Shane wrote:Then I've got Godland this amazing retro- flash back.
Shane ain't kidding, and even though I could've sworn it was someone else who gave a shout-out to this gobsmacking bit of comic ingenuity (

), I, at the behest of my favorite comic shop clerk, who, when he noticed that both the gf and I were giggling ourselves silly over the pressed on picture and caption on his red t-shirt, which consisted of a headless figure cradling it's noggin' in a jar whilst brandishing a gun and exclaiming "Violence is the new black!"...where was I?
Oh yeah, so while he was wringing us up, he said, simply, "
Godland". Vaguely (so fucking vague I couldn't recall just who mentioned the tome) I replied with the standard "oh, I heard that was good" (which, of course, ='s "ring me up monkey!") but then he went on about how "
Godland" is where both the design and the quote came from. Hmmm...intriguing. Could this surly comic book nerd, who I know also digs on The Venture Brothers and baseball (aka, my kind of surly comic book nerd), be onto to something here? Was there something a notorious taste-onista like myself could possibly have missed I asked myself with existential dread? I had to find out!
Lo' and behold, Godland is the fucking real deal. A pull quote from the back from "Ain't it Cool News" (aka some @sshole...wish they would say which one, ya' know? Like if it said superhero or squasha I would just ignore it (j/k...kinda)) does a fairly adequate job of summarizing part of this comics dervish delight...
some @sshole wrote:taking Kirby as a genre...and presenting an original concept within that genre...
...but I assume that's mostly from the art that evokes King Kirby at his most cosmic. Not being all that familiar myself with Kirby's writing (for shame!), I don't know to what extent
Godland either homages and/or parodies da' King, but I do know what I likes, and Joe Casey and Tom Scioli have tapped the vein into my juvenile, dope addled mind that adores the silly, the fun, the meta, the bizarre and just plain loopy.
Characters mentally comment upon their own cheesy dialogue ("why am i verbally taunting this thing?! Am I such a poseur I can't help myself?"), the narration by the author is often comically cross cut with anachronistic glee ({heroine scales remote castle}
narration - Her thoughts hum like a finely-tuned engine of action..."ain't no mountain high enough") of the big bads, the aforementioned head in a jar with a penchant for mind altering substances from the far edges of the cosmos, Basil Cronus, is an absolute hoot, there's maximum cheese guised as plot moving family melodrama, a pain inflicting humanist villainess with a predilection for perverse torture, a cosmic talking dog...and I'm just scratching at the surface of this now 15 issue bit of comic gold.
BUY THIS BOOK!
ooh, wait, I can even tie some of this together...remember how I mentioned The Venture Brothers? If you read Basil in The Monarch's voice, if you read Adam Archer with a Bud Manstrong inflection, your god, it's even funnier! The sensibilities of both ventures (heh) are remarkably similiar, in that the can both be seen as loving gestures to their respected influences.
see what I did there? Tying things together like that? keepcool, gonzo tho' he may be, still packs a critical wallop!
Personally, I'm an atheist in the voting booth and a theist in the movie theatre. I separate the morality of religion with the spirituality and solace of it. There is something boring about atheism.