Life Moves Pretty Fast

Remember when we were kids in the 80s and we saw all the big media news reports about the anniversary of the Summer of Love, and the Rolling Stones and The Who did beer company supported reunion tours, and DC Comics was releasing comics of The Prisoner and the British version of The Avengers? And we kicked the dust with our untied hightops, pulled a Marlboro out of out $1.50 packs and lit it indoors, smoothed out our Steve Dallas t-shirts and cursed the Goddamned Baby Boomers for hijacking our popular culture with their filthy, stinking, corporately-sponsored nostalgia?

That was the 80s. It is now 2012. And we of Generation X have finally met the enemy. And it is us. The video after the jump indisputably proves it.

Taking The Bullet: Secret Avengers #21.1 Review

In the world of stand-up comedy, one of the biggest nightmares you can have as a comic is for a legend of the medium to show up unannounced to do a guest spot. Entertaining people on your own merits is hard enough without suddenly discovering that one of the best in the business has shown up… and now you have to follow them. It leads some acts to tweak around their own styles to better match the person they have to go up after. It can fuck your own rythyms and take you off your game.

In Secret Avengers #21.1, writer Rick Remender is taking over from Warren Ellis’s title-redefining four-issue run. And while it’s too early to really tell, it feels like Remender might have fallen into that old comedy trap.

Please don’t misunderstand me; this is not a bad book. And it doesn’t feel like any kind of slavish imitation, just that it was influenced and steered by the fact that Remender is being forced to follow a modern legend. When you see lines like, “When you see your yankee doodle deity in his chicken-fried heaven — tell him you died molesting the world!” come out of the mouths of characters not written by Ellis, I can’t help but picture some pimply-faced yeoman comic taking the mike and saying, “Jeff Foxworthy, everyone! Hey, you know when you might be a redneck?”