Nothing Funny About Print's Demise

Egon Spengler proclaimed print dead in the 1980s, but for the longest time the newspaper has barely hung on by a thread. Alas, my beloved Rocky Mountain News in Denver went the way of the do-do bird several years ago, unable to keep up with the instant demand for news through other outlets and the dwindling attention spans of its readership who would much rather consume news online or through 140 characters on Twitter.

It's been sad to see newspapers slowly entering retirement and watching them struggle to adapt to an online format in some shape or form to survive. Which is why it's also especially sad to hear news that the NY Post has dropped its funny pages from the publication. While there hasn't been an official confirmation, and many of the cartoonists that provide strips to the newspaper have received cryptic replies and answers according to the linked blog, it seems like the comics page was kicked to the curb rather unceremoniously.

While I'm sure that it's a dated nostalgia that kids don't really relate to much anymore, getting the newspaper out of mom and dad's hands meant being able to go straight to the funny pages for a laugh or two (many of them over our young six-year old heads but at least they looked funny). The funny pages introduced us to the Peanuts characters and Garfield in our youth, were most likely to blame for the massive amount of paperback Garfield collections that we forced our parents to purchase at every book fair, and when our tastes got a little more sophisticated took us to the Far Side.

What will the future hold for newspaper strip comics (and the creative teams behind them)? Will the format strictly become the webcomic strip? Or will the format be able to adapt and evolve to be consumed in a way that modern audiences will be able to access them? I sure hope so. The four panel strip is highly underrated and incredibly influencing to developing the humor and artistic tastes of all ages. No matter how cynical of a world we currently inhabit.

ABC Renews Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Picks Up Agent Carter

According to the official Marvel site, and confirmed by show runners, cast and crew via Twitter, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been renewed for a second season. Along side the show is the oft-discussed but never confirmed Agent Carter series, which has been ordered straight to a season order (skipping the formality of filming a pilot and running through the trials that many shows often have to endure).

Obviously this is great news for Marvel fans and fans of great genre television as it means not one but two more shows to look forward to this fall revolving around the extraordinary. For those that might have fallen off the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. train early in the season, I would really encourage you to go back and give it another try, especially in this post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier arc that the show is currently exploring.

For more information including casting as well as how many episodes to expect and when, I would expect ABC's upfronts presentation to reveal (at least some) answers. Stay tuned!

NFL Draft: A First Round Review

The first round of the NFL Draft was yesterday, and for many a football fan with it brings the promise of greatness (or something exciting to wash away the bitter tears from the previous season). Did Johnny Football expect to be moving to Cleveland, I wonder? Anyway, here's guest-writer Tony Garcia with more observations...

Finally. It's over. After months of debate and prognosticating, the NFL Draft is over! Wait… what's that? There's six more rounds? That can't be right. What the hell was I just watching for the past 4 hours?

I kid, I kid. I enjoyed every moment of it. The first round of the draft is in the books and I need a cigarette. Was it good for you?

This has to have been the most hyped draft that I can remember. Partly because of the timing of the darn thing. The draft was moved back a couple weeks this year which led to an overhyping and an already hyped event. I say overhyped like I hate it. I don't. I love it. I watched every minute of it. Like I said in my previous blog, the NFL is king and they are going to flex their muscles tonight. The draft will dominate ratings, talk shows, Twitter, Facebook and the 24 hour news cycle. But we already know that. 

Another reason it was ultra hyped was the cast of characters. Two guys come to mind right off the top of my head that made the draft what it was. Those two guys are Jadeveon Clowney and Johnny Manziel. Sure, there are guys that are going to probably be bigger impact players than Clowney and Manziel but those guys were the stars of the show tonight. Clowney is said to be a generational talent. Guys like him don't come around too often. Manziel on the other hand has already been in the spotlight for a couple years. He was a college superstar and we'll see if his talents will translate to the pro game. He's also been known to throw down a few brewskis every now and then. Mostly on days ending in "Y". His name is Johnny Football and he's here to party. 

I never know what to expect on these draft nights as far as draft order goes. I'm not much of a mock draft guy. Meaning I don't put together my own mock draft and try to outsmart the smart guys like Mel Kiper Jr. and his perfect head of hair. His hair intimidates me. It's like staring into an eclipse. You know you shouldn't look, but you still do anyway. 

But after one round I have a few notes on the things I witnessed tonight:

- John Gruden loves Johnny Manziel and probably went through a years supply of Vaseline going over his game tape. 

- JJ Watt and Jadeveon Clowney should be pretty fun to watch if you ask me. 

- Three phrases can pretty much sum up the entire evening: "Giant hands", "Penetration" and "Ball skills". 

- My beloved Bears didn't pick any of the top 5 guys I had on my list. This could be a good thing. 

- Not as many trades this year as in years past. 

- Who the hell names their child Ha Ha? Seriously, that's a name? If I'm every scoreboard operator I'm cueing up Nelson from The Simpsons classic "Haha" for every time that dude makes a mistake. Good player, bad name. 

- The Packers and Jets, two teams I strongly dislike, got two players I'd want on my team (Calvin Pryor and Ha Ha Clinton-Dix).

- The Lions did it again, drafting a guy they could've probably traded down and gotten later in the first round. I love ripping the Lions so maybe there's nothing they could've done that I would've applauded. LOLions.

- Cleveland's bar district single-handedly became one of America's most booming bar areas. I mean that in a literal sense. Johnny Manziel will be doing many 12oz curls and will turn that place into another Vegas strip.

- Chris Berman needs to hang it up. I think I've been saying that for about 10 years now but the guy just won't quit. He may have been clever in the 90s but his brand of comedy died years ago. He reminds me of that guy in your group of friends that just doesn't know when it's time to call it a night. 

- Whenever the Jets fans chant "J-E-T-S, Jets! Jets! Jets!", I chant "S-U-C-K, Suck! Suck! Suck!"

- My favorite part is always seeing the emotion that some of these kids display. As an athlete growing up, I always imagined what it would be like to be drafted to any team. I can't imagine that feeling. 

That's all I've got for now. I'll be paying close attention over these next few days to what's going on with days two and three of the draft. It's always fun to see your favorite team start building what could be a Super Bowl winning team. GMs make and break their careers on these days. Once the draft is over all of the experts will start handing out their grades. The reality is we won't know how these draft classes turn out for another 2-3 years at least. All we can do is sit down and watch it all unfold. I'd like to say I can't wait for football to start back up again, but after a brutal Chicago winter I'm ready to enjoy summer. Football signals the end of summer and I'm just not ready for that yet. At least not while the Blackhawks are still alive and well in the hunt for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

IDW Ghostbusters On-Going (Volume 2) Issue 15 Review

Longtime SPT friend and contributor Fritz Baugh is back with his reviews of IDW's amazing on-going Ghostbusters series. The issue continues the series' Mass Hysteria event and features a few familiar faces that haven't yet appeared in the IDW Comics! Spoilers are abound below, so consider yourself warned!

Troy's graciously allowed me to continue, on the new SPT blog, the snarky reviews of IDW's Ghostbusters comics which I used to post on the SPT message board. While the SPT board is now no more, I also cross post them at my own web site: you can see the reviews of previous issues here.

With that out of the way, on to the current issue!

Fritz Babbles About Ghostbusters #31 (V2#15)

I had a real decision when buying this issue. Which cover to buy? I hated both of them. Not the fault of the artists--just the subject matter. I leaned toward the Tristan Jones one because it was the RGB version, but then again, it also had the subject matter trying (and failing, as he almost always does) to look heroic or competent or something.

Ah well... I know Louis Tully is a popular character and lots of people are excited about his IDW debut. I'm just not one of them. This does not have anything to do with Rick Moranis, a very talented and funny actor who was great in the first movie and in other films like Spaceballs. The blame for my disdain lies solely, as many know, with Ghostbusters II: after funny and effective use of the character in the courtroom scene, they made the mistake of keeping him around. I understand the reasons from a purely real-world standpoint: Moranis was a rather hot item in 1989, as well as good friends with Harold Ramis from the Second City days, so it didn't make much sense (to them) to just have him in the courtroom scene then go away. But look at the awful stuff they came up with to "justify" having Louis in the rest of the movie: a bunch of dumb Slimer scenes that even they didn't even think were good enough for the final cut of the movie, and the complete assassination of Janine's character compared to the way she was written and portrayed in the first movie. She was basically dumbed down to make the sleazy Janine/Louis work (and even then, it didn't). Worst of all, in a comedy movie, the scenes just weren't funny. They were more squicky and uncomfortable. (Editor Troy's Note: To be Fritzy's devils advocate, I happen to find the Janine/Louis scenes in the second film one of the highlights of the movie. The two acting like hormone-charged teenagers on a babysitting gig tickles me every time.)

But enough of that rant that most of the posters on the Ghostbusters boards have heard before.

Spoilers Ahead, as usual:

We start this issue a few days earlier at LaGuardia Airport, as Louis arrives in New York from Ocala, Florida, meaning that after Egon threatened to send him to the Netherworld (or that's what I like to imagine what happened to get him to go away) he moved closer to his mother. He's met at the airport by his cousin Sherm, a podiatrist who looks suspiciously like Eugene Levy. Well, not a coincidence--as the more dedicated Ghostheads are well aware, Levy was, indeed, originally slated to play Sherman Tully in Ghostbusters II (GB2), but his scenes were cut. You can see a version of what might have been at the fansite GBFans, where the GB2 comic adaptation was posted; on the one hand, it was another instance of GB2's insistence on aggressively repeating the same beats as the original film (by having Mayor Lenny demand the Ghostbusters' release instead of Sherman writing it at Louis's prompting), and Levy is awesome; but on the other hand, with all the out-of-nowhere stuff Louis was at the center of in that movie already, it's probably the wiser decision to not truck in yet another instance.

Turns out this scene takes place about the same time Winston and Tiyah are getting hitched--we see the rain of blood from Louis and Sherm's point of view as the drive from the airport. Sherm doesn't seem fazed--after finding your son masturbating with an apple pie, nothing is gonna shock you anymore.

We return to the "present", as Dana tries to escape her now bricked-up apartment. It...doesn't work, and she's soon under Tiamat's spell. "One down, one to go" the Queen of Chaos says cryptically. Gosh, what could she possibly mean by that? Maybe connected to a past incident involving Gozer, Dana, and a character who just happened to show up this issue?

The scene shifts to Ray's Occult, where Mel, Kylie, and Eduardo are comparing notes and researching Tiamat and Gozer's history--we see the five-headed dragon version of Tiamat from "I Am The City" and Gozer, in an infrequent callback to pre-Burnham/Schoening IDW stories, in the form of a giant slug thing like the Ghost of Christmas Future's vision in "Past, Present, Future"--and Eduardo states that maybe it's time to, despite Dana's desires and Janine's orders, bring Ray at least in on this. This really annoys Kylie, because she agrees with him, and agreeing with Eddie really annoys her (their Unresolved Sexual Tension at work). So she takes it out on his deck of cards instead.

Helen Schreck of ABS News is updating us on the rain of blood as we switch to Bob's Country Bunker, where Louis is trying to get drunk on 7-Up and wondering why it's not working. A rather strikingly good looking blonde woman saunters in and starts hitting on him, which hasn't happened to him since back in the Keymaster Cologne days. But unlike most of the women who pick him up in bars, it doesn't take until the next morning for her face to sprout scales. No, he hasn't wandered into another V reboot by mistake--it's Tiamat. After Louis faints, she drags him out of there; the other bar patrons don't do anything, because hey, it's a bar--they see stuff just like this all the time. 

Back at Ghostbusters Central, Venkman and Wally are having another one of their fights. Janine is on another call when the phone rings, and against Wally's wishes Venkman answers it. 

It's a voice saying two words: "Peter... help..."

You know all those times in IDW's stories where Egon is just not giving a shit about what anybody is trying to tell him or get him to do until Janine either gets in trouble or starts yelling at him about it? Yeah, this is like that. On steroids. Without a word--which, as Wally quickly points out, is completely uncharacteristic--Venkman vaults out of his office, runs to the all-new ECTO-5 motorcycle, and burns rubber out of the firehouse like a bat out of hell.

Any guesses who and where?

Yep. Venkman skids to a stop at the Upper West Side, and Dana's apartment. So he does know where she lives and that she's still in New York. We know Dana's already possessed, so he's clearly been lured here; the rest of the Ghostbusters, original and New (even Ron "Jake Kong" Alexander) arrive. Venkman's mad because nobody told him Dana was in trouble again; Janine tells him that was at Dana's insistence so piss off. Just about then, Janine hears a voice from her darkest romantic chapter, filtered through photonegative Gothic font.

Dana and Louis dangle like puppets from the building. "Tiamat will see you now"

Holy cow. And the story's not even halfway over, kiddies!

See you next month!