Why not try dissecting Marc Silvestri for a change?

-Was this post, in which Kevin Church recounts his struggles with a fellow named Steve Ebbing, really necessary? There's no doubt that this Ebbing dude is kind of sort of really obsessed --he's materialized in the comments here practically every time I've mentioned Church. But every time Ebbing has left a comment, Church has felt compelled to leave a rebuttal. It's almost like he's rewarding him with attention.

Look, this guy isn't even a good troll. It's "UR a ghey homo LOL!!!1" type comments, or vague "u suk" stuff. Church and his defender-commenters have made it abundantly clear that he's heterosexual, so why would he be bugged by this stuff? I mean, maybe Ebbing has crossed the line into outright stalking by invading Church's personal life. If so, that's clearly a matter for the police. If not, I think the old axiom "don't feed the trolls" is appropriate here if Church wants the harassment to stop. As it stands, to an outsider lacking any strong feelings re: Church, the whole thing reads more like a rallying cry to his fans than a denunciation of Ebbing. In fact, I think the latter, regardless of the author's intentions, automatically becomes the former.

(BTW, Mr. Church, I can't help but notice you still haven't responded to my offer to moderate your board. Since nobody's talking about said board in any blogs I read, I have to assume that it lacks excitement and intrigue. I can deliver these things, and in a far more sophisticated and genteel manner than Mr. Ebbing. However, your hesitance to respond has forced me to increase the asking price. In addition to an MMA sub-forum (which I will moderate exclusively, and which will only be accessible to those whom I deem fit), I also will need a vegetarian cooking sub-forum. I'll be a bit more lenient here--anyone can post in this forum so long as they acknowledge my moral superiority as a vegetarian. Again, this offer will not be on the table forever. Let me know ASAP.)

-From Chris Mautner's brief obituary for Johnny Hart:

"Hart was part of a generation of cartoonists that included folks Charles Schulz, Mort Walker, Hank Ketcham who, in the 1950s, signaled a movement away from adventure strips like 'Terry and the Pirates' or soap-oprea works like 'Mary Worth,' and more on witty, gag-based strips drawn in a minimal, iconic style."

Wow, I know it's not Mr. Mautner's intention, but that's like the most concisely damning indictment of Schulz I've ever read.

-My grandmother had (possibly still has) this cake pan. As is probably evident from the picture, it was a single mold with two different sets of plastic parts which were laid on top of the cake. In other words, Grandma would bake the cake, frost it either in Batman or Superman colors (always the former if it was my birthday), and then place the appropriate hero's face and insignia on the frosted cake. She also had similar Scooby-Doo and Cookie Monster molds. Man, I do a lot of cooking, but I've never even attempted to bake a cake, much less apply frosting in multiple colors. Is cake-baking a dying domestic art, or am I just lazy? Or both?

-Via Graeme McMillan, chumps mock Rob Liefeld. FOR 15 PAGES (SO FAR). Really now, attacking Liefeld has been done to death. It's been 15 YEARS since R. Fiore established the model for ragging on Liefeld, and nobody's improved upon it since then. In fact, these message board denizens (and the occasional lazy blogger) are to Fiore what Liefeld is to George Perez. Think about it.

-Joe Rice refuses to dismiss the chances of John August writing a good screenplay for Shazam, but he does slam his list of "good" Captain Marvel comics. As well he should, I might add. But what I noticed was this:

"DC publishes hardcover anthologies that gather up decades’ worth of Captain Marvel comics. If I were writing a dissertation on the evolution of the Captain Marvel character, these would be invaluable. But I’m not. So every time I read one of these, I’m struck with the same realization I encounter trying to watch The Honeymooners or a black-and-white movie: Wow. Old things suck.

Yes, I know that will piss off the vintage comics fans, who insist that the original incarnations are the purest forms of a character. But what you quickly realize is that old-time comic books were awkwardly written, crudely drawn, and bewilderingly inconsistent with their rules. They were making up the art form as they went along, and today’s comic books are better for the accumulated wisdom."

That settles it. This guy is a hack, and probably not a very smart one. Like Mr. Rice, I don't have any particular attachment to the Shazam family of characters--I've always thought their semi-self-contained mythos was kind of neat, but nothing more than that. But Christ, if you're pushing 40 and prefer Winick and Johns to the original comics, you probably are the right man to write those Charlie's Angels movies. Really though, I strongly suspect that August has never actually read any of the archival Captain Marvel collections.

-More stuff later today, probably.