Armored divisions

IDW is known for publishing some high quality art books — many involving artist Ashley Wood in some capacity — and World War Robot would fit quite well along side of them with its full-page and multi-page art spreads.

But there's a story here too, which is what I was looking for. I started seeing WWR-related toys being produced by three A toys, and had to pick up some Squares from the line. Intrigued by the whole back story, I was glad to see Wood had already put out the WWR book.

You do get some back story with WWR, but it comes in the form of short snippets from journals and letters home from the battlefront. The battle in question involves Earthling colonizers of Mars vs. the stay-at-home Earthlings, with a bunch of war-wreaking robots thrown into the mix. Also involved are the mad genius Rothchild who's behind the robots' creation, selling to both sides from a moon base; mercenaries; and — based on the toy line — zombie soldiers.

You don't get a full-on story with the text pieces accompanying the art in WWR, but writer T.P. Louise gives you enough in the letters and news pieces to develop a pretty cool world. (Well, a pretty cool world for the reader, not so much if you live in it.) Whether it's a SNAFU Mars mission, or a Terran tale of a 'bot left behind, you get human tales from a fucked up world gone robot.

And while the book is short on text, what's there is compelling enough to want more. I guess that's where volume 2 will fit in.

Wood's work varies between a light, thin lined, often colorful pencil style, and a heavy, thick oil painting style — often employing both in the same books. WWR is done completely in the latter style, and while I usually prefer his former style, Wood's dark paintings here are as badass as you'd expect considering the material.

Looking forward to the next volume, and the arrival of my Squares.

The price of Famous

Comedian/actor Patton Oswalt is a funny man, who once semi-famously labeled KFC's Famous Bowl as a "failure pile in a sadness bowl." His bit was funny, but Mr. Funny Man had to know he was painting himself into a Kentucky fried corner, and would one day have to stare down the inexplicably popular pile.

Well, the day arrived in early 2008 via an AV Club Taste Test. The results were, if not epic, very funny.

Case in point:

KFC calls it their version of the shepherd's pie. Shepherds in Kentucky must be full of rage and slathered in confusion. They must hang their fat, skin, and muscles from bones carved with runes of surrender.

And:

The cheese had congealed. Even in the heat and steam of the covered Famous Bowl, it had congealed. I stabbed it with the tines of my spork and it all came up in one piece. I nibbled an edge, had a vision of a crying Dutch farmer, and put it down.

Oswalt is a great writer, and several more examples can be found at his site. He also just had a movie — Big Fan — in Sundance that I want to see. It's about an obsessed New York Giants fan, featuring Michael Rapaport as an obsessed Eagles fan. Rapaport as a Birds fan could go either way, frankly, but I still want to see it.

Oh yeah (SPOILER), Oswalt did not die eating the Famous Bowl. Not yet, anyway.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Fervent fanboy/girl spawner Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and Firefly/Serenity and writer of the great first Astonishing X-Men arc, has a new show called Dollhouse set to start Feb. 13 on Fox.

What's that? You remember hearing Dollhouse was one of the highly expected new shows set for last fall's lineup? Yep. Apparently there's been quite a few hold-ups, including a reshooting of the pilot episode.

If that doesn't sound encouraging, it may well not be. But Whedon, on his Web site, gives what reads like a pretty honest and revealing look at what's held up the show and his dealings with Fox.

They're not wrong. Oh, we don't see eye-to-eye on everything, but wanting the first episodes to be exciting and accessible is not exactly Satanic. Being Satan is, but that's in their free time and hey, there's no judging in the Dollhouse. This kind of back and forth has happened on every show I've done, so if you liked those, chances are that was a part of why. And the need to focus on the essentials of what makes this universe tick - and which wire to cut to make it stop - really does bring up our game.

I'm not a Whedon fanboy — I thought his Astonishing X-Men run and Serenity were really good, but could care less about Buffy and Angel, etc. So I really had no interest in this show before reading this post.

Having read it I'm sort of intrigued, though. Plus, he's talking up the work of Reed Diamond, an alum of one of my all-time favorite shows, Homicide: Life on the Street, so I figure it's worth a look.

Playoffs?!?!

That's right, Jim "Coors Light" Mora, we're talking about the playoffs, or the lack of them in college football. Aside from the lower three divisions, of course, where they've been running quite fine, thank you.

But anyway, Dan Wetzel at Yahoo Sports offers the best argument I've seen yet for a playoff system for Division I-A (no, I'm not going to call I-A and I-AA whatever they call them now). Onto some high points.

A playoff would give teams from small conferences at least a shot to win a championship on the field. Unlikely? Yeah, but then I just watched Utah from the Mountain West beat SEC power Alabama — ranked #1 for several weeks — in the Sugar Bowl to cap off an undefeated season.

Perhaps the most memorable college football game of the last few years was Boise State-Oklahoma, in part because Boise was the unbeaten underdog that wasn’t supposed to win. When it did, in dramatic fashion, it became the talk of the country. There would’ve been historic interest in seeing if the Broncos could do it again the following week.

Why wouldn’t college football want that?

The BCS said Boise State had no shot at a national title in 2007 because either 1) it wasn’t any good in 1977 or 2) wasn’t geographically or politically situated to be in the proper conference. As illogical as this is, that’s the system.

And maybe a smaller conference team never does break through to win four of those games, but watching such an upset in the context of a playoff is a lot more fun than just seeing an isolated upset that ends up meaning nothing for either team, as is the case for Utah and Alabama.

Oh, but the bowls. How will America survive without them? Now, I'll usually watch the big bowl games, and mix in some random, smaller bowls pairing teams I could care less about because sometimes those are fun to watch (and on TV when nothing else is, but that's a good thing).

But are there any bowl games — meaning the bowl itself, regardless of who's playing in it — that means anything anymore? I'll give you the Rose Bowl. Any others? I don't think so. And as a graduate of a Big 10 school (albeit latecomer Penn State), I can say I'd have no qualms about the playoffs doing away with the Rose Bowl and all the rest.

Can they still have bowls and a playoff? Sure. But the bowls should not be any past of a playoff. And be assured, it's not the tradition of the bowl games that's holding up a playoff, unless that tradition is the stacks of cash at stake.

BCS bowl games are the single worst deal in American sports. College football’s [continually willing] to be fleeced by outside businessmen, who gleefully cut themselves in on millions in profits ...

Just about every idea you’ll hear or read will use these bowls for the quarterfinals and these for the semifinals and all of it is ridiculous.

The travel demands alone on teams and fans for three or four weeks of neutral sites make it implausible. Going neutral site makes seeds meaningless. This is exactly what the apologists want the debate to be about, a non starter of a solution.

The solution, however, is to ignore the bowls.

The next bit in Wetzel's piece addresses higher seeds getting home games, which would be amazing. Of course, I'm picturing a raucous Beaver Stadium in December, the Nittany Lions running onto a snow-covered field, and the fans hurling snowballs at, well, whoever. Throwing snowballs is fun.

And yes, even if I'm still feeling the sting of Penn State's Rose Bowl loss to USC, I think many non-USC fans would like to see them repeat their usual Rose Bowl domination-fests on the road in December, outside the sunny confines of Southern California or the fluorescent confines of a domed stadium.

Hosting games would be a boon to the schools and the campus communities — literally tens of millions of dollars into the local economy.

It would also reward the higher seeds (again placing value on the regular season) by providing the distinct advantage of playing at home. To be a top two seed, and host through the championship game, would be a monster reward.

This would also placate complaints from northern teams that are seemingly always playing bowl games near the campus of their opponent.

We’ve seen, say, USC have its way with Ohio State and Michigan in Pasadena, but what if the Trojans had to travel to Ohio Stadium on a cold and snowy day? Perhaps USC could prove it has grit not just talent. Intra-sectional games have all but died out due to recent scheduling philosophies, but the idea of them returning each December and January, famous jerseys in famous faraway stadiums can warm any fan's heart.

There are yet more excuses, and that's all they are.

Not enough time with classes, etc.? Too many games? Yeah, because in the month between their last game and their bowl those teams aren't practicing and scrimmaging every chance they get. At least they'd be playing for something now. And lose early, you get a nice holiday break with the family.

They'll miss exams, or their exam schedule will be interfered with? Pffft. Please, as if schools give a crap.

The best arguments, though, are the most sensible — you'd have a champion determined on the field, and it would be more fun for everyone involved. Except possibly those bowl organizers (I'm picturing the rich Texan on The Simpsons) who may be out a cash cow. But screw those jerks.


I should note that Wetzel's was the best argument for a playoff I've read or heard since I had to write an argument for my Speech Comm class in college. That class sucked, but I killed it on this assignment.

My roommate Orlando was such a fan (desperate for a topic), he later used my speech (parts or all, I'm not sure, but I suspect all) for his own Speech Comm class at a satellite campus. And if I recall correctly, the A-minuses abounded. A two-fold triumph!

Crack reporting

I don't really have any interest in reading his book — and if I did, it would have to wait until I wade through the piles of unread stuff laying around my apartment — but this is a pretty interesting article on New York Times columnist David Carr.

Carr, a former crack user and lots of other things apparently, wrote an autobiographical drug addict memoir soon to be released. I never heard of or read the guy up to this point (that I can remember), but what I found most interesting about the article was writer Jennifer Senior's descriptions of the man and journalist working today.

In one bit of insight, that doesn't sound like it necessitated a whole lot of insight, Senior describes Carr as having "a crackhead's approach to news," substituting new job-related addictions for old ones.

He’s just had three big stories run in the space of 24 hours, totaling 6,300 words. “There’s something to the theory of mania replacing mania,” he says. And compulsion replacing compulsion, he might have added: When he recently wrote a media column slamming Fox News, he got 450 e-mails, and he answered each and every one. “And why would I do that?” he asks. “There’s a weirdness to it. Like if I don’t, flying monkeys will attack.”

I've seen several drug addict movies and liked many, so if it goes to the big screen I'll probably see it eventually. Reading the book may take one of my more up-to-date reader friends to tell me to read it, though. I'm still working on stuff I got for Christmas, after all.

Oh, enjoy the bonus Woody Harrelson.

You bleww itttt!

Glenn Greenwald in a column at Salon.com raises some interesting points in the wake of Bruce E. Ivins' suicide, reportedly committed after Ivins learned he was about to be charged for the anthrax mailing attacks following 9/11.

Most notable is the fact that:

If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks.

So, an American working with anthrax for the government in a government lab, killed Americans and tried to make it look like Islamic militants did it. Hmm. (But it looks like it might have been worse than that. More further down.)

Of course, even while politicians and pundits (subtly or outwardly) were using the anthrax attacks in their arguments for invading Iraq, the FBI's investigation did center on a guy from the same Maryland lab. It was just the wrong guy. In doing so they also overlooked some pretty strange behavior from Ivins.

This strange behavior, according to Greenwald, included some letters to the editor of his local paper that I'd term as being of the right-wing nutso variety.

I used to get similar letters from one reader at my former job, and while I'm pretty sure he was retired, had I known he created anthrax for the government, transported plutonium for nukes, was developing a weather dominator or some such very dangerous, sensitive job, I'd of been on the phone to the FBI pretty quickly. Though, when you have people like Dubya, Cheney and Rumsfeld with their hands on the chicken switch, it's not hard to believe nutsos with silly, ignorant beliefs can hold down government jobs.

But more on Ivins in a bit, because Greenwald goes into depth about erroneous reports by ABC News at the time about testing on the anthrax used in the attacks. Reports stating government testing of the anthrax used in the attacks showed the presence of bentonite, which might have indicated Iraq's involvement.

ABC News went with these "exclusive" reports despite the fact the White House denied their accuracy. Repeatedly. They eventually reported bentonite wasn't found in tests, but never acknowledged the fact they screwed up the story (I completely agree with Greenwald here).

The fun part is that ABC News credited "well placed" sources close to the testing as feeding them the information, meaning sources (or source - I don't necessarily believe ABC had multiple sources just because they say so) in the Fort Detrick lab where the tests were conducted. And since the story was completely wrong, the sources obviously lied. Sources from the same lab Ivins worked in.

Greenwald is careful to point out Ivins hasn't been charges or convicted of anything yet. And based on their handling of the previous anthrax case, I wouldn't be surprised if he never is. And with his suicide, perhaps we'll never know if he was responsible.

Greenwald stops short of stating what seems a logical implication, assuming Ivins was responsible for the anthrax attacks, that Ivins was a (or the) source for ABC News on their erroneous stories.

The guy who may have made the anthrax attacks lied to ABC News, leading to stories implicating Iraq in the attacks, helping lead to the ongoing war in Iraq. All just a theory, but if true, what a massive story that would be. A massive story, if true, ABC News is sitting on.

Whether or not Ivins was involved, the identity of the sources of the erroneous ABC News reports would still be a huge story. And that story ABC News is definitely sitting on. A massive, massive story they won't report because it would include the mention of their embarrassing mistake? A mistake they're still not owning up to (see Greenwald's correspondences with the ABC News boss).

Greenwald rightly nails them for this:

ABC News knows who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and -- as importantly -- to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They're allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.

They're not protecting "sources." The people who fed them the bentonite story aren't "sources." They're fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds. That is why this is one of the most extreme journalistic scandals that exists, and it deserves a lot more debate and attention than it has received thus far.

I can understand ABC News not wanting to point out their mistake, but I'd think such a massive story would take precedent. It would be an exclusive, afterall. Considering the competitive nature of the news game, I can't believe the rest of the media (aside from Greenwald) isn't raking them over the coals on this one. I'd think that would be good fun.

Greenwald goes on to question ABC News' citing of sources for another story, further emphasizing how this practice has gone beyond the breaking point, in my opinion. Using unnamed sources is necessary, even quite often, but it gets abused left and right these days.

Go read the whole Greenwald piece, and all his connected posts. Great stuff.

Oh, this post's title comes from De Niro in Cop Land, in case you didn't see it. Story via.

Obullshit

Since right-wing mouthpieces act like there's never been criticism of the president on the scale experienced by G.W. Bush by the mainstream media (read: "liberal media," or not them), conservatives can probably now rest assured the Daily Show will live on should Obama be elected.

Should still be plenty of fodder.

I posted about the FISA bill's troubles before, but now the bill — which would grant retroactive immunity to telecom companies for their help with illegal spying by the government — is back and guess who signed up in support? Obama.

Apparently the Democratic apologists are out in force so as to clear any criticism of the gentleman from Illinois from his path to the White House. Pathetic, but sadly not surprising.

Glenn Greenwald skewers Obama, and his apologists, as well as you can. A couple gems include:

There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism — "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" — and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here.

And:

What Barack Obama did here was wrong and destructive. He's supporting a bill that is a full-scale assault on our Constitution and an endorsement of the premise that our laws can be broken by the political and corporate elite whenever the scary specter of The Terrorists can be invoked to justify it. What's more, as a Constitutional Law Professor, he knows full well what a radical perversion of our Constitution this bill is, and yet he's supporting it anyway. Anyone who sugarcoats or justifies that is doing a real disservice to their claimed political values and to the truth.

I can't stomach the thought of McCain winning, and want the Republicans out of office as much as anyone, but not at the expense of being able to criticize McCain's opponent. And especially not if it means giving the next president the same unchecked (begging to be abused) power as Bush.

A bad sign of things to come? Probably. He is a politician, folks. Via.

Wal-Mart whoops

Usually watching or reading the news is a surefire way to piss me off, so it's nice when such an amusing story comes along, especially when a heartless corporate monolith is the butt of the joke.

Seems Wal-Mart hired a guy in 1970 to tape its annual meetings, big sales meetings and other doings. This continued until 2006, when the relationship was terminated. What wasn't terminated was the 15,000 tapes made in the meantime (even though Wal-Mart, good cheapasses that they were, suggested videographer Flagler reuse the tapes to save money).

So now the video company's new owners, having turned down Wal-Mart's $500,000 offer for all the material, are ready to sell to anyone. I don't know if they'll ever make $500,000 off the tapes, but turning down the offer definitely makes for a better story. And as Wal-Mart will likely forever be involved in lawsuits, the tapes could prove most valuable — assuming Wal-Mart's perfunctory legal challenge on the tapes fails.

The tapes surfaced, so to speak, via a lawsuit against Wal-Mart in which a kid was injured by an exploding gas can.

The plaintiff's attorney Diane M. Breneman says that when she first laid eyes on the racks of tapes, "I thought, 'How could anyone in the world allow this to exist?'" The videos, she says, deal with "everything anyone would want on Wal-Mart ... They've got 30 years of people winging it."

Ouch. That's gotta sting.

Here's hoping lawyers, as well as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, put this stuff to good use.

Super for Siegels, not so much DC

A federal judge this week ruled the heirs of Jerry Siegel own part of the copyright to Superman, co-created by Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Now, this case mainly involves the first Superman story in Action Comics #1, which Siegel and Shuster sold to DC (for $130!), and the character points and story elements therein. But how much of what DC did with the character since was based out of that story? It could also only pertain to money being owed the Siegels for product only after 1999, when DC's copyright protection would have terminated. But that's a ton of product and money at stake, and product decisions could conceivably have to be OK'd by the Siegels and Shuster estate holders (after 2013).

Comic book writer Warren Ellis is not one for hyperbole, but called the ruling "fucking immense."

There's been numerous cases of comic book creators, or their heirs, challenging publishers over the rights to characters, especially with the boom of comic book-based films. Although the specific cases differ, and most may not be able to overcome the work-for-hire hurdle as was done in the Siegel case, most of these people were royally screwed. Hopefully this will lead to more getting their due.

It is amazing to think about Superman product possibly having to be run through the Siegel and Shuster estates — not unlike Star Wars comics, games, etc. running through Lucas — and further down the road, the Superman copyright being in the public domain. Assuming copyrights aren't extended by then. It's no accident Mickey Mouse isn't already public domain.

I'm no lawyer, but the detailing of the ruling and possible ramifications make for interesting reading. The article at the top breaks it down in non-legalese. More here, with some interesting comments in the forum. Yet more here.

Note: The image at the top is from All Star Superman #8, which came out Wednesday, the same day the ruling was announced. All Star Supes is written by Grant Morrison. Is this more Morrison magic via comics at work?

And the law won?

Well, not yet it didn't. And even if much of his remaining time in office is spent on vacation, Bush has nine months to figure a way around a House bill disallowing immunity for telecom companies who helped the government spy on Americans. But still, the House made a good call, and it apparently puts Bush in a bit of a quandary:

President Bush has repeatedly claimed that there's an urgent national security need for new spying legislation. But he also says he'll veto any surveillance bill that does not grant retroactive immunity to the companies that turned over phone records and access to internet cable fibers to the government.

Bush argues that the participating companies were patriots, and that they would stop complying with lawful court orders in the future if not freed from the lawsuits accusing them of conducting illegal surveillance for Bush.

But it will likely be politically difficult to veto a bill containing new spying powers Bush himself says are vital to American's security, simply because a couple of deep-pocketed corporations are facing lawsuits for violating federal privacy laws.

So a tough decision. Lucky for Bush he's the decider. Via.