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Comic Con 2008 - Sunday, and home

2008-07-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

Sunday was a low key day – no panels for us (decided to skip Smallville and Supernatural as well as another Grant Morrison one), but we kicked it out on the floor. I bought about 200 comics from the bins, including the Marvel Star Wars issue 98 (the last one I needed – Avengers 4 completed my Avengers collection to, so it was a good week). I bought a Roboshark t-shirt off of Ivan Brandon (of NYC Mech, and chief of the best comics messageboard), and got lots of “cool, what is that”’s. We bought gifts for those who stayed home (my youngest son <5> got a Yoda lightsaber). I poked my head in the Owlship, saw NPH’s unicorn, and got some Chuck bags (out of Watchmen bags… rats – at least we got the Watchmen t-shirts after the panel). We talked to a few people and ate some nachos. I talked to Jerry Robinson for a while (the dude who created the Joker and and may have first drawn Robin - not sure about that last bit), talked to Mad Magazine marginalia and Groo artist Sergio Aragones, chatted briefly with Kyle Baker, saw Stephen King’s son (Joe Hill nee Joseph Hillstrom King) waiting in the Lego con exclusive set line, and generally took it easy.

It was a wierd con, in some ways. After last year's clean sweep of the independent comics area (I got everything I wanted, tons of sketches and signatures, and talked to lots of nice people), I was hideously unprepared this year and only snagged a few of the things I wanted, which I'm a bit bummed about. I missed the Scott Pilgrim color thing, the previous-post mentioned Tori Amos book, Eddie Campbell's Monsieur Leotard, the American Terrorist preview, a bunch of Picturebox stuff (I walked away with Comics, Comics 4 and the other newspaper thing and got Godess of War signed, but I didn't get back with more money for the Cold Heat specials, etc.), the new Tales Designed to Thrizzle, the F Grampa thing, the mini by Gilberto Hernandez's daughter, or the book by that North/South American collective group (who I LOVE - Cloonan, Ba, Moon, etc) that did 5 last year (was it Pixu? Are those two different things? See, I'm unorganized). The stress caused by spending more money than I have ever spent in one place, added to the worrying about the kids at home, the lack of my usual I-ain't-commin'-back mid-Friday cathartic meltdown (I always feel better afterwards), my somewhat illusionary feeling of being squeezed for time on the floor, and the fact that this week is a bitch at work, made me feel a little down coming out of the con.

Then we piled in for the trip back to Vegas, and the stories started. We buzzed all the way home, bubbling with the fresh memories. I gradually (somewhere around Victorville) realized I had had a pretty frickin' awesome time, but it took everyone else (whose heads were not as far up their asses) to remind me of that. By the time I got back to the house, I was ready to collapse into a satisfied heap.

Good times.

Comic Con 2008 - Saturday

2008-07-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

Saturday began with me waiting from 8:05 in line for the 10:30 Heroes panel. That time got me, estimated, 3,000-3,500 people from the door. Several people slept at the Hall H door for it. Weird. I waited in line with several other perennial con goers, and discussed the way it used to be before all these johnny-come-latelys ruined it.

They aired the first episode of the third season of Heroes in its entirety at the panel. Tim Kiring brought the the disk with the episode in a metal suitcase handcuffed to his arm. Very hammy. The cast was late (elevator mishap was given as the cause), and so there was only about three minutes total for questions, which were squandered by several people doing the old attention seeking explain-a-thon, with no real question in mind. One dude went on forever trying to let the room know he got in line early both this year and last year. Yeah, glad I found that out.

Heroes seemed desperate… they brought the whole cast of regulars (which was kind of wasted… see above), and were practically begging people to watch (which the did before the first season started, so, yeah, a bunch of whores, those producers). However, the episode was the best season opener they’ve had, and I didn’t get any of the big danger signals (that they didn’t know what they were doing) that graced last year’s opener. Might wind up being as good or better than season one. Good use of an hour at the con, but I wish (because the airing used up so much time) that they could have staked out an extra half hour.

Lost followed Heroes. The Lost panels are always great, but this was not the best of them. The surprise reveal of Matthew Fox being there was telegraphed, and seemed a bit underwhelming given the prior Heroes panel that had everyone acting in the show. It is always nice to have comic con (which I feel connected to) get more tied in to the Lost mythos (as in 2006’s appearance of Rachel Blake as an audience member, asking probing questions, which was closely tied to the endgame of the Lost Experience multimedia game), and this year gave us Dharma’s recruitment drive (yeah, I talked to the recruiters, but didn’t get into the booth) in which Dharma “sponsored” the panel (with promotional cups, just like American Idol), had the head of recruiting address the crowd, and had one of the candidates that had reached the ”next level” of recruitment, smuggle in a video camera, and get chased out of the con. Now the DVD supplemental features will wind up actually having con footage as part of the Lost “universe,” which I think is great. But the actual address by the recruiter, and some of the stuff with the recruitees was a bit boring, and the Marvin Candle video they showed didn’t do much for me (was that Faraday asking questions?). The main thrust seemed to be to introduce that some of the characters on the show (mainly Faraday through his notebook and people in the same division of research as Candle) have some knowledge of how the future is going to turn out, at least in certain areas, and that some events may be changeable, while others are not.

The giving away of prizes to the attendees was funny and cool, but added to the feeling of the panel being a little light on them telling us anything. They need to bring back he bell (they used this a couple of prior years for the producers to “gong” each other when the answers started to reveal too much). A so-so Lost panel is a good panel, though. Matthew Fox said almost nothing.

After that, it was straight to the Battlestar Galactica… line. As you may have guessed, casual panel changing is now impossible, and we waited in line for Battlestar from before the preceeding Dollhouse panel started (which I would have loved to see, but face it Jake, that’s comic con). This was one of the better (quality, not length) lines, with several women dressed like Starbuck and Boomer behind us, a Seven in front of us, and an incessantly chattering girl (who went on and on about how much she loved British accents, and when she’s around the accent she just wants to start talking that way and is that a Red Bull? oh that looks disgusting which reminds me, they have such an awful idea of where you can smoke in America and on and on) on the side of us – it sounds weird, but it kept getting funnier.

Aside – every year, I have seen Joss Whedon. He has built up the con (and the con him in a NASCAR drafting kind of way), as much as any specific “staple” personality. When I haven’t seen a panel with him in it, I have always bumped into him on the floor. This year it was passing him in a line, where he was complaining about all the sweating. But, as much as I wanted to, making any of the 4 or 5 Whedon panels/events was impossible due to lines. The con needs ideas for a better way to run things. Some of our traveling companions made the big Dr. Horrible screening (it subsequently screened 4 more times after the "big" one), and said the room was electric. Seeing it on the web, it seemed a bit slight to me, which might be due to my recent my recent Whedon ennui (more accurately ambivalence: I’ve liked everything the guy has ever done, but the tone of Whedon admiration as of late has given me the willies - it’s like, I can’t stand certain strains of guy geeks, and Whedon has emboldened a generation of their gender-opposite number: equal opportunity, but now there are twice as many icky people). The reaction at the con, though, seems to suggest this is a major thing. I heard 4 different people on the floor singing “with my freeze ray I will stop... the world.” It could explode into a phenomenon. For my part, I wore a WWNPHD bracelet.

The Battlestar panel was the best one ever. Only Edward James Olmos' (he wasn't there) infuriating, but ultimately hilarious, tendency to babble awkwardly could have made it better. Kevin Smith moderated (marking the only time I have ever seen a panel moderated by someone more famous than the panelists), and a lot of the cast was there (Lee, Gaius, Six, Anders, Helo, Starbuck) along with Moore and Eick. The questions were raunchy, causing Anders (I think) to put his place holder card (the ones they put in front to identify the panelists) backwards on top of his head, revealing the “remember, some audience members may be less than 18” printed on the back. The footage was scant, and showed a lot of the cast on earth moping, which was not par-tic-u-lar-ly promising. The Caprica trailer was OK, but made it look like Falcon Crest in space. I don’t know if this all bodes well. It seems like they have finished shooting the series (given their comments), so I also think it’s odd that it won’t start airing for so long. The vibe of the room was awesome, with everyone relaxing and answering Smith’s expletive laden questions candidly (except for Jamie Bamber, who always seems a little uptight). Great panel.

Chuck followed – the interplay between Zachary Levi and Josh Gomez was as funny as last year, but they didn’t push it quite as far (the “69” McG made them do on the top of the panel table last year was only reenacted with their hands, which was... weird). Yvonne (emitting a really cute Australian accent) was sweet, and the sister and Captain Awesome were good. The clips were nice, and suggest a LOT of guest staring next year. Yvonne challenged Chuck (who had already done 5 or 6 impressions) to do an Australian accent prompting him to give a lesson into how to speak Australian (“No is not n-o, it’s N followed by all the vowels run together really fast… try it, slow at first – naeiou, then speed up”).

We stayed for the Fringe panel, mainly to see JJ Abrams finally show the hell up in person. Nothing wasn’t presented we hadn’t seen in the pilot, but they assured us that the pilot was tough to do, and is a little rough in some ways to watch, but the show (3 more episodes have filmed) has gotten better and better. So, I don’t know if apologizing for the pilot is good, as a rule, but I’m hopeful.

Saturday night, it was off to the Masquerade! The Masquerade is one of the most hotly anticipated activities of any year, and is hard to describe. The line is long, but we have one perennial companion who loves it so much, she waits in line all day for us! YESSSS! The event is the costume contest to end all costume contests. It is judged by a year-to-year-stable group of people who all work costuming in movies, and Magenta from Rocky Horror. The costumes are AWESOME, and the atmosphere is like nothing you’ve ever seen. There is unbridled hysteria, with 20 some-odd beach balls (which look like Pokeballs) being bashed around the room, people cheering and freaking out, chants from prior years spreading in the crowds (e.g. “beast boy, beast boy,” “all hail brain”), and people screaming out random statements (both before and during the competition). Numerous people in the audience are costumed. The MC (Phil Foglio, a portly gentleman dressed like an 1890's mayor or the dude on the Monopoly set) lays down the rules of showing restraint and dignity, followed by high decibel noise from the audience. He folds his arms and waits… he can be here all night, he’s got nothing better to do. The audience shouts the counting of the entrants, leading to "contestant number (unbelievable roar of whatever the next number is, like) TWENTY!!!!" fourty, fifty times. The costumed contestants work all year on incredible stage presentations (e.g. last year's Harry Potter, in Grease the musical, in 5 minutes). People shout “Hermoine’s hot” at the top of their lungs.

It’s like the Disney World psych ward busted out and went to see Gwar. And it’s AWESOME!

That said, this year's costumes and acts were not quite as good as last years, which was a high water mark. There were these people behind us telling everyone to shut up (they sounded like 1970’s oriented geeks – they liked any Monty Python and LotR’s references out of proportion). I don’t think they understood the environment they were in. Still, a blast. Best moment – the Super Smash Brothers Brawl Opera moment when the Kirby costumed one flapped her arms, and everyone on stage slid on the floor as if being sucked in. Chants of “Kir-by, Kir-by” ensued for the rest of the night. Again, unbridled hysteria.

We ate chips and smuggled in wine. No official meal.

Comic Con 2008 - Friday

2008-07-30T16:00:00.000-07:00

Friday started with the Watchmen line. As you may have speculated from earlier posts, the big panels had worse lines this year, but the increment of worsening has slacked off. Along with the new hi def projectors in the biggest rooms (hall H and ballroom 20), they got new people-tracking software to help with the head counts, so the lines moved a bit faster, but there is no way to make it into any of the larger rooms (not just H and 20, but also any of the room 6 subdivisions, or rooms 2 or 3) without “missing” a panel waiting. I was in the Watchmen line at 8:30 for the panel, which started at 11:55 (it was the main panel I wanted to see, so forgive the excess), so I was about 1,000 back from the door (hall H holds 6,500). The line reportedly stretched about 3/5 of a mile, which I believe.

The Watchmen panel was better than expected. The material that they showed was a million percent better than the trailer, which wasn't really bad itself (just limited in what it presented). Several of the actors are panel naturals (the Nathan Fillion effect – some people just know how to work a room) – Billy Crudup, the British guy they cast as Ozymandias, and even Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Carla Guigino had a weird look on her face while the british dude (imdb says his name is Matthew Goode) was talking about getting high in Vancouver that was priceless. Zack Snyder has the same con affect he has always had – awkwardness overcome by enthusiasm that gets to be really funny 20 minutes in. I liked the fact they had Dave Gibbons on the panel – Jeff Jensen (who was hosting) asked him did he ever want to “just slap Alan Moore and tell him to lighten up,” and the diplomacy of Dave’s answer (something like “I wish Alan could enjoy the process of these things coming alive as much as I do”) was nice. The questions were good, and generally came from people in costume, which led to Snyder saying “awesome!” after just about every question was asked. They used Philip Glass (I don’t know the name of the piece) over the new footage which worked better than you could imagine. The "extended" footage showed Nixon, the beginning of the “flashbulb” scene, Dr. Manhattan blowing a lot of people up, the Comedian’s swan dive, Rorschach’s mask effect (a lot of it - it had a nice ink-diffusing-through-canvas, non-CGI feel), Dan, expertly shot watches… just great stuff.

Good panel but, due to the timing, it almost killed the day. We did some floor stuff (including the small press booths, where I bought some nice stuff, missed a hell of a lot including the new Tori Amos book(Comic Book Tattoo) and signing (the book looks phenomenal, by the way - I bought it when I got back home), saw most of the floor, but didn’t really get anything done, which probably saved my con-sanity, now that I think about it. We went early to see 24, and wound up getting into the panel before (Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden Files). I didn’t know his work, but he was an engaging speaker, and did the panel solo. He had that crazed but friendly hippy affect, like a thinner American Hagrid.

The 24 panel – some nice footage from the beginning of the prequel movie 24: Exile, and some time with Keefer, who came off as exceedingly gracious and good natured (he knows how to treat the crowd), and the actor that plays Tony, who was a little to gum-smacking-attitudinal. Many of the questions concerned the ethics of torture and when Jack pees (the on set joke is that every time they cut to the White house, Jack takes a leak, drinks, and eats a sandwich), which had relatively thoughtful and/or funny answers. Very pleasant panel.

In contrast, the Prison Break panel was pretty bad. They aired the beginning of the first episode (with insert cards still in – like “insert hand holding photo of Sarah” – which got some laughs due to their unintendedly absurd nature), which was actually fine, on par with Prison Break openings of the past. It looks like they are going in a more secret agent-ish direction this season. No prison yet (but hey, it’s an even numbered season). The bad part was that Dominic Purcell was a loathsome panelist, checking his Blackberry and sending waves of negative energy at the audience, and the actress that plays Sarah was a bit quiet, and didn’t know how to play the crowd (her answers were to serious, and she had a tendency to bring everything back to her theater work… blech!). The producers weren’t the engaging super-producers comic con crowds have come to expect. All in all, a lousy use of my time. One interesting thing – Dominic Purcell notes that comic con is the only place anyone ever says “I love John Doe” to him.

Friday Night is the Eisners, the Oscars of comics. I always go, and my comic book retailer always gets me a spot at the tables (thanks, Ralph!). I was a little over 50/50 guessing the winners, which was pretty good. I waited in the booze line with the Reno 911 guys for the second year in a row (Dangle and Junior - we must have the same drunk clock), who also presented some awards, giving George Foreman grills to the runners up (“Cash value? Bigger than then actual award”). Last year, I met Jane Weidlin, but this year she was escorted in by a cadre of Stormtroopers so, no. Sam Jackson gave some awards. I was sitting near Gerard Way (front man of My Chemical Romance, who won two Eisners for Umbrella Academy), who I did not talk to (what am I gonna say? I loved that “teenagers scare the living shit out of me” song?). The awards were nice, and many were deserving, though I cannot understand how Len Wein gets into the hall of fame before Mort Weissinger. Always a nice night.

I didn't eat till I got back to the room at nearly 1 o'clock, where I ate some of what was left of the "Giant NY Pizza" we had ordered (28" - it was pretty good).

Comic Con 2008 - Thurday

2008-07-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

Thursday was a bit of a slow start. I went solo to the Grant Morrison/Stan Lee panel (the wife's hair wasn't ready to go yet) which, surprisingly, turned out to be a monumental event in the history of anti-chemistry. The thing was hosted by Virgin comics CEO (Depak Chopra’s son, incidently) who was not a strong enough moderator to get the discussion functioning well. The panel had Lee, a god of self-aggrandizement (with a sliver of self-deprecation), at his most self aggrandizing, and Morrison, a very interesting speaker, being reverential (I think in an attempt to get out in front of Lee’s shtick, and maybe have a real discussion) and not much else. So Grant’s good speaking qualities were nullified, and Stan played the irritating huckster end of his persona.

Morrison is working for Virgin on a motion capture/CGI animated (videogame-looking) version of a 10,000 year old Hindi myth about a family of deities going to war. This will be released as installments for cell phones. Interesting project, I guess, but I don’t really want to spend time watching anyone, even someone very interesting, play World of Warcraft.

Lee is working on a new universe for Virgin, and nothing of the past 35 years suggests this will be any good. The dancing around subjects was interesting, and the bit comedy (mostly concerning Lee’s inability to understand Morrison’s Scotts accent, and Morrison’s impression of a New York Cabbie – this included prop comedy, when Lee inserted an earpiece in his ear, saying it was like the ones they used at the UN) was well received.

It’s always nice to see either Lee or Morrison, but I think they worked against each other here.

I did get to the EW Visionaries: Comic Books panel (Note: I know some EW people so, on Friday, I tried to get into the EW showrunners panel, but couldn’t get in the room – so much for my connections - and there was no way I was getting into Saturday’s EW filmmakers panel, so I didn’t even try). I don’t know quite what to say about it. Some creators I love dearly were on the panel (Jim Lee, John Cassaday, Matt Fraction, Mike Mignola, Robert Kirkman, Colleen Doran, Mike Mignola, Grant Morrison); however, all but Mignola seemed a bit estranged from their usual charm (not that Hellboy creator Mignola's that charming, but he seemed to be at least as chatty and foul mouthed as he usually is). Morrison (again, after the Virgin panel) and Fraction were particularly an issue, as they are usually very engaging subjects, and were almost entirely shut down. Part of this was, maybe, panel size (too many people means less time to speak), but it was mostly the poor moderation. There were some boneheaded questions (I think the “why comics” question was frankly insulting… they don’t ask Christopher Nolan or even Kevin Smith “why film”), the creation of a vibe the creators didn’t feel comfortable with, and a general lack of encouragement in moments when the discourse could have taken off (panel dynamics are weird sometimes). I hate to complain, but that one didn’t go well. EW's Jeff Jensen (on Watchmen, discussed later) and E!'s Kristin Dos Santos (on two panels I saw) did a lot better than whoever handled this one (I forget the moderator’s name).

I missed the True Blood panel (my wife left EW early to get in line, but got in the wrong line… thanks Elite security!), but I talked to a producer in line for a while, which was kind of neat. He got the news of the Paramount Vantage firings on his Blackberry while we were waiting (you know, I just had to be a stupid doctor instead of getting a cool job). We stayed in the line to catch Dexter. I heard from some of our travel companions that True Blood was good.

The Dexter panel was a nice, middle of the road affair. Michael C. Hall was witty and engaging (not a surprise) as was Julie Benz (a surprise, but I guess that’s a testament to her acting abilities). The footage from the third season looked good (best “trailer” material so far at the con), and suggests the direction of the next season is this:

Dexter does something (possibly killing an innocent) that sets off a chain of events “like a pebble dropped at the top of a mountain, starting an unstoppable avalanche” (producer's words). This includes the introduction of Jimmy Smitts as a new superior involved in the investigation, who becomes Dexter’s first real friend. The overriding motif of the season is growing into new relationships and becoming you own man, as Dex learns to make father Harry’s "kill only the deserving" code his own, steps up with Rita's kids, and “figures out” sex.

Not an “I’ll always remember” panel, but nice to see, and pleasant. The female writer (showrunner?) was low-key-funny. The panel was hosted by Kristin Dos Santos (of Ask Kristin on E!) who did a nice job, but may be crosseyed.

Thursday on the floor was mixed. It was more crowded than I’ve ever seen Thursdays in the heavy trafficked part of the floor (by WB, DC, Star Wars), but lighter elsewhere. This rule held essentially all weekend, except Saturday when the lighter areas became a ghost town in the late afternoon (unusual), and Sunday, which was much heavier than usual everywhere. The actual comic book dealers (yes, there are still comics at the con) had fewer key books than usual, and I only saw 2 copies of Adventure Comics 247 (1st Legion of Super-Heroes), and I looked at every booth. They told me it was because they were all wiped out at the recent Wizard World Chicago convention, which is threatening to become the big actual comic book convention in the US. It was apparently verrry busy there.

I bought my first ever painted original art on Thursday, which is a nice shot of the Justice League blooming out towards the “camera” that I thought was a great piece by an up and comer. I almost bought an Alex Ross original later, but I’m just not ready to spend as much on a picture as on a car.

Wizards of the Coast, who does card games like Magic the Gathering and who owns TSR (D&D) didn’t show up, which bummed my 12 year old out, who loves to play in miniatures and card tournaments. He did a Super Smash Brothers Brawl tournament insrtead. I don’t know if this shows a permanent shift for the con brought on by simple economics or not. Paramount didn’t show for a panel this year, which I hear is related to bad treatment at the hands of con employees (one of the people I was travelling with witnessed Hiro’s friend from Heroes - Ando? - being turned away by panel personnel from getting into a room… these stories are legendary, and over time, some of the studios probably get a bit pissed).

My oldest son, who works for Paramount (oddly enough), left a friend's condo in Irvine, which is usually about an hour away from the con, but it took him 4.5 hours to get there due to a burning Von’s truck blocking the highway. Many panels were missing people who didn’t make it due to the accident, and several actors in later panels talked about being trapped in the traffic. The same thing happened 4 or 5 years ago due to forest fires.

Didn’t do anything at night but eat at Bucca Di Bepo’s. Nice meal, though.

Comic Con Report - introductory Remarks and Wed (preview night)

2008-07-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve never written a formal San Diego Comic Con report before. I’ve gone for 7 straight years (coinciding with the “explosive growth” phase of the con… attendance was 51 K the first year I went and is just north of 125 K now) and figured, hey, why don’t I get off my butt and get some of this stuff down. This is the first year we left some of the kids home (the baby and the 5 year old), which added some mobility, but felt kind of weird. We drove up Wednesday during the day, and got badges easily (much easier than any other year) in time to hit preview night.

The free wi-fi on the floor was a bit of a surprise (I think it's the first year for that), so much of the following was originally typed in Hall H and other rooms while waiting for the Watchmen and other panels. The con keeps getting busier in some areas, but seems to have topped out in others. Later in the con, we were shut out of the True Blood panel (30 from the door - rats), which may be the first time I haven't gotten in a 6CDEF room panel. The lines for the 6-ballroom subsections were busier in general.

Preview (Wednesday) night had scheduled events in the rooms for the first time. My preview night consisted of going to the Fringe pilot screening, and dropping thousands of dollars on two comics: Amazing Fantasy 15 (1st app of Spider-Man), and Avengers 4 (1st silver age Captain America). Got a decent deal. I still feel dizzy about the purchase, and smile everytime I think of it.

The Fringe screening may have been a mistake on the part of Fox… con screenings usually whip people into a frenzy first (by having cast members present, handing stuff out, etc) which helps the audience get all screamy and irrationally into it. The Heroes pilot was not “in shape” at the con a few years ago, but the stars (especially that Milo guy, having hailed from audience beloved Gilmore Girls) sold the thing, and the room was very positive about it. The cold (no one from the production staff was there) Fringe screening with bad audio led to a chilly audience reception. There was a ton of negative body language in the room.

So, Fringe itself. This is a further edit/tightening than the leaked, bit-torrented version, and is better. Even so, the pilot was too much a “modern” pilot – it wanted to be a full story and a cohesive origin at the same time, but wasn’t honed as well as a movie. So, it dragged like crazy in the middle, tried too hard all over the place, and had an opening sequence too like the openings of the Lost and Invasion pilots. However, the lead actress was good (like Joan Allen, but more conventionally sexy), the father/son stuff was good (the comedic stuff between Pacey - everyone kept calling him that - and Theron from Lord of the Rings - no one called him that - and the two action sequences were the high points of audience involvement for the entire event), and I left thinking that it was a good premise for a show. I’ll try it, so, mission accomplished, I guess, but my standards aren’t terribly high. I think much of the audience might not be as responsive, and the screening may lead to some mezo-mezo buzz.

We ordered pizza the first night, had some wine, and went to bed, with the comic books safely snuggled in the room's safe.

THIS.... IS AMEHRICAN IDOL

2008-05-01T10:48:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a little out of commission lately due to a Hawaii trip, schedule changes at work, and my son’s upcoming graduation from collage (wow!). I intend to really start cracking the whip soon. There’s a lot I want to get to. But, for now, I wanted to stand up at the meeting and admit I am powerless over my disease. I watch American Idol.

As this season wheezes to a close, and in light of Paula Abdul’s career defining moment Tuesday, it seems like a good time to point out the think that is my very most favorite thing about American Idol – its utter amateurishness allows for real moments to crack through the feeble attempts at the show (the producers, if you don’t like me nebulizing the blame) “controlling” what’s going on. I think this is my favorite thing, in a way, about just about all reality shows that I watch – no matter how much people might realize that the things going on are on camera, ultimately in the live environment people can’t help but let themselves seep out through the thin spots of whatever image they are trying to construct. This is also why I don’t watch shows like the Hills which give me the existential willies, as they posit the emergence of a generation (albeit one that may be restricted to So Cal) who are their on camera persona. The abyss stares back.

Back to the point: I find it really charming that all the aspects of Idol seem locked down and controlled in a way that is so poorly executed that everyone can figure out what is really going on. Paula telling multiple versions how it happened? The gaff was obviously a ticking time bomb, and how they did not have an immediate meeting post Tuesday’s show to figure out their story is beyond me. Instead Lithgow blows up during the event (anyone had to know that would get out), Paula gives the “I read the notes for Cook” (which didn’t make any sense as an explanation as she liked Cook’s performance), then changes her mind on Seacrest’s show the next morning, essentially admitting to something damaging, only to have Seacrest bring the whole thing up in a particularly unsatisfying way on the results show, that served only to piss off people paying attention, and remind everyone else that it happened. This is lousy crisis management, but brilliant television.

The Idol producers have no idea how to run things in a professional manner. Their crisis response has always done more harm than good - their only good decisions seem to be when they decide to say nothing and wait it out. Otherwise it’s some version of the same story: first, lie really badly; then, go back on the lie without admitting the lie, and tell the partial truth, usually the most damaging part of the truth, cushioned by easily fact checkable lie; then, comment once more in a self defeating way, without apology, and in the most insulting way possible to the audience; finally, steadfastly pretend it never happened.

This kind of stuff is what keeps me watching the show. The way that they support and pimp plants and crappy singers that they, for some reason, want to see go all the way is what makes the perseverance of interesting or different people so compelling, and keeps me rooting for them when there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY I WOULD EVER LISTEN TO THEM SING OTHERWISE!

Watching the show is like some crappy pop culture version of reading Moby Dick (my favorite book, which has been on my mind lately thanks to Battlestar Galactica), where watching the creation struggle against it’s bonds, the structure threaten to fall apart, and the (mostly not overtly present) creator(s) struggle and succumb to the untameable nature of what they created are the most gripping parts. Only Melville was a really terrific writer not an incompetent committee of producers.

Movie Binge: Serenity, Breach, and Tales of Babylon 5

2008-04-08T10:53:00.000-07:00

I've been on a movie catch-up binge lately, and wound up watching Breach, Tales of Babylon 5, and Serenity (again) on the same day. I don't have much to say about Serenity (it was my third viewing of the sci-fi movie spinoff of the Firefly TV show, so didn’t learn that much new – I watched it introduce some people to it) except that I’ve been struck on each viewing by the way the entire cast is put into a position of certain death at the climax, only to have them walk away (the only hero's death in the climax happens as an accident before the "certain death" sequence starts). This has to be some sort of record - "greatest amount of cumulative character jeopardy achieved without anyone actually dying" or something. It almost seems like the big fight was filmed in such a way that they could decide who dies later, with almost everyone potentially mortally wounded. It's still a really good movie in its own right, even if you haven’t seen the Firefly TV series, and a good movie to for teenage daughters to watch (if you can get over the prostitute thing and don't have a problem with some mostly stylized but occasionally more brutal violence). The only thing I noticed this time that I didn't remember from past viewing is how simplified the side characters are compared to the TV series – everyone is pared to one basic character trait except Mal. That’s part of why it’s so tight, I guess.

Watching Breach, last year's Ryan Phillipe, Chris Cooper, Laura Linley "true life" spy story concerning the bringing down of the CIA's biggest mole, helped me understand why such a well reviewed movie didn't make many top 10 year end lists. This is one of those times where a movie made of 4 star parts, makes a 3 star whole, and leaves a 2 star memory. The acting (especially Chris Cooper's) is good, the plot is interesting, the characters are nicely fleshed out, the DC “city porn” (i.e. gratuitously luscious cinematography of buildings) was great, the true story angle was cool, etc. But the movie was just too sparse to stay with you much. Very few characters are focused on, interesting things aren’t returned to (like the “tell me four true things about yourself and one lie”), important info for understanding these people's lives (like simple time-line information) is not addressed, and it just seems like the movie takes its time so much that can’t fit some of the necessary stuff in. The thriller elements were OK but total 10 minutes of screen time (tops), and didn’t build. So you’re left with a movie that was good but is less than the sum of its parts due lack of ambition in much it was trying to accomplish. I generally like third path narratives (stories where someone is offered a choice of examples of how to live, and instead makes the decision to follow their own road), but Philippe played an internally passive character, and his decision to take the path happens in the end-text of the film, so it is not effective. Also, I don’t know why it was written this way (an attempt to be true to the real people?) but Philippe’ s character answers a question with a “what?” or “huh?” something like 20 times in the film, and the other character has to repeat the question. It was a little much.

Tales of Babylon 5 is an oddity that screams out to be evaluated in light of its production goals, more than what actually happens on screen. For those unfamiliar with the project, it is a direct to DVD couple of stories that function as two additional episodes of the 1990s TV show. The idea behind the DVD was to follow a new production model of continuing television by doing limited production on just a few episodes, releasing a DVD, and using rolling financing and more limited budgets to produce a series without having a network or syndication house bankroll it. If something like this worked, you might see continuations of cancelled series with a strong, small following like Journeyman (to choose an example from this year) or any Tim Minear show ever.

The original B5 show was a bit of an oddity itself, with a 5 year plan (it was always conceived to last that long and only that long) to tell an epic, but finite story centered on a satellite station that was, in effect, the “UN of space.” The first year of the show was kind of hit and miss, but the skein made the full 5 years by kicking and screaming and clawing and financing its way to the end. It built up a significant following, with cries of “best science fiction show ever,” which was not enough to keep the subsequent stabs at reviving it (B5: Crusade, the most notable example) from crashing and burning.

As to the current DVD, the low production values would be obvious to a four year old, and are damn distracting to a TV addicted adult. There are 2 episodes and a total of 6 speaking roles, and 2 extras. The opening is shot in a series of varying long shots with dialogue over an establishing shot, then a medium long shot of two main characters talking, with only the back of the speaking person’s head visible (it looks like the director blew getting the proper coverage, and they were trying to patch it together without reshoots). The matting instead of sets is distracting at first, but improves (I think I just decided to ignore it) except for the one shot of the hanger bay with people in the background that don’t move, which bugged me every time they used it as an establishing shot (about 10 times).

The episodes were OK, but suffered from the same overly parable-like construction that a lot of the original show’s first season stand alone episodes fell into. They are also structured as 2 act plays, and aren’t edited tightly, so neither story really gains momentum. The stories are kind of neat, in that “why don’t they tackle these subjects on TV more” kind of way, with the first about the relevance of religion (by redoing Silence of the Lambs with a demon in the Hannibal Lector role) and the second a version of the “if you could go back in time, would you shoot Hitler” story (their answer the disk offers, incidentally, is “don’t shoot him, take him home for supper”).

This has to be considered a failed experiment. The quality level falls short of the average episode of the show in essentially all ways, and the strength of the original was its monstrously building mega arc anyway. There is really no way to condone the low level that the production values stoop to, here. I know I’ve said this before about other things, but this reminds me of early TV “theatre” shows like Playhouse 90, only with rushed CGI. The DVD is watchable, with low expectations, but don’t expect TV continuation on DVD to become a fad based on this. Nor would you want it to.

On Genre

2008-03-28T15:33:00.000-07:00

Dick Hyacinth, he of the awesome Dick Hates Your Blog blog, posted some musings on the use of “shocking plot development” as currency, which slid pleasingly into a discussion of genre. In this discussion he makes the audacious claim that the superhero category isn’t a genre, it’s an occupational grouping that may be part of a number of genres. Well, let’s let Dick speak:

But, despite this movement across genres, I don't think that superheroes really constitutes its own genre. It's more like an occupational setting. A television show set in a newsroom could be in the mystery, comedy, or soap opera genre. I think that's basically the case with superheroes, which works pretty well in unexpected genres like comedy.

There’s a lot of other really good stuff in the post, both on the topic of the recently increasing tendency to skew superhero writing to other genre styles, and on satisfaction of audience expectations. But that money shot quote above really was a great observation, even if its conclusion is incorrect. In order to see why I think he’s wrong we have to figure out what a genre is.

Dividing stuff into genres or “kinds” really has only two rules. Rule one: the genres must be distinguishable (people must be, for the most part, able to see something a say “that belongs to the ______ genre” – they’ll always be exceptions, but that’s the most important rule). Rule two: there must be reasonable utility to this grouping (this differences must be useful for the audience). There is no rule three. There is especially no rule three about genres themselves being coherent with each other, and being defined by the same sets of rules with just differing parameters.

It’s probably easiest to use the strongest genres to make this point, and by strongest, I mean by the criteria above – the most clearly defined and useful, which also tend to be the most inclusive. The genre of horror movies, about the strongest genre I can think of, is a good example. If something could be considered a family drama or a horror movie, it’s going to be considered a horror movie… horror usually wins any head to head. (I’ll talk about the Alien counter example in a minute). Horror movies are defined by a clear set of narrative values, mostly a rule set of how things happen, and the presence of a plot driven by a threat of death to the protagonist(s) (to use Todd Alcott terminology: what does the protagonist want? To stay alive). Another way to say this is that a movie is a horror movie because it “behaves” like a horror movie.

Compare this to Science fiction. sci fi is defined by a set of tropes (terrible word for this discussion except as it helps us isolate defining elements that we can then usefully categorize) that are a grab bag of elements (you can take some and leave others): space, spaceships, aliens, future technology, evolved or degenerated societies, etc., but you need signifiers – if you don’t have space or spaceships or aliens, you better have enough future technology and an odd enough society to make it clear that it’s sci fi. The defining characteristic here is the presence of things that don’t exist, but might one day exist in our world as understood scientifically (i.e. without the need to appeal to magic or the supernatural). Another way to say this is that a movie is a sci fi movie because it “has stuff” like a sci fi movie.

This illustrates the first big problem encountered when trying to define genres – they are not defined by using rules that are coherent with each other, which also means they are not mutually exclusive. The movie Alien has all the defining characteristics of a horror movie and of a science fiction movie. So what is it? I’d argue that it is a sci fi movie because of the litmus test to end all litmus tests – that’s where they put it in Blockbuster, i.e. that’s how the mass audience perceives it. In this case the sci fi “trappings” trump the horror plot.

This recalls the always fun argument over Star Wars. The movie “behaves” like a fantasy, therefore it must be a fantasy say the cognoscenti. This is total bullshit, however, since the people in the move shoot stuff in space and have laser swords and shit. Q.E.D., bitches. This is because that is how the public perceives it, which is in turn because this is the most useful distinction to the mass audience.

Let’s talk TV for a second, to get into a direct example of non coherent rules. The sit-com is a genre. It doesn’t matter if it takes place in a doctors office, a law firm, a hospital, an office building, a bunch of unaffordable apartments, the Lincoln White House, a spaceship, or some dude named Herman’s head. Almost no one would say “I like sitcoms, but I specifically don’t like medical sitcoms.” They might say “I don’t like Scrubs,” but it would likely be that that don’t like the modern frenetic “cutaway” type comedy, not because they don’t like “medical sitcoms,” and thus the “medical sitcom” is not a genre. But “medical drama” is a genre, because people make that distinction, and make decisions based on it. CSI and Law and Order are very different shows (one could be subclassified as a science detective show with law enforcement trappings, the other a hybrid cop and legal drama/detective show) but both are considered in the same genre (the law enforcement procedural drama), even though CSI is closer to House in form and execution than Law and Order.

That brings us to superheroes. The only reason there is no superhero category in Blockbuster is that there aren’t enough movies (yet) to justify the shelf space. People recognize the superhero genre, thus it exists. It just so happens this genre is defined occupationally, or, alternately, through its outward trappings - colorful suits, powers, and externalized conflict. It’s OK. Don’t worry. It’s just a label. We can still get together on Friday nights and talk about thematic concerns such as preoccupation with the ethics of power.

This brings up the question of audience. I have been skewing my results to that of the mass audience and, as we well know, the mass audience doesn’t read comics. So, like the sci-fi/fantasy community does, we can sub-genrefy all we like. Since only people weirdly interested in analyzing narrative seem to read comics, we can compartmentalize in the air like we just don't care. Superhero noir comics. Event-driven superhero comics. Superhero spy comics. Superhero space opera comics. Superhero-sploitation comics (wait, that would be all of them).

Genres are a mess – they are stitched together Frankenstein’s monster-like constructs because their strength is judged not by how smoothly we can describe them, but how readily people can go “oh, it’s that kind thing… I hate that… you love that stuff, so go enjoy it and leave me alone.” Superheroes definitely constitute a genre, but are one defined in such a way to allow for lots of juicy subgenrefication that we can discuss till we start to cry about how we’ve squandered our miserable lives.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets Review

2008-03-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

My wife has become really picky about going to see movies. We’ll set out to see a movie and, very often, she’ll look through the listings and we’ll wind up bowling instead. Far from the super-elite cinema snob, though, she’s just looking for well crafted escapist entertainment (a romantic comedy that’s funny but still gets too you, and action movie with a brain or a heart or something other than just explosions) but, in her opinion, it seems like this is too much to ask at this point. She really liked the first National Treasure, though, so off we went to the movies, for the first time in many months, to see the Sequel, the Harry Potter-ish-ly titled National Treasure: Book of Secrets, .

One Quick aside concerning my own feelings about the Original National Treasure: I liked it. I thought it was relatively tight both in the way the plot hung together and the historical aspects were (mostly) organically woven in . In the year or so since I saw the first one, it didn’t age well in my memory (some movies are like that… you forget you liked them somehow), but I saw it again the Friday before we saw the new one and… yeah, it held up. The history geek aspects fueled the likable character interactions and grounded the action stuff.

Tight is not a word I’d use to describe the sequel, however. The producers seemed to have taken the lesson of CSI Miami to heart - if something’s absurd, overwhelm the audience with it. The first movie was pretty ridiculous on its own merits (albeit consistent in its absurdity), but this one pushes through the envelope and blows up the whole damn mailbox. Got an important government function you want to crash? Just book all the other hotels in the city the day before so they’ll have to move it (wha?). Need to find something hidden on the SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN? Just pour some Aquafinatm everywhere (oh yeah, the product placement was pretty bad too – the MSN logo was on the screen for like 30 seconds). Need to break into Buckingham Palace? Here’s some flowers. Did I mention I’M NIC CAGE?

The historical stuff was also an issue. In the first movie, the templar treasure and foundation of the country aspects came together nicely, and formed a somewhat coherent mystery (thanks, Freemasons!). The current movie's historical aspects don’t really gel, touching on the end of the civil war, the statue of liberty(ies), the resolute desks, etc., all held together only by time period. In addition, the idea that the confederates could have reopened the Civil War after Lincoln’s assassination with a big American aboriginal treasure seems kind of a farfetched (or at least random) confluence of things on which to hinge the movie. The motivations for the “villain” (the quote marks indicate a huge lack of nerve on the movie’s part in making the villain villainous) were really thready, the fake documentation that MacGuffin's the movie is never explained, and the suggestion that a government official is in on the plot is never returned to.

The recurring shtick gets reeeealy thick in this one. Did you like this from the first movie?:

*Nic Cage “We need to _____!”

*Assembled others “but mister Nic Cage, that’s impossible, there’s no way, can’t be done

*Nic Cage “What about _____!

*Assembled others “You know, if we… that just might work”

Did you like it last time? Then you’ll LOVE this movie, cause’ that happens like eight times. There is also a few “you know, you’ve just committed many obscene crimes against important historical artifacts and the leader of the free world, and I’m in a position to kill you or put you into prison forever, but I respect your overt reverence for history mister Nic Cage (even though it didn’t stop you from peeing on the Gettysburg address), so we’ll call it even” moments.

It sounds like I am saying I didn’t like the movie, doesn’t it? We’ll you know what? Just like CSI Miami, I think these things validate the existence of the movie, not undermine it. Nic Cage’s gift of having no demarcation between the person and the actor helps anchor the movie in its unreal place, a true movie place, a Hollywood place. As with David Caruso, there is never a moment with Cage so real its not fake, but (paradoxically) never one so fake that it doesn’t seem real to him - i.e., we wind up resetting our reality on him… he’s that persuasive… so the center of the movie seems to move with him (even though it’s probably the other way around). Thus, he makes the movie function despite a screenplay that needed a lot more work. As all this would suggest, the movie is also pleasantly self aware. During an argument as distraction scene, his helpers tell Cage to stop overacting, which causes him to ham it up even more.

Other stuff of note: 1) the video game-ishness of the movie was something to behold at times (I need to write about Highlander the Source soon to talk about videogame aethetics invading movies at greater length). I mean, the plots of the films are obviously influenced by adventure games (find glasses, find declaration, use glasses on declaration), but the action sequences reminded me specifically of the last Zelda game - the thing with the crank that lifts the water door - and even Donkey Kong (Cage has to time a barrel jump… no, really). 2) They did something to accentuate Helen Mirren’s breasts that distracted me. 3) The fireworks of Disney over Mount Rusmore ending (wait - the Disney fireworks were on the big CGI Disney production logo at the beginning of the movie… hmmmm, symmetry) was just the right squirt of Cheese Whiz on the fried Spam of a movie (hey, but I like fried Spam and Cheese Wiz).

When ZZ Top’s Eliminator album came out, I remember reading a Rolling Stone review the money line of which was “rock and roll doesn’t deserve to be this stupid” and thinking that that concept was so orthogonal to my point of view as to be nonsensical. This is one stupid movie, but if I let that stop me from enjoying it, I have to ask myself what the hell am I doing watching these types of movies anyway. The movie was awesome, not despite its stupidity, but by brandishing its stupidity like a knife and telling the audience “im'o cut you!” It, well Nic Cage really, physically drags you into its world were egghead crap like “plot logic” and “Chekov’s rule” doesn’t matter. The only way I’d have liked this more is if they tipped it over entirely and cast Bernie Mac as the president.

The Beautiful (Thought) Balloon

2008-03-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

As promised, I’m returning to comment on the series of recent Steven Grant Permeant Damage articles on the thought balloon. He covers the ground quite well, so I really don’t intend to do much here than add a couple of surface details, and bring up a few related points.

This balloon and caption stuff Grant is discussing occurs in a specific historical background. When I started seriously reading comics in 1980, it was at the cusp of the storytelling “revolution” hinted at in the column. The golden age’s anarchy of poor technique, with occasional better writing including EC’s almost experimental contributions to the field, had long ago given way to the Lee and Kirby distillation of Romance comics personal angst and war/action comics kineticism which reached its zenith during Roy Thomas’ run as editor in chief at Marvel. What had happened by the time I climed aboard is that the dominant superhero paradigm, created in the cold fusion of the early silver age, had been perfected, and had spent the 70’s starting to strain under the weight of creator’s ambitions to do something else with the form. It all continued to work, of course, but there was a great need to do something new, and frustrations arose, partially because the “language” was set so firmly, that it was difficult to tell certain kind of stories as well. Steve Gerber managed it, but for the most part, comics “product” seemed like an imitation of the recently perfected heights with occasional uncomfortable stabs at realism.

The caption box/thought balloon revolution in the mainstream was a long one, stretching from Frank Miller’s 1st person narrative boxes circa 1981 through to 1999’s the Authority, which seemed to be the ultimate statement of “we tell comics stories differently now.” It’s funny how these two examples demonstrate the opposite models pulling comics from the Lee mode – literature (in the case of Miller, Spillane specifically) and movies (the “widescreen” Authority with place/time captions only), but superhero comics changed during this time, gradually but totally.

The reason to abandon techniques such as the thought balloon is twofold: to kick out the crutch and to sever the link to the aesthetic. By crutch, I’m referring to the fact that usage of these devices were straightforward and time tested, and easy to use to tell the obvious kinds of big two stories. People brought up in superhero comics only knew how to tell the stories the way they read them, and was very easy in some ways and severely limiting in others. Bottom line: the “language" of these comics was both dominating and limiting but easy to employ, and thus encouraged the medium to stagnate. It was necessary to destroy the form to transcend it, or even just to move anywhere with it.

This brings up the second issue of the aesthetic. Say what you will about The Roy Thomas Avengers, but it is a specific thing. You know what you got with that book, you knew what to expect. If the cover said “Enter Goliath,” you knew what was inside - the story would have a certain feel and certain values. This was reassuring but also meant it couldn’t stray to far in the kind of thing it would attempt. In order to break this, comics had to stretch far enough away to effectively isolate themselves from the original paradigm, leaving the original paradigm as an antiquated artifact of another time. Doing a traditional comic like almost any comic from 1972 today would seem like pastiche, and we’d all be looking for the underlying (probably ironic)statement the usage of this style is meant to imply. That, of course, means you can’t really do a comic like that straight anymore (for the exception, read on). This could be considered a loss and, of course, still is by John Byrne.

Now, I’m a huge Byrne fan. I have the majority of his work (five longboxes and three magazine boxes worth) and have read it all, and enjoyed most of it, so this is a fan talking. Byrne seems to have taken the losing side in the revolution. Back when I entered comics, he was a major positive force for advancing the form, but he seemed to always believe in a core system of accepted values that shouldn’t change. It is most often sited that his public persona began to sour about the time Next Men went under, which many blamed on sour grapes - he went "creator owned" too late to fully capitalize on the industry’s boom time - but he had started ranting about people doing things “wrong” long before that. The fact that the image guys, who he openly feuded with, were such time bombs obscured the crankiness (made it seem, in fact, like righteous indignation) but by the time he started claiming Morrison’s Doom Patrol was some kind of moral plague on comics, you knew something more was up.

It’s gotten harder for me to read Byrne now. It’s not the Dave Sim effect either, with blonde-Latina-hooker messageboard comments tainting the actual work, it’s the way he started to look at rigid adherence to superhero comics values (as he saw them) as an end unto themselves. His recent comics read like they are trying to prove no one should have moved on from 1983. (please note, I developed some other problems with Byrne as well that revolve around an almost Star Trek the Next Generation-like need to examine the same plot ideas over and over with only slight variations. I should also note that Alan Moore, although has a different paradigm – a more literate one – is just as guilty about being stuck in the stylistic mud). Byrne nonwithstanding, it is but-ass hard to write a good traditional superhero story without running into the either the irony/pastiche or the looks-like-a-hack landmine. In fact, The Brave and the Bold is the only current title that is able (brilliantly, I might add) to do it today.

Back around to balloons and captions: the work of distancing superhero comics from the original aesthetic is done. The crutch has now been kicked out, and the leg has healed. Since though balloons have been removed from their original associations in the language, this is an excellent time to bring them back as more adaptable constructs. The real question is how to use them and the real work is to honestly judge the results. I’m not a big fan of Bendis’ use of them in Mighty Avengers, but that’s not because I disagree with the idea of using them… I just think Bendis’ tendency to try to emulate the way “people really talk” leaks over into the “way they really think” department in an uncomfortable way, and the “what I’m really thinking” sub-thought balloons following word balloons has too much of a jokey, ironic, high school-ish feel to belong in this book (it belongs in a book like Ultimate Spider-man).

Point is: the slate is clean, which means creators can attempt to use these devices again to try to create an effect, or figure out how to incorporate them holistically to create a new way to tell stories. These are unique devices without an analogue in other media, other than possibly voice-overs in movies (although they should theoretically be more useful in comics). Care just must be taken when re-employing them, however, to avoid loosing the ground that years of abstinence has gained.

Bionic Woman Struck Dead - a Postmortem

2008-03-20T16:32:00.000-07:00

Bionic Woman, the show that Entertainment Weekly called "one of the highlignts of the new fall season" (while really, really high, apparently) has finally been officially cancelled, though it's been presumed dead since the writer's strike started. Needless to say, I think EW was a bit off the mark, and there is some objective quality standard issue at play over this show (i.e. the show sucked, and that's not an opinion). This was the first show since Medical Investigations (see the first couple of months of this blog) that I found myself watching solely because of the spectacular wrong-headedness of the whole enterprise. The problems with the show were sub-total but the show's big problem to me was the fact that it seemed written by people who didn't understand what this kind of show is (i.e. they weren't really up on the strengths and weaknesses of the genre, and maybe felt like they were slumming it – underestimation of the demands of genre writing is probably the second biggest issue with TV writing in general after the fact that too few people can write comedy well). The writers/producers didn't appear to be aware when they did something that has been done a hundred times (and better) or the damage that some decisions did to the credibility of the set-up.

Specific problems included:

1. Hopeless miscasting of the lead - I think there is probably a lot of agreement on this. The actress was inert, and demanded no interest when she wasn't in action. She wasn't the right actress for the quiet drama, which this show had waay too much of.

2. She's just so special - A little Mary Sue-ishness plus a little screenwriterey "everything has to connect" bullshit, which the character couldn't support. The show abandoned the idea of the main character being randomly pulled into the situation as soon as the pilot was done (I think her "files" were found within 15 minutes of the following episode). There is virtually no criteria that a super-elite government agency attempting to build a perfect agent could have that would include this woman. She's personally encumbered, indecisive, avoids sucess, and has a problem with authority.

3. Speaking of indecision – every action scene seemed to start with an extended moment of assessment on the part of the lead as to whether to do anything or not. This is Bionic Woman, not Hamlet. The tortured thing is fine as a backdrop, but come on.

4. Just fire her already - Given point 2, the "agency" would never have chosen her in the first place but, given they did, why would they have tolerated her constantly defying orders, setting her own mission goals mid-mission, letting people go, kicking the crud out of her superiors when they get in the way, etc. This pushed things way over the believability cliff (an aside - she was, incidently, most often WRONG when she went maverick, and it is difficult to see how, if the show had survived, she could have learning curved her way out of that without changing the message of the show to "submit, they were right" or by her suddenly doing things right, which will seem like the writers skewing the outcome). I’m all for suspension of disbelief, but it was too much, and the other aspects of the show didn’t earn it.

5. The James Joyce thing - Don’t get me started on the self indulgence of the “I want to sip coffee and read James Joyce” stuff. It rang incredibly false, the writers didn’t even know what the Dead and Ulysses are about, and it put a lie to all her lunches with her “successful” friends (the tone of these lunches was a sepperate problem in and of itself). And the Dead, although it may be published as a free standing unit today, is not a book, it is a longish short story, not even a novella. That’s a credibility issue when they tried to sell her as a great mind who knows her stuff. As with point 2 above, the writers wanted us to believe she was awesome, but flawed, and it seems they chose to elevate her to the standard of "I was kept from being a lit professor by the cruel machinations of fate," which was wrong on many levels. This is a primary example of the self indulgence of the show - you can do as much unique and individual work within the confines of genre, and give people whatever quirks you want, but the framework needs to be strong enough to support it, and the stuff has to make sense.

6. Stupid technological details - it was stupid for her to be walking around talking on the cellphone. If they didn't bluetooth (or direct cell) her replaced ear or give her a more sophisticated internal com, the super uber govt' tech guys just suck (when they make these mistakes, they often tried to paper over them later with flimsy appeals to her rejection of authority).

7. The british accent - in that one episode, her speaking in her natural accent (the actress, as everyone knows, is british) seemed a little to unearned-inside-baseball for me. They assume the show's audience would get this joke, but the "show's audience" (I'm talking genrephiles here) was mostly pissed off by that time, and saw this as too cute by half. If it wasn't supposed to be a joke, then the only possible other explanation is lazyness (the actress was tired talking in an American accent).

8. Her character just didn’t work in the framework of the show - related to my writer’s quibble above, I think she’s the character that the show’s creators wanted to write about shoehorned into a context that didn’t fit her. Everything about her relationship to her environment was unbelievable or (at best) required a leap as to what’s going on (e.g. some of the sister and friend stuff might have worked if we believed that Lindsey was really not capable of succeeding and was hiding behind her sister as an excuse why she didn’t make it, which would make the Joyce errors clever – she’s a person who enjoys the idea that she had been kept form what she wanted by the outside world, while really it's just that she couldn't be bothered to understand – or possibly even read – the books she was supposed to have wanted to “study”).

You will see the repeating issues above of self-indulgence, bad character/actress decisions, and difficulties with the premise/framework. These, I think, most likely stemmed from the above mentioned idea that the show was worked on by a writing staff that was unfamiliar with the type of material (and the importance of fundementals of world-building) and didn't know how to make their voice heard in a fluid way in this genre specific structure. And miscasting the actress, of course.

The only way the show could have ever worked for me would have been to pull a Miracleman on it – i.e. overhaul the whole reality of the show. My vote would have been to end the first season by increasing the things that didn’t make sense, killing off characters left and right, then ending with a cliffhanger that looks like certain death for the lead character’s death, only to start next season with the lead character leading a normal life (unexplained at first) with no powers, but having “dreams” or flashes of first season things happening. She would begin to see people she has some recollection of, and eventally would be contacted by some "crazy" guy who suggests these may be more than hallucinations. At this point, she investigates her way to finding that the project from season 1 was real but was discontinued, with the units (including her) sent back to some version of their lives, memories wiped, and their powers locked with a keyword necessary to revive them (she could even be living the life that season 1 told us she wanted, giving the whole thing a Last Temptation of Christ overtone).

This would culminate in a scene where she finds the lab of someone who has continued the work (someone from season 1, not necessarily in the same role… this is a Wizard of Oz type deal) where there is a woman in a tank with surrounding TV screens showing a scene identical to some memorable scenes in season 1, but with the woman in the tank in Lindsey’s place. It is thus revealed that much of season one was a VR training exercise in her head, but with real people in the roles. This explains the inconsistencies (and their increase at the end of the season) – the interaction between native psychologies and the program are unpredictable, and impossible to program flawlessly. Now she knows the score, somehow gets hold of the keyword (turning off her strength governors and regaining her “powers”), and the agency has to get rid of her. This puts her on the run, but she wants to find her sister, and her “dead” boyfriend, who (if they ever existed at all, or if they were actually her sister and boyfriend) may not be dead.

This premise would have fit the actress’s talents better, the first season would not have to be completely “written out” (the actors could show back up, even the dead ones, in roles that could be tweaked however necessary, and even the events could have been based on something, partially on her own memories of events that did happen to her) but the trick is figuring out what was real and what wasn’t. If you could have gotten David Lynch to direct a key episode or two of the transition, it might have worked.

Greg Rucka's Spider-aversion

2008-03-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, before I decided to try to really kick this blogging thing back into gear, I went to the Las Vagas Library system’s annual comic book day. They held the thing at the West Sahara branch, which is a big, big library, with quite a bit of meeting space. I have never mentioned before what a great couple of library systems we have in Vegas – a Las Vegas system and a Henderson system, both pretty top notch, both with robust “graphic novel” sections, and the Vegas system at least (maybe it's both ways, I don't know) is open to everyone in the area (meaning as a Henderson resident, I can check out from either library). The event was crowded… I got lucky with someone leaving or I would have had to park across the 8 lane Sahara Parkway and walk to the thing. The mini-convention had one large panel room, used during the whole event by the more “important” panels, upstairs panel rooms, also in use most of the time, a vendor area where my local awesome retailer of choice (Ralph from Alternate Reality Comics) had a booth, and a signing area. The big guest was Greg Rucka, who I happen to like, mostly for Queen and Country (including the prose novels) and Whiteout, although a lot of his DC eventsmanship isn’t my bag.

I’d mostly forgotten about Rucka’s talk, which was nice and informal, with many questions that I didn’t care about (most of which were answered with some version of “I can’t tell you or Dan DiDio would have to kill you”) but also many writing process questions, which weren’t groundbreaking, but which elicited thoughtful responses. One quibble… whenever I see or hear (exclusive) prose writers talk, they seem to have a range of personalities an attitudes, varying from person next door, to egotistical, to whiny, to kooky, to shy, etc. When seeing "mainstream" comic writers I’ve never seen speak before, they always seem to remind me of one a few guys I knew in high school predominantly characterized by a sense of arrested development (or, more precisely, man-childism). Rucka seems like a smart guy, but when he gets enthusiastic, it’s in that embarrassing “imagine how many dice damage the fireball spell of a level 50 magic user could do” way that makes you half expect that he has wet himself.

The topic of that talk came up again as I was catching up on Permanent Damage columns where I found a reference to it in the first of Steven Grant’s recent columns on the use of the thought balloon (the later is here - I’ve got some comments about those articles, which were excellent, but I’ll deal with them in a later post):

At the library convention I was at a couple weekends back, I heard Greg Rucka explaining to an audience member that people who go around complaining that if Superman really existed he wouldn't use his superpowers altruistically just don't get it because that's the character and what you think he would or wouldn't really do is irrelevant. The conceit of Superman is that he's an altruist, so going in you have to accept that. It's like people who complain that rock concerts are too loud; that's like complaining that Beethoven symphonies have string arrangements. It's their nature.

This was part of a pretty sound discussion by Grant on the adherence to a central conceit, and the suspension of disbelief. You know, you can’t watch House unless you accept that, in the world of the show, that Gregory House could retain his license and privileges despite his egregious behavior because you and the show have an “agreement” about this. Fine. But the context of Rucka’s remark was a discussion of which characters he liked and which he didn’t, during which I felt he was a bit short sighted. The discussion seemed mostly a rationalization of taste. This rubbed me the wrong way since the character he used as an example of one that he didn’t like was Spider-Man, and Spider-man is awesome. I love Spider-man! Shut up! Just shut your DC exclusive hole! Seriously, though, he did suggest that Spider man was a guilt ridden wretch, and that is no way, he says, to be a hero.

Restated, Rucka’s claim seems to be that guilt abrogates heroism. Spider-Man, he said, was driven by guilt to do the right thing, and thus doing the right thing is not a heroic act. The upshot is simply Rucka admitting doesn’t understand Spider-man, and couldn’t write him (I agree with that), but in getting there, he suggests that only heroism without any other personal factors besides sheer altruism can be considered heroism. Although I can see what he’s driving at, I think this is a load of crap. For one, Spider-man's motivating force is not guilt but responsibility (duh! it’s in the motto). The Uncle Ben sequence, especially after close to 50 years of Spider-musing, is best seen as a cautionary tale that you can’t ignore the suffering of others when you are in a position to help since you and those you love are, ultimately, the others yourself. Peter was a good kid who was at a point of moral choice and was taught a lesson, which he apparently learned about as completely as you can learn such a lesson. So, if I jump off of an overpass into water that I don’t know the depth of in order to try to save someone thrown from their car, would it be not heroic if it turns out I’d been to afraid to jump in the water and save someone from drowning when I was ten (this didn’t really happen to me - it was Phil Collins, I think… maybe I’m getting the story wrong)? I would argue that Spider-man just has a slightly more relatable heroism - a more day to day go out there and get it done, when am I going to get that haircut heroism - than the Superman example.

Let me reveal, however, that I agree with Rucka's love of Superman. In fact, I’d go as far as to say the three superheroes that are the best built as characters (whether they are handled well is another matter) are Superman, Spider-Man, and Captain America. Superman and Captain America both tap directly into a deeply rooted idealism of the American dream, with Superman’s two fisted immigrant protecting the little guy from exploitation and facing the big threats because he can, and Captain America soldiering anonymously for the core (and, as it happens, American) ideal of freedom from the tyranny over the minds of men whether or not the government agrees and especially if the government is the tyranny over the minds of men. Spider-man is just a smaller scale version of the same civic responsibility, made more personal.

Rucka likes Batman, although I don’t personally think that that’s a step down from my three greats (although he seems to be an easier character to get right). Batman’s themes of fear and safety run just as deep, but not as wide to me, and Rucka gives him an easy pass on the motivation of his parents dying (it’s not guilt like Spider-man, y’see, it’s not wanting it to happen to others). The Batman theme that has been the most interesting over the past 20 years or so is the end/means of the need for ultimate-competence - an examination of what the person is like who says “the buck has to stop with me… no one else can do it.” Batman as the hero version of Col. Jessup.

If I was going to devil’s advocate against Spider-man, I’d go for a different angle – gender politics. One could cobble together an easy argument that manly men heroes are out of style due to wimpification of men by the media. Superman has to be reduced in the movies (oh God, see Superman Returns, or better yet don’t) to a pining lovesick voyeur, because that diffuses all that threatening male confidence. Whose fault is this? Spider-man, the grandfather of all nerd heroes. I don’t buy this argument, but that’s what I’d use were I the prosecution in this case.

Misty Water-colored Memories: Seeing Temple of Doom again

2008-03-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

We have some kids in the house who hadn't seen the Indiana Jones movies, so we rewatched Raiders of the Lost Ark right before Christmas and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom this weekend. The one thing that stuck out about this experience is how I remembered virtually everything about the first movie, but almost nothing about the second. In my dim recollection, when Temple of Doom came out I thought it compared okay to Raiders and I probably thought the same thing a few years later when I saw it on video. But, boy, watching it again... Temple of Doom sucked! In my memory, I managed to reduce everything between the jumping out of the plane in a raft to finding the secret passage in the palace/compound to just a few minutes, while in reality it is nearly half the movie.

The middle of the movie has only one real action sequence (Indy fighting the Thugee guard in his bedroom while Ms. I'm-gonna-marry-Speilberg is in her room, expecting him to come back for lu-hu-huve), which ends of one of the longest action-free streaches of any action movie I can name. This entire part of the movie is supposed to be held together by the fish out of water antics (which are just too much after a while) and the rom-com aspects, but Capshaw acts like such a buffoon (I'm not blaming her alone... I'm sure she's written that way) that she's more a fifth-wheel second sidekick than a serious romantic interest (there seems to be no development of their relationship or even "you are turning me on" arguments until it's time for one of scenes that beat you about the head and ears with the idea that they are interested in each other). You have no idea what indy might see in her other than the fact that she's the only woman in 500 miles with all her teeth.

I remembered the clumsy exposition, that seemed to drag on through most of the movie, and the poorly executed coda but apparently thought the adventure made up for it. Ah, I was so easily amused as a you.

Bottom line: not enough action set pieces, bad pacing, terrible lead actress, too much mugging, too much "I'm not eating THAT," failed attempt at capturing Bogie-Hepburn paradigm, and really dated special effects (check out those insubstantial blue screen explosions), made accaptable only by the decent action (when it's there), one of Harrison Ford's last charming performances, and good quotable lines from the sidekick (if only Indy had heeded "No time for love, Dr. Jones" - what a wonderful movie this could have been).

The Amazon Kindle: Before and After "Reviews"

2008-03-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, Stephen King wrote one of his last page Entertainment Weekly columns ("the Pop of King" I think the column is called) on the Amazon Kindle. It was a good piece, but demonstrated something that irritates me about his more recent opinion writing, and his EW column in particular: his tendency to enter a full blown cultural discussion that has been raging for the better part of a decade, and act like he’s the first one to bring it up.

The Kindle is part of a ongoing really broad discussion about digital delivery of print media but has many of its own wrinkles. It is difficult to even begin discussing something like that in the one page he had to work with, but King does an OK job bringing up a few of the issues. This paragraph:

Will Kindles replace books? No. And not just because books furnish a room, either. There's a permanence to books that underlines the importance of the ideas and the stories we find inside them; books solidify an otherwise fragile medium

This is a good example of the plus/minus nature of discussing a topic so huge in such a small column… it’s a really nice encapsulation of some of the points into one unified statement, but it suggests the topic boils down to this, and it most definitely doesn’t. It confuses me that King doesn’t hint that this is the tip of an iceberg that all sorts of people (other writers, notably Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, and Douglas Rushkoff, cultural critics, publishing executives, and futurists of all stripes) have been trying to get a hold of for at least 6 years. At the very least, his “Uncle Stevie” delivery seems to trivialize the topic beyond what he’s directly addressing.

When discussing the Kindle at that time, I had specific areas of concern, some of which King aludes to:

The catch: For now, you can only order the (electronic books) at the Amazon-run Kindle Store. The advantage: It's cheaper than your local big-box store, with $9.99 as the price for many new releases.

I was (and still am) of the opinion that the proprietary format SUCKS at this stage of the game, in ways an article of this size doesn’t have time to get into, and $9.99 for a data stream has to be compared not only to buying the book, but also to free libraries and other authors who make online versions of their work available for free as a loss leader to the book “artifact.”

From the outside, I could see some other issues: the design didn’t maximize its screen size (dumb move). The damn thing apparently couldn’t handle graphic novels, even manga. The Black and white only screen was a small issue, but limited what you would want to purchase for it. These technologies are designed for a reason, and the e-book reader that I felt I needed was one designed to facilitate the emergence of a portable e-book culture/sub-lifestyle, not one designed to serve the biggest online seller’s business model.

Then I got to use one.

For Valentine’s day, I wound up getting my wife one (I know, I know, tres romantique' – it’s better than a cutting board), and my opinion changed somewhat.

The first thing I need to mention is my reason for the big buy, which I think puts a finger on a significant missing element from my pre-purchase comments. The deal went down because my wife was looking to find better oportunities as a reader, being been part of a dying breed – the sub-culture of used book store exchanges for credit bag-ladies (books always go back in a brown paper grocery bag). She (unlike me who, when I read a book, want the relic of my experience to stay with me forever) likes to read fast, sometimes more than a book a day, and then get rid of them. This used to occur by buying books, reading them, and exchanging them at a used book store for half credit. We can no longer find a used book store that will allow this, therefore she buys books, reads them, and then they sit around in a the afforementioned brown bag until they get donated to someone. For her, the idea of paying less for a non-paper version of the book makes real sense, and Amazon has Kindle versions of ALL the books she reads. In my original comments, I applied MY model of reading to the new technology, but not my wife’s. For my wife, this works, and Amazon’s system provides better access to these books than is possible with any other reader.

Most of the negative comments about the Kindle still hold, but they are less important in the face of the above noted specific utility to my wife and the process of actually handling the thing (making my own mental adjustments once I put it through its paces). One such complaint is its proprietary nature - the thing will only supposedly handle Amazon’s proprietary file type and mobi files that are unprotected, with Amazon offering to convert files to their format via e-mail. Several comments – 1. this should really cheese you off if you have already invested in buying lit files or, especially, protected mobi files – but converters exist, and you don’t have to go through Amazon to recover your other files – you can convert and directly upload them; 2. the system will handle the usual image file types with an image viewer that is for some reason a secret (there are a lot… A LOT… of undocumented things you can do with the Kindle and the image viewer is the best of them – large images load really slow, though).

The price point of the books is still an issue, but if you’re not looking for a new release best seller, the price isn’t 10$... its less. The books my wife reads go for about 3$ and change, a little over half the paperback price. As suggested above, this is a good deal because, at best, she would sell her out pile to a used book store for credit, which is certainly worth less then half the new price, but in practice, we can’t really recover any of the cost now anyway. The price point discussion veers into deeper waters, though: what are the rates for authors? Do they get the same as a paper book sold? Less? More? The consumer base probably could get a better price point than this direct from the authors, but with Amazon positioning itself in the market this way (with this closed technology), it works against the potential of authors selling directly to the consumer, one of the major potential benefits of the internet to the book market. As an example: would you rather pay 6$ for a new book with the author getting all of it (minus slight overhead) or pay 10$ so the author can get 3$? Amazon’s model (and the design of the Kindle itself) assures us that we won’t get this choice.

I still don’t like the way the screen size isn’t maximized, and the lack of an illuminated screen option seems dumb in a product of this cost (about 400 bucks). The screen itself is pretty neat, though – it is a non light reactive surface so you can read it in just about any conditions in which you could read paper (it reads great in glare) and the battery life is incredible… if you turn the wi-fi off when you are not downloading, you can read for weeks without recharging. The keypad is not great to use, and I’d have rathered a flip out design, with the keyboard coming out when you need it, but the screen taking up closer to all the front surface instead of the 65-70% or so that it does. One moderately significant quibble… it is impossible to handle the unit while doing anything other than reading (e.g. plugging in the power, putting in an SD card) without hitting the next page buttons, witch are right at the edge. Also, I managed to freeze the unit a couple of times, requiring rebooting that I had to figure out how to do on my own.

Given the image viewer option and the way the web pages load, reading manga on the thing should easily be possible (although the screen is of a suboptimal size). Since they are not making manga available now, I think Amazon is probably still a bit worried as to the stability of the image viewing, and is trying to find a better security method for these kinds of files. The way black and white line images display, however, suggests that getting a clean image is not a problem, which is very hopeful (the screen saver is line art that displays nicely).

The cell connection method is a bit wonky. We got good downloads and web viewing, but I had to “reboot” the WiFi several times after it would seize up (turn the unit off for 20 seconds or so, then back on with the switch… easy, and takes less than a minute, but it happened quite a few times, all while I had 4 or 5 bars). There is a list of blogs and magazines to subscribe to, but since you can web surf for free (free cellular web access, at least at this point… I predict this will change once they decide the web surfing is not “experimental” anymore) you can get most of this content for free, so as a model it’s a bit odd. Their e-mail is useless as such as messages must contain an attachment to be viewed, and you are charged 10 cents to convert and send anything (from “how ya’ doin’” to the complete works of Proust). In the right setting, it could be used as a 10 cent per use text message service, but we have cell phones for that. The Google maps cell locator is cool – the fact that you can use an e-book reader to find the nearest gas station is funny to me somehow.

All in all, having the thing in my hands has improved my feelings towards it. Most of my complaints are either early adopter/beta test type stuff (most things will be fixed in a year or so… we’ll definitely see manga) or are problems with the business model derived from a philosophical difference of opinion between me and “the man.” A basic wish list on my part would include a bigger screen, illumination, native support of lit, doc and txt files, and immediate manga availability. Other desires would include better price points and stability (of both the unit and network). I was prepared for the negatives, but was pretty surprised by the positives of the Kindle once I had used it (the mp3 support was a pleasant surprise). I think with some tweaks, this platform could work, and I’m not shocked by the Kindle’s early success. If you are a high turnover book reader and have a reading habit which is not properly served by the library (or are just a technophile), the Kindle is a really decent choice, as well as being the only game in town for much of the market.

Force of Will Review: Scapled and Criminal

2008-03-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

I read too many comics. This shouldn’t really come as a shock to anyone (the comics audience tends towards the obsessive type, after all) but the sheer number of comics I read tends to suppress my ability to discuss them (by the time I can get to a computer to write about a comic, I’ve likely read 15 other comics, which kind of clouds the focus a bit). I don’t think writing short fierce reviews is my bag (plus, we’ve got professionals to deal with that) but my reading habits tend to dilute my focus. Also, some of the comics that I’ve been enjoying the most lately (Criminal and Scalped to name two prime examples) haven’t had that “I’ve got to write on this” effect… I love them, but I don’t know what to say about them. So, as an exercise, I thought I’d force myself to sit down and say something about them and maybe focus for long enough to see why I like them.

Scalped, published by Vertigo, currently on issue 15, is a series that snuck up on me quickly (I liked the first few issues OK, but by the end of the first arc, the hook was set). The book could best be described as western (specifically Native American reservation) noir, of the there’s-no-escaping-the-past variety. That’s selling it a bit short, though… there’s a lot going on. The main character (or the first main character – the focus shifts around a bit), Dashiell Bad Horse, returns to the reservation after almost half his life away, taking a job in local law enforcement. His almost superhuman emotional baggage leads to a rather robust level of physical violence and disruptiveness, which catches the notice of Chief Lincoln Red Crow, the reservations answer to Boss Hogg, who is about to open the big Casino that will change everything. Red Crow has some baggage too, with various interests after his money, a reservation which has gone to seed with meth and alchohol, and a past that includes being an Indian rights revolutionary, with said revolution, long abandoned by Red Crow for money (or at least a more pragmatic approach to “progress”), has two murdered FBI agents to its credit. But, as it often goes, Bad Horse and Red Crow are connected… one other person involved in the murder was Dahiell’s mother, and Red Crow’s lover, Gina, who never left the reservation, but is bitterness personified.

Added to the mix are Carol Ellroy, the “love” of Dashiell’s past and Red Crow’s daughter (now a woman who has sunk about as far as she can go into the squalor of the reservation, and who seems to be becoming Dashiell’s obsession), Catcher, a semi crazy man who was there years ago when the murders took place, and a current crop of FBI agents (I won’t say any more about them). All in all, this stew reminds me most of Lone Star (the John Sayles movie) which shared the western setting, moral tone, corruption, murder from the past, ethnic concerns (in the case of the film, Hispanic), and (if I remember right) hints of possible incest (I haven’t seen the movie in 10 years, so this might be me overlaying something). It also reminded me of Soderbergh’s Underneath, which I have a soft spot for (I lived 4 years in Baton Rouge… did I mention my wife grew up down the street from Soderbergh?), with its “man returns to entanglements he left long ago” noir vibe. But the extent to which the comic has sucked me in was unexpected.

One reason may be the Indian-casino angle. I live in Las Vegas, where the life of the town is supported by gambling. The issue of the reservation Casinos and their relationship to taxes, government, and big business has, to my mind never been fully reported on, and I find myself thinking about it like it’s food stuck in my teeth, wondering what I don’t know. This is certainly the first comic I am aware of that addresses this in any way, and maybe that’s part of the attraction. In addition, I exist in a place where (although Vegas is a paradoxically family friendly town) drug culture, especially meth culture, isn’t that far away. In a way, this is a peek into the other side of dream, at those ruined by the pleasure machine.

But I think it’s really the characters and relationships that make this one sing. Bad Horse is a cauldron of misdirected anger and misunderstood desires, and he makes a compelling protagonist, all the more since his actions (which in large part drive the story) lack coherence. Red Crow, driven from his true love by his moral compromises, and left with nothing but his will and pride to keep him warm at night (oh yeah… and money and power), makes a gripping, and very human, monster figure. Gina (what we see of her) is all idealism and loss, and Carol is all enticement and degradation. The interactions are complex, the diad relationships of character well fleshed out, and the second Rashomon-like arc gives us time with each characters hidden thoughts… some of which are surprising given the actions in first arc. The third arc, which follows the big event of the (single day of) the second arc, has been deft in its handling of the repercussions.

Criminal has also been uniformly excellent. Unlike Scalped, Criminal has been talked about and openly supported, so I don’t know that I have much to add to the discussion of the content. Instead, I want to note an odd effect: I’m anxious about whether the comic will remain good. I don’t mean “I have my doubts” anxious, I mean “I avoid reading an issue” anxious. I haven’t had this reaction to something since the first season of the OC when (believe it or not) the show, after a wobbly start and a 6 episode warm up, became the best show ever of it’s type (the funny/crazy nighttime teen soap). I would actually dread watching the episodes because they were getting better and better, but I knew it was the nature of these shows to self destruct. They can’t help it. There’s no way to reinvent the show without ruining what you have, so it’s stasis (fade away) versus self consumption (Burn out). the OC did both, starting 2/3 of the way through its first season.

Criminal has given me a couple of warning signs, despite the fact that it has been great. The first is that it is firmly a noir book, dedicated to telling a different self enclosed story with different characters every half year or so, and there are only so many noir plots (and, for that matter, so man y noir characters). Already, both of the completed arcs have been centered on heists. The second arc had someone returning to the life he left behind for revenge. Both had a bad girl with a past that spells trouble. Although both were very worthwhile, how much retreading does the future hold? Second, if the book has been building a world (I’m not sure it’s that interested in doing it), the way it’s handled character “crossovers” has been less Stray Bullets and more Sin City (“oh look, they’re in the same bar at the same time as that one scene in the first arc…score!) – not a good sign. I really don’t want this to resort to a network of cute cameos. If you are going to world build, I want fragments of a thought out functioning social construct. If you can’t aspire to be the Wire, don’t bother.

But still, it’s been great… I just don’t want it to start sucking, or worse, get stuck in a rut. I guess you should count your blessings if your biggest problem with something is that it might get less good. But does anyone else ever have a comic that they have to build up courage to read, like the way you take a deep breath to make an unpleasant phone call? So far, though, all I’ve gotten when I’ve opened the book is a sense of relief. Life is good, I guess.

Whatever Alan Moore tells you, he really didn’t start it

2008-03-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

The recent AV Club primer on Alan Moore trotted out an old chestnut, namely that Watchmen kicked of an era of grim and gritty comics. What’s irritating to me about this statement is not just that it’s wrong - said era was already well underway for years – but that I’ve never even seen it challenged. Memories of comics often get foggy about what came before what, but I’m in a particularly good position to remember what came before Watchmen. Like most comic readers I know, I quit comics at one point and eventually came back, but I happened to ~~discover girls~~ leave my childhood hobby 3 months before Dark Knight Returns started and about 9 months before Watchmen kicked off.. My memory should be reasonably clear on what came before the big bang of 1986 and I can tell you the phrase grim and gritty itself had been in use for well over a year, probably more like 3 or 4 years, when I quit.*

The deep roots of the 80’s grit explosion are in the 30’s pulp origins of the superhero traced up through the early 1970s, notably the darker parts of the relevance movement (see the O’Neal/Adams Batman, starting with issue 232, June 1971) and superhero comics creators publishing more violent and morally stark stories (albeit usually not strictly superhero stories) in independent B&W magazines such as the Warren magazines of the same period. The 70s heavy influence by the apocalyptic future branch of science fiction and other darker genres, fostered by the beginings of geek-fan hypersaturation, also helped Petri-dish the first spores of the movement. In many ways, the direct progenitor was seen in early 70’s Marvel with the re-emergence of non-superhero genre comics, especially horror titles (Toumb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night, etc., but also Conan, Shang Chi, and the ilk) which felt different from the superhero output of the time but crossed over into it and infected it with its heightened sense of anti-heroism. The first signs of the infection in the main host showed up in 1974-5.

There seemed to be something in the water at Marvel at this time (maybe someone left an Executioner book in the bathroom) when, firmly in the superhero universe, potentially darker, more violent heroes began to emerge: most notably The Punisher (Amazing Spider-Man 129, February 1974), Wolverine (Incredible Hulk 180-1 October/November 1974), and Moon Knight (Werewolf by Night 32, August 1975). Of course, the code hadn’t become a dead dog quite yet, and these characters more extreme tendencies (and the implications of their actions) were blunted and blurred. Despite the obvious repercussions of having a character who slashes at people with knives attached to his arms, Wolverine probably wasn’t even conceived of as particularly dark and Frank Castle shot the bad guys with rubber bullets, for Christ’s sake (some soldier). Moon Knight, drifting as he did through backups in Marvel’s B&W Magazines was the most hardcore in the early going, especially after Adams-acolyte era Bill Sienkiewicz took over (Hulk! Magazine 13, February 1979). But this was just the first signs of redness – the festering wound was yet to come.

The catalyst for the rise of the popularity of the grim and gritty paradigm came with the advent of the era’s superstar comics creators (although, it is perhaps more correct to say they catalyzed each other). This was mostly fostered by Frank Miller and the Claremont Byrne team, but at Wolfman/Perez team, and to a lesser extent Keith Giffen and Bill Sienkiewicz are implicated. For a proper discussion, it is probably best to get specific at this point, so here it goes (I’ve organized by character for flow):

Wolverine was the most important single character in this phenomenon. A relatively bland creation out of the gate, and disliked by X-Men writer Claremont, he only started to gel when John Byrne took over the art chores on, and slipped into the co-plotting of, the book. Byrne’s sculpting of Wolverine’s “don’t eff with me, bub” personality, and Claremont’s reaction to it really fascinated readers at the time. The seminal early event in his progression was the character’s explicitly delineated killing of a guard in the Savage Land (I think it was X-Men 115, November 1978, although I might be off by an issue). The killing, which in the story context was portrayed as somewhat necessary was made a bit more unsettling by the look of anticipation on the hero’s face before the act: “I’m going to enjoy this” it seemed to say. Along with the constant talk of berserker rages, and the horror of his murderous potential by the other team members, especially Storm, this was what really got people interested in the runt. Then came the body slam – “Wolverine Alone” (X-Men 133, May 1980) the issue where Logan goes nuts killing Hellfire Club guards left and right, making the threat of uncontrollable violence, only hinted at before, real. But it was the Wolverine miniseries (starting September 1982) that saw the ultimate solidification of the grim and gritty image - not only for Wolverine himself, but for the whole age. “I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn’t very nice.” Try to say that without clenching your teeth, looking up through your eyebrows, and snarling. Before we move on, it is noteworthy that the Uncanny X-Men of this era also gave us many more grittifying moments including the Death of Phoenix (kill them to show you are hardcore - 137, Sept 1980), Days of Future Past (future dystopia, everyone’s cynical - 141-2, January/February 1981), and Storm’s badass Mohawk angst (turning the gentle caring character into a punk… take that Mary Marvel! - starting 173, October 1983).

Miller’s run on Daredevil, and its fallout, are arguably the most important general element of the gritty revolution. Miller started on Daredevil with just art at issue 158 (May 1979), and had a phase of gradually taking over the writing (with 168’s January 1981 introduction of Elektra being his first solo credited issue). The intervening issues show a gradual seepage into Miller’s trademark brand of grimness - dirty cities, ninjas, and badasses badass enough to outbadass everyone else - with the retelling of the origin (164, May 1980) and the code rejected Punisher story (would have run as 167, December 1980) being of particular note. After 168, though, the world of Daredevil was all Miller, from the re-working of Bullseye into the ultimate grim and gritty villain throughout the run, to the death of Elektra (181, April 1982), to the final publication of the previously rejected Punisher story (163-4 June-July 1982).

Speaking of ~~Mack Bolin~~ the Punisher… the undeniable early 80’s popularly of this character is the hardest to document. The dude that goes around shooting bad guys was considered cool, to my memory, throughout the late 70’s, but it was Miller’s one two punch of Amazing Spider-Man Annual 15 (Summer 1981) and the aforementioned DD163-4 that really seemed to harness what people liked coherently. The trouble is that the Punisher never had a title during the period we’re talking about and, with the exception of the Miller issues, wasn’t that well written. But I can tell you from experience that all the comic readers I knew got really excited at the possibility that he was going to shoot someone in the face.

I should also briefly come back to Moon Knight, who launched his own Bill Sienkiewicz drawn series (November 1980), which went direct sales only with issue 15 (January 1982) because it was, essentially, too dark for the code. It was in these non code issues that Sienkiewicz’s art really began to take on the impressionistic tone he has become more associated with today. One big landmark of Marvel’s grim and gritty era was the spoken-of-in-hushed-tones Bizarre Adventures 31, the “violence” issue featuring work by Byrne, Miller, etc, all working in bloody kneecap mode, in April of 1982.

DC’s publishing style wasn’t quite as conducive to this phenomenon, but it was there to be sure. It took the New Teen Titans 2 months from their first appearance in DC comics Presents 26 (October 1980) to introduce Deathstroke the Terminator (New Teen Titans 2, December 1980), another “I’m the best there is” badass. They went on use him and his psychologically damaged (and underaged) spy Terra in the definitive “intense” Titan’s story The Judas Contract (starting with Tales of the New Teen Titans at issue 42, April 1984) the same month that the group started their own non code approved book with a bunch of more “adult” stuff like satanic rites. The New Titans also gave us (in Annual 2, Summer 1983) the DC version of the Punisher, the Vigilante. Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen started to grim up the Legion with the Great Darkness Saga around May of 1982, and (for his first appearance only – DC Comics Presents 52, December 1982) Giffen’s own Ambush bug really looked like a psychopathic clown murderer in the hardcore Joker mold (he soon became more of an all purpose comic foil). I won’t go into Swamp Thing (gritty since February 1984) because it’s not really a superhero title, doesn’t always have the dark tone, and started kind of late in the game.

The early 80s mini boom in independent publishers was heavily involved in this phenomenon. Matt Wagner’s Grendel, the king of the era’s ultraviolent anti-heroes (utterly without societal morals, Hunter Rose slices anyone in his way apart with his razor sharp double pronged pole arm), first appeared in Comico Primer 2 in January of 1982, alongside other “extreme” kinds of characters with names like Slaughterman. First comics had a few “hard” characters show up in 1983 including Mike Grell’s (of Legion of Super-Heroes fame) Jon Sable Freelance (Mercenary for hire), Reuben (American) Flagg by former semi-hot superhero artist Howard Chaykin (dystopian future law enforcement), once and future superhero creators John Ostrander and Timothy Truman’s Grimjack (dystopian future mercenary), and dystopian future badass soldier/leader Nexus (originally published by capitol in 1981 by Mike Baron and Steve Rude, superhero cre… you get the idea). These harder edged characters which, while not superheroes per se, but might as well have been… they all created by superhero creators, wore costumes, had powers or abilities, secret origins, etc. There were many other companies flitting around before the revolution of 86’ that were either all badass all the time (Silverwolf and Aircel spring to mind) or published some extreme characters (Continuity and Renegade). Moore’s earlier seminal superhero deconstructive work Marvelman (Miracleman later when it got to the states) started in Britain’s Warrior Magazine in 1982, and 2000AD was busy producing dystopian future grimness since the 70’s.

The final proof that grim and gritty was firmly established and popular years before Watchmen and Dark Knight, is that humor comics were making fun of these tendencies as early as 1982. What If? 34, Aug 1982, contained gags making fun of the grimness and badassness of characters, Captain Carrot (1982 or 83) had some sequence parodying grim and gritty (I’ve got to pull the issues… I can’t remember which ones it was), and E-Man (First Comics iteration, issues 2-3, May and June of 1983) did an all out parody of X-Men, angst, tough as nails Wolvie, and all. . Last but not least, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1984) were first and foremost a parody (or a loving attempt to capture the spirit of) of grim and gritty mutant/ninja comics (Raphael, the mysterious tortured Wolverine analogue, was, at first, the featured character).

I’m not denying that this aesthetic did have a real growth spurt in the late 80’s, but there are multiple reasons besides the popularity of Watchmen for this. Let’s name a few:
1. Artists who were weaned in 1982 started coming into the industry and gained power to dictate what they wanted to do, and what they wanted to do was draw cool stuff, i.e. do something awesome like Frank Miller’s Wolverine.
2. Editorial weakened. Marvel especially started to get more lax about whet they would let through, with a character the Punisher, not allowed to have his own title for years of popularity (because he wasn’t a good guy), suddenly having multiple titles. Artwork that would have been deemed unacceptable a few years ago was allowed to pass, Wolverine was suddenly in 6 titles a month, and a weakening code that let questionable material through.
3. The black and white boom, which started due to the Ninja Turtles not Watchmen, encouraged anyone who could pick up a radiograph to publish whatever they felt like with NO editorial interference. What everyone felt like putting out, apparently, was badly rendered AWSOMENESS (and I don’t mean that in a good way, just as a description of intent) that read like the Turtles or Miller, depending on the presence or absence of fur.
4. The British invasion, which owes a debt to Moore in general, but not to Watchmen any more than any other work of his, led to a number of mostly good writers entering the game who were just coming off of writing dystopian badass future stories for 2000AD. Fill in the blanks: their first superhero comics were g___ and g_____.

The main point I’m trying to make is that Grim and Gritty was a “thing” and had captured the consciousness of 8-12 year old boys long before Watchmen. In fact, gazing at the above list, it seems that 1982 (4 years before Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns) was the watershed year for the phenomenon. So next time Moore says “If I had known what writing Watchmen would unleash…” be a bit dubious, and maybe look at both it and Dark Knight Returns as, at least from one angle, the first meta-commentary on an already existing grim and gritty sub-genre, not the first examples of it.

* It’s hard to pinpoint when I quit exactly, but basic mental archeology seems to place an absolute quit date at around December of 1985, with Dark Knight Returns starting in March of 1986 and Watchmen in Sept. of 1986… In this post, I‘m referring to consistent dates on CBDB and GCD, which I think are cover dates not actual release dates. Also, I can’t document this, but I think I first heard the phrase grim and gritty during the run of the Wolverine miniseries in one of the fan mags like Amazing Heroes, which would date the term to the latter half of 1982.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix

2007-07-13T16:21:00.000-07:00

I hightailed it from work yesterday and caught the Harry Potter movie. The good news is that the adult acting was great (especially Alan Richman who turns "I have no idea" into the best line of the movie) and the climactic sequence in the ministry of magic (which is actually quite a substantial part of the movie, timewise) was probably my favorite part of any of the Harry Potter movies. It visually worked (with all the lighted death eaters flying through the trenches), and had Helana Bonham Carter, after spending her earlier scenes as a Edward Gorey cartoon, suddenly start doing an Amy Winehouse impression - what else could you want?

The problem was the rest of the movie didn't bother to get you to the final scene. At all. They didn't mention the big McGuffin (the milky prophecy ball) till the last third of the movie, and there wasn't any plot momentum to speak of. They took the opposite approach of most adaptations of big books - usually it's find the spine and cut out the detail that doesn't directly contribute (part of what made Goblet of Fire simultaneously brilliant and pretty dull*). This time there was a bunch of detail from the book that was cool presented incomprehensibly with no context - an AD/HD adaptation. This may have been necessary because the book itself lacked a compelling enough unifying story too (especially for its length), but the book was more... well, it was like one of those episodes of an HBO show that isn't your favorite episode, but it does the work that makes the ones that are your favorite possible (it was the only book of the series that you could feel any strain -Rowling seemed to be stressing that she needed to get some character/theme/set-up work done, fun of not, because the last book was just 2 books away).

The unexplained and underexplained detail was rather distracting. The giant in the forest, the Centaur war, Luna Lovegood (the whole character!), the aforementioned prophecy ball, the info on Serious’ family, Snape’s past with Harry’s dad, the occlumency lessons... these were all shown but with so little development, you wonder why they bothered. And I guess they’ve decided to jettison Neville as a character to follow with any sort of arc. That’s what the books are for, I guess.

This was also the first movie where the child acting really started to stand out as bad. The Hermoine actress (Emma MacJailbait? sp?) had been acceptable as long as she seemed young enough to be so screechy, but she has now aged enough that she can't get away with it anymore and has crossed the line into terrible (case in point: any scene with the giant). And Luna, crazy out there conspiracy theorist as she was in the book, came off as being just toked up (she needed more Fox Mulder, less Brad Pitt in True Romance).

The movie was a mess, now-and-then entertaining in the details, but sort of figety and without a sense of direction, until the end comes out of nowhere and knocks one out of the park. It’s odd but this movie suffered less in comparison to other movies than the book did to the other books, but I can’t help but feel they missed an opportunity to really improve (for once) on aspects from the book. The problems of the movie were most likely caused by the length (shortest movie, longest book) and the narrative problems of the book itself, but the movie could have benefitted from a little of the Ritalin the last movie (Goblet of Fire) was obviously on.

*Please note that the one scene in GoF, a movie that I would otherwise call "servicable," that I unreservedly loved was the dance scene of which Emma Watson (I really did know her name), who I have expressed displeasure with in the current movie, does an excellent job histrionically lynch pinning a chaotic panorama of bad music, raging hormones, and 14 year olds crying on the stairs that was, all at once, every school dance I ever went to. It may be interesting about my psychology that my second favorite scene in the current movie was the one where Fred and George lead the terrorist attack on the final exams. This is one area where the lack of explaining detail actually works: the sudden unexplained "aw, eff it" it very Fred and George.

Whoops

2007-05-31T16:09:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that my comments have to be moderated, and I apologise to all those people who had comments sitting unpublished for awhile (sorry Jim). I really want to put my thoughts down on the Plain Janes, a book that defied my expectations (not in a good way... but that may not be the book's fault), but it will have to wait a day or so.

Spider-Man 3 - a short review

2007-05-07T14:57:00.000-07:00

Three words: boring, nuts, and slightly satisfying (oops, that’s three words or phrases – sorry).

The first act was incredibly inert. The various threads of story, of which there were too many for this sort of movie, took an hour to get in place, and of the three or four action sequences, I only really responded to the one where the villain was an out of control crane. I thought, by an hour in, that the movie was bad. Taost. Sort of painful to get through.

Then something interesting happened. There is a scene from the first movie, my favorite scene, where Peter is in his room, and the Russian landlords daughter comes in and gives him cake. The scene is out of place, doesn’t really hit on any of the themes of the movie, and just sticks out in a disjointed way. And I loved it. Like a piece of popcorn stuck in your teeth, I just kept going back to it, the little Last Temptation of Spidey moment.

So, about 40% of the way into SM3, that scene metastasizes into this movie, and detonates (mixed metaphor nonwithstanding, you get the idea). The pregnant food metaphor is everywhere in the middle third of this movie, all screwed up omlettes and bring me pizza and cooking frenzies and cookie eating and “can you get me some with nuts?” Nuts indeed. Even before the Jazz club scene pushes perilously close to “Cuban Pete” territory, the movie has gone all ADD on us. I haven’t read any reviews of the movie, but I am SURE everyone has covered how when Peter goes evil, he gets emo (even pulling his bangs over in the first scene for Christ sakes), so the less said the better.

But an even funnier thing happens at the end. This overburdened movie that bit off too much to chew, that is full of incredibly expensive effects scenes that are both boring and unreal, somehow gets a bit rewarding. The movie seems like it was constructed backwards… all these unsatisfying beginnings coalesce into a workable ending. Most superhero movies tend to strand themselves before the end, terminating in messy and inconclusive set pieces because the conflict has been set up, and nothing is left to do but slug it out (and these fights of ideas work better on the comic page where it’s easier to talk in long paragraphs while being pummeled). This one is satisfying only when things come together, and that’s something.

So the first movie was nice, the second was a masterpiece of fitting a wormy thematic morass spanning decades of comics history elegantly into a movie structure. The thirds was a bit of a schizophrenic odd duck. But, in the end it worked. Kinda.

My 11 year olds short review, just for balance:

“Needed more Venom.” Point taken.

ANSWER IS THE DEATH OF DISCOVERY: WALLACE CLARK AND LOST or SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT AND ONGOING NARRATIVE

2007-05-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, its been a year since I posted. Sorry, life is busy. I've been working, and am about to go to China to adopt, and soon I'll link a China travel blog here. I really wanted to get started blogging again, though, especially since I am a history buddy now. I feel ashamed for not holding up my end of the blogging agreement. No excuses. So, without any whining, here we go again:

I’m a dermatopathologist, which is to say I spend much of my time at work looking at sections of skin under a microscope, trying to tell moles from melanomas, psoriasis from eczema, etc. Wallace Clark was the great American giant in this field. The “Clark level,” named after him, is the major melanoma prognostic index (if you know anyone who has melanoma they will know what it is), and all the current big guys in the field remember him as the great teacher. The guy also practically invented the idea of tumor biology, and thus he’s sort of the father of the modern conception of “curing cancer.” Despite all of this his biggest claim to fame (both to the public and, believe it or not, to other Pathologists) was that the character of Quincy, the character who for time immemorial defines the public’s ideas of a Pathologist, was based on him.

He was an interesting guy. The self proclaimed “only liberal the Citadel ever produced” was a pathologist in New Orleans for a while (before moving up the east coast) and, because of some interesting quirks of the practice of Pathology in New Orleans, did forensics. He was overblown and colorful, and a hardcore intellectual. Looking at slides was interesting to him. He would stare and explore the connections to other cases he had seen, remember outcomes, guess at behaviors, and try to out-think nature. Then, after straining the limits of the exercise, he would say “I’m tired of learning on this one… let’s just give it a name and get rid of it.” Why? I mean, diagnosis is the goal of the whole process, right? Getting to the solution is the point, eh? Well no, he would have thought.

Getting an answer is the death of the learning process. Where’s the fun in that.

All this stuff kinda comes back (I haven’t spent as much time dwelling on the Dermpath lore since my fellowship) when I hear of the current reactions to Lost. I think one of the show’s biggest strengths is the way that all competing theories are, here in the middle of the whole experience of the show, equally true, like Schrödinger hasn’t opened the box yet. This last episode, which continues the current string of absolutely great episodes, kills a recurring character, whose main role in the episode is to act as an advocate of one theory of “what’s going on,” the “they’re all dead/purgatory” theory. The metatextual interplay is kind of cool: the show runners have specifically discredited this theory (in public, yet they have shown themselves to be big liars) but here the theory comes in again with some “evidence,” so what happens? The great seeker in the show kills the messenger (well, has them executed… he doesn’t do it himself). It’s like they are warning us not to decide on an answer or . Anyway, if you’re just looking for the answer, the show says, you are being ridiculous – where’s the fun of getting the answer. Lay back, and enjoy all the possibilities.

The show has, mostly, been very deft at playing this stuff the right way: shifting focus around, striking chords of different parts of the pastiche (a little experiment gone wrong here, minor element of mental actualization/wish fulfillment there, then a major we’re in hell/purgatory moment), dropping in references like web links (The Third Policeman – let me look it up!). I would argue the show only missteps when the powers that be listen to the audience voting with ratings, or let cast woes affect the pacing.

Anyway, maybe it’s just me, poisoned by too may comics as I am. I have a thing for the exploring of unanswered questions as an end unto itself. All that serial narrative where the point is watching the story grow past its own inquiries, not really answering them but handing them off. I think three act structure has just about ruined the ability of the broad audience from being able to enjoy something that extends past such horribly limited horizons. Its no wonder that so many great works of literature don’t have an end as much as they have a moment of non-ending, which just shows that the work is handling things too big to be wrestled to a fake dénouement.

Survivor

2006-05-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

A few words about Survivor (why not, it's gotten good).

I’m a mild Terry supporter, but I can see why some might hate him. I feel, in these shows, that there is always a sliding scale on the uber-competent middle age males, where they can either come off as incredibly self righteous and overbearing (like that bald fireman on Big Brother) and get very little public love, or as gracious and together (like Survivor Mike who fell in the fire) and be well liked, or any point in between. I actually like Terry more than Survivor winner Tom, but mostly because Terry wasn’t forced to play head games with a tribemate who was decompensating worse than Amanda Plumber in Pulp Fiction (Ian) in order to win (Ian threw away the game in that “Honey Bunny” moment). However, I think this all depends on any one person’s given tolerance for alpha males, and on your age. I would really like to see a poll on the average age of Terry lovers and haters… I think there would be at least 15 years gap in the average. But, for me, bridgeguy said it best in that he’s more confident cocky than arrogant cocky, and I can forgive the fact that he just doesn’t know how to put things sometimes… like with the wives before mom’s discussion.

What I don’t understand, though, is why there is not more Aras hate. He is the very picture of a guy, probably very likable at home, punking out over having his sense of absolute superiority punctured by not being able to “teach a lesson” to the guy making him look bad. Aras seems good looking, smart, and athletic, and is probably well adjusted at home, but you can see in his face that he just can’t understand how he might not be the best at something, and his composure is cracking. There is an element of entitlement denied that I haven’t commented on. And, lets face it, Terry was right about the “love” choices, but saying wives beat mom’s just wasn’t the right way to put it. If you are in your mid twenties and you can’t spend one month away from your mom, something is wrong with you. If you are married and you can easily spend a month away from your wife and kids, something is also likely wrong. I would also like to see age data on Aras supporters and haters.

I love Cirie too, but does anyone else fell like she might be a little tainted? Swearing with Shane on the lives of children, and going back on your word is somehow is vaguely worse than doing the same thing with a fully mentally capable person, and is kind of icky. BUT she has shown real control in the final stretch, after seeming to float under the radar for most of the game (nice change in direction) – I mean, getting Courney out really served only her ends, and didn’t actually help anyone else, but she got everybody to go along.

For me it’s either Terry or Cirie, with a lead for Terry at this point, and I’d like to see these two in the final. I agree with those that say that Terry could win against Aras or Danielle in the final 2 because Shane was sent off in almost the optimal way to get him to vote for Terry (Terry letting him spend time with son followed by steps towards an alliance followed by his entire tribe stabbing him in the back), and Courtney not only resents the tribe but (crazyness of crazy) listens to Shane. However, this assumes Shane remembers and processes facts as normal humans do, which has been shown to be an erroneous assumption.

The Comics Journal Library 6 - The Writers

2006-02-15T12:28:00.001-08:00

While hewing my way through a bunch of comics stuff (including Locas, which I should post on soon), I wound up reading a few of the interviews from the Comics Journal Library vol. 6 – The Writers. I was just trying to skim it at first, but I got caught up reading it, and now I’m reading a few pages before bed each night (It’s on the nightstand with perennial favorite Ice Haven, and the quirkily interesting, but hard to finish Nil – the R. Crumb handbooks on the back of the toilet for some reason). All three interviews I’ve finished have been pretty good, and interesting in their own ways.

The Alan Moore interview that closes the book is one of the books shortest, but still manages to be riveting. The main thing about it is that I’ve read so many Moore interviews, following his progression through to today, that going back to 1984 is a refreshing glimpse of the artist as a young man – pre DC hatred, Pre magik, pre superhero rejection. The self-deprecating humor is here full tilt (used today mostly when discussing his artistic collaborators), but is often used express I’m-not-worthy humbleness about dealing with DC properties. There is really nothing new in this interview for the Moore indoctrinated, but the differences in his attitude and point of view are the big draw here.

The big interview in the book is that of Harlan Ellison. I have the benefit, I think, of not having read a lot of Ellison dialogues over time (though I have heard many of the legendary stories) making his amusing but laser-like tirades seem fresher. He comes off here as a bit of a bitter, self righteous (and self serving) bully, but the sheer causticity of his attacks serve to strip away the defenses of the institutions, media, people, works, etc. that he is attacking. It always seems, though, that his favorite targets have all either rejected him at some point (TV being the biggest example), didn’t give him what he felt was due, or are small easy targets. That said, TV of the time (early 70’s – some of these interviews are quite old, in service to the 70’s and early 80’s saving comics theme of the book) was pretty bad, and it’s worth reading this simply to hear an entirely remorseless account of Ellison running across a boardroom table and breaking a TV executives pelvis for insulting writers (in general).

I also read the Steve Gerber interview. A good read, with some attention-grabbing tidbits, but I was mainly struck by how much this sounds like current dialogues with Joe Casey. I guess I never noted a connection between the two before, but they both have a similar rebel-in-the-woodwork approach. I respect his honesty of perspective, also, as he freely cops to stuff he’s done that just didn’t work. A lot of talk about markets and formats, too, and this was in the 70’s. Gerber was apparently more of a visionary than I thought.

I’m Currently reading the Wolfman stuff, but so far this is notable mostly for the interviewer accusing he of being a shitty writer half the time, and Wolfman essentially saying ‘I agree, but when you have to get an issue of each book you do out every month, if something doesn’t work it might take a while to get around to fixing it.’ Good book, strongly recommended so far.

LOCAS

2006-02-15T12:28:00.000-08:00

Whew, where to start. I finally got around to starting Locas, the Jame Hernandez magnum opus and the companion huge-but-not-all-encompassing tome to brother Gilberto’s Palomar. I read about half on a flight to and from Hawaii (to the end of “the death of Speedy Ortiz”), and have now dug my way through about a third of the rest.

It is difficult not to compare this to my experiences with Palomar. Palomar also sat imposingly on the shelf for a while before I got around to reading it, and both were somewhat mixed experiences. I felt similarly, I think, to Abhay (he of the fondly remembered AK’s Title Bout) in that I enjoyed Paolmar, but didn’t feel that this was because it made such a statement or was a finely honed piece of art, but because the sprawling, messy, weird, and sometimes insane/borderline incoherent tapestry of human events formed a critical mass that was greater than the sum of its parts. The peak of the work (“Human Dystrophism” in the book, athough I think the TPB covering this goes by a different name) is the only time (for me) in the book's 600+ pages where this broke through to a truly transcendent level. The political aspects of the book were kinda’ banal, and I don’t think I felt as much empathy for the main characters as Beto wanted me to, but there was so much going on, from introductions (multiple times) of major numbers of new characters at once, to the deft magical realist epiphanies, to big heaping gobs of deformities and everyday perversions. I’m sure several dissertations could be written analyzing the symbolism of breast size alone.

It is tempting to say the same things about Locas, but I find myself more ambivalent for 2 reasons: 1. Gilberto is a better writer and 2. Jaime is a muuuch better artist. I mean, I think he may be my favorite draftsman period. He can draw absolutely anything perfectly, has incredible consistency and differentiation of faces and forms, and is incredibly expressive. Let me make sure this is understood – I think Gilberto is a good at putting ink on the page, but Jaime is the best. I found myself touching the pages with my palms, at times, the line was so perfect (certainly it must be raised on the page!).

But Locas, although the narrative approach is somewhat similar to Palomar (lots of characters, spectrum of attitudes from adolescent to mature, tracking of long periods of time, most things occurring in and around one place forming a microcosm, and that dense human tapestry again), does not, in my opinion, achieve a critical mass in the same way. There are specific parts of the milieu that could be singled out as being in Palomar’s favor, such as the replacement of Gilberto’s underdeveloped-but-understandable-from-a-character-standpoint politics (which is kind of sweet) with Jaime’s concern with street cred/being punk enough (which just seems kind of tired) as the major positional stance, the replacement of love of the small town where you grew up with the love of two women who act poorly (to each other and everyone else) as a central unifying story element, and a replacement of the mangled perversions showing us the distorted underbelly of normal people with hairstyles and sexual dilettantism. Now, this is not a fair statement, but it expresses how Locas just seems a little less mature, a little less realized, and a little less real than Palomar. The story that is supposed to be the high point (by critical consensus), the aforementioned “Death of Speedy,” was not bad, but had an ending that aimed for subtle and ambiguous, but instead hit erratic and confusing.

So, Locas suffers by this comparison, but is still well worth reading. The artwork alone is… I thought about cutting out some of the pages of this and framing them. And, although I’m not a huge fan of the Maggie/Hopey love, some of the other characters, and the stories focused on them, are much more galvanizing (probably my favorite is the Terry Downe story, which operates on an experimental comics level, and asks a lot of the reader, but pays off. I know this is hopelessly lowbrow of me, but I really wanted to spend more time with the band as a performing act… the one story focused on the band performing is my other favorite, and really captures something about the excitement of a part of life that the book as a whole spends a lot of time pursuing. Still have a few hundred pages to go, though, and I’ll be sure to update my thoughts later if they change. Don’t tell me how it ends.

Death Note and Dragon Head

2006-02-14T16:14:00.000-08:00

After reading much of the Comics Journal Shoujo issue (yeah, I’m behind in my reading) and getting the hard sell from Jog and my first rate retailer, Ralph (at alternate reality comics here in Vegas), I read two new (to me) manga in the past couple of days. Both are linked in having the kind of ultra high concept hook usually reserved in the US for quick 90 minute moives like “Speed” and “Phone Booth.” I only read the first volume of each, but I get the impression one of them will rise above its initial hook, while the other won’t.

The first of these is Dragon Head, by Minetaro Mochizuki, which is just out from Tokyopop, but was (apparently) previously put out in 10 volumes from Pika. The concept here is locked chamber Lord of the flies – students coming back from a field trip are trapped in a train tunnel collapse, which kills most, and seals off the survivors in the collapsed tunnel, with no idea of what’s going on outside. We follow Aoki as he wakes, and finds (so far) two other survivors, one a female schoolgirl (natch, as they say) and another possibly insane male student. Was the collapse caused by a massive earthquake that destroyed Tokyo? Maybe nuclear war? I’m guessing this will settle into a by the numbers exploration of dealing with the dark, hunger, the smell, psychosis, and human nature one has come to expect from every third rate zombie apocalypse movie. Just as long as there is “Grease 2” (or if you prefer 24 season 2) inspired “let’s do it for our country” uncomfortable mating scene, I guess this is mostly harmless, but I am not expecting too much. This seems to lack the visceral ruthlessness (had by something like, say, Battle Royale) necessary compel interest.

The more interesting of the two (if you can get past that silly looking monster who is in 90% of the panels) is Death Note. Three volumes of this are out, but I’ve only read the first. The hook here is that a student finds a notebook which kills anyone whose name is written in it. By following a series of rules (and man there are many, many rules), the manner and specifics of the death can be manipulated. The simple twist is that the kid, Light, who finds the book is not some wussy who writes a name in and must deal with the consequences of the death and his conscious, blah, blah, but is a hard core successful high school student (a gunner, in other words) who immediately sets out to make the world better by killing as many people as he can. This has the effect of flipping the genre… the situation casts him as a protagonist or “victim” in the work, but he uses this situation to become, in essence, an incredibly successful serial killer. Instead of the normal “into the mind of a serial killer” journey where we are made to approach and understand the killer from the outside, we empathize with the killer before he becomes so, which implicates the reader (I think the closest I’ve seen this approach before was in “Badlands,” but even Martin Sheen played the killer as a kind of distant figure, and we empathized more with the accomplice). The figure of L is introduced as a interpol sanctioned “sleuth” out to get our killer by any means (including setting others up for death), setting up a cat-and-mouse which is interestingly exploited, as Light begins to send messages to the mysterious figure hunting him by manipulating the events relating to his victims deaths. The shinigami death god who looks like a rejected design for the Kiss: Psycho Circus comic (I don’t even see the narrative need for this character), and a few overdone bits of silliness aside, this is a pretty good start.

SURFACE REVISITED

2005-12-06T14:48:00.000-08:00

One of the truly great stops on my TV websurfing rounds (other than Tom the Dog) is TV Guide’s site which has great rumor/TV show secrets columns (Entertainment News and Ask Ausiello) and some good Q&A commentary from Matt Roush (I agree with his opinion less than with Ausiello’s, but he’s a good read… he’s kind of like the Ann Landers to Ausiello’s Dear Abby). I had been meaning to write something here about how Surface is becoming one of those critically maligned shows that people stand up for (in the messageboards and the Q&A areas of magazines and their websites), but I decided to write Roush a letter instead. They’ll never use it (I have always had a problem tailoring length of letters to entice editors for publication), so I figured I would slap it up here.

Dear Matt,

Congratulations! By referring to Surface as “critic-proof,” you’ve given the show more credit than most critics seem to be willing to. As a follower and slight fan of the show (pretty good but not great is my assessment), I’ve noted that the negative critical reaction was swift and certain, but that a groundswell of positive feeling in venues of public sentiment (i.e. the blogosphere, messageboards, and in letters to Q&A columns such as yours) has begun to build; however, I don’t think the show is critic-proof in the conventional sense (having elements of mass market appeal such as big stars, well worn themes, big special effects, etc. that make it impervious to traditional criticisms) but instead believe this is a matter of a genre adventure being dismissed in favor of other similar dramas liked better at pilot time by critics who are either are sticking by their guns or are too busy to revisit the comparison. For the record, I thought Invasion’s pilot was pretty good, but that the show (immediately afterwards) entered a 5 episode sag where nothing occurred except for dwelling on the same character reaction patterns over and over (it has recently pulled out of this slump a bit), and I thought Threshold had a good pilot with a great set of ideas and a good cast, but desperately needed a new show-runner to figure out how to use these elements better. For my money, Surface has been the most successful of these shows and one of only two new shows this season (the other being Ghost Whisperer, of which I am not the target audience) that seemed to be born fully realized with the pilot without requiring any retooling.

The appeal of Surface, for me, boils down its “novelic” feel. The pacing, which seems different than that of any current network TV show I can name (but is similar to that of some miniseries and HBO dramas) allows for slow movement of intra-episode plot elements (none of that frenetic jumping around to create action filled episode climaxes) and character moments, which nonetheless produce relatively quick advancements of the “big” plot (this show actually shows you stuff… it doesn’t wait till the season finale for a big reveal) and provides characters that actually change over the course of a few episodes. The scope is large with characters located across the US and the world, with care given to develop several distinct micro-settings. The writers have created character relationship pairs (I call them “diads,” although I don’t know if this is the preferred term) that have a life of their own and actually evolve over time (my favorite being the relationship between Miles and his sister, but the show has several really interesting ones). Any of the criticisms that I have heard about this show being boring could also directly apply to Deadwood (don’t hit me... I’m not really putting the shows in the same league, just illustrating a point).

The critical vs. populist (or, more accurately, paid vs. amateur critical) differences of opinion remind me of the very beginning of South Park (a situation which changed as the show is now a minor critical darling) and Family Guy (a situation which has not changed), with columns damning the shows being met with letters from progressively more ardent fans defending them. I don’t think the show is flawless (I too thought the traipse through the grocery store was a bit much), but isn’t this a show that deserves some respect for penetrating a critical pitch black cloud, and emerging with a following? (see, I did have a question)

-Todd Murry, Las Vegas, NV

The diad term (I don’t know where that came from) was one I used to use a lot when discussing why Star Trek TNG was a show that worked so well (the fact that Data had such specific well developed relationships with each other character was the major reason, I think, that he was so popular). Also, I can still remember the Moviepoopshoot reader response wars over whether Family Guy was a good show or not (no better way to stoke reader reaction than to bash a show they like every week), and the turnaround on Entertainment Weekly’s position on South Park when it became obvious their reader base loved it. I don’t think Surface is quite so galvanizing, but it is quietly becoming a show with an actual fan base.

DRAWN AND QUARTERLY 5 – A REVIEW

2005-09-26T16:02:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been interested in D&Q’s eponymous anthology, but somehow never picked one up. As is my habit in such matters some small thing must have stuck in my mind long enough for me to remember to pick up the latest anthology in the stores. And, as you might expect, I read it.

You know a review, even a quick and dirty one like this, is not going to be entirely positive when it starts off with “well, the production values were good,” but… well they were pretty good. The stiff pages and top-notch printing reeked of quality, and I do mean reeked. The book smells great! The odor is that great banana-oil, ester-like smell that I for some reason associate with learnedness (does anyone else associate the smell of certain books with academic quality?). Anyway, reading this is, as a result, a better physical experience.

The anthology is divided by page count into thirds: Depuy and Berberian’s piece, that opens the book, the Albert Chartier retrospective that ends it, and a few assorted shorter stories rounding out the middle third. My favorite part (aside from the aforementioned smell) was the ECized version of Wuthering Heights by R. Sikoryak and Harry Mayerovitch, which managed the neat trick of lampooning both the Bronte story, and the EC story format. This wasn’t great satire by any means, but the experiment is so exacting (love the typeface, slightly off register lettering) that I couldn’t help but giggle at the little flourishes (ridiculous overuse of underlighting, for example) helping fit the original tragic story into an EC moralizing arc.

Before this, the last thing I had read by Depuy and Berberian was the odd little story in Dark Horse Maverick anthology 2001 (you know, the one with the upstairs neighbor that apparently doing it with his toaster). That story was driven by a strange set of events that resolve into a mystery (what is he doing with that toaster?). Those of you who have not read this story will, doubtless, be staring at me slack jawed, but I’m telling you – the spark of life in the story was trying to imagine how the upstairs neighbor was using the toaster sexually. The story in D&Q5 has no such spark and suffers from its length. Part of my overall assessment of “technically competent, but mediocre” comes from my general malaise when it comes to autobio (or pseudoautobio?) comics, but I will say that Depuy and Berberian do tend to have some story agendas that are head and shoulders above the listless self involvement of most comics of the me-me genre. It’s just that here, none of these ideas really take flight (except possibly for the odd linkage of a game boy pokemon-like game, and the overwhelming responsibility of parenting). The mistaken-as-gay and holocaust-money subplots are a bit sit-comy (well, if the holocaust can be a sit-com topic), and my inability to sympathize with the main character (that is to say, I sympathize with the situations he’s in, but he acts so poorly, he looses any shot at my identification with him) eventually couldn’t be ignored. Reaction: technically competent but meso-meso.

The Michel Rabagliati story was shorter, and thus better tolerated, but otherwise gave me a similar feeling of nice art-no point. This is a more standard autobio, but we are given no real reason why we should care about the two delinquents in the story. Like many “rebel youth” comics (Mahfood’s Working Grrls, to pick another random example), the characters seem to look down on anyone who doesn’t have the same screw-it-all attitude. Slice of life tales are always tough for me to swallow (there’s that pointless thing again), pissing on an unsuspecting shopper doesn’t make it go down any easier. I haven’t read Paul Has A Summer Job, which may have some qualities that this lacked, but this short piece wasn’t a terribly good introduction to Rabagliati. Better pacing than the Depuy piece though (it moved better), although it aimed a lot lower.

I can’t comment on the piece by the Japanese artist (the name eludes me at the moment), because I didn’t understand what the hell was going on. This may be my fault, but I doubt it. More likely, understanding is based on some prior knowledge of the people in the story, or based on Japanese cultural things that I am unaware of.

On to the Albert Chartier retrospective. The opening about the significance of the artist is quite good, and made me want to find out more and see the cartoons. Then I read a few. O.K., the printing really shines here. These are full color representations of B&W artwork, so you can really see the process (liquid paper and all). It really gives you the sense that this is a gifted artist, with his deceptively simple linework fearlessly depicting anything he wished to draw (although he apparently liked snowstorms and auto accidents quite a bit). The guy was an excellent draftsman.

But man, what the hell is up with this strip.

The jokes, which are very gag oriented, are just not funny at all. Although lacking the treaclyness of Family Circus, Billy and the gang might just be funnier. Yes, I said it. Family Circus is funnier. I concede that some of this may be that the jokes just don’t translate into English, or are aimed mostly at rural Canadian concerns (and thus are lost on me), but they seem pretty bad. The only parts that stood out were the bizarre things, like the main character (who appears about as physically strong as Don Knotts) beating up a… wait for it… belligerent hippie.

There is a movie review site I used to frequent called Mr. Cranky that gives only bad reviews (ranking movies by shades of badness), and I know that’s what I sound like here. Overall, throughout this book, I found the material well presented, well drawn and professionally done, but none of the stories completely engaged me. So, please don’t take this review as a unilateral slam, but I would be remiss if I didn’t relate my disappointment. The majority of the material here is translated, and this may explain the fact that the stories never connected, but given the positive features mentioned above, the lack of any sense of excitement or transcendence feels like a waste.

TV Update

2005-09-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

So I managed to squeeze out that last post completely on comics during TV premire week. What was I thinking! I figured I’d better get some opinions up on the new season before the cancellations start to hit, though.

PRISON BREAK: I need to comment on this show because, just a few posts ago, I called this the only new show I was excited about this season. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the premiere – I lost my critical objectivity. I initially saw a bit-torrented version of the pilot, which I watched on a computer screen, and really liked. Specifically, I thought they did a good job achieving a big reversal before each commercial break, which made the show feel like it moved at a good clip. Although I noticed some tenuous plot elements, I felt the show misdirected and moved passed them nicely (maybe watching in a small window helped). Then the reviews hit, and everyone blasted the show for its lapses in plot logic and overall silliness and now I have to actively resist reacting to the reviews of the show when I feel negative thoughts (did I really not like that, or is it just the critics talking?). For instance, when the main character whittles a bolt to use as an Allen wrench on a toilet screw, his placing the head of the bolt against his tattoo (instead of just inserting it in the head of the toilet screw which was right there in the same room) feels like an attempt to make the tattoo look useful, and I groan. But would I have been able to look past this (or even thought about it for more than a second) if a voice inside my head wasn’t saying, “look - this stuff just doesn’t work.” I guess what I’m saying is that the critical response has hampered my enthusiasm for the show, and now I’m seeing the flaky stuff, and it’s harder to get past. I still like the show; I’m just not as high on it now as I was initially.

HOUSE: Strangely enough, this show has been sluggish out of the gate for the same reason the OC was slow to start its second season – the most compelling actor had a cold while filming. Like the 2nd season of the OC, I expect this show to get back up to snuff soon, but still a lackadaisical start (especially considering the second to last episode of last season, which won the writing Emmy, was clearly the show’s best). They haven’t used Sela Ward at all yet.

While I was watching LOST’s first episode of the season, it seemed mighty good, but the more I thought about it, the better it got. Easily the best hour of the new season so far.

REUNION came incredibly close to loosing me completely in the first 20 minutes or so. There was a lot of really sloppy writing, very clumsy setups of a few of the situations, and some huge character problems. For instance, I instantly disliked, but was not interested in, the Tom Cruise character (I call him this because of the 4 Risky Buisness references in the first half of the show alone) and the other male characters seemed to be complete non starters. But the show did pick up towards the end of the first episode. I think one of the big trends for pilots this season is starting badly, or at least very coldly, and showing improvement towards the end of the hour (the other HUGE example of this is Nightstalker, which has the most soporific opening 10 minutes of any pilot I've ever seen). Episode 1 gets going in its last half as some of the emotional punches start to connect, and the characters get a little more exposure. The second episode, although it had less character issues, didn’t show any improvement in the writing department, which is where the show could use the most work. There is a moment in the episode (one character stands up and screams “nature calls,” leaving the other two characters in the room to have an conversation that is all important to advancing the plot) that is so un-natural, that I was jarred right out of whatever immersion in the narrative that I was able to develop by that point, and it generally takes one hell of a lot for this kind of shoddy transition to cause me any problems (I’m a 80’s TV vet, dammit). Interesting premise that looks DOA on execution.

I refuse to talk about the OC, a formerly great show, on the grounds that it might cause me internal hemorrhage.

BONES will succeed or fail on the basis of whether they can put together a writing staff that can provide better plot material for the lead actors to work with. I thought David Boreanaz basically "got" his character right away, and managed to inject enough charm so that I didn't rankle so much that the character is a bit creaky and hackneyed. Emily Deschanel, however, seemed to be trying to wrestle her character for control in the first half, and there was an interesting internal friction as a result (the character seemed overly developed in the script, and the actress seemed like she was trying to avoid the dialogue/exposition landmines to actually find the character she was playing). Toward the and of the first episode, this seemed to be actually working to her advantage, as she was employing that confusion/awkwardness in the character, which helped counter the "Mary Suism" some have pointed out. But never have I seen so many absolutely useless secondary characters. They really did a good job of giving us leads that can carry the show, but (as the X-Files shows) this kind of program just doesn't need all this other character baggage (plus which, this is a forensic anthropology show, so there must be a lot of travel a lot and you can't drag the whole cast along, unless you are "Medical Investigation" and have a (bullshit) transport plane and Batmobile to run around with). I would be shocked if at least 2 of these characters are not gone by the fifth episode.

SUPERNATURAL is a classic decent WB show (like Smallville) were casting blandly attractive actors seems more important than acting chops, but the show seems to work, and develops some nice tense moments in the first two episodes. I’ll watch anything with Wendigo in it, anyway.

HEAD CASES: My wife liked it. It’s cancelled. No need to go on.

SYRVIVOR has managed to really hook me all but two of its (what, is it eleven now?) seasons. I have faith, and bringing back Stephanie and Bobby John (sp?) was a nice touch. The early (as in just off the boat) incredibly hard reward challenge is nice to watch the fallout of. Survivor is one of only two reality shows (the Amazing Race being the other) that have been able to maintain both quality and watchability.

THRESHOLD: Whew, boy. This one is tough. I like the ideas in this show a lot (bioforming – i.e. alien invasion by taking over the organisms already on the planet - is a great one), everyone wants Karen Cisco to finally lead a show that doesn’t get cancelled, and the horny dwarf is a hoot, but crap! The show hasn’t really (after 3 hours) given me any indication that it is going to do anything interesting. This show is paradigmatic of the current season’s sturdy and serviceable, but bland and undistinguished shows. Nothing of any real interest has happened.

The CSIs: Warren Ellis is the only person who agrees with me that these shows have gotten more interesting to watch as abstract art films as they go on. All sorts of experimental film techniques are used to fetishise body fluids, and the shows different visual themes that make each distinct are miraculous. Meanwhile, the shows are well written and have watchable actors and actresses. All except for CSI:NY which sucks.

LAS VEGAS had a really odd opener, which does a reboot on the show after only two years. The episode took some very interesting character turns, but seemed to lack conviction (this should have been a two hour premire, just to let the “I’m not coming back…, OK I’m coming” reversals have more room to breathe). I just finished watching Twin Peaks in its entirety, and let me say that, although always limited, Lara Flynn Boyle looks especially wooden in Las Vegas in comparison. And the pony tail makes her look like Cindy in Jimmy Neutron (the second best animated lookalike in the past few months, as Michael from Big Brother looked exactly like Syndrome (Buddy) in the Incredibles). Some fun stuff and interesting moments, but felt a little forced getting from point A to point G in one hour.

INVASION: probably, after review of the play, the best pilot of the new shows, but I will reserve judgement for now.

SURFACE: I will also readdress this after a few weeks, but, out of all the shows I’ve seen, this had a pilot that was MUCH better than I expected judging by the reviews. I have no idea how this show could work week in, week out, but I was pleasantly surprised by the casting and writing. I like the Louisiana guys a lot.

MEDIUM: Interesting start, but we really have no change in the status quo after some diverting “has she lost her powers?” mumbo jumbo. As I have said before, I really warmed to this show after a chilly start (I really thought the pilot was bad), mostly due to ceasing to think of it as a real life psychic show and starting to look at it as a realistic superhero show. The fact that the family life somehow feels more authentic (and actually loving) than anything else on the air helps.

So far, the surprise of how good the last season was has given way to a season of the meh’s (good but not great! is the motto for the new shows). To be continued.

Retro-pseudonostalgia

2005-09-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

A recent series of posts (the Lethem and Leifield parts in the later link) over at Double Articulation got me thinking about some interesting things. If you read the two Lethem articles linked at the site back to back, there is an interesting overlapping undercurrent concerning the feeling in the 70’s that the Fortress of Solitude author (and thus all of alive at the time) were living in the shadow of “when the great things happened.” Letham seems concerned primarily (and to great benefit) with 60’s Marvel, but makes a few allusions to pop music of the time as well.

This is a subject area I have considered before. Everybody, from time to time, gets annoyed by the boomers who cut their music appreciation-al teeth in the 60’s and are more than happy to gleefully exclaim how it’s all been downhill from there. There is a perverse joy in letting you know that “your” stuff can’t hold a candle to “their” stuff. The interesting angle suggested by the articles is that the implicit tone of comics of the 70’s (both in the stories, the editorial citations, and the bullpen bulletins) seemed not just to clue you in on what you’d missed but also to point out that you’d missed it. This creation/promotion of the “legendary time” probably worked very well for Marvel for a while, but seemed to ultimately work against it (by making readers feel they were getting cold leftovers). This may be the beginning of the modern age of shortsighted comic marketing.

But this line of thinking also reminded me that the presence of a legendary past (that the new reader is invited to slowly become aware of) is one of the most exciting things about being an obsessive experiencer of any pop experience. I have often thought about one odd effect that occurs when someone really gets interested in an area of entertainment (pop music, Marvel comics, etc.) - the recent past looms disproportionately large in value like a Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover. Someone who got really into music thanks to Pet Benetar’s Love is a Battlefield playing at the roller rink would likely have, in the initial stages, tended to overinflate the significance of Quarterflash or Loverboy, and think of Journey, Foreigner, or Styx as bands with an illustrious history (close your eyes and imagine the unexpected wonder of hormones mixing with the thudding speaker system… Don’t Stop Beleivin’, Hot Blooded, and Babe seem transcendent). And there is always, as you look to the past to get “educated” on the history of your area of obsession, a tendency to devalue what is going on right now, because you are in the right now, the material is “common,” and there is no feeling of secret superiority in having access to the true great stuff.

This is the part of nostalgia that no one talks a lot about: faux nostalgia (or, more correctly, retro-pseudonostalgia - nostalgia for the illusion of a primary experience of something that was experienced after the fact). Lets face it… the comic that woke me up and got me first into the field that is my lifelong passion was Star Wars #39. You read that right, the first issue of the adaptation of the Empire Strikes Back. This, of course, is not entirely true (I owned many comics before – including the original Star Wars movie adaptation - and enjoyed reading them, and my fever really took hold slightly later when I bought Avengers 200) and the comic was not particularly bad (Al Williamson art, Tom Palmer inks, if I remember), but SW 39 is not exactly remembered as a trend setting stunner. But it was, ultimately, the comic that started it for me in many ways. All the stuff from just before had a glow of interest. Moon Knight seemed a mysterious and dim figure who’s early appearances were in magazines that were hard to find. You had but to peek back a few years to the Korvak saga, which just seemed so big. This effect of retrospective nostalgia may be more important in the comics industry than actual nostalgia.

Lethem specifically mentions this in “The Amazing…” article, stating:

“In fact, I'd sentimentally rewritten my personal history, according to the dicta of the Bullpen Bulletin, so that until my research into the movie disproved it, I could claim (in Bookforum, two years ago) that 'the first romantic loss for a lot of guys my age was Gwen Stacy's death.' This was a retrospective fiction, I now see. Gwen Stacy was dead before I met her, which imparts a Gnostic eeriness to our sundered love.”

The impulse to engineer access to a shared history of prior greatness is strong. I’m sure some sociology wonks out there could say something cromulent about tribal identity, and the dance between societal assimilation and shared acceptance of carefully constructed fictions, but I won’t. I just remember being slapped in the face by Thor 300 with its intimation of rich history of Celestials and Gods, like I had just peered through a crack in the door into a jungle of ideas that seemed, in their elusive majesty, to be better than anything I’d ever seen.

There are many offshoots of this discussion: the altercation between those with militant immersion in the now vs. classicists, the discussion of faulty memory as a means of creating selves that we are more proud of (see the Leifield part of this post), and the reason that these types of obsessive interest patterns tend to burn out over time (leading to lack of interest, and even “quitting” once you get to familiar with the mysterious past). But I’ll stop here, and simply remember those wonderful times when the first issue of Micronauts seemed intriguing, and my excitement at striking gold and finding Star Wars 38 (the strange and wonderful Michael Golden issue) at a local 7-11. If I hadn’t had these feelings then, I wouldn’t be reading comics now.

SEASON’S UP

2005-09-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

OK – if there is anything that can get me blogging again, it’s a new TV season. I’ve been doing major catch-up work with reading comics recently, I read the new Harry Potter, I’m almost finished the Dark Tower books, and there is more TV on the horizon than I can watch. So much to talk about.

So, PRISON BREAK then. I saw the first hour of the show a few months back and really liked it. When I watched the two hour premiere Monday, the bloom was a little off the rose, but I still felt it was solid entertainment. What changed? Most likely, when I first watched, I was propelled through the show (due in no small part to the big revelation before every commercial break structure) and didn’t really stop to smell the roses of implausibility. The second time through, I knew what was going to happen, and had more attention to spare in order to look around. This is not really a criticism of the show… it was propulsive enough to carry a Jaded viewer like me the first time through, and if it doesn’t hold up as well on repeated viewing – so what. I liked the second episode better in the 2 hour premiere (the part of the show critics have been hardest on – uniformly everyone says the 3rd episode, which I haven’t seen yet, is better), which bodes well for the show. I like the cast, the show moves fast, and I remain quite entertained. Bottom line is, this probably won’t turn out to be the next Great (note the capital G) show, but will be solidly fun.

I’ve also seen the pilots for Invasion and Night Stalker. INVASION seems quite good, but I faded out near the end of the hour. The show starts very strong and has some nice cast elements, but the last third of the episode starts working a little too hard for its exposition. One has to wonder if, due to its subject matter (hurricane aftermath), the show may be pushed back, even to spring, but there are some interesting elements, and I liked the prior Shaun Cassidy produced shows, so I have a good feeling about it.

NIGHT STALKER performs the opposite trick. When the show starts, everything feels very flat. Stuart Townsend looks positively comatose, and his “partner” (who I have only seen previously as the head cheerleader of the urban-school-where-the-white-girl-cheers-were-stolen-from in Bring It On) doesn’t work in the role at all. But a few things happen along the way. First, the actual horror scenes are pretty good (the werewolf at the end is a bit cheesy, but when the show is being subtle with the horror, it works). Second, Townsend begins to wake up a bit. It seems it must have taken a few days of filming to get comfortable with the part, but he actually begins to bring something to it by the end. Third, the what-happened-in-Vegas reveal really pumps up the “over arc” of the show – I didn’t think they would come clean with this stuff until later in the season. So, the pilot got better as I watched it. The show bears watching.

I just finished reading KRAMER’S ERGOT 5 and, much as in my review of DRAWN AND QUARTERLY 5 (wait, that might not be up on this site... I’ll have to think about reposting it), I was not that impressed. Many have gushed about this anthology, but besides the Kevin Huizenga (which was kinda neat), and “My sexual History” (which was fascinating, until the comprehensiveness made it boring) I really wasn’t into much of it. Some of the other material was nice to glance at, but was not readable in any clear sense. This is likely just me placing demands on the art that the art was not created to fulfill, but pthuut... I seek narrative when I read comics, and precious little narrative was present. If I could crack the reason why this stuff was lost on me, I also could also figure out why most minicomics leave me cold. P.S. another thing that bothered me was the excellent high grade color reproductions of a lot of unfinished black (often pencil) and white art… I just seemed like a seventy-five dollar frame holding a seventy-five cent poster you got at a garage sale.

SUMMER TV

2005-06-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written in a while, and I desperately felt the need to get started again. Part of this stems from my wish to get dialogue going again with the other comic book lovin’ folk so that I could attempt to set up some kind of get together with any of the bloggers that are going to San Diego this year – and time is growing short. Part is the fact that I’ve never seen so crowded a summer TV season and I felt the need to comment. Luckily, my ability to ping the comic weblog updates sites is back, so maybe someone will see me as I get started this time.

The 4400 has resumed – this show is one of those that followers of this blog (if there were any) would recognize as a “Brandi show” – i.e. a show I watch because my wife does. It’s not bad by any means, but I think it suffered a bit in it’s first run from not knowing whether it was an ongoing show or a mini-series, leading to confusion as to where the viewer investment was supposed to go. I’ve seen three hours of this season, in which it is obvious that the focus has shifted to a core cast of about 9 (10 counting the baby) characters indulging in both serial narrative and plot of the week stories. The X-Files like structure has stabilized the show, but I confess that I don’t know how interested I am in some of the plotlines, like the fugitive storyline of the guy, the girl, and the baby (which seems to be treading water already, with only one real purpose – to keep the baby away from Billy Campbell’s cult leader guy so that the baby’s powers/intentions can manifest). Of the “big mystery” shows out right now, which are by and large pretty good, the only one in which I have less faith (i.e. faith in the show actually delivering something meaningful when all is said and done) is Desperate Housewives.

The Insider has started, and I have seen the first hour (I think the second ep is tonight). The show, which has pretty damn good geek pedigree, being run by Tim Minear (generally considered the finest of the Joss Whedon writing staff), and having some of the better writers in recent genre TV, is certainly promising. The show has a lead (Rachael Nichols) who is OK as a Clarice Starling-lite FBI agent (Rebecca Locke) with “Profiler” like insight and a damaged past that could send her off the rails if she doesn’t keep it together (this is explicitly established - the agent she is replacing died doing to herself what the killer she was trailing did to his victems, showing us one of the Rebecca's possible outcomes - freak out suicide). Peter Coyote (a 4400 alumni) is the real standout as the “bad cop” head of the task force Virgil (love that name) Webster who wants to push her hard, regardless of the consequences to her personally, in an attempt to mold her into the perfect killer hunter (like himself?). At war for her soul is the (as stated in the script) conscience of the team Paul, an agent who will no doubt need to step in regularly to pull her back from the edge. Adam Baldwin is fun as the gum popping expensive suit wearing sardonic agent, and the cast seems to gel fine. The only problem I foresee is finding new places to go with the dark parts of the show, as the aforementioned Profiler was on the air for a number of years, and the similar in tone Millennium struggled for its entire run to find something new to say. Good start, though.

Prison Break won’t start till august, but I can’t wait. I saw the pilot, and (like the pilot I saw early last year – “Lost”) it knocked my socks off. No sane human being could help but wonder, howevere, how they can make this an ongoing TV show (a guy gets himself sent to prison to break out his brother who will wrongly be executed otherwise – they either have to put off the Prison Break for a loooong time, or rename the show), but I’m game to see what they do. The greatest thing about the pilot is the way they manage to drop a REAL bombshell before each commercial break, so you always felt pulled back in. Another big mystery show that looks like it knows where its going.

With Big Brother, Monk, Dead Zone, and Battlestar Galactica starting, good shows I haven’t tried yet (“The Closer”), catch up TV, and a few minor shows dropped in (including the “I can’t believe I’m watching this” Hit Me Baby One More Time), this is the busiest TV summer I can remember.

Incidently, for you lost fans (I’m sure everyone knows about this, but I’ll say it anyway), this web site is of interest. Look deeper.

Next season's TV

2005-06-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

I’ve got to get back posting, so I thought I’d ease in with this categorical look at next season’s new shows (yes, a TV post):

No way no how
-Commander in Chief
-Three wishes
-Related
-Apprentice: Martha Stewart
Sounds pretty bad, probably won’t watch
-Sex, Lies, and Secrets
-Out of Practice
-Inconceivable
-Hot Properties
-Head Cases
-Close to Home
I’m afraid my wife will make me
-Love, Inc
-Ghost Whisperer
-Freddie
Not too bad, but not uninterested
-The War at Home
-Twins
-My Name is Earl
-Kitchen Confidential
-Just Legal
-How I met your mother
-Criminal Minds
Hope’s not good, but I feel obliged to try
-Supernatural
-Fathom
-The Gate
-E-Ring
Sounds good.. not great, but good
-Bones – fan of both Boreanez and the Riechs books
-Threshold – heard good things
-The Night Stalker – got a good feeling
-Invasion – loved American Gothic… this is the same team, right?
I’m excited
-Prison Break (seen the pilot, and it’s great!)
Special Category: Sounds promising, but I’ll never watch it because of the time slot
-Everybody Hates Chris

HELLO, IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE – The Dark Tower

2005-03-28T16:23:00.000-08:00

I’ve noticed, since I’ve come back, that blo.gs is not registering my updates, and thus comics weblog updates doesn’t “see” new posts of mine. Sent an email, hope it gets fixed, but the likelihood of anything I write actually getting read at this point is getting pretty low.

I’m almost through an audiobook listen of Stephen King’s Dark Tower Book IV: Wizard and Glass. I read the book when it came out, and am re”reading” all the Dark Tower books right now in service of reading the complete series. I’ll comment on the series as a whole when I’ve finished, but suffice it to say that this holds up as the best Stephen King book since It (a personal favorite), at least, and probably holds together as a story better than It did. The flashback part of the book (which is about 85% of it) would make a terrific miniseries as this and the first book (The Gunslinger) would adapt fairly well.

I tolerated book 2 (The Drawing of the Three) less well this time out than when I had first read it (possibly due to the irritating way the reader does Eddie and Detta/Odetta/Susanah (2 of the three main characters), possibly making me dislike them in a way that reading the book didn’t. The book also comes off as dated, despite the “revised” designation.

Book 3 (The Wasteland), however, fared better in my mind. I had a memory of the end of the book being repetitive and boring, but it didn’t bother as much this time. The beginning was not great, but this is likely due to my aversion to anymore of the New York mumbo jumbo after book 2.

As happened the first time, I can really feel the tragedy coming in book 4, and it is making me tense even when I’m not listening. Now it’s onto Book 5 (Wolves of the Cala) that I haven’t read yet.

BENDIS’ WOMEN

2005-03-23T14:29:00.000-08:00

The Bendis interview in the Comics Journal 266 was, surprisingly or not, blah. I think Bendis is still suffering a little from the overexposure of a couple of years ago when there were multiple interviews with him available every month. There is a sense that he has already been asked all the questions, and that he has settled in on the best answer to anything they can ask him by now (not that the interviewer probed that deeply). The only thing that I didn’t recognize as having already been covered was the stuff about the end of Caliber, and I found it interesting that he was still able to remain thankful to Gary Reed after essentially getting screwed over when all was said and done.

One thing that gelled for me in the article, however, was a better idea of what’s going on with Bendis’ women characters. Writing women (for male comic and other writers) seems to be a big challenge. Susan Faludi talked in “Backlash” about how serial television only had one type of woman character for many years – the good wife – until the Mary Richards paradigm finally kicked in. Thus was introduced the type of gal who had a career that was important to her, but who cried a lot. Of course, this was due to the (not always spoken) sense of loss at being removed from her natural state of wife-and-motherhood; hopefully, the characters seemed to say, this was temporary, but oh-my-god maybe it’s forever and I’ll die unloved. And behold, there was now a second type of woman on the tube (go figure). This is the TV woman version of that old Alan Moore saw of inventing two-dimensionality in world of one-dimensional characters. So, your choices for female protagonist were goodwife and deep-down-want-to-be-goodwife-but-can’t-right-now-because-I’m-working-and-being-unhappy. This is kinda simplistic, but Nick at Nite seems to more or less bear this out. This period lasted for an awful long time; but, if you write for a medium where there are actors and actresses performing the parts, you at least can depend on the fact that the intermediary is the correct gender, and can help interpret what you’re trying to get at - comic and prose writers are on their own.

In comics, femme characters were written as swooning dames for a loooong time. Since then, we’ve mostly had them written as men with breasts, or in specific wish fulfillment modes*. The Bendis women are more interesting, because they seem more real, but with 2 caveats: they all seem kind of the same and you can still feel the connection to that Mary Richards archetype which, when boiled down further, suggests that to be “real,” women need to be unhappy.

You can’t, obviously, pin this just on Bendis. I was talking to my wife once about a “great idea” I had for a TV show, and she asked me why the lead female role needed to be so relentlessly miserable. I thought instantly of the “women in refrigerators” cliché, and how it seems any woman in any medium that seeks to have a less traditionally defined identity must do so by suffering. So when you watch Jessica mope around getting shit on or Deena get abducted or Wanda go crazy with the loss of her kids (this one is even closer to the roots of this sociologic nexus), you can’t help but think that what Bendis is doing is related.

Bendis reportedly gets a lot of his dialogue tics from actual observation, and it seems that the accuracy of his general portrayal of women may also be from watching them behave. Jinx seems to be the crucible of his female writing, where he was really doing the observation and trying to capture it on paper for the first time. It is interesting that probably his most realistic (and best) writing in this vein is the flashbacks to her teen years (something he also did in Alias, the spiritual sequel to Jinx), a time in which the brooding intensity of feelings bring male and female psychologies the closest they will ever be. Perhaps the reason writers put women through such pain is that their strongest identification of the feminine point of view may be from junior high and high school, when deep mental anguish is a way of life.

Anyway, in this interview, he claims that Deena (a character I think quite close to Jinx) is the closest character to his wife. As I said, I think most of his “strong” female characters are similar. The insight (such as it was) that I got from the article was that the reason Bendis’ women characters seem so real is that he is channeling his wife, with different aspects of her personality accented. This works particularly well for him because: 1. channeling is mostly how he works anyway (see dialogue), 2. his wife’s personality is somewhat more compatible with the male POV than average, and 3. due to the time periods involved with meeting his wife, and him taking his usable impressions of her, there are some specific events and some age related “pain” to draw on.

Thus, the reason the women feel the same is because they are reflections of the same person, and they seem more real because Bendis is close to his subject and knows how to channel character as well as language. Bendis’ tendency to channel this personal stuff directly into his stories (as well as high output) also explains why every title he has worked on in the past few years has also had a woman in a coma, with a male in anguish poised over her (as noted in TCJ).

I need to play catch up with TV soon, so my posts will probably skew that way next. See you sson.

* A lot of this boils down to a need for identification. Previous generations of male mass media writers may have been more comfortable understanding women in terms of roles or uses, but currently, they strive to identify with them (albeit in somewhat limited ways). At the low end of the totem pole is sexual identification – “bad girl” comics - attempting to delineate sexually aggressive creatures that want what the writer and presumed audience wants. John Byrne turned the early 90’s She Hulk revival into “I act like a guy, but look at how much I enjoy having female body parts” (something similar to National Lampoon’s “My Vagina” with, um, Wyatt Wingfoot). But indy relationship comics are not always that much better, often showing stabs at relating to stereotypical women, only to find connection with the girl that is basically indistinguishable from a guy. I’m picking on comics, but this is everywhere. One of the reasons I think I like Stephen King so much is he is the rare male writer that seems to know how to write female characters as people, not just story dressing.

COMICS FIRST

2005-03-22T15:31:00.000-08:00

Been busy, now I’m back. No excuses. Back to the grind.

I’ve grown a little behind on comics reading, but that’s mostly because I buy too much. Lots of good stuff recently, though. For example:

I’ve seen the latest issue of Street Angel (#5) compared to the first issue of Shaolin Cowboy a lot online, but to me it’s Shaolin Cowboy that reminds me of Street Angel. The reason? The second issue of Shaolin Cowboy showed a tonal shift from the first, with wide open puns and parody humor replacing the first issues action fantasmagoria. The only other recent title I can name that offers such an over the top grab bag with glaring shifts in tenor is, you guessed it, Street Angel. Both books also are insanely FUN, and leave me with a sense that the creators don’t really know where they are going (yet) but aren’t that worried about it as everyone just hangs on for the sake of the ride.

Good books recently have come from unexpected quarters. I’m enjoying Breach, the first issue of which I picked up as a lark, but which sucked me in the same way that the similarly (deceptively) low key Batgirl: Year One sucked me in a few years ago (the art actually bears some similarity as well). I haven’t heard jack squat about this title, however, and I can’t help but wonder if this is supposed to be, basically, Captain Atom: Year One (it kind of works this way). Likewise Legion of Superheroes surprised me. Now, I’m in to try any Legion title, but after an acclimation period (it took the third issue before the everything-silver-aged-is-new-again vibe really clicked into place for me), I’m really digging this.

Ultra is now over, and I was a little underwhelmed by the ending. Most of this is likely due to the minimalist rotascope-lite art, which was light and refreshing at the start, but degenerated as the series wore on (I don’t know if the art actually worsened, or whether my tolerance for seeing poorly drawn mouths simply dissipated), but I also found the story exceptionally meh in the last 2 issues. I couldn’t even arouse enough interest to figure out how the ending fit together with the prophesy in the first issue (by the way, they probably should have reminded us of the specifics of the what the fortune teller said at some point in this issue…it’s been awhile for us plebes shelling out for the singles). Don’t know if I’m following the creators to their next project (Girls) or not.

DC needs to declare a moratorium on crossovers in titles I get. War Games basically ruined the bat-titles I read (Catwoman – don’t get it anymore - and Robin – barely holding on due to my support the locals attitude about Bill Willingham), now flash has been utter crap for a half year thanks to useless Identity crisis tie ins and now some ridiculous Wonder Woman cross over. I also have a ruined issue of Wonder Woman to look forward to.

I reread Arkham Asylum and the script, all part of the 15th anniversary edition, or some such. I enjoyed the script in an ideas-flying-around watch-your head kind of way, but I can see why other writers laughed this off when it was first submitted. The whole affair seems kind of silly. If you want to dress the Joker like Madonna in the Open Your Heart video why do you need to link the resulting image to the tarot, kabbalah, and the i-effing-ching. The Joker dressed like Madonna is self-explanatory. And for a guy who claims how kids today can’t write Batman… crap! This is the least Batman-like Batman comic ever. This isn’t dark and brooding of sci-fi Batman. It’s I-need-my-mommy Batman. The word association scene is just laughable. The saving grace of the whole project is that the ideas are, ultimately, some fun, and the McKean art forcibly drowns the silliness and capriciousness under 3 feet of dream weirdness that makes things (kind of) work.

Well, this was just to climb back in the saddle and I’ll be thrilling you with additional posts shortly.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2004-12-31T16:54:00.000-08:00

No year end lists for me (well, maybe next week - who knows), but I just wanted to leave everybody out there with a little good will. This will be a great year for all - I can feel it. Happy holidays!!!

HOUSE

2004-12-31T16:35:00.000-08:00

Scott at Polite Dissent has been writing about the mid (or so) season Fox replacement show House so I don’t have to. But I think I’ll mention it anyway. I agree with Scott about almost everything he says about the show, but I feel that I need to express my opinion that this is the best medical show in a long time. ER started somewhat strong (with a truly great pilot), but had already begun to succumb to its inherent problems by the end of season one (although the show has always been capable of the occasional really good episode). You really have to go back to St. Elsewhere to find a better show (the gold standard, of course, is Quincy M.E., a show that, thanks to strong identification with pathology, has made my job almost impossible to explain to people on airplanes).

Hugh Laurie (who I will parenthetically call Mr. Little just to be contrary to all the BBC watching snobs out there) is phenomenal, and the rest of the cast ain’t that bad, but he’s gotten so much attention for his paint peeling performance, that I have nothing to add. Omar Epps does a fine job, but has been singled out too much from the rest of the fine cast who all take a back seat to Mr. Little. But I’d rather talk about the medical aspects of the show, especially in comparison to the other major “medical detective” show on the air, Medical Investigations (MI), which I have written about before.

Let me start by admitting that House is not a perfect show. As in MI and other such shows, there is a tendency to up the ante on everything, so that any rare infection or drug with low percentage (but pretty bad) side effect comes off as ALMOST CERTAIN DEATH. Scattershot bizarre elements of the differential diagnoses are used to treat the patient, because much more likely explanations have been scratched off the erasable board because they don’t fit perfectly. Case in point, the woman in the recent episode who was very fatigued and was dying without a diagnosis was decided to have either tularemia (rabbit fever) or African sleeping sickness (both of which they admit didn’t quite fit) simply because they couldn’t think of anything else that it could be (I’m sure they could have come up with something a lot more common that didn’t perfectly fit - I don’t think that they even considered metabolic causes). I could follow this example out, talking about the other problem tendencies germane to this type of show (like when the doctors insist that the sleeping sickness had to be sexually-transmitted despite only one Portuguese report suggesting this could even happen, and proceed to rake the family over the coals about it till they caused the couple to separate, though the question of transmission was, at the very best, ancillary information… I could go on), but I’m here to say why the show is good, not to take pot shots at it.

The thing is, however the doctors take liberty with the execution of their medical knowledge, the whole show seems based on extremely solid medical understanding. The final diagnoses seem earned, and make sense. The differential diagnoses are thought out (apparently by someone who knows something), the tests chosen are generally correct, and many many moments seem piercingly true. The debunking of “if you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras” was edifying, the scrawling mnemonics on the erasable board and crossing through things conjured up memories of internal medicine rounds (aside – the leader of our internal medicine rounds, Dr. “Bo” Sanders, was so intuitive that he pegged me a future Pathologist - before I had decided to be one - after I uttered only 2 words to him – “Mallory bodies”), and the clinic scenes seem real even though the clinic set seems incredibly fake. And the odd mixture of high mindedness, contempt, the contentious relationship with political correctness, and the gallows camaraderie seems authentic when matched against my memories of academic medical training.

Scott isolates a very helpful point in one of his reviews, that I think all writers and producers for these shows should take note of. He coins the term “medical school disease” for those diseases that are talked about constantly in training, which you almost never see in practice. Just realizing that there are rare diseases that every doctor has heard about far out of proportion to the actual occurrence of the disease would prevent an entire type of error – the idiotic “a-ha, water is wet” moment - in all of these medical shows (I talked about this fact when I noted that everyone in MI was acting as if they had never heard of ontogenesis imperfecta when it is talked about constantly in med school - especially in ER rotations - and something like 2 questions a year about it show up on the step 2 boards).

The point is that even though House and MI are guilty of some of the same sins, MI feels utterly phony, and House feels authentic, despite specific lapses in reality (there is no way Dr. House could get away with acting the way he does – some other physician with an ax to grind would crucify him in front of a committee if he didn’t get thrown out over patient complaints first, unless he publishes a lot, which he doesn’t seem to – and they would never in this lawsuit shy environment force the guy to do a clinic). The show earns a pass in these areas. Right out of the gate, this is the third best new show of the year (after Lost and Veronica Mars).

MY GOD

2004-12-30T15:50:00.000-08:00

I just heard on the news about an Australian woman who had to choose which of her two children to hold onto during the flooding in Asia. When I heard the coming-up blurb, I thought “oh, another one of those kind of stories.” But when I heard the report I was horrified on some existential level. She was holding on to her toddler and her 5 year old, and wasn’t going to be able to keep holding on. She was convinced, she said, that the older child was dead, and thus chose to let him go. He was found alive hours late floating on a car door. Happy ending, says the news. WHAT!!

I’m scared for life just hearing the story. The choice is truly horrifying, but the woman could not have been too convinced that the boy was dead. She just willed herself a reason to do what she had to, which was let one go. Now, she knows she was lying to herself, and she has to look at the kid she was prepared to let die every day. Then, there’s the fact that she’s more guilty of doing something wrong in a complex parent guilt way than if the kid had died, which means it has to enter the back of her mind that if the kid had died, her life might be better. I’m not saying anything against the woman at all – but can you imagine living with yourself after this. It reminds me of the cruel old testament god who would make someone decide to sacrifice his child, then say, in essence, “psyche!” Also, isn’t this complex moral topic (the necessary sacrifice that survives) the subject of Touching the Void (I didn’t see the movie, but I think its about 2 mountain climbers, one of whom has to be cut free over a big crevasse, but lives).

These stories might strike home for me more because my whole family was, while in a car, directly hit by a tornado about 6 or 7 years ago. We were driving (down from Nashville through the Huntsville area which is the second most active tornado area in the world – did you know 2/3 of all the worlds tornados are in the US? Weird, huh) ahead of a bad weather front. We stopped for food, and as we pulled out onto the road back to I-65, the visibility dropped to close to zero, and I saw, for a split second, a funnel touch down in a ditch 50 ft from the car, and in a split second, the windows of the car vaporized into a hail of tiny cubes, and the sound was like being convertible in a car wash x20. Swirling earth filled everything. I was leeward, and so my feet got buried in earth and roofing tiles. My wife wrenched her back throwing herself over the baby, and got hit in the side of the head with some roofing material (she had tinnitus for a month). Everyone had dicing injuries but, other than the above-mentioned injuries to my wife, was pretty OK.

But I always think back to why I didn’t act quicker somehow. Floor the car, try to help the children like my wife, something. But in my mind at the time I was the driver, and was at a loss to specifically see how moving would be better than standing still (read: I was in shock, and froze up). Backing up would have been bad - one of those roadside signs (the ones with the lighted arrow and the 2 wheels, with little rectangle letters you stick up – do you know how big and heavy those things are?) crushed our trunk. But what if someone had died – how would I have felt about this not making whatever decision would have prevented it?
I feel really sorry for all of the victims of this tragedy, but I also feel sorry for this woman who did would she had to do, and lucked out, but will have to live with the fact of what she was willing to do for the rest of her life.

AND THEN THERE'S THE FOOTBALL THING

2004-12-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

***Football warning: Stop here if you don’t want to here my idiotic sports blatherings***
Please scroll down for more sensible comic talk

I will be watching collage football on new years day (LSU plays Iowa in the Capitol One Bow), which is something I haven’t done in a while. I’m a huge LSU fan (went there for undergrad, medical, and graduate school), and think that, overall, they have been greatly wronged by the collective sports media during the past year. But my son goes to USC, and I think I have some perspective on the issue, and you won’t see me with a FUSC shirt on.

For those not in the know, Oklahoma, USC, and LSU were 1,2, and 3 going into the conference championship weekend. Oklahoma lost to K State, LSU won against Georgia, and the Pac10 doesn’t play a championship. Thus, the AP poll had USC 1, LSU 2, and Oklahoma 3. But the rank that determined the championship bowl (the BCS or BCE) had Oklamoma 1, LSU 2, and USC 3, due to complex rules including strength of scedule. The consensus opinion was that USC and LSU deserved to play (some thought USC and Oklahoma), but the system dictated LSU vs. Oklahoma. LSU won. The AP poll voted USC 1 anyway, the coaches poll violated their agreement with the BCS and voted USC 1, The BCS had LSU as 1. So LSU wins the championship game, but is 2nd in the major 2 polls. LSU has one trophy that says National Champion at the bottom, USC has 2. So, this is a problem. Bad for USC (didn’t have a chance to prove themselves). Bad for LSU (met all the requirements, won game, still don’t get full credit). Bad for Oklahoma (everyone hates them because they “didn’t belong” in the game). People rail at the BSC system. And over the year LSU, who won the national championship game, has been systematically written out of the position of national champion.

The main agent of this has been ESPN, which has been pretending all year that USC are THE National Champions. I personally would have preferred the nomenclature of LSU as the National champs and USC as the #1 team as a rule, which would seem to be more of a correct apportionment (seeing as LSU won the championship game), but even the split championship idea isn’t being acknowledged (even in a Roger Maris 61* kind of way). If you turn on the tube, it’s like USC were undisputed champs.

Having talked to many USC students, I can tell you that there is a general arrogance about the championship, but I do not think this is specific for this issue. USC is just arrogant. They are a great school academically (far better than LSU) with one of the best football program histories (better than LSU’s – no doubt about it). But one reason they are so easy to hate is a pall of superciliousness over the basic “school pride.” So I don’t think that USC itself has really contributed to the championship travesty, except to collectively say “of course we’re the real champions,” which is in perfect harmony with other past and present actions. Short version – it’s not USC’s fault because they’ve always been assholes.

I’m not going to further analyze the whys and wherefores of this issue. There are a lot of major and minor contributing factors (anti-SEC bias, pro USC-bias, game availability to voters, specific bad decisions in the BCE system, the SEC knocking its own teams out of contention year after year, groupthink, a tendency to use or not use facts to support gut level conclusions), but several things are noteworthy about the outcome of the controversy. First, the BCE rules were changed this year by trying to remove some of the objective component of the system. In other words, the sports-media complex doesn’t like it when the facts get in the way of their conclusions, so it’s back to the popularity contest. Second, no one is even talking about USC “legitimizing” their championship. This is really odd on a basic psychological front as whatever they “won” last year is undeniably tainted, and Leinert will likely leave after this season. So anyone who has ever competed in anything should realize that this game has to be important to USC being considered the “real” champions, but there is nary a peep on this front. Third, we’ve already seen the boo-hoo for Auburn (the undefeated #3 team this year) come and go, and (mark my words) no one will consider this championship split or tainted in any way if if a bowl winning undefeated Auburn winds up #2, because there is a general comfortability with the SEC team being left out. I feel really sorry for the Mountain West, whose teams have looked really good this year but no one will take seriously. The fact that no one acknowledges the conferencism and programism is just weird (Notre Dame, for example, is ALWAYS overrated). Fourth, I think things look really bad for LSU with Sabin leaving. A big recruiting class was coming in, and there is a very high rate of these guys un-committing as we speak. The offer from the Dolphins sounds like it was too good to pass up, but I wonder if the championship fiasco influenced his leaving at all.
But being national champions is like being Miss America – you’re only “it” for a year, and that experience can be contaminated by events, but for the rest of time, you were “it,” and noone can take that away. Except maybe ESPN.

WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING? AND A DEFENSE OF DAVE FIORE

2004-12-30T14:04:00.000-08:00

Why, I got busy at work, had a lovely Christmastime visit in Louisiana, had the kids get sick, got sick myself… everything but blog posting, it seems. Even got involved in yet another John Byrne discussion over at the pop culture bored, but I’m through talking Byrne for now. But I didn’t realize quite how long it had been since I posted, and I feel like I need to get in some serious writing in this week not to be embarrassed at myself.

Christmas was good to me. I received as gifts mostly comic related books, (B. Krigstein Comics, the Smithsonian book, two Joe Sacco’s, Tales to Astonich, Men of Tomorrow, A Complete Lowlife, and Bighead). It was weird being in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The trips back always have an oddly depressive component, as the environment appears to have deteriorated since I lived there, but there is a lot of new construction, and maybe that’s a good thing.

I am horrified by the tsunami deaths (115K and climbing – shit!), which I keep thinking about. What could have been done if there were warning beforehand? Anything? Is this one of the biggest natural disasters in recorded history? I know there was a famine in China (that the government tried to keep hidden) that killed many millions, but how many natural disasters have killed over 100K? I can’t seem to conceptualize the size of it all. Just hearing about one kid dying gets me sick to my stomach. Thousands, though. God.

I have to throw my support in for David Fiore, though, as there has been a little backlash concerning his opinions on Darwyn Cooke’s DC: The New Frontier (see here for the backlash discussion and links). I have to admit that, although I found stuff to like about this series, I was, at the end of the day, underwhelmed by it. The saving grace for me was the style of the thing, which I think accomplished no mean feat by achieving a reliable “feel” of silver age superheroes as seen through the lens of the current public conception of the 50’s-60’s swinging hipster aesthetic (note: I live in Vegas and get a thrill of pleasure every time I pass the construction on the decadently future-deco sign going up in front of the Wynn – so I have something of a weakness for the style in question).

This is why issue 1 fell utterly on it’s face as far as I was concerned (the dinosaur island and boneheaded Hal Jordan pacifist fighter-pilot sequences left no room for the grooviness), and the series most fully captured my attention in the Las Vegas cocktail party sequence. The convertible rides went a long way to making the series worthwhile. But I had no use for the overall plot, theme and subtext which makes the sledgehammer subtle Kingdom Come look like Gravity’s Rainbow in comparason. My reaction to this series reminded me of my reaction to Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score, where the visual and stylistic elements evoked (in a positive way) a period chic (calling to mind –oh, I don’t know – The Getaway where New Frontier recalls The Right Stuff), but the narrative itself felt a bit creaky and clunky. I my mind, Cooke is an excellent stylist who could stand some improvement as a writer.

But I don’t understand the bile directed towards poor Dave. He’s always been upfront about the fact that he views comics through a somewhat narrow prism, and that no one else is compelled to agree with his conclusions. I have disagreed with his position an several occasions (most notably on the issue of whether Lost in Translation is a masterpiece or a failure of a movie with a few redeeming values, and on the topic of whether or not the phrase “it took me out of the story” makes sense), but I can trust that his thoughts are authentically his, and that he will not seek to judge the opinions of others as less worthy than his own (this alone places him above 95% of online commentators). He is the only blogger that has stayed near the top of my blog favorites list for an extended period of time because of this non-judgmental sincerity.

I hope to be back to regular blogging now, I just had a really rough few weeks. I’m going to the Electra premier and after party on Jan 8 (at the Palms – yay!), and I hope to report a bit on it.

WE USED TO WEAR AN ONION ON OUR BELT, WHICH WAS THE STYLE AT THE TIME

2004-12-01T09:27:00.000-08:00

This (as always lovely) David Fiore post leads me to this Ian Brill post about John Byrne and outmoded comics, which got my juices a-flowin’. By way of quick recap (so you don’t have to follow the branching tree down to the roots) Joanna Draper Carlson started this train a-rollin’ by suggesting the approach to dialoguing in Doom Patrol #6 was “sloppy and boringly old-fashioned,” using the outmoded techniques of redundant description (describing stuff that you can see in the panels), and clunky character over-exposition (with characters completely restating what they know for the sake of convenience). Into this is stirred Dorian’s answer to Bob Layton’s open letter on the Death of Future Comics (to which the link is broken), in which it is noted that, despite Layton’s protestation to the contrary, Future comics went down because the comics stunk, they were expensive, and they were hard to order (in that order). During this preaching to the converted, the word old-fashioned is used again, along with “dated” and references to grandpa. Ian approaches this subject (old styles stubbornly refusing to die) seriously, as an admitted fan of older comics. He makes the good point that, in refusing to evolve, creators stagnate, and become irrelevant.

As you might expect from a confirmed “Byrne victim,” I think he misses the mark on what it is that Byrne is doing wrong. Brill writes –

“In the case of Future Comics, John Byrne and others we get creators who hit it big decades ago and apparently don’t feel they have to improve the skills they used in creating comics back then. To them and many of their fans the problem isn’t they fact they haven’t changed, the problem is the fact that the rest of the world has.”

There are two distinct concepts here – 1. Byrne and his ilk don’t feel the need to improve and 2. they view change from “the way things were” as a bad thing. I think there is something here, but it misses the point of where Byrne went off of the rails. Byrne began his carrer as an artist, but found great success in collaberations where he had some story influence. We all love Cockrum, but Claremont did his best writing along with Byrne, and this is not just in response to the art. Byrne had certain narrative abilities (finding the surprisingly interesting handle on the neglected character, stripping core concepts for reuse, etc.), and he used these to sucessfully launch from collaborative efforts to solo work. There was no looking back - from the moment he set foot in FF, he was (except for a few notable exceptions such as the Larry Niven and John Cleese collaberations and a brief reuniting with Claremont) a writer/artist, dammit. So far, so good.

It is the Byrne persona, however, that helped incite the development of the problems that Brill notes. Tracking the development of this persona is not that difficult, as Byrne did a lot of interviews in the 80’s, and his 90's columns (the Next Men’s “A Flame About this High” being the most prominent example) gave him a chance to state his beleifs and rail about this and that. So the foundation, and subsequent evolution of Ego the living artist is pretty clear. He stated pretty early on that the artist is the most important person in producing a comic, using the example that a good art can save a lousy story, but bad art can ruin a good story. This may be a good point in the currently writer dominant environment, but he repeatedly harped on this point during a period in comic history when the writer was all but ignored. Statements like this show that he, out of all the hot creators of the late 70’s early 80’s (Miller, Perez, Giffen, etc.) served as the most direct template for the attitude of the Image guys (an attitude still evident in McFarlane).

Two things seemed to happen to Byrne as the 90’s dawned. He became nummingly comfortable with his approach to the comic page (beginning to lock in his angulated approach to layout and the pencil/inking relaionship that caused the major fluctiations in his art during the 80’s), and he began to see himself as more of a writer (he bublished two novels around this time “Fearbook” in 1988 and “Whipping Boy” in 1992). He still appeared to have areas where he was trying to improve the art (e.g. the use of computer technologoies, mostly in backgrounds), but it seemed that he felt his primary area of growth as an “artist” was in trying to find his place as a writer.

It is my belief that the reason that Byrne has been having a bit of a problem being precieved as an creator of note lately is that his primary focus is on a certain kind of story, and he is just not that good or innovative in dealing with the subject matter he is trying to explore. In addition, and perhaps most crippling, he does not have the proper feedback system in place to acnowledge and react to this. Virtually everything Byrne has written since he returned to Marvel last time (in 1999) has been a rehash of the same kind of weak sci-fi plot ideas that he toyed with in the Next-Men phase (early 90’s) through the filter of his mid–late 90’s DC Legend-ized work (which was, in turn, the direct descendant of his 80’s FF and Supeman work). These plots, which revolve around attempts at structurally convoluted time travel, what’s-real-what’s-not virtual reality, and issues of memory/identity/humanity, were all better explored by episode 10 of the original Star Trek series, but Byrne approaches them as if he’s the first one in the territory. I think these topics still interest him, and he feels that he is trying to explore and perfect them.

Byrne’s imperviousness to feedback is sad, but not unprecedented. Many great artists, writers, and mucisians have been felled by the lack of an editor and insulation from criticism. Stephen King, who is a pretty good writer (really, I believe this) has written only a small number of books of note since1990, and I attribute this to the fact that he has no editorial influence at all other than his wife. He has some good instincts, but he has mostly given himself over to stylistic bloat. Byrne seems to get most of his ideas on “how things are” from his own head, without any additional strengthening of his position through debate with dissenting voices (this has been going on for a long time – see any of the afforementioned columns – but has worsened). The JB message board, with its squelching of dissenting voices and syncophantic chorus, is not a competitive environment in which to grow strong ideas.

The other issue, that of older professional’s view that “things shouldn’t change,” is harder to defend, as I think there is a component of thought on Byrne’s (as well as Layton’s) part that modern storytelling has abdicated some positive storytelling values. But it seems that the old fashioned feel of these comics come predominantly from blind spots – things (like that expository scripting and overuse of internal monologue thought baloons) that these creators have done for so long they no longer even comprehend that there is a different approach possible. New approaches are not so much less valued, but simply not comprehended.

So, to disagree, I don’t think that Byrne has given up on improving (although I think he is “happy” with his rendering and layout style, which means he has gotten a bit static and, thus, boring), just that he has focused his attempts at improvement in an areas that he’s not that good at (e.g. sci-fi plotting), or that are process concerns that don’t significantly affect the story experience (e.g. computer modeling for backgrounds). He does not, as Brill suggests, refuse to evolve, but believes he has evolved (and is still evolving appropriately) - he has just done so in a fashion perpendicular to the rest of the comics industry (although he thinks the comics industry has evolved perpendicular to him). To put it another way, Byrne hasn’t stopped moving, he’s just been moving on different vectors than the audience (whicle standing still in some axes that the audience has moved on), and thinks that’s the audience’s problem. Popular musicians who do this kind of thing wind up with rabid loyal followings and, like Byrne and Claremont, do “reunion tours” from time to time, filling bigger arenas by doing so. And I don’t think Byrne necessarily feels things were “better back then,” but simply has some ingrained anachronisms, and a (possibly partially healthy) view that just because it’s new, doesn’t mean its better.

So that’s my defense of Byrne (like my previous defense of Dave Sim on the old fourcolorhell, with people like me defending you, who needs adversaries).

TV REPORT CARDS – THE OTHER NETWORKS

2004-11-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

FOX

Fox is without a doubt the most unpredictable network (and I mean that in a bad way). Their upfront schedule diverges in several areas from their aired schedule, and I don’t even know if their three part season plan is still in place. They have cancelled most of their interesting shows of the last few years by the end of their first season (Firefly, True Calling, John Doe, etc. - with the notable exception of the OC and 24 – and maybe Arrested Development, which I don’t watch), and they jumped the most shamelessly on the reality bandwagon. They cancelled Tru Calling (a show that they had renewed at the time of the upfronts) by just dragging their feet on starting production, finally making the announcement that it was cancelled about a week before new episodes were to start. All this lead to a period (until November – Fox’s phase 1 season) where, for the first time in the network’s history, I wasn’t watching a single show.

The OC has started back now, though, and the signs look good. The OC was basically my favorite new show last year, getting better and better, and extending its season until it crashed in the last third. After a stream of perfect episodes around the holidays, there was only one good episode after February – the second to last (Vegas trip) episode, which was outstanding by any measure.

The first episode of this season was a snoozer, but it was obvious that the producers and writers were doing heavy lifting to get the rails of the show back in place. This has resulted in a couple of fine episodes, including the much remarked upon comic club episode, where comic talk had to eat up 10 minutes of screen time, surely a record for and mainstream drama. Adam Brody is in relatively good form, although he seems to have had a cold the whole season so far. Everyone in the cast is in pretty good form except for Marissa, who, it almost seems, the writers want lame her off of the show. Her involvement in the show at this point doesn’t seem necessary. Anyway, besides the first episode plot cleanup project, the year is off to a good, but not roaring start.

I’ve seen only the first episode of HOUSE, the medical drama(dy) with Hugh Laurie, and it looks to be pretty good, but I need a couple of more eps to truly weigh in. And until 24 and American Idol start (I know, kill me now), that’s all the Fox.

WB

This is the station of the shows I almost watch. Never watched Charmed and Gilmore Girls (though I will if DVD’s become available for multiple seasons and I can catch up), which I would probably like, I missed trying Jack and Bobby and the Mountain, and I’ve heard some of the other shows are good from friends and family. But, since Buffy and Angel went bye-bye, I watch no WB.

UPN

Never watched any substantial UPN in the past (I tried a few shows that weren’t too bad, but got cancelled). But VERONICA MARS is a destination unto itself. My earlier review Came off a bit harsh in retrospect, as I was still struggling to find the show’s wavelength. The “afterschool special” issue I referred to has largely disappeared, although the show does maintain a specific teen show charm. The Vibe I failed to isolate in my initial post was the Rockford Files vibe – the resourceful and likeable, if beaten down and outsider-y, individual that is competent out of sheer will, but is still looking for something to complete their lonely and damaged souls. The shows also have the “brutality” I went on and about in common. The show has been getting better and better at a fierce rate, and has an upward trajectory compared to the other really good new show’s (Lost) flattening progression. This is a truly great show. There, I said it.

Overall, the season is better than I thought it would be, and has some really good new shows. If only they had kept Global Frequency on the schedule, TV come January would kick ass like it’s 2001-2 (the last truly great season).

MORE TV REPORT CARDS – CBS

2004-11-23T17:12:00.000-08:00

CBS is a tough network for me to write about. They definitely have the most shows that I watch, but have no particular passion for. This probably fits in with the “passionless quality” mandate the network has seemed to have since the Eisenhower administration, but in the beginning, I got quite a buzz off of CSI. How are things stacking up:

COLD CASE: Put this on the list of shows that I watch cause’ my wife does. My feelings on this show have basically not changed since the pilot aired – solid worthy production, good but unexciting writing, no outstanding charisma in the otherwise decent cast (the Peter principle is in operation here – I think the lead would make a great 2nd character, the second character would make a great supporting cast member, etc.). The major strike against it is that is about the 100 millionth OK cop drama on the air right now. My thought after the pilot (as now) was “pretty good but superfluous.”

The show has one specific thing to recommend it – its device of using period music to set the tone of the flashbacks. They tend to collect songs not just from the era of the scenes, but which indicate the culture that the story is happening in, and counter pointing the plot/theme. This could get heavy handed quite easily (as the “Who’ll stop the rain” rainy scene did in the pilot), but whoever does the selection, in general, misses seeming on the nose, and has a good ability to choose songs that evoke the memories, without making you queasy.

I’m sounding too harsh, though (I have a tendency to be overcritical – I love Veronica Mars, for instance, but you really wouldn’t know it from my review). This is an enjoyable show that just doesn’t grab you and shout, “watch me!” And in this TV landscape, that would have been enough to make me drop it if my wife didn’t like it so much. Anyway, this show, after improving just a little better during the first third of last season (its first), has had a constant quality level ever since. The further exploration of the main character’s life (a sure danger sign) has peen toyed with, but is still bearably at arms length.

TWO AND A HALF MEN: My wife loves this show, and often watches without me, and I wish she wouldn’t, because I rather like it too. Since Joey fell by the wayside, this is the only comedy I’m watching (which is because it may be the only funny one on). I think this show has improved, and every episode I have seen this season has been excellent.

The CSI’s: When the first CSI aired, I thought, after a respectable period of gelling, that it was the best new show of the year (competition – Ed which was great out of the gate, but had a slow fade/don’t care anymore problem present from the end of the first season). The end of season one and season 2 were fabulous. When CSI Miami started, there was an immediate diluting effect noticeable on the writing pool, such that there seemed to be an allotted number of great eps, whether they had one or two shows. This got better, especially for CSI Miami that may be the best of the bunch right now. The original CSI can still put up great episodes, but everyone seems a little tired (or maybe just distracted). The real casualty, however, is the premature third installment, CSI:NY, which is the first of the shows I have considered dropping. Now, out of faith, I am giving it time to get its act together, but I already have a bad feeling about where they are going with Melina Whatername’s character (did I write about her emotionally forlorn shower? I thought I did but I can’t find it anywhere – must have been on a message board), and Gary Senise seems incapable of either the line delivery or charm-despite-the-personality-disorder of the other two show’s central characters. The real hit, though, is in the secondary characters, where the other two shows wound up really shining. Maybe they will develop with time. So – CSI, treading water, good but tired; CSI: Miami, hitting its stride (although they are really overdoing the water episodes this season – getting the most of the Coast Guard helicopter rental, I guess); and SCI:NY, struggling out of the gate.

DR. VEGAS: Gone, so can’t say much about it except that I’m not surprised. Joey Pants’ character was annoying, unbelievable, and a little ill conceived (what exactly was his job, anyway). The premise was hard to swallow, and the women in the cast seemed like they might have had a spark, but were poorly used. Rob Lowe wasn’t bad, the show could be fun at times, but it was confused as to how it wanted to portray Vegas (and as a fun show, LAS VEGAS has it beat all around). I didn’t hate the show by any means, and I’m a little sad to se it go, but I’m not surprised, and I won’t loose any sleep.
Next up… the OTHER stations.

COMICS COMICS COMICS

2004-11-19T17:32:00.000-08:00

As you can tell by the last post, I just wanted to get back to the comics again. I will finish my network scorecards as soon as possible, and I have a lot to post on coming up. But for now, I wanted to talk about some recent comics.

Golden Plates #1, AAA POP COMICS: This is an interesting project from several standpoints. One, why hasn’t this ever been done before? As soon as I heard about the idea of a strait adaptation of the book of Mormon which is lengthy and will take a few years to produce, by a real artist, but could then be re released in different formats for years seems like such a great idea, that one wonders why no one has tried this with the old or new Testament. Second, I’ve never been aware of Allred’s religious affiliation, and I can’t help but wonder what’s going on there – what’s the motivation behind him doing the project. Third (corollary to #2) is this Allred’s project from now till when he finishes, or will he do anything else in the meanwhile. Lastly, the text on the inner front and back covers is uncredited, and sounds like something that would have been written by the writer/artist as an explanation or mission statement, but, again, it makes me wonder what made the project happen? That said, the art’s great, including the color art, and the adaptation reads good in a Classics Illustrated kind of way, but I lent this to a Mormon friend, and I’ll let you know what he says about the accuracy of it when he gets back to me.

BPRD The Dead #1 (Of 5): I can’t say anything you haven’t already heard. I like the feel of these Guy Davis drawn issues, and I hardly noticed it when Mignola dropped out of doing the full script, but these minis are more tightly continuitied end to end then most of Marvel’s continuing series. This should definitely be one long series if they intend to carry on this main meta-storyline.

Challengers Of The Unknown #6 (Of 6): Everyone has analyzed this to death, so let me take a brief, more superficial crack at it. I like Chaykin, and I liked American Flagg a whole lot, but coherence has never been his strong suit. The last two issues salvaged this series which, before then, was well drawn and designed, but hopelessly indistinct and muddy. I also read Twilight recently (the little remembered 3 volume prestige book from the early(?) 90’s that Chaykin wrote and Jose Garcia-Lopez drew the living crap out of), and it is obvious to me that Chaykin is a page design genius, has a nice art style, and tackles wild ideas, but is just not a great storyteller. In Twilight, Garcia-Lopez’s page compositions are instantly understandable (while actually incorporating Chaykin’s stylistic tics such as talking TV heads), which helps tame the scattershot nature of the story. As I said, the last two issues of the Challengers series are the most lucid, and thus recovers somewhat from the truly disjointed early issues.

Detective Comics #800: First story – pure frigging crap. War Games has been awful and has ruined every Bat-book it hat touched. Even Brubaker’s Catwoman was completely unreadable. I’m glad it’s over, but the scars may last. The last third of the issue, which is the first Lapham story, is so much atmospheric fluff, and doesn’t bode well, but hopefully this story was done just to set the tone of Lapham’s Gotham, and this is not what we will see every issue.

Intimates #1: I liked this, but it required a lot of concentration for a story that wasn’t exactly highbrow literature. Casey is hit and miss with me, and this looks like I will probably like it well enough, and the text crawl used as pop-up video exposition is a nice idea. We’ll see.

Question #1 (Of 6): Good art can’t save the lack of any point.

Astonishing X-Men #6: This series is really cooking now after a sluggish start. This feels like the real X-Men somehow.
I want to comment on Avengers #503 (#88), Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes #1 (Of 8), and Avengers Finale #1, but I’m out of time… tune in next week for my reaction!

COMICS COMPULSION

2004-11-19T15:53:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, I read more comics in one day than I ever have before. By the end of the day, I couldn’t take one more panel, but it was glorious. I had about 5 weeks DC backlog, and at least 2 weeks of everything else. This discrepancy has to do with the fact that I read my comics in an odd order – any Byrne or ABC comics first, usually followed by Vertigo, then Image, then the Independents, then Marvel, then DC. And within each group, I read strictly alphabetically (except for the independents, which are alpha by company first, then alpha within each company). This is not really due to some obsessive compulsiveness, but is generally in ascending order of how big the stack is on an average week, and it mixes things up so that I don’t read all the best comics first, and then peter out. But when I get behind, DC (with, on average, the largest stack) starts to get bulky.

As long as I’m spilling my crazy O-C habits, I also have a weird segregation tendency in my books that has an associated unusual hierarchy. I have separate John Byrne long boxes (4, with an additional 2 magazine sized boxes), and all Byrne’s stuff goes in there no matter what (I always promise to write a big thing on my Byrne fetish, but not today). Vertigo’s are filed separately (3 boxes), and ABC’s have their own short box. Dark Horse used to have its own box, but I wound up with just over one long-box of them, and then started buying from them at such a low rate that I merged them with the rest of the independents to keep from having the dreaded loose-box syndrome. Image (5), Valiant (3), DC (about 10 or 11), and Marvel (about 15 or 16) have their own sections, with all other heretofore unmentioned comics filed by company in the independent section (6 boxes). Don’t get me started about the bookcases and magazine boxes.

One odd tendency I have is to file all Wildstorm in the Image boxes, despite the fact that DC owns them now. Since I buy a lot of Wildstorm, this skews my perception of how Image is doing, and a couple of years ago, when people began to talk about how poor Image was doing, I thought “wow, I still sure buy a lot,” but when I subtracted the WS titles, I found “gee, I buy almost nothing from image except Savage Dragon, Powers (not Image anymore), and the Kirkman stuff.” I also file Rob Leifield’s numerous superlatively named offshoot companies with the Image books, as well. The weird thing is, I’m not consistent about this, as I file the new issues of Powers with Marvel, along with other counterexamples I can’t dredge up right now. All the Bones are under Cartoon books, however.

One last weird thing is the question of where you file any inter-company cross-overs. This requires a hierarchic scheme, which, for me, is Byrne, Valiant, Image, Marvel, then DC. Other smaller companies are variable (if Defiant, which I – shudder – have every published issue by, were to have crossed over with anything but Valient, it would be filed with the Defiants, unless Byrne did it).

Is anyone else this weird?

TV REPORT CARDS: NBC

2004-11-11T17:38:00.000-08:00

In our last post, ABC picks up a new show that I love, and one I’m violently ambivalent about (but interested in) doubling the number of interesting shows form last year. How does NBC fare?

L&O, various: These are the baseline shows against which the other dramas are judged. Year in and year out, they keep a consistent, if not exciting, level of quality, which is an absolute marvel. I watch random episodes when they come out, catch some reruns on cable, and the level seems consistent again this year.

CROSSING JORDAN has been quite good. I get whiplash watching the non-primary characters come and go, but the stable cast is all good. This is another show I warmed to over time. When it first aired, I thought it was quite inaccurate as to medical and pathologic knowledge and technique, but now I have Medical Investigations to compare it to. Many good characters have developed, including Jerry O’Connell’s Woody (the little man-child is a scream, and he doesn’t flinch in playing an incredibly silly character), Bug, Nigel, and Macy. I’ve warmed to Jordan a bit, though attempts to dither with her character always seem to fall flat. Axe the councilor and the DA, though (yuk). Their half of the crossover with Las Vegas was the better half, and was an above average episode. The show seems healthy now after last season’s stutter start (due to Jill Hennessey’s pregnancy). The show is a bit inconsistent, but is as good as it’s ever been.

LAS VEGAS This show continues to flesh out (no pun) it’s guilty pleasure goodness, with only two relative dud episodes so far this season (the Crossing Jordan X-over finale and the episode with Sam boffing a Boston lobsterman for… well, lobsters). Several episodes are series bests (e.g. the George Hamilton episode). The show is fun fun fun, and has developed well, and has the two silliest male cast members on TV who aren’t Woody Hoyt.

LAX was the season’s first casualty of shows we actually watched (Hawaii and Father of the Pride were two NBC shows we sampled a few of, but never committed to). This perfectly watchable show just didn’t have what it took to weather the move to Wednesday. See earlier posts for a discussion of what I liked about this average show.

WEST WING: Missed the premiere, and didn’t care, so I’ve dropped it. Probably will catch this on DVD. Networks – this is one problem of late start dates for shows in decline.

JOEY: Don’t want to start on this. Suffice it to say the writing was horrible but got better each episode, and the one with the party was pretty good, but my DVR can’t handle 3 things, so I haven’t seen it in several weeks.

MEDICAL INVESTIGATION continues to suck slightly less than the pilot did. My favorite episode was the North Nebraska State University episode, which was filmed at USC so obviously that anyone who had never been west of the Mississippi would know it (the Olympic stadium, the USC crest, Tommy Trojan, and yes, the big letters USC, all appeared in the episode). So the whole show is sloppy, not just the medical fact checking. Lets face it, though: this show is hamstrung by its formula. The reversals are all predicated on the investigators being convinced they are right, steamrollering over everyone in their path, finding out they are wrong, redirecting, and then being sure they’re right again. Repeat x4, then close. I almost want to start a website dedicated to the inaccuracies in this show, but that smacks of desperation. The fact that I’m watching the show is desperate enough.

So NBC doesn’t fare that well with 2 good returnees, the L&O’s (that I don’t usually watch new), some relatively failed shows, a show I hate so much I watch it.

BACK AGAIN – TV REPORT CARDS: ABC

2004-11-11T16:43:00.000-08:00

Excuses – last few weeks have been like a blur. A week in Disney. Family visiting. Starting Atkins. Haloween. My Birthday (November 5 – yay! Guy Fawkes Day). Election. Middle son (Chase)’s birthday. Playing catch up at work. These factors have not completely obliterated my time to post, but have occupied my mind enough to shut off that little nattering voice in my head that this blog is an outlet for. So, here’s to hoping for more regular posting from here on in. What... the holidays are coming? Crap.

Better make with the TV update – I’m a little behind in my comics reading, and maybe I’ll be more inspired in that direction after I catch up a little. So, how’s the season developing? Maybe I’ll just tackle ABC today.

LOST continues to be my favorite new show of the year, though I’m sure it’s about to hit the same Abrams wall that Alias did. The non-stop nature of the dramatic stuff has led to a sense of constant propulsive conflict, and I don’t know how they are going to brake efficiently before the show overheats. The force feed character reveals have come uncomfortably fast, and the individual characters have not had enough time to develop a relaxed sense of organicity (is that a word?). The show is still great, but I just here the ticking time bomb in the background – that “they can’t keep it up” feeling. Really great writing on most episodes, good characters, some nice acting – I’m cringing for the downshift, though.

EXTREME MAKEOVER: HOME EDITION is the best home improvement show going, with the most charming collection of lead “designers.” Last season (the show’s first) burned out a little near the end due to the diluting of it’s A-team (Ty, Preston, Paul, Michael, Constance, and Paige/Tracy – can’t tell the last two apart, sorry) with fill ins and a wearing thin of the formula (each episode I wait longingly for the moment they start freaking out because they don’t have enough time to finish the project –wait can’t they just take an extra day, surely they have scheduled some time for overages- but they need to because the peace corps volunteer who’s adopted child needs a earwax transplant or else his head will explode really DESERVES this). My favorite part of the show is imagining what the 6 year old, who gets her room with a pink castle and a cloud bed, will think she’s 15 and her wheelchair bound broke single father whose wife died in a bus crash can’t afford electricity much less redecorating. Hopefully we’ll get EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION REDUX – RECTIFYING OUR SHORTSIGHTEDNESS in a few years. Aaaaaanyway, this year is off to a good start, with the A-team in place, but no real tweaking of the formula. This will probably wear a little as the season goes on.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES: This is a tough one. My wife really likes this show. I kinda half like this show. There is no doubt that it is well produced, and well put together. But let me hedge a bit here. I more or less hated SEX AND THE CITY when it first started. This was due to the fact that there was not one character I liked. I began to like the show, however, when I realized that these four awful people suffered for being such wretched human beings. It became like a karmic comedy to me… they shit on someone and then get (sometimes literally) shat on. I will likely have the same arc with this show.

At the moment, I actively dislike two of the four main characters in DH: Lynette (Felicity Huffman) and Gabrielle (Eve Longoria). I like Felicity Huffman (she was great on Sports Night, blah, blah), but she is trapped within a hideous character: a former business professional (who was, of course, very very good at her job), who decides to do the stay at home mom thing and is utterly overwhelmed. This is a thankless role, where she runs around, angry at her barely-recognizable-as-human kids, being shamed in front of all the world as an incompetent mom, but is saved by the shred of ruthlessness in her soul, and by the fact that she really, after all, loves her kids. The truly objectionable part is that at the end of the day, “it’s all worth it” because she loves them so much, but we really don’t see any loving contact except that forced by the need for the proper heartwarming denouement in each episode. There is nothing here I actually want to witness on a weekly basis.

I don’t even remember Longoria from the recent Dragnet series (which was a great great show), so it’s like she’s a new face. Gabrielle’s household in the show is the worst of them all, as she cheats on her appallingly bad husband with a high school student. His gambling addicted, meddlesome, my-son-can-do-no-wrong –and-I-hate-his-wife mom is over for an extended (permanent?) visit. So that’s three people I can’t stand in one house. There is no one to root for and the show seems to be passing no judgments over Gabriella’s deplorable behavior and lack of any humanity.

Maria Cross’ Bree is also not eminently likable, but she has, due to the series’ best performance, been subtly and gloriously humanized. This is the one character-with-problems in the show you can really understand and root for. Even though she acts almost insane at times, you really hope she gets through this and becomes a happier person. Again, I chalk this up to Cross’ outstanding job at developing the character.

Susan (Teri Hatcher) is the most instantly likable person on the show, and is the every-woman character that has no internally induced issues. All the “bad” is due to her crap husband, neighbors, and bad luck. Her and her daughter have some chemistry, and I like her love interest Mike (James/Jamie Denton from the late kinda great Pretender), though, for the only positively portrayed male character on the show, they haven’t developed him a whole lot. I like most of the stuff with her, when the writers aren’t humiliating her Which is a lot, actually.

A couple of troubling issues –
1. The show as a whole views men as animals in the landscape, and the primary role of most of them is as the object of anger (runner up – object of desire). The hostile two dimensional portrayal of men may turn some men (such as myself) off. There is no male character (except possibly Mike) to identify with (unless you have a poor self image). This may be a show that most men like as much as women like the three stooges.
2. The women always seem to win in the end. Though they may suffer indignities, the show always ends with the women winning their individual battle for the episode. I don’t want the ones who act badly to get away with it or to see the good ones humiliated on the way to their (more or less) happy ending. The only one with no constant happy endings has been Bree, who appears to be in a downward spiral. So Bree, who I feel for, gets punished, Susan, who is blameless, gets humiliated, Gabrielle, who’s soul is a sucking vacuum, gets off scott free all the time, and Lynette, angry and bitter creator of bad children, smites her enemies and is happy with some inauthentic hugs. Love those endings.
3. I can’t escape the feeling that the “mystery” super-story is a bunch of hooey, and I wouldn’t look for any kind of decent payoff.
4. The voice over narration of Mary Alice is extremely poorly written, with really bad puns that even Arnold couldn’t save.
5. The show is, on some level, just plain meanspirited.

And that’s everything I watch on ABC until Alias starts again. Tune in next time for NBC.

THE REPLACEMENTS

2004-10-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

It’s been hard for me to get any blogging done recently not due solely to a lack of time (I’ve been busy, but I’m always busy), but due to a high level of distraction. We have visiting relatives at casa Murry from about a week and a half ago till about 2 weeks from now, and we spent the last (long) weekend at USC for the game and visiting my oldest son, Brandon (I’ll have to talk more about USC, LSU, and the collage football thing later). There is also a week at Disneyland in my near future. So, though I probably could have made the time to write, it’s just that nothing has pushed past the other these more pressing mental concerns.

Not that there hasn’t been anything to write about. The few comics I’ve had a chance to read have been good (Ocean, the 3rd issue of Ultra, etc.), and the Brubaker interview in the Comics Journal is above average for a Groth/Spurgeon interview (which is to say slightly better than really really good). The TV season has been shaping up nicely with many shows putting up terrific episodes (Las Vegas’ George Hamilton episode was nearly perfect), Veronica Mars shaping up better and better with each show, and Lost holding the high note of interest on which it started (it’s pretty clear there is some sort of material manifestation of the id thing going on now, so the show is going in that psycho fantasy direction I speculated on earlier). But nothing pushed me over the hump to get to the keyboard until now.

The point of interest that got me a thinkin’ about a bloggin’ was this post at the Crooked Timber. The “Friday Fun” question is, on the surface, a mildly interesting one in a wish fulfillment sense – if you could replace one member of any musical group, which group and who would you choose. This allows for the obvious choices (though I guess it’s too late to kick Linda McCartney out of Wings), bold choices (like the example of a Jagger-less Rolling Stones), and funny choices (Black Sabbath fronted by Tiny Tim was recommended). Everyone has at least one favorite group that they feel are (or were) one member away from perfection. But the interesting part of the question, I think, is in the qualifiers.

“You need not be bound by practical considerations; you’re free to ignore the fact that (say) Peter Criss was the only one who could properly apply the KISS makeup. For example, you can replace Liz Phair (the singer) while keeping Liz Phair (the songwriter). How do you use this power, and why?”

This brings up a host of issues that are probably best addressed by specifically tackling the Liz Phair example.

Now, I admit that Liz Phair is one of those artists that I think about much more than her impact on my life dictates that I should. She came to my (and just about everyone else’s) attention when her first album, a song for song answer to the Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street,” was released. This was an interesting experiment that was, other than this high concept/marketing gimmick, simply a low key examination of how sometimes it’s hard to be a girl/woman because men are pigs, and it’s hard to know what you want when you’re young. A few of the songs were good (I still love “the Divorce Song”), but the project was so compelling not because of the music but because of the context, ambition, and Phair’s image.

The image in question is that of the fragile f**k me feminist. Phair is cute, with somewhat elfin features and a horn-rimed mouth that has two modes: winsome smirk and come hither sulleness. She seems to know this and uses traditional modes of seductive posturing and dress to achieve a degree of empowerment through enticement. At the same time, she manages to project a slightly damaged quality, fragile as if she’s been beat about a bit. And she also radiates minor instability, like she might get a little crazy if you caught her at a bad moment.

Whip Smart, Juvinallia, Lilith Fair, Whitechocolatespaceegg, and the newer self titled album followed, and really have added nothing. The author of the C.T. post claims to want to keep Liz Phair “the songwriter,” but I am (mostly) a fan and even I can’t think of 5 of her songs I consider essential. It’s hard to imagine anything good coming out of someone covering one of her tunes. So why do I read about the new album, follow her career, etc.? It’s the primarily the enigma of the image, with enough interest in the music to support it. If you replace her because of her thready, flat voice, get another songwriter too, but keep the personality, the attitude, the look, and the mystery.

Thus, applying this to one of the other examples, if we replace Mick Jagger with Otis Redding, do we have to watch Otis onstage, or do we get Mick with Otis’s voice? Because if it’s the former, it’s not the Stones no mo’. This gets to the crux of why this is an interesting question – can you replace a central member of a group and still have the same group, even if you cheat with the above songwriting proviso. Someone probably has written a thesis on this topic (with Pink Floyd as the primary subject), so I won’t delve further, but if we set up rules for this game, we need to consider the physical presence as an entity separate from the musical ability.

The other issue of inseparability is that groups often evolve their sound around the weaknesses of the members, such that a given weakness can be converted into a strength. Black Francis, who was a candidate in the comments section for insertion into other groups, can’t sing, but developed a perfect working relationship between his voice and the Pixie’s music. The Filth and the Fury (the excellent Sex Pistols documentary) contains a top-notch discussion by Johnny Rotten of how he developed his style of vocal delivery despite the fact that he had a “defective instrument.” Since this is a developmental issue, it is often off beam to suggest that someone should be replaced because they can’t sing. Jagger, Morrison (Jim), and Daltry (all mentioned in the post or comments as replaceable) are examples of voices inseparable from the groups they helped define.

That said, I wish Nick Rhodes would get the hell out of Duran Duran. Then life would be perfect.

COMIC QUICK TAKES

2004-10-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

DEMO #10: The letters page claims that Wood changed the end of the story to make it seem less like the others in the series. This results in confusion on my part, with a lot of “wha? How are they going to explain that” moments that we never get back to. The most interesting thing this issue is trying to figure out what the “power” is this issue, or why it is that this issue alone in the series lacks one. We think the power is the girl’s ability to know so much about him (mind reading? Empathic powers? Omniscience?), but when we see her surveillance equipment (any rational explanation for this?), that jig is up. The cover suggests that the guy might have the powers, until the end (which explains the cover). But wait… isn’t the powered being always on the cover? So does the guy have some power that is subtly hinted at that I missed?

303 #1: I’m a sucker for this. Nice tight military action with uber-confident soldiers and pansy “modern” recruits. I love Ennis in this mode.

CONAN AND THE DAUGHTERS OF MIDORA one shot: I like Texeria more than is fashionable in today’s comic atmosphere, but WHO INKED THIS. The inking killed the art, despite clever use of 2 page panel layouts. Simple effective story, but who cares.

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #2: For the kid. Very blah. OK art. Oddly enough, I liked the insert story a little, despite the fact that it was a very thin toy adaption comic.

SWAMP THING #8: Nice art on this and the last issue, but pretty useless story. I’m getting bored with the relaunch already.

Y THE LAST MAN #27: Didn’t expect this, even though it’s so obvious they had to do it somehow. Is the engagement ring the protective device? Can’t be, but still spooky.

NYX #5: Might have been OK if I waited 4 weeks for it, but not enough at this point. What happened to Middleton? Has he left? I must have missed the press release.

SABRETOOTH #1: Much better than expected. The inks really tame Sears into something that looks pretty good, unlike the recent fiasco over in Cap and Falcon. My only problem is if Sabertooth really is in the habit of killing this many innocent people (and maybe he actually didn’t – I’ll wait and see), why doesn’t Logan hunt him down and put and end to him.

WOLVERINE #20: Another pleasant surprise. Millar pulls this off better than I thought he would, and the story somehow feels well paced and substantial. My faith in Millar’s take on Marvel characters has been eroded lately (due to Trouble and Spider-Man MK), but this isn’t half bad.

QUEEN AND COUNTRY #27: Liked this a lot, probably due to the fact that I’m currently reading Gentlemen’s Game: A Queen and Country Novel (great so far), so I kinda’ feel into the characters.

BATTLE ROYALE #9: Back to bidness after last issue’s discharge filled porn. I really like where this is going, and I note some storytelling similarities with Lost (the ABC TV show). I need to write a bit on Lost, as I wonder if I’m the only one who thinks this show is going in a psycho-fantasy direction (is the island in the kid’s mind? Is this a Stephen King-like war between good and evil in idea-space?).

Next week’s gonna kill with the new Comics Journal, Locas, the Punisher arc finale, new Astro City, and Brubaker Tom Strong.

2099

2004-10-07T17:28:00.000-07:00

Oh, the problems of the Marvel timeline.

I’ve mentioned that I like John Byrne’s work a lot, but that I have a tendency to be disappointed with him as of late. Someone (I have no idea who to give credit to) suggested that this is due to the fact that he is still punishing us for the “failure” of Next Men, but to me the issue started a bit earlier (and I think the “A Flame about This High” columns serve as an excellent glimpse into the womb of his current online persona – more on these thoughts later). However, Spider-Man Chapter One was, in my opinion, the low point of his career. Byrne had touted for years his theory that “Marvel time” worked by the following means: one year their time equals seven years of our time (dog years or so – I’ve heard different estimates), but that the current universe drags the timeline behind it (and I quote) “like the chains of Marley’s ghost.” This means that Reed Richards didn’t take the illegal spaceflight in 1961, but (as of now) about 1998. In a few years, as this reasoning goes, the Iron Man suit with have been invented post 9-11, and the Punisher will graduate from the first Gulf war to the second.

I can’t tell you how stupid I think this is. This idea arises as a solution to a problem that does not exist. Who cares that in the Marvel universe it’s only been 5 years since Vietnam, or whatever. So they elect a president twice a year. I. Don’t. Care. Byrne’s solution imposes a definitively more malignant solution than any potential implication of the problem. (Aside – I realize that probably the biggest actual problem that arises is about what to do with the movies. The Punisher movie puts him in the gulf war, and it kind of works, but jettisons a lot of the jungle imagery from Frank Castle’s history. I miss it, but it is probably not a big deal to audiences, so that sounds like a good solution – change the movie as much as you need to to make it work. They didn’t have to mess with the time period in Spider-Man or X-Men at all.) Byrne can operate under any assumption he wants, but by publishing Chapter One, the theory was imposed on the Marvel Universe. It has been blatantly ignored on an irregular basis (see the Born mini-series), but some damage has been done.

So what do we do with the future chronology? Is the future pushed ahead of the present by the expanding timeline, altering as it goes along? This could potentially explain some of the inconsistencies between this and the previous 2099 incarnation. But still, shouldn’t there have been some attempt to at least establish whether the other 2099 stuff ever happened, or whether this is a completely alternate future?

With relation to how the timeline functions, the specific example that I find the most interesting is the issue of Punisher and Electra’s grandson. It is 95 years from now till then (13 and a half in Marvel time), with the Punisher and Electra now, what, in their mid to late 30’s? (anyone have the new Marvel Universe Handbooks to give a definitive answer?) So either they have 13.5 years to fall in love and have then raise a forty something year old daughter and for that daughter to have a coming of age son (if you say “John Byrne was right!”), or Electra will be having her baby at age 60.

It’s interesting to compare this 2099 project, with its one shot/end of story approach with AiT’s Demo. Both set up a premise that could be used to launch a series (building a small cast of characters and an open ended situation), give them some sort of crisis point at the end, and give it a sense of kind-of closure with a resolution that suggests a direction rather than being a real ending. Demo is supported by a consistent artist, while each of has different artist likely for the sake of timing (getting it done), but also giving each one shot it’s own look. But while Demo manages some imaginative things each issue, this seems like a scramble to rub together enough quick ideas to fire up a universe. This is in part, no doubt, due to the fact that Kirkman is writing entirely too much at this point (I think I’ve read 13 of his books in the last month). But what really kills me is how joyless this whole enterprise is. All the books except for Mutant were flat out depressive. I mostly enjoy Kirkman’s books, but I think he has to slow down at this point.

NIP/TUCK

2004-10-06T16:46:00.000-07:00

Ha ha ha ha ha!

I have the 2099 post half written, but after seeing the Nip/Tuck season ender last night, writing about this takes immediate precedence. Let me establish that this is a show that I have seen every episode of, even though I did not really like it that much when it began (this is one of the handful of shows we started watching because my wife insisted on it). In fact, I don’t think I can say I began to actually like it until some point in the second season, but now – yeah! This is a great show.

Laying my bias cards on the table, one reason that I was so slow to warm to it (along with the fact that it contains no truly likable characters) was that I have a general problem with the A plot the show maintained for a while. A lot of people, I think, have a particular aversion to specific plots (some people can’t stand kidnapping stories, some cringe at rape, etc.). I personally can’t stand the “family guy has his life and family dismantled due to some external force he can’t control” plot. The Denzel Washington movie Ricochet was extremely uncomfortable to sit through for me (this obviously taps in to some primal fear on my part). Nip/Tuck’s first season dealt heavily with the control exerted by drug dealer Escobar Gallardo, and how the blackmail threw Sean (the family man/asshole doctor) and Christian (the womanizer/prick doctor) into an ever-deepening spiral, jeopardizing Sean’s family, their practice, bank account, reputations, medical licenses, and futures. These plots were fairly well tied off at the end of the first season.

The second season won me over not by redeeming anyone or adjusting the plotlines, but by becoming so unhinged that I couldn’t help but respond to the psychotic elements of the drama. The season ender made me giggle with delight at the profoundly ridiculous revelations, but this show has earned its ludicrous moments by having established a deadly serious and high stakes tableau (much as a football team might develop the passing game by establishing the running game...uh, kinda). I cant go much further without a…

********************SPOILER WARNING******************

Famke Jansen’s a man, baby. How do we find out? The ol’ dip stick test. Just checking the oil, mam. Apparently Christian’s experience as both plastic surgeon and philanderer uniquely qualifies him to identify post-op trannies the old fashioned way. Who knew? And how about Alec Baldwin’s deliciously unreal performance? He is an actor well suited to playing fakey characters (like Col. Doolittle in Pearl Harbor – not a shred of reality in that performance), which is why he’s so good on SNL. His portrayal of Dr. Moore is such a great parody of a performance that I almost jumped up and down with delight. Also, the closing minutes of the episode closed off a lot of the possibilities for the “big mystery,” while bringing up new questions, just to drop us off on such an incredible cliff hanger! Bravo!

The big mystery is, of course, who is the serial rapist/disfigurer (The Carver) is. Being forever affected by the Green Goblin turning out to be Norman Osborn, my Stan Lee (not Steve Ditko) nature implores that the Carver must be someone we know well. Let’s take stock of where we stand with this puzzle. First, who’s (reasonably – anything is technically possible) ruled out?

1. Sean – was (halfway) disfigured on camera by the Carver, but was never a likely choice anyway (low emotional believability, low plot believability)

2. Christian – ruled out in the last scene of the season for same reason as Sean (seen in same place same time). Slightly more likely candidate than Sean before this final scene, but it would still have been a hard sell believability-wise.

3. Adrian – Dead before the attack on Christian, so out. Formerly the #1 suspect from a believability standpoint (unstable, seen buying knife), but probably too obvious.

4. Ava – On plane to Paris before Christian’s attack. Even before this, she was problematic due to his/her lack of a (current) penis (the victims were raped anally), but this could have been possible with a device, or as part of some co-conspiracy (with, for instance, Adrian). This goes for all the females on this list. Moot point for her, now.

5. Bobolit – Assume he’s in jail. Plus, he’s too known-to-be-crazy.

6. Annie, the McNamara Daughter – Too young, no penis, only mentally stable person on the show. Perfect daughter. Maybe too perfect. Hmmmm, not so fast…

So, who are the prime suspects left (in no particular order):

1. Sofia Lopez – My wife’s big lead. Although essentially absent this season, she/he (I can’t believe how often I have to type that for this show) is unstable enough, and has issues with the surgery. Bonus points for being mentioned in the last episode in order to get a transgender councilor to show Sean and Christian Ava’s records (eliciting an ambiguous response from said councilor). Still has a penis (I think).

2. Kevin – Not a lot in the way of knowing what makes this guy tick, but making Julia’s boyfriend the maimer would be the kind of kill two narrative birds with one stone cop out that often turns out to be the answer. Say it with me now, he has a penis.

3. Dr. Moore – Pro: acts like a serial killer, making him a candidate for the similar m.o.’d carver, has plastic surgery issues. Con: late introduction may feel like a cheat. Has penis, will travel.

4. Any other male plastic surgery recipient – frostbite guy, or even the earlier Carver victim can’t be ruled out because they all have issues, and the all have penises.

5. Liz – The sentimental favorite. Some think she is some kind of moral center on the show because she bitches about how “what we’re doing is wrong” before doing it, but I think this makes her the morally weakest and most despicable character. Has issues with plastic surgery and the cult of beauty, and is not liked well by the fans. Would need to solve the “how did she rape them” problem common to all the females on the list.

6. Kimber – No brainer inclusion. Recent increased mental stability actually makes it MORE likely she’s the one, and boy, does she have the specific issues necessary.

7. Gina – Too weak with HIV now? Has all the issues necessary, but this one just feels wrong.

Some of the less likely ones:

Matt – OK, no one wants this one, but once Adrian was eliminated, some of that focus has to shift to Matt. He seems too stable, but does have some issues that could act as a raison detre for the Carver. Not really a credible choice. Again, and I can’t stress this enough, he has a penis.

Natasha – Disfigurement too symmetrical for a blind girl, but you have to at least consider her.

James Sutherland – Lives far away, but has a morally righteous streak, and a penis.

Grace (Dr. Santiago) – Has to be mentioned because of a big prior part in the show, and issues with Sean, Christian, and plastic surgery in general. Unlikely.

Julia – Weak choice, but needs to be mentioned. Same believability issue as with Matt, Sean and Christian.

Anybody who watches this show have any ideas?

COMICS – QUICK TAKES 10/5/04

2004-10-05T15:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on “late” for a couple of weeks at work, and it’s tougher for me to post as regularly due to timing, but I hope to get a few good posts in this week. I’ve seen some troublesome TV this week that I need to address, which includes a really off episode of Las Vegas, and the 60 Minutes analysis of the “Echo Boomers” that I feel I need to comment on. But, to get something up, here are my takes on various books (mostly comics) from this week.

ADAM STRANGE #1: The art works so well, that it covers up the wonkiness of the beginning of the story. I’ve got to start commenting on how well colored some of DC’s books are because, although the line art here is really great, the colors are truly striking (if I was one of those people who referred to visual stimuli as “scrumptious” I would do so). The interrogation room thing didn’t have the “verisimilitude” that Diggle was going for, and it was annoying that the cops were so incredibly hot to send him to the loony bin (they weren’t interrogating him like they actually thought he was crazy – but I guess, in Gotham, threatening Arkham is a good way to get information). But once Diggle gets the police procedural bug out of his system, things start to take off, and at least we don’t have to see 6 issues of homeless Adam Strange coming to grips with his sanity of some similar bullocks. When we buy Adam Strange we want the BIG ADVENTURE, with a tinge of longing for temporarily lost love not the BIG LONGING. The last half of the tale hints it’s moving in the right directions. I don’t remember Strange’s guns being so blatently phallic, though (nice glans).

HELLBLAZER #200: Nice mix, here. The pacing’s a little funny, with Dillon drawn story slowly progressing, and the other two ripping along, but this was a nice sample of distinct styles, with solid structuring before the conclusion, which sets up for the next run of issues nicely. I miss Dillon when I don’t see him for a while – he’s so good at making talking head scene’s visually interesting. Is the last artist the new guy on the title?

LOSERS #16: It’s nice to have Jock back, but the title, for me, lost some momentum while he was gone. Diggle has to ramp up this plot faster to wake me up a little, or at least lay some more infrastructure to the series. Sluggish.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #512: Just read The Savage Critic’s thoughts (scroll down to Thursday, Sept 30) and chalk me up for feeling the same, but at about 80% the level. I was similarly angry at Byrne for Chapter One, but in many ways, this was worse. You hear from time to time the story of haw some younger writer at Marvel wanted to make Peter an unwed father in the 1970’s, and that essentially everyone has always been glad that they didn’t let it happen. This is uncomfortably close to that idea, and just doesn’t make emotional sense to me. I’m hoping MJ wakes up and it was all a dream. Has David Fiore has commented on these developments? I’ll have to look.

POWERLESS #4: I haven’t commented on this title before, but I really have enjoyed it both for the great Gaydos art, and for being the only halfway interesting stab at the alternate universe/what if old standby at a time when there are record numbers of these things floating around. I don’t know why this book hasn’t gotten more attention. I mean, it stars JK Simons (in his role from Law and Order not as JJ Jameson), has a Bendis family pedigree, and is actually readable in a way that makes me want to read the next issue (at least until the ending ruins the whole series for me – I’m predicting this, but I could be wrong). That being said, this issue suffers from all-middle-itis, an ailment of our times.

2099’s: Oh, boy. Where to start. You know, I think I’ll separate this to its own post.

DAREDEVIL #65: I liked the last arc more than the average blog opinion, but this was a useless hodgepodge. I couldn’t get a read on what the point was supposed to be, and the art was a disappointment in relation to the level of talent involved (uninspired).

DOOM PATROL #4: I really need to buckle down and tackle my feelings on Byrne sometime. Until then, suffice it to say that I expect to be disappointed with any of his new work now, despite the fact that I feel the urge to defend it when people lambaste him for being a hack (which reminds me, I need to tackle the George Lucas issue too). This issue was definitely an improvement on the last three with a few big ideas in the opening, and a little more passion in the art throughout. But hoser, please, you’re down to like three plots now - you just keep changing the details of and recycling (at least there’s no backwards time travel storytelling or virtual reality simulation in this arc…or did I forget some).

GUARDIANS #4: I liked the opening of this series, but now that it’s “taking off” (badum-bum), it seems to be getting a little silly and hard to swallow. What happens in Space stays in space, indeed.

MISTER MONSTER WWII SPECIAL: Is this reprint? Cause it fells exciting, cheap, and exploitative like all those indy action comics of the mid to late 80’s. Purely a nostalgia rush here, as this must be considered inconsistent by any objective standards.

VERONICA MARS

2004-09-30T17:27:00.000-07:00

Every new TV season has several shows that crop up which are not highly anticipated by the TV Guide set, but which have either critical buzz or some level of pedigree (usually due to the creators having produced a prior failed show with critical buzz). This usually produces at least one good show that inspires passion and/or online petitions, but will be cancelled before Christmas. This years prime candidates are Veronica Mars (created by Cupid supervising producer Rob Thomas) and Life as We Know It (with Freaks and Geeks credentials). Failure of critical buzzards with more network backing like Desperate Housewives (a show with very little cachet by way of pedigree, unless you liked Threat Matrix) and Jack and Bobby (ditto, unless you like Everwood) are possible, but much less likely. Lost looks like a winner judging by the viewership of the first episode, and I don’t think we’ll see any online polls to save Dr. Vegas if it goes under.

There is a great history of good shows, cancelled right out of the gate. Cupid (cited above) is a perfect example of a very sweet show that was different, well written, touching, funny, and quickly gone. Solid shows Profitt and American Gothic were axed early in the same season (the first for both), and Action lasted, what, six episodes? I even liked that C. Thomas Howell vampire mobsters show (the Kindred?) that was gone inside of two months. This is why I hate not having Trio available on my cable system to see cancelled show theater, or whatever it’s called (way to go, Cox). Chances are that one or both of these new shows will follow their illustrious forbears. Life as We Know It hasn’t premiered yet, so lets talk about Veronica Mars.

Veronica is played by Kristen Bell, who looks very familiar, though imdb tells me I’ve only ever seen her in two episodes of Deadwood. Her performance here is not revelatory, by any means, but she is good enough and likable enough to carry the show. The other kids are played by Percy Daggs III (who I vaguely recall as a mathelete in Freaks and Geeks only after gentle reminding – thanks again imdb), Francis Capra (hereafter, thanks to my wife, referred to as “Vin Desil Guy” – a man with a healthy history of playing young toughs, seen already this season in the Without a Trace premiere), and the problematic trio of Teddy Dunn, Jason Dohring, and Aaron Ashmore. The problematic part is what call the “Brooklyn South” problem – in a cast with a moderate number of actors, you have to be able differentiate the characters easily, or you get into a confused “which one is that” loop. These three actors look somewhat similar, and only Dohring (as asshole Logan) acts in such a way as to significantly differentiate himself. It is very detrimental to a show trying to gain an audience to have this issue.

Famewhore Paris Hilton shows up in the second episode, illustrating the show’s strength with some interesting peripheral casting. Mars’ dad is played by Enrico Colantoni, who has been trying to recover from being miscast (in my opinion) as the womanizing photographer Eliot in the long running sit-com Just Shoot Me! Bumbling PI and failing-but-not-for-lack-of-trying dad is much more his speed, and he is quite good here. It’s always good to see Kyle Secor, but he has been misused across the board (remember the beginning of Crossing Jordan?) since his defining role as Bayliss on Homicide. Here he plays the local rich guy to whom everyone owes their fortune, and the murder of whose daughter is responsible for the context of the show (more on this later). His use so far is encouraging, but sparse, but this could be very good thing. Voice actor and perennial San Diego Comic Con panelist Darrin Norris (Jimmy Neutron, Fairly Odd Parents, Cowboy Beebop, and Commander Courage in Comic Book the Movie, among many others) plays the obligatory smarmy lawyer with all the glee you would expect.

On to the show itself. It’s about Veronica Mars, who used to be a popular girl in the rich costal town of Neptune, CA. She was not rich, but her father, bein’ sheriff and all, gave her enough cachet to be considered “in.” Her best friend, who seems like the thick and thin type, is the daughter of Jake Kane, the aforementioned guy who made everyone in the town rich, and who is much beloved. She is seeing Duncan Kane, Jake’s son, and life is shallow but good, except, of course, that mama Kane hates Veronica. After telling Veronica she knows a secret, daughter Kane is murdered, and daddy Mars thinks daddy Kane did it. Sheriff Mars is driven from office, and Veronica has a choice – family vs. her life as a “Heather.” She chooses dad. Duncan leaves her. Mommy Mars leaves daddy mars. Veronica is alone, an outcast in high school, and stuck trying to help dad from going under in his new PI business.

There is an odd dissonance that I noticed in the first episode, which took me awhile to put my finger on. On the surface, the show has the feel of an after school production like the Bloodhound Gang or an Olsen twin DVD, with not exactly top notch production values, an unapologetically non-realistic set-up, and somewhat stagy scene setting. This effect is blunted somewhat in the second episode, but still seems (again, on the surface) no more artistically accomplished than something like Beverly Hills 90210. Veronica is a high school student who acts as an assistant to her PI dad, and solves some of his tough cases – this is the kind of adventurous wish fulfillment set-up of a pre-adolescent show, realism be damned.

But something bothered me. The first episode contains an explosive scene of violence at its end that interrupts the surface gloss of the show. Veronica seems not just a generic outsider teen, but seems actually troubled by the events of her life. There is authentic cruelty in the show. And then there is the rape.

The scene dealing with Veronica’s rape (which, along with her friend’s murder and Veronica’s fall from grace, is the major determinant of her current mindset) has as neon tinged unreality. She goes to a party where she knows she is not welcome in a last desperate attempt to cling to her old life, and is slipped a drink containing Rohipnol. One distortion effect later she lies on the chaise lounge by the adolescent sex-filled hot tub, and passes out. She awakes, mascara running, and painfully realizes she is no longer a virgin – having no memory of the who or how. In the following scene, where she reports the incident to the new sheriff (who does a great job conveying the aw shucks malignancy of a good ol’ boy system), his apparent cartoonish glee and her baby doll tears further reinforce the fakeness of the tableau.

Here’s the thing, though…it’s so fake, it’s uncomfortably real. The flashback is doubly disturbing because she has reduced the memory to overwrought iconography to reduce the pain. My wife hit the nail on the head when she called this show brutal. The genius of this show is the presence of the coiled snake of this brutality slithering under the rug of just another high school drama. Most shows of this type are fake at the core which is coated with a pseudorealistic covering. This show inverts that, with a deep, dark ugliness that bubbles to the surface, and is thinly covered up with a candy coated surface. Episode two continues with several more violent acts, including the vicious gang beating at the end. I should mention the current sheriff again, whose mask of bumbling stupidity (watch out Hazzard county!) slips just enough to catch a glimpse of the disease underneath.

The framing mystery is interesting enough, and I think the show has a few elements to keep it moving for a while, giving the repressed vileness a chance to steap, and let the id punch through every now and then. This is an unusual show where apparently lame surface elements (including a truly amateuristic credits sequence), add to an effect that is a lot like being in high school with dreamlike inauthentic external elements covering real pain, cruelty, and human evil.

IT’S A MEME!!!

2004-09-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

Jeff Chatlos has, thank god, brought up something interesting to talk about. Since I came back to the blogosphere, there has been a meme drought, and this is an interesting one. The matter at hand is the assessment of worth or value in art that transcends the idea of what you “liked better.” This crisis of criteria apparently occurred to Jeff partially because he liked Resident Evil: Apocalypse better than Sky Captain ATWOT (which he admitted to grumbling after seeing), although he thought the later was a better movie.

Many good comments are to be had, most notably by (no surprise) David Fiore who, among many other brilliant posts, zings this paragraph:

"[T]his is precisely the problem with aesthetic hierarchies--it's all very well to claim that complex structure and susceptibility to multiple interpretations makes a work objectively 'more artful', but what happens when other readers begin finding all kinds of complexities and polysemies in a supposedly flat, 'for entertainment purposes only' text? This happens all of the time! And the humbling fact is that just about any work of art can be a steak, if the reader approaches it with a steak-sized appetite (can we change the metaphor to a gourmet oatmeal?)."

My posted response was simply to indicate the angle that everyone seemed to be toying with, but not quite tackling (typos fixed):
“It seems like Harold Bloom
is the elephant in the room (hey, iambic pentameter!).
Jeff mentioned "canon," but used the word hierarchy in the same breath, where hierarchy seems to be used in his assessment more as an indicator of qualitative order. The questions asked in the first post seem to lead to his list of discreet "values" which he posits could potentially be used as part of an objective assessment of the worth of an individual work of art. So the idea of strong and weak works within the canon is essentially ignored, as the "hierarchy" here is not a holistic relational framework, but only a calculus of worthiness using value criteria.

“So the unadressed thing is the Bloomian critical angle, if you will. How does an individual work relate to the canon of cop shows, superhero comics, fantasy novels, etc. Do they strengthen the tradition and rally the tropes (as prime example Harry Potter did with the child wizard sub-genre of fantasy), or do they have no impact (i.e. are "unsucessful") despite some high degree of "objective" worth (like, say, Alan Moore's Big Numbers).

“This is not the only way to view the issue of value or worth, but its hard to completely disregard this approach when talking in terms of genres built on tropes so well worn that they become equivalent to cliché. How does the work under scrutiny "hold up" in relation to the other works we are judging it against?”

Incidentally, after posting this, I read a subsequent post of Jeff’s, and I think I was wrong about his use of the word hierarchy, but I think he still had not tackled the “strong work/weak work” aspect of the question of relative value. I don’t think this critical approach is the end all be all, but I don’t think you can approach the question of worth in this day and age (especially within Jeff’s hierarchical groupings) and ignore the anxiety of influence factor.

COMICS – QUICK TAKES

2004-09-28T17:05:00.000-07:00

One danger in deciding that I would not post during the weekend is that on those occasions when I get snowed under at work for a couple of days, all of a sudden its been 5 days since I’ve posted, and I’m at the bottom of the Updates page. Oh well. I need to catch up on TV posting, but I guess I’ll start with a few comics reviews of this weeks stuff.

SLEEPER SEASON TWO #4: As usual, a good issue without exciting me quite enough to say anything of substance. I have a friend in the workplace that will read and enjoy certain comics that I lend them. They loved Goldfish and the first four issues of Caper, and really dug the CSI and Shield comics from IDW. But I have had a bit of trouble trying to broaden their interests, or even finding the edge of what they like. I wasn’t totally surprised that Watchmen went over like a Lead Zeppelin, but I was surprised that the reception to Jinx was so cold. They have basically rejected the idea of superhero comics as a viable read. Sleeper is one of those titles that I somehow wish could have avoided being a superhero comic, because I think that they might like it if it weren’t for the “powers.”

TOM STRONG #28: Nice self-contained issue, and the best in a while. Probably the best non Moore issues, in fact (and better than some of Moore’s efforts of late). The real spark of life here was the melee with figures from famous paintings (though “the scream” didn’t help out much), but the actual story was simple and touching, if not entirely original. This title started out really, well, strong, with the interesting first few issues followed by the 4 issue Saveen arc (did it win the Eisner for best serialized story? Can’t remember – it was quite good), but has seemed to be treading a lot of water for a long time (the problem began for me with the first Terra Occulta arc – issues 11-2?). Signs of life occasionally appear, but for the most part my favorite Tom Strong appearances since the first year have been in Promethia. Terrific Tales, for me, has been an almost complete loss. Again, once Moore leaves ABC, and my thoughts congeal, maybe I’ll be able to face up to writing a “what went wrong” piece on ABC.

ELRIC MAKING OF A SORCERER #1: It’s always nice to see new ambitious work from Simonson, and Moorcock’s Elric is always worth a look (I recently reread the Marvel Graphic Novel #2, and it was even better than I remembered it being). This story, though, is a bit abrupt in it’s storytelling method (i.e. it’s choppy, and grinds its gears while shifting), and is kind of hard to follow if you don’t know most of the Elric story (I’ve read a few books and GN’s, but don’t know the full story by any means, and I could follow it only with extreme effort). Also, the 2nd part has only just been solicited, meaning waiting for the end of this 4 issue series may take a while. Still, it was pretty, and built up a head of steam during the brief periods of fluid narrative between the gear grinding.

VENOM VS CARNAGE #3: How is this art done? Is this standard pen and ink art colored with some pseudo 3-D methodology (sort of the evil opposite of cell shading), or is this simply an unusual computer “painting” method? The story’s not too bad, really (remember – I buy this because my wife likes venom), but this is definitely the “evil” (clock punching) Peter Milligan, and I don’t think this will change anyone’s life.

UNCANNY X-MEN #449: All it takes is one non-Alan Davis issue to make abundantly clear that I’m only buying this title for the Davis/Farmer team. That said, the fill in artist is not that bad, but the inanity of what’s going on in this title finally has really penetrated.

AVANGERS #502: Ugh!

EX MACHINA #4: This is a case of me clearly seeing the issues that some online critics have with this title, but simply not having any of said issues myself. I know, intellectually, that the scene between the artist and the intern from the mayor’s office is implausible (the intern seems to have had the perfect speech prepared, and the artist reacts on cue), but it felt fine and didn’t crack my suspension of disbelief when I read it. I’m not sure that my gut believes the twist at the end, but we don’t really don’t know if it’s true or not yet, so I’m in wait and see mode. Incidentally, I may be the last person in the entire comic reading public to get the “Ex” part of the joke in the book’s title. I understood the “Machina” part in context, but just noticed that since he’s not the Great Machine any more, that the mayor is now…Ex Machina. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

VENOM #18: This is a series I haven’t enjoyed that much because it doesn’t make sense to me moth to month. I suspect that it would read a lot better if read together, but I don’t know if I’m up to try. It seems like there is some time travel thing that will explain things, but I can’t figure it out with the little they give me to go on every 30 days.

BLACK WIDOW #1: Very disappointed (most depressing purchase of the week). Bill’s art was so-so, which makes it better than 90% of everything else, but the story was unpleasantly didactic (to the point of being almost preachy) and lacked the sense that it’s going somewhere. The Black Widow (exotic spy) is the wrong place to prattle about female victemization, which is most of what I retained after reading it. The truckers win the “most clichéd characters of the month” award.

TEEN TITANS #16: Last issue I will buy. This is supposed to make you WANT to buy the Titans/Legion crossover?

CONAN #8: Interesting “Origin” story (something I didn’t expect them to do at this point) with change of pace but nice art by Greg Ruth (of Freaks in the Heartland fame).

That’s enough for now – tomorrow, I should take a look at Veronica Mars, and/or give a status report on this TV season.

WEEKLY LIST

2004-09-22T08:29:00.000-07:00

I buy way too many comics, and I have to make a list every week (with running things to check on from week to week) or else I miss stuff. Since I have a blog now, I figured, why not slap this list up here with some light annotations:

ATOMEKA
A1 Bloodman Special Mister Monster WWII, $6.99: I’m excited about Atomeka’s return, and am willing to see where they go. Mister Monster is one of those low key independent comic “properties” that I missed out on, so this will be all new to me.

AVATAR PRESS
Robocop Killing Machine Special #1 Crowd Control, $5.99: I’ll get this if Stephen Grant (a fellow Hendersonite and Nevadan) is writing.

DARK HORSE COMICS
Conan #8, $2.99: A good midrange book. I’m never really excited to read it, but it’s been pretty solid month to month.

Milkman Murders #1-3 (Of 4), $2.99 – look into: I like Parkhouse, but just sort of missed this. If I see the issues, I might pick them up.

DC COMICS
Catwoman #35, $2.50: I’m out with Brubaker. I’m one of those ninnies that got left cold by the art change.

Elric Making Of A Sorcerer #1 (Of 4), $5.95???: The ???? designation means taking a look at it in the store.

Ex Machina #4, $2.95: Put me in the pro column for this – I’m really enjoying it month to month, and none of the reported inconsistencies have bothered me. My favorite Vaughn book right now by a comfortable margin.

Flash #214, $2.25: This title and JSA (both by Johns) have increasingly lost me as of late. They may not be long for my list.

Manhunter #2, $2.50: First issue intriguing – giving it one more to sell me.

Sleeper Season Two #4 (Of 12), $2.95: I really like this title, but I’m not as gung ho as some. This is definitely quality storytelling, and I hope, somehow (though I don’t see how it will happen) this can avoid the axe at the end of this “season.”

Teen Titans #16, $2.50: Think I’m dropping this (wait, another Johns book – I see a pattern)

Tom Strong #28, $2.95: In till the end – I’ll write a dissertation on the ABC books some time (maybe when the universe finishes ending, and Moore does his last issue, I’ll do a postmortem).

Witching #4, $2.95: Mildly interesting – thought it was a mini-series, and I’ll probably be out after the first storyline if it’s not.

Justice League Unlimited #1, $2.25: Residua – missed this when it first shipped– this is for my 8 year old (though I will read it) who also gets Teen Titans, Go! And Sonic the Hedgehog

IMAGE COMICS
Gray Area #3 (Of 3), $5.95: Don’t think this comes out this week

Walking Dead #11, $2.95: Really liking Kirkman’s stuff at the moment, but I’m beginning to tire of the volume, and (I believe) so is he. This is his best title right now in my opinion, and I like Allred’s art better now than I ever did before.

MARVEL COMICS
Astonishing X-Men #5, $2.99: No comment.

Avengers #502 (#87), $2.25: One of only 2 come hell or high water titles I get – the other being Legion. I’m not enjoying the Bendis here (this is only the third Bendis title I haven’t liked, though, and he still hits more than he misses) and I hope he just finishes the arc and leaves.

Black Widow #1 (Of 6), $2.99: Gotta do it.

Doctor Spectrum #1 (Of 6), $2.99: Missed it somehow, still looking for it.

Nightcrawler #1, $2.99???: Probably not, but I’ll look.

Ultimate Elektra #2 (Of 5), $2.25: No comment.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #11, $2.25
Uncanny X-Men #449, $2.25: Good art, that’s it.

Venom #18, $2.99: For my wife, believe it or not.

Venom Vs Carnage #3 (Of 4), $2.99: Ditto (she’s a Venom fan – yes, they exist).

Harry Johnson???
Ashes 2 Ashes???
Previews

TV LAST NIGHT

2004-09-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided not to talk too much about the third movie I saw this weekend – Waco: Rules of Engagement. Suffice it to say it hails from the great tradition of one-sided documentaries that are made as deprogramming exercises to (also one sided) popular public perception. The problem is, after being spoiled by really ambitious fully fleshed out documentaries like “Capturing the Freidmans” that aren’t afraid to raise questions they might not be able to answer, I wanted this to address the really hard questions that were implied, but ignored (such as did the ATF push a raid instead of an inspection because they wanted to find something more than just guns – evidence of child abuse, for instance - and, even though this was clearly out of their jurisdiction, would this be right or wrong/legal or illegal if the local government was looking the other way intentionally?). It does raise some interesting questions, though, and does make the FBI look like the FB-CYA.

Some TV notes:

CSI MIAMI 3.1: When the predicted death occurred, I told my wife that that was my favorite character. She said I’m the only person in the world for whom that’s true, as the person in question was boring and not working properly in the show. I thought there was something sort of enigmatic about them: relatively quiet, hints of a Spartan existence, guilt about having an easy life, an odd tendency to attract porn stars (not kidding – women were strangely attracted to this person in this show at odd moments). I need to learn how to use inviso-text so I can talk about these things easier. This episode was typical of the standard quality level for the show established in the first two seasons.

LAS VEGAS 2.2: Thank god! Its like 2.1 never happened, and we’re back to the non-stop brea…fun. I mean fun. Danny is magically cured of his PTSD! Good Las Vegas filmed scenes with this one, even if they were walking in the wrong direction (the Monteceto has been established as south of the Tropicana across Las Vegas Bvd from the Luxor via many CGI shots, now, so there is no reason to cross to the MGM Grand from NY, NY – it would require going over the strip and back for no reason). But by now, travel down the Strip with the hotels in the wrong order is practically a trope (see: “Beavis an Buthead do America” for a particularly flagrant example). This is another show that looks to continue its healthy quality level plateau (in this case mounted in the last third of last season).

TWO AND A HALF MEN 2.1: Nice use of cameos. Elvis Costello taking notes on Sean Penn’s sex life for a song was quite funny. Harry Dean Stanton “they say you’re as young as you feel…and I feel like boiled crap.” Sitcom competition is extremely weak nowadays, and this moderately funny one turns out to be one of the better ones on the air (in a thin field) as a result. My wife makes me watch it.

LOST 1.1: I saw the pilot at the comic-con, and though it was one of the most impressive first episodes I have ever seen. This Lord of the Flies meets Land of the Lost via Swiss Family Robinson effort surprised me with how much I enjoyed it. It premieres Wed., so give it a try. This is a JJ Abrams (Alias) show.

I’ll try to tackle BIG BROTHER after the finale, but I will say that this was the second best season after BB3, and I predicted the two ultimate game masters (Nikomas and Drew) in the second week.

MOVIE WEEKEND 2: LOST IN TRANSLATION

2004-09-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

I’ll say right up front that this movie was not made for me. This film relies almost entirely on the ability of the audience to empathize with Scarlett Johansson’s character, and it becomes almost impossible to enjoy if your psychological make-up/attitude/background/alignment are not close enough to bridge the gap of feeling between Charlotte and everyone else. I would probably have loved this movie, another words, if I didn’t think she was a whiny bitch that won’t take responsibility for herself. I really liked many things about this movie, but I felt shut out of its core.

The street scenes of Tokyo were fantastic, and worked to build the bright but alien/alienating atmosphere that was obviously indented. Bill Murray was funny for the 15 minutes or so that he was supposed to be (the scene in the hospital waiting room was hilarious). Certain scenes really worked (the phone conversation in the tub was chilling; the Porsche pronunciation parlay was subtle). And the ending evoked “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (the MOVIE) in a mostly good, but slightly problematic way (more on this later).

The problems start with the dialogue (or lack thereof). There was a stiffness and lack of genuineness to much of the dialogue, and, I believe, this contributed (along with a sense that it might possibly be “deeper” to do it this way) to the fact that so much emphasis was placed on communication through heavy silences. The problem in writing this way is that it places a LOT of faith in your actors’ ability to communicate effectively in this manner, and this is not easy. Johansson is, in my opinion, just not up to the task, and, perhaps surprisingly, neither is Murray. They don’t fall on their faces, but I just don’t think they ultimately bear the burden that these silent passages place on their abilities.

Murray is not as much of a problem as Johansson because when he’s being funny (which is a chunk of his screen time) he is undeniably entertaining, while she has nothing to do but brood and occasionally converse. The movie is also centered on her for most of its length (with a subtle shift towards him at the end) and more time is spent fixedly watching her character, and creating a situation where the movie lives or dies on her performance. My theory about Scarlett Johansson (formed while watching “Ghost World” for the first time) is that she comes off as the girl you think is pretty, but that you think other people see as plain, so you feel “special” for being attracted to her. The thing is, that’s what everyone thinks. But having this preconceived nature is a useful bit of equipment to bring to roles, so I find her generally interesting as an actress.

Her character Charlotte, if I’m reading her right, is actually more Enid than Rebecca, though - if Enid had gone to Yale and delayed her crisis of self-worth a few years. Charlotte is Prozac Nation fallout – certain she is superior to everyone else because a) she’s smarter and b) she suspects she has more depth somehow, but is faced with the dawning realization that she is ill equipped for anything important in life (true feeling, living life, finding fulfillment). We are supposed to know this because a) Hubby John tells us she’s a Yale graduate, b) Hubby John tells us she feels superior to everyone else, c) she tells someone on the phone she doesn’t feel anything, and d) she hangs out by the window a lot, silently not doing anything (like, you know, feeling or living). This is a lot of telling, and a lot of assumptions to be made in a performance vacuum.

When moments of understanding come, they often “strike” from nowhere. Bob telling Charlotte in the restaurant something like “sorry, I didn’t know I was the only one around keep you entertained” (damn, I wish I could remember the exact phrase). This is kind of a slap in the face to Charlotte and the audience, who didn’t know Bob was feeling this kind of thing (I didn’t at least – and I know, this was mostly defensive posturing, but it seemed to come out of nowhere). And then there’s the embrace at the end.

I love the book “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” and I think the movie, though thoroughly compromised of course, acquits itself fairly well. The ending is the obvious hot spot illustrating the difference between novel and movie: instead of Holly running off to Africa to resume her pantheonic role as free spirit (which the end of “Almost Famous,” with Kate Hudson playing the most thinly veiled Holly Golightly rip-off in history, gets exactly right), the characters embrace on the street suggesting that they could live happily ever after. One of the beauties of this scene, however, is that with a little thought, we realize they won’t, and the scene becomes not a pat Hollywood ending, but an endearing character moment, as the two connect on some level, even though the DON’T have a future together. Odd place to put THE END, but hey – Audrey Hepburn can sell anything.

Lost in Translation delivers us the implied ending of this scene as the actual ending. Bob and Charlotte, who previously come hesitatingly together, inadvertently wounding each other, come together again and embrace, happy with the moment of connection as something to carry on with them, even though they will likely never meet again. The movie is about the collision of the two major change of life crises – youth to maturity, and productive years to old age, and the glimmer of recognition as two ships pass each other against the backdrop of an alien and unfamiliar seas. As such, this ending works just fine, although by setting itself BiT as a point of comparison, is comes off lacking. Charlotte is Holly Golightly robbed of the transcendence of the human spirit, and Lost in Translation is “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” robbed of its lost but shining star (and through this, its meaning).

MOVIE WEEKEND 1: STARSKY AND HUTCH

2004-09-21T11:09:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned earlier, I managed to squeak in 3 movies this weekend in between all the normal domestic stuff like buying a new toilet, and helping my middle son carve/paint the car for the pinewood derby (no, seriously). The first movie, which I saw on Saturday afternoon, was certainly the slightest – the Owen Wilson/Ben Stiller Starsky and Hutch. The movie was mildly amusing (I have no idea why I found the Will Farrell part – “TWO dragons” – as funny as I did, and shooting the pony was fried comedy gold...well, bronze at least), but it irritated me too much to really say that I enjoyed it. The movie was, on some level, a spoof, but really belongs to the same genre of comedy devoid of sincerity as Zoolander, the Brady Bunch movie, and (I presume – I haven’t seen it) Anchorman. The Abrams and Zucker style spoofs (like Airplane! And Hot Shots) also lacked sincerity, but this was in the service of merciless deconstruction (pushing genre conventions as far as possible, and recording the results). This new crop of movies basically examines only its own ironic detachment to the material. Stiller and Wilson (and Phillips) are playing at making a cops and robbers movie not to poke fun at cops and robbers movies, but to point out how above making a cops and robbers movie they are.

This begs the question – why make this movie at all? The obvious answer is that the movie had to be made because Snoop Dogg was destined to play Huggy bear, and like some Robert Jordan “taveran,” he warps space/time around himself until the destiny is fulfilled (the same way the X-Men movie had to be made so Patrick Stewart could play Professor X). I’m only slightly joking here, as I think the movie serves of the attitude of the producers, writers, director, and actors, and not the other way around.

There is no attempt to peruse the “spoof” angle with any diligence. The cop spoof ground has been covered before (notably the underrated “Loaded Weapon 1”), and 70’s spoof has been done to death. Even as specific an avenue as pimp culture has been well canvassed (“I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka” among other efforts). Still, nothing new is attempted or added. Snoop is basically a plot device that wears outrageous clothes and drives a Lincoln (Oooh, burn!). Stiller and Wilson aren’t really trying to play Starsky and Hutch, with Wilson stuck in Roy O’Bannon (or “Hansel” or Kevin the Christian, etc) mode, and Stiller doing a non-specific over-the-top tense guy. Only Vince Vaughn does anything to play with his archetype (by making his drug dealer villain humorously self-involved in a “here come the 80’s” way) so that he looks like he’s at least trying for something.

Part of the problem is the cringe-worthy realization that Stiller and Wilson are the closest thing we have right now to a working comedy team (since the death of Chris Farley, and resulting stranding of David Spade – not a great apex from which to fall in the first place). The basic shtick – Stiller is kind of uptight, but finds himself casually and mostly unintentionally (or is it really unintentional?!?) outdone by the laid back Wilson, agitating him all the more - was well worked out from their first outing (“Meet the Parents” I mean – did they work together in the “Cable Guy”? – I don’t remember). It’s not that they aren’t funny together (I thought the “Greg’s Jewish, Kevin,” “Alright, so was J.C. – you’re in good company” sequence was the funniest part of “Meet the Parents”) just that the shtick’s too thin to support a body of work together.

All in all, I’d rather have seen “Napoleon Dynamite” again – a movie also steeped in irony, but which ultimately is a human story. Starsky and Hutch is not about human beings, but about cool detachment. All of this would be excusable, though, if it were just a little funnier.

FOLLOWING CEREBUS

2004-09-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

Lots of stuff to write on this week, including the Emmys, the TV premiers (this is the big week), and the 3 movies I saw over the weekend, but I thought I’d start with comics. I got through my read pile of the week (except for Apocalypse Meow vol. 2, which I probably wont get to for a few days), and most of it was unremarkable.

MADROX 1 was OK, but I don’t know if Peter David is going to be able to capitalize on the set-up.

My enjoyment of STRANGE 1 was hampered by my general distain for origin revisions that futz around trying to fine tune the basic premise of a character for no other reason than the comic company can’t figure out how to tell NEW stories (thank you Spider-Man, Chapter One), although the changes here are relatively minor in comparison (BUT do you really want Strange to start as a sympathetic character? It changes the nature of the origin in a way I’m not sure I’m comfortable with because it’s more, I don’t know, easy to make him an idealist that lost his way and not just a callous bastard).

I’m ready for Rucka’s WOLVERINE (19) to end. I’m getting nothing out of this now.

I thought THE END: WOLVERINE (5) had already ended (shows you how crucial the story is to me).

Is Micha Ian Wright writing NEW INVADERS (2) under a pseudonym? Or is the art and military stylings just giving me Deja-vu.

What I really want to talk about, though, is FOLLOWING CEREBUS (1). I didn’t know quite what this was when I asked my retailer for it. I definitely didn’t know that it was produced the same people responsible for “Wrapped in Plastic,” the Twin Peaks fanzine which I’ve read a few issues of and which really impressed me with the depth of its analysis. I guess I thought Sim himself might be producing Following Cerebus as part of the archival work he’s always talking about. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this issue.

It opens with an editorial in the inner cover, which is continued in the interior for a total of two and one half pages. This mildly intriguing mission statement is a bit over long, and spends way too much space trying to explain one very simple idea (that sometimes its better not to know what an artist intends in a work of art – it’s often a richer experience when we don’t know) with multiple examples. It also pissed me off by telling me that Lynch’s “Lost Highway” (which I was going to watch soon for only the second time) is really about *****Spoiler – skip the rest of the sentence***** Lynch’s reaction to the trial of a certain celebrity murder defendant who has the same initials as a breakfast drink. I would have preferred not to know this until after I saw it again. ***We’re back*** This editorial was still enjoyable, and was actually the weakest piece in the whole thing!

The Dave Sim interview was fascinating the way all Dave Sim interviews are fascinating. He’s such an intelligent guy, and it’s fun to watch his mind work whether you agree with his conclusions of not. I love his tendency to go on several hundred word tangents (like his observation of the effect of John Lennon’s assassination on men of his generation), and his use of odd examples and counterpoints (in this issue, he references Kurt Cobain’s observation that it SMELLS like teen spirit – not looks or sounds - as possibly “the last keen observation we will get out of rock ‘n’ roll,” in a discussion of the nature of “light”). I have two favorite passages from this interview. The first:

“It’s really “Stairway to Heaven” stuff. The ironic secular humanist acknowledgement that you can’t buy a “Stairway to Heaven” (what kind of idiot do you take us for?) in no way ameliorates for secular humanists that they are aware that an “up there” exists and that getting “up there” involves some manner of “stairway” or “Stairway.” In my own case, I wondered if there wasn’t a metaphorical “way up.” Was it possible to tell a story that was long enough and exact enough in proximities in intent itself to create a stairway by writing and drawing about it?”

This is the missing link between Sim and Grant Morrison. The discussion in physical terms of a narrative creating the “stairway” through the reader (like an instruction manual to enlightenment) is almost exactly Morrison’s concept of the comic experience as magic sigil for creating sentient universes, cat medicine…whatever. Sim is explicitly saying that this is nonsense he left behind with his secular humanism, but admits that this is one of his aims early in the creation of Cerebus.

The second passage I like just cause its funny. In talking about how Cerebus couldn’t get past Jaka, and its relationship to the presence of color on the TPB covers:

“…he entered the female half of reality where a much-beloved analogous transformation takes place in the quintessential female movie, The Wizard of Oz, which starts in black-and-white and then, when Dorothy gets to Oz, switches to technicolor. This is a beloved transformation, I suspect, because it reflects female nature which sees the movement from schism to fragmentation as a “good thing,” which is what color really is. Light and darkness are white and black. A duality. “0” and “1.” The fragmentation of light is color, a multiplicity. This was another part of the joke behind the title of Going Home, indicating to the ladies and “ladies” in the audience that even at the point where the Wizard of Oz switches to color, when Dorothy arrives in Oz, she is also, in a real sense, going home. Or, as the Koran assures us, we all came from god and to him we are returning.” The fragmentation from light to color isn’t permanent, the basic duality of light and dark is still there, and only light is subject to entropy. It will, ultimately, dissipate.”

Wow. There is very powerful playing with ideas, here, but it seems a bit too much, eh? But is Sim saying movement from fragmentation to the “schism” of a binary system (which is against the nature of light tends to split apart due to its inherent “entropy”) is “a good thing?” He most often resists reductive thinking himself (one of his biggest problems with feminism is the pushing of equivalence of unequivalent things - Male=female – for the sake of unification), but here color is bad because it offers more than two choices? So unification = bad, schism = good, fragmentation = bad? All sense aside, the reason I love this passage is that I love any over the top deconstruction of popular entertainment. I read a paper once on racial egalitarianism in Pulp Fiction as the final step in the racial paradigm of American narrative as it has evolved from Huckleberry Finn. Couldn’t stop laughing (in a good way). Making an argument that the color change in the Wizard of Oz is a feminist statement is just brilliant!

The Gerard interview brings up a nagging problem of mine - I really have never been convinced that he is a separate person than Dave Sim. This interview would appear to help lay this unusual suspicion to rest, what with a picture of him and all, but then he goes and says this:

“Although, I did have this strange sensation near the end of the book. It occurred to me that maybe the pressure of doing a monthly comic book all by himself caused Dave’s personality to split, and his mind created this background artist guy, and that I was just going to poit out of existence when I finished the last page.”

So apparently Gererad agrees that he might be imaginary.

The crowning glory of this issue, however, is the analysis of the usages of the phrase “something fell” throughout the series. I have only read the first half of the series, and had no idea about this repeated phrase. Although the article fails to completely pull together a cohesive thesis of the usage of this phrase, it does yeoman’s work of charting the usage, and related “fallings” and “ascensions” that pepper the book. Really nice work, and exactly what I want to see when I buy something like this.

This looks like an excellent start, and I would love to see where this series goes. Best of the week.

COMICS – SHORT TAKES

2004-09-17T16:46:00.000-07:00

Its been a busy couple o’ days, but I wanted to eek out something before the weekend (my intention is to not post on the weekends unless something burning comes up). Of my Wednesday reading reading pile, I’ve only read two items, but I thought I’d give them a go.

TERRA OBSCURA, V2 2: I liked the first mini up until it completely fell apart in the last 1/3, but this one is a mess. It is difficult to pull off this type of epic (this story, for some reason I can’t put my finger on, reminds me of the Starlin Warlock stories that ran through the Marvel Two-in-One Annual and seemingly random issues of other Marvel books in the 70’s) with characters that no one has anything invested in. The “superteam fights itself from 40 years ago” trope pisses away all of its potential as metacommentary (which is what this book is about, right??) and, more importantly, is boring in execution. Shouldn’t stripped down melee at least be visually interesting? There are a few good lines in the battle, though, and I like the necessary explanation of why the teams have to impulsively (compulsively?) fight when they first see each other (of course, it must be a “Japanzi” plot!). It may make more sense once completed, but I’m not holding my breath. All in all, it reads like someone trying to explain the idea of a story to you, not as the story itself.

WANTED 5: This was my favorite issue since the first, and I think it was the focus on Rictus (who gets all the best lines) that did it. Plus Eminem and Halle Berry, who are getting on my nerves more as the series progresses, get little screen time, and when they do, they are being shot at. Smelled the twist at the end 4 issues ago, though. This is the only Millar book I’m enjoying right now, and the art (by J G Jones) may be part of it, but I think Millar’s not hacking this out like his is the horrendous Marvel Knights Spider-Man.

I’ve got more TV commentary on the way soon, as I’ve got to cover Hawaii and Father of the Pride, and discuss Big Brother before it goes into hibernation for 9 months. See you next week.

HURRICANE ENVY

2004-09-16T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have intently been watching the hurricane coverage on the news. I used to live in hurricane country (born in New Orleans, lived in Southern Louisiana for 28 years), and I feel tremendous sympathy for all those with personal loss of property or loved ones. But…

Hurricane coverage makes me homesick.

I left Louisiana many years ago, and I miss some things, while I don’t miss others. The unbearable humidity and the attitude of many towards education (this is a rant for another time) I could do without, but I love a lot of things about the atmosphere of the Crescent City…just not enough to make me want to go back.

There is something compelling about the atmosphere surrounding the storm, though. Life stops for a day or to, and routine schedules are supplanted by the persistent thought of “what actions will I take to keep me, my family, and my property safe.” Even if you are not too worried, or most likely the hurricane will miss you, the normal grind is set-aside for a while. There is electricity in the air (which is partly barometric and party psychological), and a heightened sense of community. In short, it is a kind of purifying experience.

So, when I watch the coverage on the news, it brings back that feeling, and I miss New Orleans in a way that I usually don’t. Hope everyone stays safe.

SIM SWAG

2004-09-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I received in the mail a flat envelope from Kitchener Ontario. There was an attractive little aardvark logo next to the return address, and inside was a copy of Cerebus 168, signed by Dave Sim and (I think – its hard to read) Gerard, a flier advertising the Cerebus trade paperbacks, and a typeset letter (also signed by Sim). I was thrilled.

This was the result of writing a letter and mailing it, followings Sim’s offer to send a free comic (signed, if requested) free to anyone who would do so. I heard about this via Neil Gaiman's Journal, as, apparently, did a host of other people. This was stated at the outset to be an experiment, the purpose of which was to ascertain whether (i.e. prove that) people in this computer age won’t take the extra time to write letters via mail. The hell you say! I wrote mine the first day I heard about it.

I am extremely grateful to Mr. Sim for this small generous act, and am elated out of proportion to the size of the gift. This was a great idea on his part, and reinforces my feeling that he is a marketing genius. I own the “Phone books”1-6 and 8, and have wanted to complete the set, and finish reading the saga. This small act, which didn’t cost him very much, made it far more likely that I will act on this impulse sooner rather than later. In the “Cerebus Guide to Self Publishing” (an extremely interesting document I haven’t seen referenced a lot lately, even though many of its points are just as applicable today as when it was initially published), Sim spends some time talking about how to attract attention at conventions, and how to market a comic out of the gate, and if this was another ploy, I can see how it works. I just wanted to note that I was surprised at how positive my reaction was to just getting a signed comic in the mail for free. Thanks, Dave.

I found the accompanying letter very funny, and quite intriguing. Well, let me just post the letter, and then comment:

“30 August 04

“Dear Sneaky Neil People:

“Having gone to the mailbox this morning only to find only James Turner’s as-yet unpublished, soon-to-be-self-published computer comic book, I, Librarian, and Nihil Obstat (which can be viewed at james@jtillustration.com)(and which he had sent me a few pages from and which, because I asked nicely, he has now printed out all 62 pages to date for me to comment on)(and you thought you had a good job) and a very nice letter from Sgt. Brian L. Moore accompanying a copy of James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen from 1922 because he really thought I should read it and because I sent him a copy of Guys. Two hour later there was one inquiry about the free signed comic book from a gentleman in England.

“And I thought, Well, it’s finally subsided to nothing, after last week subsiding to the point where I could open all of the inquiries in a half-hour or so, type the form letter, print it out, sign it and get on with my other work (mostly the Cerebus Archive). So, I actually gathered up all of the form letters to date and faxed them to Neil for his dining and dancing pleasure (specifying which ones had already gone out, and which hadn’t so he wouldn’t give anything away before the intended recipients read them) and prepared to “turn the page” on the Blog Plug That Just Wouldn’t Stop. Then I went to the post office after lunch and there were another 60 Inquiries. I made that funny High-pitched “MMMMM!!” noise that Jerome “Curly” Howard used to make in the Three Stooges.

“Took me an hour to open those and – just now realized the post office closes in twenty minutes! Raced down there to stay ahead of the deluge and…the box was empty. “MMMMM!!” Is it any wonder that they call you The Sneaky Neil People?!

“Anyway, this 60 brings the running total to 981. Tomorrow should push us over the 1000 mark. Or it might not happen ‘til next week. Or it may never happen. For such is the existential premise of the Sneaky Neil People – whose every epistulatory outcome is uncertain!

“Sincerely,

(Signed)
“Dave Sim”

I found the letter amusing in tone (a sort of “gosh darn it, thems there folks got me” bemusement), with a light undertone insidiously implying that the letters really “don’t count” in the experiment because we’re writing intentionally to prove him wrong. Well, I don’t feel very sneaky…just happy to get this nice signed comic and amusing letter.

The main point of interest for me, however, was that the letter reads like the latest of a series, and I am entering in the middle of the “Sneaky Neil Saga.” I would be love to read the other letters! Since the letter implies that he has sent copies of all letters to Neil (presumably Gaiman), who, again, has a blog, I wrote Mr. Gaiman yesterday asking:

“Would you consider (with Mr. Sim’s permission as needed) posting these to your site? I feel like I have one sliver of an ongoing conversation, and would like to hear the whole thing.”

So, maybe he will, which would be cool. Meanwhile, this offer does not (as far as I know) have a time limit so it is not too late to get your cool free signed comic, and prove that civilization is not crumbling at the same time. My letter was handwritten, not typed (he says in a defiant tone). So hop on the bandwagon, and send your written and mailed request to:

Aardvark Vanaheim, Inc
P.O. Box 1674 Station C
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

Tell em’ Todd sencha’

BLANKETS REVIEW REDUX

2004-09-14T17:11:00.000-07:00

Since I mentioned my feelings on Blankets in my Comics Journal Review, I thought I would repost my review from Fourcolorhell, which, I think, absolutely no-one saw. I’m giving it to you unaltered, though I thought about rewriting some of it for clarity (I really liked this book, and I don’t know how forcefully that comes across) and timeliness (man mentioning Bendis’Alias... we were such crazy kids back then). No, it’s better to let it go as is. So, without more needless posturing…

Blankets
Craig Thompson

List price: $29.95
ISBN: 1891830430
Format: Paperback, 582pp
Pub. Date: July 2003

I took a while for me to get around to reading this. I haven’t read Goodbye Chunky Rice (and so wasn’t clamoring for more of Thompson’s work) and I have a mild aversion to autobiographical comics because I can’t stomach the self-indulgence that is sine qua non for the sub-genre. The thing that finally made me get up and buy it, despite the spate of reviews declaring it a flawed work, was that the first printing had sold out and there was a nebulous feeling in the air that this was, in some way, an important work (the unqualified positivity of Neil Gaiman’s opinion may have had something to do with this).

The first thing you will notice when you bring this thing home, and you should bring this thing home, is the mass of the object. Clocking in at around 600 pages, it is doubtless the largest original (read: not previously serialized) graphic novel that has been produced. The trade dress is nice in literate press sort of way, and it just feels substantial and non-embarrassing to hold.

The story, as if you need another rehash, is a near autobiographical (I’ve heard there is a missing sister, for instance) coming of age tale, about a sensitive and pious Christian kid dealing with a narrow-minded set of values within both his family and the surrounding town, a relatively normal (if obnoxious) relationship with his brother, the casual cruelties of adults and other socially darwinian teens, and the confusion of his first exposure to the larger world and the guilt inducing feelings stirred up as a result. These emotions are largely focused on Raina, a girl he meets at a Christian retreat, and whom he later visits for two weeks during a school break.

The main thing that struck me after reading the book was how quickly it went. From Hell, which is a similar size with annotations, seemed to take ten times as long to read and Maus, which is half the size, still took much longer. Now, granted, this is not intended to be as dense, but, as deeply felt as it was, it came off feeling a little more slight than I would have liked. 30 bucks seems like a bargain for a comic this huge, but it reads so fast, that it about breaks even on the dollars per hour of enjoyment scale with your average issue of Alias. It sounds weird to suggest this, but it seems “serious” works are usually imply gravity and craftsmanship with dense page layouts and wordiness, and this may represent one of the first “decompressed” serious autobiographical comics.

Tangent: There is a USA show I enjoy watching called “Monk.” As soon as I first saw the show, I realized one reason I liked it was that it was something of a throwback. I initially attributed this to story structure elements such as strong act breaks and “on the nose” tying up of loose ends. But the more I watched, the more I realized that the relatively low number of shots and the abundance of medium shots (held for a length of time) are part of what made the show seem pleasingly “old fashioned.” I like this because the actors have more room to actually act, and not just give microscopic sub-performances to be edited together later to tell a story. Maybe this is my personal averse reaction to the MTV editing-in-lieu-of-ability style of video making that has influenced so much of the modern narrative paradigm. Its no wonder that classically trained actors and actresses love the stage, where the performance is of the utmost importance. In any event, it occurs to me that there is a similar formalist issue in comics, with an art comix rejection of any decompression of storytelling, the implication being that this emphasizes flash over substance. Perhaps the Blankets reads so fast because it rejects the notion that tightly packed storytelling is necessary to create something important, and indeed the airy pacing may better fit the dreamy subject matter. It still felt slight, though.

I try to read and review before I’ve read any other reviews, but in this case, both due to my purchasing tardiness and the delay in the return of the web site, I’ve got to deal with the prevailing set of opinions. The most common criticism is that Raina is not a fully realized character, and only exists in reaction to Craig’s desires. Now, this brings up some complex issues, not the least important of which is the fact that this is something approaching autobiography, and thus other people essentially DO only exist only in relation to the author/protagonist, especially those who are relegated to such a short, emotionally charged time in the author’s life. But I don’t think its fair to dismiss her as a badly fleshed out character, just because she is kept firmly in the subjective lens throughout the book (this subjectivity is the only way such a character can really function). So let’s look at two aspects of this character’s “reality:” the way she is written, and the way she is (physically) rendered.

The main objection Raina’s presentation is that she is kept inscrutable – that we have no clue why she acts as she does. It is left largely unexplained as to why she seems so eager to get close and seems to need Craig so badly, and then withdraws rapidly without explanation. Let me just ask: has anyone not had this happen to him or her at least once? Adolescents are confused little beasts in the best of circumstances, and demonstrate various levels of over-sensitivity, magical thinking, and inconsideration, all at an unconscious level. Everyone has hurt and been hurt by someone who has emotionally turned on a dime with no explanation ever offered. And, more specifically, it is not at all an uncommon occurrence for one partner to kick the other to the curb (for no apparent reason, of course) a couple of weeks after instigating talk about what to name the kids. If Craig has broken subjectivity to show us what Raina was really thinking, what we would get would be something mundane, such as “well, it couldn’t have come as a surprise... we both knew it wasn’t going to work out,” which breaks the beautiful spell that helps Thompson depict the way it felt, not the way it really was (whatever that means). The fact that Raina and even Craig himself are viewed in such a subjective light, adds a layer of meaning as we apply our own knowledge of adolescent sexual politics to the situation, which gives her a more complex characterization than if he had depicted her with full disclosure. The story is truer because her conflicted behavior remains unresolved. Bottom line, it would have been false to break into her head and give her motives. My largest concern in this (subjectivity) arena is actually that by framing the book with adult “understanding,” it may be slightly dishonest about Craig’s lack of objectivity about his own feelings and actions, but I think his adult inconclusiveness suggests that he is at least aware of his inability to accurately judge what had happened all those years ago.

Her physical depiction is actually a huge factor in making Raina unknowable. I had already seen Thompson’s “sketchbook” in Top Shelf’s Comic Book Artist #1 before I read this book, and I noticed that, even in his realistic sketches of his partner (wife? girlfriend? don’t remember), he seems to be attempting to capture not the essence of the character, but some idealized ephemeral moment. This is why these sketches mostly show her sleeping or staring at something. You know, he’s capturing the moments of transcendence and beauty, not laughing or talking or other character bits. His depiction of Raina is similar and, although she does talk, laugh, etc., she really doesn’t seem to be. She always seems to be slightly arched, eyes closed a lot, head tilted… you know posed, unnatural. But one would assume that this is what he remembers of her. Craig seems like the kind of kid that is more interested in the transcendent than in the real, more the impression than the detail. And he never truly rejects this.

The religious text (not sub enough to be subtext) of the book is pretty tame stuff, but has real resonance. I don’t think anyone from the hardened atheist to a big ol’ Jesus freak could find anything offensive here, as he eventually embraces a relatively non-judgmental (to both self and others) spirituality that is Christian specific yet generic enough to squeak by either way. But it helps a lot that he really, really remembers how it feels, and seems like a genuinely good person who is not interested in passing judgment. I like that he never blames his God for the fact that religious followers gave him a hard time (this is a fairly easy way out, and is often taken) and “his” Jesus looks on him approvingly at him after he knows physical love.

Well, you get the idea. I loved the book, though I thought it read too fast. I thought Raina was as fully fleshed out a character as could be (or should be) when depicting the captured image of another person from your own experience. I found a real resonance in Thompson’s depiction of his childhood, possibly because I was an awful lot like that character (a bit sensitive, a bit religious, a bit wracked with guilt and self doubt, but ultimately a better person after the bugs get worked out and everything gets more integrated). Blankets is very impressionistic and the underlying emotional truth trumps the question of what is real and what is bullshit. The blanket in the story itself (dispensing with the obvious security metaphors) seems to reflect this patchwork view of subjective truth. Raina’s blanket stitches together bold individual impressions into an object of beauty, with the strength of the individual pieces of cloth placed next to each other giving the illusion of detail in a simplified design. In the same way, the story emerges from strong well-remembered details in an overall simplified outline of a specific time in Thompson’s life. This is a good-though-not-flawless work that borders on essential reading.

LAS VEGAS PREMIRE

2004-09-14T16:38:00.000-07:00

As a Las Vegas resident, I am ethically bound to watch this show and to talk about it. When it started out a year ago it was, in my humble opinion, not that great, but quickly found its legs. By 1/3 of the way through its first season, it had become compulsively watchable. This show is about FUN, which is why I am a little disturbed by this season’s premier, even though it was, in isolation, a good episode.

Danny, the young male lead who’s sex seeking antics and father-son relationship with James Caan acted as the main axle for season one’s narrative rotation, returns from somewhere top secret, with that Rambo from first blood look in his eyes (except he wears a shirt… well, most of the time). By the end of the episode (several twitchy PTSD interludes later), he is sitting by a window in a Treasure Island Casino room with an assault rifle, presumably ready to kill himself and/or take a bunch of people with him.

The episode was good, but how can they get back to the fun without a) dragging everything down with an egregious drawn out after school special-like healing sequence (which would have to take at least 8 arduous episodes) or b) conveniently restoring Danny back to normal next episode, because, you know, he was bonked on the head by the catharsis fairy. Dumb an unbelievable (b) beats overwrought and tedious (a) in my book.

I don’t think getting Danny engaged is a bad idea (even though it does seem a bit early in the show’s development) because virtually every regular on the show besides James Caan is young, unattached, and promiscuous, so we don’t really loose anything. But I’ll bet they shit-can the engagement to go for a long-winded will-they-or-won’t-they romance (screw that – the characters belong together, and this is not a novel plot anymore).

So – a good but worrying start, and here’s hoping they get back to the fun. Incidentally, the show has the best opening credits of any show on TV with the remix of Elvis’ “A Little Less Conversation” against an exciting Strip montage. LAX (see OH GOD, NO below) in comparison, pairs a great opening song (ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky”) with a good airport montage, but by just playing the song’s opening (you don’t even get to hear the words “Mr. Blue Sky”), it gives you that didn’t-reach-the-climax feeling (like auditory blue-balls). Maybe they’ll do a better opening song edit for the series (this was, after all, just the pilot, and sometimes pilots don’t even have the opening credits).

THE COMICS JOURNAL 262 REVIEW: MEET THE NEW BOSS

2004-09-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

The most recent Comics Journal (Aug/Sept, #262) is an attractive package with a smashing Toth cover, and gobs of nice full color reprint pages. But this issue, which feels like the end of the transition between the George and Deppy eras, begs for analysis of its contents vis-à-vis the question: has anything really changed?

Yes, and No.

The Toth section, which is composed of an old interview, an article by Bob Levin, and a juicy reprint section is, in fine Journal tradition, good, but not as good as you thought it might be when you saw the cover. The interview shows the strain both of being of being overly reverent, and really old (the ancient interview reprinted from now defunct European magazine is another Journal tradition), especially when Toth mentions current projects or talks about any peripheral subjects. Being someone who doesn’t know much about the guy, however, it worked for me as a brief introduction. Personally, I would have preferred that they print the legendary aborted Groth attempt at an interview instead (the one that allegedly ended in an acrimonious fit), but I probably learned more from this one. I found the accompanying article very nice, again mostly because I don’t know much about Toth’s life.

Toth is one of those artists that everyone respects, but who remains a bit mysterious to most of us comics plebeians. One of the reasons for this is that his work is generally unavailable for anyone of casual interest, and I myself have read very little of it (just some of the random DC work, and the stuff that was reprinted in the “Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics”). Alot of my exposure is via decontextualized drawings of his, mostly his animation work. The article actually addresses this point, acknowledging that due to his lack of any consistent work on a recognizable serial (except perhaps Zorro), his work tends not to be reprinted, and this not seen by anyone but the hardcore collector. In this way, this section was perfect for an audience of what I imagine are a bunch of interested folks like me who need the quick intro, and a little taste of the work itself. Just don’t approach this as more than a surface swoop at the topic of Toth’s artistic genius. Besides the color reprint section (the importance of which should not be undervalued), there is nothing here that wouldn’t have been seen in past years of the Journal.

The newswatch section is also about the same-as-it-ever-was, but contains the fantastic article “Collective Inaction: The comics community tries and tries again to get it together.” This is an excellent well-researched account of attempts to organize comic professionals that, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing in the issue. The letters section (Blood and Thunder) prints only one letter, however it is exactly the kind of letter and point-by-point response/filking that so marked the last iteration of the magazine. The letter (from Chris Oliveros) is picked mercilessly apart my Michael Dean (also the author of the fantastic Collective inaction piece). This was business as usual.

The manga essay was light, but fun and makes some good points. Most importantly, though, it is different in tone and content than what I’ve been accustomed to. Thus emerges the main point of deviation from the George years: the presence of commentary that dares to brave the cold heart of the comics mainstream (read “the direct market and Manga”). There had been some recent stabs at this (during the transitional phase), and all were thoroughly condescending and worthless except as comfort reading if you have similar views. This issue was very different. The nu-marvel article (part 1 of 2) is basically an admiring letter to the rise of Quemas (although part 2 will, we have been warned, not as kind to the post Jemas Marvel), something of the sort I thought I might not ever see grace these pages. The article is well reasoned and suggests that the Journal may now be able to broadly analyze the industry without dismissing large segments of it out of hand. But, hey, that’s Dirk for you.

The Cwilklik article (“Obsolete”) is even more evidence that there has been a fundamental shift. The article argues that superhero movies have outdone superhero comics, and there may be no turning back, but it does it without really condescending to either fanboys or mainstream movie audiences.

“Fighting Words” was fun, and I think a magazine like this is wise to have a feature that simultaneously keeps its ear to the chatter, and presents it in a gossipy-fun way. The momentary tonal shift adds to the reading experience.

The reviews were also basically same old/same old, but I was happy to see Smax and Demo in the bullets section. The only review that bothered me (and it wouldn’t be TCJ without that) was the Blanket’s review, which had something of a salient point to make but sort of lost it in the execution. Austin English compartmentalizes Craig Thompson’s Blankets to a genre, teen romance to be specific, solely in order to help take it down a peg by association. I understand the point, and may even agree with some of what he’s getting at, but it is impossible for me to embrace the implication that “just” a teen romance could never, by virtue of what it is, attain the level of great art. English also claims to really like the illustration, but refuses to let this in anyway affect his judgment about how good the book is (a little odd when evaluating a comic). Any of this could have been in the old Journal (the Blankets review was even a year late! - Journal tradition, again).

The last and worst item was an overwritten piece of BS called “Time Out of Joint.” The article is basically an attempt to expound upon a relatively easy to understand and convey worldview (a sort of grand unification conspiracy theory of world control and psychological manipulation) with some relatively simple consequent conjecture, which is presented as fact and hidden inside jargon and unnecessarily baroque language. I’ve never seen anything quite like this in TCJ and I hope it was an aberration because it simply did not belong here (comics it definitely wasn’t, and calling it cultural criticism is really pushing it).

So has the Journal changed? Yes, some. But it never needed to change that much to begin with, and the changes here all seem to be steps in the right direction. Not all the annoying things are gone, but I think the tweaks we see here, both physical and editorial, bode very well. This is a good time to start reading if you aren’t already.

BACK TO COMICS

2004-09-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

I am going to start focusing more on comics soon. I hope to get the (now half written) Comics Journal article up today, and I want to share the hilarious contents of my form letter from Dave Sim (I wrote off for the free comic he offered, that I discovered via Neil Gaiman's Journal - and apparently lots of others did too), but I left the letter at home, so Manăna.

OH GOD, NO

2004-09-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

Against all reason, last nights pilot for “LAX” turned out to be pretty good. There is something a little off about the two leads, with Blair Underwood in full pre murder OJ mode (not just the running through the airport, but the simultaneous pompous/charming/sleazy thing) and Heather Locklear as a rule breaking rebel (we know this because she tells us). The chemistry here is odd, but there was a huge “ugh” moment when it was revealed, low and behold, they had previously had an affair, and he’s married. To me, this is the kind of baggage a quick moving show like this does not need. I wonder if their animosity to each other will turn out to be thinly veiled attraction? I also though the dog-chasing slapstick was a little much, and they overused the soundtrack (it was too obtrusive in the same way the “Crossing Jordan” weekly folk-remake orgy is). But otherwise, the usage of the secondary characters was good, and they managed to develop some nice tense moments. The drunk Serbian pilots were fun (enough to suppress the feeling of “no way that could happen”) and the “orphan plane” thing was genuinely touching, though it did come out of nowhere. I am very surprised as this looked dreadful from the ads.

EPISODE 2 - ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE AS PATHETIC(AL) INVESTIGATION

2004-09-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

I do not know what possessed me to watch the second episode of “Medical Investigation.” Oh wait, I do… my wife made me do it! I’m innocent, I tell ya! This episode somehow wasn’t as bad as the pilot, but this may have simply been mathematics – there was really only an A plot (with maybe an associated C- plot) but no B plot like the pilot’s stellar example. The recurring theme between the episodes is large numbers of people reacting outrageously to limited exposure to agents that wouldn’t quite do what the show says they would. Most of my specific problems in this episode came from the diagnostic phase, however.

The final agent (again, ****Spoilers****) causing the problem was a pesticide, the treatment (or should I say miracle cure) for which was atropine. This pegs the substance as an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, the treatment for which is either an acetylcholinesterase reactivator (such as 2-PAM) or atropine. The symptoms of this type of poisoning are vomiting, diarrhea, salivation, tearing, myosis (constriction of the pupil), trouble breathing, slowing of the heart rate, muscle tremors, paralysis, and depressive mental effects, which could lead to coma or sudden death. Note how many of these symptoms should ring bells on a physical exam, plus the fact that encephalitis is not really present. In their work-up, they jumped strait from coma to “must be encephalitis” to brain biopsy, and told the parents “the risk of not doing a brain biopsy is worse than the risk of doing it.” Wrong. The risk of having shitty doctors is worse than either. This case would have never been misdiagnosed by some of the tards’ I went to medical school with, much less the NIH’s favorite weird looking doctor. We also never found out about why the kids all had herpes, either (brain biopsy my ass). The parasitic worm (the C- plot) was fun, though, even if the ultrasound was bullshit.

One interesting facet of this show appears to be that unlike normal shows with a detective component (and somewhat honed scripts), there is a lack of clearly delineated clues and red herrings. This show violates the Chekov rule (or whatever it’s called) all the time by bringing up issues that are never quite explained or dealt with fully. You know, like the unexplained herpes, or the way everything in the first 20 minutes of the show screamed “check the coffee shop” as a common point of exposure, but no one ever did – but that’s OK cause’ it wasn’t the coffee shop anyway. No. Plot. Function.

That’s it. I’m watching the third episode now to pick it apart more. Medical shows nowadays tend to use medical conditions by understanding the illness first, then writing a show around it. This show seems to come up with a situation, and try to come up with a condition to explain it. They just must not have a medical consultant (or they just won’t listen to the consultant, or the consultant is one of those tards’ I went to med school with).

COMICS: SHORT TAKES

2004-09-13T10:54:00.000-07:00

I’m going to have to post on the second episode of Medical Investigation (yeah, I know, why did I watch it AGAIN) before I do the Comics Journal post, so I figured I would at least prove this is a comics blog by posting some reviews of what I read this weekend.

PUNISHER 11: I’m in the opposite camp of most of the reviews I have read on this title. I didn’t warm much to the first arc (issues 1-6, which people seemed to like), but I’m liking this one (which I have heard complaints about) MUCH better. It seems like my favorite Ennis stuff is always when there’s a bunch of characters wrestling with issues of belief (or lack there-of), hurtling towards a bloody end. “Brotherhood” (the one with the cops and the priest) was my favorite arc by far of the last series, and this current story is doing it for me. I also like the Punisher better when he is used as a Mary Worth (i.e. non-essential character – the story could have been written without them – who acts as a narrative nexus)/Instrument of Nature figure more than a character, and mostly that’s what happens here (this story isn’t about the punisher in any significant way). I wonder why people don’t try writing Electra this way (I think Rucka took a spin at it in one arc). Wonder if the Punisher and the two young characters (the British Soldier and the Irish guy who has spent the last 3 issues tied up) will be the only ones to walk away (only wiser).

IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS: Short review – “about what I expected.” I’m not a huge Ted Rall fan, but I agreed with most of his critique of Speigleman , which was recently rediscovered by the blogosphere. It had always seemed to me that Maus was a greater triumph of ambition and self-marketing than art, but there are many positive things to be said for it. I have been apprehensive about reading No Towers, Speigleman’s first real work (magazine covers non withstanding) in a while, mostly because I didn’t like the excerpts presented in the McSweeney’s graphic novel issue. The full result, however, is even more under whelming than I expected, as works of more personal and political power were produced within a few weeks of 9-11, and it’s tough to read this without realizing it took 3 YEARS to put together what amounts to not very much (this is partially because Speigleman won’t let you forget how long it took him, and how hard it was). The art comes off as crude, sometimes obviously intentionally (when reenacting old newspaper strips), but often not (the sequence of parts of himself and his cat changing places looks like a layout sketch). The most obvious complaint, however, is that the book is almost entirely about Speigleman himself, but the self-focus yields no real revelatory content besides that he has trouble dealing. The only part that really got to me was the bit where he runs across the Tribeca foot bridge to get to his daughter at Stuyvessant, and this is an entirely personal thing (we moved from NYC a few months before 9-11, where our son went to Stuyvessant, and watching the students run was the main image that haunted my dreams of 3 years ago). I think there was something of value going on in the (admittedly poorly rendered) page where he gets yelled at by the homeless woman, but this little anecdote is 10% of the story, and can’t support the weight of the whole work. This was not BAD, per se, just not nearly good enough for so many reasons.

BITE CLUB 6: Didn’t see that ending coming. This redeems some of the other sins of the series.

FABLES 29: Love the apology for Van Helsing getting there first.

FORSAKEN 1: Late on this one. Story idea clichéd’ (they admit as much) but OK. The art is not impressive. Colorist should get top billing.

PATHETIC(AL) INVESTIGATION

2004-09-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

As promised, the call of crappy TV forces me from comics before I actually have ever said word one. You have to go with the passion, though, and what forces me to write is my strong reaction to NBC’s new CSI meets the Agency meets really-sloppy-writing drama “Medical Investigation.” This is not the first bad show of the year (I turned to my wife 35 minutes into the pilot of “North Shore” and said “If they don’t blow it in the last half, this may be the worst pilot I’ve ever seen”), but this one was somehow uniquely offensive to me.

The show has that NBC house brand production (all their shows seem to be shot on the same film stock, with similar camera work) which works fine. The lead actors are that weird looking guy from “Band of Brothers” and Minority Report whose name I can never remember (and I refuse to look it up on principle) and the non-fat white lawyer from “the Practice” (she’s even more non-fat now, having lost 15 pounds and all of her charisma). The weird looking guy (henceforth referred to as “weird looking guy”) is ideally suited to play authority figures who are unsettling not because of their actions, but because they are weird looking. He has intense unblinking light eyes which stay popped WIDE open, and a shock of blonde hair that looks like it belongs on another person (the first time I ever saw him, probably Angels in the Outfield, I thought he had gotten a bad dye job for the role, but at this point I theorize that it must really be his). It is like a male no-cosmetics-necessary version of those hyper-tanned women who wear light colored make-up – he looks like a photo negative.

Enough! WLG didn’t bother me that much, and the emaciated 5/6ths that’s left of Kelli Williams (the Practice chick – see I know some names) was too innocuous to really bother me. The rest of the actors were not really noteworthy. The production was OK. So what bothered me sooooo much? This show is constructed to rely almost entirely on its medical detective plotlines (thus living and dying by its writing and research), and it has THE LEAST BELIEVABLE MEDICAL CONTENT EVER.

The A plot commits the greater sin of being utter fucking hogwash, but the B plot actually offended me more. A plot rundown (warning ****SPOILERS**** that may hamper your enjoyment of the tense suspense achieved during every minute of this taut drama): Instead of shipping salt, a food company actually ships saltpeter, a meat preservative and well known military de-lebidinizer, in salt cannisters. Apparently, the one diner that gets it salt quicker than everyone else, puts it in a shaker, and everyone who uses it turns blue and dies in the exact same amount of time (we know, because the number of minutes left per patient is stated as a bold absolute as if they had a time-bomb display over their heads). They figure out the thing because the smrufy dying patients have a large amount of nitrite in their “brackish” blood (whatever that means), which turns blue (see blue, blue – its science!) in a test tube. The TV in a “scoop” (don’t ask) reports that the salt is benignly being recalled, and all is right with the world.

Since absolutely nothing here made any sense, I guess that’s why it wasn’t that bothersome. The B plot, however, took the medical show-of-the-last-10-years standby osteogenesis imperfecta and fucked up everything around it (usual plot – med stud thinks baby is abused, consequently is mean to parents, attending reviews case and looks at X-rays, blue sclera noted, attending says “don’t you study,” student is appropriately ashamed as parents leave with baby and glare at them). The same basic plot is in place here, except the first step is a resident (who obviously had never seen Unbreakable or taken step 2 of the boards) knows “something’s wrong” which, as is standard procedure, dictates that she must call her sister from mythical NIH offices, so that they can send some MD field agent in training (during a suspected “biologic crisis” I might add) to help. The agent (who obviously had never seen Unbreakable or taken step 2 of the boards) says “yes, something’s wrong” and orders some tests. An evil doctor, accompanied for some unknown reason by an even more evil hospital administrator (neither of whom has ever seen Unbreakable or taken step 2 of the boards, but who seem to have just stepped out of a fairy tale via the principles office of Rock-and-Roll High School) threatens to arrest him, but lets him send the tests (whew!), where the “orphan” brittle bone disease (later in the show called osteogenesis imperfecta just so you know they know) is uncovered. Did I mention the glow in the dark blue sclera? Would it have killed them to crack a textbook?

I don’t even want to address the interpersonal stuff, which was complexly so-so. I predict week three for a terrorist attack (you know its coming), but I won’t be there to see it.

HERE WE GO AGAIN

2004-09-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

With this wee post, I am going to attempt to slide unobtrusively back into the comics blogosphere with no fanfare, no mission statement, no muss, and no fuss; however, I though I should at least remind everyone that this is not my first blogging experience, and thus explain why my name may ring a bell with the 2 or 3 people who ever read any posts in my previous ventures.

About a year-and-a-third ago, I became one of the collective bloggers for Fourcolorhell. I managed somewhat regular fairly long posts, and was involved in some good cross talk. Lack of synchronization of the blog (which was kind of up and down) and my schedule (both vacation timing and my involvement in establishing a lab at a new hospital) took its toll on my posting record, though, and the collective blog eventually folded from atrophy. I was sure that I would return to the fold, but I just didn’t have the time to figure out (from a technical standpoint) how to start my own blog.

Well I did, and here I am. I will try to post as regularly as I can, and I believe the fact that this is a semi-comics blog will make this easier to accomplish. This means I can talk about other topics and personal stuff, which I never felt comfortable doing on Fourcolorhell. As the name of the blog indicates, TV will be another main topic, but so will books, cultural stuff, and anything that comes to mind - but I'll try to keep the comics #1 (damn, I said no mission statement). TV will likely figure big in the beginning, as the new (and likely shitty) season is just starting now.

This is the best of times and the worst of times to come back, it seems. The number of bloggers has hit a critical mass; however, we have also just lost two of comic’s best (John Jakala and Sean Collins)who functioned, in the absence of Journalista! as the defacto tastemakers of the blogosphere. At least ADD's back.

So here we go. I will post soon concerning my thoughts on the most recent (the one with the Thoth cover) Comics Journal, which was eagerly anticipated, but which I don’t think anyone’s taken a hard look at (although some TV thing will probably eek in first). Wish me luck.