Personal blog - and temporary home page until new website is finished - of writer, editor and graphic artist Christopher Mills


Friday, January 19, 2007

Early Morning Musings

It's snowing heavily this morning. First time this year, really. (We got a little bit of white stuff a week or so ago, but not much.) My wife, who's been complaining all winter that there hasn't been any snow, will be happy... but not in a few hours when she has to go out and try to get the car out of the driveway and to work.

I'm going to Boston on Monday for my last round of tests, and then, just about a week later, I'll be checking into the hospital down there for my surgery. If all goes well, I'll be hospitalized for only three or four days. Good thing I still have a lot of books to read.

My pal Jim just sent me a couple cool comic reprint collections for the recovery period – if I can make myself wait until then to read 'em! One is SHOWCASE Presents: The House of Mystery, with tons of beautiful art by Jerry Grandenetti, Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, Alex Toth and others, and the other is Justice League of America: We Elect... , a collection of all the classic JLA stories in which the League invited new members into their ranks. Always loved those stories, and most of these are drawn by the underrated Dick Dillin.

My DVD review column for Quick Stop Entertainment has been on hiatus since November (and the DVD Late Show site's been idle for even longer, unfortunately), while I was dealing with other writing gigs and, later, my health issues. Still, the review discs are piling up. You'll probably start seeing random DVD reviews appearing in this blog again soon, to be compiled into columns when I get enough. Think of it as being privileged. You get to read 'em first!

Speaking of DVDs – I watched the new Chuck Norris flicks I ordered last night. Silent Rage was, sadly, not one of my hero's best. It's an interesting attempt to meld an action film with a sci-fi/horror film, but it just never comes together. Chuck's fine as a small town, karate-kicking Texas sherriff (well, duh.), but the movie's structured as a slasher film, and the director never manages to build any suspense. The pacing's terrible, the script is worse, and although the game cast tries their best, the movie just doesn't work.

Oh well. Forced Vengeance, on the other hand, was fun, if average. At least it had nice Hong Kong location work and some good action sequences.

I don't think The Spider Chronicles will make it to the shelves this month after all – I only just received a pdf "galley" of my story yesterday. Looks great, though – very slickly designed, and Tom Floyd's illustration is perfect – so whatever delay there might be should be worth it. Hopefully, it won't be long.

Well, I'm beat. Been working all night, and I think I'm going to go watch a short movie or TV show on DVD and hit the hay before dawn.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Long time reader, first time poster, yada yada yada. :-)

Dick Dillon and Frank McLaughlin were my FAVORITE art team on the JLA when I was growing up. If I remember correctly Dillon died while doing the chores on the JLA summer crossover with the JSA and the New Gods and George Perez finished the story but I could be mistaken...

The old JLA/JSA team-ups looked spectacular with them at the drawing board. Thanks for the memory.

Christopher Mills said...

All of the classic JLA/JSA team-ups are being collected, too, in the CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS trade paperbacks. I have the first three volumes of these, and they're great.

Anonymous said...

Silent Rage could have been a lot better. The guy playing the maniac was iin a lot of Chuck's films of the period including The Octagon. Silent Rage is a lot like The Hero and the Terror.

There was never any doubt in my mind that Tom Floyd was the ideal illustrator for the Spider book.