Things Popgun Chao$ predicted

Maybe you didn’t realize it, but Popgun Chao$ was ahead of the times back when I was posting regularly. I was ahead of the curve. A pop culture predictor as it were. Yeah, this guy. Me.

Here are just a few brilliant things that I have predicted:

Jay-Z’s connection to The Great Gatsby

Before I learned about Baz Luhrman’s Great Gatsby film, I wrote an article about how Jay-Z connected to the novel. In short, I discussed how quickly one can attain legitimacy today compared to Gatsby’s day. Gatsby’s grandkids could have been America’s darlings like the Kennedys if he hadn’t been killed (and if he were more than fiction). Meanwhile, Jay-Z went from selling drugs and mixtapes out of the back of his car to performing at the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.

Then, everything came full circle when Jay-Z produced the soundtrack to Baz Luhrman’s Gatsby film. All in all, it’s a decent soundtrack. Like all things, there are good tracks and terrible ones. Lana Del Rey’s track is easily the best of the lot and the remix of Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” is a guilty pleasure of mine.

I’ll talk more about Luhrman’s film in a later post, but for now, I am going to bask in the glow of my brilliance at seeing this connection.

Bask

Bask

Bask.

Cole Closser is an amazing artist

On December 10, 2010, I put together a very short post giving a shout out to Cole Closser’s artwork. His work still impresses me and his dialect is always a delight. Closser’s Little Tommy Lost has a timeless quality to it and one just feels like a kid reading the titular character’s exploits. In short, I love Cole Closser’s work and other people do too.

The Onion AV Club listed Little Tommy Lost as their number 7 best graphic novels of 2013 saying “Little Tommy Lost touches on everything from Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo to Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, all while bringing a luxuriously scratchy, not-quite-meta self-awareness to his celebration of the classic daily and Sunday newspaper strip.”

This year, Closser’s Little Tommy Lost was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Publication Design. 

Seeing Closser receive recognition for his work is really fantastic and I couldn’t be happier for him. His work is phenomenal and I look forward to whatever he does next.

Saving Comics

Comics have been saved! The New 52, Marvel Now, Image, Dark Horse, Valiant, Comixology, and tons of others did it!

Well, a lot of the same problems that I addressed in my Saving Comics Project still exist, but as I predicted in my post about the New 52 announcement, comics needed a change and going back to core concepts was the answer. Sales have slumped a bit lately now that the New 52 isn’t so new anymore, but it’s still a much healthier industry than it was.

I love my New 52 announcement post because it has generated the most traffic I’ve ever received to date. People called me a DC fanboy for defending them and that’s fine, but anything that helps the industry as a whole is a good thing.

No, the New 52 isn’t perfect, but some really great comics have come out of the initiative.

——–

Okay, so I may not have really predicted anything, really. The Jay-Z thing was a coincidence, Cole Closser’s incredible talent has put him on the map, and of course the comic industry was going to bounce back eventually. But, it’s fun to go back and read some older posts and see what things have changed.