It was a short list this last week. I guess I should have posted sooner, but it was a pretty crazy weekend--the visit to the emergency room with Mom Speculator, painting the living room and kitchen, a dinner on Sunday night, me and Mrs. Speculator celebrating the first anniversary on Monday... whew, some weekend.
At any rate, due to the short list, I'm only reviewing one book this week.
Spoilers ho!
Supergirl and the Legion of Super-heroes 30 -- Although the listing on DC's official web site says the Dominator War story-line ends with the next issue, I'm not entirely sure that's correct. This issue ends pretty resolutely, letting us say farewell to Mark Waid and Barry Kitson.
When last we saw our intrepid heroes, Earth was underattack by the Dominators and the Legion and Wanderers had decided to take the fight to the Dominator homeworld. Mon-el continues to suffer from his lead poisoning. And even though the Dominators are defeated, everyone knows it is only a matte of time until they come back again to attack the United Planets. But Cosmic Boy has a plan. The Legion's strongest hero will carry a bomb into the heart of the Dominator homeworld and destroy, removing any threat the Dominators might make. And sine Mon-el is dying anyway, he should be the one to carry the bomb to the core of the planet.
The reaction of the rest of the Legion to the plan is mixed. Some accuse him of plotting genocide and others congratulate him on his ingenuity. But ultimately he convinces them of the necessity of his decision. Bainiac builds the hypergrenade and Mon-el delivers it after a tearful farewell. Then the bomb goes off and Mon-el and the planet disappear from space.
Of course, not everything is as it seems. There aren't terribly many clues as to what really happens, but after the story divulges the truth, it's pretty obvious. It's a very fine comic book twist, one whose roots are found both in the Legion and in the best comic stories. And then comes the last surprise, when Cosmic Boy is invited to join the Knights Tempus, a group of teenagers from the 41st century that became super-heroes by following the model set by Cosmic Boy. It is a glowing tribute to the earliest Legion stories, and the final panel has the covers of some of those old stories in a montage. That those stories are now severely out of continuity is unfortunate, unless this is Mark Waid's last clue that even the universe of his last 30 issues is not as it may have seemed, more hints about "the middle crisis."
Waid and Kitson's run started off with some bumps, revamping the history as radically as they did. But they found their stride and put up some solid story-telling in the last year to year and a half. The bizarre emergence of Supergirl is a bit of a flaw, but I suspect that was mandated to them by TPTB and the ongoing effects of Infinite Crisis, 52, and Countdown. I only wish that they could have continued the fun letter pages that they had, with members of the Legion actually answering their mail, but I suppose the space was needed for the real stories.
It was a good run, and I am little dubious of Tony Bedard, the new Legion writer, but Waid and Kitson left the new creative team a solid foundation for more stories.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
One of my most strongly-held beliefs about writing is that ending a story is incredibly difficult, perhaps more so than starting one. It takes real talent and skill to end a story with only a few carefully chosen threads dangling while the rest are closed off in a satisfying sense of closure. I don’t think this is so much a matter of the characters being where the reader or viewer wants them to be, but whether they are in a place that fits their characterization. And of course, how the characters got there is equally as important.
Imagine then the difficulty of trying to write an extension to the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, The Curse of the Black Pearl. The Black Pearl threw something new at the screen—wide open sea-faring adventure, drawn with a fairly tight script featuring undead sailors and the breath-taking personality of Captain Jack Sparrow, as played by Johnny Depp. With very little expectation, since it was based on an amusement park ride, The Black Pearl exploded into the cultural imagination. Suddenly, pirates were cool again, in no small part to Depp’s flamboyantly wacky Captain Jack, which was deservingly nominated for an Oscar. The movie was funny and fun, the action fairly non-stop, and the audience really didn’t have to think very much to follow what was going on; even Captain Sparrow’s humor was visceral and slapstick, Python-esque without oblique cultural references. The man just wanted his ship back.
The measure of the success of the formula can be found in the sequel, Dead Man’s Chest, which set all sorts of box office records. There were chills and surprises and the special effects grew even more remarkable, and there was a satisfying cliff-hanger. Jack was Jack, perhaps a little more slapstick than in the first movie, but he was present in all his selfish stylish glory.
And then there’s At World’s End.
The writers emphasized what had been a minor plot element in Dead Man’s Chest, much to the detriment of the rest of the story. Suddenly, Davy Jones isn’t so much the enemy as is the East India Company, a nefarious capitalistic machine bent on world financial domination, and to ensure it they need to get rid of the pirates of the world. No longer is the crisis about Jack Sparrow; it becomes an allegory about the extent to which people will go to create and maintain power. And to make sure the viewers know that this is what the movie is really about, the opening scene depicts the East India Company hanging all the people in a colony who are pirates, associate with pirates or know about pirates, including a child who has to be put on a barrel so that his head can reach the noose. The horror of the scene is increased as we witness the line of victims stretch the length of the fort, and the guards stripping the boots off the deceased. We are shown, in no uncertain terms, that this movie has aspirations of seriousness. And that’s where it falls off the rails. I mean, what is the point of a Pirates movie where Captain Jack is relegated to an almost minor role?
Because that’s what happens. Jack is almost inconsequential to the plot of the movie. Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, even Captain Barbossa have more to do with the events of the movie than Jack. This is due, in no small part, to Jack having to be rescued from his cliff-hanger from the previous movie, forcing the action to fall on the shoulders of Turner, Swann, and Barbossa. They hold up admirably, but the movie already has three main characters in it by the time they get to Jack. The scenes with Jack talking to himself, while fun, answer the unspoken question about Jack’s sanity, further minimizing his effect on the suddenly important events surrounding the plot. And when our pirate heroes meet with the pirate lords, we’ve got six more characters to take into account, as well as three villains and a goddess. It all becomes too much.
I suppose it is possible for the movie to be as fun as its prequels given the diminution of Jack’s role, but there just isn’t a lot of humor outside the scenes with Jack. The earlier movies had a sort of cartoonish violence that is replaced with the realistic violence of cannonballs blowing through ships with full crews. While there is very little gore, bodies fly everywhere during the battles, effects I don’t recall seeing very much in the earlier movies. To be sure, it’s a beautiful movie, and the effects are fairly spectacular, but the ends they serve are not as whimsical as before.
And ultimately, Mrs. Speculator and I found the denouement of the movie, the bizarre union of the quarrelling lovers, Will and Elizabeth, to be highly improbable. They were passionate in the first movie and confident in the second. But in the third, they have too many secrets from each other that never get talked out. Perhaps it is the excitement of the battle which causes the proposal to be made and the acceptance to be given, but it asks a lot of the audience, especially as it comes out of not nowhere but instead the jarring dissonance of their fragmented and faulty conversations. I tried to convince my wife that perhaps this was an example of love conquering all, but I’m not sure I completely buy that explanation myself.
The most entertaining moments are Jack’s interactions with his rival Barbossa, but at the same time they are a little distressing. As the two argue and bicker for command of the Black Pearl, their scenes are amusing, but Jack never takes the lead in those competitions. The strong dominant (though wacky) Jack Sparrow is replaced by someone who can only duplicate the actions of his competitor in the hopes that the crew (and audience?) will recognize in him the traits that make a great captain.
And finally, the movie limps to an end. All of the problems are solved, but in order to get there, the movie has about four endings. It wasn’t entirely necessary to go on, though hinting that more movies could be made was a nice treat. I suppose a joyous celebration like the one at the end of Return of the Jedi is out of the question. Nonetheless, until its end, the movie moves briskly from action scene to action scene, often charming and always exciting, but just not giving off the same vibe as its prequels. And sadly, the solution to its weaknesses is the thing that made the first movie so great in the first place.
It just needs more Jack.
Imagine then the difficulty of trying to write an extension to the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, The Curse of the Black Pearl. The Black Pearl threw something new at the screen—wide open sea-faring adventure, drawn with a fairly tight script featuring undead sailors and the breath-taking personality of Captain Jack Sparrow, as played by Johnny Depp. With very little expectation, since it was based on an amusement park ride, The Black Pearl exploded into the cultural imagination. Suddenly, pirates were cool again, in no small part to Depp’s flamboyantly wacky Captain Jack, which was deservingly nominated for an Oscar. The movie was funny and fun, the action fairly non-stop, and the audience really didn’t have to think very much to follow what was going on; even Captain Sparrow’s humor was visceral and slapstick, Python-esque without oblique cultural references. The man just wanted his ship back.
The measure of the success of the formula can be found in the sequel, Dead Man’s Chest, which set all sorts of box office records. There were chills and surprises and the special effects grew even more remarkable, and there was a satisfying cliff-hanger. Jack was Jack, perhaps a little more slapstick than in the first movie, but he was present in all his selfish stylish glory.
And then there’s At World’s End.
The writers emphasized what had been a minor plot element in Dead Man’s Chest, much to the detriment of the rest of the story. Suddenly, Davy Jones isn’t so much the enemy as is the East India Company, a nefarious capitalistic machine bent on world financial domination, and to ensure it they need to get rid of the pirates of the world. No longer is the crisis about Jack Sparrow; it becomes an allegory about the extent to which people will go to create and maintain power. And to make sure the viewers know that this is what the movie is really about, the opening scene depicts the East India Company hanging all the people in a colony who are pirates, associate with pirates or know about pirates, including a child who has to be put on a barrel so that his head can reach the noose. The horror of the scene is increased as we witness the line of victims stretch the length of the fort, and the guards stripping the boots off the deceased. We are shown, in no uncertain terms, that this movie has aspirations of seriousness. And that’s where it falls off the rails. I mean, what is the point of a Pirates movie where Captain Jack is relegated to an almost minor role?
Because that’s what happens. Jack is almost inconsequential to the plot of the movie. Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, even Captain Barbossa have more to do with the events of the movie than Jack. This is due, in no small part, to Jack having to be rescued from his cliff-hanger from the previous movie, forcing the action to fall on the shoulders of Turner, Swann, and Barbossa. They hold up admirably, but the movie already has three main characters in it by the time they get to Jack. The scenes with Jack talking to himself, while fun, answer the unspoken question about Jack’s sanity, further minimizing his effect on the suddenly important events surrounding the plot. And when our pirate heroes meet with the pirate lords, we’ve got six more characters to take into account, as well as three villains and a goddess. It all becomes too much.
I suppose it is possible for the movie to be as fun as its prequels given the diminution of Jack’s role, but there just isn’t a lot of humor outside the scenes with Jack. The earlier movies had a sort of cartoonish violence that is replaced with the realistic violence of cannonballs blowing through ships with full crews. While there is very little gore, bodies fly everywhere during the battles, effects I don’t recall seeing very much in the earlier movies. To be sure, it’s a beautiful movie, and the effects are fairly spectacular, but the ends they serve are not as whimsical as before.
And ultimately, Mrs. Speculator and I found the denouement of the movie, the bizarre union of the quarrelling lovers, Will and Elizabeth, to be highly improbable. They were passionate in the first movie and confident in the second. But in the third, they have too many secrets from each other that never get talked out. Perhaps it is the excitement of the battle which causes the proposal to be made and the acceptance to be given, but it asks a lot of the audience, especially as it comes out of not nowhere but instead the jarring dissonance of their fragmented and faulty conversations. I tried to convince my wife that perhaps this was an example of love conquering all, but I’m not sure I completely buy that explanation myself.
The most entertaining moments are Jack’s interactions with his rival Barbossa, but at the same time they are a little distressing. As the two argue and bicker for command of the Black Pearl, their scenes are amusing, but Jack never takes the lead in those competitions. The strong dominant (though wacky) Jack Sparrow is replaced by someone who can only duplicate the actions of his competitor in the hopes that the crew (and audience?) will recognize in him the traits that make a great captain.
And finally, the movie limps to an end. All of the problems are solved, but in order to get there, the movie has about four endings. It wasn’t entirely necessary to go on, though hinting that more movies could be made was a nice treat. I suppose a joyous celebration like the one at the end of Return of the Jedi is out of the question. Nonetheless, until its end, the movie moves briskly from action scene to action scene, often charming and always exciting, but just not giving off the same vibe as its prequels. And sadly, the solution to its weaknesses is the thing that made the first movie so great in the first place.
It just needs more Jack.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Presidential goofiness
No, no, I'm not foraying into political commentary here, at least not yet. Just throwing out a link that has had me laughing all morning.
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2823158
Some seriously geekily funny stuff here.
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2823158
Some seriously geekily funny stuff here.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Comic musings for 16 May
Spoilers ho!
Flash: The Fastest Man Alive 12 - I never really looked closely at the title of this comic before, but it certainly leads to the question, are there faster dead men?
I suppose that makes as good a lead-in as any to discussing this issue, where the Black Flash rears his ugly head. And whenever the Black Flash appears, a speedster dies. Given that Bart's clone, Inertia, has just stolen all the Speed Force and is attempting to run it through a machine, prompting the dire prediction that the machine can't handle it and will blow up with the power of ten atomic bombs, our hero being attacked by six of his rogues on the last panel (while being without the Speed Force) does not necessarily mean that Bart is the one going to die any time soon.
I should point out the solicitation for this issue from DC: "The dark force behind the Rogues' full frontal assault is revealed —and this issue's shocker ending will change the Flash forever!" Not like we haven't heard this before, but I'm not at all sure what the dark force referred to here is. Perhaps it is the Black Flash, but he doesn't really seem to be the force behind Inertia gathering up the rogues to attack Flash. And we've known about Inertia for a while now, so that doesn't feel right either. As for changing the Flash forever, the Flash has been a completely different character and story since his reintroduction. This past year has felt like a mini-series being written in order to re-introduce the old Flash as the new Flash in the very last panel of the last issue. There has been no real consistency in the story-telling or in the art, though it is refreshing to see Tony Daniel's pencils for the last couple of issues. So, in a year-long run where *everything* changes the Flash forever, the hype for this issue gets lost in the utter mediocrity of what has been going on.
This is not to say that the hype in any way reflects the actual contents of this issue. There is nothing here remotely hype-worthy. The biggest news from this issue is that the rogues are together and still can't beat the Flash (like we haven't seen that before) and that Abra Kadabra has a new macho look.
Just remember, the next issue is so big that DC is hiding the cover. I'm holding out for the end of this arc, myself, hoping for the return of Wally.
All Star Batman and Robin 5 - We get to meet the All Star Wonder Woman. Seriously, that's about al to recommend this comic. She's a bad-ass who hates men for the pathetic weaklings they all are, and especially Superman for his wanting to work within the system to bring the apparently rogue Batman to justice. And of course, her anger at male frailty just hides her own desire for the "despicable Superman" with whom she ends up in a passionate clench. It makes me wonder if this is the way Wonder Woman was going to be represented inthe All Star line when she was to have her own series. This Superman is not recognizably the All Star Superman being written by Grant Morrison, so I can't say that there really was going to be some sort of continuity between the titles. However, it's not like it really matters given the horrific record the titles have for punctuality. (I read a column this week that talks about comic shops trying to order these titles; All Star Batman went a *year* without a new issue. It's good stuff: http://www.newsarama.com/Tilting2_0/Tilting40.html.)
All of the interaction between Superman, Wonder Woman, Plastic Man (who is just as annoying as he was before he found out he had a child in the non-All Star Universe) and Green Lantern (who is curiously a non-entity) introduces the idea that people outside the immediate Batman family are not happy with his activities and that they are going to have to do something. That confrontation holds promise, if only we ever get to see it.
The rest of the issue is just annoying. Batman proves he is as crazy as we have been led to believe up to now, when he stops a mugging and leaves the would-be muggers to suffer nad perhaps die from their wounds. There's also a three-page interior monologue where Alfred remembers the origin of this All Star Batman. It's more than a trifle disturbing, not so much for the events that birthed Batman--they don't appear too terribly different from the ones we are familiar with. What's disturbing is the language Alfred uses to describe Batman: "And now my DEMON--my black-eyed, brilliant, willful ANGEL--has grown to manhood." And with that note ringing in our ears, Robin discovers Batman's armory, filled with all sorts of nasty pointed deadly weapons. The final scene is an ecstatic Robin pronouncing his judgment on the toys he has found: "Cool."
It's all very disturbing, and not just because it is a twist on the Batman we have had for so very long. These people are not sane, which may be writer Frank Miller's point after all, one he drove home repeatedly in The Dark Knight Returns. Jim Lee's art has its usual flawless beauty, which only exaggerates the disunion between the people and their godlike appearance. I don't know how this All Star Batman could exist as a long-tyerm character, when not even the "good guys" want him around, and if that's the case, I believe that some Elseworld story aong the line has gone down the same road before, just not with Miller's awful intensity.
There are possibilities here for a real study of the madness that is being a super-hero. But between the ridiculous schedule and Miller' over-the-top portrayal, we may never get to see that potential realized.
Flash: The Fastest Man Alive 12 - I never really looked closely at the title of this comic before, but it certainly leads to the question, are there faster dead men?
I suppose that makes as good a lead-in as any to discussing this issue, where the Black Flash rears his ugly head. And whenever the Black Flash appears, a speedster dies. Given that Bart's clone, Inertia, has just stolen all the Speed Force and is attempting to run it through a machine, prompting the dire prediction that the machine can't handle it and will blow up with the power of ten atomic bombs, our hero being attacked by six of his rogues on the last panel (while being without the Speed Force) does not necessarily mean that Bart is the one going to die any time soon.
I should point out the solicitation for this issue from DC: "The dark force behind the Rogues' full frontal assault is revealed —and this issue's shocker ending will change the Flash forever!" Not like we haven't heard this before, but I'm not at all sure what the dark force referred to here is. Perhaps it is the Black Flash, but he doesn't really seem to be the force behind Inertia gathering up the rogues to attack Flash. And we've known about Inertia for a while now, so that doesn't feel right either. As for changing the Flash forever, the Flash has been a completely different character and story since his reintroduction. This past year has felt like a mini-series being written in order to re-introduce the old Flash as the new Flash in the very last panel of the last issue. There has been no real consistency in the story-telling or in the art, though it is refreshing to see Tony Daniel's pencils for the last couple of issues. So, in a year-long run where *everything* changes the Flash forever, the hype for this issue gets lost in the utter mediocrity of what has been going on.
This is not to say that the hype in any way reflects the actual contents of this issue. There is nothing here remotely hype-worthy. The biggest news from this issue is that the rogues are together and still can't beat the Flash (like we haven't seen that before) and that Abra Kadabra has a new macho look.
Just remember, the next issue is so big that DC is hiding the cover. I'm holding out for the end of this arc, myself, hoping for the return of Wally.
All Star Batman and Robin 5 - We get to meet the All Star Wonder Woman. Seriously, that's about al to recommend this comic. She's a bad-ass who hates men for the pathetic weaklings they all are, and especially Superman for his wanting to work within the system to bring the apparently rogue Batman to justice. And of course, her anger at male frailty just hides her own desire for the "despicable Superman" with whom she ends up in a passionate clench. It makes me wonder if this is the way Wonder Woman was going to be represented inthe All Star line when she was to have her own series. This Superman is not recognizably the All Star Superman being written by Grant Morrison, so I can't say that there really was going to be some sort of continuity between the titles. However, it's not like it really matters given the horrific record the titles have for punctuality. (I read a column this week that talks about comic shops trying to order these titles; All Star Batman went a *year* without a new issue. It's good stuff: http://www.newsarama.com/Tilting2_0/Tilting40.html.)
All of the interaction between Superman, Wonder Woman, Plastic Man (who is just as annoying as he was before he found out he had a child in the non-All Star Universe) and Green Lantern (who is curiously a non-entity) introduces the idea that people outside the immediate Batman family are not happy with his activities and that they are going to have to do something. That confrontation holds promise, if only we ever get to see it.
The rest of the issue is just annoying. Batman proves he is as crazy as we have been led to believe up to now, when he stops a mugging and leaves the would-be muggers to suffer nad perhaps die from their wounds. There's also a three-page interior monologue where Alfred remembers the origin of this All Star Batman. It's more than a trifle disturbing, not so much for the events that birthed Batman--they don't appear too terribly different from the ones we are familiar with. What's disturbing is the language Alfred uses to describe Batman: "And now my DEMON--my black-eyed, brilliant, willful ANGEL--has grown to manhood." And with that note ringing in our ears, Robin discovers Batman's armory, filled with all sorts of nasty pointed deadly weapons. The final scene is an ecstatic Robin pronouncing his judgment on the toys he has found: "Cool."
It's all very disturbing, and not just because it is a twist on the Batman we have had for so very long. These people are not sane, which may be writer Frank Miller's point after all, one he drove home repeatedly in The Dark Knight Returns. Jim Lee's art has its usual flawless beauty, which only exaggerates the disunion between the people and their godlike appearance. I don't know how this All Star Batman could exist as a long-tyerm character, when not even the "good guys" want him around, and if that's the case, I believe that some Elseworld story aong the line has gone down the same road before, just not with Miller's awful intensity.
There are possibilities here for a real study of the madness that is being a super-hero. But between the ridiculous schedule and Miller' over-the-top portrayal, we may never get to see that potential realized.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Comic musings for 9 May
This past week finds the end of a couple of anthology series started up for One Year Later. They had mixed success, and one part of them I liked very much.
Spoilers ho!
Tales of the Unexpected 8 – I’ve long been a fan of the Spectre, but I’ve grown weary of DC bouncing about his human host. I’m not sure if there was an overall plan after Jim Corrigan was allowed to go on to his just reward; even though it made a nice conclusion to the history of Corrigan, it brought the Spectre himself to a complete stop. Of course, this was supposed to be tied into Hal Jordan not really dying, or dying but not really being gone, and a series with Jordan as the host for Spectre had some potential, that just wasn’t met by the actual writing. Short version, nobody has handled the Spectre recently better than John Ostrander.
Just what do you with the most powerful character in the DC Universe inhabiting someone’s body? At least with Ostrander, there was a sort of maturation process for the length of the series, as the reader learned the history of the Spectre as Corrigan began to fully explore and comprehend his possibilities. And there is the potential for some dramatic irony here, as the reader knows more about the Spectre than the host it inhabits, which in turn could add up to unhappy fans since they know that the situation a host may be in could be avoided (and perhaps has been avoided in the past).
David Lapham recognizes the awesome power of the Spectre in his half of Tales of the Unexpected but does nothing with it. After Infinite Crisis, there was a six-issue mini-series about the Spectre’s new host, Crispus Allen. The story in Tales of the Unexpected doesn’t move the arc of the Spectre any further than where the previous story ended. The Spectre must avenge the horrible death of the landlord of a tenement, and nearly every issue is filled with Crispus Allen being appalled at the methods the Spectre uses to deliver his judgment. But the “mystery” part of the story, determining who is responsible for the landlord’s death, moves at a glacial pace. It’s no help that the solution to the mystery is either stunningly obvious or impossible to solve, depending on how you handle such things. This final issue should have been the big reveal, when the murderer is exposed, but instead it’s just a tedious cycle of little reveal and Spectre-ific gorefest.
And when the cycle is complete, we realize that nothing of any importance has really happened; Crispus Allen is just as unhappy as the Spectre’s host as he always has been and neither half of the Spectre has grown towards the other. Crispus can’t control the Spectre and the Spectre won’t be controlled. The last panel sums up the whole story’s futility with the hope that eventually the Spectre can be contained. But it also serves as a reminder that we’ve just spent eight months hoping with very little to show for it.
On the other hand, the back-up story of Doctor 13 was a fun metatextual romp through C- and D-list DC characters and the effect yet another universe-changing storyline has on them. Brian Azzarello finishes it all up nicely as our goofy cast of characters confront the Architects, those people responsible for their displacement from the universe they know and their threatened deaths. In some ways, the one-note characters of this story are more fully rounded than the no-note characters in the Spectre story.
And there really is no surprise that Doctor 13 triumphs over the Architects, using his sole power of disbelief. There is a hint that these characters could show up again, and given the range of possibilities in the new multiverse, I suppose they can. But I’m not sure that they should; to me the moral of Doctor 13’s story is that universe-changing storylines are not necessary in the face of good ideas, even if they are forgotten good ideas. And metatextuality is a short-term gag; I don’t know that an entire series could be written with the characters commenting on the machinations of the writers of their series. The occasional breaking of the fourth wall, like in She-Hulk, seems to be sufficient in the long run. Admittedly, as Countdown continues for the next year, it might be amusing for the uber Monitors, trying to maintain continuity between the parallel universes, to actually meet Doctor 13 who doesn’t believe in them or their universes nor in the very concept of continuity (unless it’s his own personal continuity).
Mystery in Space 8 – Another mixed bag, this time with two interweaving stories that I desperately wish had never been entwined. On the one hand was the Heavy Metal-style Captain Comet story, where the character is literally resurrected with mostly the same powers as before but with some additional twists. Newly named Comet, the character fights the Eternal Light Corporation, an extrapolation of today’s corporate-style megachurches, as they try to take over the space colony where he lives. Jim Starlin writes Comet deftly, going through the natural progression of the “amnesiac hero” trope, first rediscovering who he is, then rediscovering his friends and support, and finally confronting the danger that threatens his home. Captain Comet has always been an underused character, and Starlin uses this series to flesh out his personality as well as to show the potential for Comet or any other space-faring hero in the DC multiverse.
The Weird, on the other hand, may have some potential but spends for too much time talking to himself to be very effective. Because the rebirth of Comet is tied to the rebirth of the Weird, it makes sense that we have some story with the Weird. But for most of the eight issues, the Weird’s story is subject to the worst of Heavy Metal-type science fiction—never-ending internal monologue, two-page spreads with psychedelic art for no really good reason, and general malaise. Unlike the positive arc of Comet, the Weird spends eight issues questioning himself or being misled upon his awakening. Eventually, by the end of the eight issues, Comet and the Weird are able to work together to thwart the Eternal Light Corporation, but Comet is by far the dominant and more interesting character. I would like to see more of him, if he is written in this same vein.
Spoilers ho!
Tales of the Unexpected 8 – I’ve long been a fan of the Spectre, but I’ve grown weary of DC bouncing about his human host. I’m not sure if there was an overall plan after Jim Corrigan was allowed to go on to his just reward; even though it made a nice conclusion to the history of Corrigan, it brought the Spectre himself to a complete stop. Of course, this was supposed to be tied into Hal Jordan not really dying, or dying but not really being gone, and a series with Jordan as the host for Spectre had some potential, that just wasn’t met by the actual writing. Short version, nobody has handled the Spectre recently better than John Ostrander.
Just what do you with the most powerful character in the DC Universe inhabiting someone’s body? At least with Ostrander, there was a sort of maturation process for the length of the series, as the reader learned the history of the Spectre as Corrigan began to fully explore and comprehend his possibilities. And there is the potential for some dramatic irony here, as the reader knows more about the Spectre than the host it inhabits, which in turn could add up to unhappy fans since they know that the situation a host may be in could be avoided (and perhaps has been avoided in the past).
David Lapham recognizes the awesome power of the Spectre in his half of Tales of the Unexpected but does nothing with it. After Infinite Crisis, there was a six-issue mini-series about the Spectre’s new host, Crispus Allen. The story in Tales of the Unexpected doesn’t move the arc of the Spectre any further than where the previous story ended. The Spectre must avenge the horrible death of the landlord of a tenement, and nearly every issue is filled with Crispus Allen being appalled at the methods the Spectre uses to deliver his judgment. But the “mystery” part of the story, determining who is responsible for the landlord’s death, moves at a glacial pace. It’s no help that the solution to the mystery is either stunningly obvious or impossible to solve, depending on how you handle such things. This final issue should have been the big reveal, when the murderer is exposed, but instead it’s just a tedious cycle of little reveal and Spectre-ific gorefest.
And when the cycle is complete, we realize that nothing of any importance has really happened; Crispus Allen is just as unhappy as the Spectre’s host as he always has been and neither half of the Spectre has grown towards the other. Crispus can’t control the Spectre and the Spectre won’t be controlled. The last panel sums up the whole story’s futility with the hope that eventually the Spectre can be contained. But it also serves as a reminder that we’ve just spent eight months hoping with very little to show for it.
On the other hand, the back-up story of Doctor 13 was a fun metatextual romp through C- and D-list DC characters and the effect yet another universe-changing storyline has on them. Brian Azzarello finishes it all up nicely as our goofy cast of characters confront the Architects, those people responsible for their displacement from the universe they know and their threatened deaths. In some ways, the one-note characters of this story are more fully rounded than the no-note characters in the Spectre story.
And there really is no surprise that Doctor 13 triumphs over the Architects, using his sole power of disbelief. There is a hint that these characters could show up again, and given the range of possibilities in the new multiverse, I suppose they can. But I’m not sure that they should; to me the moral of Doctor 13’s story is that universe-changing storylines are not necessary in the face of good ideas, even if they are forgotten good ideas. And metatextuality is a short-term gag; I don’t know that an entire series could be written with the characters commenting on the machinations of the writers of their series. The occasional breaking of the fourth wall, like in She-Hulk, seems to be sufficient in the long run. Admittedly, as Countdown continues for the next year, it might be amusing for the uber Monitors, trying to maintain continuity between the parallel universes, to actually meet Doctor 13 who doesn’t believe in them or their universes nor in the very concept of continuity (unless it’s his own personal continuity).
Mystery in Space 8 – Another mixed bag, this time with two interweaving stories that I desperately wish had never been entwined. On the one hand was the Heavy Metal-style Captain Comet story, where the character is literally resurrected with mostly the same powers as before but with some additional twists. Newly named Comet, the character fights the Eternal Light Corporation, an extrapolation of today’s corporate-style megachurches, as they try to take over the space colony where he lives. Jim Starlin writes Comet deftly, going through the natural progression of the “amnesiac hero” trope, first rediscovering who he is, then rediscovering his friends and support, and finally confronting the danger that threatens his home. Captain Comet has always been an underused character, and Starlin uses this series to flesh out his personality as well as to show the potential for Comet or any other space-faring hero in the DC multiverse.
The Weird, on the other hand, may have some potential but spends for too much time talking to himself to be very effective. Because the rebirth of Comet is tied to the rebirth of the Weird, it makes sense that we have some story with the Weird. But for most of the eight issues, the Weird’s story is subject to the worst of Heavy Metal-type science fiction—never-ending internal monologue, two-page spreads with psychedelic art for no really good reason, and general malaise. Unlike the positive arc of Comet, the Weird spends eight issues questioning himself or being misled upon his awakening. Eventually, by the end of the eight issues, Comet and the Weird are able to work together to thwart the Eternal Light Corporation, but Comet is by far the dominant and more interesting character. I would like to see more of him, if he is written in this same vein.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The Time Machine
Note: this is a book I’ve read for my book group, so I’m going to try to stick to a single topic for this entry.
When my book group selected The Time Machine as our monthly choice, I had trouble remembering if I had actually read it. Sure, I’d seen the George Pal movie and the more recent remake with Guy Pierce, but I honestly couldn’t remember having read it. But Mrs. Speculator and I found it on the shelf, and in it are scribblings in my handwriting, so clearly I read it at some point. Which got me to thinking as I reread it.
I often toss out “classic” as a descriptor of something I’ve read when I’m talking about it. Sometimes, I mean it in the sense of the period it came out of, sometimes called the Golden Age of SF. And more recently, there are books which I would consider to be classic in that they create new genres or change the direction of existing ones. But The Time Machine is truly a classic—so very many things I love about this genre go back to that seminal novel, originally published in 1895. I discovered that my forgetfulness is not based so much on any shortcomings associated with it but because I’ve internalized so many of its conventions and tropes by reading them over and over in other works that their origin is momentarily lost to me.
One thing that leapt out at me is what appears to be the primordial dividing line in SF, Wells versus Verne. Wells spends a good bit of time commenting on the social problems of his own day by extrapolating them out into the future; this is especially true in The Time Machine. But unlike a lot of novels that follow, trying to provide social commentary in an effort to perhaps lift their writing from “the gutter” SF often finds itself becoming, the Time Machine is smooth and adept in those passages, not resorting to clunky ham-handedness. (That’s not fair—some writers may really be trying to give insight into the current human condition; nevertheless, it often ends up clunky and ham-handed despite the best intentions.)
But I rediscovered one convention whose origins I have trouble understanding. And why it continues to be used—my best guess is because the authors who went before did it—escapes me too. I remember reading my very first Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, A Princess of Mars, and being a little bewildered by how the narrator at once simultaneously distances himself from the story being told and yet provides some sort of verisimilitude. In Princess, the narrator is a relation of John Carter who is releasing a manuscript at Carter’s request. In later Burroughs’s stories, the narration is delivered by vision, by some sort of psychic communication that can take place over miles, and via radio. The narrator is rarely the protagonist of the story being told, but is dutifully repeating the story as it was delivered to him by the protagonist. What a strange twisting path to get to the story.
As I reread The Time Machine, I rediscovered this same pattern. The protagonist, who is only described as “The Time Traveller” is not the narrator, but instead it is some unnamed witness to The Time Traveller’s original recitation of his adventures to his friends. In fact, in The Time Machine, most paragraphs begin with quotation marks to indicate that our narrator is quoting The Time Traveller’s story. (Burroughs is able to get away from the repeated quotation marks because he sets his framing device in an introduction that ends with a somewhat formulaic “and here’s his tale.” The quotes throughout the story are still there, just implied rather than explicit.)
At first I thought to myself that The Time Machine is the originator of this device, but the more I thought about it, I recognized that his sort of framing technique is used throughout Victorian literature. In fact, Frankenstein does it as well; the introduction is a series of letters that describe the growing relationship between the narrator, Robert Walton and Victor Frankenstein and ends with Walton recounting Frankenstein’s story. So clearly there is a history with this device, but what does it add to the narrative such that an author would want to include it?
It strikes me that it provides a sort of truthiness to the story, because the narrator is able, if questioned, to say “Hey, it’s not my story; I’m just telling you what I heard.” The narrator backhandedly vouches for the veracity of what is told by denying any claim to knowing its truth. But this line of reasoning has a second implication, that the narrator actually makes no claims to the truth at all; the only truth he admits to is that he was told this story by someone else, and that the narrator is only responsible for the truth of the circumstances under which he first learned the story.
Why does this matter? I suppose in the long run, it really doesn’t. But as someone who is writing about writing in the hopes of eventually doing the original writing that others will write about after, I’m interested in the art of it, the artifice of it. What does such distancing add to the story? Really, most of the story is told in first person by the protagonist (The Time Traveller, John Carter, Frankenstein), so why add the gaudy bits around it to separate the voice from the narrator? Especially when that narrator is clearly a fictional character also?
Perhaps so many levels of misdirection actually help the reader to forget that what is being read is not a factual account but a fiction, at least for the moments that the reader actually has the book in hand. But that seems awfully flimsy—a good first-person narration…heck any good narration has that same effect without resorting to such contrivances.
I’ve actually been thinking about this for a number of days now and I’m afraid I’m going to have think some more about it. I don’t have an answer of the benefits of such a narrative technique. I welcome any opinions to help me puzzle out what, as it turns out, has puzzled me for a long time now.
When my book group selected The Time Machine as our monthly choice, I had trouble remembering if I had actually read it. Sure, I’d seen the George Pal movie and the more recent remake with Guy Pierce, but I honestly couldn’t remember having read it. But Mrs. Speculator and I found it on the shelf, and in it are scribblings in my handwriting, so clearly I read it at some point. Which got me to thinking as I reread it.
I often toss out “classic” as a descriptor of something I’ve read when I’m talking about it. Sometimes, I mean it in the sense of the period it came out of, sometimes called the Golden Age of SF. And more recently, there are books which I would consider to be classic in that they create new genres or change the direction of existing ones. But The Time Machine is truly a classic—so very many things I love about this genre go back to that seminal novel, originally published in 1895. I discovered that my forgetfulness is not based so much on any shortcomings associated with it but because I’ve internalized so many of its conventions and tropes by reading them over and over in other works that their origin is momentarily lost to me.
One thing that leapt out at me is what appears to be the primordial dividing line in SF, Wells versus Verne. Wells spends a good bit of time commenting on the social problems of his own day by extrapolating them out into the future; this is especially true in The Time Machine. But unlike a lot of novels that follow, trying to provide social commentary in an effort to perhaps lift their writing from “the gutter” SF often finds itself becoming, the Time Machine is smooth and adept in those passages, not resorting to clunky ham-handedness. (That’s not fair—some writers may really be trying to give insight into the current human condition; nevertheless, it often ends up clunky and ham-handed despite the best intentions.)
But I rediscovered one convention whose origins I have trouble understanding. And why it continues to be used—my best guess is because the authors who went before did it—escapes me too. I remember reading my very first Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, A Princess of Mars, and being a little bewildered by how the narrator at once simultaneously distances himself from the story being told and yet provides some sort of verisimilitude. In Princess, the narrator is a relation of John Carter who is releasing a manuscript at Carter’s request. In later Burroughs’s stories, the narration is delivered by vision, by some sort of psychic communication that can take place over miles, and via radio. The narrator is rarely the protagonist of the story being told, but is dutifully repeating the story as it was delivered to him by the protagonist. What a strange twisting path to get to the story.
As I reread The Time Machine, I rediscovered this same pattern. The protagonist, who is only described as “The Time Traveller” is not the narrator, but instead it is some unnamed witness to The Time Traveller’s original recitation of his adventures to his friends. In fact, in The Time Machine, most paragraphs begin with quotation marks to indicate that our narrator is quoting The Time Traveller’s story. (Burroughs is able to get away from the repeated quotation marks because he sets his framing device in an introduction that ends with a somewhat formulaic “and here’s his tale.” The quotes throughout the story are still there, just implied rather than explicit.)
At first I thought to myself that The Time Machine is the originator of this device, but the more I thought about it, I recognized that his sort of framing technique is used throughout Victorian literature. In fact, Frankenstein does it as well; the introduction is a series of letters that describe the growing relationship between the narrator, Robert Walton and Victor Frankenstein and ends with Walton recounting Frankenstein’s story. So clearly there is a history with this device, but what does it add to the narrative such that an author would want to include it?
It strikes me that it provides a sort of truthiness to the story, because the narrator is able, if questioned, to say “Hey, it’s not my story; I’m just telling you what I heard.” The narrator backhandedly vouches for the veracity of what is told by denying any claim to knowing its truth. But this line of reasoning has a second implication, that the narrator actually makes no claims to the truth at all; the only truth he admits to is that he was told this story by someone else, and that the narrator is only responsible for the truth of the circumstances under which he first learned the story.
Why does this matter? I suppose in the long run, it really doesn’t. But as someone who is writing about writing in the hopes of eventually doing the original writing that others will write about after, I’m interested in the art of it, the artifice of it. What does such distancing add to the story? Really, most of the story is told in first person by the protagonist (The Time Traveller, John Carter, Frankenstein), so why add the gaudy bits around it to separate the voice from the narrator? Especially when that narrator is clearly a fictional character also?
Perhaps so many levels of misdirection actually help the reader to forget that what is being read is not a factual account but a fiction, at least for the moments that the reader actually has the book in hand. But that seems awfully flimsy—a good first-person narration…heck any good narration has that same effect without resorting to such contrivances.
I’ve actually been thinking about this for a number of days now and I’m afraid I’m going to have think some more about it. I don’t have an answer of the benefits of such a narrative technique. I welcome any opinions to help me puzzle out what, as it turns out, has puzzled me for a long time now.
Hot Fuzz
This past week, Mrs. Speculator and I decided to catch a movie. There were an astonishing range of choices, especially as we are rushing up to Memorial Day and the beginning of the summer movie season. But we both had been intrigued with the notion of Hot Fuzz, from the creators of Shaun of the Dead, and decided it would be our goal for the afternoon.
Some back story is in order. When the future Mrs. Speculator moved in with me, I tried to get her hooked on anything Joss Whedon. We watched some episodes of Firefly together, and she allowed as how she might be mistaken about its worthiness (she thought it had none until we watched it together in order). So, when she and I went to San Diego Comic-con a few years ago, we decided to go to the Serenity panel. We also knew it was going to be packed, so we decided to go to the panel before it in order to get a seat. That panel was Simon Pegg talking about Shaun of the Dead, and during the course of that hour, the movie we had no real interest in became something we really had to see. One of our touchstones with our friends is how much they enjoyed that movie.
Ironically, in our conversations about the Planet Terror half of Grindhouse, the quality and art of Shaun of Dead surfaced again and again as an example of how an homage should really work. And so, when she realized that Hot Fuzz was from the same group of people, it was on the list of films that we had to see.
And, here’s the review—you should see it too. There’s no question that its creators know and love the action movie genre. But their love for that kind of movie does not permit them to make just another in the near-endless train of them. Hot Fuzz takes some time to establish its credentials as the creation of true fans of the genre, then sets off on its own to imitate and poke fun at its most ridiculous conventions. And because of the breadth and depth of their knowledge, their barbs are dead on at every turn.
Nicholas Angel is a dedicated and decorated London officer whose astonishing law enforcement skills are embarrassing his commanders since no one can keep up with his prodigious pace. So those same commanders transfer him to the sleepy village of Sandford, where nothing ever really seems to happen outside of the escape of the village mascot, a swan. And before you can say Bad Boys 2, Angel is bored with the idyllic and pastoral life, as well as stunned by his co-workers’ complacency in the face of what he is certain is not so much a string of horrific accidents but a series of murders. But as all the important citizens of Sandford, including his boss, tell him repeatedly, there aren’t any murders in Sandford. In fact, it regularly wins “village of the year”; how can there be murders in the village of the year?
Unlike the way he is portrayed in the commercials, Angel is not so much gung-ho as he is terribly efficient at his job. He loses his girlfriend because she thinks he cannot turn the job off, which if you think about it some is actually a quality most people would like to see in their law enforcement. But he is essentially a good man. His foil in Hot Fuzz, Danny, is played by his cohort from Spaced and Shaun of the Dead, Nick Frost. It’s obvious these two have spent many hours acting together, and their relationship both on the job and off doesn’t feel nearly so forced as the buddy movies their scenes together play up. And their interaction constantly points out the bizarre relationships those buddies have in those movies. Without much twisting, most of Danny’s lines to Angel can be read as expressing something more than camaraderie and fellow-feeling for people working in the same dangerous line. But Hot Fuzz also doesn’t beat you over the head with these lines. It is a British movie after all, so when the humor is not over the top (and it does get there in the action sequences), the wit is incredibly dry and usually verbal.
The last third of the film is in fact a long action sequence, with jump cuts and flying bodies and hard-driving techno soundtrack. But the throttle is fully open for the homage to send up what I’m sure is scene after scene from movies I have never seen. A constant reference is made to a scene from Point Break including Danny playing it for Angel as he says that he’s sure that’s what it really means to be a cop. So of course, eventually the scene is replayed with Danny in the starring role, and despite its heavy-handed foreshadowing, it is still laugh-out-loud funny. I chose to read this as a winking reference to the scenes in those action movies, where you know a certain scene is going to happen and it usually comes off pretty clunky. Hot Fuzz is that good a film; it takes the clunky and makes it funny.
Not since Schwarzenegger’s The Last Action Hero has there been a movie so well versed in the action genre and so able to make fun of it…while still producing a fine film in its own right. And The Last Action Hero makes a nice touchstone for Hot Fuzz; given the differences in comedy in the US and UK; both films have the right blend of homage and action, and both of them have laugh out loud scenes. But they come from different traditions—The Last Action Hero is American and so has to eventually play the comedy and action over the top, while Hot Fuzz is British and more cerebral in its picking at its antecedents. And while there is violence, the pay-off is not in the gory destruction of world-threatening malefactors, but in the ridiculous come-uppance of misguided do-gooders.
Pegg and co-writer Edgar Wright hit the right notes over and over again. I'm sure that as an American watching a British movie, I'm missing some of the in-jokes, but ultimately, that just doesn't matter. Both for its wry observations of what is traditionally an American genre and for its own merits, Hot Fuzz is a movie even moderate fans of action movies should take the effort to see.
Some back story is in order. When the future Mrs. Speculator moved in with me, I tried to get her hooked on anything Joss Whedon. We watched some episodes of Firefly together, and she allowed as how she might be mistaken about its worthiness (she thought it had none until we watched it together in order). So, when she and I went to San Diego Comic-con a few years ago, we decided to go to the Serenity panel. We also knew it was going to be packed, so we decided to go to the panel before it in order to get a seat. That panel was Simon Pegg talking about Shaun of the Dead, and during the course of that hour, the movie we had no real interest in became something we really had to see. One of our touchstones with our friends is how much they enjoyed that movie.
Ironically, in our conversations about the Planet Terror half of Grindhouse, the quality and art of Shaun of Dead surfaced again and again as an example of how an homage should really work. And so, when she realized that Hot Fuzz was from the same group of people, it was on the list of films that we had to see.
And, here’s the review—you should see it too. There’s no question that its creators know and love the action movie genre. But their love for that kind of movie does not permit them to make just another in the near-endless train of them. Hot Fuzz takes some time to establish its credentials as the creation of true fans of the genre, then sets off on its own to imitate and poke fun at its most ridiculous conventions. And because of the breadth and depth of their knowledge, their barbs are dead on at every turn.
Nicholas Angel is a dedicated and decorated London officer whose astonishing law enforcement skills are embarrassing his commanders since no one can keep up with his prodigious pace. So those same commanders transfer him to the sleepy village of Sandford, where nothing ever really seems to happen outside of the escape of the village mascot, a swan. And before you can say Bad Boys 2, Angel is bored with the idyllic and pastoral life, as well as stunned by his co-workers’ complacency in the face of what he is certain is not so much a string of horrific accidents but a series of murders. But as all the important citizens of Sandford, including his boss, tell him repeatedly, there aren’t any murders in Sandford. In fact, it regularly wins “village of the year”; how can there be murders in the village of the year?
Unlike the way he is portrayed in the commercials, Angel is not so much gung-ho as he is terribly efficient at his job. He loses his girlfriend because she thinks he cannot turn the job off, which if you think about it some is actually a quality most people would like to see in their law enforcement. But he is essentially a good man. His foil in Hot Fuzz, Danny, is played by his cohort from Spaced and Shaun of the Dead, Nick Frost. It’s obvious these two have spent many hours acting together, and their relationship both on the job and off doesn’t feel nearly so forced as the buddy movies their scenes together play up. And their interaction constantly points out the bizarre relationships those buddies have in those movies. Without much twisting, most of Danny’s lines to Angel can be read as expressing something more than camaraderie and fellow-feeling for people working in the same dangerous line. But Hot Fuzz also doesn’t beat you over the head with these lines. It is a British movie after all, so when the humor is not over the top (and it does get there in the action sequences), the wit is incredibly dry and usually verbal.
The last third of the film is in fact a long action sequence, with jump cuts and flying bodies and hard-driving techno soundtrack. But the throttle is fully open for the homage to send up what I’m sure is scene after scene from movies I have never seen. A constant reference is made to a scene from Point Break including Danny playing it for Angel as he says that he’s sure that’s what it really means to be a cop. So of course, eventually the scene is replayed with Danny in the starring role, and despite its heavy-handed foreshadowing, it is still laugh-out-loud funny. I chose to read this as a winking reference to the scenes in those action movies, where you know a certain scene is going to happen and it usually comes off pretty clunky. Hot Fuzz is that good a film; it takes the clunky and makes it funny.
Not since Schwarzenegger’s The Last Action Hero has there been a movie so well versed in the action genre and so able to make fun of it…while still producing a fine film in its own right. And The Last Action Hero makes a nice touchstone for Hot Fuzz; given the differences in comedy in the US and UK; both films have the right blend of homage and action, and both of them have laugh out loud scenes. But they come from different traditions—The Last Action Hero is American and so has to eventually play the comedy and action over the top, while Hot Fuzz is British and more cerebral in its picking at its antecedents. And while there is violence, the pay-off is not in the gory destruction of world-threatening malefactors, but in the ridiculous come-uppance of misguided do-gooders.
Pegg and co-writer Edgar Wright hit the right notes over and over again. I'm sure that as an American watching a British movie, I'm missing some of the in-jokes, but ultimately, that just doesn't matter. Both for its wry observations of what is traditionally an American genre and for its own merits, Hot Fuzz is a movie even moderate fans of action movies should take the effort to see.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Comic musings for 2 May
If you've been waiting for me to post my reviews, I apologize on two counts--first, I've been pretty since last Friday and just haven't felt much like getting out of bed. And second, now that I am putting them together, I really only want to review one title. And it ain't good.
Spoilers ho!
Teen Titans 46 -- So, for months, the Titans East storyline has been hyped to the gills. A sort of Teen Titans Crime Syndicate, teen supervillains gathered together to fight their archnemeses in the Titans. Geoff Johns's swansong as he leaves the title.
So the build-up to it was okay, actually Wolfman-esque in some ways. A few panels per issue, a dark figure gathers up unhappy teens with super-powers, or those who have already decided to make themselves into villains. And they would call themselves Titans East, because there's a name to punch fear into the heart of all heroes and law-abiding people everywhere.
And that's where we run into the first roadblock--who exactly are the archnemeses to the Titans, some of whom have been Titans for less than three issues? Miss Martian? Kid Devil? Soe praise is due here--the new characters created for this fight are ingenious and promising---Sun Girl and Kid Crusader. But we know absolutely nothing about them except that they appear able to handle some Titans...about whom we also know nothing. Sun Girl has one schtick, she has fire. But Miss Martian should have mental powers too, yes? That's how J'onn always gets away from hsi fire-based foes.... And forcing Kid Crusader to take on the powers of Kid Devil was a brilliant twist in the story, but nothing happened with it and it was over and done quickly, just long enough for us to see the heroic nature of Kid Devil again. Nothing new, really, just a character as a plot device.
So, Wonder Girl gets to fight Match, the unfortunately named clone of the recently deceased Superboy. He's pretty much a Bizarro Superboy, adn they are only interesting when they fight their originals. Bizarro doesn't wander around looking to pick a fight with Wonder Woman, though I bet Gail Simone could make it interesting. Flash (who spends a lot of time trying not to be Kid Flash and generally coming off a little bit as a jerk) versus Inertia, which is at least something we have seen in his own comics. And of course Robin gets to fight the drugged Batgirl, in a move that had to be set up across a number of other titles and made very little sense as she was played totally out of character. And for what? The big pay-off of Robin getting her the antidote within minutes of the first round of fighting two issues ago?
Not that any of this should have matterd, because Nightwing and Donna Troy show up to fight also. Nightwing is a great leader and he can go toe-to-toe with Deathstroke all the time. But you give him 14 super-powered allies and he can't end the fight in less than ten seconds? What kind of leadership is that?
And why--tons of build-up and tons of hype, but for what? Wonderful Geoff Johns final-page reveal last issue, the Tians coming together to fight for each other. What can Deathstroke possibly hope to accomplish? Some arcane plot by Deathstroke to make sure his children are loved? He can't love them the way they should be loved, so he threatens their lives so the Titans will love them more? Folks, that's just exhibit A in bad writing. As we have been told, over and over, the Titans are family. It's not forced on them; they choose to commit to their relationship to the team and each other. Deathstroke didn't have to do *anything* and Joey and Rose would be considered family. Heck, Joey already *is* family; he died for the Titans. And this is all revealed by smarmy first-person dialogue over the course of this issue, with no hints at all before now.
I'm willing to believe there may have been some problems in the handing-off of writing chores; Adam Beechen is taking over for Geoff Johns and they shared the credit for this story. But a good editor would have seen this ocming and fixed the flaws.
And if this weren't bad enough, the art for this issue is a disaster. Figures are horribly out of proportion throughout. In some panels, it appears that characters are travelling through gravity fields, with half of their bodies in extra gees while half in free fall. And this was supposed to be the crowning story for the Titans in the One Year Later--everything was coming to this. The art and story are just horrific. This could end up being the worst comic of the year.
Some thoughts
I'm dropping Superman Confidential and Batman Confidential from my pull-list. I really can't get past the Tim Sale art in Superman Confidential. I've never liked his work, and it is too hard for me to get through whatever he is doing to appreciate the story. And the palette choices are just weird. Even the supplementary art he has been doing for Heroes uses more colors than he has got going in his ongoing comic stuff. And I just can't get past the idea of a story told from the point-of-view of a rock. And it's not a particularly good story., even from a rock.
As for Batman Confidential, I'm saddened that they cancelled Legends of the Dark Knight for this. There's nothign really bad about this that makes me just despise it, but then again, there is nothing really great about it that makes me want to read it every month.
Now I recognize I will now be missing out on the back-story of the retconned Superman and Batman, bu I reckon I'm just going to have to live with that loss. Good editors will take care of their readers by providing enough information to catch us up.
If anyone would like to tell me why I should like the art of Tim Sale, please let me know what I am missing.
Secondly, my brilliant idea for a new series in the post-52 universe appears to be taken. One of the focal points of the weekly series is that there is now a multiverse made up of 52 worlds. Madame Xanadu has been kinda bored lately, so I thought a great series could be created using the motif of Madame Xanadu reading/using a deck of cards as a story-telling device about the different worlds of the multiverse. See, 52 cards...52 worlds? But if you see the cover of the first issue of the newly announced Booster Gold series, you'll see Booster exploding forth from...a pile of playing cards with alternate versions of the heroes we know (http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/WAcker/Week52/booster.html). I'm thinking this is going to be a series sort of like Marvel's Exiles. Well, I'm hoping it is. It would be a great way to explore the new multiverse. And if anyone is interested in an anthology series starring Madame Xanadu, you saw it here first.
Spoilers ho!
Teen Titans 46 -- So, for months, the Titans East storyline has been hyped to the gills. A sort of Teen Titans Crime Syndicate, teen supervillains gathered together to fight their archnemeses in the Titans. Geoff Johns's swansong as he leaves the title.
So the build-up to it was okay, actually Wolfman-esque in some ways. A few panels per issue, a dark figure gathers up unhappy teens with super-powers, or those who have already decided to make themselves into villains. And they would call themselves Titans East, because there's a name to punch fear into the heart of all heroes and law-abiding people everywhere.
And that's where we run into the first roadblock--who exactly are the archnemeses to the Titans, some of whom have been Titans for less than three issues? Miss Martian? Kid Devil? Soe praise is due here--the new characters created for this fight are ingenious and promising---Sun Girl and Kid Crusader. But we know absolutely nothing about them except that they appear able to handle some Titans...about whom we also know nothing. Sun Girl has one schtick, she has fire. But Miss Martian should have mental powers too, yes? That's how J'onn always gets away from hsi fire-based foes.... And forcing Kid Crusader to take on the powers of Kid Devil was a brilliant twist in the story, but nothing happened with it and it was over and done quickly, just long enough for us to see the heroic nature of Kid Devil again. Nothing new, really, just a character as a plot device.
So, Wonder Girl gets to fight Match, the unfortunately named clone of the recently deceased Superboy. He's pretty much a Bizarro Superboy, adn they are only interesting when they fight their originals. Bizarro doesn't wander around looking to pick a fight with Wonder Woman, though I bet Gail Simone could make it interesting. Flash (who spends a lot of time trying not to be Kid Flash and generally coming off a little bit as a jerk) versus Inertia, which is at least something we have seen in his own comics. And of course Robin gets to fight the drugged Batgirl, in a move that had to be set up across a number of other titles and made very little sense as she was played totally out of character. And for what? The big pay-off of Robin getting her the antidote within minutes of the first round of fighting two issues ago?
Not that any of this should have matterd, because Nightwing and Donna Troy show up to fight also. Nightwing is a great leader and he can go toe-to-toe with Deathstroke all the time. But you give him 14 super-powered allies and he can't end the fight in less than ten seconds? What kind of leadership is that?
And why--tons of build-up and tons of hype, but for what? Wonderful Geoff Johns final-page reveal last issue, the Tians coming together to fight for each other. What can Deathstroke possibly hope to accomplish? Some arcane plot by Deathstroke to make sure his children are loved? He can't love them the way they should be loved, so he threatens their lives so the Titans will love them more? Folks, that's just exhibit A in bad writing. As we have been told, over and over, the Titans are family. It's not forced on them; they choose to commit to their relationship to the team and each other. Deathstroke didn't have to do *anything* and Joey and Rose would be considered family. Heck, Joey already *is* family; he died for the Titans. And this is all revealed by smarmy first-person dialogue over the course of this issue, with no hints at all before now.
I'm willing to believe there may have been some problems in the handing-off of writing chores; Adam Beechen is taking over for Geoff Johns and they shared the credit for this story. But a good editor would have seen this ocming and fixed the flaws.
And if this weren't bad enough, the art for this issue is a disaster. Figures are horribly out of proportion throughout. In some panels, it appears that characters are travelling through gravity fields, with half of their bodies in extra gees while half in free fall. And this was supposed to be the crowning story for the Titans in the One Year Later--everything was coming to this. The art and story are just horrific. This could end up being the worst comic of the year.
Some thoughts
I'm dropping Superman Confidential and Batman Confidential from my pull-list. I really can't get past the Tim Sale art in Superman Confidential. I've never liked his work, and it is too hard for me to get through whatever he is doing to appreciate the story. And the palette choices are just weird. Even the supplementary art he has been doing for Heroes uses more colors than he has got going in his ongoing comic stuff. And I just can't get past the idea of a story told from the point-of-view of a rock. And it's not a particularly good story., even from a rock.
As for Batman Confidential, I'm saddened that they cancelled Legends of the Dark Knight for this. There's nothign really bad about this that makes me just despise it, but then again, there is nothing really great about it that makes me want to read it every month.
Now I recognize I will now be missing out on the back-story of the retconned Superman and Batman, bu I reckon I'm just going to have to live with that loss. Good editors will take care of their readers by providing enough information to catch us up.
If anyone would like to tell me why I should like the art of Tim Sale, please let me know what I am missing.
Secondly, my brilliant idea for a new series in the post-52 universe appears to be taken. One of the focal points of the weekly series is that there is now a multiverse made up of 52 worlds. Madame Xanadu has been kinda bored lately, so I thought a great series could be created using the motif of Madame Xanadu reading/using a deck of cards as a story-telling device about the different worlds of the multiverse. See, 52 cards...52 worlds? But if you see the cover of the first issue of the newly announced Booster Gold series, you'll see Booster exploding forth from...a pile of playing cards with alternate versions of the heroes we know (http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/WAcker/Week52/booster.html). I'm thinking this is going to be a series sort of like Marvel's Exiles. Well, I'm hoping it is. It would be a great way to explore the new multiverse. And if anyone is interested in an anthology series starring Madame Xanadu, you saw it here first.
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