So Happy NYE!

I changed the blog's colors with fingers crossed.

Awaiting word on a book whose lead character sort of matches this color scheme.

Could be fun.

Dick Up

Didn't know Newsarama was doing this, but the entire lead story from HAWAIIAN DICK #1 is up on this Boxing Day:

DICK!

At least click on it so it looks like you care. And, of course, to enjoy Steven Griffin's backup story, you'll need to pony up for the book. Or download it illegally, if that's how your twisted soul rolls.

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"Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates
a victory of 'style' over 'content,' 'aesthetics' over 'morality,' of irony over
tragedy."

-Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp

Top Twenty-five (NO....FIFTY!) of the 90s

Or...twenty-five of the top...from the 90s. Twenty-five of my favorites from the 90s. Top Twenty-five. Twenty-five of the Top. The 90s. No order. One album per artist. No comps.

1. If You're Feeling Sinister by Belle & Sebastian
2. Fruit of Life by Wild Colonials
3. Telegraph by Richard Davies
4. Vinyl by Dramarama
5. Grace by Jeff Buckley
6. Whatever by Aimee Mann
7. Wild Wood by Paul Weller
8. Fisherman's Blues by the Waterboys
9. Hymns to the Silence by Van Morrison
10. Moseley Shoals by Ocean Colour Scene
11. Fight Songs by Old 97's
12. Loveless by My Bloody Valentine
13. Definitely Maybe by Oasis
14. The Bends by Radiohead
15. The Holy Bible by the Manic Street Preachers
16. The Missing Years by John Prine
17. Gentlemen by the Afghan Wigs
18. It's Great When You're Straight by Black Grape
19. Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys
20. Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos
21. XO by Elliott Smith
22. Parklife by Blur
23. Pinkerton by Weezer
24. The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips
25. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel.

Probably should expand it to fifty. Missed a bunch of favorites.

Okay. Twenty-five more!

26. A Different Class by Pulp
27. Laid by James
28. Odelay by Beck
29. Girlfriend by Matthew Sweet
30. Feeling Strangely Fine by Semisonic
31. Exile in Guyville by Liz Phair
32. Tuesday Night Music Club by Sheryl Crow
33. The Man Who by Travis
34. Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space by Spiritualized
35. Ben Folds Five by Ben Folds Five
36. Keep it Like a Secret by Built to Spill
37. Cure for Pain by Morphine
38. Tomorrow the Green Grass by The Jayhawks
39. Dog Man Star by Suede
40. August and Everything After by the Counting Crows
41. I Should Coco by Supergrass
42. Amplified Heart by Everything But the Girl
43. I Love My Friends by Stephen Duffy
44. Cracker by Cracker
45. Hot by The Squirrel Nut Zippers
46. White Sky by Archer Prewitt
47. Tindersticks (II) by Tindersticks
48. Vauxhall and I by Morrissey
49. Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub
50. Infamous Angel by Iris DeMent

I still left a few out.

Damn.

Happy Holidaze

Superman Confidential #13

Man, I love this cover. By Phil Hester & Ande Parks. Something old school about it, but mainly I love simplicity in design:

Same Old Lang Syne

Song always gets to me. With the passing of Dan Fogelberg, and the time of year, I thought I'd dig up a video. About the best I could find was this fan-made video that's still pretty heartfelt:

CBR on my Superman Confidential arc

If you're curious. I chat about it a little bit:


http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12587

Music 2007

In no particular order:

Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (each Spoon album is a grower...better and better with each listen)

Dinosaur Jr.: Beyond (great listen...they haven't missed a beat)

The Broken West: I Can't Go On, I'll Go On (beautiful folk pop...or something like that)

The White Stripes: Icky Thump (after a misstep, a return to great)

Radiohead: In Rainbows (best thing since OK Computer)

Bettye LaVette: Scene of the Crime (soul survivor teams up with Drive-By Truckers , tears it up)

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings: 100 Days 100 Nights (soul neophyte belts it out like the old days)

Field Music: Tones of Town (easily one of my most-listened to discs this year--catchy catchy pop)

Loney, Dear: Loney, Noir (pretty music)





The Clientele: God Save the Clientele (harmonious pop!)

Candie Payne: I Wish I Could Have Loved You More (Bond music for a new generation)

Band of Horses: Cease to Begin (a step up from an impressive debut)

Jens Lekman: Night Falls Over Kortedala (beautiful realization of potential)

Celebration: The Modern Tribe (uplifting dance-punk, soul pop)

Dan Deacon: Spiderman of the Rings (electronic kookiness that hooks)

Stephen Duffy & the Lilac Time: Runout Groove (fucking beautiful work from a guy who's done a lot of beautiful work)

Pale Young Gentlemen: Pale Young Gentlemen (technically a late 2006 release, but I love it...catchy, bittersweet low key pop)

The Lodger: Grown-Ups (classic sounding Brit indie rock)

Christmas

It's going to be different this year. To say the least.

I was in Orlando for Thanksgiving, but I'll head back to Wichita for Christmas. Probably the last time I'll ever spend Christmas in Wichita with my family. I think my father's going to sell his house, and try living down on Grand Lake in Oklahoma for a while. He and Mom sold their condo and bought a house big enough for my sister and I to bring our families down to visit. With Mom gone, there's no real reason to stay in the house in Wichita, so Dad's going to try to sell it and put the money in the bank while he truly retires.

We moved to Wichita (or Andover, if you will) just prior to my eighth grade year, and then into that current house during my second year of college. During high school, and for years after, we'd gather at our house on Christmas Eve with my friends and play games, drink beer, watch a movie. Generally Christmas Eve was more fun than Christmas, although there were some slightly rough Christmas mornings.

Anyway, we'll head back there, and spend Christmas Eve and part of Christmas day together one more time, before Dad drives down to Oklahoma to enjoy the day with some new friends, as the new chapter in his life continues to develop.

Having moved all over the place as a kid, Wichita is the closest thing to "home" I ever really knew. Most of my truly formative growth took place there, and there are a lot of people there I truly love. Those people will still be there, but with my parents and the house gone, it feels like "home" is fading away...

"Moore Gives Good Karma"

CBR interviewed me about '76:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12555

Hawaiian Pee-Pee

Kelly Tindall posted this over on the Image boards, as part of his "Image Babies" concept, and it made me giggle:

Things I can't believe I think about

There's an early episode of the Jeffersons on right now, and it features an intro I can't remember seeing for years. Instead of the familiar intro featuring clips from the show, this one is a grainy film into featuring the Jeffersons following their moving van from their old life to their new high-rise.

I assume that when the show went into reruns or syndication, this intro was axed in favor of the later intro, but I dunno. It would be just like TV Land to dig out the original intro. After all, they resurrected the original intro and bumpers for I Love Lucy, which, from what I can tell, hadn't been aired since the show first entered syndication, when they were replaced by the giant "I Love Lucy" heart. If memory serves, the original animated "stick figure" intro was dumped because it displayed a sponsor's name (which would have been removed by TV Land).

Until these old intros were revived, I had no idea they'd ever existed, but I had always wondered why such a popular, and (one would assume) well funded show would have featured such a static, dull opening and closing.

Along those lines, you can't beat the original "Rock Around the Clock" intro for Happy Days, a show that had one good season, and truly jumped the shark long before Fonzie did.

Contracts! Office!

Got the contracts for the project with Tony Harris sent off.

Pretty jazzed to get rolling on this one.

I've been trying to get my office organized over the past couple of days, and have had very little success. I have way too many copies of my own books lying around, for one thing, and despite dumping countless boxes of old comics, I still seem to have piles of them stacked up all over the place.

I also have a stack of unpaid bills that reaches the ceiling.

In reality, this is what I want my office to look like:

Snow Days

God bless readers

This was posted in a Newsarama thread about HAWAIIAN DICK #1 selling out (and after a comment of mine about using more pidgin English in the book):

Ho wow man, I can't wait! I love Hawaiian Dick, I've purchased all the issues of the previous series as well. I'm a Hawaii girl currently living in Florida. I'm old enough to remember old Waikiki Beach before all the high-rises were built, my dad built his own HUGE surfboard (6 feet long) and used to surf Waikiki all the time. We used to live a short walk from the zoo in one of those rinky-dink 2-story apartment buildings back in the '50s. My husband is a local boy, grew up in Kaimuki and Palolo Valley, so we know the old Hawaii. I love Mo and Kahami, and Chinatown ... So few writers and creators "get" Hawaii (that Michener guy - nah, his book junk in my opinion), that we who grew up there get very excited when someone does it right. You guys have been getting it right. I would love to see more pidgin in the local characters' dialogue, but I know you have to balance it with the need for all readers to understand what is being said. So, geev 'um, Mistah Moore!

In this same thread, two Hawaiian readers (who admit knowing each other) had taken us to task for abusing Hawaii for our entertainment purposes, as they had both done on boards in the past.

I've always suspected that those guys were less about dogging our book and more about grabbing a platform from which to pontificate, and that's fine. I understand that.

I've seen the book attacked for some pretty ridiculous things. One "reader" in a forum noted that Byrd dressing in long pants would have immediately outed him as a "stupid haole." Well, you know...that's what he IS. And anyone who tells me no one wore long pants in Hawaii in 1953 is just being stupid. Likewise, people have taken exception to the notion that Hawaii played up its Polynesian culture to lure tourists in the fifties, which is equally absurd. But I try to avoid debates over that stuff. I fully understand that when people who feel they usually get the short end of the stick get an opportunity to make their voices heard, they're going to take it.

So, anyway, while I've never claimed HAWAIIAN DICK was a realistic reflection of 1950s Hawaii (see my earlier post about "Heightened Reality"), we have gone to great lengths not to be condescending or insulting, and to try to somewhat give people a feel for what it might have been like back then.

So, thank you, Librarykat. You've made my day.

2007 can't end soon enough

Sometimes I feel like a Merle Haggard song:

If we make it through December
Everythings gonna be all right I know
It's the coldest time of winter
And I shivver when I see the fallin' snow
If we make it through December
I got plans of bein' in a warmer town come summer time
Maybe even California
If we make it through December we'll be fine
I got laid off down at the factory
And their timing's not the greatest in the world
Heaven knows I been workin' hard
I wanted Christmas to be right for daddy's girl
Now I don't mean to hate December
It's meant to be the happy time of year
And why my little girl don't understand
Why daddy can't afford no Christmas here
If we make it through December
Everythings gonna be alright I know
It's the coldest time of winter
And I shivver when I see the fallin' snow
If we make it through December
I got plans of bein' in a warmer town come summer time
Maybe even California
If we make it through December we'll be fine

Well, I guess we do have a tree.

Latour's cover

For the second printing of HAWAIIAN DICK #1: