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I first met Alan White online when comics brought us together. But over the last five years, we have become friends outside of our beloved medium, and he continues to surprise me in the best possible ways at nearly every turn.Last October, we finally came up with an excuse to get him out to visit us and meet in person: Columbus’ Mid-Ohio Con. I got to know Alan even better as we shared the stories of our lives, and it was then that I first learned the details behind The Power Principle.
Over the course of that weekend, Alan shared his origin story and the role The Power Principle played in it. The reveal took place in epic conversations around my kitchen island and debates while driving in my car and smaller exchanges while back issue diving side-by-side at the con. It was these moments that reinforced my admiration and respect for Alan, and solidified my belief in his project. By the time we put him on a plane back home to New York City, he had given me the scripts to the first four issues of The Power Principle, and I had signed on to edit the whole affair.
In the months since, I have done whatever I can to help Alan... not just as an editor, but as a friend. We talk weekly about the series, the characters, the Kickstarter preparations, the finances, the fear, the excitement, all of it! I’m honored he has allowed me to have a small role in his dream. But more than that, I’m excited to see this Kickstarter campaign finally go live and see my friend put himself out there, inching even closer to the reality of a Power Principle on-going series.
I am often astounded by how effortlessly The Power Principle story spills out of Alan! As I have worked my way through the scripts, there are countless moments where I have had to stop and simply admire how well-crafted Alan’s vision for these characters is, and how well-executed the initial drafts were. And that’s what makes me so excited about the possibilities for this Kickstarter project... I love the idea that others will finally get to read these comics and get to know these characters Alan has created and invested so much of himself in, and be gobsmacked by the cliff-hangers and reveals like I have over the last nine months.
Please take a few moments to check out Alan’s Kickstarter project... read about what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. Check out the video he made that perfectly captures his personality and sincere gratitude for just having the opportunity to produce The Power Principle. And, of course, consider contributing whatever you can to realize Alan’s dream while getting to read a damn fine comic and some awesome swag to boot!
Radiohead
06 June 2012: Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
Tracy is definitely a bigger Radiohead fan than me. I enjoy their music and Thom Yorke’s solo album well enough, but it doesn’t necessarily move me in the same earth-shaking sense it seems to affect others. I’m also fully aware of how a live performance can alter my perception of an artist and their music, so I’m usually game for concerts of artists I might not be 100% in love with. That was the scenario going into Radiohead’s Northeast Ohio King of Limbs tour stop, and for a group I’m not super into, it was a good show.
Despite not actually recognizing the songs they were playing and only understanding snippets of lyrics, I really dug the wall of sound. They played three sets – a 16-song main set and two encores. The four-song first encore consisting of “House of Cards”, “Myxomatosis”, Supercollider”, and “Reckoner” was by far my favorite set of the night.
The other standout song was the main set’s rendition of “There There” with its “just ’cause you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there” refrain. Already augmented by two full drum kits, for this song everyone in the band was working percussion to accompany Yorke’s guitar.
I didn’t really care for the second encore or the final song of the night (“Paranoid Android”), but loved the accompanying light and video show throughout the night. Along with a large continuous screen near the amphitheater ceiling at the front of the stage, there was a giant light panel at the back of the stage, and a dozen high-quality video panels suspended above.
These panels changed position throughout the show, song by song, displaying everything from band member close-ups to more artistic shots of microphones or Yorke’s trainers. At one point near the beginning of the show, the panels all moved into place to form a sort of mock ceiling over the band, almost looking like they were playing in a room. At other times they were all akimbo with electronic psychedelic designs. The panel’s lighting and imagery was probably my favorite aspect of the show.
A Radiohead tour is a big deal among both rock critics and the fervent fan base. Their shows are hyped as being mind-blowing events, but I guess you have to be a super fan to get that sort of experience out of their concerts.
When I listen to Radiohead’s recorded output, it often reminds me of Pink Floyd in its scope and sound, yet somehow always seems to fade into the background. Live, the band seemed energetic, passionate, and to be having a great time connecting with their fans. It made for a good time and a great night out with my wife, even if the earth didn’t move for me musically.
1997-2012
Pink Martini, with special guest singer Storm Large
10 May 2012: State Theatre at Playhouse Square, Cleveland, Ohio
With original lead singer China Forbes sidelined since last summer with vocal cord surgery and taking a year off from the band to recover, Tracy and I had some trepidation heading in to a Forbes-less Pink Martini show. We’ve seen the band perform four times at four different venues – the Cleveland Museum of Art, the House of Blues, Severance Hall, and the Palace Theatre – with Forbes, each time to a packed house. This time around, the State Theatre was embarrassingly empty, adding to our anxiety. Then Storm Large took the stage, and we quickly realized we had nothing to worry about. While Large’s voice isn’t as full as Forbes’, it’s every bit as powerful.
The little orchestra started the night off with “Amado Mio” for a couple of reasons: First, to get the audience acclimated to Forbes’ absence by force-feeding a Pink Martini classic through Large’s presence. And, second, to illustrate just how good a fit Large is with the band. Never trying to replace Forbes, she left her own mark on every last song she fronted.
We had never heard of Large prior to finding out she was appearing with the band. (She’s a Portland, Oregon local just like bandleader/pianist Thomas Lauderdale, and was on a music reality TV show.) Regardless, Large’s personality is big enough to own the stage with her unique style.
Typical for a Pink Martini show, although there was a setlist, it was more of a recommendation than any sort of set-in-stone directive, and the troupe was guided by Lauderdale’s wonderfully entertaining song intros and backstories. Adding to the looseness of their approach was the fact this was the band’s first show of the current tour.
The first half, separated by an intermission, featured “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” presented in its original Spanish incarnation of “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás”, “Donde Estas, Yolanda?”, “Song of the Black Lizard”, and “The Flying Squirrel”. There were plenty of side trips to get the audience comfortable with Large’s somewhat naughty sensibilities and a wonderfully playful rendition of Splendor in the Grass’ “And Then You’re Gone”/”But Now I’m Back” with Timothy Nishimoto. The initial set ended with the frisky “Tuca Tuca”, where Large invited a flamboyant fan in electric yellow pattered pants on stage to dance with her, and Nishimoto and Large dueting on “Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again”.
Returning for more after a wardrobe change during the break, the band kicked things off with Toledo-native guitarist Dan Faehnle’s “Ohayoo Ohio” composition before Large nailed Pink Martini standards like “Splendor in the Grass”, “Hang on Little Tomato”, and “Una Notte a Napoli”. The show closed with a two-song encore featuring the return of “Amado Mio” – this time in Russian! – and “Brasil”.
Other classics from the band’s repertoire were noticeably absent from the set, including “Sympathique” and “Hey Eugene”, but they weren’t necessarily missed or interpretations I wanted to hear. Those two songs in particular are so closely associated with Forbes that it was probably best to not try and shoehorn them into the show or Large’s style.
Trading Forbes’ reserved elegance for Large’s brassy personality worked beautifully in execution. She pulled off a great trick by filling in for the absent regular and staying true to the band, but putting her own mark on the proceedings. At the end of the day, I certainly look forward to seeing (and hearing) Forbes back out front, but I can’t help but hope that Pink Martini captures their temporary collaboration with Large in some way. They are just that good.
I have never attended a midnight movie premiere before. It’s just not something that’s ever been on my radar. And, frankly, I was hard-pressed to think of a movie I’d want to see a midnight premiere of. It wasn’t until we were leaving the theater after watching Captain America: The First Avenger that I realized it, but Marvel’s The Avengers is that movie for me.
Seeing this movie at the midnight premiere and sharing it with my wife and kiddo is an experience I'll always appreciate. The atmosphere was unbeatable. We arrived at the theater around 8:30 and found our line. It wasn’t bad at all, and they ended up letting us into our theater right around 9pm. We were fortunate to not have to spend the next three hours on the floor, and instead were able to settle into our oversized XD theater seats where Jack read the movie prequel comics, Tracy read The Walking Dead, and I bounced between tweeting, meeting up with friends who were still waiting out in the hallway to get into their theater, and getting pwnd by the kiddo in many rounds of Zombie Dice on the iPad.
There were plenty of folks in costume, and our theater was completely packed by 10:30. When the house lights eventually dimmed, I couldn’t believe I was actually about to see an Avengers movie. And I was rewarded for my decades-long patience.
The crowd made this an event. Cheers for the first 3D trailer we got – Amazing Spider-Man – and for Prometheus. Cheers for the feature presentation’s main titles. Someone yelled, “Cleveland!” during the first on-screen scene shot here in the hometown and the place erupted.
I’m not a fan of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, which birthed the reimagined Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, but I have completely bought into it over the course of the last five movies leading up to this. And I am a huge fan of Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson. Brilliantly conceptualized, he is to the Marvel Movie Universe what Boba Fett could have been to the Star Wars Universe. Where Boba Fett was a background character whose cachet was based solely on the mystery of his presence then squandered with a pandering, sloppy origin and overexposure in the prequels, Coulson was grown organically to provide real weight to the character’s actions and importance to the story. Nothing wasted. Nothing easy.
That consistency carried over to Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark. By far the biggest star in this thing, writer-director Joss Whedon matched the tone of Jon Favreau’s first two solo Iron Man movies seamlessly. Similarly, Chris Evans was surprisingly believable as the man-out-of-time Captain America who ascends to the leadership role over the billionaire Stark and Asgardian God of Thunder by earning their respect. Thor’s entrance elicited cheers from the sold out crowd, and rightly so. It was a brilliant moment that Chris Hemsworth pulled off effortlessly.
As expected, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow really shone under the contradictory hand of Whedon, known for not only his strong female characters, but also his penchant for framing his leading women’s posteriors in shots. I would have liked more screen time for Cobie Smulders’ Maria Hill, but it was great to have her on-hand in any capacity (and, again, more ass shots).
Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner was much more thoughtful than Ed Norton’s previous run at the character (and I really enjoy the underrated Norton Incredible Hulk movie). Ruffalo pulls off the tortured scientist in every way. Hawkeye is one of my all-time favorite Avengers. (See my loving look at the character's history in issue #56 of BACK ISSUE magazine.) And the glimpse of him in Thor was great, but I have to say he’s not the standout for me in The Avengers. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to pick any one character as my favorite. This is truly a super-hero ensemble movie.
There was actually only one moment – a split-second gag – in the movie I didn’t care for. It was the only time while watching the film that I was jarringly aware I was viewing a "Joss Whedon film," and the moment was completely unnecessary and didn’t serve the story.
And there was one thing that took some getting used to: The rendering of the Green Goliath. I remember a lot of press about how you would be able to really see Ruffalo’s Banner in the Hulk onscreen. And you could, in the face and upper body, almost to a fault, but it has grown on me the more I think about the movie and the representation. And this was more than balanced by the personality infused into gamma-irradiated giant. Hulk truly shines in battle. Given what was revealed in the eight-issue Avengers Prelude: Fury’s Big Week comic book miniseries about the fate of Dr. Samuel Sterns (Mr. Blue) from the Norton movie, I really hope they pick up that thread and run with it in another solo Hulk movie.
Whedon nailed the character cameos, and Loki – Wow. Tom Hiddleston takes his performance to its scenery chewing limits, then dials it back just enough to keep you grounded. A wonderfully realized villain that builds progressively on the character we saw in Thor.
As far as the stingers go, Avengers comes packed with two of them. One at the beginning of the credits and one before the final fade out. Both are great in their own way. The first for its nod to fans of the comic books, and the second for the way it releases the tension of the previous two hours. Brilliant.
Marvel’s The Avengers is the movie 12-year-old me has waited 30 years for. This is the movie I would wait in line for. This is the movie I would sacrifice sleep to discover unspoiled on the largest screen in the area, in 3D, with my wife and 10-year-old son beside me. If I have ever been gobsmacked, it was during the two hours shortly after midnight on May 4 when I saw The Avengers for the first time. There were so many moments that made me cheer, or my jaw drop, or simply sit there with the biggest damn grin plastered across my face, it was a completely satisfying experience.
New Order, with Public Image Ltd. and The Sugarcubes
05 July 1989: Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
My senior year of high school we had a foreign exchange student from Germany. I was pretty smitten with her, even asking her out a few times, but she shut me down quickly (and repeatedly). As the school year wore on, I met and fell hard for another girl who would set me on the path that helped shape me into the person I am today, leaving indelible fingerprints all over my creative outlets and musical tastes. Something was in the air our senior year, because my best friend John had also found love, falling harder than I’d ever seen him fall before – for our German exchange student, Julie.
Somewhere between Monsters of Rock and Lollapalooza, in the music festival no-man’s land that was the summer of 1989, New Order toured with Public Image Ltd. and the Sugarcubes. Firmly in my wheelhouse (both then and now, I have to admit), this was the must-attend show of the year. But by that summer before college, my girlfriend had moved on – figuratively and literally – dumping me and heading to San Francisco. So not only did I have to borrow the $15 from John in order to buy my ticket, I was third wheeling it to the show with him and Julie.
I only saw three shows at Blossom before moving to Florida in August of 1990. The New Order/PiL/Sugarcubes show was bookended by the Beach Boys with Roy Orbison and John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band (of Eddie and the Cruisers fame) in the summer of 1988, and Jimmy Buffett in the summer of 1990. Being relatively broke high school and college students during that era, it was exclusively lawn seating for me and my friends. I remember wandering the grounds and getting into all kinds of trouble during the Beach Boys show, and I remember very little about the Jimmy Buffett show (read into that what you will).
For the New Order concert, my memory puts John, Julie, and me right in the center of the lawn with a view straight into the pavilion and stage. I remember being pretty well anchored to our staked out plot of lawn for the duration of the show – even for the Sugarcubes’ set, despite never having been a huge fan of theirs.
The PiL performance was by far the most dynamic of the day. Johnny Lydon is nothing if not an entertainer. They were supporting 9, their most commercial album and one I thoroughly enjoy. The headliners were touring behind Technique, an album I have on vinyl, cassette, and CD. Publicly, New Order played to type by remaining completely impassive behind their instruments. Privately, the band was falling apart. This show took place about a month after Bernard Sumner announced to his bandmates that he no longer wanted to continue as New Order and was forming another band with Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr.
I’ve heard recordings of New Order’s set from this night, and the music itself was fairly solid, but lyrics were mangled or forgotten throughout the set (making one wonder if it was internal band strife or *ahem* recreational activities that resulted in the lyrical casualties). It was a visually sterile show, more impressive for getting to hear this music I love played at incredibly loud decibels than for any sort of stage presence by the performers.
More remarkable than anything else about the night, though, is the fact that virtually everyone from my future close college circle of friends and lovers attended that show, and then some. Some combination (or maybe all) of the people John and I would find our freshman year at Bowling Green just a few months later were there.
The alternative music culture of the late ’80s was an amplified version of the feeling I had of gaining entré into an exclusive club after wearing my first concert t-shirt (David Lee Roth) to school the day after the show. Musical tastes were visible in the costumes we wore day-in and day-out: dyed black hair, black eyeliner, thrift store chic. We might have found each other anyway, but because she was wearing a black PiL concert t-shirt I was prompted to strike up a conversation with Erin at college orientation a month or so after the show. I’m pretty sure Jeff was at that concert, and maybe Jen was, too.
Just as extraordinary, and like so many other shows in our shared history (David Bowie at the Richfield Coliseum springs immediately to mind), Tracy was in the house this same night. Although I wouldn’t meet her for another six-and-a-half years, while I was on the lawn, my future wife was in the mosh pit down front getting gobbed on by Johnny Lydon himself.
PiL is rumored to release a vinyl EP and full length album of new material this year, and a partial reunion of New Order has been teasing live shows overseas since late last year. The frenzy around the latter should only increase with their scheduled performance at the closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics. I’m not sure if I’d go to see New Order or PiL, though, if they ended up touring the U.S. (I didn’t go out of my way to see a reconstituted PiL a couple of years ago when the closest they came to Northeast Ohio was a 2010 show in Pittsburgh.) I just have too much history mixed up in these groups, and it’s probably best if I just leave those memories unaltered.
I first met Alan White online when comics brought us together. But over the last five years, we have become friends outside of our beloved medium, and he continues to surprise me in the best possible ways at nearly every turn.
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