the machine

I'm looking to get into some older Spider-Man. I've loved the character since I was a kid, but I haven't really delved too far into the classic comics. I've just kept up with Ultimate, mostly, and read a few other things here and there. I'm particularly interested in reading about Venom and Carnage. Actually, anything involving Symbiote Spidey, really. What would be some essential reading for them?

Maximum Carnage is the general arc that people point to when someone wants to read a good Carnage tale. You could start there.

Why do you lie to him? Maximum Carnage was the biggest pile of horseshit I've read. Know what was worse? Maximum Clonage. Barely.

There.

To be fair, there's pretty much no "essential" Venom/Carnage reading. Has Venom ever been featured in a story arc that was acclaimed by anyone? I think people just liked the character design and the gimmick: nearly all the stories were godawful.

As much as I didn't love the status quo after Civil War, I understood it was an attempt to tell new stories, and stuff like Avengers: the Initiative was a great way to showcase new and forgotten characters.

But God, this Dark Avengers stuff is horrible. I know I can put my head down for a year and things will go back to normal, but the stories being produced by this are just awful. What makes it even worse is the thinly veiled condemnation of the media and the government, both about 4 years after it would've been culturally relevant.

I loved the original Thunderbolts concept because it explored the effects of villains acting like heroes, and Baron Zemo was presented as this great strategist. Norman Osborn is portrayed either as a government toady or a psychopathic megolomaniac, and is apparently supposed to be a wildly popular national hero? Because the media wouldn't investigate Osborn's record as an evil industrialist or an insane super villain. Then there's the fact that the Dark Avengers whole bit is that they dress like existing characters. It's just bad, and I want to move on already.

Except the machine loses all credibility when he says things like

"I'm not debating artistic merit, but I am saying Lonely Island's shit works, and if it bugs some people, that's fine, they're entitled to be a cynic asshole who hates what other people like."

As if GoGo and like minded fellows are being cynical assholes purely because they dislike the unfunny sketches. Thats less us missing out on the humour, and more him reading more into it than is appropriate.

Or it's me making a joke. Look at the context of the post.

Worth a watch?

YES. Season 1 especially.

I just want to chime in and say I think Kristen Wiig is hands down the funniest on the show. Not that the rest of the cast isn't talented (the only exception being Keenan Thompson... I HATE him with a passion...) but Kristen is so god damn funny.

Kristen is talented, but sketched built around her have a tendency to get really lazy really quickly. She's a good impersonator and she can be really funny, but once a sketch is built around her, it becomes this virtuoso thing where instead of timing or delivery or build we're supposed to laugh just because she's talented and can talk fast in various midwestern accents.

D'Go: stop being a HUGE DOUCHEBAG. I know it's tough.

lol, this guy going into the artistic merit of the comedy of the Lonely Island.

"The way he fucks the gigantic fish prop brings a tear to my eye, and when he delivers the lyric 'Fuck trees I climb buoys motherfucker'.. it gets my every time"

I love the shorts. But calm down bud.

I didn't realize it was such a cardinal sin to look at why somebody's comedy is successful. I'm not debating artistic merit, but I am saying Lonely Island's shit works, and if it bugs some people, that's fine, they're entitled to be a cynic asshole who hates what other people like. This is the internet. But recognize that there's a reason people like Lonely Island's comedy.

Also, I would never write the sentence you "quoted," because it seems to conflate Akiva and Andy into one single being. How about do some research? GAWD.

Comedy is serious business, D'Go. Good comedy is hard, and deserves support. If you don't protect the good parts of SNL, you end up with Mad TV.

Good god are you getting outraged over the fact that someone doesn't find the digital shorts funny.

Are you confusing analysis with outrage? Something to look into.

I'm not reducing it, I'm pointing out that the basic premise of a number of the shorts is exactly the same. It's people rapping aggressively about a scenario or as a character that isn't congruous to that style of music. Tee hee. It's funny once, but it's really a one-note joke that they've recycled a number of times (off the top of my head: Lazy Sunday, Natalie Raps, I'm On a Boat, and Like a Boss) to rave reviews every time. I don't understand.

Because it works for different reasons and consistently has amusing pay-offs? Natalie Portman rapping about drinking and fucking is funny because of her image, while Dick in a Box is funny because it's basically a 90's boy band parody featuring a 90's boy band guy. You are reducing the concept when you lead off with "the basic premise is the same" because as has been mentioned, it's more then that. The Rastafarian song is "basically" the same as I'm on a Boat, because they're both about posers, right? But the way they're shot, the style of music, and even the style of humor is extremely different. Of course, both have awesome lyrics: "Me toil part time at ja coldstone creamery" vs. "I'm King of the World, on a boat like Leo, if you're on the shore, then you're sure not me-o."

So weird. Pretty much everything you liked bothered me. I thought the increasing insanity was increasingly stupid and the fish sight gag was really lame. That basically sums up my general distaste for the shorts in that I find the 'wackiness' to be incredibly forced.

I didn't say what I liked, I just summed up how the bit worked. I can't help it if you apparently have some problem with giant puppet fish and/or zany humor.

I cannot believe anybody can dislike the digital shorts. They're catchy, multi-layered parodies. Reducing it to "white guys acting black" is missing all kinds of humor, not to mention it ignores the fact that these bits are just FUN. Take this week's "Like a Boss." Why is it funny? Well, it's an over-the-top parody of an over-the-top song, but it's also a parody of corporate culture (Promote Synergy... LIKE A BOSS!), combined with some funny sight gags (the fish) and a great build of increasing insanity plus the recognition at the end ("that's an average day? You cut off your balls and die?!), makes it a solid 2 minutes. Compare that to a 4 minute "Kristen Wiig talks fast" sketch. And Like a Boss isn't even a great short, just a good one. The videos add great sight gags, and a number of the songs are legitimately catchy.

Also, agreed 100% on Hader. He's ridiculously talented, and his Vinny Vedici character is great. I really don't know if he can ever be a star of his own projects or if, like Ackeroyd, the best he can do is being the normal guy in duo projects (Ackeroyd/Belushi, Murray, and even Murray). Ackeroyd rules though, so I think it'd be great if Hader could be in something even half as great as Blues Brothers or Ghostbusters.

I also think Fred Armisen has improved 100% since his start with the show. His impressions and timing have gotten really good, and I love his stare and his Woody Allen-ish characters. His Obama impression has improved, too.

Casey Wilson is another pretty solid talent that hasn't been totally overexposed yet. I liked Forte but now I'm ready for him to move on to some show where he plays a character with a silly mustache.

Don't get Killing Joke, get DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore, which has Killing Joke, plus several other classic (and a few forgotten) Moore projects from DC. I'd also recommend Astro City.

Great show, but one that I'm a little leery of going back to: I remember it was 3 camera and had a laugh track, and shows like that bore me to death when I try to go back and watch them. I agree that Lewis, Oswald and Mr. Wick made one of the greatest supporting casts ever (but were way too low-brow to compete with Frasier, Seinfeld, or even Friends [blargh]). For me the show stands up because it was always willing to take risks like the live improv shows or the April Fools' episodes (hey! That's today!) or the "Emmy" episode. It was a great show, but it got sadder and sadder as the cast visibly started aging and the premise started changing every month.

Anything of Dario Argento's before 1990. Deep Red, Tenebre, Suspiria, and Phenomena are all worth checking out. Movies so cool, they were even referenced in Juno, a prime example of "things that a real teenager would never, ever be aware of."

Dan = Nite Owl

= man who fucked Kate Winslet in Little Children

No...

Rorschach is the one who fucked Kate Winslet in Little Children.

Nite Owl was tortured by Ellen Page in Hard Candy. Get it straight!

In no real order:

Bill Cosby

Lewis Black

Bill Maher

Christopher Titus

Richard Pryor

George Carlin

Ellen Degeneres

Jon Stewart

Negative points go out to:

Carlos Mencia- mindless and not funny, some of his "rants" are basically hate speech. Apparently he steals jokes, too. Too bad he can't steal timing or a brain.

Dane Cook- he's not terrible, but I really hate his fans.

Larry the Cable Guy- I only find this guy funny when he goes up in front of a New York audience and is met with silence and/or boos. I also hate his gimmick.

Jeff Foxworthy- for making Larry the Cable Guy famous. Plus he's like a lame, Kentucky-fried Jerry Seinfeld.

The only Marvel stuff I'm reading right now are Captain America and Avengers/Invaders, and I'm about to drop a DC title from my reading list. Is there there anything from Marvel I should check out? Keep in mind I have no interest whatsoever in the Ultimate books or anything written by Bendis (Paul Jenkins, too, if he's still working for Marvel), and I'm boycotting the Spider-Man books until BND is eventually undone.

If you have any interest in Sci-Fi, Abnett and Lanning have been doing solid stuff with Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova (I'm not even a fan of the genre and I've enjoyed them), Daredevil is consistent if not great, and features Brubaker and Lark, together again from Gotham Central. The first arc of Invincible Iron Man was great, and worth the trade.

Not sure if anybody was familiar with the site, but livejournal mainstay scans_daily was shut down over the weekend following Peter David's complaints about a post scanning most of X-Factor including the surprise ending.

I never saw Boogie Nights.

Some of you need to get past your "I will never like this" mindset for things you haven't seen/read.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If you're not reading Avengers/Invaders, put it on your must buy list when the TPB comes out.

Latest issue is #7 (of 12), and I can't wait for #8 due to the cliffhanger at the end.

And regarding machine's comments, Bendis has the ability to drag out something over six issues when it could be done in one or two. I'm convinced that's the ONLY reason he has a job, and Marvel really shouldn't let him write anything outside the Ultimate universe.

Paul Jenkins is infinitely worse than Bendis and Millar, though. I still can't figure out how he ever got a job writing in the first place.

Hellblazer and Jae Lee's Inhumans made Jenkins seem like a bigger deal than he was. Inhumans is spectacular, though. It's slow and character-driven, but it works really well as a non-traditional comic. As a regular comics writer, he's not very good.

Good to hear Avengers/Invaders is picking up. I dropped the book after two issues, but might check it out later. My wallet can only handle one golden age homage at a time, and I'm already committed to the twelve.

Anything you do like?

Well, I like good books. Right now I'm reading Nova, X-Factor, Captain America, and Daredevil from Marvel and all of them range from good to excellent. Invincible Iron Man has hit the ground running, too.

There's plenty of good indy comics out there that are far better than Walking Dead. It's just that so few of them are in the survival horror genre.

Also, since I was talking things that are emotionally manipulative, did anyone else read X-Factor this week? I could not believe what happened. I felt so bad for Madrox. His life sucks so much.

With loads of times on my hands, I've been going through my trades and wow, The Walking Dead is just spectacular. I read volumes 2 and 3 straight through, going to probably do the same with volume 4 tomorrow, and I just ordered volume 5.

Anyone else a fan?

Those are two of the worst trades of the most overrated comic on the shelves. Walking Dead is so aggressively mediocre that it bugs me to hear people constantly say how great it is.

Also, Secret Invasion, while maybe a cool-sounding idea, was horribly paced and plotted. The finale was completely lacking in any drama, suspense, or other emotion as the issue barely manages to have a plot before immediately shifting into "look what's coming next year from Marvel!" mode. I mean, to be fair, I hated Millar's finale to Civil War, too, but at least Millar had the common decency to be emotionally manipulative so that when America's REAL Heroes jumped on Cap it produced an emotion in the reader (even if the emotion was probably "Ugh"). Bendis just writes a boring, anti-climactic issue where a 'major' character death somehow manages to have less resonance than Black Goliath in Civil War.

What kills me is the thing is so filled with promising ideas that the story could have been good. Instead, it was significantly worse than Civil War. Bendis always does this, too. Great idea, but it's like even he's bored with it by the time we get to what should be a pay-off.

PS- Yu's art is atrocious, and he should never have to draw large-scale fights, since all of his characters are slight variations of each other. I also love how far out of his way he goes to not draw eyes.

1. Daredevil

2. Vision

3. The Thing

4. Magneto

5. Songbird

6. Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

7. Nova

8. Justice

9. Venom (Eddie Brock)

10. Dr. Strange

#11 (but no points) go to Mr. Immortal of the GLA.

Edit: How did this get here?

Arrested Development, Season 2

Dexter, Season 1

Lost, Season 1

Veronica Mars, Season 1

The Simpsons, Season 4

The rule for me is that dramas usually start hot and then gradually get worse once they stop having one set, defined purpose, while comedies usually get a lot better after a season or two to get their feet on the ground.

Anyone who might be a fan of or are reading DC's Robin, Nightwing, or Birds Of Prey are all officially shit out of luck. All three have been cancelled.

Well shit. There goes 2/3 of my DC pull.

Ugh, I talked about this way too much in undergrad. Essentially Family Guy is a soulless commentary on how shitty sitcoms are/were, populated with characters nobody cares about (except maybe the baby or the dog). It also gets a lot of love for referencing things from the 80's that absolutely everyone had forgotten about, so rather than write actual jokes, it can just cut to a cartoon from the 80's and people will go "hey, I know what that is!" The show only worked as some kind of bizarre plot deconstruction, and that was before Adult Swim started improving on the formula (pretty much all every williams street show has ever done). Now it's just garbage with a lot of pop culture references. The target audience is boys that haven't heard sex jokes before and twenty-to thirty year old men who get all the references and would rather watch their Family Guy DVDs rather than go back and realize that all the stuff they loved as a child was actually shit.

Not that I'm letting the Simpsons off the hook. For awhile it was probably the best show being put out on television, period. It had a bizarre combination of believable characters, talented writers, and an incredibly creative animation department. I mean, Brad Bird was animating, and Conan O'Brien was writing for them in season 4. How could that not be amazing? It went from being a pretty formulaic "edgy" sitcom (pretty much an animated Roseanne), to a developed world with clever writing and cinematic vision that was just great television. But all the writers moved on to host talk shows or direct mediocre films or direct great films like The Incredibles or The Iron Giant or create "The Critic" or "Mission Hill" or "Futurama" or whatever, and the animation started being handled by people that had pretty much just been worker bees (and computer animation has turned the show back into a traditional sitcom). While every other great sitcom from the 90's either went out on top or died a long, lingering death (remember when Drew Carey got a new job or Roseanne won the lottery?), the simpsons became a money-making machine and the show became obsessed with referencing every film ever. Political jokes that always go stale in the long development cycle also started showing up more, and are almost never funny. The Simpsons' target audience is weird, because the current audience is boys and girls under the age of about 15, while there's fans of all ages that don't watch the show any more.