Say you're a poor software developer named Jose, and though out of favor with fortune and men's eyes, you still have enough gumption to furnish your apartment with a couch, bed, table, chairs, and a computer desk that you yourself have fashioned out of readily-available FedEx materials.



Now, if you were FedEx, wouldn't you co-opt this guy like Subway did with the ubiquitous Jared? You hear of a guy who's using your product in an out-of-the-box way, and you shine a spotlight on him. Sure, Jared lost 200 pounds or whatever on his Subway-only diet. What they don't tell you is he walked eight miles uphill both ways in the snow with eighth-graders hanging on to his legs for the exercise. It's the walking, not the Subway sandwiches, but nice work, anyway, Subway. Beat-of-a-different-drummer, co-opt, make more money.

What does FedEx do? Send him a cease-and-desist. I mean, c'mon. I can't think of a faster way to put that guy on Leno or Jon Stewart. Nice work, FedEx. You called attention to something that was frivolous at best and neutral at worst. Your company is impacted exactly not-at-all by Jose sleeping on padded envelopes.

This kinda reminds me of the Kieron/Starbuck's thing.

Steven Grant turns his practiced and studied gaze upon Smoke and Guns and decries it to be "A paper B-movie about cigarette girls in a turf war. The setup - that cigarette girls, a staple of '40s noir that has as good as vanished from the face of the actual earth, have a city divided up into districts and get violent about intrusions from girls of other districts - is so ludicrous it's funny, but once you're past that, the casual psychopathy of the characters and the action are pretty entertaining." Which one could say about most period-piece/sci-fi/futuristic/fetish noir, I should think. Smoke and Guns is the Rorshach Test of graphic novels: people see what they want to see in it.

Sean Fahey over at CHUD.com also hits the end of his stick with the butane perfume from his Zippo and says "I loved Smoke and Guns' in-your-face attitude and the subtle commentary of writer Kirsten Baldock’s hyper-realistic vision of a world where the only smokes for sale are from organized gangs of cigarette girl with guns -- lots and lots of guns."

Jonathan over at Jonathan's Ink has more faith in my Spidey-clone theory than his countryman Rich Johnston does. I feel constrained to point out for my pals in H'wood that my theory was just a little by-product of a strategy session with AiT Creative Exec Josh Richardson, and in no way a result from any inside knowledge or digging around.

Daniel Palacio, performing a damn public service with his blog Gateway Comics, ("Comics reviews for people who don't normally read comics, but should."), reviews Astronauts in Trouble: "Recommended for: fans of the James Bond movies, Armageddon, or any other big, explosive summer blockbusters." Dang, that's some fine company.

...and speaking of fine company, Chris Brown says AiT is one when he answered a question he'd asked himself: "Today I asked myself a question. 'Self, if you only had to pick one and ONLY one monthly comic book to pick up what would you pick up?; Well, I secretly agreed that this doesn't include the bi-monthly True Story Swear to God (by Tom Beland), because that's BI-monthly. I also secretly agreed that I'd still continue to pick up the OGNs from AiT/Planet Lar because they're not a monthly and 9 time out of 10 I get more bang for my buck than a Michael Bay movie."

Listen to the sound of thinking: "It's not about agreeing or disagreeing -- opinion isn't really the point of criticism, although that's what everybody takes away from it -- it's about watching a thesis being developed, about watching an idea being defended."

That's not me, online comics reviewers, that's award-winning writer and essayist Jon Carroll, and, unless you're Harlan Ellison, Carroll's a better writer than you, so pay attention to what he writes. No one cares about your opinion; people care about how well your idea of things are outlined and defended. So, all you guys emailing me in high dudgeon, offended by one parenthetical paragraph in what's ostensibly a review of Dukes of Hazzard, with all of your impassioned defenses of past reviews (parenthetically, again, I note that only one of the six of you who wrote to me yesterday was the guy I was talking about, so all of the rest of you have guilty consciences) need to defend your ideas within the body of your reviews and not contained in frenzied albeit well-intentioned emails to me. In that vein, here's some more cheap shots and bon mots from around the Internet:

First up: we've finally made an honest woman out of Josh Richardson.

Jason Richards opened up Riot! today, and posted up a pic of the color key and original art pages I sent him to congratulate him on his new shop. We'll be hearing more about his shop in the future.

Greg from Comics Should Be Good loves The Annotated Mantooth. But, honestly, who doesn't? Communists, that's who.

You can meet the booze-addled malcontents behind last year's World Series at Comicopia this Friday in Boston, as reported by my friend and yours Brad Searles: "The two gents behind the best Red Sox fan blog out there, Surviving Grady, will be stopping by the best comic store out there, Comicopia in Kenmore Square, this Friday night from 6-7pm (then heading to the game, 'natch). They'll be signing copies of their every-fan-should-own-it collection of Red Sox writings that AiT/Planet Lar recently released. It's perfectly captures the entirety of last year's spectacular season, all the ups and downs and ups and big-time downs and unbelievable ups from a couple obsessed points of view. Loved it. So catch 'em Friday night, or on Sunday, August 28th from 1-2pm and 5-7pm (unless the game goes long, of course)."

Once again, the very fabric of American society is polarized upon a central question. The moral ambiguity of the death penalty? Roe v. Wade? Stem cell research, intelligent design, pit bull ownership? All these, of course, are the source of impassioned debate, polite cocktail party conversation, and feigned ennui from across social, economic, and even religious strata. One burning subject, though, polarizes thought and action the instant it is broached. Of course, I refer to The Dukes of Hazzard.

Parenthetically, I must write about what passes for online "criticism" nowadays. I had occasion to write to my good friend Graeme McMillan about an online comics reviewer yesterday: "All of his reviews of our books start out 'I wanted this book to be green. I wanted some green in my book, and it didn't deliver the green. What a disappointment.' YEAH, WELL, THE BOOK IS ORANGE, YOU SIMPLETON. THERE IS NO GREEN IN IT. GREEN WOULD OBVIATE THE POINT OF WHAT WE WERE TRYING TO DO. IT WOULD CHANGE THE COLOR! ORANGE! DEAL WITH IT ON ITS OWN MERITS! ORANGE, I SAY! One will have to be able to pass an English Composition class before you're allowed to have your own review blog, when I am king." and it is under this practice-what-you-preach mindset I commend to you the cinematic glory that is The Dukes of Hazzard.

The First Goal of any pop culture entertainment is to entertain. One assumes this would go without saying, but you'd be surprised. Otherwise excellent writers often gloss this over and go straight to the "Better Than Citizen Kane?" yardstick. So. The Dukes of Hazzard? Does it entertain? Only one response is necessary: YEE-HAW!

I would make the argument that The Second Goal of any pop culture entertainment is to entertain again, missing any stragglers or malcontents who might have been passed over in the freight-train ride of initial entertainment. I allow that this might just be me, and will say The Second Goal would be to make some money. Pop Culture is a commercial art, after all, and my views on this are widely known. So. The Dukes of Hazzard? Does it make money? Let's go to forbes.com: "Despite a solid, near-unanimous thrashing by critics, the film grossed an estimated $30.6 million according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations. But not only gentlemen turned out to see those toned legs. Dan Fellman, distribution president for Warner Bros. said the audience was 47% female and that two-thirds of all viewers were under 25." Translation: YEE-HAW!

I enjoy a good narrative, a well-turned phrase, a pithy comment, some droll commentary, and Machiavelli as much as the next liberal arts sheepskin-holder (been known to produce my own entertainments so dense with satire and allegory that your regular joe misses it wide), but dang if I don't like to wave my beer at the car crashes and hot chicks, authority figures getting their what-for, and big-ass explosions without consequence, as well. Mimi calls this "The Dichotomy of Lar." Anyway. What Macbeth says in irony and despair, I say with conviction and glee: "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more: it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing." So you might as well enjoy some spectacle when it presents itself. YEE-HAW!

From Booklist: Beland, Tom. True Story, Swear to God, v.2: This One Goes to 11. 2005. 176p. illus. AiT/Planet Lar, paper, $12.95 (1-932051-34-1). 741.5. When Hurricane Georges struck in September 1998, Beland and his girlfriend, Lily, seemed to be living at opposite ends of the earth, he in California’s Napa Valley, she in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Worried to distraction, he called her frequently, and she faithfully reassured him about her safety in her fourth-floor apartment, above the flooding that was the storm’s biggest danger. The experience made them realize that they needed to be together, and any lingering doubts were dispelled when Lily’s flight to California soon afterward was delayed a day by bad weather in Texas. Beland decided to move to Puerto Rico. His graphic-novel account of this dramatic turning point in his life ends with him on an airport-bound bus. His funny-pages drawing style, reminiscent of the boldly curvy, speedy lines of Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace, maintains a positive tone even when the action is at its most emotionally moving, in the scenes of Beland’s leave-taking from his lifelong home, family, and friends. How profound unsensational, everyday lives can be when chronicled with such candor and affection. ––Ray Olson

I'm in the middle of Writing A Thing. This is good, because usually I'm in the middle of Holding Somebody's Hand, or Putting Out One of Them There Fires You Hear So Much About Nowadays, or Jostling For Position, or Telling Somebody to Calm Down. Lots of things to do, as a publisher, and not much of them have to do with what I want to be doing, you know? Which is, of course, to be telling my own stories.

Some dudes think this is a conflict of interest, and to them, I say: Astronauts in Trouble and True Facts and Proof of Concept and the rest are paying for your printing bills, so, you know, there you go.

To everyone else, I say: turn a blind eye to the emphasis-capitals, above. It's an affectation. Just deal.

But, yeah. In the middle of writing a thing. And one of my good pals comes into the office in the middle of one of his things, and asks me what to do. How to write. Where to go in the story. What sorts of tricks to use and where to do the sleight-of-hand and when to do the interviews after and who to talk to and whatnot.

And I had a really productive conversation, and I hope I helped 'im out a bit. But it made me realize something that Dennis Hayes said... the sawyer on the line behind me back when we both cut granite... something he once said to me is true for everyone, forever: "Lar," he said, "there's book sense, and then there's common sense, and too mucha one over the other ain't doin' nobody no good."

So, no kidding. You want to accomplish something, just go do it and let the chips fall where they may. Worst case scenario is that you did something.

Like they say down at the pool hall: "Stop talkin' and start chalkin'." All the hot air don't pay the bills, you know?

I'll leave you to it, and I'm going back to Writing My Thing. Do, or do not; there is no try. This has been a Public Service Message from your friends at AiT/Planet Lar.