and the final one:
At the risk of falling into a pit of my own hard-won cynicism and cold-blooded marketing analysis so soon after the holidays, I will temporarily keep my mouth shut and invoke the following:
It's never really good when they can Google "Your Name + Hitler" and come up with several pages worth of hits.
I don't feel that Will Smith meant to say that the Nazi dictator was Awesome with an A, but when you're doing a press junket for a so-so I Am Legend remake during Christmas time, there's no need to get into strained metaphors utilizing genocidal maniacs. I don't want a history lesson from Smith, Brad Pitt, or even Sean Penn. Well, maybe one from Ellen DeGeneres, because she's so damn pleasant.
Did you know that Cathy Lee Crosby of That's Incredible fame was the original TV Wonder Woman? I was trying to forget this, personally.
Over at Digital Femme, Cheryl points out that Misty Knight has lost her trademark Afro:
I liked the fact that Misty was a character who was secure enough and loved herself enough that she wasn't going to dump a vat of caustic lye on her head or risk scarring herself with hot metal in order to look acceptable.This reminds me of when I was twelve and sitting next to an African-American girl at the beauty parlor. She was having her hair straightened, and I was having a perm. Why can't females be loved for who they truly are, dammit?! See, now I'm going to be cranky all day.
Incidentally, when I saw the title of another Cheryl post, "Yo, OS Heads!", I really didn't click the link thinking it was about me.
Really. I'm not that egotistical.
Really.
Fast on the heels of the "Fatgate" controversy, Jennifer Love Hewitt feeds the homeless in a heavily-covered media event. Is this her (or her publicist's) way of symbolically saying, "I don't stuff my face, I stuff the face of others?"
UH-OH!!!! MY CYNICISM IS COMING BACK! QUICK:
Kids, if you don't like the way your current comic books are written, remember:
See, here is where I think DC marketing is brilliant. By currently producing some lackluster titles now, consumers are forced to turn to where the money *really* is -- in the backlist. Monthly copies at your comic shop are mere pennies to a big corporation, whereas Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon.com net the big cash -- and with mainstream audiences, too.
Of course, in several years when the amount of trade-paperback worthy new material dwindles, there may be a little gap in quality backlist. But there will still be plenty of readers who haven't been introduced to Watchmen, Kingdom Come, and Batman tales from the 1940s.
And let's face it, all the mainstream companies are putting out expensive collected editions of stuff whether the sales or quality warrants it or not. It's standard now to, in many cases, plan the collected edition at the same time the original is being produced. If it has a gorgeous cover, beautiful binding, and shrinkwrap it MUST be worth that $25 or $30 or $50, right?
And where will DC's next ground-breaking works of art like Watchmen, Dark Knight, Kingdom Come, Batman Year One, Starman, or V for Vendetta come from? And does it really matter?
And now: THE KINKS!
