Old Faves, New Ways

My pop culture consumption this last week has been mainly focused on some old favorites being presented in new ways, or at least ways new to me.

Two weeks ago I picked up JLA/Avengers at the sale at the comics shop. This softcover collects the mini-series from 2003-04 by Kurt Busiek and George Perez, which I didn't read the first time around and don't really remember existing (it must have come out when I wasn't paying close attention to comics). I am a big fan of both Busiek and Perez and they did not disappoint here. One standard of the super-hero crossover is a fight between the sets of heroes and it's not one that I'm too fond of. That said, there is a reason for it to happen in this book but it also doesn't go on forever. In fact, there is an alternate reality wherein the JLA had a crossover with the Avengers every year and not the JSA. Fun and cool moments abound in a shifting reality and shifting rosters for both teams. Perez really pulls out the stops with his "camera angles" and singular super-hero prowess. It seems that this is the last DC/Marvel crossover for the forseeable future (and maybe ever); if so, they went out on a high note.

Tuesday saw the release of a new R.E.M. album, Live at the Olympia, which presents highlights from a five night run of rehearsals they did in 2007...and invited the public to. At the start of the double CD, Mike Mills announces "this is not a show" and Michael Stipe refers to the whole experience as an "experiment in terror." Their impetus for the shows was to rehearse new material they were going to record and indeed, you can hear 9 of the 11 songs from Accelerate (one in a different form) as well as 2 that didn't make the record (I really like the change of pace that is "On The Fly"). The rest of the songs span the breadth of their career and many are from Chronic Town and Reckoning, two albums I've still never gotten around to picking up. After hearing "Second Guessing" and "Harborcoat" I know I need to rectify that fact. The band sounds great and bangs out classics like "So. Central Rain" and "Cuyahoga" and "Pretty Persuasion" as well as should have been classics like "New Test Leper"(New Adventures in Hi-Fi seems to be forgotten these days). It's also a testament to their solid songcraft that the new songs don't seem out of place with the rest. I have a feeling I'm going to be listening to a lot of their music over the next month or two.

Consumerism

I started out the day with big dreams, wanting to see two movies, buy two books, download the new Built To Spill album, and pick up some goodies at a sale at the comics shop. I knew I wouldn't be able to do all of it and didn't really have the money to do all of it anyway but some days it's nice to dream. As it turned out, some of my dreams for the day came true and I got some other stuff I hadn't even planned on getting.

I ended up getting four nice shirts that I can wear to work, as well as a new pair of corduroys. I might even end up with a pair of black ones by the time the weekend is over - my wife and I saw them on the way out of the store and she had to make a movie time.

That's right, she went to the movies and I didn't. The good news for me is that I have a four day weekend coming up due to fall break, so I have a decent chance of catching either Where the Wild Things Are or The Invention of Lying (or both!) next weekend. Why not tomorrow? Football, baby.

I went to Barnes & Noble but they only had one of the books I was looking for (the missing one was the new Jonathan Lethem) and that one wasn't on any sort of sale, so I passed it up.

My last stop was the comics shop...and I couldn't decide on anything. I came home. I sat around for a bit. Then I went back to the comics shop.

They had the other book I was looking for, Peter and Max by Bill Willingham, which is a prose novel set in the world of his Fables comic. It was included in the sale. Finally, a decision made.

I had been looking at the first collection of Invincible Iron Man, which I've heard great things about (and read the first issue of about 18 months ago), but I just couldn't commit to it. One day, I will. I did notice the collection of the last DC and Marvel crossover series, JLA/Avengers, which was written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by George Perez. I'd been looking at that for months too and decided to pull the trigger.

That should have been the end of it...but I wasn't done. Even though I had resolved to only buy trades again, I couldn't help myself. I had to pick up a couple single issues and at 40% off it was easier to justify. I grabbed the two most recent issues of The Unwritten (the first four were great), the first issue of Sweet Tooth (which was originally a buck), and Adventure Comics #2 (I can't resist a comic starring the original Legion of Super-Heroes). I would have picked up Adventure Comics #3 if they had it. I don't want to start down that path again but there has got to be a way to make it work for me. I need to figure it out.

Anyway, there's my day of consuming.