§ Last week was the 10th anniversary of the release of Scott Pilgrim vs The World and though it was a “flop” at the time, it was a beloved flop, and everyone knew it would also be a cult film. And so a decade on here we are, right up there with The Breakfast Club and Reality Bites.
Director Edgar Wright commemorated the occasion with a fine twitter thread:
10 years ago today #ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld was released. Looking back on this magical voyage, I'm even more grateful to have made a crazy movie with Universal with THIS cast & crew. To thank all the fans this last decade, I give you the epicness of these behind the scenes photos. pic.twitter.com/Qp7u3q0Ypi
— edgarwright (@edgarwright) August 13, 2020
And Vulture looked back at Brie Larson as Envy Adams in Clash at Demonhead
Scott Pilgrim is a zillion types of movie: It’s a comic-book movie, based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels. It’s a video-game movie, filling its action scenes with power-ups and 8-bit imagery years before Ready Player One was even a glimmer in Spielberg’s terribly misguided eye. It’s an end-of-the-aughts Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie, a zippy comedy, and that most rarefied of things, a Toronto movie where Toronto actually is Toronto and not a stand-in for somewhere else. On top of it all, it’s a music movie, centered around a bunch of delightfully scrappy fictional bands (Sex Bob-omb, Crash and the Boys) in a delightfully real local indie scene (Lee’s Palace! Sonic Boom!). The fight scenes are intertwined with musical set pieces: Evil Ex No. 1, Matthew Patel, fights Scott (Michael Cera) with slant rhymes and backup dancers. The Katayanagi Twins summon battle monsters out of their subwoofers. The final boss is a smarmy record exec played by Jason Schwartzman.
It must be said, the fake band names in Scott Pilgrim are indeed one of the most perfect things about it, even if Clash at Demonhead is an old Japanese videogame and not about Joe Strummer playing at a place called Demonhead, which I thought it was for years.
A site called Gamerant had a “Where are they now” for the cast but it was only half of the cast so I’m not even going to link to it. Faugh.
Anyway, long live Scott Pilgrim.
§ I guess there is some controversy over killing off or severely hampering the effective function of the US Post Office these days, which will effectively kill small businesses, crowdfunding, my eBay business, your eBay business, people who get their medicine in the mail, and so on. Here is a representative article. Don’t kill off the Post Office.
§ The movement to hamstring the Post Office is especially weird since online shopping is huge right now. Package volume is way up, even if letters are way down. It’s true, the categories have changed. People are buying fewer clothes since slobbing around the house in your same old Sex Bob-omb t-shirt and Uniqlo shorts is what we all do until required to put on some kind of “top” for Zoom meetings. But other categories are way up.
But it seems that books are hanging on – although sales were down in July from early in the pandemic, in August they came roaring back, with the new Rowley Jefferson book from Jeff Kinney among the leaders:
Driven by strong sales from a host of new titles, unit sales of print books jumped 24.8% in the week ended Aug. 8, 2020, over the comparable week in 2019, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. The biggest gain came in the young adult fiction segment, where unit sales skyrocketed 168.8% over the week ended Aug. 10, 2019.
The category received a huge boost from the release of Stephenie Meyer’s Midnight Sun, which sold more than 524,000 copies in its first week. The juvenile fiction segment had an 18.8% gain over 2019, led by a new Jeff Kinney title, Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Adventure, which sold nearly 46,000 copies in its first week.
Don’t count reading out!
§ New CBLDF interim director Jeff Trexler wrote a bit about what his goals are to rehabilitate the organization:
With regard to ethical commitments, we’ve already begun to discuss reforming CBLDF’s internal policies and procedures. Anti-harassment provisions will be an integral part of this as will diversity and inclusion. Another key aspect of our ethical reforms will be transparency — you’ll see what we’re doing and why, and if you have your own recommendations you’re welcome to send them our way.
And as I said on Twitter, if you’re tired of hollow corporate-speak and unfair harassment investigations, I’m with you. That’s why I’ve spent so much time on this issue, including the development of more trustworthy reporting procedures and the enactment of local- and state-level protections for independent contractors, which have significant ramifications for comics. I’ll be talking more about all of this too, along with how we can put in place standards that, I hope, will be a model for the entire industry.
§ The Inkwell Awards, honoring the now somewhat obscure art of inking comics, announced their 2020 winners last week:
FAVORITE INKER (Favorite ink artist over the pencil work of another artist; cannot also be nominated for the “Props” award): Walden Wong (43%) (genLOCK, Justice League [DC], Crazy, Incredible Hulk: Last Call, Marvel’s Hero Project Season 1: Mighty Rebekah, X-23 [Marvel])
Other nominees: Mark Morales, Joe Prado, Norm Rapmund.
MOST-ADAPTABLE (Artist showing exceptional ink style versatility over other pencillers): Walden Wong (41%) (genLOCK, Justice League [DC], Crazy, Incredible Hulk: Last Call, Marvel’s Hero Project Season 1: Mighty Rebekah, Star Wars: Age Of Republic Heroes–Obi-Wan Kenobi, X-23 [Marvel])
Other nominees: Marc Deering, Jonathan Glapion, Scott Hanna, Jay Leisten, Norm Rapmund, J.L. Straw.
PROPS AWARD (Ink artist deserving of more attention): Eber Ferreira (32%) (Freedom Fighters, Detective Comics, Supergirl [DC])
Other nominees: Jonathan Glapion, Stefano Guadiano, Le Beau Underwood.
S.P.A.M.I. (Favorite Small Press And
Other nominees: David Cabeza, Adelso Corona, Anthony Fowler, Le Beau Underwood.
ALL-IN-ONE (Favorite artist known for inking his/her own pencil work): Liam Sharp (34%) (Green Lantern [DC])
Other nominees: Brad Krause, Sean Gordon Murphy, Stan Sakai.
THE STACEY ARAGON SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD (SASRA):
Allen Bellman, Sal Buscema and Norman Lee
Other nominees: Jack Abel, Gene Day, Bill Everett, Frank Frazetta, Graham Ingles, Dennis Janke, Michael Kaluta, Pablo Marcos, June Tarpe Mills, Bob Oksner, George Papp, Wendy Pini, Stan Sakai, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Simons, Jim Starlin, Art Thibert, Charles Vess, Al Vey and Bob Wiacek.
THE JOE SINNOTT HALL OF FAME:
Bob Layton, John Romita Sr. and Bernie Wrightson
Other nominees: Brett Breeding, Johnny Craig, Mike Esposito, George Klein, Steve Leialoha, Pablo Marcos, Terry Moore, Mike Royer, Chic Stone and Bob Wiacek.
§ Amidst all the in person comic cons being cancelled for 2020, many online events have sprung up. Here is one that already happened this weekend, Mainframe Comic Con, which had a lot of well known names, likes Toms Taylor and King, and publishing sponsors including IDW, Humanoids and so on. Sadly I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t even know about it until now. I was curious about who put it and apparently it was a fellow named Chuck and a fellow named Chad and some other folks. It’s a pretty flashy website though.
§ ReedPOP also held it’s first “Metaverse” event, and you can see the video line up here, and some of them got a lot of views. Hm, a talk with Mad Max Fury Road director George Miller...I guess I will watch that because I love listening to George Miller!
§ I wish I could be more enthused about these kind of events but right now I would trade in all the online panels in the world just to be standing in a concrete hall surrounded by pipe and drape eating an $8 hot dog. All that said, it will be interesting to see how online events evolve and they are here to stay in some form.
§ It’s a rough time in retail, but a comic shop has opened: Holymoleys in Paradise City, located in Northhampton, MA. It is, however, a new location for a previous store. But hey at least it’s open!
Customers walking into Holeymoleys’ storefront at 90 King St. will be greeted by a life-size statue of Marvel Comics’ iconic superhero Iron Man, who along with another statue depicting Pinhead from the 1987 horror film “Hellraiser,” looks out over a sales floor filled with tables and shelves of comic books, movies, toys, videogames and other collectibles. “We love talking comics with people, but it’s also OK if you don’t know about comics and you just want to ask questions or find something for your family member who’s into it,” said Corinne Barrineau, who co-owns Holeymoleys with her husband, Tonye Barrineau. “We’re really open to everyone shopping here — whether you’re a comic lover or if it’s your first time.”
Personally, I think the postal crisis began because the Fucking Moron-in-Chief was crapping on vote by mail and he was catered to, as it were, patronized by people who didn’t think it through.
Vote by mail skews towards Republican voters because those of us in the socialist states have compliant election boards with drop-off boxes and, uh, liberal early voting. No good reason not to vote in the American soviets. The heartland, though, isn’t as liberal in that regard so vote by mail is a bigger thing there. Team Donnie made a big oopsie.
Too, people depend on the P.O. for delivery of packages, some of which might be actually important, like medication and checks for those who don’t do that direct deposit thing.
The USPS has a serious financial problem because of Congressional action imposing certain financial requirements. So sure, they have a problem, but it’s not one that any Postmaster General can address and certainly not the one the USPS has now.
So here we have the Stable Genius a) screwing over his own people and b) appear to be overtly rigging the election because, you know, what his party’s been doing on the state level (aided by the five GOP apparatchiks on SCOTUS) hasn’t been enough in his so-called thinking.
Donnie may not be the worst POTUS ever but he’s the most unfit and unqualified one since at least the late 19th century. And for references, ask the tens of thousands who died from his handling of the pandemic as well as the hundreds of thousands impoverished from the depression he allowed his party to trigger. Unforced errors; the result of deliberate decisions.
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