Apologies for the tardiness of this Dispatch; it’s been a busy month. Hope May has found you all healthy and happy and not suffering with allergy-related sinus headaches like yr humble scribe.
Comics… First up, I wish I could recall now where I saw the post or image or whatever I saw that piqued my interest in this series…well, I think it’s an ongoing series anyway; that said, the five issues I read as part of a trade paperback collection were published in 2022, is called Hit Me by scripter Christa Faust (to my surprise, I found I was following her on social media and for the life of me I can’t remember why) and new-to-me artist Priscilla Petraites, and while it has “please make me into a streaming service adult action thriller” written all over it, it has a lot more going for it than the usual extended storyboard pitch we see a lot of in comics these days. Basically, a sex worker whose specialty is taking a beating- she’s shown as very fit and in shape, works out with a good friend who wants to be more but… anyway, she can give as good as get- gets mixed up in a diamond heist gone bad and has to go on the run from those who want their stones back on both sides, kinda After Hours-ish if you’ve seen that movie. Ms. Faust knows whereof she writes, as I see it anyway, with a gratifyingly positive look at sex work and a nice dialogue writing style, concise and naturalistic. Ms. Petraites’ work is mostly up to the task; she’s asked to depict a wide variety of scenarios, sexual and otherwise, and does so clearly. There is, of course, the whole “done on a tablet” look of it though, which doesn’t bother most people but I suppose it stands out to me because I’m an old fart and pay me no nevermind. The trade paperback is out now; if what I’ve written piques your interest, I hope you check it out.
I have read a literal shit ton of comics in the interval between these posts; in fact, I may just have to devote a whole post to them later on. Fortunately, most weren’t literal shit. For example, I liked one Dark Horse series titled Minor Threats; it’s yet another entry in the “let’s create a bunch of new characters with powers based on familiar superhero tropes that suggest but don’t actually come out and say we’re imitating the Joker or whatever” comics series we’ve been given for at least 30 years now (The Boys comes to mind, but I’m sure it dates back even further. The Wild Cards series of novels, perhaps?), and it’s co-created or co-written or something by Patton Oswalt, the Court Jester of Celeb Comics Admirers and See? Successful People Like Comics Too!, of which there are many members. Someone named Jordan Blum (came to find out he and Oswalt were the showrunners on that godawful M.O.D.O.K. show from a year or two ago…) is most likely the actual scripter of the thing, and all this said, the characters are mostly likable, especially focus character “Playtime”, who was the kid sidekick of her mother “Toy Queen”, and the dialogue/plot flows smoothly from one issue to the next. Said plot? The Joker anagram “The Stickman” has killed the Batman analog “The Insomniac” (har har)'s sidekick, “Kid Dusk” and the Supes, especially the Insomniac, are making life miserable for the lower-shelf superhero community (i.e. “beating hell out of”) as they search for them. Playtime, who is an adult now and just tends bar, wants no part of the superhero life, winds up organizing a motley crew of c-list bad guys and they try to find the Stickman before the Supes do and put a stop to his rampage. Honestly, it kinda progresses the way you think it will, but the heel-turn character surprised me, the characters are mostly clever in execution, no pun intended, and the art by Scott Hepburn with Ian Herring on color has a nice appealing John McCrea on Hitman look to it. I found it a good read to kill an evening, you might too if you still have patience left for this sort of thing.
Musically…
On May 1, 1976, but the newly-born Alan Parsons Project- you remember them, don’t you?- released their debut album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe. On my Facebook page, I have often indulged myself in writing long-winded reminisces about certain albums from my misbegotten teenage years, and I did one for that record. I’ll re-present it here for your presumed edification.
I suppose I'm getting old, well, no "suppose" to it... and my memory is getting less sharp these days because while I've known this record since its 1976 release, and have had it on multiple media, I don't recall where and when I got my copy, or even when I first heard it. I think it was around Halloween of 1976 because I always associate the music here with that holiday for some reason. It's entirely possible I borrowed someone's copy but outside of Terry Boeckmann or maybe Dwayne Gardner, I can't imagine who among my peers would have had a copy before me. I seem to recall hearing "The Raven" on Bowling Green radio station D93, between that and reading about it in Creem and elsewhere, I was motivated to get the 8 track. One thing I've never owned, though, is a copy of this on vinyl; why, I have no clue and to be honest I wouldn't mind picking it up if I run across it whilst crate diving someday.
Anyway, the APP certainly became a radio annoyance eventually (even though, as with so many things, the warm tint of nostalgia has led me to appreciate the likes of "Eye in the Sky", "I Wouldn't Wanna Be Like You", and the sadly beautiful "Time") but you wouldn't have known it from this proggish presumed one-off from a well known studio engineer (Floyd, Beatles, etc.) Alan Parsons and a bunch of who-deys (save arranger Andrew Powell, who worked with a ton of folks including Kate Bush eventually), looking to do musical interpretations of Poe songs. Out of this unlikely scenario rose a very interesting record; ambitious orchestral pieces sit side by side with progpop tracks, and it all does hang together quite well. Of course, and bear in mind I'm not really a discriminating sound kinda guy, but the whole thing sounds very sonically impressive. Wish I had a true audiophile stereo rig to listen to this on. Anyway.
Love the funky vocoder-enhanced rocker "The Raven", yep, "nevermore", which gets repeated a lot; "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether", a rather obscure Poe short story that I once went out and read because of its inclusion here. It's also quite funky-rockish, though not exactly in a George Clinton way. Especially adore the album closer "To One in Paradise", which of course features strings and children’s choir so of course I think it’s just drop-dead gorgeous. Not quite as impressed with the rest; "Tell-Tale Heart" has a gallumphing arrangement with frenzied vocals by Arthur Brown, he of the Crazy World of... fame, but it has never really grabbed me. "Cask of Amontillado" has a touching lyric and gentle, orchestral arrangement- it does evoke pity for the poor fellow who got bricked up in the wall- but it's never called me back like the other tracks have. The grand opus they attempt to make out of "House of Usher" never really coheres and my attention wanders; I often skip it to get to "Paradise", so to speak.
So, to sum up, another album fondly remembered from my adolescence, even though the details of how I came to this music have become fuzzy. Oh well, like some forgotten sage once sang: "Na na na na na let's live for today".
Listen to the Alan Parson Project’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe on the streaming service of your choice.
OK, gonna wind this up now, I just wanted to get this out there. Hopefully it won’t take me as long to do the next one, and remember, it’s all still free as can be!
Take care, and take care of each other.