Daft Punk blows up Vegoose!

This past weekend Kate and myself went to Vegoose 2007 (here in Vegas of course) and it was Daft Punktastic! I've liked Daft Punk since I first saw their video Around The World on MTV's 120 Minutes years ago when MTV still played music videos (reality shows killed the music video stars as the Buggles would sing). Well nothing prepared me for how awesome Daft Punk would be live and as they got on stage, I was as the kids say, "out of my mind" when the first electronic note and visual onslaught began!

Daft Punk is a two man French techno band (Guy-Manuel de Homen-Christo and Thomas Bangalter), in the fine spirit of the German pioneer techno band, Kraftwerk. They've been recording since 1993 and 2003 saw Daft Punk in an excellent anime called Interstella 5555, which used the music from their 2001 release, Discovery (actually the whole movie is just anime and Daft Punk music - no talking). They'll release a live album called Alive, November 19th of this year. One of their songs on Discovery is called Superheroes, so I feel justified in talking about Daft Punk on my Ich Liebe Comics! blog !

Anyway, Daft Punk was the closing band on the first night of Vegoose and it's a good thing they were because I don't see how anyone could follow their performance. As the curtain was raised they played a few of the musical notes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (one of my all time favorite movies) so I knew they could do no wrong the rest of their set! Then the lights came on and Daft Punk (in their robot helmets, perched in the middle of this glowing, pulsating pyramid) launched into Human Robot. I don't think I've ever bopped my white boy ass off as hard as I did during Daft Punk's set - thanks France!

The photo above is of one of the three stages used and if you look really really closely you can see Michael Franti & Spearhead, who put on an excellent reggae set Sunday afternoon.
Kate, with one of the best costumes I saw all weekend, a guy who was calling himself Tyrannosaurus Sex. More people dressed up on Saturday than Sunday, but there were a lot of good costumes both days. Right away when we got to Vegoose Saturday afternoon I knew it was going to be a good time because there was a great vibe in the air (or was that the abundance of marijuana - actually even those who weren't smoking probably got high by proxy)!
Even one of the Green Lantern Corps managed to break away from the Sinestro Corps war going on in the DC universe to attend Vegoose!


Besides the uber excellent Daft Punk show, other acts I enjoyed playing Vegoose were: Blonde Redhead (whom I hadn't heard before, but they put on a great show - they've got a bit of a Sonic Youth sound going on), STS9 (another band I hadn't heard before - they had a cool techno, jazz, hip-hop sound), Queens of the Stone Age (just a great rock it hard band whom we've seen before), Michael Franti & Spearhead (got my reggae on with this band), Muse (another hard rocking band, and their drummer was wearing a Spider-Man costume - the one from the movies, in which his mask hardly stays on), and some little mellow band called Rage Against The Machine that closed Vegoose Sunday night. Rage Against The Machine was the band that definitely brought the people out to Vegoose (as well attended as Daft Punk was Saturday night and the other acts like Public Enemy and Cypress Hill, I'd say it was Rage that was most attendees main reason for coming). And Rage Against The Machine gave the people what they came for, a high energy show with their politically charged lyrics that had the audience head banging and dancing - if that energy could be harnessed, our political landscape would be very different from what presently exists (sorry for the digression). Rage Against The Machine is one of Kate's favorite bands and they definitely delivered what she was hoping for (Kate's also the bigger Queens of the Stone Age fan between us, but I enjoy them also).

So overall I'd give Vegoose 2007 an A+! Besides the great sounds, everyone there was having a great time (well actually we did witness a couple of people that had too much fun with alcohol), the weather was great, good mix of vendors, and they even had vegetarian food (curry and Thai food). I'd heard that last year's Vegoose "only" had 15,000 people and that they needed to have more than that this year or Vegoose wouldn't be coming back. Well I don't know what the official numbers were for this year's Vegoose yet, but it looked really well attended to us (actually if there would have been too many more people, we think it would have been somewhat uncomfortable and could have been a real logistic problem), so I'm encouraged that there'll be a Vegoose 2008 (bring on Kraftwerk and Bjork to make it a dream ticket for me!).

Daft Punk has left this blog!

Doktor Sleepless

Doktor Sleepless is my favorite book that Warren Ellis is currently writing (art by Ivan Rodriguez). The closest comparison I can make as to what Doktor Sleepless is like is Ellis' Transmetropolitan (I like Doktor Sleepless a lot more though). Actually I'm not here to tell you what Doktor sleepless is about, just wanted to share the following passages from this week's issue (#3):

"Sometimes, the rain makes no sound. I wear a glove made of your skin. It's the colour of your skin. It's the colour of rain, soft and grey. It makes no sound, now as I flex my fingers inside it."

"I want to touch myself and pretend it's your hand. Love as leather. But I know I'm too far gone even for that now. I'm just a human bin filled with prescription pills, rinsed down with rainwater mixed with stolen medical alcohol and served in old vegetable tins."

..."The me you used to kiss thrashes like a cat in a sack, somewhere in the back of my head. ...You wouldn't know it to look at me. I am perfect and still and strong."

..."Moving only to stroke your skin. Sometimes, living makes no sound."

Truely powerful, obsessive prose - it's like Ellis is channeling Alan Moore!

The above cover is from upcoming issue #5, I love the tagline: "Your Imaginary Friend"

Christos Gage signing

Last night I was happy to host Christos Gage for a signing here at my store and a great time was had by all! Thanks to everyone who came out and big thanks to Christos Gage for stopping by!

Christos Gage's first comic gig was the Deadshot mini series for DC a few years ago and since then he's written series for Marvel, DC (and Wildstorm), including Union Jack, Stormwatch PHD, World War Hulk: X-Men, X-Men: Endangered Species, Batman Legends of the Dark Knight, and Annihilation Conquest: Quasar. Presently and upcoming Gage is writing Authority Prime, Wildstorm Armageddon, What If? Civil War, and House of M: Avengers. He's also written episodes of Law and Order: SVU and Numb3ers (with his wife) and his experiences writing them were interesting to hear.

Christos Gage is a fairly young guy, which surprises me because from reading his comics, anyone who has read comics for a long time knows that Gage has done his research. I talked to Christos about this and he said he started reading comics when he was about three years old (so he's been reading comics for almost as long as me, but he started at a younger age)! I've especially enjoyed his Union Jack mini series he did last year with artist Mike Perkins (who'll be the artist on House of M: Avengers) and am looking forward to many years of Christos Gage written comics!

Whisper of the Heart

Whisper of the Heart is not just one of my favorte animated movies (or anime as the Japanese call animated features), it's one of my favorite movies ever. Whisper of the Heart is a Studio Ghibli production, but wasn't directed by the master, Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki did write the screenplay though as well as doing some of the storyboards and serving as the general producer. Whisper of the Heart was the only film directed by Yoshifumi Kondo, who was maybe poised to be a protege of Miyazaki, but sadly he died in 1998 of an aneurysm. Whisper of the Heart very much looks and feels like a Miyazaki film, with its strong female lead character and doesn't need any good guys or bad guys to drive the story.

Whisper of the Heart is a coming of age / young love story. Shizuku is the main character of Whisper of the Heart - she loves to read, has a great imagination, but is unsure what lies ahead for her in the future until she meets Seiji, an aspiring violin maker, who inspires her to pursue her writing. I love Whisper of the Heart because it has great likeable characters as with all of Miyazaki's movies, but it also has great quiet scenes in which the landscapes seem to speak. Other then one brief imagined sequence which illustrates Shizuka's writing, Whisper of the Heart is just a great people story and I always highly recommend it to guys and gals of all ages.

The main thing that sold me on Whisper of the Heart was the way it uses music, specifically John Denver's 1970's hit Take Me Home, Country Roads, as a major part of the story. Whisper of the Heart opens with Olivia Newton-John doing a cover of Take Me Home, Country Roads, as the credits are rolling and we are seeing some of the city in which Shizuku lives. Then about halfway into the movie, Shizuku sings Take Me Home, Country Roads in Japanese as Seiji accompanies her on violin. It's one of my favorite scenes of any movie ever. It amazes me that a song like Take Me Home, Country Roads, which is so associated with 1970's USA is used to such beautiful effect in a Japanese movie. I'd recommend first watching Whisper of the Heart with the original Japanese vocal track even though I think that the english dub is strong (and with all of the Miyazaki movies that have come over here, this is the one I was most concerned with - also even surprised that it was released here).

The above photo was taking at Anime Vegas 2007. They had a nice display of most of Studio Ghibli's movie posters. I like the one on the left the best because I think it better captures the spirit of Whisper of the Heart. The Cat Returns is another studio Ghibli feature that is sequel of sorts to Whisper of the Heart, but it has more fantastical elements and can be watched independently.

more great comics!

This week had a higher than usual ratio of good to bad superhero comics and the following are amongst my favorites:
This month's Catwoman and last month's written my Will Pfeier and drawn by David Lopex and Alivaro Lopex were especially good issues for a title that's fairly consistant. Having heard about a new direction for Catwoman from some future issue solicitations, I was worried that they were going to go to a dumb place with Selina's daughter, but I was happy with how this issue was resolved.

Birds of Prey is another constistantly entertaining superhero book (even post Gail Simone). Tony Bedard has written the last couple and Sean McKeever is coming on board soon so it should remain solid. Most issues are drawn by Nicola Scott (and she knocked Gail Simone's last issue #108 out of the ball park!), but other artists have also been good on this title. This week's Birds of Prey #111, focused on Oracle who had a meeting of sorts with the Calculator (a villain) and is a good done in one issue that takes place at a computer convention. Lots of fun bits and Barbara Gordon (Oracle) is used to great effect.
>Brave and the Bold by Mark Waid and George Perez featured Wonder Woman and Power Girl so with this title, Catwoman, and Birds of Prey, those who like to see strong female superhero characters were doing pretty good. Brave and the Bold is another consistantly well done superhero title where you can just tell that the creative teams are paying attention to storylines that have happened in the past, but yet aren't inaccessible to new readers.


This is Dwayne McDuffie's third Justice League of America issue (counting the Wedding Special) and for me this is the issue where he starts bringing in his good writing chops he displayed on the cartoon Justice League Unlimited. Some of the art is a little too cheesy, but the story of the new Injustice League up against the Justice League is really getting ramped up and the pacing of this title looks to be back on the upswing after what I thought was largely not previous writer Brad Meltzer's finest hour (his 14 issue run would have made a better, tighter six issue story).

great week for comics!

This week had some especially good releases. My pick of the week goes to Umbrella Academy #2 by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba (with The Sword #1 almost taking the top spot). Umbrella Academy is written by Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance (and I know for some people mentioning that would be considered a minus, but I like the songs I've heard and I think people who wouldn't try Umbrella Academy because of that fact are missing out) and this definitely continues all of the intrique and quirky elements of the first issue and expands on what exactly is going on. I love the title of this issue "We Only See Each Other At Weddings And Funerals." And with a new villainous group calling themselves the Orchestra Verdammten, how can you not like this book!? This isn't just a weird for weird sakes book though and has nice Mignolaesque art by Gabriel Ba (Casanova).

Ex Machina, like Brian Vaughan's other creator owned title, Y The Last Man, is just about always on with every issue. With the end of this issue it looks like things will be turned up another couple of notches. The central character of Ex Machina is Mitchell Hundred, who's the mayor of New York City and also used to be a superhero called The Great Machine (because he can communicate with machines and as silly as that sounds, Vaughan makes it work). Ex Machina has never been anything even remotely resembling a superhero comic (not that that's a bad thing) with politics almost being a secondary character while at the same time not being done in a boring Face The Nation fashion. I'd be remiss in not mentioning the always beautiful art of Tony Harris and Jim Clark with lush colors by JD Mettler.

Another great debut this week was Suburban Glamour written and drawn by Jamie McKelvie (artist on Phonogram). Suburban Glamour starts off appearing to be just an ordinary alternative "cool Kids" title, but by the end it goes into another direction and I'll be interested in seeing how Jamie McKelvie maintains a balance or whether he'll just go in one direction entirely. And while I've liked McKelvie's art in black and white the addition of color is good eye candy as well.

Marvel Zombies volume 2 #1 continues the craziness that Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips started with Marvel Zombies volume one. This series takes place forty years after the last series and is the same turn off your brain non stop fun with demented visuals by Sean Phillips (Criminal). It is pretty amazing that the whole zombie thang hasn't played out yet (although Marvel's October zombie varients on many of their titles may be pushing things). If you haven't read the previous Marvel Zombies (collected in hardcover), all you have to know about this series is that just about everyone in this universe are zombies including the superheroes and they're constantly hungry.

The Sword

Yesterday The Sword #1 came out by the Luna Brothers and Image. The Luna Brothers are Joshua Luna, writer, and Jonathan Luna, artist. The Sword is their third creator owned project from Image and like their previous series, Ultra, and Girls, The Sword opens really strongly and I'm going to guess that anyone who picks up the first issue will definitely be back for more. Both of the Luna Brothers previous series have been collected so there's no reason to think that The Sword won't be collected, but the Luna Brothers are amongst the exceptions of creators who do innovative exciting work and also do it monthly, so there won't be any crazy waits between issues. In the first three fourths of the first issue of The Sword we're introduced to Dara Brighton and some of her friends and family and it's a nice look into what appears to be just a regular day in the suburbs, until halfway through dinner some people come looking for a sword. I'd be okay if the Luna Brothers didn't have anything fantastical going on because they make their characters so interesting, but when the fantastical stuff enters the picture it's all the more powerful because they're really good at set up (without the padding that goes on with some writers who are just stretching out an idea).
Girls was the Luna Brothers second series through Image and is collected in four trades - basically it's an M. Night Shyamalan (Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) kind of story in which some really weird things are going on and it's not until almost the end when we know what is behind the weird things.
Ultra is the Luna Brothers first project for Image and with the first issue, you could tell that these guys were going to just get bigger. Ultra's central characters here (as with all of their work, now that I think about it) are female and this is one of those titles that has super powered stuff and super heroes running around, but again because the Luna Brothers are so skilled at doing the everyday people stuff, when the powers aspects enters the story they have more power (no pun intended) because we, the readers, have more frames of reference. The dialogue at first reminds one of Bendis' work in Powers and Alias without being derivative, with characters that are strong, funny, and fallible, often at the same time.