March 11, 2004

dissolution, hats

Made my pilgrimage to Excalibur Comics yesterday morning to buy the final issue of Cerebus and whatever else happened to be coming out (which turned out to be Promethea and Powers--with Promethea in particular I get the very strong sense that Moore has said his piece with the long explanation of his magical system and is now just trying to wrap things up because that's what one does). Anyway, it's a pretty brilliant ending to the series--a very nasty inversion of the single biggest death-of-the-protagonist cliché. And everybody who's wanted to see their favorite character just one more time gets a... basically, a "you can get what you want and still not be very happy" moment. Also kind of fascinating that Sim deliberately doesn't wrap up a lot of dangling plot threads--which is underscored by the fact that he introduced a bunch of new ones last issue. (And he alludes directly to the most famous one.) It's the end of the character's life, it's the thematic payoff of all the big ideas of the series, and that's all we get.

Now I get to start my re-read of the entire series in preparation for a long piece I'm doing on it. Most of the way through the first book now, & surprised by a few bits that are in retrospect setup for stuff that happens much later, and by long passages that aren't.

Mahjongg last night at the Meow Meow were, as I expected, much better than their EP. A little too arch to really pull off the funk more than half the time (you can do dance songs in 10/8 or 9/4, but it's a lot harder for them to automatically precipitate actual dancing). Really good arrangements, though--I liked the very fast one that built up to peaks and abruptly switched from a regular drum kit to an electronic kit, or vice versa, a few times. I want to hear their next record.

Posted by Douglas at March 11, 2004 12:24 PM