Friday, May 16, 2008

A few items of no import

(a) Have you looked at CNN.com lately? They've added a feature where you can click a link and get a T-shirt printed with the headline of certain stories, complete with the CNN logo.

At what point did CNN realize that the time honored tradition of creating the bizarre (and therefore appealing) headline had crossed over to an artform of the surreal? How far is the jump from CNN.com to The Onion?

Obviously (or perhaps not so obviously) they aren't doing this with hard-hitting news, but right now the following seem to be available.

-Lawmakers say its time to tax porn
-Navy plebes scale greased obelisk
-Secret UFO files released to the public
-Legions of half-inch frogs invade town

CNN is still covering actual news on the front page, but its interesting to see them embracing the tabloid side of journalism.

(b) Here's an article that expands on some of what I was talking about in a post a few days ago. It discusses why Marvel seems to be able to have a good game when it comes to bringing movies to the screen, whereas DC Comics struggles when the connection to the studio should be a pipeline.

I don't entirely agree with the article, and I sort of roll my eyes when I see statements in print like "Marvel has always been one step ahead of DC". But I DO think its interesting how the author mentions the culture of Marvel vs. that of DC and how the differences can be reflected in how they've handled the move to major motion pictures. And I do agree with his conclusion.

(c) We're headed out for Radiohead in Houston tomorrow, leaving Lucy and Jeff in the care of erstwhile house-mate Nicole. Wish Nicole luck. Lucy is one pushy little busy-body, and Jeff is prone to strange fits of purring/ suddenly biting.

At the moment, however, we are having a nice moment. Jeff is literally squished between me and Lucy on the sofa. Unfortunately, I can't take a picture because my phone is charging on the kitchen counter, and if I get up, they'll both move.

(d) the weather here the past two nights was really bad. Reports have come in that League-Pal Matt had to take his car in for extensive body work, etc... after his car was sort of demolished by "grape-fruit sized" hail.

I had wanted to clean out our garage before this point in the year, when the really scary weather can suddenly blow in, but its still full of all kinds of stuff, and I just haven't done it. I hope our cars do not get destroyed.

Texas weather can be nothing, if not exciting. Living in Arizona, I was amazed at the predictability of the weather. Whatever the weather folks said would happen usually did. You didn't feel like you actually needed to check the weather all the time. And, in fact, the weather segment on the evening news was always very, very brief. Not so much here in Texas. And, it sounds like, across a lot of the US this year.

4 comments:

J.S. said...

I remember the days when The League collected X-Men, X-Factor, and even Excalibur comics, with DC comics taking a much more secondary role (and let me add the blasphenous comment that back in those days, I don't really remember Superman as even really registering as a blip on the radar- definitely some Batman, but I honestly don't really remember Superman in the mix back in those junior high/early high school days. I remember that I had some Teen Titans...)

Anyway, my point is just that even though the League now seems pretty firmly allied with DC, there might have been a day sometime in the foggy past when someone might have unequivocally stated that Marvel was superior to DC, and the League might have just quietly nodded in agreement (although maybe not- even back then you were a pretty big Batman fan. And maybe Justice League? I know Reed used to collect Justice League...)

Anonymous said...

Last week, CNN briefly was selling a shirt with "Fire shoots out top of college building."

The headline was taken from a story out of San Antonio, as a one hundred year old building on the campus of Our Lady of the Lake University burned. A lot of people here were kind of offended by that, and CNN pulled the shirt after a few hours, I think.

The League said...

Yeah... there's a lot of room for the non sequitir headlines to be taken a little too lightly. Hopefully they'll get this down to where it's only the real tabloidy stuff.

And, yes, it is true that I got into superheroes through the X-Men. I think my main points of interest were X-Men, Spidey, Batman and JLI. I also read Teen Titans, Punisher, TMNT, and a few other titles. Back then, it was considered a very friendly rivalry,a nd they would even say nice things about each other in their letters pages, etc... The whole "we only read Marvel" thing seems to be a weird by-product of the internet and some ugliness when Jemas and Quesada took the reigns at Marvel.

I guess I am not sure why the media has decided to take a part in the ever-evolving story that Marvel's heroes were somehow magically "better" than DC's.

As per one step ahead of DC, the real reason I sort of sigh when I hear that Marvel is the innovator is that Marvel publishes pretty much only super heroes. DC takes its chances with the Vertigo line, Its CMX branch, and was first on the block bringing comics back for little kids. For years, they've brought in and developed a lot of the top line talent, who miay or may not eventually drift back to Marvel.

Even Marvel's current stab with reprinting European comics from Soleil is five years after DC's failed Humanoids experiment.

I read both DC and Marvel. I'm just more interested in the DCU as a whole, but various runs and writers from Marvel. I drop titles and pick them up, depending upon who is handling them. They have talented folks over there. And if you're not reading Cap or Daredevil, shame on you.

Someday I'll outline my various attempts to get into Superman comics, and what happened. But it's not very interesting.

mcsteans said...

Wow, yeah, CNN.com is currently displaying a story entitled, "Grizzly victim: 'He's eating my brain!'". With video.