'm "back", I have about a week's worth of data (re)entry in front of me to recover everything from the first of the year on, which makes Brian a very sad man.

At least I have my address book back now -- that only took me 90 minutes of typing!

Anyway, back to data entry for me -- HOPEfully I'll be Criticing next week... but I wouldn't count on it, really. (I've got to write a Tilting during then, too, sheesh!)

-B

A New Fanboy is Up and Shambling....

As promised, a new Fanboy Rampage is up (and, as expected, I put it up about a week later than I said I would). I don't know if I mentioned it, but I'm going on vacation next week and won't be back until the last week in October. My hope is Hibbs' computer will have returned from the shop by then and there'll be no delay in all the savaging and the criticing but who knows? I'll keep you updated as I get an idea of what's going on.

Two Quick Public Service Announcements

PSA Numero Uno: I'm sure most of you caught the announcement that Geoff Johns is going to be signing at CE from 4 to 7 on Saturday Octobert 30th. But some of you may missed it, so there it is. We hope you can make it. PSA Numero Two-o: If I was Hibbs I would have posted the shipping list doo-da that he does, but I'm not--I can only link to the Diamond site's if you're curious. But Rob Bennett informs me that we did not get in Superman/Batman #12 this week. He said that the East Coast did, the West Coast did not for quick brown reasons that jumped over the slow, lazy dog of my head. Just a head's up for those of you breathlessly anticipating how much sillier Jeph Loeb was going to twist a storyline about Supergirl wearing a slutty outfit and beating our heroes to pudding in apparent obeisance to Darkseid (I freely admit to counting myself in that crowd).

I have a batch of new comics here. Give me some time and I'll let you know what I think.

Fuckity Fuck

Ben decided it would be fun to make a grab for the power cables in my office, so the power to my Alienware flickered on and off a bunch of time before I was able to get hold of his little hands... and, apparently, something blew out on my system. Long story short, I've got to send it back to Florida for repairs, and that's the system with all of my work/games/WORK, so I'm, basically, fucked on a gimped old computer for the next three weeks or so.

The upshot of THAT is, you won't be seeing any updates on this blog after this one from me for at least 3 weeks.

Jeff may or may not update.

See you in a month or so....

-B

Comics of 9/22 (*sigh*)

I really have to get used to saving a copy of what I write outside of blogger -- damn thing just gave me a 404 and lost everything I wrote about this week's comics. I'll try to retype it later, I guess.... -B

How Do You Surf, and How Much Content Do You Demand?

Here's the other thing I'm wondering -- how fucking obligated should we feel about trying to have SOME content up here every day. Jeff and I have both discussed how weird and uncomfortable we feel when we go *gasp* 48 consecutive hours without one of us saying something. I don't want to start posting BlogShit ("Woke up late. Ate cornflakes, then brushed teeth...."), and I don't have anything remotely like the time to actually write a Rant Of The Day. I mean, notice I STILL haven't done the Deppey/NuMarvel piece I threatened ("I'll wait for the second half!" I rationalized), nor have I said anything public about Rozanski's latest Tales From The Database, which just flatout begs a response from someone who isn't the #4-or-so largest Diamond account (I think I might append it to the next Tilting at Windmills, actually) -- but what I just don't know is What You Want.

Basically, are we updated frequently enough (even if we go 2 days at a time with radio silence), or, because we don't update daily are we on your Secondary or even Tertiary "Surfing Habits"?

I mean, I know that I like my overall bookmark list to be kinda short (I have 34 [!] links saved, as of this moment!), so I only have Heidi and Graham bookmarked, and I hit everyone else either through the blogosphere page -- and people who don't update frequently don't get visited frequently. So, how do you surf? What kind of frequency of content do you need? Does quality over quantity count at all?

Or do you want me to breathlessly blog that yesterday both Robin Williams and Lauren McCubbin came in? (Because, y'know, I'm not sure I want to write that blog?)

Just wondering what you want, is all....

(and because I wrote this, I didn't write up any of this week's comics... eternally behind)

-B

Something like a New Content Alert

Happy Labor Day! When we did the minor clean-up on the site, I swore I would change my ways and get better about putting up the Fanboy Rampages closer to their publication date. So this latest piece, dealing with Bendis and Millar and underoos and whatnot, was supposed to go up on the first of the month. How it got to be the sixth of September already, I have no idea. As they say in those fancy restaurants: enjoy!

Lament

OK, I've learned something very important about Blogger. If you're selecting text in a window using the shift key (Say, to make a copy) , and the post is many pages long, and you're going from the bottom to the top, if you go "too far" (that is you're still using the up arrow past the top of the post), all of your text will go bye bye leaving you with nothing. That's TWICE I've done this now in one day -- the first time taking more than an hour to write a long long essay about IDENTITY CRISIS #3, the second time doing it in about 40 minutes.... and I lost it both times.

F. U. C. K.

So, I give up, clearly the universe doesn't want this published yet, there's no way I'm going to write it a third time. Maybe I'll try again around when #4 is released.

I'll be back with more one sentence reviews SINCE THAT'S CLEARLY WHAT THE UNIVERSE WANTS FROM ME, THE FUCKER later.

-B

Site News

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Oooh, colors

Look, Jeff has changed the template! What a mensch! And yes, go read his Fanboy Rampage, as linked below, GO NOW NOW NOW!

(Huh, we need to add those links on the side... and I need a lot more "away from here" links too... give us a few more days folks!)

Ben's asleep (for the mo'), and I dinged 28 in City of Heroes, and I have 30 minutes before I have to get to work, so let's see what else I've managed to read, shall we?

MAJESTIC #1: Wow, fuck yah. I expected nothing from this (not of the previous iterations were all that hot), but I thought this was wicked funny and well characterized all the way through. Silver-age Superman level powers can be FUN, sometimes. Excellent, and barring some big surprise later in the pile, I'm willing to call this one The Pick Of The Week.

UNCANNY X-MEN #447: Damn Alan Davis can draw. Daddy likee. The story was a bit meh -- we've seen this one before from Claremont, more or less. I seem to recall essentially the same conflict circa the 200's -- that Sentinel from the future? Wossname? Nimrod, I think? (heh) But, this looks fab, so let's go with a real strong OK.

MILKMAN MURDERS #2: Despite how shocking this book is looking to be, I like that the first 3 pages were so understated and elegent in what they presented. I liked this quite a bit -- might be the strongest narrative I've seen from Casey, and Parkhouse art is always a joy to look at. Very Good.

HARD TIME #7: "Meanwhile, back at the ensemble..." Now that the Focus "line" has been winnowed down to 2, it's time for a little of that comics Activism for this and Kinetic. Both are very strong books focusing more on human reaction than the garish zow of super-books. Both books have found their rhythm and both should be selling at least twice as well as they do. While I'm not giving this PotW, I really do urge you to pick up a copy the next time you're in the LCS, and give it a chance. Very Good.

MONOLITH #7: It's always smart to try and guest-star Batman to goose your numbers, but, folks, the bottom third of a cover is THE SINGLE WORST part of your cover to put any sales information. MOST stores overlap covers, and that's "dead" sales space. Seriously. (Wake up, there in DC -- Vertigo, especially, has been putting out a lot of covers lately with "misplaced" logos). Very nice art from Tom Coker, a good solid story from Palmiotti and Gray, and now that the story has started moving at a slightly brisker place, you should give this one a gander on the racks. Good.

SOF' BOY #3: Great cartooning from Archer Prewitt. While I've been a bit turned off by the sadism this has sometimes shown towards it's indefatigable, invulnerable lead, this I thought was wonderful and sweet and joyous. And god-damn nicely drawn. $4.95 is kinda a lot to swallow, but dem's the economics of doing askew work like this. This was a terrific issue: Very Good.

And so endeth this session of the Savage Critic. Wow I kinda liked everything is this part of the pile! More later.....

-B

A Big Head's-Up, or A Big-Head is Up?

Howdy, everyone. Jeff here with a quick bit of non-Savage shilling. I just put up eighteen or so old Fanboy Rampage columns covering a span ranging from two years ago to published just last month. If you're waiting for Brian to make with the Critic-ing, and you want some cheap Fanboy laffs, there's Alan Moore's turn on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, excerpts from Grant Morrison in Conversation, the second season of The Apprentice with Lex Luthor, and, as they almost always say, much, much more. It's not a complete archive--I've got about twenty to twenty-five columns to hunt up and/or convert--which means you still have to go to The Fourth Rail to read "The Fish Story," (which drives Hibbs nuts), but it's still a pretty good sampling of the free funny CE customers get every month in our newsletter, Onomatopoeia.

Okay, now I have to get my butt to the store to sell some quality funny books. I return you to regularly scheduled Hibbness.

Right, so...

Welcome to the Savage Critic blog. As some of you may remember (depending on how you got here), I used to do a weekly review column (aided and abetted by the affable Jeff Lester) of which you can find the archives here.

Once the wonderful Benjamin Alexander Friedman-Hibbs was born, I realized I couldn't keep up with the old format any longer -- I just didn't have that big block of time any longer!

So, again, thanks to Jeff Lester, we have the new cutting edge SavBlog where I can do shorter, but theoretically more frequent, updates / reviews.

I will probably be posting something daily (let's hope), but will not limit myself purely to comic reviews -- I'll also probably babble about being a dad a bit, as well as covering comics industry topics from a retailer's perspective. At least that don't fit into my monthly Tilting at Windmills column up at Newsarama.

(Matt Brady still needs to update the index)

(You can also find a lot of older, Pre-Newsarama Tiltings here, as well as purchase a copy of IDW's collection of the first 100 Tiltings here)

Anyway, this is just a "welcome" message -- we still have to add links, and do a lot of tweaking, but here I am, alright?

-B