Went to the comic book store this weekend, bought some stuff. Artist Marcos Martin’s work on Daredevil #5 (Marvel Comics) – his first full issue in what I hope will be a long, classic run – was a delight. The final issue of writer Jonathan Hickman’s fighter pilots of the future/father vs. son/time travel saga The Red Wing (Image Comics) was trippy and touching; seek out the trade when all four issues (superbly rendered by artist Nick Pitarra and colorist Rachelle Rosenberg) are collected. I wish I was equally affected by Hickman’s current work on FF (Marvel), the much-hyped new formulation of the Fantastic Four, with Spider-Man replacing the recently-extinguished (i.e., “killed”) Human Torch. I’ve been disappointed by the inconsistent art and focus on peripheral players like The Inhumans and the Kree. More needs to be done to make Spidey feel more essential to this book. To borrow a phrase from a departed friend: Flame on, dammit! (BTW: Was the new issue really the climax of the “Four Cities” saga as has been advertised? Didn’t play that way to me.) READ FULL STORY »
Archive: October 2011 (1-10 of 50)
Snooki's new book: I read it so you don't have to!
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi took advantage of her Jersey Shore fame by publishing a novel earlier this year. Now, she’s back on the book shelves again with her follow-up, Confessions of a Guidette. It’s part memoir/part guide on, you know, how to be your very own guidette. For example: Your hair should make you six inches taller…. (How do you think I get on roller coasters? That, and wedges.)” And my personal favorite, a guidette must own hoop earrings. “And they have to be big enough to fit a Red Bull through.” The more you know, people. I read Confessions of a Guidette so you don’t have to, and here are the friggin highlights: READ FULL STORY »
Chuck Eddy's 'Rock and Roll Always Forgets': 25 years of unique pop-music writing
I admit it: It took me a good 10 years to “get” Chuck Eddy. Reading his early pieces, mostly in The Village Voice, where music editor and ultra-talent-scout Robert Christgau showcased Eddy’s idiosyncratic ardencies (Montgomery Gentry? White Wizzard?) and a prose style that was conversational if your idea of conversation was being hectored by a good-natured obsessive, I was stumped. Eddy defeated my pride in being able to ignore the taste of a critic as long as he or she wrote well. His aesthetic seemed random, if not willfully, showily perverse.
But eventually – through sheer quality; through sheer quantity (as a once and future freelancer myself, I admire a man who churns out well-wrought sentences by the ream) – Eddy won me over. How glad I am to see the publication of Eddy’s new song(s) of himself Rock and Roll Always Forgets: A Quarter Century of Music Criticism (Duke University Press). Glad, first, because it’s truly a representative selection, tracing the slithery paths of Eddy’s enthusiasms from Marilyn Manson to Mindy McCready just to stick with the “M”s, with tart new intros that set up reprints of some of his greatest hits. And glad, second, that there exist publishers still willing to release anthologies of rock writing, since so much great rock criticism remains uncollected, neglected, less forgotten than never known to a wider audience. (Can we get a Tom Smucker book together, please? I’ll edit the damn thing myself.) READ FULL STORY »
'Elephant and Piggie' author Mo Willems on his latest best-seller and his new Pigeon app -- VIDEO
Image Credit: Marty Umans
Cartoonist Mo Willems likes to say he doesn’t write books — he makes them. And children and parents who’ve enjoyed his numerous award-winning stories — Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, Knuffle Bunny, Elephant and Piggie, Leonardo the Terrible Monster, Cat the Cat — understand the distinction. His simply-drawn but complex characters leap off the page, and their comical adventures have a rhythm that makes reading them a fun group activity. “If you really love your kids,” he jokes, “every time you read a book [of mine] it should be a new copy.” That might just be his secret: His most recent book, Elephant and Piggie’s Happy Pig Day! is currently a New York Times best-seller. The author chatted with EW about his most pliable characters — the sensitive pachyderm and the irrepressible swine — and discussed his first app, Don’t Let the Pigeon Run This App, which becomes available today.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: My wife and I have read all your books to our two children, including your Knuffle Bunny series, and I’ll just throw it out there, we’re a nuffle family, not a k-nuffle family.
MO WILLEMS: It’s all fine. I don’t really care much. The knuffle/nuffle thing became so brother against brother and it split up families. So if you’ve figured out a way to make that work, I’m all good.
A knuffle kerfuffle.
Right, when people ask me how to pronounce it, I often say, “It depends on how you pronounce it.” READ FULL STORY »
Superman gets picketed! Sneak peak at 'Action Comics' #3 -- EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW
Many superhero fans rolled their eyes when DC Comics announced it was going to give Superman a youth culture makeover — edgier attitude; blue jeans instead of tights — in order to make the icon more relevant. But with writer Grant Morrison at the helm, Action Comics has emerged as one of the best books in the publisher’s ‘New 52′ line.
The third issue — which hits comic book stores on November 2 — shows what happens when the citizens of Metropolis get fed up with their self-appointed protector. (#OccupyMetropolis!) And as this exclusive preview shows, the story also offers a sense of what life was like on Post-Flashpoint Krypton. The art team: Rags Morales, Brent Anderson, Rick Bryant.
CLICK HERE FOR THE EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW
Twitter: @EWDocJensen
Read more:
Sneak peek at DC’s #2 visually stunning ‘Batwoman’ — EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW
Sneak peek at DC’s #2 ‘Batgirl’ — EXCLUSIVE
Reviews: ‘Batman,’ ‘Uncanny X-Men,’ the outstanding graphic novel ‘Daybreak’
Casey Anthony book: Publishers aren't biting
Image Credit: Joe Burbank, Pool/AP Images
Back when EW asked book publishing insiders if they’d be interested in an Amanda Knox book, the answer was an unmistakable, resounding “Yes.” One prominent editor told us, “People vote at the bookstore when it comes to any big case. You need to ask, ‘Where is the court of public opinion on this?’ That’s who’s going to buy the account.” While in publishers’ eyes Knox is golden, the opposite can be said for Casey Anthony, the Florida mom acquitted of murdering her daughter Caylee. It’s safe to say that the court of public opinion finds Anthony guilty, and readers are, for obvious reasons, loath to hand money over for her book. TMZ called around to publishers yesterday and today, and here are some of the statements they received from the big houses: READ FULL STORY »
Darrell Hammond's new memoir reveals he did crack, cut himself, and abused alcohol
Image Credit: Fernando Leon/FilmMagic.com
On the back jacket of his new memoir, Darrell Hammond, one of Saturday Night Live‘s best political impersonators, writes: “I have to give the SNL crew props — it cannot have been easy to work with me. Over the years, the medication I was on included: Depacote, Lamictal, Zyprexa, Abilify, Zoloft, Ativan, Triavil, and Klonopin. I was drinking, doing coke, cutting myself in my dressing room. I was repeatedly shipped off to rehab or a psychiatric unit, and once taken out of the SNL offices in a straightjacket. But somehow, perhaps because I’m my father’s son after all, I was able to soldier on and perform. That is, until I wasn’t.”
It turns out the days of famously self-destructive SNL performers aren’t far in the past. In God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked, out Nov. 8, Hammond recalls some of his most detrimental behavior, and the tumultuous childhood he was trying to forget. The New York Post highlighted some of the most shocking revelations from the book: READ FULL STORY »
Michelle Obama book: cover art revealed!
The cover of First Lady Michelle Obama’s book was revealed this morning on iVillage, featuring a fantastic-looking Obama holding a basket of vegetables in front of that famed White House garden. American Grown: How the White House Kitchen Garden Inspires Families, Schools and Communities, due out on April 10, will be about the First Lady’s passion project: healthy food for everyone.
Read more:
What’s on your workout playlist? For Michele Obama, it’s a whole lot of Beyonce
Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates and others remember Apple legend Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs’ food weirdnesses: Fasts, living on apples or carrots for weeks on end, fruit smoothie diets
Steve Jobs' food weirdnesses: Fasts, living on apples or carrots for weeks on end, fruit smoothie diets
Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Some of the most fascinating tidbits in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs bio are about the Apple founder’s bizarre eating habits:
Carrot and apple fasts
Jobs was affected by the book Diet for a Small Planet in college: “That’s when I pretty much swore off meat for good.” But Isaacson notes, “But the book also reinforced his tendency to embrace extreme diets, which included purges, fasts, or eating only one or two food, such as carrots or apples, for weeks on end.” A friend told Jobs, “There is a story about Steve turning orange from eating so many carrots, and there is some truth to that.” As Jobs says, “Friends remember him having, at times, a sunset-like orange hue.”
Eating nothing but fruit, and shunning deodorant, in 1977
“Steve was adamant that he bathed once a week, and that was adequate as long he was eating a fruitarian diet,” Mike Scott told Isaacson.
His diet during the early years at Apple: spitting out soup that contained butter
Jobs daughter Lisa “watched him spit out a mouthful of soup one day after learning that it contained butter….Even at a young age Lisa began to realize his diet obsessions reflected a life philosophy, one in which asceticism and minimalism could heighten subsequent sensations. ‘He believed that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from restraint,’ she noted.”
More fasting, cleansing, and restrictive diets as he grew older
“He would spend weeks eating the same thing—carrot salad with lemon, or just apples—and then suddenly spurn that food and declare that he had stopped eating it. He would go on fasts, just as he did as a teenager, and he became sanctimonious as he lectured others at the table on the virtues of whatever regimen he was following.” READ FULL STORY »
Steve Jobs: Famous folks he met and what he thought about them
Image Credit: David Paul Morris/Getty Images
Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Steve Jobs is full of the late Apple visionary’s tart assessments of people he met over the years:
Mick Jagger
“I think he was on drugs. Either that or he’s brain damaged.”
Barack Obama
“I’m disappointed in Obama. He’s having trouble leading because he’s reluctant to offend people or piss them off. Yes, that’s not a problem I ever had.”
John Mayer
“John Mayer is one of the best guitar players who’s ever lived, and I’m afraid he’s just blowing it big time….I think he’s a really good kid underneath, but he’s just been out of control.”
The Beatles
“If the vault was on fire and I could grab only one set of master tapes, I would grab the Beatles.”
Bob Dylan
“He’s one of my all-time heroes. My love for him has grown over the years, it’s ripened. I can’t figure out how he he did it when he was so young.”
Image Credit: Albert Watson Yo-Yo Ma
When Jobs was ill, Yo Yo Ma came to visit, bringing his 1733 Stradivarius cello and performing a concert in the Jobs’ living room. Jobs, who had been moved to tears by the music, told him, “Your playing is the best argument I’ve ever heard for the existence of God, because I don’t really believe a human alone can do this.” He made Ma promise to play at his funeral.
Joan Baez
He had a long relationship with the singer: “I thought I was in love with her, but I really just liked her a lot. We weren’t destined to be together. I wanted kids, and she didn’t want any more.”
Bill Clinton
When the president asked his advice in the Monica Lewinsky affair, Jobs told him, “I don’t know if you did it, but if so, you’ve got to tell the country.”
Yoko Ono
“I can see why John fell in love with her.”
Jeffrey Katzenberg
“When Jeffrey was still running Disney animation, we pitched him on A Bug’s Life. In sixty years of animation, no one had thought of doing an animated movie about insects, until Lasseter. It was one of his brilliant creative sparks. And Jeffrey left and went to DreamWorks and all of a sudden he had this idea for an animated movie about — Oh! — insects And he pretended he’d never heard the pitch. He lied. He lied through his teeth.”
MORE STEVE JOBS BIOGRAPHY:
‘Steve Jobs’ by Walter Isaacson: EW Review
Steve Jobs’ food weirdnesses: Fasts, living on apples or carrots for weeks on end, fruit smoothie diets
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