Asteroid blues
My friend Jesse Betteridge has a website that some of the Canadian animation fans in the audience might find interesting. As you may or may not know, up here in the Great White North we have an organization called the CRTC that helps protect our country by banning unrelenting threats to the very fabric of Canadian culture like the Cartoon Network. That means that we have to rely on Canadian networks to rebroadcast the programs found on Adult Swim and elsewhere. Often, they never do. Can you believe Cowboy Bebop and Invader Zim still haven't aired on Canadian TV?
Fortunately, we have Mr. Betteridge to piss and moan on our behalf. Or, if you would like to directly assist him in his crusade, you can visit his website and allow him to direct you all in unison like some unholy army of anime nerds. Me, I don't even have basic cable, but I still feel his pain, and I have a feeling there's at least one other canuck reading this who does as well. If you are this man or woman, give his website a look!
Sam Logan
Baby!
The Sam and Max webcomic is up to four pages now. It looks beautiful and it's great to see the duo in action again, but man, the snail-paced updating schedule is painful! I know the instantaneous nature of the internet encourages artists to serialize their work, but if you can only update a single page every couple of weeks, serialization is probably not the best choice. Just serve up the whole thing in one big whack when it is finished. There is no shame in that!
Sometimes, strange thoughts enter my head. Just the other day I was thinking how awesome it would have been if Megatron had been Irish. They could have called him Meg O'Tron! And he could have battled Optimus McPrime, the Switch-able Scottish Sedan! Why didn't Marv Wolfman think of that?
Sam Logan
Fight the future
Actually, snorting a solvent-soaked rag will only open your mind to one startling insight: that the snorting wasn't a very good idea.
Even in this confusing modern age -- cheese in a can? -- there are many things that I'm confident you can enjoy.
There is a new Pillows album. It has a very similar feel to their Good Dreams album, which you may recall I heartily endorsed, but it is easily the better of the two discs.
There is season five of 24. Six episodes in, it still hasn't started sucking yet. Maybe the writers try harder for the odd-numbered years than the even-numbered ones. Or maybe it all goes to hell next week. Either way, this first quarter has been 24 at its very best.
There is a (relatively) new collection of Ultimate Spider-man. I love this series. It takes one of my favourite characters and builds him up with the kind of elaborate plotting, extended character arcs and general cohesiveness that only a unchanging creative team can bring. Nearly 100 installments in, Bendis and Bagley are still at the helm, and the series maintains a narrative unity that is incredibly rare in its genre.
And finally, there's DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore, which is one of the best-value books you'll ever see published by DC. For the price of the old Killing Joke and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow trades alone, you get those two stories and a whole whack of other stuff from one of the most respected writers in comic history. DC's trades tend to be kind of overpriced, but this one is a major steal.
Tune in on Friday for a "very special" edition of Sam and Fuzzy!
Sam Logan
