#167. Paperback Weekly Notice

Making some personal changes. One you might have noticed already happens to include my work at Paperback Reader. During an indefinite hiatus from my duties there, I'll be posting an abbreviated edition of my column here at Scouring Monk. Should be fun!

#166. Weekly No. 90

Paperback Reader's Weekly No. 89i

Week of May 14, 2008

QB ~Final Crisis Sketchbook #1 (DC) “Surveillance heroes” is an interesting way to describe the modern era, and the Japanese characters are off the charts. Welcome back to the big show, Grant.

QB ~Batman #676(DC) Still working the early stages, but Grant style, for Part 1 of “Batman R.I.P.”

QB ~Zorro #3 (Dynamite) Maybe it takes Matt Wagner and Zorro together for readers to realize they haven’t seen this story, this hero, in a long time.

~Project Superpowers #3 (Dynamite) Best issue so far.

~Gotham Underground #8 (of 9) (DC) Nice statement, Batman. So does the gang war have a meaningful conclusion in sight, Penguin?

~Green Arrow and Black Canary #8 (DC) Welcome to the family, Dodger?

~newuniversal: Shockfront #1 (Marvel) I know Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, and you are no Grant Morrison. And newuniversal has to do more to prove it’s not just another emerging-powers thing than this.

QB ~Simon Dark #8 (DC) Nice way to demonstrate how Simon fits into the rest of Gotham.

QB ~The Twelve #5 (of 12) (Marvel) Nice way to demonstrate how these heroes fit into the rest of the modern age.

QB ~Rann-Thanagar Holy War #1 (of 8) (DC) Terrible cover, Jim Starlin. Great art, Ron Lim. Great story, Jim Starlin.

~Wonder Woman #20 (DC) Seriously, Gail Simone, you’re not getting it if you think she works best on an “epic scale.”

~Superman #676 (DC) A better segue issue than most of the Kurt Busiek run. But does it actually portend to greater significance, or is the ending just misleading?

~DC Universe Special: Justice League of America #1 (DC) I’m not sure if the timing of this release was just right or too early. But the reprints were fun to look at, if not actually read.

Please note: QB preceding a title means it's a recommended read.

***

The Eidolon never had a ghost of a chance. Read The Cloak of Shrouded Men, an original work of prose heroic fiction.

#165. Who Watches

Here's some rather significant news:

I've decided against writing Who Watches, at least for the moment, after all. Who Watches was going to be my NaNo last fall, but after all the delays caused by moving screwed up my momentum and I couldn't even motivate myself to try again in January, which had been the plan, I figured something about it just wasn't meant to be. It's not that I consciously decided against writing it, or will admit even now that it was in the end a bad idea, but having self-published its predecessor, The Cloak of Shrouded Men, a product of the previous three NaNos, I recently realized...Maybe my next project shouldn't be another superhero story, no matter how different this one was going to be (in fact, hardly was going to be a superhero story at all). I have to accept, even if I've sold maybe three copies, that I've got a book under my belt. It changes things. If I've got some real ambition in me, and I know I do, I've got to make my next prose project another challenge. Fortunately, I've been working on short stories which have continuously done just that, a constant tune-up (well, as constant as my writing goes), keeping me on my toes.

It's still weird to think that I've all but abandoned Who Watches, at least as it was originally conceived.

#164. Ric Flair

Reading Ric Flair's To Be the Man has proven to be more enlightening thanI thought. Such as, I now know yet another reason why it would be incredibly easy to be happy with Bruno Sammartino exiling himself from wrestling. According to Flair, Sammartino just wasn't a great worker, and I believe the Nature Boy when he says something like that. And I feel less bad about how Bret Hart's career imploded once he jumped to WCW, and less so when the reason it ended was because of an incident with Bill Goldberg. Goldberg I respect. Hart, it becomes easier not to.

Anyhoo...

#163. WrestleMania XXIV, ECW/Smackdown Taping, Al Pacino

Obviously, WrestleMania XXIV has already come and gone and I haven't actually written about the results, which I will hold off on until the DVD release next month.

Days after the release I'll be going to my second ever live show, a taping of ECW and Smackdown on May 27th at the World Arena in Colorado Springs. I will be able to confirm my irrational suspicion that Bobby Lashley will make his triumphant return at the show! (The Dominator is a native of the city.)

In literary news, I was amused to watch Al Pacino's Chinese Coffee, a movie he directed in 2000 with Jerry Orbach about a writer attempting to win his friend over with Al's character's third book, which basically apes everything about their relationship, including Orbach's character's past, which he isn't so pleased about. The thrust, however, is really a reflection of my cheery future as a writer, all the uncertainties that I'm enjoying even now. Pacino, you are an unwelcome god. :p

#162. Map of Mouldwarp

Someone inadvertantly pointed me in the direction of Google Pages, so I may be developing a new homepage in the near future, to be called Map of Mouldwarp if I go through with it. The previous incarnation of the homepage, which became, exclusively, a homebase for my Star Trek fiction, will look on in shame, while the first one, Age of Mouldwarp, will only become more embarrassed.

Just sayin'!

#161. Dead Letter Quarterly, WrestleMania XXIV Preview

The big news lately 'round these parts is that Dead Letter Quarterly is in fact dead, murdered by the very process that birthed it, a collection of editors who didn't realize they were pushing ahead too far too quickly. The end result was that it collapsed upon the weight of itself. Yet another personal failure. Yay!

Anyway, let's move on to those WrestleMania XXIV thoughts:

WWE Heavyweight Championship Triple Threat Match: Randy Orton (champion) vs. Triple H vs. John Cena
What's inevitably going to be the main event at first seemed a bit pasted together, but as pasted-together triple threats go, this one's a bit more even-handed than the past two at WrestleMania (Triple H-HBK-Chris Benoit and Mysterio-Orton-Angle), both of which were pasted together so the company wouldn't feel bad about giving the win to the least expected but most fan-friendly competitor. This time, the champion is the guy who has everything to prove, and his challengers are two veterans who've already headlined and won at WrestleMania, and no one has a clear edge. This is the biggest wild card of the evening.

World Heavyweight Championship Match: Edge vs. Undertaker
More than any other match in Undertaker's storied WrestleMania career, this is going to be the biggest challenge to the streak yet, simply because Edge is that rare wild card (so much so he couldn't stay on Raw and is one of the few big names WWE has granted Smackdown to receive; the others are Undertaker and Batista, and it's no wonder each of them have been the focal point of the brand for the last year) who can create the spirit of the Raw main event all on his own. Clearly there's a theme this year for the company. Should be a highlight of the evening.

Floyd Mayweather vs. Big Show
Chosing to ignore the Akebono sumo match (not because I didn't enjoy it, but because it's just not the same), also featuring Show, this is the first time WWE has dipped into the celebrity WrestleMania match since 1995's encounter between Bam Bam Bigelow and Lawrence Taylor, which ended up being the main event. So this is going to be interesting. No predictions, really, just a nice match to have on the card, a sort of rallying point for wrestling fans who find themselves in an environment that sort of implicitely questions whether their favorite sports entertainment is still relevant.

Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels
Everyone knew the whole "Career Threatening" matches thing was going to lead to this card, it was just a matter of who they were going to put against Flair as his ultimate opponent. HBK is about as appropriate as they come. Should be a classic.

Money in the Bank
The spot in the card that has become a showcase for a number of stars WWE otherwise can't figure out what to do with has this year become a well-rounded match, with some of the best competitors, in or out of the spotlight of late, the company has to offer: Chris Jericho, MVP, Mr. Kennedy, John Morrison, CM Punk, Carlito, and Shelton Benjamin. Not a one of them is going to be carried through this match. A lot has been said about why Carlito's here, a lot, in fact, about why he's even still with WWE, even after he himself requested his release. The dude just hasn't had a good break since he jumped from Smackdown to Raw. Last year, he should have had a match against Ric Flair at WrestleMania, but he was dumped in a tag match with Naitch just off the card instead. The year before that, he should have had a match against Chris Masters, but was instead dumped in another tag match, which actually got on the card (yay!). Three years ago, he made his debut, in a talking segment. I just don't understand how the fans have never gotten behind him, which has been the problem the whole time. Even when he started exhibiting some first-class skills in the ring, they yawned, and by that point, he wasn't even allowed to work the mic anymore, which effectively killed him all the way around. A good showing here could potentially turn things around. I doubt he'll win (Y2J, Punk, or Kennedy, possibly MVP will), but like Shelton Benjamin, who here could remind fans just of the awesome athleticism that he possesses but doesn't need to rely on (when he thinks he does, in ordinary matches, he inevitably screws up), just participating in this match elevates his status. Same with Morrison, who probably lost the most from last fall's illegal substance witch hunts. Anyway...

Umaga vs. Batista
If Batista couldn't main event Smackdown's evening, this was the next best possible thing, if they weren't going to give Ric Flair to him. Dave's at a crossroads. Give him a monster match with the only monster he hasn't already gone through, the only one capable of matching him pound for pound. Umaga wins, too, since this time he doesn't have to try and carry Bobby Lashly.

ECW Heavyweight Championship Match:(24 Man Battle Royal Winner) vs. Chavo Guerrero
It would've been great for WWE to keep the battle royal on the actual card, just to keep the momentum on ECW's first title defense at WrestleMania, just the uniqueness of picking the challenger. Mark Henry seems poised to get the nod; either way, Guerrero gets a nice spot on the card. This match could define the new era of ECW like no previous championship encounter has. Chavo may be required to win for that to happen, though.

Belfast Brawl: Finlay vs. JBL
What a great spot for Finlay, the great unheralded star of any WWE brand, with the wrestler best matched for him. Add in Hornswoggle, and this will be yet another highlight. If you haven't gotten my drift by now, I expect this, pound for pound, to be the best WrestleMania, possibly ever, at least from the best card.

BunnMania Lumberjack Match: Ashley & Maria vs. Beth Phoenix & Melina
Should be fun.

#160. Needless Tease for WrestleMania XXIV Thoughts

Coming soon:

Thoughts on WrestleMania XXIV...before it takes place!

#159. We'll See

Everything worked out to plan. "Generation Divide" went the distance, and yesterday I launched We'll See, the second volume of my ongoing series of poetry blogs. Terror of Knowing took a bit less time than I thought to transcribe from the blog to a compiled file, but it has now officially become my third unpublished collection.

#158. Terror of Knowing, We'll See

If nothing else, my poetry is sustaining things for me at the moment. Terror of Knowing has been a really great time for me. Because of the way my work week is going to be (and it's not always like this), I'm going to be completing be sequence of one hundred poems within it by Friday, to relaunch the series of "Weblog Idylls" the next workday (because of how I've arranged things, I've only got access, on my laptop, at work) in a new blog called We'll See, taken from an anecdote in the film Charlie Wilson's War, which was another of 2007's fine cinematic offerings, slightly unheralded, unfairly. So this week, I'll be writing a sequence of poems called "Generational Divide."

So you've been warned!

#157. Josh Brolin, Wrestling

I read Entertainment Weekly. I've read it for ten years, and maybe last year was the first time I was truly surprised by it. After two issues commemorating 2007, the oversight was complete, and not until I saw American Gangster again last night did I finally decide to voice my frustration. Josh Brolin had the best year of his career last year. I hope to god I'm not actually the only person to say this. He co-starred in four exceptional films throughout the year. Maybe some of the roles overlapped a bit (Gangster, for instance, and In te Valley of Ellah), but clearly casting directors finally discovered him. Robert Rodriguez had him in his half of Grindhouse, the first of the films to hit theaters, and his last was one of the most acclaimed movies of the year, No Country for Old Men. Take a bow, Josh, you've earned it. Here's to better years still.

***

Okay, so that was the part theoretical readers who don't like pro wrestling were safe to read. Here's the rest. Recently I bought a pair of DVDs from PPVs WWE and TNA put on in the fall, No Mercy and No Surrender respectively. Apart from the similarity in titles and staging dates, each event also put its biggest stars through incredible nights that should make the cards some of the most fabled in wrestling history. Randy Orton, having to replace an injurd John Cena at the top of the Raw brand, had to prove once and for all that he'd stepped out of the shadow of Evolution mentor Triple H, while Kurt Angle finally defined his role in TNA.

Orton had basically been sandbagged since 2004, when he was quickly put atop Raw in his first heavyweight championship reign. The backlash from it affected his career for years, and once Batista and Cena established themselves as the successors of Triple H, The Rock, Steve Austin, and Brock Lesnar, his opportunity for another try seemed like a far distant chance. So when the window opened, it was only natural that WWE quietly make it the biggest night of his career. Of course, the truth is, he still has a long way to go to reestablish the trust in his future that was so easily dashed four years ago. Just because John Cena ain't around now doesn't mean management won't want Cena right back in the title scene when he returns. This means for the first time in twenty years, Macho Man is going to have to make his stand against Hulk Hogan, a real challenge to an established authority as brand standard-bearer.

Angle, meanwhile, turned out to not be the savior of TNA as far as making it a truly viable competitor to WWE in terms of ratings. But the one thing he did and he was supposed to was finally give the company the legitimacy it had long strived for. As a competitor, Angle has what it takes to make the whole thing work, as he was made to demonstrate that night. He may even have what it takes to finally bring A.J. Styles to a level where he'll be a main event threat and true icon, rather than aspiring savant, as he has to this point.

There's always more to see in the ring.

#156. Cloak of Shrouded Men in a Bookstore

A quick update, The Cloak of Shrouded Men is now in an actual bookstore! The one I work at, Borders in Colorado Springs (Southgate Rd.), but hey, the bums at my previous Borders didn't do that!

#155. Colorado Springs, Poetry, Dead Letter Quarterly, Who Watches, Other Potential Stories

When last I wrote here, I was still in Burlington, MA.

Now, I'm not!

As it turns out, I moved to Colorado Springs at the start of last November, and after a little over two months, I may be starting to get a definite feel for the place. It's weird.

Terror of Knowing has been going strong in the meantime, with a good run of poems mostly under the banner of "Metaphysics", continuing a run from October that explores my concept of the world as it is and as I've been noting more and more. Dead Letter Quarterly, read hot at the time of my last post with submissions and other activity, has been viciously derailed by ailments to both my colleagues since November, during which NaNo was not completed by any of us. Yeah, first time in four years I can say that personally. The move completely wrecked my chances, but Who Watches, a Staged Man Chronicle (a character who appeared during Cotton's War), originally set to be a shot at publishing through my employer, Borders (deadline is January 1 for submissions), will go on. At some point. It's the Douglas Adams in me!!!

Once it's done, I'm thinking of Lulu.coming it, as DLQ is supposed to be, and Apropos: An Inquisition into the New World, a sort of anthology, will follow in like regard. I've also recently completely revolutionized an old story of mine, and once I write it, Harvest, or the Book of Eli will likely follow suit as well, unless people actually start buying my books, starting with The Cloak of Shrouded Men.

I will probably write back again soon, possibly with some fresh wrestling thoughts, and may even begin the Scouring Monk Recommends Reading feaure, which has been brewing for about half a year now.

You've been warned!

#154. Cloak of Shrouded Men Subtle Plug

I've been thinking lately, have I been talking enough about my book?

#153. Watchmen, Paperback Reader, Who Watches

I'm thinking somewhat sacriligiously: I'm reading Alan Moore's Watchmen for the first time, and have thus been thinking maybe this year's NaNo, and capper to the previous three years' will be called, or subtitled Who Watches(?).

In other news, Paperback Reader has, at least for the moment, decided it doesn't actually want me to continue writing for it. Maybe not Bart himself. But definitely the site. Weird...

#152. PWI 500 2007

So, having digested much (okay, all) of the new PWI 500, I wish the magazine could do more. I wish it came with a DVD, like music magazines and computer magazines do, with matches featuring the top ten finishers. I've never seen Mistico (#3) in action. He's the latest international sensation I know only by name and picture. Wrestling's such a funny thing, though. It's a deep enough culture that a bunch of people would be crazy enough to compile a list of the top 500 wrestlers, every year, but not lucrative enough, or whatever, to be truly represented like it should be. It's still all about the territories, with Mexico and Japan, say, losing out to most audiences, like baseball, I guess.

Anyway, Edge (#2) made it in the top ten, and Batista didn't. I'm okay with it. Edge had a wider pool of talent to contend with, having operated on both Smackdown and Raw, and was as such able to, because of his mobility, cover a lot of ground. It wasn't really that great of a year for him, at least not as compared with the same period in the last PWI 500. He just happened to surge through his last few months (during which I hated him vehemently, because he'd stolen a bunch of other wrestlers' thunder, not the least being Mr. Kennedy, who lost his Money in the Bank for no reason). Batista, meanwhile, spent the entire grading period either holding or pursuing the World championship. This sounds really good on paper, but it also means, as some have pointed out, he had a nearly unlimited number of title shots throughout that year. He was in every single Smackdown main event, from King Booker's reign to the Undertaker to Edge, even to the Great Khali. He was their only opponent. It's ironic, too, because this happened after seemingly everyone on the Smackdown roster got injured. Batista, of course, originally lost his title because of injury (as John Cena has just now done as well...if WWE is guilty of anything, it's not knowing when to take the pressure off of any one star when they could really use a break...it's how The Rock made a career, right?), and by the time he returned, Rey Misterio's reign had become Booker's, and everyone's pants had been caught around their ankles. They were in the awkward position of not actually knowing what to do with Batista. After he'd gone to rehabilitate, WWE got Kurt Angle one last championship reign, and they used it to push Misterio as well as Randy Orton, but Orton's interests were elsewhere, and so were Angle's. Smackdown ended up with Misterio as champion, with no real program, so it took the title off him and put it on another veteran who'd waited his turn so patiently, King Booker.

But Booker was never going to be champion that long. Then someone came up with the worst possible scenario for Batista as champion, and that was to pin him against a reinvigorated Undertaker (counting all the way back to his match with Angle at No Way Out just before WrestleMania 22, for WrestleMania 23. People had already seen Smackdown with champions of seemingly every orientation. Batista, when he returned, face a public that had moved on.

So between the fall of 2006 and summer of 2007, when so much had been squeezed from the brand, Batista faced the unlikely possibility of proving himself all over again, and his contenders just kept falling. Somehow he became an MVP no one quite appreciated. He took the brand on his considerable shoulders, and for that, because of his unwitting dominance of the title scene, whether as contender or champion, everything the fans had loved him for, when he'd captured, two years earlier, the top spot on the PWI 500 over Cena, they'd completely forgotten. Somehow, between the winter of 2006 and summer, everyone had started assuming, rather than becoming exactly what he would, Batista was actually nothing more than the new Goldberg, Brock Lesnar. The Goliath whose interest could be easily toppled. Goldberg, that dude spent two solid years tuned in, and then went the Warrior route when everyone started forgetting. Lesnar, he was another two year wonder. Well, Batista's on his third year, and he was the only one of the three to have an origin, a before. That's why he's better than people say, better than #13.

But that's exactly where he should be. Hey, the guy above him is Samoa Joe, whom PWI itself admits competed in last fall's most invigorating feud with Kurt Angle. For now, wrestling fans can be enamored of lightweights like Christian Cage (#7), and Bobby Lashley (#9). Those guys don't have the upside of Batista. He's older than both of them. And he's going to be making news long after them.

Angle was robbed at a mere #4. But his historic championship rush is but a precursor of the stuff he's going to continue doing for TNA. Shawn Michaels (#6), Undertaker (#5), they're worth their spots. Perro Aguayo (#8)? A somewhat familiar name, that's all. Takeshi Morishima (#10), please convince your Ring of Honor superiors to release more footage. ROH could be the new ECW, and we, the fans, really don't have the chance to say so.

Speaking of ECW, there's that new version running Tuesday nights, and everyone's saying that it has no business calling itself that. Tough cookies, folks. ECW, the original ECW, wasn't really just about the "extreme." It was about providing an outlet for stars no other promotion would use, even though they deserved it and could put together a show just as entertaining as could be found in WWF or WCW. "Extreme" was a fad, but ECW was meant for the long haul. "Extreme," as the New Jacks, the Sabus, the Tazes, the Tommy Dreamers, the Sandmans, the Justin Credibles defined it, it was about tenacity, a sheer force of will, not just the blood and the gore. It was about the blood, but it was also about the sweat, and the tears. Go back over the history and tell me I'm wrong. Go ahead and look over the talent that was discovered there, not just the names you still associate with ECW, but with those whose careers owe a huge debt to its philosophy. ECW made it safe for the next generation.

The new ECW, it's doing the same thing again. It's just that it's a WWE brand now. Smackdown may still be the place WWE grooms its upcoming talent, but probably, as always, the big stars that will inevitably make their way to Raw, the Carlitos (the flack he catches now, trust me, it's inconsequential), the Mr. Kennedys (ditto), even the John Cenas. Elija Burke is no John Cena, but he's a real talent. John Morrison is no John Cena, but he's a real talent. CM Punk? I think once the fans calm down and let ECW be what it's going to be, this brand is going to be able to exhale, be itself, and prove that it's worthy of existence. It's ECW. It's not the old ECW. But the old ECW wasn't, either.

If anything, TNA is the old ECW, a show with a not-incredible sense of creating TV shows, stars that have perhaps more heart than ring sense, and it's also the old WCW, which had such a great sense of stealing talent worth banking on.

Anyway...That's more wrestling thoughts. Sorry, nonwrestling-thoughts-interested readers.

#151. Poetry, PWI 500 Preview

What's a kind of goal for Terror of Knowing? How about making it to Silliman's Blog? Hey, Ron, we're both at blogspot!

Meanwhile, I've joined (for the poetry blog, not this one).

Oh! And the 2007 PWI 500 is now in my greedy hands. I'm going to read through some more before posting thoughts about it, but here's this much: Batista has sort of been put in a provocative ranking, and unlike the last time I would have said that (two years ago, if you want to do the research), I think I'm actually quite okay with it.

#150. Terror of Knowing, Cloak of Shrouded Men

For the past month now, I've been maintaining, on sixteen of those days, a separate blog entitled The Terror of Knowing. It's a new experiment of mine, the regular composing of poetry, spur of the moment pieces that I haven't given a lot of thought to, or written any real notes on (that's what I do for the majority of the poems I write, either as I've thought of them or as I plan them). Okay, so I just lied. Some of them I put a good deal of thought into before I sat down to write them. Others, less so. The blog, I guess, is really my attempt at having a regular forum. I've written at Scouring Monk over the past few years how I've compiled a few collections worth of poetry as I've written them. "Terror of Knowing" is an instant collection, with a few continuing themes (and partially inspired by Queen and/or David Bowie, at least in name), some political thought, but mostly my philosophy as it's grown and now featured in a certain book I've recently indy published (*cough* The Cloak of Shrouded Men).

I've purposely stayed away from the Monk since I started the poetry blog, but I'll be back again soon. PWI has a new 500 out next week, the #1 has already been revealed, and the fall TV season is upon us (missed Back to You last night!). If you have already, lose yourself in some of my nonsense...

#149.Crass Pitch for Submissions

If you're a writer, send some of your shitty work to the fine editors, Your Monk included, at Dead Letter Quarterly. I told you it was going to happen. You didn't believe me, Theoretical Reader. It happened! I'm now onboard a literary journal!

#148. No More Pen Name, Dead Letter Quarterly, Poetry

I guess I've decided to finally do away with the "pen name" (Sean McKenna) here, partly because I've actually published a book and didn't use it....

I almost turned this blog into a social advocacy forum recently, but then I remembered I'm not a Charles Buckley character, so I decided against it....

I'm starting a literary magazine with a few pals from Paperback Reader, and am crossing my fingers for the name "Dead Letter Quarterly" to convince them. I'll let you know when I do....

Did I mention I have a book? Fools! You've been able to read the story at my NaNo blogs for years! Bwahaha!....

Every time I think about poetry, I wonder why my life hasn't become completed engrossed in it. A friend whose last day at Borders is tomorrow (Borders is where I work, but you may have known that from my PBR column, The Quarter Bin) recently told me he has a poetry blog. A former college mate has a blog of his favorite poems. Sometimes I write some here, too. Mostly, I go the recluse way, because I've somehow mabaged to convince some really good poeyry buddies from another college that I'm not worth tracking....

(I remembered yesterday I actually have two collections ready to be published, if I can convince someone to. I swear no one would regret it.)