Tag Archives: year’s best

Midlife Crisis Crossover 2013 in Review, Including Last-Minute Posts Seen Only in NYC and LA

December 30, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Hi-dee-hoo, fans and visitors! Welcome to the second annual Midlife Crisis Crossover year-in-review for this humble site, launched on April 28, 2012, as an excuse for one guy to do things, try stuff, and think whatever aloud. Next week will mark MCC’s 600th post, but that’ll be in an entirely different year and is therefore ineligible for celebration at the moment, so forget I mentioned it till next week.

This occasionally purposeful experiment has lasted a full twenty months without crashing and burning yet, though we’ve seen some excitement, some tears, some discomfort, some joy, some serious stress, and some much-needed days off. And that was all just over Christmas break. 2013 was a year of successes and failures, of triumphs and tragedies, of records and horrors. MCC’s own fortunes have ebbed and flowed depending on which subjects caught my attention at the right time, which times I was utterly out of step with the rest of the world, and what moments of synchronicity were the most unexpected of all.

Of all the nouns to frequent the site this year, none had a deeper effect than Boston.

Boston Public Garden, Boston vacation

Continue here for MCC’s own best and worst of 2013!

My 2013 in Books and Graphic Novels

December 28, 2013 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Neil Gaiman, Skottie Young, Fortunately the Milk

A rare instance of a book I bought and read in the same year it was published.

I rarely review printed matter on this site, but rest assured I find time to read a book or two where I can — in between buying new comics every Wednesday (single issues, pamphlets, floppies, whatever you prefer to call them), occasional issues of the Indianapolis Star, my longtime Entertainment Weekly subscription, Bible study, internet, contributing to this site close-to-daily, overtime at work, chores, family, and other distracting excuses. But books are definitely on my activity list, ranking well ahead of laundry, shining my shoes, and any home repair projects that I don’t actually know how to start.

I spent the first part of the year trying to clear out my accumulation of new finds and autographed items from conventions. I wedged in some prose novels and even a little nonfiction wherever I could, but most of my reading was catching up on the graphic-storytelling variety. I’m really tired of having a large backlog, and some tentatively planned restructuring of my free time and priorities in 2014 should help facilitate that. Maybe. Hopefully.

Presented below is the complete list of books, graphic novels, and trade collections that I finished reading in 2013. A few were started in 2012 and one was an on-‘n’-off side project for years, but I reached their final page this year and that’s what matters. I’m also pessimistically assuming I won’t have any reading time over the three days remaining. If reading time does occur, I’ll just stop three pages from the end and save it for January 1st. Fair enough?

That list, then…

Box Office Beyond Borders: What 2012 Movies Did Other Countries Enjoy More Than We Did?

February 2, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Scrat, Ice Age

Everybody on Earth loves Scrat! Except large portions of America.

Anyone with a passing interest in movies, as well as all-out stat junkies like me who can’t get enough of numbers, are well aware that last year’s undisputed box-office champ was Marvel’s The Avengers, which raked in all the monies in the Americas, and nearly 1½ times that overseas. Box Office Mojo has the definitive rankings of the highest-grossing movies in America in 2012, naturally topped by the predictable big-budget spectaculars — The Dark Knight Rises; The Hunger Games; Skyfall; The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey; and so on.

Short-sighted American than I can be sometimes, I rarely pay attention to overseas ticket sales. I was raised with the shallow understanding that American dollars are the only dollars worth tracking and comparing. In my youth I assumed other countries either hated all our movies or patiently waited for them to be released on home video. More and more, though, chatter about film performance elsewhere keeps leaking into media reports, possibly because it gives them another fallback topic on slow news days, or perhaps because such info can provide a more comprehensive answer as to whether or not all those big-budget spectaculars truly earn back their production budget plus tips.

While the aforementioned BOM data compliation covers the domestic and grand-total worldwide grosses of the top films of 2012 (which have also been shared in the February 8th issue of Entertainment Weekly), I decided to examine another aspect of those figures. The following list ranks the twenty highest-grossing films of 2012 in all countries except the U.S.:

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My 2012 Comic Books in Retrospect: the All-Stars and the Abandoned

January 13, 2013 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Kid Loki and Leah in "Journey into Mystery" #639, story page 11, panels 1-22012 was my worst year for comic book enjoyment in the last fifteen years. I’ve collected them for thirty-four years, ever since the well-stocked spinner racks at Marsh Supermarket caught my eye at age six and opened new worlds of imagination and heroism. For the majority of my life they’ve been my primary hobby among all my hobbies. Once upon a time, friends could count on me to spout the occasional essay about a particular series, event, historical recollection, or rage-filled response to an aesthetic offense. When I launched Midlife Crisis Crossover last April, I thought the topic of comic books would inspire a lot more posts than they have so far.

I have no plans to wave farewell to the medium altogether, but my personal backlash started during the last half of 2011, when DC Comics purged their continuity yet again and rebooted their entire universe with the “New 52” initiative. The first time they rebooted after Crisis on Infinite Earths, I was fourteen and the combined talents of John Byrne, George Perez, Marv Wolfman, Mike Baron, and others were more than enough to convince me that this new direction was right up my alley. Twenty-six years and countless post-Crisis emendations later, DC and I are no longer the same entities under the same conditions. I can handle reboots to a certain extent, but when the new versions are poorly thought out — or worse, prone to twice as many crossovers as they used to be — I exercise my right as a consumer to opt out.

Marvel’s response was to concentrate on crossovers for a while longer, then roll out their own restarts without rebooting. I’ve found their results a little less alienating, but they’re still leaving some of my money on the table. Image stepped up mightily for a while and snatched some of my leftover Big Two bucks, but their titles have varied in quality and performance. I was glad to see other publishers continue earning attention from me as well — Dark Horse, BOOM!, IDW, Red 5, Valiant, and even Aspen. Again, results varied, but I appreciated the alternatives they offered.

Even though I’m increasingly disappointed with the current majority readership’s predilection for overspending on prequels, crossovers, and do-overs, my year had several bright spots in the world of monthly titles. (For purposes of personal categorization, I treat original graphic novels and trade paperback collections as “Books”, which are grouped and ranked separately from “Comic Books” in my head. Those might be fodder for a separate MCC list.)

The following were my favorite comic book series throughout 2012:

* Journey into Mystery — Kieron Gillen, Rich Elson, and other artists delivered one of the very few series that inspired any MCC thoughts at all, and ended their two-year storyline on a note of epic tragedy. After seeing the reincarnated Kid Loki and his best frenemy Leah through so many misadventures (not to mention the only A-plus crossover tie-ins of any crossover by any company in the last two years), I felt helpless and bereaved to see it all coming crashing down ’round his ears. Marvel’s formerly unrepentant trickster god was so close to redeeming himself for his previous lifetime of treachery and lies, albeit by finding clever ways to wield treachery and lies as forces for Good, only to see everything fall apart because of the lies he told himself and us. I wish every series aspired to thematic examinations this complex and riveting. More fire-breathing angry puppies like lethal li’l Thori would also be welcome.

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Best CDs of 2012, According to an OId Guy Who Bought Seven

January 7, 2013 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Whether on or off the Internet, I very rarely discuss music. I was a typical top-40 fan as a child, but segued to “alternative music” circa 1989 thanks to the late-night lineups of Post-Modern MTV and 120 Minutes that kept me company over homework into the wee hours every evening. I’ve followed musical acts of varying degrees of talent and volume ever since. I don’t consider myself finicky, but I’m not interested in 99% of the bands that receive mainstream coverage nowadays. I rarely discover new bands because local radio is a joke and I haven’t felt compelled to subscribe to satellite radio yet. You can bet the aging process hasn’t exactly broadened my vistas. As for the disparate gulf between my lifelong musical tastes and my present-day spiritual mindset, that’s a subject for another essay altogether.

I have the hardest time keeping track of when the musicians I still follow finally release new albums, but in 2012 I stumbled across six such occasions, and on another occasion tried one (1) relatively new act with pleasing results. I also bought one reissue, relegated to a separate category of its own. The following list scratches the surface of my purchasing preferences and may or may not provide any insight into me at all.

And just so we’re clear, I really did buy all seven albums on CD. My disdain for collecting digital music is also a subject for another essay altogether.

On with the countdown:

7. Joey Ramone, “…Ya Know?”. If I’m understanding the candid liner notes correctly, the Ramones frontman’s first album since his death in 2004 was constructed from vocal recordings acrimoniously wrested through litigious means from the hands of frequent Ramones collaborator Daniel Rey. The bulk of the posthumous backup-band work is by Joey’s brother Mickey Leigh, late-’80s Ramones producer Ed Stasium, and assorted studio musicians, though a few familiar names also contributed — mid-’80s bandmate Richie Ramone; Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick; Steven Van Zandt; Dennis Diken from the Smithereens; and Joan Jett, though her part is reduced to backing vocals on “21st Century Girl” rather than a true duet. It’s nice to hear one last Joey collection, though the assemblage of various artists creates a sterile, corporate-bar-band sound too diluted to approximate the vintage Ramones buzzsaw sound. (Sample track: “Rock ‘n Roll is the Answer“.)

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My 2012 Movies in Retrospect: the Top Seven

January 6, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Previously in our three-part miniseries, Part One was the bottom of the barrel and Part Two was the middle of the road. Part Three, then, is the top of the pops.

The countdown speeds toward its inevitable end:

Andrew Garfield, "Amazing Spider-Man"7. Amazing Spider-Man. I’ve gone on record multiple times with my reservations about unnecessary reboots. On the other hand, after Spider-Man 3 became the series’ answer to Batman and Robin, it’s hard to argue with the corporate decision to enact damage control and give the series its very own Batman Begins. Director Marc Webb avoids Sam Raimi’s fondness for Lee/Ditko/Romita ambiance in favor of transplanting the cast to a less timeless setting. The results reinforce the same moral without chanting it at us, thrill and thrive on their own terms, and recapture the trademark Spider-sarcasm that was my favorite part of the first few hundred Spider-comics I read in my youth, but regrettably in short supply in Tobey Maguire’s earnest, anxious portrayal.

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WordPress.com Magic Elves Offer Colorful Second Opinion of My 2012

January 1, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Important part first: Happy New Year’s to one and all!

Here’s hoping 2013 will be Best Year Ever for all of you, whether you’re planning to expand on your 2012 achievements and victories, secretly wishing for a complete do-over, or were born within the past hour and have no basis for comparison.

Since most readers are either partying or recovering (depending on how soon this is being read), I’ve allowed myself to relax a little more than usual tonight, spending more time with family than with keyboard. It’s my understanding that correcting this imbalance at least three or four days per year is strongly recommended by most of my relatives, biased though they are. That meant less time for writing and more for board games, but in my mind it’s an exchange more than fair, even though my wife and son refused to let me unleash our Scrabble set and trounce them both just once.

In lieu of an overlong piece about New Year’s resolutions (expect something along those lines tomorrow, because of worldwide mandatory blogging bylaws), the following Very Special Report is provided as a treat for my fellow blog stat junkies, or for fans of cute animated fireworks.

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Midlife Crisis Crossover 2012 in Review, Assuming the Next Thirteen Days are a Complete Write-Off

December 18, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 34 Comments

Midlife Crisis Crossover was launched April 28, 2012, as a creative attempt to do something different with my spare time, my ostensible talents, and four decades of accumulated monumental mistakes and mental minutiae. Though it wasn’t my first blog, it was my first time attempting a blog without an immediate support system or preexisting audience. The MCC experience has been eight curious months of dedication, persistence, failures, sleep deprivation, loneliness, stubbornness, prayer, and occasional wild luck. Over the course of the first 240 posts I’ve discovered new peers, made new friends, learned new things about myself and HTML, improved 2% at photography, and remembered one or two stylistic rules I’d forgotten since college, with several more still repressed and yet to be rediscovered.

Empty Obama Chair, Clint Eastwood's arch-enemy

The infamous empty chair, a.k.a. “Obamachair”

The WordPress.com Weekly Writing Challenge has encouraged us to look back at our year and remember where we’ve been. Even before I began assembling my MCC year-end lists, I already knew which post would top most of them: “The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet” was the watershed event that drew the most Likes, Comments, and Shares (and nearly the most traffic) of anything else I’ve written this year, arguably even in my full thirteen years of Internet participation, thanks in large part to its “Freshly Pressed” status that saw it spotlighted for all WordPress users to see over Labor Day weekend.

For its outstanding achievement of Attracting an Audience, “Empty Chair” is the first and only entry in the MCC Hall of Fame, even though it was about political events and my incredulous disdain for same. If we set it aside in a class by itself, my memories of 2012 look like so:

* * * * *

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