1) It's based on I AM LEGEND, which is rightly regarded as a seminal piece of modern horror, having served as the inspiration for NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD which spawned one of the few legitimate additions to the horror canon in modern times.

2) The screenplay itself was written by Richard Matheson (the author of I AM LEGEND), under a pen-name, which means that it's actually true to the story, rather than just taking the idea of "World overrun by vampires and one man has to stick it out."

For all of its pyrotechnic bluster and love of New York as deserted wasteland, the recent I AM LEGEND missed the story's point entirely, as entertaining as the first two-thirds of the book were. As unintentionally entertaining and provocative as THE OMEGA MAN was (the late-sixties version of LEGEND, and decidedly reactionary document) was, it also missed the mark but was closer. Strange that the humble LAST MAN ON EARTH serves as the far more chilling of all the three. More frightening than even NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was, ultimately.

But are these zombies emblematic of real change in society or is that just an easy comparison to make? Romero has certainly gone out of his way since then to imbue his monsters with a sense of lost humanity slowly bubbling up to the surface (one that I'll note was abandoned in the recent DIARY OF THE DEAD), building major characters out of members of the walking dead in both Bub and Big Daddy (of DAY and LAND OF THE DEAD, respectively). Ultimately, though, zombies aren't a society; they're not anything more than they appear to be, and are more than happy to munch down unless regularly fed (remember, a dog is only three meals away from being a wolf, and society is only three hot showers away from utter meltdown...)

They're a dead end. Ignore the pun; used for for accuracy and not comedic value. They don't represent a transformed society. They're entropy. They eat us and our memes and our emotions and leave nothing that they can't break down with their molars. That's not society. That's a meatgrinder, a big, cosmic meatgrinder. Again, talk about your ultimate existential nightmare, that's it. From everything to nothing, corpses shuffling through a dead world. If I could bottle the essence of that, I'd make a million (or several) selling misery to folks who dig that stuff.

But THE LAST MAN ON EARTH doesn't flinch on this issue. Instead of the ultimate horror being mindless ghouls overturning civilization, there's something worse. There's replacement humans. Human 2.0 (or did I use that the last time I went over this subject?) Human 1.0 didn't make it. The last remnants of the old republic have been swept away, all Tarkin-like. What's left is ultimately vampires who've kept their appetite in check. And they don't like that the lead character (Neville in the book, Morgan in the movie, played by the Master, Vincent Price) has been staking vampires for the last three years.

See, there's vampires with their brains intact (who you don't see until the end of both the novel and the film), and there's the near-mindless hordes who prowl the night streets in search of sustenance. Both the Old World (as represented by Morgan) and the New World (as represented by the black-clad vampire survivors) seek to kill these brutes. But when the rubber hits the road, the New World can't go on with such a dangerous remnant of the Old World in place running around and killing "good citizens" every day.

Ultimately, Morgan/Neville finds a "cure" for the plague (which itself is kept in check by a homemade concoction passed out among the vampire survivors) which would assumedly allow the "Old World" to rise, once again ascendant. Morgan himself becomes a germ that could infect the New World (an ironic reversal of the germ that consumes the old world and gives birth to the new, albeit slowly.) Much like the humans attempted to exterminate the vampire germ, with science or open pit fires; the new world is forced to utterly crush the Old World, wiping out all remnants, but for the legends which are whispered amongst the populace (from which comes the title.)

But in this, humanity is not simply faced with its own mortality (in the maw of legions of idiot corpses), but with being fundamentally replaced. The slate is being wiped clean, debt records wiped out, and everything is starting over again, only there's not room in this world for anyone who can walk around in the daytime. Is it more comforting to think that all that'll be left would be a dead world, or that what would be left is a world full of people like us, only not us in some fundamental fashion?

LAST MAN ON EARTH outdoes all of these other adaptations in embracing the novel. It succeeds in making an engaging and provocative statement without resorting to cheap political trickery (whether they be critical or textual). NIGHT may be more viscerally frightening (the idea of being killed and eaten is pretty primal), OMEGA MAN is more politically in-your-face and contemporary (the vampires are regarded as "The Family" in a time when Mansonmania was ruling pop culture), and the modern I AM LEGEND just represents a full-on-retreat to pre-9/11 Americana by way of Shymalan. But LAST MAN ON EARTH stands on its own two feet, does what it can with its meagre budget and still offers some solid chills and stark visions of a dying world. The opening montage of a deserted city may certainly be more spartan and spare than the lush desolation of I AM LEGEND, but there are times that less is indeed more.

Because you could hardly Balti-less!

Okay, that was weak. But I'm only on my second cup of coffee here.

And apparently there's a contest too, over at Comics Waiting Room. Check it out. I would, but I'm not allowed to win, so I figure, why bother?

2. The Sacramento airport offers free wireless, unlike seemingly every hotel I stay in. I should stay in airports instead...

3. When you gamble, you sometimes lose. You sometimes even look foolish for having gambled.

4. Sometimes no answer is better than any old answer.

5. I've been to the east coast...four times. Ever.

6. I've been told to get crab cakes somewhere in particular, but I don't have that message any more, and wonder if I'll even have time to go.

7. I'll be underdressed for the Harveys, should I go.

8. A deal is never dead until it's dead.

9. Either you have to sell to your target audience or you have to secure a new one.

10. This takes some time. Don't even try if you're not going to work on it for three years.

11. I wish I was there, but I'm not yet.

12. It costs $25 if your bags are even one pound overweight.

13. Books are, sadly, heavy.

Sure you do.

GeniusboyFiremelon: When Words Collide BONUS: Morrison's Very First Superman Story

Spotted at Geniusboy Firemelon, where else.

Inner zombies, man! It's all right there! They're COMING! You're NEXT!

But back to street dates. Now, why would a comic that's destined to be pulped drive debate over street dates? Because not all retailers got the book before it was supposed to be pulped. It's okay, you can let that roll around your head a moment. There's plenty of retailers who never got a copy, but not before word went out that the run was to be destroyed. Most of 'em were on the west coast, as I understand it.

Now, why is this a deal? Because any books that survive the pulping will be genuine collector's items. That's not something that happens every day in comics, even with variant covers and other attempts to manufacture collectability, rarity. The truth is, if you want a recent mainstream back issue, you can find it without too much trouble. Generally. There's still the occasional book like WALKING DEAD that has sufficient demand to drive up the cost of back issues, at least in the early run. But UNCANNY X-MEN #500? You'll still be able to find it in a year or two for not all that much over cover, if not in a bargain bin.

Of course, these are books that shouldn't even be sold. The order went out to shred 'em. Theoretically, they should all be in landfills or at least hidden away for a discreet interval. But the fact is, they aren't. They're out there for people to sell and buy if they want. Which, rightfully, upsets the folks who either played by the rules or didn't even get the books in the first place, but really the former. And this example has re-kindled discussion of street dates for comics.

A street date, if you didn't know, is basically a reverse-expiration date. You can't sell a book before the announced publishing date. That's how it works with prose and music and videos. Protip: street dates get broken in all those businesses, too. Back in the old days, comic stores got the new stock shipped to them on Thursdays and they got put out for sale on Friday. I used to hang around after hours and chat with the owners of Comic Quest in El Toro (still there, but a different location and different owners) while they shelved the books that I'd buy the next day. But I often got to buy them that night for cash on the barrel head (didn't have a credit card back then, nor did I need one for a week of comics).

The perception now is that street dates hold even greater importance in this single-provider, PREVIEWS-driven, internet-frenzy, short-shelf-life, age of comics. I don't have a lot of room to argue a counter position. When Wednesday is the holy day of most comics fans and you as a retailer by gosh better have those new comics out or that business is gone, then there's a definite sense of urgency in terms of getting the dates right.

So in principle, I'm behind a street date for comics. But there's a number of problems, some of which are pretty big. The gotta-have-it-now urgency of the weekly comics rush may indeed tempt some fans and sellers to jump those dates and be the first on their block with the new books. The pressure would be real and on both sides of the counter as it were. To be completely honest, most of the retailers I talk to are responsible and not interested in jumping the gun--but they're often exceptional when it comes to comics retail.

The other problem is with the volume of (semi-) monthly titles that one has to wrangle and keep track of. Maybe that's less of an issue than I think it is, but I don't think so. Street dates for say, the new Kanye West CD are probably a lot easier to maintain (though to be fair, with a popular artist, there may indeed be extra incentives to break that date as well.) West only puts out a new CD, what, once a year? Every two years? Now, the record company as a whole might put out a bunch, but when it comes to serial management of "individual titles" there's a lot less regular work to do. There's more groundwork to do when it happens, but it doesn't happen every month. Or year.

Nobody but me cares when the next Bardo Pond or Roy Montgomery or Steven Smith CD hits the street. Consequently, there's probably a lot less demand (and therefore perceived reward) to break street dates with smaller, independent artists. So I'd expect that there'd be more...temptation...to try to get your hands on a copy of SECRET INVASION early instead of a LOVE AND ROCKETS (oh, my bad, they don't do a monthly serial any more.)

Now, if there's no dis-incentive for breaking street dates, then yeah, they're gonna be broken left and right. But if there was a chance that there'd be some real sanction for retailers who broke it (and yes, that happens in the non-comics world, but again, not enough to put a real end to breaking street dates), then maybe they have a chance of sticking.

I'm not holding my breath on this issue. Street dates, should they prove workable, would make retailers lives a lot easier. But then so was the idea of announcing what was happening in comics three months ahead of time. And where did most of the leaks of upcoming storylines start? Retailers who leaked them to readers. Announcing that sort of thing ahead of time isn't nearly as toxic when you're not dealing with a longform serial, like with blurbs of prose books getting out (as they're *supposed* to do). But in comics when you're trying to balance year-long stories and keep them fresh and surprising, and you have to tell folks what's happening three months before the book comes out so you can entice them to order the book, man, that's problematic on so many levels.

Just another of the "dreadful" things that happens in publishing, I guess.

As for street dates, I don't see them being workable until comics shift out of a regular serial format. But that's a bigger change than I can safely get my head around just yet.

Wherein I ramble about what I did over the summer "break", as well as the importance of backstory and compelling badguys.

But Wright's keyboard playing was a foundation of the band, through its entire existence, from the mid 60s of Swinging London through psychedelia ascendant, stoner rock, the odd doldrums of the late seventies (for which ANIMALS is a great antidote) and up until just recently where a reunited Floyd performed as part of, geez, I want to say Live Aid 8 or something. Only Nick Mason and Richard Wright survived as original members (there was a guitarist before David Gilmour, remember?) once Roger Waters broke with the band in the late eighties. Syd Barrett might be Pink, but Wright was pinker than most, should you catch my drift.

Running "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" currently. Odd that what was ostensibly a tribute song to Barrett should serve so well as an example of the foundational role that Wright played in the band.

I will definitely have lettered art from the entirety of the first chapter of THE THIRSTY while there (unless I break an arm or something.) Just wrapped up writing the final chapter yesterday (but will head in for some tweaks before it goes to Gervasio and Jok.) Picked up a new lettering typeface from Comic Craft a couple weeks back, and it's different than the first one I used, but works in the same aesthetic.

Anyways, look for me there, in the artist's alley, I believe. Get a look at the next book before anyone else does. And if you're an editor (like they scour blogs looking for talent...) then I'm more than happy to talk to you about freelance jobs. Looking forward to the show, even if all I've seen of Baltimore is HOMICIDE.

No, I haven't watched THE WIRE. I know, I know. Someone buy me a month off so I can just take it all in, please.

Seven-year-old me would have been appalled. In my dotage, however, I find these pictures quite charming.

PANEL 1
Long panel. Joseph, trying to see who’s there. Shadows seem to be moving behind him, but they’re indistinct.

JOSEPH Who’s there? I can hear ya breathin’.

JOSEPH Aw come on out. Maybe you got a little bust-head on ya?

JOSEPH Hmmph.

JOSEPH You be like that. I can get my own solace.

JOSEPH Hey!

JOSEPH
AAAAHHHH…*