HYGOTS No. 73
March 5th, 2010
I had a most curious awakening recently. I know how common it is to stick with pretty rigid opinions in the sci-fi/fantasy community (the “genre” of both Lower Decks’ and HYGOTS’ focus), but I also know that in my own life, I seem capable of pretty radically changing my own, sometimes at the drop of a dime. When their album ‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind’ was released a decade ago, my only opinion of the video for “Beautiful Day” was how thoroughly preening and irritating U2 lead singer Bono was, just in his dancing. I couldn’t stand the band, even though I’d flirted with being a fan five years earlier when, of all things, they’d done a song for the ‘Batman Forever’ soundtrack (“How Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me”). I was twenty years old, U2 was twenty, and beyond Batman, my closest connection was “Staring at the Sun,” another song I liked, but at the very peak of general discontent for what they’d become, synthesized, forgettable pop. Anyway, not so long after writing U2 off forever, I suddenly became one of their biggest fans, and for the last decade, I’ve remained in their camp. How is any of this relevant? Have you heard of a show called ‘Babylon 5’? Yeah, well, for me, today ‘B5’ is a little like U2.
HYGOTS No. 72
February 27th, 2010
Would you believe it? I’m about to do a column about something I like that’s actually popular, that I don’t have to defend at all. Unbelievable! What’s the world coming to?!? Oh, and that topic’s Green Lantern.
HYGOTS No. 71
February 20th, 2010
When it comes to superheroes, there may be any number who can claim to be the most popular at any given moment, but none are more famous than Superman. Without the Man of Steel, there would inarguably be no comic books today. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find a fictional character get less respect for what he’s due. This is prime HYGOTS material…
HYGOTS No. 70
February 13th, 2010
One of the truly interesting things about being around for this era of comic books, either its first hundred years or during a really interesting fad, is that you get to see just how the iconic characters are handled. Everyone knows what ended up happening to such fictional figures as King Arthur and Robin Hood, how they ended up standing the test of time and formed certain standard tales around themselves. Greek myth is filled with that sort of thing, too, with the most famous example, ‘The Iliad’ and its sequel ‘The Odyssey’ either based, like Arthur, in historic fact, or filled with an cast of characters forever frozen in a sequence that’s helped serve as the basis of modern storytelling. It makes you wonder just what might happen to superheroes like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and Captain America. Batman seems to have the leg up on his contemporaries, if you don’t mind my saying.
HYGOTS No. 69
February 5th, 2010
Here’s another subject I haven’t gotten around to yet (if you’ll indulge me, this isn’t the first time I’ve done a column, but it is the first time I’ve apparently found it exceedingly easy to come up with new topics on a regular, weekly basis), and that’s been my interest in the Arthurian legend. From ‘Excalibur’ (which hasn’t really been my cup of tea, but I still hope to revisit it with more enthusiasm) to ‘Merlin’ (the mini-series) to ‘Merlin’ (the TV series) to ‘The Last Legion’ (involving a prehistory of both Merlin and Excalibur) to ‘First Knight‘ to ‘King Arthur,’ I seem to have stumbled into quite a number of filmed projects over the years covering the fabled ruler of Camelot (oh! didn’t mention ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ in that line-up!), which I’ve read about my whole life, whether on my own or experienced Sir Gawain and his experience with the Green Knight in school (either in the classroom or as part of a one-act play competition). It’s hard to be part of the Western and/or English tradition and escape it, really.
HYGOTS No. 68
January 29th, 2010
Well, it’s not as if we weren’t warned in advance. Since the third season, we’ve known that ‘Lost’ was coming to an end with its sixth season. From the introduction of flashforwards onward, it’s been one breathless sprint to this moment. The fourth and fifth seasons were abbreviated runs that were broadcast during the winter and springs of 2008 and 2009, and now that the same point has been reached in 2010, you know that it’s time to begin saying goodbye…
HYGOTS No. 67
January 22nd, 2010
Here’s one of the big ones. I know, it’s called “How I Got These Scars.” Most of the topics I’ve covered in this column since I launched it two falls ago have been big ones. I’ve found it surprisingly easy to find material to sustain the column. I don’t know what exactly that says about me. Anyway, this week’s topic is ‘Star Trek: Voyager,’ the one element of the franchise I haven’t covered yet because, well, it’s the one that really counts where this column is concerned. You could call ‘Voyager’ the series that broke the franchise’s back.
HYGOTS No. 66
January 14th, 2010
One of pop culture’s perennial figures for the past forty years, Terry Gilliam has done a good job of hiding in plain sight. He’s the American in Monty Python. Along with John Cleese and Eric Idle, he’s managed to make a career of the success he enjoyed from the handful of TV seasons and movies the famed British comedy troupe, except unlike them, he did it behind the camera, as a director, where he tried to make a modern interpretation of fantasy storytelling.
HYGOTS No. 65
January 9th, 2010
One of the great things about the DVD era is that it can make it exceedingly easy to catch up with TV shows you skipped on original broadcast. Now, I know a lot of programming is also available on the Internet, but I’m, well, just a tad old-fashioned. It may be why I was still thinking of a show called ‘Day Break’ at all, why I was excited to learn it was finally released on DVD, even though I had never watched it before. Now, I can’t imagine having ever overlooked it.
HYGOTS No. 64
January 1st, 2010
This was supposed to be a transition year. Everything about January 2009 said as much. Heroes & Dragons, the comics shop I’d been visiting since I moved to Colorado Springs in November of 2007, was moving. I didn’t know if I could depend on Bargain Comics to deliver quite the same experience. Everything about it had contradicted Heroes – sure, there were always comics I could find there I couldn’t at Heroes, but Heroes was always more reliable. On top of purely logistical concerns, Batman was going away, Geoff Johns was leaving virtually every series I’d been following him in, from ‘Action Comics’ to ‘Justice Society of America.’ I didn’t even know that Superman was going to be abandoning Earth for New Krypton. And I didn’t know that I’d be switching from Bargain to Midtown Comics.com at the midpoint of the year. I’d truly believed I’d be reading far fewer comics in 2009 than I had in 2008, or 2007, or 2006 (the year I started writing about comics and began what became the QB50) or even 2005, when I was taking my first steps back into the medium and all the rules were gone. And heck, the economy was officially terrible, not terrible as in the presidential candidates were talking about emergency stimulus ideas in their campaigns. I mean terrible in that jobs kept getting lost even as everyone was talking about a theoretical recovery. I mean that there were rumors that although Marvel was in a position to weather the storm relatively intact, DC might have to eliminate virtually every title not including the words “Superman” and “Batman.”
But somehow, I just kept reading comics. I started reading in 1992, snatching what I could from my brothers. I started buying in 1993. I became a serious reader in 1994. I had to give it up in 1999. I dabbed my toes around in 2004. Then, yes, I started writing about comics. I began the QBs. I mean, I’m no authority today, but the QB50 has begun to take on a life of its own. Comics don’t dominate my life – I’ve been desperately trying to finish my second book the whole time this year’s ranking finally came due – and I now write a column that only occasionally handles the subject. But finally, it’s time for the 2009 QB50.
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