Four Colour Blog

New Post

2009-03-18T20:37:00.002-03:00

Hey, it's a new post.

Really this is me focusing more on a chance to practice writing reviews because I've been inspired to do so, and I'm sure will not interest you all that much. Still, I'll also use this to say what's going on with me too. Right now, I'm working at the ALC again, teaching Koreans English. I always find English teaching rewarding and while I enjoy the work, I need more hours. Until I get them, I'll be working at the Gas Station part time, so I'll be pretty busy for the next while.

Also I saw Coraline last weekend. Man, the new 3-D they're using these day looks impressive. They even used 3D on the previews, which looked awesome, even when the movies looked awful. Sure that live action movie about live-action Guinea Pigs who fight crime looks awful, but in an eye-popping kind of way.

Anyway, here's my comic review for the day:

Wonder Man: My Fair Super-Hero

Me, I’m a guy who loves a good romantic comedy. Of course, when people think romantic comedy they often think chick flicks in the vein of Pretty Woman or My Best Friend’s Wedding or every other Julia Roberts movie (I’m sure that’s an unfair hyperbole but I’m sticking with it). Me, I love romantic comedies like the ironic yet endearing “Princess Bride”, or the odd “the Trouble with Harry”. You know, ones that are really quite genuinely sweet, but manage to do it with a warped sense of humour. Wonder Man: My Fair Super-Hero certainly had a lot of potential: a great comedic talent in Peter David and a plot taken directly from the classic musical My Fair Lady. There was a lot of potential, but in the end, it doesn’t seem to fit together very well.

Wonder Man, for those who don’t know, was a formerly (and very briefly) a super-villain who was suppose to destroy the Avengers by posing as a hero, but ends up being a real hero sacrificing his own life to save them (or so he thought). Do to the nature of his powers he would later return from the grave… several times, but that’s another story. He eventually uses his powers to become a Hollywood superstar as well as a hero. In this tale, Wonder Man is discussing the nature of good and evil with a documentarian. The documentarian thinks that some people are just born evil while Wonder Man thinks that even his most nasty foes are capable of rehabilitation. Suddenly, another Hollywood bigwig is attacked by a berserker martial artist calling herself Ladykiller. Wonder Man takes her out handily enough (though she does prove to be surprisingly tough) and the bet is set: Wonder Man vows to turn Ladykiller into a super-heroine his upcoming documentary.

As I said, there is a lot of potential her, and the mini-series certainly hints at a lot of interesting subjects but never deals with them in any satisfying way. It certainly discusses the idea of whether what Wonder Man is doing is immoral trying to force rehabilitation (in a manner not dissimilar to brainwashing) but it sort of feels like when characters talk about it the discussions they have never really affect the characters actions too much, almost like the discussions are happening outside the plot. I suppose it does effect a decision that Wonder Man makes at the beginning of chapter four, but even if the conversations weren’t there his decision wouldn’t feel strange or out of place.

The villains are also pretty weak and do surprisingly little in the story. They have powers but the nature of those powers are never fully explained (so one guy can turn his hands into stone and that other guy can clap at people to death?) and it doesn’t even seem to matter that they have them because they never confront the hero and they don’t actually effect the plot except for their leader. Perhaps Peter has plans for the characters later on down the line but they get little to do here. There’s also a noticeable continuity error and while I hate to be the guy who whines for every inconsistency but it really does take me out of the plot when a character that’s supposed to be dead shows up at a part to hang out. This I blame on the editor who could have just gotten the creators to make a few quick changes and it would have been fine. Just bugs me is all.

The romance itself also holds promise but when the characters do fall in love it doesn’t really feel earned (possibly true of My Fair Lady as well, but I haven’t seen it, only the many spoofs of it.) The explanation of why the romance blossoms is plausible and even a little deliciously dark (Stockholm Syndrome) but it doesn’t feel organic, even with Ladykiller opening up about her painful past. The final act with Ladykiller’s “Coming Out” had the potential to be very charming but it all feels sort of rushed towards the end, despite the fact that the story doesn’t really feel tight.

I’m also not very fond of the art by Andrew Currie, with the characters all looking a little awkward. I can’t put my finger on exactly why but the face structures seem a little off to me. The one character he gets dead on is the Beast, who plays a major role in the story. He decides to give Beast a cartoony look that serves the character quite well. In fact, while I’m not fond of this particular book, I’d love to see Currie on a funny animal book like Uncle Scrooge, Peter Porker, Spider-Ham or Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew. I think his animated styled art is much more impressive than his straight forward super-hero art. The art issue is only made worse by an artist fill-in in the middle of the book by Todd Nauck. Interestingly, I like his art on this book a bit better except for his Beast, who looks a little wrong (though few artists other than Frank Quitely can do Beast’s feline look justice).

I know it sounds like I’m pissing all over this book, but I’m not trying to. The book isn’t bad, but there’s a lot of wasted potential. The book feels rather pedestrian, which is a shame because I know that Peter David is capable of mixing action, comedy and character drama very well in other works, like "Hulk" and "Fallen Angel". And using a classic film’s plot for a super-hero/Hollywood actor seems like a good idea and I would like to see Peter David try it again, but I really want there to be something a little more solid than this production.

Comics and... that's about it

2007-08-29T02:02:00.000-03:00

Waw, I think for once I have two many comics right now. I certainly have enough to read at least two chapters a night, which I think is pretty cool. Anyway, I read three trades recently of varying quality.

First was Fun Home, which was a very well-written autobiography about the writer/artists relationship with her somewhat dysfunctional family, particularly her father. And not wacky dysfunctional, though not quite depressing dysfunctional. The writer paints a vivid picture of her life with her father, who seemed to be more interested in preserving their house than raising children. The narrator explains that he is now dead in what could have either been an accident or a suicide. There's no way to be certain and evidence really points toward accident, but a suicide is not out of the question since father had been somewhat ostracized by the community for being gay and supposedly having trysts with teenagers (actual evidence really points to him seeing guys in their twenties, and I don't remember it mentioned that he was actually with any teenagers).

The story jumps around in time a lot, but not in a "Hey look, I'm creative" way. It's really more of a "I'm writing based on what I know about my father and it doesn't work in a linear manner" sort of way. The father is really an enigma despite having so much character details given. This is because everyone in this world is complicated. Jerks aren't always jerks, nice people aren't always nice people. The father seemed insensitive in many ways, but he seemed to care about his family in others. But in what way he cared is unsure. There are times he seems shallow and times he seems sincere. He (and the author) always seem to bear bored expressions and I think the author is trying to show that despite some issues she has with her father, they're quite alike (especailly when they can both freely talk to each other about being gay).

Thankfully, this isn't a woe-is-me story, but the fact that the author seems to make book references in every chapter seems mildly pretentious (and I think the author sort of sees herself that way, though she sees even more annoying people who fix their own views and make half-assed assumptions about literary subtext), though it works logically and well in the context of the story, since these are books that shaped her and how she looks at the world. It's an art student thing I guess. Still, while I understand what she's saying when comparing her father to Dedalius, it strikes me as a bit overwrought. Still this is a great book and a very well told life story. But I wouldn't put it at the level of Lious Riel or Maus as a powerfully told comic biography.

Fantastic Four: Books of Doom was a big disappointment, especially after reading volume one of Sleeper a few weeks prior. In fact it didn't need the Fantastic Four title at all seeing as how the FF never show up in any signifigant way (only a few scenes with Reed Richards). The book is supposed to be the life story of the most accomplished, power and beloved tyrant ever, Dr. Doom, but Doom's rise to power is surprisingly boring. It doesn't help that the artist has a rather bland style for this supposedly grandiose story. The writer, Ed Brubaker, has done much better stuff, so I was expecting something... more poetic. This is really sort of criminal

I also get the feeling that Doom was handed a bit too much in this book. He always always struck me as more of a self-made villain rather than someone who got his power because his mother was a sorceress and some monks thought he had a destiny because he face blowed up. Now, the fact that Doom sees flawless in this story makes sense, due to the story's end, but he should also come off as more arrogant (which is one of his few flaws). His final conquest is OK but it really adds nothing new to the character. The big twist at the end seems sort of pointless as well and in no way really effects the nature of the story.

Lastly, the latest volume of Walking Dead was pretty good, but the torture part of the story rivaled Hostel in terms of unpleasantness. I find Robert Kirkman's story-telling is good, but I think that he's even better at making the reader excited about the next story. He's good with the cliffhangers and the setting up interesting subplots. It's not the execution is bad or even a let down in anyway, they just don't pack the same punch as the set ups (though the torture scene was pretty harrowing. Penis violence, even off panel, is owie). Still, great book. Reads a little too quickly though.

Light hand and get away

2007-08-22T03:28:00.000-03:00

We messed around with fireworks the other day. F\It was fun far a while, but then we sort of got stuck with some of the less fun explosives that sort of fly off and make a small bang. The best ones are the sticks. You light them and hold them and like wands of power they release colourful fireworks. They're fun to aim at other people's cars (I didn't but two of the people in attendance sort of waged wars). There was also a cool small spinny-thing that flies up into the sky and disappears. And it's a crime that there was only one (but I got to use it)

Other than that, there isn't too much going on at the moment. My roommate is spending all of his free time locked in his room studying Japanese in order to pass this big test. Unfortunately, he's already ben told that there's no way he can pass at this point. He was a major in university, but there's a big difference between that and the real world. Hopefully, he sticks around for a little while if (or when) he fails, but on the plus side, he is translating manga for me (working on the first volume of Neuro at the moment).

Hope things are going well over there. Send you another quick message later.

X-Men: Mutant Genesis

2007-08-19T10:46:00.000-03:00

Ah, memories. I got my roommate to get me this book when he was in Sapporo... mostly because the store in Sapporo had slim pickens in terms of comics. Still while this comic is not terribly good, I'm glad I read it because it contains X-Men #1 (the 1990's one) which is the comic that got me into comics. It wasn't the first comic that I thought was really good, but I was attracted to the cool looking characters... and that's about it. A friend (name Francis, but not pronounced how you think it is) showed it too me (he bought several copies because of the infamous variant cover pictured below, which when put together forms a nifty cover.

But rereading it, it certainly isn't really good. Oh, the art by Jim Lee is pitch perfect and his costume designs are among the best loved (why didn't the Jim Lee Cyclops and Storm costumes show up in the X-Men Legend games?) and the man draws good super-action. But the writing is painful. It contained (at the time) what was supposed to be long time writer Chris Claremont's last story arc, but it really didn't work out all that well. There are some interesting moments but they are ruined by over-the-top wordiness. Way too much talking and posturing and characters talking about how complex and interesting they are. This makes them seem shallow and boring. I certainly have fond memories of this one but it doesn't hold up.

This story focuses on Magneto (who was a good guy only short time ago), who finds out that he was only a good guy because he was brainwashed as part of a chain of events that sounds too to be said out loud (it involves Magneto being turned into a baby, and somehow comedy was not intended). Anyhoo, he does the same thing to half the X-Men and the two halves fight and they eventually snap out of it (way too easily, by the way. Must be a crappy brainwashing machine) and I'm just bored by the whole affair. I know this is coming from a comic fan but no one can possibly talk that much whilst fighting or flying a short distance.

The story after, however, co-written by John Byrne and Jim Lee (and I think Scott Lodbell fits in there too somewhere) is a lot more fun. It too is flawed, but it's like growing up with a so-so movie. While it doesn't age well, it still pushes certain buttons. The dialog is less full of itself and more dumb action movie, the fight scenes are just plain fun, the twists are fun, the villains are badass and there's a McGuffin. You'd be surprised what a positive effect a McGuffin can have in your story if you play your hand right.

Basically, this story has the first appearance of Omega Red, who teams Matsuo, an evil Upstart (on evil gang that makes a sport of starting wars and wants to see whose manipulations can produce the highest body count) and the Fenris twins (mutant children of an evil Nazi who happens to be a Captain America villain. I swear there's like two degrees of separation in the Marvel Universe tops) to find something called the C-Synthesizer so they can... do something. Something to do with Omega Red's death factor (people around him die if they hang around him for a few minutes) but I don't remember or care to look up the details. This one got my attention for the cool character designs.

I'm sort of sad this book doesn't have the Mojo story that happens right after it. Mojo (an emperor of a TV-obsessed universe) seemed like a good villain when I was young but now he seems silly. Still, I think if he was retooled as an Fantastic Four villain he'd be better (even though they've had some of their best stories their, I never really liked the idea of the X-Men in space). Still, this little trip down memory lane was an eye opening read and an interesting little peak into my childhood. And it held up better than the Ewoks movie I was always watching as a kid.

She Touched Me in a Special Way

2007-08-15T10:34:00.000-03:00

Hey I got a girl's number recently. It's quite sweet story. I was riding my bike across the street when I saw her. She was in her car. And when I saw her, I was struck.

By her car.

Hard.

Luckily I was completely fine, but still we called the police in to make sure everything was cool. We exchanged numbers so I could contact her in case something came up. Too bad she already had a boyfriend (or a brother) and doesn't speak English. She seemed sweet.

The next day (and apparently she works in Posful, the building I work in) she brought me some sweet mini-croissants and a sports drink. People tend to give gifts for things like this. Perhaps I've struck a goldmine. A painful, painful goldmine. OK, maybe not. But hey, free Pocari Sweat.

I love telling this story. Don't want to tell my Mom though. She going to get pissed that I wasn't wearing a helmet. People just don't seem to wear them here, so I don't want to offend anybody.

Eyes Wide Shut

2007-08-13T11:20:00.000-03:00

Eyes Wide Shut is one of those movies that everyone was talking about at the time, yet no one was really talking about the film itself. Like Angel Heart* and Disclosure** people were more interested in talking about behind the scenes crap and "social issues" than talk about the film itself. I had heard a lot about it but not too much about it's real content. When that happens, I start to think that the film is in fact contentless, like many of Tom Cruise's films (has anyone had the misfortune of seeing cocktail? It's like events are occurring but somehow nothing is happening).

Luckily, I was wrong. I mean, I know I like Stanley Kubrick, but I was afraid that I would be bored to tears, seeing as how so many "erotic thrillers" seem to be boring as sin and surprisingly unerotic. I didn't find this film too erotic, but I found it too be smart and engaging, though a bit frustrating. I don't know why. It's not because there are unanswered questions, because that is in fact the film's strength. It is not the acting (though that's nothing special). I guess it's that the events after the night feel a bit... underwhelming after the night.

See this film is split into two parts: one night and the following day. The night half the starts the film is almost a dreamlike world, a sort of twilight between asleep and awake. It's an odyssey and the main character played by Cruise starts traveling down a strange sexual road. It begins when his wife (stoned to the gills, if that's possible) admits that she almost threw everything for one night of passion with a navy guy (if he were to offer). The film's performances didn't grab me too much except for that one scene, which I thought was very powerful and sort of hypnotic (even Tom looks hypno-zonked). It started out the usual uninteresting "frustrated couple fighting" scene and went somewhere rather interesting. The way she admits that the fact that her wanted to cheat on him made her realize how much she treasured him was an interesting angle.

Anyhoo, before he can react to the bombshell, Dr. Bill Harford (Tom's character) is called to check on a patient who just died. Bill begins his journey, deciding to just sort of walk around, letting things happen to him. He never seems to initiate anything... at first. There are two interesting things about Dr. Harford. One is that he seems to justify anything he does by saying "I'm a doctor". It's a bit of a joke and while Roger Ebert says that he seems to be trying to show he exists with it, I see it as Harford naively thinking that being a doctor acts as some sort of warrant to do what he want. He really treats it like a skeleton key, and it actually works, even when it shouldn't (like at a costume shop)

The other thing is that almost every character reacts to him sexually. My guess is that Harford's character has some invisible sexual aura that he emits and doesn't seem to know about (but has had it long enough that he's used to the reactions he gets). To my recollection, he never actually flat out says no to any woman (or man) who shows interest, even when they're going far with their flirtation. Still, Harford spends the whole movie unlaid.

Anyway, Harford spends the rest of the night sort of walking no where in particular and getting into tiny adventures until a friend tells him about a weird kinky place he plays piano for. He ends up sneaking his way in, and finds a strange sexual underworld. Not evil or anything, just a bit decadent and strange,with a sense of ritual and almost religious significance. Eventually, he's caught, but before he's punished he finds himself spared (from what?) in another strange turn of events.

The second half of the movie is far less dreamlike and is sort of about the harsh light of day, as Harford investigates what happened. It's still good and a logical following thematically and plot wise, but I dunno, I just got the feeling that after the intriguing midpoint show stopper in the mansion, the rest seemed less intriguing. I do like how the events of the previous night has two theories behind it and both seem plausible (is it some crazy cult, or some boys club? Are they murderous or just cowards who are into smoke and mirrors? Are they Illuminati or Skull and Bones), but I feel that I wasn't as drawn in anymore.

Still, a much better movie that I expected after all the hub-bub.

* A good but flawed film
** Which I haven't seen but since it has Demi Moore and Michael Douglas it was probably shit. I'm not commenting on their acting ability, I'm just saying they tend to star in shitty movies. Also, there's something about Douglas that makes me want to keep hitting him and never stop.

A Title

2007-08-12T11:27:00.000-03:00

I haven't really said anything lately, but things have indeed happen. We're in the middle of a heat wave over here and it's driving me nuts. And I hate being driven nuts.

I got a new roommate who despite being a goth is a rather nice guy. He seems a little to nervous at times and seems to think that I can answer his questions (I'm not terribly smart, guy). Though I certainly am not interested in the Gothy stuff he likes, he seems interested in my comics, so as you can assume, I'm happy to oblige. We actually have two new coworkers and he also seems like a nice guy, but I'm getting the impression that NOVA will soon be run by nerds. That's because my current boss will be leaving rather soon (in September) and we'll be without a true boss figure for a while. Frankly, that seems a little strange since I don't see anyone there being true leadership material. No offense to my coworkers, of course.

I'm also still contemplating what I'm going to do once my year is up. Shall I go back to university to get a masters in TESL. Perhaps I'll tech somewhere in Europe. Perhaps I'll stay in Japan. I really don't know, and I really should decide sometime soon. I. JUST. DON'T. KNOW.

In all honesty, I'm in a bit of a rut, so I'm going to try to type some random stuff in this thing at least every other night. I'll probably keep things short though. Maybe not this short but still... short. I'll write again soon. (It's too hot to do anything that isn't just lying down and sweating.

I wish I could get the pictures on here...

2007-06-09T02:32:00.000-03:00

Unfortunately, I can't find a way yet, but I got a few nifty pictures from my quick trip to Sapporo.

Basically, the trip went something like this: I got up early in the morning (well, 7AM anyway, which is early-ish, I guess) and finished packing for my trip and had a quick breakfast. Then I headed to the train station and got on. The trip there was interspersed with playing Jump Ultimate Stars and reading the Wonderful Wizard of OZ (there's a lot more killing than I expected in that book).

When I got there I first headed to a book store in order to get some English comics and Magazines that I wouldn't be able to get in Obihiro. Then I went to an arcade to play a very impressive Gundam game. I don't really like Gundam, but the game was really cool, in that there are big pods for different players to enter. Said pods are designed to operate similarly to the pods in the series, what with the pedals and double stick shift and what have you. It has a screen that goes about 160 degrees around you to get more of an immersive feel and a really old school Gundam soundtrack. It's also quite expensive, because you also have to by a card for the game (which is about three bucks) and it's about 5 bucks for two bouts. The more you win, the more points you get to gets all sorts of upgrades later. I got a better gun now.

Anyway, after that I had lunch and started walking aimlessly. Then I started walking with an aim. After a long walk looking for a subway, I finally found one. Now, I had written to myself that I was to go to Higashi station but the line I was on only had Hiragishi. Assuming I had made a mistake with the spelling, and not thinking whether or not I was on the wrong line, I headed to Hirigishi. I soon became apparent that I was very lost and while I got help from several gas station attendants, I could only follow their vague pointing. Luckily I stumble across a travel agency and the guy inside was able to help me (as you can assume it was Higashi all along). It wasn't the log walk that bothered me so much as it was my heavy luggage.

After finally getting to my hotel, I was told that my room was available for a second night, which I took. Then I just walked around, went to my room and watched a rifftrax.

The next day, I went to Odori Park and TV Tower, which is tall, but not really impressively tall. I don't see the point really. But Odori Park as quite pretty and a nice place for a picnic (or at least a bento). I also had some BBQ corn and potato cookies, which really just taste like regular cookies. After a quick nap in the park, I walked around again and found a place called Space Create, which is one of those Manga Kisaten (Sp?) where people can go lock themselves up in a small closet sized room where they can read manga (there is a large library of it) watch TV, surf the net, play PS2 and order food. It's no wonder that this country breeds creepy introverts. I wonder what our excuse is... Anyhoo, I decided to try it and had some fun playing Biohazard 4. A truly awesome game that I spent far too little time with.

Anyhoo, I had some curry and went back to the hotel some time in the evening. The next day, I checked out and more or less repeated a few of the things I've done before, as well, as visiting the old government building call Red Brick. I unfortunately couldn't read a damn thing so I could not guess the historical significance of this place. Still, it seemed nice. Also: duck pond! Woo!

And that was pretty much it for me. I went home and now I'm back here in an empty apartment (my roommate left for parts sort of known) and a broken refrigerator (the freezer works though). Man, I just wish I could get those pictures off my phone.

What's new with you?

2007-04-19T08:44:00.000-03:00

So, is anything actually happening over there? I really haven't gotten much mail from anyone recently, except when Jordan sent me that Blue Dragon thing the yesterday. Are you guys... breaking up with me? I guess I haven't been saying much either but as yet there hasn't been much to say. I may be off probation soon if I have correctly read the reaction of one of my superiors at Nova, so that's pretty cool.

Also, I got a DS, which is also quite cool. The first game I got for it was Jump Ultimate Stars, which is like Smash Brothers, but it has Shonen Jump characters and it's not as good. Now, don't get me wrong, it is still a damn good game, but it's missing a few things that keep it for being that good. One is level design. Smash Brothers was great with that but the levels in this game, though reflecting many og the manga, they also feel generic. Most of them feel like the same kind of platform filled level with mildly different traps, if any. The Naruto level was kind of cool in that it has some ninja traps and the One Piece level has a cannon in the middle but I just know it can have more than just platforms. I'd loke the Eyeshield level to be on a Football field, not just another platform level with a field in the background. On the plus side, the levels all take place within a big manga panel, which I think is kind of cool.

The other is that I don't know if this plays nearly as well in multiplayer as Smash brothers, but I've never really played a multiplayer game on a game boy before.

I do love the Koma (panel) system, though, which is pretty cool and allows you to build a cool team of battle, support and bonus characters. Basically you have to build a team on a grid fill it with manga panels. More powerful characters take up more panels (except for bonus characters who only take up one panel each and ive bonuses to selected characters). So you can have a team of three characters with a few bonuses or one character with lots of bonuses and support.

I already beat of levels from series I like (Slam Dunk, Eyeshield21 and One Piece) and from series I've never heard of (Popularity King Taizo Saga and Jaguar for example) and for the most part am kicking ass, though right now, I'm having trouble trying to finish the Hitman Reborn level. Still, I really hope they bring this game to the Wii, because it would be endlessly cool.

As for other things, not to much is happening over here.

I heard that there will be a Spider-Man stage musical, and even stranger, it's directed by Julie Taymor, who did the incredibly popular and critically acclaimed Lion King play as well as some amazing movies like Titus and Frida. The music will be by Bono and the Edge. Frankly, I'm not a musical person, but I am curious and will be buying the inevitable soundtrack. However, I'm mildly worried since they mentioned there will be a new character, Arachne:

The character breakdowns provide some insight to plot points as the character Arachne ("female, 20-35 years old, any ethnicity") is described as "a beautiful, boastful young woman turned into a spider for her hubris and lack of respect for the gods. She subsequently appears to Peter Parker and the audience as in turn a powerful spider-woman who comes from another time to inspire Peter; an otherworldly lover; a bride; a terrifying (and sexy) dark goddess of vengeance; a dance partner in a charged and violent spiders dance of death; and, finally, a lonely, fragile young woman." Casting is seeking a "strong Celtic, Balkan style, e.g., Sinead O'Connor," noting, "outside the box ideas are welcomed. Could be someone from the music industry."

Seems very strange, as Spider-Man doesn't interact with magic and myth that much unless some gets start like Doc Strange shows up. Still, they did mess with it in Michael J Straczynski's run (creator of Babylon 5) but that story was really nothing to write home about. Still Taymor, is very talented and as long as she gets the characters it should be fine. But most importantly, I want to see J. Jonah Jameson sing. Face it, you do too.

A Few Random Things

2007-03-29T02:38:00.000-03:00

I finally got a bicycle so now traveling around the city is a lot easier and a lot more fun. On first glance I was starting to assume that no one in Obihiro was locking their bike, but in fact the wheels of the front tire is locked up. Too bad someone could just pick up your light-ass bike and carry it to their apartment. Just saying.

Still, I have a nice little black bike with a little basket and a light generator (which all bikes seems to have) and is adorable. Unfortunately, I have to keep it in my room but it doesn't take all that much room. Soon my knowledge of Obihiro will be a lot batter and maybe I'll find a few more cool places.

I just had possibly the most delicious curry I've ever eaten at a place call Soup Curry Waruw... or maybe it was called Soup Curry Maruw. Now I didn't know what Soup Curry (or Curry Soup) would be like but it was absolutely wonderful. It was full of big chunks of delicious veggies and a chicken breast and rice of the side. Now I've never had curry soup before but I wasn't sure how to eat it. Curry by definition is a sauce, but you can make a sauce into a soup. Anyway, it was basically a flavourful soup with a side of rice. So I poured the soup on the rice and ate them together. In retrospect they can probably be eaten separately but they taste good together too.
The restuarant itself is a hole in the wall (though for all I know it's a part of a franchise) and looks a little rundown but it has a cozy feel to it. I also like the fact that reggae music is being played in the background, the place has a whole Hawaiian tiki look and they serve curry. A little confusing. They also have a couple of vintage Great Mazinger-type toys. Also like many small restaurants there's manga lying around waiting to be read (though I have no idea why none of there places have anything from the cooking manga genre. What the hell?

I finished reading Young Avengers Vol. 1 and my opinion of it hadn't changed. It didn't help that it was sort of obvious where the ending was heading, though I could easily see further volumes being better reads. This had a good artist and an OK writer but something didn't click.

I also am halfway through Day of Vengeance, which is one of the four mini-series that lead into the Infinite Crisis book. Unfortunately before the titular story begins there's a three-part Superman story that leads into the story that's just God-awful. Awful art but Ian Churchill (he doesn't even strike me as someone who should be drawing Superman) and a terrible script by Judd Winick. I was told this guy was a good writer but this was painful. It was an unbelievably generic story that feels over twenty years old (in a bad way) opening with a early Alan Moore wannabe type feel, then a generic Eclipso possesses Superman story (I'm positive that they've done that many times, yet they act like it's the first.) and then it's just a boring Super-battle. In fact the way Captain Marvel beats evil Superman was already done much better in Kingdom Come.

The actual story is kind of fun and the art is OK. But it also didn't click. Still the author does something I appreciate, which is taking B-level characters and making them interesting. I have a soft spot for B-level characters because their status quo is less fixed. I don't care what you do to Superman but he'll always get his status quo back. However, you can do anything you want with Detective Chimp.

Actually Detective Chimp is made into a fun character here: a talking Chimpanzee with only the ability to talk, heightened intelligence and eternal youth. Basically, he's an asshole detective in a Sherlock Holmes hat (deerstalker) who wears an "Everybody Sucks but Me" shirt. I also like Ragman who can borrow the strength of all of the people he punished for their sins, so it's like he's powered by purgatory and the souls in his costume work off their karmic debt. It's a really cool idea in my opinion.

The plot sounds fun but I'm not that into it yet: the most powerful character in the DCU (the Spectre AKA God's Wraith incarnate) is tricked into wiping out all of the magic users and the only people to opposed him that haven't been spanked or killed by the Spectre is a ragtag group (one of those things) of random magic types... and Captain Marvel, and Marvel is in the middle of getting his teeth knocked out. I'll have to wait till it finishes to pass final judgment but I have to say this is a fun story, but nothing special.

Also Justiniano art's good but it doesn't fit here. His art is good but when I read it I get the impression that these aren't the characters that he was meant to draw, except maybe Nightshade. Seeing the way he draws Nightshade, I get the impression that he should be drawing Birds of Prey. It really seems he was meant to draw when in tight clothes doing martial arts.

Also, I've been listening to I Love Movies radio podcasts. I can't promise that you'll like it (though I'm sure Darcy will) but generally obscure comedians (and Patton Oswalt on one show) and host Doug Benson. Mostly it's just talking about movie but there are times that are just very funny, though exact moments don't come to mind. So that's what I've been up to.

I Feel Like Talking About Comics

2007-03-21T03:37:00.000-03:00

Can you pay phone bills at convenience stores in Canada? Because you can in Japan apparently. And since this was my first phone bill it's taken me aback a little (and I sincerely don't know if it can be done in North America). Just think, in the middle of the night, you get the munchies, so you head over to a 7-11 for a peach-flavoured kit-kat bar, some Wild Turkey and pay your Internet bill all at once. Nifty.

Not much happening here. I helped some guy beat House of the Dead II with all of my loose 100 yen coins (about 8-9 dollars worth). A little kid watched on and while I have no idea what he was saying, he seemed amazed by everything that was going on. I only got rookie, but that's because I allowed the continue to hit zero half way through. And I shot a guy who wasn't a zommbie so that didn't help.

My Mom wants to visit me in Japan some time, but I don't know when she's coming or what she'd do. Too my knowledge, winter is Hokkaido's big season because of the mountains used for skiing and I really don't know if the sakura bloom up here in Spring (I believe one student told me they bloom later here than anywhere else, but I don't know when that would be) so I really don't know what there is for my parents to do here.

I've been reading the comics that have been sent to me (and I at my KD) and have finished Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3, which might have been better in one sitting than one chapter a night (but still, I want it to last a while) and is a little disappointing, though mostly because all of the big surprises were ruined for me before I picked it up. Still, there are some great moments (Wolverine spends much of the story mentally regressed into his 12 year-old pansy self) and some interesting developments (the real secret behind Cyclops' optic blasts are revealed), but too much of it is setting up for the forth and final story arc. And since I'm not too into X-Men in Space stories, I'm not looking forward to that one too much.

Nonetheless, I'm definitely gonna get it because while I'm not all that interested in X-Men in Space, I want to know what the Hell's going on with Emma Frost and I want to know where Cassandra Nova's (Xavier's creepy and positively evil twin sister) consciousness went. I guess my biggest problem with this is that instead of a proper ending, it ends on a cliffhanger and I wanted at least a little bit of closure before blasting headlong into the next story. This story is clearly too attached to this next story and I really want to read the next one simply to clear up that one important plot point. Frankly, I don't even care is Colossus is destined to bust up a planet.

Right now, I'm in the middle of the first volume of Young Avengers, one of Marvel's most critically acclaimed series. It was created by veteran TV writer Allan Heinberg (The OC, Sex in the City, Grey's Anatomy and many more) and drawn rather well by Jim Cheug. It has a really good premise, a lot of critical acclaim, a good hook at the end of the first issue and a lot of potential but it's really left me cold... so far. The premise is an Avenger's themed super-group of teens shows up after the original Avengers team is decimated by one of their own. The characters look like side kicks and are all modelled after classic Avengers (Iron Lad, Asgardian, Patriot and Hulkling) but their origins and connections to the Avengers turn out to be not what anyone expects. I like the fact that Iron Lad is actually a young Kang the Conqueror and the revelation that the team was planned by the Vision before he "died," but the characters' aren't doing all that much for me. Of course, I am reviewing a book before it's finished, but at the same time, I'm just not that into it yet. Now if we're talking awesome teen super-book, I much prefer Runaways.

I also am close to being all caught up in Gantz and I always have to say that this series impresses me in terms of art, story telling and just how far the creator can go with keeping things fucked up. I do like the fact that the series feels a little less cynical in some ways, yet doesn't manage to betray it's feel. No matter what the character Kei Kurono is like, you root for him simply because of the fact that he's place in oer his head in an unfair situation. I really like the evolution of his character and where the series is heading. The best thing about this series is that whenever one question is answered it manages to raise many, many more. I love everything about this series and am constantly confused as too why no one is fighting for the rights to publish this series in North America.

I haven't read any manga that's been too impressive beyond that and I keep hoping whatever I'll read next turns out to be a nice hidden treasure (hey, it happened before with Level E... which none of you have read yet. Shame on you). I did catch up with One Piece a few month ago. I love the series still, but I have to say... END! It's been 10 years and there's no sign that they'll find the treasure. Now it doesn't feel monotonous as some series (Inu-Yasha) but I really feel that a series chronicling the characters quest for a single goal should end after 10 years, just because the fans deserve an ending. Just make sure it's satisfying and appears before people stop caring about the characters (time can do that).

As for what's happening in American comics right now... well, I'm not actually terribly interested in the death of Captain America. Not just because he'll be back, but also because I'm just exhausted of anything related to Civil War. I do like the direction for a lot of books that Civil War ignited but I don't think it was worth all of these talented creators giving readers a tired and wildly uneven (and sometimes even contradictory) final product.

I'm much more interested in seeing how 52 ends. I like 52 not only because it's well written, but it's tapping into the kind of things I love about super-hero comics: crazy ideas, the idea you can go anywhere or do anything while retaining the sense of danger and suspense. Luckily, the cast is all B-level characters so there's also a sense the things can be done with them that you can't do with the big iconic characters like Superman and Batman. Also, I really like Booster Gold, an athlete from the future who came to our time and become a super-hero simply to get popular and make money. He's always been kind of a neat character. There are other great ideas working here too: an island inhabited only by mad scientists, Booster using his knowledge of the future to stop crimes before they happen (and covering his uniform in stickers like a NASCAR car.... car) and Lex Luthor's giving ordinary people super-powers (including flight) only to turn them off at midnight on New Year's eve and watching them fall from the sky. Dick.

I'm not necessarily in favour of more weekly series on this scale, but I think that this series was certainly a success for the most part, especially considering this is the first American attempt at a weekly comics series in who knows how long. I'm very interested if all of the stories are in fact interconnected and what the 52 are.

I'd also really like to read SHAZAM!: the Monster Society of Evil, created by Bone creator Jeff Smith. there aren't enough high quality super-hero comics you can give to young readers and Jeff Smith's take on SHAZAM! is exactly the kind of book I want to see. It looks like it has the same humour that made Bone such a great read and has an old fashioned super-hero style that isn't drenched in kitsch. It's just a comic in the vein of the original series: a boy who gets to be a cool grown-up super-hero with a magic word. It's doesn't get any simpler than that.

I'm also excited about what's coming next in Heroes (not a comic, but close enough). I've been let down in ome elements of this show and have been very impressed with others. The origin of HRG (as the fans call him) episode was very impressive (though I have no idea how the crap he survived that much radiation) and was the kind of episode I wanted to see since the series began. I also liked Mohinder taking out Sylar (if just for a short bit) and am quite interested to see where that it heading. I'm just hope that the November explosion is taken care of at the end of this season, because I already want the show to move beyond that. I'm also interested to see if Hiro's father really wanted him to save face for his company or if he was just trying to protect him from "the Company."

I still don't care that much for the Petrelli family. They don't interest me that much. And Linderman's appearence was a bit disappointing (what won't you star in Malcolm MacDowell). I think my biggest beef with this series is that there's a lot of stuff I can see coming that the characters can't. Matt Parkman often strikes me as annoyingly incompetent (I'm never surprised he never made it as a detective). What I love in super-hero comics is seeing super-types doing intering, clever things with their powers. There's some of that (shooting Claire to appease Ted, Sylar telekinetically turning off his IV) but I'd like to see more of that as the series goes on. And some more subtlety. Not many people strike me as subtle on this show. Do something about that.

But now I have to wait a month to see. Crap.

Wha's Hap'nen

2007-03-08T03:12:00.000-04:00

So what's going on in Japan right now? Not much really.

For work I was recently observed, which is never a comfortable experience. Still, it went by pretty painlessly. However, it doesn't look like my probationary period will end quite yet and I might have too wait another month or more.

Most of the students are really nice, and even the ones who are pains aren't too bad. The only real pain is this one guy who's in a much higher level than he deserves to be. He doesn't participate all that much either. It's like he's spaced out unless I'm giving him constant attention. In fact, he's one of the few cases where it might be better to have him and him alone in a class, simply because I can give him as much time to talk and stop him from nodding off.

There are students from all walks of life, but where I work seems particularly popular among older women. Most of them are pretty nice and are really interested in learning the language. But there are also people ranging from high school to their elder years. There's even one young kid from Jr. High, although he's incredibly quiet. Things, for the most part, are going pretty good on that end.

Oh, and I finally got my comics from home (and a box of KD) so now I got Astonishing X-Men, Day of Vengeance, Doom Patrol and Young Avengers to live off of for the month. I'm trying to stretch it out by reading a single chapter a night, which is almost painfully for more slowly paced books. I feel sorry for people who read certain monthly books. I was only able to find one place with English books (more than I thought, but less that was implied by my roommate). I had very little options so I just picked up the classic Heart of Darkness and Dragonball Vol. 10.

I've also been reading lots of manga, including Eyeshield 21, which is much better as a manga than an anime. I like the fact that even the series artist likes mocking the characters insane proportions (the artist points out that certain characters are ten feet tall but only during the games. I also recommend Eternal Sabbath (less generic than the title implies), My Name is Zushio (a little too hyper at times though), Mr. Fullswing (one again, sometimes a little too hyper) and Freesia.

I've been keeping up with my English TV, watching the Daily Show and Colbert Report on the Comedy Central website. I've been good with downloading everything thing else I would miss but there isn't that much I watched on TV that wasn't reruns, so I'm downloading some other shows I haven't completely watched before. I'm also renting movie from Tsutaya, the "culture convenience" store that rents movies and, interestingly enough, CDs. So if there's some J-pop you want me rip and send you I'll see what I can do.

Tsutaya actually has a really good selection of new and classic films (Darcy would be happy to know there's a silent film section), but apart from sections, it's hard to tell where to find something if you're looking for it. Now I'm just picking a few random movies that I heard were good or look like their good. Or are really old looking. Apparently, DVDs of American TV series are very popular in Japan, particularly 24. Frankly, I prefer to download my shows, so I'll probably just stick to that. Right now I have the first season of Masters of Horror downloaded and have found it mostly disappointing. I know Dario Argento can do better.

I went skiing yesterday, which was a lot of fun, and it was nice to just get out there and do something. Stil, it's been quite a while since I went skiing so it was a little choppy, though I got the basics down pretty quick. The weather on the mountain was quite crazy, ranging from very clear to completely closed in. I should also try to get my legs ready for next winter so I can ski longer without my legs feeling the strain. Still, I had a pretty good time and I was somehow able to get some rental boots for my giant feet.

I'm thinking of getting a DS (partially because Jordan nags me to get one and I'm a pretty malleable guy), but aside from Wario Ware and New Super Mario Bros., I'm not sure what to get. I hear Shonen Jump Stars is good, but will it be good as a one player. I'd like Eyeshield, but I'm tempted to wait until the next game in hopes that they add more stuff from the manga. Also, I can't read Japanese. Any ideas for games when I bite that bullet?

Anyway, I'll try to update more often (especially since I'm done those 2 back to back six day work weeks.

Phoning It In

2007-02-22T08:49:00.000-04:00

Yep, it's a terrible post title all right, but appropriate, since I have very little too say.

I got a cell phone recently. Now I don't really like cell phones as it is, but I figured I pretty much had to get a phone while I'm here and everyone in Japan has a cell phone so....

Unfortunately, it turns out my phone has no bi-lingual option and changing the phone is a huge expensive chore. Frankly, the only thing I really wanted the phone for was the camera and now I don't know how to use it. Goddammit! *sigh*

I'm also starting to get a little bummed out, seeing as I have no friends here and there isn't much to do. I don't have a lot of money to spend right now, so I got to think about how to eat economically until the next payday and I'm still waiting for my comics to get to me.

So not much happening right now, but I thought you'd like the update.

A Serious Parlor on a Serious Earth

2007-02-14T10:03:00.000-04:00

Hey, you want to know where I live? You want to know?

That's right. I live above GOTHAM FUCKING CITY! YEAH!

I wanted to mention this much earlier but I wanted to wait until I got a picture. I forgot I took this shortly after I got here before my camera stopped working, but I also really wanted a good night shot when the place was lit up like Vegas.

You may have guess already but Gotham city is a pachinko parlor, pachinko being an extremely popular gaming device that combines the loudness of pinball and playing requires the skill usually reserved for one-armed bandits. That's right, pachinko is all this and more too. And by more I mean less. I assume. I actually haven't played pachinko so maybe there's a subtle element that I'm missing but I don't really like any game that requires luck and luck alone. If I can't at least attempt to help the outcome in my favour than I can't see the appeal. Which is why I was really surprised that there seemed to be a whole manga magazine centered around pachinko. And not just comedies but also competition manga. How can that not get old really fast. Sigh.

Anyway, I have not actually entered Gotham City yet, so I don't know what it's like, but peering in I get an idea: pretty much like any pachinko parlor. Just rows and rows of machines. Still, I guess I should enter one to get the whole feel, but I don't think I'll like it. Still, I did see an interesting machine that was part video game and part VLT so maybe I'll soften up on the whole thing (not that I have hard feelings towards them at this point).

But the point is I live above Gotham City. I mean, think about this. I begin the last leg of my journey home with a heavy-ass bag still nervous about the whole affair. I did see a red fox in a white snowy field, which I took to be a good sign (though I'm not sure I should, since the fox is a trickster in Japanese mythology). Then I get to the place I'll be spending the next year and find that I'll be living above Gotham City. I mean, I was seriously unsure if I followed the map wrong or what. It was a truly surreal experience and a somewhat surreal country. I guess I should have broken out my copy of The Dark Knight Returns and read through it that night, but at that time I was looking for something a little more upbeat than that so I started rereading Bone.

Now make no mistake, this place has "seeing how Batman-ish we can make this place without getting in trouble" written all over it. There are flags with the Batsymbol minus the ears and pictures that feature Batman's silhouette with a pointed head (and when I can I'll get pictures of those for you too, and maybe some from inside, if they'll let me). This place is like the pachinko parlor equivalent of those action figures that you find at dollar stores that are clearly knock-offs of a much more successful character. But this is a lot more fun because it's in big lights and it's a lot less thrown together looking than a cheap toy.

Now there are a couple other things that I feel I'll just have to take pictures of and show you (just telling you would not have the same impact), but this was the one that meant the most, so I figured I may as well get this one out of the way. By the way, a warning: any sort of Gotham City joke will be old by the time I get back home so don't bother.

Now, I'm more of a Marvel zombie and am always quick to point out that while I love super-hero comics, that's not the extent of my taste. Still, this makes me feel a little giddy, just knowing that those bat wings are flashing in on this snowy winter's night.

I really wish the blog menus weren't in Japanese

2007-02-04T07:46:00.000-04:00

I didn't think I'd be able to get back on to my blog. Well, it's been many moons since I last posted and I haven't had much time to go into detail. I guess there were a lot of weird small things that I wanted to remember for my first blog that never really stuck with me. Fewer things are around to strike me as strange then when I first came here. I don 't think it's just me getting used to the culture because I swear fewer things are talking to me. But I guess part of that is what part of town I wander into.

I promise to have some great pictures when I get a working camera (the one Dad sent with me is wonky at best), and trust me, there's some weird thing's you'll want to see.

Classes are going well though my first couple weeks where a little discouraging. I feel very confident that they're not going to fire me and that I'm getting much better as a teacher. Let me explain. Before I could teach I had to take On-The-Job training in Sapporo (a rather large city). I liked teaching but I still lacked confidence and at the end of the first three days they told me I needed another day. Then after that day they told me I'd be training more when I got back to Obihiro. Now I harbour a little resentment to the guy who told me this, but really he's a good guy. He's just the messenger is all, and I appreciate his honest and fair criticism. But it always feels so negative when he does. My roommate tells me thats just the way it is in Japan and that I shouldn't worry too much. Anyway, I feel that I'm getting better with each lesson and the students generally seem to like me. I do enjoy teaching and watching them learn, but I still need to refine my skills in the department of saying things in a concise and simple manner as possible. Not easy for a chatty cathy like myself, but I'm getting better.

I'm getting used to the food, which for the most part is noodles. Seriously, I'm eating a lot less rice than I expected. But part of that is that I didn't see rice at the grocery store (probably looking in the wrong place) and our rice cooker is really nasty dirty. I'm scared to clean it. I try to cook for myself, but only a few stir fries and a spaghettini (like thin spaghetti) dinner turned out well. I liked Tako Yaki at first but slowly I realised I liked everything about except a certain goop inside (the octopus part and the coating where great). Butadon is good (an Obihiro specialty), and I find that pretty much anything with noodles is enjoyable. Still, I will miss some of the food from back home, like decent pizza and anything with cheese (the cheese here is generally not good)

On work days I eat out (since I usually work nights) and generally get something from the food court downstairs, which is pretty OK. I also find that obento is a a somewhat decent price in the day but gets really cheap in the evening. Like 30% off stuff that's only about 6 bucks anyway. At the end of the evening you can see that there's quite a few discount stickers on them. Still, since the bento boxes have things crammed with preservatives (like, more than is legally allowed in Canada) it's better to go light on them.

At this point I am attempting to save this blog. Unfortunately, the blog site I'm on has a hiragana menu, so I might be posting this early. For that I'm sorry.

Edit: Dammit, I knew this would happen.

Anyhoo, I guess this post will end prematurely and I'll have a post with much juicier details than lunch sometime within the next few days.

Other Writers I Like

2006-11-28T21:59:00.000-04:00

With the last post I mentioned the name of writers I liked who also happened to be the biggest names in comics right now. I'm continuing that list and admittedly most of the other names are also big names in comics whom I really like.

Brian K Vaughan
Most Famous Works: Y - The Last Man, Runaways, Pride of Baghdad, Ex Machina
Claims to Fame: Not much beyond quality storytelling. He did escape the stigma of being confused with Brian Michael Bendis. That's what you get for being a bald American writer named Brian.
Big Mistakes: None yet, but I do find some of the pop culture references in his works distracting in that they can really derail a conversation and it feels like Brian's mentioning stuff he's personally interested in.
Style: I can't really describe him as having a single particular style, though he works very well with the serial format. He's great at both creating cliffhangers and hinting at things to come in future stories so that even if the current story doesn't press all the right buttons, the next one looks promising. Vaughan is wise enough to keep things unpredictable, yet logical. There are lots of series that are well written but has plot twists that one can see a mile a way, but Vaughan manages to surprise with every story. He's also really good at coming up with premises for series. Y - The Last Man examines the age old hypothetical question "what if I was the last male on Earth" and examines how women have learned to survive in the face of the end of mankind (so to speak). Runaways is a subversive teen hero book about rebellious youth warring with their super-villain parents. Ex Machina is about a super-hero who can speak to machines who ends up giving up crime fighting to do greater good as the new mayor of New York City. Brian K Vaughan takes already great ideas and does a very good job exploring the possibilities within the series. His characters are also usually pretty likeable, which always makes a series better.
Most Recent Works: He's finishing up his run on Runaways and is finishing Ex Machina and Y - the Last Man. I really don't know what he's planning beyond that.

Kurt Busiek
Most Famous Works: Marvels, Astro City, Conan, Superman, Thunderbolts
Claims to Fame: Showing readers that powerfully emotional and human stories can be told with classic super-heroes. Plus, he made the Avengers and Conan popular again, and catching readers completely off guard with the surprise ending to Thunderbolts #1.
Big Mistakes: He's had quite a few forgettable stories and created some very forgettable characters (Triathalon and Silverclaw). Also, the epic Kang Dynasty had as many flaws as it had strengths.
Style: His style of writing is old fashioned in an age of meta-storying that has become popular in the post modern era. Most of his super-hero stuff is classic hero versus villain storytelling, though he does it quite well. When he's on the right book he can really bring out the best in the heroes and villains. In Thunderbolts, a series about a group of villains pretnding to be heroes as part of a world domination plot, become quickly likeable and there is a pleasure in seeing these selfish villains reluctantly learning what it means to be a hero. His best stuff, however, are his slice of life stories that take place within a super-hero filled world. The best examples of this are Marvels, in which a reporter chronicles the Marvel universe in through the Golden and Silver Ages, and Astro City which focuses on what it is like living in a city full of heroes and villains. His stories are often quite poignant and rather than trying to make the world "realistic" (which was popular at the time), he's more concerned with having believable characters in a crazy and unbelieveable world. Recently, however, he has expanded into sword and sorcery type books like Conan and Aquaman, which he is doing a great job on, bringing an epic feel to books I never thought I'd care about.
Most Recent Works: Superman, Aquaman, Astro City: the Dark Age

Warren Ellis
Most Famous Work: Transmetropolitan, The Authority, Planetary, Fell, Desolation Jones
Claims to Fame: Bringing the edge back to super-hero comics and sci-fi in general, though sometimes that can be a bit of a mixed blessing. He also manages to explain sci-fi concepts in manners that are both clever and carry the illusion of pluasiblity.
Big Mistakes: I wouldn't call him mistakes, per se, but even Warren admits that some of the early books he wrote for Marvel are not that good.
Style: Warren Ellis is what I would call a cynical optimist. Or maybe an optimistic cynic. It's like what Morgan Freeman's character says in the movie Se7en: 'Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part'. Warren Ellis' work shows just how horrible, hypocritical, and humanity can be and how incredibly unfair the world can be, but he also often shows that there is beauty in the world, sometimes hidden even in the mundane and that there are at least a few good things humanity can accomplish. And he also tends to show that there are causes worth fighting for, but no one says you have to fight fairly for them. It doesn't mean that the means justify the ends all the time. It just depends on the means and the ends. He is primarily a sci-fi writer, though he has written mysteries and a few fantasies as well. As I said before, he's very good at constructing and explaining the sci-fi elements in his works, but what really impresses me is that he is able to explain these things while retaining the sense of mystery and wonder that would often be lost or dulled by explaination. He's also known for his absolutely wicked sense of humour (he's known for offing characters in warped and bizarre ways) as well as a strong sense of justice that most of his characters have.
Most Recent Works: Nextwave, newuniversal, Fell.

Next time, if I don't come up with a better idea for an article, I'll probably introduce some of my favourite artists, who, in this case, while popular, are not quite the huge megastars (for the most part) that these writers are.

Styles upon Styles

2006-11-22T19:49:00.000-04:00

I was thinking of doing a blog entry on comic books that would make great video games (since we started playing Ultimate Alliance for the Wii) but talking with Nathan of Sunday and last night about comics and writers that we like and ones that he hasn't tried yet made me feel like properly introducing the writers and artists that I really like. Now they're not all perfect, but they all have something that makes them unique and capable of telling great stories. So here's my list of today's top writers.

Alan Moore
Most Famous Works: The Watchmen, Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, Promethea, From Hell
Claims to Fame: He rewrote the book on comic storytelling and ignited the "British Invasion" in which DC comics started staking out great English-speaking European writers to work for DC (and those writers ended up becoming superstars in their own right) and became one of the most respected comic writers of all time.
Big Mistakes: Not a lot really, although dealing with DC after he said he wouldn't ended up biting him in the ass. He and Frank Miller, unfortunately did unintentionally usher in the "grim
n gritty" fad in comic, which both writers sort of regret. See Moore was writing a lot of very dark super-hero books that poked holes in the usually optimistic genre and a lot of other series tried to do the same thing. Unfortunately most of these imitators were missing the heart, the intelligence and the interesting characters that made his books great.
Style: Though many of the writer on the list can be quite versatile, Alan Moore is among the most. He gained popularity through his dark super-hero-related books in which cliches and concepts that were taken for granted are scrutinized, as is the act of being a super-hero. He also explores themes of power (and those who wield it), political philosophy and human nature and how super-humanity would be effected by these things (and vice versa). A lot of his super-books also have recurring mystical themes as well Many involve protagonists who die (or are "destroyed" in a more metaphorical fashion) and come back like a phoenix from the ashes, having to relearn who they are and what they are capable of. Lessons often take story arc and culminate in a big threat were the character must show what he/she has learned. Though his hero-related books grab the most attention, he has also written quiet subtle books like Birth Caul and A Small Killing that tell the kind of stories nobody else tells in comics. One of the most famous examples of this is when he fell away from the mainstream and started writing the meticulously researched From Hell, which tells of the Jack the Ripper murders and the supposed conspiracy surrounding them. Interestingly much of the series starts building up a strong case for it and the final issue seems to imply a case against both the existence of a conspiracy and exploiting such tragedies (the way he has done through the series). In the nineties and 2000's he's almost turned his back on writing dark hero books and has focused on more classic and pulp style hero books. His made his return to mainstream comics with Supreme in which he writes his version of Superman, not having to worry about editorial interference with his vision of an Icon. He made an even bigger splash with ABC (America's Best Comics) where he writes action/adventure books in an attempt to lead by example that there are great new things to do with the pulp/hero genre. With this he mixes both retro and contemporary styles in a fashion where you can tell silly and serious stories at the same time. ABC allowed him to do comedy, drama, adventure and tell all kinds of fun stories. Unfortunately a bad deal with DC caused him to leave ABC though he has given the OK for DC to have certain characters to have new stories, the only exception being League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which he took with him).
Most Recent Works: His latest works include the final book he's done for DC and the last League book publish by DC: the Black Dossier. He also published a long in the works project called Lost Girls, a story that proves that pornography can be art.

Neil Gaiman
Most Famous Works: Sandman, The Books of Magic, 1602
Claims to Fame: One of the biggest names to come out of the British Invasion, Neil Gaiman was one of the first writers to get his own American ongoing series with a complete ending, rather than having the series go on until sales could no longer support it, paving the way for other ongoing series with full planned endings and the like. That book, Sandman, also was the leading book when DC launched Vertigo, it's imprint aimed at mature readers.
Big Mistakes: Gaiman's lucky in that he hasn't really made any huge mistakes and seems to have made nothing but friends in the industry and beyond. Heck there was recently a CD released centered all around him. But I guess that writing for Todd McFarlane proved to be a big mistake and they have had a pretty shitty relationship since. I don't know if his Spawn related stories are any good, but Spawn is bad in general.
Style: Gaiman's style is to tell stories in the form of epics, fairy tales and myths. In fact, most of Gaiman's stories revolve around the art of storytelling and the importance of myth and archetypes in all of their forms. That's actually what Sandman, Gaiman's most popular series, is all about. Gaiman is a fantasy writer in general and most stories include actual myths, legends and stories and often involve how they interact with contemporary society.
Most Recent Works: While he writes lots of novels he's slowed down quite a bit in his comic writing, but he still does it. His current project involves the old Jack Kirby comic The Eternals, about space gods who have forgotten who they are and are secretly living as humans waiting to be reawakened. He was also supposed to write the return of Thor but plans changed with a story called Civil War. Thor will now return at someone else's hands but Neil Gaiman's original explanations for his return may be worked in.

Grant Morrison
Most Famous Works: The Invisibles, New X-Men, JLA, Animal Man, We3
Claims to Fame: Creating comics stranger and more experimental than anyone else was doing, being one of the most innovative writers around, and re-invigorating classic characters.
Big Mistakes: Skrull Kill Krew. He's had a few misses but even his misses have something salvageable but Skrull Kill Krew was written by him and Mark Miller for beer money and it was written while they were drinking. Heavily.
Style: Grant Morrison's work has lots of counter-cultural leanings and often questions the nature of reality. With his work on Doom Patrol, he started writing the series by ear and including all the crazy ideas he could fit into it. Some stories were great, others impenetrable. Disliking the grim n gritty "realistic" direction comics were heading in and decided to go against the grain. Though he certainly wrote some dark books, it wasn't in the vein of books like Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen, but rather he followed his own style. He did play with the "realistic" approach in his first major series Animal Man in a more upbeat way: The title character wears a jacket so he has a plkace for his wallet and keys and he often has to by milk after a super-battle for his family. He is a likeable guy who has to balance his goofy super-hero life with his mundane but happy family life in the real world. A lot of his books involve reality and the thin fourth wall between creation and creator (most noticably in Animal Man). His super-hero books are also a mix of traditional super-hero wackiness (Grant doesn't shy away from the sillier ideas and in fact seems to relish in them) and some clever ideas. Grant has crazy ideas but they always end up making a strange sort of sense. He created such great ideas as the idea of mutant culture (think a cross between the flamboyant gay culture, the return to Africa movement as well as other cultures), a woman with 64 personalities that each have a super-power and the idea that Joker isn't insane, but rather supersane and isn't tied down to any one identity, philosophy or ethical code.
Most Recent Work: Currently he's writing 52 and just finished his epic Seven Soldiers of Victory which includes 7 interconnected but individual mini-series.

I'd write about more writers but I'm tired right now, so I'll probably just wait a while before writing about any more. But there are indeed more European people.

Torrent! Torrent! Torrent!

2006-11-15T11:34:00.000-04:00

While I like Bit Torrent, I only recently decided that I should start using it to read American comics that I haven't read before or don't own. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, however, because I don't enjoy reading it off my computer the way I enjoy reading manga on my computer. I do think that might have something to do with the fact that there's a lot more detail and spaces being used than in manga. Plus there's colour. Or maybe I just haven't gotten used to it, because the only thing I've read so far is an issue of Supreme. Still, I want to take advantage of the bit torrent in order to try to find certain books, which are unavailable in Trade Paperback (my format of choice) and my never be before I die. In some cases books are considered classics but because they're so hard to find, they are unread b a large number of contemorary fans. In other cases, the company just hasn't had enough demand to reprint them or to continue reprinting them.

Miracleman (known as Marvelman) in Britain is Alan Moore's first major comics work and, along with V for Vendetta, helped him get noticed by DC comics. The basic premise is that a good-hearted and innocent hero (who was a pre-existig British character clearly modelled after Captain Marvel) finds himself in a much less innocent present. It seems he spent the past few years not knowing that he was a rather silly super-hero and that the past few years of his life were a lie. Now he's returned to find a much less innocent world and much grimmer threats. Later, Neil Gaiman took the book over and wrote a tale in which Miracleman now rules the Earth as a more benovelent leader, but Miracleman starts questioning if he's done the right thing. Though the final issue of the story was written and drawn, it was never released and it doesn't look like it will happen any time soon. A lot of the themes of this book (rebirth, power, changing the world) reappear in many of his later works, which are pretty much all reprinted. So why won't this one be reprinted any time soon.

It is currently caught in a legal entanglement where both Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane are battling in court over ownership of the character. And it really doesn't look like the issue will be cleared up any time soon, since both seemed very convinced that the character is rightfully theirs. Basically Todd bought the rights to Eclipse comics, who last had the rights to the character, not realizing that Gaiman received 30% of the character rights, who shared them with artist Mark Buckingham. Gaiman (who was one of the guest writers who did an issue of Spawn for Todd) had created a couple of characters for Spawn under the impression he had part ownership and was interested in trading full ownership for the rest of those Miracleman rights. But Todd pointed out something in the book that claimed he had full ownership rights of the aforementioned characters and, well, things went downhill from there. But if Gaiman ever wins, he promises that the character will be called Marvelman again and all of the books will be reprinted by Marvel.

Zenith also looks interesting in that it is an early work from certified genius/madman (may not actually be certified in either case) Grant Morrison. The series follows a Gen-X hero who is the son of a hippie super-hero couple. Uninterested in saving the world, Zenith is more interested in using his power to build on his pop star fame. Unfortunately, Zenith still finds himself facing threats including Lovecraftian horrors, and a Richard Branson-esque madman obsessed with super-eugenics. While it doesn't sound as inventive as his later works, it still sounds quite interesting. Plus it has art from Steve Yeowell, who is an underrated artist in my opinion and has worked with Morrison on quite a few projects, including a personal favourite of mine Sebastian O, which is like a cross between a dumb action movie and the works of Oscar Wilde. This too is caught up in some legal shenanigans, but the details on that one are a little less clear. Still, it never hurts to get a little more Grant Morrison.

Another Grant Morrison work that has gone unreprinted is considered by many to be a forgotten masterpiece. It also is noteworthy for featuring some early art by Frank Quitely, who is a rather big star at the moment. Flex Mentallo focuses on the titular character who is clearly a super-hero version of Charles Atlas. His origin is almost exactly that of "Mac" from the Charles Atlas comic ads in which a guy gets sand kicked in his face and gets revenge later when he returns with big muscles from the Charles Atlas program. Flex discovers that he is more powerful than Mac, however, as he can alter the universe by flexing his muscles, thus becoming the Man of Muscle Mystery! The mini-series focuses on Flex in different eras and is a metaphor for how comics have changed over the years and how they reflect changing eras and represent different stages of growing up. The series is considered by a modern classic, right up there with The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. It should be noted that DC still might reprint this, as they have reprinted all of Flex Mentallo's appearences in Doom Patrol and they seem to have won the lawsuit that Charles Atlas' current owner that brought against them. Still DC seems very tight lipped about the whole thing, so they could just be waiting until all of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run (from which Flex originated) has finished being reprinted.

These are books I'd absolutely love to fid online and wish that they somehow find themselves being published again. I suppose it's not impossible and have high hopes for Flex Mentallo. And Heck, I would have put EC comics on my list but their finally being collected into gorgeous looking Hard Covers by Gemstone comics (who are currently publishing classic Disney comics, including the Uncle Scrooge books that inspired Duck Tales). I know I saw a torrent for Miracle Man once but now it all seems lost. Still, I hope that some day I can cradle Flex Mentallo in my arms like a newborn babe and tell it I love it. Then I'll probably open the book up to the super-hero orgy in chapter 3.

The Ends

2006-11-09T11:16:00.000-04:00

Update: I added pretty pictures and some great news: There's a really awesome trailer for Spider-Man 3 and Alan Moore will be Guest Starring on the Simpsons. I also added pretty pictures.

I really don't have a lot of things to say save for that this is my first post that didn't make it on Wednesday since I planned to update every Wednesday. I knew it would happen eventually and suspected it would happen sooner, but to be fair it isn't entirely my fault this time. Turns out that when I signed on to this blogger beta thing and then found that I couldn't access my blog until everything was ready. The price I pay for the drag-and-drop option.

Anyhoo, I've noticed that quite a few series and mini-series are actually coming to an end, so I decided to predict who it will all go down. I don't expect to be write, and for many of them I've only been following the trades, so I don't necessarily have all the information I need to make the best guesses, but I feel I have enough to take a stab.

52
How Much Longer?: The series ends this April which means it has 25 issues to go.
Premise: After the huge Infinite Crisis crossover, every DC universe series skipped a year ahead in time, allowing each series to start out fresh. DC decided to explain what happened in that missing year in a weekly year long series: each issue covers a different week within that year. The characters involved are Booster Gold (a super-glory hound from the future who decided to take Superman's place as Metropolis' big hero since Supes has gone missing), The Question (a conspiracy theorist detective), Renee Montoya (a disgraced Gotham city cop), Ralph Dibny (a former super-hero whose life's been ruined since his wife was brutally murdered), Steel (a super-hero engineer who worked hard repairing the damage from the Crisis) and Black Adam (a sometimes hero, sometimes villain who now rules his own middle Eastern country).
Goings-On: Booster Gold's been seemingly murdered (though who can tell with time travellers) thanks to his sidekick Skeets who may now be insane, Steel's daughter has joined Lex Luthor's own super-hero team, Ralph Dibny has gone off the deep end, a paradise island for mad scientists harbors a strange secrets, The Question trains Renee Montoya to become his successor, and many many other subplots are a happening.
The End?: The series has been hinting at a threat known as the 52 (the number appears in some form every issue) but what the 52 is remains a mystery. My guess is that it has been organizing the mad scientists and is manipulating Skeets. It probably also has something to do with time travel since Skeets himself is searching for time traveller Rip Hunter, who's home is full of insane scrawlings about all manner of super-activity as well as the messages "Time is Broken" and "52". With DC continuity once again changed in a big crossover, it would make sense that some entity or entity would want to take advantage of a fresh new timeline. Since all of the stories are going to intersect by the end of the book, my guess is that it has something to do with the mad science island, the crime bible (a mysterious tome that supposedly archives every crime ever), the new superheroes Batwoman and Super-Nova, the Superboy resurrection cult and pretty much every subplot the series has (which is a lot).

100 Bullets
How Much Longer?: It ends at issue 100 and it's now in it's late seventies, meaning it only has a couple years left. That seems like a while compared to the other series, but it's still barreling towards it's inevitable conclusion.
Premise: Agent Graves gives people 100 untraceable bullets and irrefutable evidenced that they've been wronged, thus giving them the chance for consequence-free revenge.
Goings-on: Well, it became apparent pretty early on in the series that there was a much bigger story and now a great deal of it has been revealed except what Grave's master plan is and the more specific details of what happened in Atlanta. It seems that America is secretly run by the Trust, an organization of 13 crime families who run America in just about every conceivable way since the 1600s. To prevent one family from becoming more powerful than the others, the Trust employs the Minutemen, 7 agents skilled in murder, deceit and espionage whose job is to police the Trust. But somewhere along the way the de facto head of the trust, Augustus Medici, convinced the others that it was time for a change and that the Minutemen where now obsolete. While they were supposed to be killed off in Atlanta, a surprising number of them survived and it has become abundantly clear that before and after the Atlanta incident it is impossible to tell whose on which side. In fact it's getting hard to say what the sides are, exactly.
The End?: One way or the other the series is going to end in a lot of bloodshed. My guess is that Agent Graves master plan will end with getting himself killed. A lot of characters seem to be willing to put their life on the line for Graves and one character seemed to know that his end was coming, as if it fit into Graves' master plan and he was still OK with that. I think whatever Graves is planning, he believes in it enough that he's willing to lay his own life on the line for society's greater good. But I doubt he'd just kill the Trust and leave America to look after itself and he doesn't seem like the type to want to take control. I think Augustus has been planning it to be this way as well and that he and Graves are actually on the same side. My guess is that Medici's son Benito will become the new head of the Trust and Augustus may also sacrifice his life in order to get his reluctant heir to want to take over. Most of the Minutemen will die (especially the more experienced and confident ones) but a few will remain. And those who do will be Benito's new Minutemen who will begin the test again, giving 100 bullets to those who need it to find out who should be Minutemen (as well as taking care of other problems)

Civil War:
How Much Longer?: Hopefully three months unless there are more delays.
The Premise: After a tragedy involving the destruction of the small mid-western town of Stamford thanks to reckless super-heroing, the moral implications of super-vigilantism come into question. Iron Man quickly gets behind the Superhuman Registration Act which would render any non-government regulated superhuman activity illegal. Before it is, characters find themselves having to pick sides and when it is passed there are two major camps: Iron Man's pro-registration side (his argument is that heroes should not be above the law and that they can accomplish more working with the law) and Captain America's anti-registration side (his argument is that superhumans should not be forced to be government agents or be forced to sacrifice their identity).
Goings-On: To beef up support for the registration, Iron Man convinces Spider-Man to reveal his secret identity on national TV. Spider-Man does so (after consulting with Aunt May and Mary Jane) and finds it biting him in the ass and finds that old friends now view him with disdain. Meanwhile Captain America plans to give members of his faction new secret identities (I can't decide which is better: Cap as a mall security guard or Hercules as an IT guy). The two sides class for the first time in the ruins of an old Stark building and Tony whips out their trump card: Thor, who was thought dead. Well, actually he still was and what they have is actually a Thor clone, that turns out too be a little hard to control as it kills the Black Goliath, which royally pisses Captain America off. Spider-Man, realizing that he's backed the wrong side prepares to defect while Tony, realizing that he'll still need more soldiers organizes a new team to neutralize the heroes, composed entirely of unreformed super-villains.
The End?: Well, if I have one problem with the crossover it's that Tony's side seems to... villainous. I would prefer it that both sides were more relatable rather than making Tony the bad guy. Anyway, my guess is that somewhere there is a villain whose adding fuel to the fire. Wolverine recently discovered that Damage Control, a company in charge of cleaning up after super-battles, may be responsible for the Stamford incident that triggered the war. Plus that murderous Thor clone stinks of evil. My guess is that Loki the chaos god has returned to life (he died at Ragnarok along with all the other Norse gods) and has decided to make things worse. Still, the Superhuman Registration Act will still be polarizing the Marvel universe with each side having to pay for their choices. There will be two Avengers team, Spider-Man will be on the run and (based on an image leaked onto the Internet) Tony Stark will be the new director of S.H.I.E.L.D., making me suspect the current director might be a villainess. Still, the Marvel universe will probably be forced to work together for the next big crossover World War Hulk.

Planetary
How Much Longer?: One issue left. Who the hell knows when it'll come out.
The Premise: A team of mystery archaeologists are trying to uncover the Earth's secret history as part of an open conspiracy while matching wits with a deadly group of ex-nazi scientists who have powers not unlike the Fantastic Four... only deadlier. the team is made up of Elijah Snow, the 106 year-old leader with cold powers, Jakita Wagner, a beautiful amazon, and the Drummer, who can talk to machines and can sense information.
Goings-On: Planetary was able to defeat most of the 4, but only the leader remains, as well as a friend turned foe. Also, it turns out the Drummer is a being of pure information.
The End?: The good guys are going to get what they want: access to the secret history of the world and the ability to give that information to the people. But what those big secrets are I can hardly imagine. I'm stumped as to how will this end beyond the obvious good guys win stuff. But Warren Ellis is always more original than that. So my guess is that we'll get a glimpse into the world that Planetary leaves behind now that there are now big plots to exploit the wonderfully strange secrets of the world. I also think that Snow may shock the other characters by giving the last villain mercy since he has much to offer the world despite his selfish evil. I'm guessing that mostly because the rest of Planetary felt a little let down by Snow's somewhat amoral handling of the four's seemingly unstoppable Thing-like member which cause a bit of a rift in the team.

Y - The Last Man:
How Much Longer?: Nine more issues left to go.
The Premise: A man with the unlikely name of Yorick Brown and the helper monkey he's training (named Ampersand) are the only living male mammals on the face of the Earth. All of the other suddenly, at around the same time, coughed up blood and died. Now Yorick finds himself traveling across the Earth with a government agent named 355 and geneticist Dr. Mann in order to find out why Yorick and Ampersand are the only survivors of the plague.
Goings-On: I actually haven't been keeping up with this one but I'd be able to make a better guess when the eighth trade finally comes out. Last I remember the main character was heading to Japan, but I'm pretty sure he's left by now in the monthly books. Also the books recently told the cause of the plague and the reason for it. The reason for Yorick's survival was released much earlier. Also, Yorick still has to find his girlfriend Beth, who's somewhere in Europe.
The End?: Someone might die but I doubt it's going to be Yorick. Frankly, I'd like a happy ending for everyone but I doubt that's going to happen. But I bet that while not everyone's ending will be peachy keen, the Earth will be able to produce new humans again.

Frankly, I'm not the best at predicting and there is some stuff being telegraphed from a mile away but with some stuff, I have a good feeling that I'm right. Especially 100 Bullets.

Four Colour Crap

2006-11-01T22:09:00.000-04:00

I really don't have much to talk about this week (or most weeks) but since I'm always singing the praises of sequential art, I thought I'd point out some of the most awful comics of all time. Now there are certainly a lot of crappy comics, but I want to go beyond your Spawns and your Youngbloods to show you something that goes beyond regular bad. These books are like the "Plan 9 from Outer Space" of comics.

Dracula: Drawn by talented artist Tony Tallarico when he was in a serious slump, Dracula is about the adventures of a guy who looks like a cross between the Phantom and Batman but with a much more hideous costume than either of them. Dracula's real name is Al U. Card (*groan*) and has radar powers derived from a bat-serum that was supposed to cure his brain damage. It apparently didn't work, because then he dressed up in purple and red and called himself Dracula despite not being a vampire, or Dracula or even sucking blood. Come to think of it, Dracula did not have radar. I'm really confused by this guy's code name. Also unlike Batman's intimidating sharp pointy ears, Dracula's ears look soft, round, fuzzy and kinda cute. Seriously, I'm not an expert in fashion but not only is this one of the worst super-hero outfits I've ever seen (and that's saying a lot), it has possibly the worst use of colour I've ever seen. Uninteresting fact: Tony Tallarico later created a much uglier looking super-hero named Frankenstein.

NFL SuperPro: For some reason Marvel and the NFL decided to team up to create a comic book. It was terrible. It focuses on a football player who receives a career-ending injury while saving a little girl. He later gets dosed in chemicals which, thanks to a combination of fire and "ultra-rare NFL Souvenirs", give him superpowers. He then proceeds to fight football themed villains, including Instant Replay and Quick Kick (a football player turned ninja). Suddenly, everything that occurs in Eyeshield 21 seems plausible and sobering. Superpro's secret identity is that of a football journalist, which, much like Superman, allows him to hear about football disasters before anyone else so that he can avert them. Finally a football reporter who isn't afraid to do something to fight football corruption, unlike those yellow football journalists.

It seems odd that there are so many football obsessed villains out there. Do baseball players and curlers have to deal with this kind of shit? Frankly, if I was about to sack a quarterback and then a guy in a blimp shot laser rays at a guy whose team colours don't match any player on the field, I might take a month off. Heck, I might take the season off. But if I became aware that this sort of thing was happening every week, I would not hesitate to quit the game and look for another non-laser ray sport to play professionally. Assuming there is such a sport.

Skrull Kill Krew: This is probably the only super-group to have a neo-Nazi on the team. The series' origins go way back to Fantastic Four #2 where Mr. Fantastic hypnotizes invading skrulls into thinking they're cows. Well, Mr. F might be a genius, but he wasn't smart enough to prevent the cows from getting milked and slaughtered into skrull burgers. The milk issue was dealt with in a rather dark and clever before this, but the skrull burgers were eaten by some random people, who now have super powers and can see Skrull posing as humans. Not only that, but these people now have an intense and irrational hatred of Skrulls and travel around the country murdering Skrulls.

This series was actually created by visionary Grant Morrison and the popular Mark Millar. Though they are currently some of comics' most beloved writers, they created this dog right before Morrison hit it big and a five years before Millar did. Millar admits that they did most of the plotting while drinking heavily and is pretty embarrassed by it. In fact, the writers did a lot of things just to see what Marvel comics would let them get away with (which was a surprising amount). Still, the series was originally going to be called the Skrull Kill Kult (in reference to the popular and controversial Thrill Kill Kult), but the all ages Marvel didn't like the idea about a series that revolved around a Kult. Oddly, they took no issue with Skrull Killing.

Bad as it is, I do like the first issue cover, pictured above.

Brother Power, The Geek: The next two series I have a soft spot for, despite having never read them. Part of it is that the series premise is so quirky, that it would be possible to make them into really fun series with a good creative team and a good mind set. The other thing is that I think that the creator of both series wanted to say something about the hippie/youth culture of the time. The problem was the writer (Captain America creator Joe Simon) and editors were way to out of touch.

This two-issue series focused on a human-sized rag doll brought to life in a freak occurrence and who is trying to understand humanity in a Stranger in a Strange Land sort of way. He gets involved with Hippie Land and there's all sorts of attempts at social commentary, but it's really apparent that the creators don't know what a hippy is or where they come from. According to artist Carmine Infantino, Superman editor Mort Weisinger really hated the hippy subculture and didn't like how sympathetically the hippies were portrayed. He petitioned to have the series cancelled, but it's hard to tell if that was what ended the series. It was probably just the piss poor sales. The series ended with Brother Power being launched into space as order by governor Ronald Reagan!

Prez: The other series by Joe Simon that tried to connect with the current youth culture and completely misses the mark. This one focuses on Prez Rickards: the first teen president! Seems that he fixes all the clocks in his hometown, which somehow gets him on the fast track to the presidency after the age of eligibility is lowered for whatever reason. After that he fights vampires, undead generals and "Boss Smiley", an evil political boss with a smiley face for a head. A lot of this book was expanding on ideas that were hinted at in Brother Power and was also apparently inspired by the hippy flick Wild in the Streets, which I haven't seen. Ask Darcy about it.

It also did poorly but had two more issues than Brother Power and... well, that's really all it had going for it.

I still think that the previously mentioned series have more potential to be a good comic than the others, as long as an appropriate can be found. Critically acclaimed writer Neil Gaiman actually did stories for both characters: he turned Brother Power into a doll elemental in a Swamp Thing annual and wrote a great Prez story in Sandman in which we get to see how America would have been different if there really was a noble, clever, incorruptible soul in the white House. Frankly, I have a soft spot for most bad comics because I always feel that any crappy premise has the potential to be a great story as long as it's given great creators and the right angle. Except Superpro. I mean, football ninja? Fuck!

I'm Trick or Beat

2006-10-26T00:04:00.000-03:00

What my rather forced pun-based title is trying to say is that I'm sort of tired of Halloween related stuff. It probably has something to do with the fact that me and Aiden had a little horror movie marathon over the weekend. I find that I obsess over the horror genre for most of the month of October, then I usually get kinda depressed afterwards (horror can be a pretty negative genre) and usually spend most of November watching upbeat comedies (Steve Martin's the Jerk is always a pick-me-up) . But nonetheless I love a good horror story when I'm in the mood for it.

Frankly, I was very tempted to purchase a $64 hardcover of Weird Science which collected the first twenty issues of the classic '50's anthology series from EC comics, a company known for it's incredibly edgy story-telling that inspired countless writers and film-makers. Surprisingly, the book is being released by Gemstone, a company that publishes almost exclusively Disney-related material. I have to applaud Gemstone for their fine treatment of the material: the book itself is quite handsome, the coloring has been cleaned up and for each book they've gotten a HUGE name to do a forward for the books. Well, not all of the books. Weird Science has a foreword by George Lucas, Crime SuspenStories will have a foreword by Steven Spielberg and Tales from the Crypt will have a foreword by John Carpenter. Now I guess I'm making to much of a big deal out of famous creators saying that an acclaimed comic is cool but I just appreciate that these lauded creators are giving thanks to the comics that inspired them. Maybe I'm just looking for more people to legitimize my favourite medium.

My one problem is that the first volume of Vault of Horror has a foreword by Goosebumps creator RL Stine. Really? Don't get me wrong, I read his Goosebumps books in elementary school and enjoyed them at the time, but he's really not that great of a writer. I guess he's still popular, and I have no problem with him thanking those comics for inspiring him, but shouldn't someone... better do a foreword there?

Still, as I've stated I've never even read an EC comic yet of seen enough bits and pieces of the books as well as pastiches and homages to fall in love with the books and their tragic history. But it's sort of like talking about how Citizen Kane is the greatest film of all time without having seen it, but have seen countless references to it and documentaries about it. I really should get this book but... $64! Geez. Looks like you're on my Christmas list.

Anyhoo, Aiden and I watched some horror flicks over the weekend to sate our horror lust and while most of the movies floundered (despite being famous) they were fun.

The first one we watched was Cube Zero, the prequel to the clever (though imperfect) Canadian sci-fi horror film Cube. For those of you who don't know, the premise of Cube is that people wake up finding themselves in a cube with doors on each side that leads to a similar room (though some of them are trapped). There is no food or water, but there is a pattern to the cubes that hint at an exit. Cube Zero tries to do some interesting things, but ultimately fails. The biggest problem is the unbelievably silly villain who is essentially (as Aiden pointed out) the same bad guy from Last Action Hero. It really feels like a relatively good Cube prequel is being interrupted by a really bad episode of Lexx (and keep in mind I like Lexx). I do like how it ties into the first film, but it really wasn't worth the movie. The first one worked better because we are given very little information about what the Cube is and the viewers only have the characters' theories and their own to work with, while this film just tells you how and why the Cube is. Disappointing.

Friday the 13th was pretty funny, but that wasn't really what they were going for. Don't get me wrong, there are parts of this movie that are scary, but I just don't like the characters enough to want them to win. Also, Ralph, the local loony who tells the kids there all doomed is hilarious and really should have appeared in the movie more. "You're all doomed... DOOMED!" I don't think the film makers intended him to be as funny as I found him but I still think the writers wanted us to laugh at him a little. On the negative side, we see Kevin Bacon's ass and various guys dressed as nevernudes. If you're gay and you're looking for a healthy mix of horror, titillation and Ralph, then I highly recommend it. Still, the final battle is a bit silly and drags on due to the fact that the Last Girl is constantly given chances to either finish off or further subdue the killer but she doesn't take them. The pattern goes like this: girl is chased and cornered by killer, girl finds something to beat the crap out of the killer who drops the weapon, doubles over and seems to be temporarily knocked out or stunned or something, girl runs away some where else with no real plan. This happens like three times and it gets pretty tiring.

Hellraiser was also rather disappointing, especially because I liked the only book I read by Clive Barker. Said book was The Thief of Always and when I read it it quickly became obvious that the book was aimed at younger readers, but I still enjoyed the book quite a bit. Hellraiser, however, is just sort of boring. It's about some jerk named Frank who opens a portal to the afterlife in a run down house and finds himself facing grotesque divine torture at the hands of the Cenobites (not to be confused with Cinnabites, which are a delicious cinnamon treat). Later, Frank's brother moves in with his ice cold wife who secretly had an affair with Frank. A twist of fate has Frank partially resurrected and he convinces his Sister-in-Law to seduce poor idiots so she can take them home and Frank can kill them and drink their blood, which will give him more flesh. Unfortunately, because this is Britain, any scene of passion in this movie is about as sexy as a luke warm fish. Any scene where people are kissing was about as sexy as church. Characters talk about sex but when I look at them I can imagine it being anything by dry, cold and uninteresting. I mean, for a film about pleasure and pain they could have tried to spice it up a bit. And I'm not even asking the characters to be attractive. I just need to believe that these characters would fuck each other.

Finally, we watched Land of the Dead, which was easily the best movie of the four that me and Aiden watched. A lot of Dead fans didn't like this movie but I thought it was a great way to end the franchise, even if the characters weren't all that deep this time around (I can't speak for Day of the Dead, which I have yet to see) but I like the story and it is surprisingly the most upbeat of them. I actually like the fact that the zombies have evolved and have become tool users and in a way shows that the zombies are actually close to becoming human. Sure that might take some of the scariness out of the zombie concepts, but it makes the film more interesting over all. The humans aren't that interesting this time around but there is a lot of great moments. There's a scene in which a character is given a choice between being shot and becoming a zombie and I found it interesting that he chose the zombie, wanting to know "how the other half lives". Not nearly as good as Dawn of the Dead, but still pretty good.

Well, most of the films weren't great, but being able to laugh derisively at them with a friend made it much more enjoyable.

Japan in the Ass

2006-10-18T19:52:00.000-03:00

In the event that there is someone who has not been told, I will be spending my next year in Japan, teaching English as a second language with NOVA.

Well, I'm going to Japan for a year provided I get all of my documents in order before this upcoming Tuesday. I know I shouldn't worry and that everything will probably be OK, but I'm a worrier. I worried about this much before getting ready for the interview and now I feel worry again. Worry!

Anyhoo, I got some stuff done today: I was told that I should be getting my passport in two to three business days, which makes me less worried (since I forgot that I could ask them to hurry up for about thirty dollars) but Dad (as my guarantor) said he hadn't recieved a phone call about it yet and that he should have if it was sent out. Worry.

Later I got my set of original transcripts from my university. I also got six more passport photos, when it would have been much cheaper to get 8 when I got the actual photos for my passport. I was out in the rain so when I got to the photo place, my hair was all wet and the resulting picture looked like I had a really greasy comb-over. Yuck!

Frankly, this kind of stuff is driving me mad because I end up second guessing every move I make and am just not sure if I'm doing it all correctly. I'm already planning to spend all of tomorrow filling out all of the documents and double checking to make sure I have everything I need. Worry.

But I am still looking forward to Japan with great enthusiasm. I just know that I'll be able to do a good job on this and that I'll be able to thrive in the culture despite the language gap. I'm not saying it will be easy, but I've had the experience (albeit long ago) of living in a non-English speaking country for a length of time. And frankly, I just need a change in my life and a chance to do some real fulfilling work.

In many ways I'm not sure what to expect when I get there, but I'm told it's pretty easy to buy English literature at a book store and I'm planning to get the Internet (and a computer) for my room on the first few days before (hopefully) my work begins. I know that if I didn't then it would just bug the Hell out of my parents simply becuase I'd be even harder to get a hold of.

I will be living with two other teachers so I won't have to worry too much about being alone. Still, I have know idea if I'll be able to stand these people (or vice versa), but it's probably than living alone. I just think I'd end up becoming a creepy introvert or something. I still have no idea where I'll be living tonight, but frankly, I think I'd be happy anywhere, hot or cold. My parents are already talking about visiting me next Christmas. It would be pretty easy for my sister if she's still going to be staying in New Zealand.

The hours look interesting as well and look like they will range from 4 to 8 hours days on different days of the week (of course, that's just based on an example schedule) and the days I'll get off will most likely be in the middle of the week, which should make things interesting. It was also hinted that I'll probably doing a lot of karaoke as it's common for emp-loyees to hit the bars and go to parties together. Frankly, I think there's no better way to socialize than to massacre songs together while wasted. It's a real bonding experience. Frankly, I've never been involved with work that really allowed me to really get to know my co-workers, so I think I'll appreciate that.

I still don't know quite what to expect when I get there but I highly doubt any culture shock since I'm very much used to being in different cultures and am a lot more mature than when I started (imagine being a "picky eater" type kid when you're living in another country). I really feel like I'm going to be involved with something important to me and that I can finally make the next big step in my life.

Holy Alliance!

2006-10-11T20:32:00.000-03:00

The more I hear about the upcoming Marvel: Ultimate Alliance game, the more I like. It looks like it's going to be a lot more polished than the previous X-Men Legends games. Don't get me wrong, those games were a lot of fun, but I had a few issues with them, and usually towards the end of each area, I found myself bored (especially in the first game, since there were only a few locations), though the boss battles were usually pretty good. Now, I'm not expecting Ultimate Alliance to be perfect, but I am expecting it to be a lot of fun.

Now, I'm not good at describing play mechanics like Jordan is, but I'm excited about the use of the Wii-mote to fight and use super-powers, but I'm still not sure what to expect exactly from the Wii-mote. The descriptions sort of paint a picture but I'm so use to classic controllers that I can't imagine it as feeling natural. Still, based on how great the DS is I'm optimistic.

I also appreciate that the "costumes" you can get for your characters not only give you different stats but also different characters. For example, if you have Captain America, one of his costumes is the U.S.Agent, Cap's less-than-stable replacement. With Thor, you can get a Beta Ray Bill "costume" so you can fight as Thor's oddly-named, hideous rival/ally. Hopefully they'll be a few more costume choices this time. The last X-Men game was good but I was very disappointed when they didn't include Jim Lee's X-Men costumes (which were popular with fans and appeared in the 90's X-Men cartoon) but they had hideous costumes that look like they belong to action figures that don't exist. Night Attack Wolverine indeed. My only real costume-related beef is that this game is clearly taking place in the classic Marvel universe, yet Thor is wearing his admittedly cool ultimate costume. I have less of an issue with using the Ultimate Nick Fury (which seems very likely) because he's just Samuel L Jackson with an eyepatch and therefore awesome.

Now all twenty playable characters have not been revealed yet, but I already take issue with Blade and Elektra being playable characters. Maybe if they were unlockable, but I'd rather they used Daredevil and Black Widow rather than a couple of untrustworthy murderers who don't really belong on any main stream super-team. Aside from that, however, it sounds like a great line-up. Still, I'm curious about the notable exception of the Hulk from the initial line-up, which makes me suspect the Hulk might be a major plot point within the game (a boss/unlockable character maybe?) or at the very least will play a large role.

Another element I like is that the game features not only a huge cast of characters (about 140 characters in all) but also all kinds of classic Marvel locations such as Hell, Murderworld, Castle Doom, SHIELD Helicarrier and the Skrull Homeworld (to name a few). Now, as I said, in the X-Men games, some of the levels started to look a like, but in this game it's so all over the Marvel map that I can't help getting excited.

Still, while I know perhaps too much about what's happening in this game already, I'm still guessing what characters will show up and what locations will be visited to give me a geekgasm. So I decided to write about some stuff I really want to see in either this game or the eventual sequel.

Heroes:
Union Jack: If the team were to hit Britain, I'd sure like to see them team up with this badass spy. In all honesty, I mostly like him for the costume, but he's a much cooler British hero than Captain Britain.

Runaways (right): This reluctant super-team is composed of teens (and one pre-teen) who discover that their well-to-do parents are actually all murderous super-villains and they team up to stop them. Unfortunately they have few resources, limited powers and gifts they barely understand and live in LA, far away from the super-hero mecca that is New York City. Since the series is heading in a road trip direction they could easily end up anywhere in the Marvel universe.

Marvel's Western Heroes: I wouldn't be surprised if there was time traveling in the next game and a quick stop in the West might be a fun excuse to showcase the Lone Ranger-esque Western super-heroes that were popular in the fifties.

She-Hulk: She's easily one of my favourite Marvel character's right now, mostly because she has the funniest series and is one of the most level-headed characters. Basically, she's the Hulk's cousin who gained his power set after a blood transfusion only Bruce Banner could give. But she doesn't have his terrible mindless rages (well... usually) and uses her hero-ness to be one of the nation's most famous and beloved lawyers. Unfortunately, she became poison to her firm when the opposition was able to point out that saving the world (and thus, her jury) could be a form of jury tampering. She was then hired by the firm that got her fired and must now try cases without her fabulous green bod. Now she works on cases involving super-human law.

Man-Thing (left): Not a hero, really, but neither is it a villain. It was, however, ordered to be the guardian of the nexus of all realities. Pretty big role for a creature that isn't really sentient. The Man-Thing is a big swamp monster who is empathic and who only reflects the emotions of any sentient creature it encounters. So if any creature is aggressive towards it or afraid of it, it attacks and becomes very corrosive. I always kind of liked Man-Thing, but I'm not sure why beyond the interesting character design.

Villains:
Kang the Conqueror (right): He's one of the most dangerous villains in the Marvel universe thanks to his time traveling. He's already conqueror the future, but is now bored and wants to conquer it in the time of heroes, where he faces the most opposition, just to show he can. He actually succeeded in the clever but overly-long Kang Dynasty story-arc but checking out all of the future's possibilities and preparing for every eventuality. He loses only because he is betrayed by his son.

The Kingpin: He looks like a fat-ass, but he's not. What looks like fat is actually almost all muscle, making him a physical match for even some of the super-powered heroes. But his real strength is his Machiavellian machinations and his tenacity. He's the runs all the crime in New York (and beyond) and though he's been taken out many times, he always finds a way to get his position back. He's also known for tricking super-heroes into beating the crap out of his competition. It's incredibly hard to make anything stick to the Kingpin no matter how much the evidence piles up. Plus, he has some quality henchmen (Elektra, Bullseye and Typhoid Mary) as opposed to the usual dumbass henchman most villains seem to have.

Thanos: When you need a villain bigger than Dr. Doom, you turn to Thanos. A mad titan from another world (populated by space gods) who worships death. Basically, his big plot is just to kill lots and lots of people to impress Death (who's a chick) until she reciprocates his love. He also constantly hunts for the Infinity Gems, which make whoever collects them all pretty all powerful. He did it once before and killed half the universe and almost all of the Marvel heroes. The universe got better.

The Taskmaster: Born with photographic reflexes (he can copy pretty much any athletic skill or maneuver he sees, including martial arts) the Taskmaster can beat most super-heroes in physical combat after collecting all kinds of martial arts just by watching. But what he prefers to do is stay out of the way and teach other villains how to fight. Still, he's a guy who only gets tougher to beat the longer you fight him.

Locales:
Wakanda: It's essentially techno-Africa. This African nation was the most technologically advanced long before any other nation, thanks largely to the vibranium mines across the country. And because of that, it's constantly under attack from villains and various greedy interests.

The Negative Zone: A crazy alien dimension that's filled to the brim with evil, violence and floating land masses.

Monster Isle: Really speaks for itself. Basically, before Stan Lee got into super-heroes Marvel was publishing almost nothing but sci-fi/horror stories with monsters in 'em. Most of these stories take place in the current Marvel universe, but to explain where they went, Marvel created a crazy island where most of those Monsters lurk. An entire level of monsters with a 12 for tall minimum? Sounds fun to me.

The Raft/The Vault/Negative Zone Prison: any one of these three jails would be cool to visit. And if it's to stop a jail break, then the creators could have fun sending an army of lame villain cannon fodder (with some really tough villains mixed in) rather than the usual faceless henchman. A fun idea for a very tough level.

Well, that's just my little wish list for the series, but so far, things are shaping up to be pretty good. Too bad for Jordan since that means that I'll be unloading all sorts of pointless comics trivia on him for each new character or area we face.

Gone NOVA

2006-10-04T22:35:00.000-03:00

Man, what a weekend. For those of you who don't know, I travelled to Halifax to be interviewed for work with the NOVA corporation, which would allow me to teach English in Japan. Frankly, I've been getting ready for this for quite a while. In fact, the week leading up to this I was a bit of a nervous wreck. Just when I think I remembered everything, there was something else to do.

I spent most of Friday and Sunday riding on a bus and reading comics and books. It wasn't really all that fun. At around 6:30ish I got to Halifax and got to my hotel, which ended up costing about $238 including meals and such. It was a pretty decent hotel, though I didn't really have time to enjoy it. I spent most of the night getting ready mentally and ironing the Hell out of my shirt for the interview. Unfortunately, the next morning I discovered that I had ironed one of the buttons off my shirt. Luckily, it wasn't that obvious and I don't think cost me any points but it upset me greatly.

I got to my 8:45 appointment on time (I wanted to be earlier, but the first taxi the hotel called for me never showed up). The first interview was really more of a presentation and information session, though there was some teaching practice. It went pretty good, but I knew that it would be the second interview that would count. Unfortunately, I was the last person to have a one-on-one interview, giving me free time between 11:30 and 4:15. I got some lunch and got some comics from Strange Adventures, but that just took two hours and I spent the rest of the time hanging around the hotel.

The one-on-one interview didn't go bad but I tripped up a little in some areas. I was quite nervous and that affected my performance a little and I wasn't sure quite what the interviewer was looking for. Still, I think my role-playing as teacher went really well and I really got to show off my teaching skills well enough. Still, I'm as nervous as sin and I'm supposed to get my answer come Friday.

Anyhoo, I spent that night with friends of the family and was treated very well (as the elderly like to do) and took the bus out of town the next day.

Now if this thing with NOVA doesn't work out I can still try with JET, but I really hope that I get hired by NOVA, as I really like what I hear about it so far.

And frankly, I just want it because I already invested so much emotionally into this last weekend.

Play MSTy for me

2006-09-28T00:02:00.000-03:00

I was going to call this post "Thank YouTube" but it's more MST3k-based than YouTube-based. But YouTube started it when I was looking around on their site for TV series openings and stuff when I found that whole (well, segmented) episodes of were available. I've since been watching many of the episodes that I had not seen before but had always wanted too. It's not as nice as having it on DVD but I'll take what I can get. It just reminds me that Mystery Science Theatre 3000 is still one of my favourite TV series of all times.

Even before I had seen the series I was always very interested in seeing it ever since I heard of it on either the Internet (back when it was relatively new and relatively hideous) or on some crappy TV show that shows the funniest clips from other recent TV series. It instantly caught my attention because it was already quite similar to an 80's TV special I loved called It Came From Hollywood in which John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Cheech and Chong heckle clips from silly sci-fi and monster movies. I remember seeing it long ago, so I have no idea how well it holds up. Still, I was intrigued and when I stumbled on to a tape of it way back in late junior high/early high school at Strange Adventures I picked it up immediately. The episode was the Atomic Brain and it still remains a favourite episode of mine.

The show was created way back in 1988 by Joel Hodgson and some other comedian friends in the mid-west. It was put on a crappy little station called KTMA which, when MST3k was airing on it, air almost nothing but syndicated reruns of forgettable sitcoms and action shows. MST3k gained a quick local following although some people didn't quite get it (apparently one person called the show saying that he liked it except for the annoying people talking through the movie). The show was originally improvised and was really not very good (or so the creators of the show admit). Still, it proved popular enough to have their 13-episode season expanded to 21. Nonetheless, it was cancelled due to the station's financial woes.

The series premise was simple: Joel, a janitor at Gizmonics Institute (a crazy science place) is knocked out by two evil scientists (Dr. Forrester and Dr. Erhardt) and forced to watch crappy movies in an attempt to find the film that will drive him insane. Once the film that is bad enough to drive him over the edge is found, then the mad scientists (or Mads) will use it to conquer the Earth. To keep his sanity, Joel creates robots from the instruments that control the film. The robots are the slightly pretentious Tom Servo, the smart alecy Crow and the unlikable Gypsy (I'm sorry but this character just sucks. Bad). But really it's all about making fun of movies.

The series was eventually picked up by the then young Comedy Channel (now Comedy Central) mostly because it ate up a lot of time on their schedule. When it made it their a friend of the creators and TGIFriday's employee Mike Nelson started working on the show and became head writer one season later simply because of his talent. With season two Josh Weinstein AKA Dr. Erhardt (who is barely remembered by fans) and the voice of Tom Servo left the show so a new Mad was introduced (TV's Frank) and Tom got a new voice. The show continued and just as it got popular the shows lead Joel Hogdson left. Part of it was because he was not comfortable with acting and was really more of a reluctant host and the other was that he was disagreeing with producer Jim Mallon about the direction of the show. In the middle of the fifth season Joel's character bids a final farewell to the cast after being freed against his will, and is replaced by head writer Mike Nelson as host. In my opinion, Mike is a better host mostly because of his confidence and that the era he ushered in brought forth more polished riffing.

Well, the series continued with TV's Frank leaving (he enters Second Banana Heaven at the end of season six) and the series was seemingly cancelled at the end of a very short seventh season. Since it seemed unlikely that there would be no more show, the season finale had the characters reaching the end of the universe and evolving into pure love or energy or something (it was pure whatever it was). At this point, Trace Beaulieu (Dr. Forrester, Crow T. Robot) left the show and his character Dr. Forrester exited.

The series was later picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel, where the crew was given a few guidelines (a continuing storyarc throughout the season, sci-fi movies only) but for the most part it was business as usual. The series lasted three more seasons (which where easily my favourite) before being cancelled.

Since then the actors have been involved with many random projects and books. Most noticeable is that Mike Nelson is chief content producer for Legend films and while there has done some MST3k-style riffing for some of the films. Mike's still pretty funny but it's just not the same without the other cast members. Luckily, Mike's also producing RiffTrax, which include film commentaries by him and, in some cases, his friends Kevin Murphy (the second Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (the second Crow). Basically, they're MST-style film commentaries for more mainstream films (X-Men, Star Trek V, Road House) that can be downloaded and listened two while you watch the film. I found clips of them on YouTube and their pretty good.

The RiffTrax website can be found here. And some great RiffTrax previews can be found here, here and here.

Sorry, if my post isn't that great this week (or ever) but I'm tired and I had to start this one later than usual. Mostly it was an excuse to show that I love MST3k and that RiffTrax are awesome.

Ticked Off

2006-09-20T20:34:00.000-03:00

I finally got the first season of the Tick on DVD and I have to say that I'm very disappointed. I don't know if Beuna Vista just doesn't have any love for the show, but this is one of the poorest looking DVD sets I've ever seen.

Now, I have some problems with the first season of the Tick to begin with: the animation is a bit weak in some areas (though some of it, like character designs, holds up rather well), the humour isn't as strong as following seasons and while it certainly has charm the first season, it doesn't quite click. I also don't really like Mickey Dolenz (of Monkees fame) as Arthur. He's no bad really and he has nebbish down but the I prefer Rob Paulson's take on him, who gives Arthur a bit more personality. The problem with the humour is in part a problem with timing and delivery (there are some jokes that I realize I would love in print but the screen fails to deliver) and just poor plotting. Still, there are lots of great jokes, including the Carpeted Man's refusal to take off his super s

hit despite sweating profusely, Stalingrad (a villain whose power is looking like Stalin) and most of the episode "the Tick vs. the Tick" where the two super-heroes fight over the use of the super-hero name. And for the first seasons failings I still like it (though would not necessarily recommend it).

However, the DVD is pretty piss poor. The only thing I appreciate is that the set features a cover with new art by creator Ben Edlund. Lovely. But the menu itself is both bare bones and ugly looking. The menu shows the Tick (Arthur in disc two) standing while wacky things move about the scene while the theme song plays. It doesn't sound too bad when I say it, but it's irritating and hideous. There's no extras (though there are trailers for other stuff before the menu comes up. I hate that), which is a shame because I would have like some Ben Edlund commentary and maybe some more insight into the series, as well as the creation of the character (which he first created for his university newsletter).

Also, episode 11 is missing. Now it's a pretty weak episode ("the Tick Vs. the Mole Men") and I'm not fighting to get it but I just don't like the fact that they would do that. It's the principle of the thing.

Still, I'm looking forward to season two, when things get really good. In fact, I'm going to make a list of the series best episodes, simply because lists are easy for me to write. Must have something to do with my lack of imagination:

Best Episodes of Season Two:

Alone Together: An accident on the moon shoots the Tick into deep space where he's saved by a cosmic entity named Omnipotus. Omnipotus agrees to bring the Tick home if the Tick acts as his personal hygenist. *shudder* Too bad Omnipotus is planning to eat the Earth when he gets to it.

Classic Quote:
(After the Tick convinces Omnipotus not to eat the Earth and teaches him the meaning of friendship)
The Tick: (whispering to Arthur) "I don't even really like him."

Evil Sits Down for a Moment: The vain super-hero (if you can call him that) Die Fledermaus and furniture controlling villainous Ottoman Empress fall in love. It's all fun and games at first until the Empress asks for a commitment. Plus, the Tick is convinced he's an elderly British woman.

Classic Quote:
The Tick: "Oh, look, Arthur! It's a completely rehabilitated villain. She's comfortable with herself. Comfort, commitment, marriage... what do all these things have in common? The letter C! Except for marriage. And if people get all British when they get knocked on the head... what do British people get? I know! Comatose! Another C!"

Ants in Pants!: After the Tick has an unpleasant run in with evil ants, he checks himself into Captain Sanity's Superhero Sanitarium. Unfortunately, Captain Sanity's only idea is to have his Shaft-like assistant Taft ("Yer darn right") fight the Tick in different costumes.

Classic Quote:

(while wrestling each other)
Taft: "I'm your momma, man!"
the Tick: "NO YOUR NOT! YOUR TAFT!"

Grandpa Wore Tights: The Tick and Arthur spend the day at the super-heroes retirement home while the Terror, an elderly villain, seeks a weapon they took from him years ago. Old people are amusing.

The Visual Eye: "Oh, the Ray Gun was terrible weapon. Turned everyone it hit into a guy named Ray."

(Flashes to a sepia-toned city scape crawling with friendly, young gas station attendents)
Ray: "Fill 'er up, chief?"

The Visual Eye: "Then there was the Tommy Gun..."

Best of Season Three:

That Mustache Feeling: The Tick inexplicably wakes up with a mustache, which he obsesses over. But when the mustache begins acting on it's own the Tick begins a decent into madness. Who holds the answer to the problem? Jim Rage, Agent of S.H.A.V.E.!

Classic Quote:
The Tick: "Hey, you have both eyes! You're not a secret agent at all! You're just some guy who hates my mustache!"

Devil In Diapers: The villain Mr. Mental seeks protection, so he hypnotizes the Tick and Arthur into thinking he's a baby. It's pretty creepy seeing a 40-year old man being treated like a baby but it's a funny sort of creepy.

Classic Quote:
None I can't think of. I'm still creeped out by the forty year old in diapers.

The Tick Vs. Education: The Tick teaches an Adult education class for super-heroes. His students: The Flying Squirrel, Sarcastro: Master of Sarcasm, Mr. Exciting, Gesundheit, and Babyboomarangotan. Together they must face ice cream mascot Uncle Creamy and the KGB Agent who replaced him.

Classic Quote:
Ex-KGB Agent and current Uncle Creamy Ivan Rubek: (In with a stern tone and Russian accent) "Hello, children. We are having fun at this time. My carefree antics are winning your hearts."

I Can't Think of a Good Zellers Pun

2006-09-13T20:09:00.003-03:00

Well, I didn't get a job at Chapters (damn) but I got a job at Zellers (*shrug*). It seems OK and all, but I don't plan on staying too long past Christmas for a multitude of reasons. One is that if everything works out I'll be teaching English in Japan for most of 2007. Hopefully things will go well with NOVA on Sept. 30th and there'll be a place for me in NOVA. I imagine that if it does go well with NOVA, I'd be heading for Japan sometime between November and January (I checked January off in my application so hopefully that will affect things). The other thing is that while it certainly isn't bad work, it's just something I'm not as interested in sticking with for a prolonged period of time. If things don't work out this time around with NOVA, then I plan on trying again and moving out of my parents apartment. I don't have a specific plan yet but I just want to get some independence in my life and get out of my rut. Maybe into a new rut. Hopefully, if NOVA doesn't work out this time around I'll be able to get some more substantial work with the English Language Programme beyond what I'm doing now (which is nice, it's only about an hour and fifteen minutes a day, on days that I work). OK, that's really more like a few reasons rather than a multitude. Still, it isn't bad work so far.

My work with ELP is really nice (and rewarding) so far, but it doesn't require too much work and I'm really hoping to do more there. Basically what I'm taking part in is recreational activities for the studentsYesterday, I gave a small tour of the UNB/STU campus to some students and today I played cards and some board games with an older Korean woman. Interestingly, it took a lot longer to grow board with War than I thought she would but she really enjoyed Go Fish (which she pronounced as Go Fishy). We also played Boggle and Snakes and Ladders. A good time was had by all.

That's all I can really think of writing about for now... yep.

Conversations with Clod

2006-09-06T22:57:00.000-03:00

(By the way, I'm the titular clod)

Well, I had two job interviews today, both of which rather well.

First, I had an interview with Zellers which turned out much better than expected. I wasn't sure even if I wanted to work there simply because I would be afraid it would be like Wal-Mart. I never really hated working at Wal-Mart per se, but I never really liked it that much either. I think I'd like working at Zellers more, partially because I'd only have part-time hours and because the positions available mean I won't have to work in the clothing department again. I feel very confident about the interview because there are plenty of openings, only a few other people being interviewed and the guy interviewing me took a liking to me. Seems he was a "Brunsy" (writer for the Brunswickan) too and said something along the lines of "anything for a fellow Brunsy". Nice guy, but that statement struck me as a little weird, as he repeated it a couple of times and I never really thought of the Brunswickan as a kind of fraternity. But any interview that ends with a discussion of the merits of Grant Morrison's run on X-Men is a successful interview in my books.

Strangely, this is the second interview I've had so far and the second one were I meet people who know comics (though not as much as I, if I may sound like a pretentious snobby ass) as the same thing happened when I was interviewed by Chapters a week ago and found that half of the other people in the group interview were talking about comics. A good omen?

Anyhoo, my other interview was a second interview with Chapters, who asked me a few extra questions. It was a pretty short interview (about 15 minutes) and they told me that I'll be informed within the next couple of days if I have the job. My hopes are up and if I get the job, I'll get 30% off all books and 10% off giftware (plates and stuff). I don't know if it stacks with my iRewards card but either way that's a pretty sweet deal. I'm hoping and praying for that call.

Both jobs start out as part-time jobs but that shouldn't be a problem for me as long as I can balance it along with my part-time work with the ELP, who I have a meeting with on Friday. I know I have that work if I want it, but I just hope whatever work I get allows me to work with ELP too.

Coming Soon to a Rack Near You

2006-08-30T21:54:00.000-03:00

The latest issue of Wizard (it's a comics magazine) came out today and had a huge fall preview issue and I just thought I'd go over some of the comics and comic-related stuff that was previewed in the book:

Mighty Avengers: This series will be taking place after the Civil War crossover (in which the Marvel Heroes are split into two warring factions over the issue of superhuman registration) and looks to be focusing on the pro-government heroes. Written by Brian Michael Bendis and Frank Cho (who likes to draw the boobies), this looks to be much more upbeat than New Avengers, but since there's a good chance these guys are the winners of the Civil War I don't blame 'em for being upbeat. The 7-page preview looks really good, particularly the Mole Man's monster army, and it looks to be a return to the classic "Avengers vs. world-threatening villain" stories that have been missing for quite a while in the other Avengers series. Plus, it's good to see Wonder Man on a team again. I keep thinking that writers forgot he existed.

New Wildstorm: I've never been a big fan of the "Wildstorm Universe" (though there are a lot of great series within that continuity), but Grant Morrison and Jim Lee's new take on it sounds like it's going to be a great read. Mixing the flash of the early Image comics with the substance of Vertigo comics, the new Wildstorm books sound clever, fun and, as one expects from Grant Morrison, crazy. Basically the idea is that while most hero comics are accused of being an adolescent power fantasy, Wildstorm will represent an adult power fantasy.

The headlining series will be WildC.A.T.s written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Jim Lee and will be about the Halo Corporation, the first alien corporate machine, run by the alien robot Spartan who has humanities' best interest at heart, whether we want it or not. He gives a cyborg in every home and all sorts of advances in technology but will Spartan and his WildC.A.T.s (who are a group of Covert heroes) give the world fatherly love or a cold iron fist? Or will it be a bit of both?

The other huge series will be the Authority by Grant Morrison and Drawn by Gene Ha (Top Ten). The Authority is a super hero team who plan to change the world for the better regardless of what any government says. Basically, if they existed in our world they would have taken care of Bin Laden, Kim Jong Il and George Bush in the cleanest way possible. The original series was good but failed to deliver on the title characters changing the world, despite overthrowing a few corrupt governments. Creative teams tried to make it work, but it never felt... right. This version will feature the title characters lost in the Bleed (a sort of field where all universes meet), trying to get home and changing every universe the meet along the way.

Gen13 features over-sexed super-powered teens who are on the run from the government. Sounds generic enough, but Gail Simone is one of the wittiest writers in the industry and the promise that she'll give us the sexy humour that made the original so popular is promising, since she handles that stuff pretty well. The artist's name is Talent Caldwell, who I've never heard of. Still, his name sounds talented. Now if only there was a writer named Plot Goodscript.

The other series (StormWatch, Midnighter, Deathblow and Wetworks) don't sound all that interesting, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of them turns out to be a sleeper hit of some sort.

Richard Donner on Superman: Yeah, that Richard Donner will be writing Superman quite soon. Apparently, this is what Superman III was supposed to be until it became a shitty Richard Pryor vehicle. Plus, it will greatly involve Bizarro, who is always one of my favourite villains. Frankly, I don't know how much Donner will actually write as he's co-writing with Geoff Johns (they worked together on conspiracy Theory), whose writing approximately 50 books a month right now. This is definitely the most-hyped book write now, but I'm still not quite sure what to expect. Still Richard Donner has directed some fun flicks before (Maverick, Lethal Weapon, Scrooged) despite some stinkers (The Toy, Timeline) and I'm pretty hopeful for his run on the series.

Heroes: Coming to NBC this fall is a series about people all over the world from all walks of life gaining different super-powers. Apparently, they will have to save the world from an apocalyptic threat but that won't be for a few more seasons yet, assuming the show lasts that long. For the first few episodes, it's just the characters exploring the possibilities of their powers, so for that alone, the first few episodes should be worth checking out. The characters include a Japanese Otaku/salaryman with teleportation and time manipulation powers, a flying congressional candidate, an inmate who can walk through walls, a cheerleader with a healing factor and a mind-reading cop. I hope it turns out to be good, as it has been a long time since I've watched a weekly program that I can look forward to.

Also, this isn't comics related, but I'm thinking that if I get a next generation system, it'll be the Wii. It sounds as though it will be less expensive than the PS3 and just more imaginative.

Comics for my friends

2006-08-23T18:24:00.000-03:00

Just as Darcy espouses on the art of cinema, movie making and all that crap, those who know me know that I go on at length about comics. I just love them. In fact, that's why I decided that I MUST write a new weblog entry every Wednesday (new comic day!) And I always try to get others to read comics too, though the results are mixed. Aiden's well on his way to loving them thanks in no small part to Marvel's Ultimate line of comics. Cheesy name aside (may as well call them extreme. No, that's still worse, if by just a narrow margin) the line, which is basically a continuity enema where things are happening again for the first time, is mostly high quality with the occasional minor slip-ups. Jordan reads webcomics and manga but I haven't been able to turn him on to anything outside those aesthetics (though he showed interest in the character of Hellboy). No luck with Darcy, but I don't see him that I often. The Twins read Transmetropolitan and loved it, although it seems to be the only thing I've been able to turn them on two. I've tried other stuff but have not been given a response for most of it. Nathan recently turned to comics after seeing V for Vendetta. He actually didn't like the book it was based on so much, but he loved Alan Moore's other book, Watchmen, which is widely regarded as the greatest comic of all time (I wouldn't go that far but it is definitely in the running) though I don't know if he has explored much beyond that.

What I want to do in this entry is provide some options that might appeal to each of my friends. My purpose is to pick the one great comic that will most likely appeal to the people listed here that they have not read, as well as a few runner ups that I was also considering. Now I can't be positive but I'll also mention what I based my decision on and let you decide. And sure, you probably don't want to spend money on something that's just been recommended to you, but most of these probably ain't to hard to download off the Interweb just as Nathan did.

Aiden: Conan: Yes, that Conan. The barbarian one. But try not to think about the movie. This is much better. Basically it follows the history of Conan, a warrior living in a time on Earth known only as the Hyborian Age (think pre-Babylonian, but much more advanced), who tries to sate his wanderlust and ends up with a greater destiny. The thing I like about Conan is that he's not off on some great quest and he's not a chivalrous selfless hero. He's not really a hero at all, just a guy who wants to find what wonders and opportunities lay over the next horizon. Oh, and gold, food and fine pieces of ass are motivating factors too. Though the series starts with him leaving his home for the first time, the series is essentially the cradle to grave story of Conan who grows and changes as a person with each story. I think Aiden would like this not only because I know he's a fantasy fan, but also because the series is essentially Ultimate Conan. It retells all the classic tales of Conan in a more organic fashion than before (the original pulp books take place in various random points in Conan's life), but still keeps the violent and exciting flavour of Conan's world. The writing by Kurt Busiek (Marvels, Astro City) deviates from his usual style of classic style super-hero books and slice of life super-hero books and really shows that he gets the character and doesn't shy away from some of the nastier aspects of Conan's world. The art by Cary Nord (whom I had not heard of before this book) is absolutely wonderful, assisted by the luscious colours of Dave Stewart. A damned fine book.

Runners Up:
Runaways: A fun teen-action series written by Brian K. Vaughan (Y - The Last Man) that takes a Breakfast Club-like group of kids and forces them to use their newfound power to stop one of the most dangerous super-villain teams ever: their parents.

Astonishing X-Men: Written by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) and penciled by the always amazing John Cassady (Planetary) bring one of the best X-Titles in a long while. Whedon brings the comedy, the plot twists and the character development and Cassady brings the bad ass fight scenes and awe-inspiring visuals

Street Angel: Seeing how much Aiden liked Dr. McNinja (or whatever it's called) I'm positive Aiden would like this series about a homeless 14-year-old ninja on a skateboard. Funnier and weirder than it sounds. Also featuring former black exploitation hero Afrodisiac and CosMick the Irish astronaut.

Jordan: Bone: One of my personal all time favourites. It's the tale of the Bone cousins, three white smurf-looking creatures from Boneville (where everyone looks like that I can imagine) who get kicked out of town after a mayoral election gone awry. Fone Bone is de facto leader and easily the most sensible of the three, Phoney Bone is greedy, cheap and short-tempered and Smiley Bone, though seemingly stupid is just eccentric and is actually quite quick-witted (he's sort of like Hobbes to Phoney's Calvin). While wandering through the desert they all get lost in a huge swarm of locusts and all end up in a huge valley, populated by humans and various talking animals. After spending most of the winter lost in the woods (though making very good friends with the animals) and occasionally chased around by fearsome rat creatures (who aren't really very good monsters, as a real monster tries to make you into a stew, not a quiche), Fone meets up with the beautiful human Thorne and her hearty Grandma Ben. He also finds his brothers in the nearby town of Barrelhaven washing dishes at a bar for a rough and tumble bartender. Everything seems fine at first but soon Fone notices strange things. Why does Grandma Ben refuse to believe in the dragon Fone claims to have seen? Why does it seem that she and the bartender know more than their letting on? And who or what is the Hooded One?

I figured this was a good choice for Jordan since it is a fantasy epic (which I understand Jordan likes) with a good sense of humour and an immensely likeable cast. Though it's full of classic fantasy conventions it doesn't feel hampered by cliches and writer/artist Jeff Smith storytelling keeps the reader on his toes. And, most importantly its just fun.

Runners Up: Hellboy: A very popular book and with good reason. A really unique art style, a very likeable main character (a sort of blue collar paranormal investigator who would rather be drinking brews than facing Lovecraftian horrors from beyond) and an interesting continuity. It should be noted, however, that the first book is plagued with serious pacing problems and doesn't hold up nearly as well as further volumes.

Fallen Angel: Generic title aside this is a strange, witty book by long time Star Trek novel and Hulk comic writer Peter David. In the city of Bete Noir, one of those "city of lost souls" cliches, a young woman, Lee, acts as a hired detective for anyone who will pay and contends with the man who runs the town Dr. Juris. But keeping with the "everything is not what it seems" cliche, Juris and Lee are lovers as well as arch-enemies. Despite everything making it sound cliche, Fallen Angel is a fun quirky series with David's trademark humour and strange, intriguing characters (Ricmond would love the criminal named Asia Minor).

Top Ten: An NYPD Blue-esque series about the cops who work the beat in Neopolis, a city who population is composed of superheroes, supervillains, aliens, robots, monsters, gods and any other things one might find in a comic book. While there is certainly humour, the actual plots and subplots are gripping. Sure, there's comedy (a shape-shifting ass-grabber is plaguing the city, a Godzilla-like drunken dad causes trouble when he tries to break his son out of jail) but there is also some great drama (a cop realizes he's responsible for a prostitute getting murdered, the team faces death and destruction at the hands of one of their own).

Darcy: The Mystery Play: This one-shot from the bizarre mind of Grant Morrison (We3, Seaguy) and with beautiful painted art by J. Jon Muth (MoonShadow) comes this eerie story of a town that holds mystery plays (a very old kind of play in which biblical stories are re-enacted). When the actor who plays God is murdered, a detective named Carpenter arrives to try and solve the mystery. But this story isn't a mystery: it's an enigma. While it's plainly obvious from the premise that this story focuses on religion and the nature of God, it also focuses on madness and humanity. The story is short but is full of haunting images and strange discomforting dialogue. Though Grant Morrison is known for being very weird, this is actually a very toned down work for the writer. It's still quite weird but it's not quite as over the top. This will appeal to Darcy for it's cinematic imagery and it's cryptic story that raises many questions but answer little despite having a satisfying ending.

Runners Up:
Doom Patrol: Also by Grant Morrison. This is a deliciously crazy mix of David Lynch, David Cronenburg and super-heroes. This is Grant Morrison at his craziest giving us sentient transvestite streets, the Brotherhood of Dada, the ghost of imaginary friends, and Crazy Jane, who has 64 separate personalities... and a super-power for each one.

Transmetropolitan: I guess calling this series Hunter S. Thompson in the future is accurate, but I get the feeling that it sells it a bit short. Warren Ellis' most personal work focuses on the media and the nature of truth in a future that's a lot like today... only stranger.

Four Women: A powerful thriller in the vein of Straw Dogs. But while Straw Dogs was about masculinity, this series is about different kinds of femininity. But it's still about survival and what people are capable of... and what they wish they were capable of.

The Twins: Fell: Snowtown is a feral city, no longer fit for civilized people. But people still live there, shop there, eat there and work there. Detective Richard Fell has entered Snowtown to clean it up but it won't be easy considering the precinct is understaffed, the town is superstitious and even his friends and allies aren't quite sane. Warren Ellis created this series in an attempt to make a book that's cheaper than others, for those who can't afford normal monthly comics, but still has a full story. Each issue is a self-contained story so the target audience doesn't have to worry about having to buy it every single month if they can't afford it. Even though the page count for each comic is about 8 less than the average each issue is satisfying like a good meal. And at the end of each issue there's four pages of bonus material including reader mail, commentary and a page from the original script. The reason I chose it for the twins is that it each issue is usually inspired by the strange sort of information and trivia that the twins seem to know and love. Said information and trivia serves the story well, however, and shows the reader how nightmarish Snowtown can be.

Runners Up: Louis Riel: It's the life story of Louis Riel, in comic form. It's much better than it sounds and is probably the best biography I've ever read. Though the writer admits that some of the details are fictionalized (such as the dialogue and the characters motivations, which we could never truly know), the book is painstakingly researched and it shows. I've always known of Riel, but I never really knew how interesting (and nuts) he was until I read this book.

Switchblade Honey: A fun one-shot by Warren Ellis (writer of That Other Stuff I Mentioned By Him) created to be sort of an anti-Star Trek, featuring a crew of treasonists (they all had good reasons) given a ship to engage in guerrilla combat in a war that humanity is losing. Clever and fun, it's to bad it never became a series.

X-Statix: This probably the only X-Title I could get the twins to read, but I'm sure they'd find it amusing. The X-Statix call themselves a super-hero team but the fact is they're really flamboyant celebrity mercenaries. With a high mortality rate, the group is constantly changing members, but most shocking is the new leader the team gets after the last one got fragged. Not only is he inexperienced but he has a moral compass.

Nathan: 100 Bullets: His name is Agent Graves and he gives people a chance to change things. He gives them an attache briefcase containing 100 untraceable bullets, a gun, carte blanche to do what you wish with the bullets and irrefutable evidence that you have been irrevocably wronged. He gives consequence-free revenge. But then, when is anything consequence-free. This epic crime book explores the secret history of America while exploring the human drama of those who are given the briefcase. The great thing about this series is how everything seems to fit together so perfectly. The readers are given hints at the big picture and with each little hint it forces the readers to reconsider all that they've seen before. I figured this is the kind of thing that would interest Nathan simply because it has style character and manages to create a cool noir mood without becoming a cheesy noir pastiche.

Runners Up: Powers: A dark violent police drama about two homicide detectives who specialize in murdered super-humans. Great story and dialogue by Bendis and great animated style art by Michael Avon Oeming add up to a great book. Great. Sorry, I'm tired and my brain thesaurus ain't working.

Preacher: Great. I mean, er-- a violent Western about a Reverend possessed by the son of God and a demon. Now the Rev, his gun-toting girlfriend and his vampire drinking buddy are hunting god to hold him responsible. It might feature a lot of religion but what this series is really about is friendship, loyalty and cowboy justice.

The Walking Dead: What if Dawn of the Dead didn't end? This series is a lot like your average zombie movie, except it keeps going month after month. A small town sheriff wakes from a coma to discover the dead have risen. After finding his family, our hero and his new friends try to find sanctuary and remain sane but things look grim.

Just some suggestions. What do you think?

Once Again, Here I am

2006-08-13T15:54:00.000-03:00

I'm back from the English Language Programme's Submarine and now it's time to look for work. Sigh. The only thing worse than not having a job is looking for one. But I had a lot of good times for these last five weeks and there were a lot of good times. There were also a lot of bad times and there were some people who were just assholes. But mostly good. Most of the clients were really eager to learn and some had learned a lot before we were out. There were a few clients who stood out:

David: a Spanish guy who seemed a little socially awkward but was really talkative and eager to learn. He also made this weird sound when he paused in a sentence, which I assumed was a habit that came with learning to speak English, but now I just think it's a sound he always makes when he's talking and then needs a second to think about what to say.

Yvonne: He wasn't in my class but this guy is hard to miss. You know movies where there is a huge overly-friendly Russian guy with no sense of volume control. Turn him French and you have Yvonne. He was a very likeable person but it's always scary to ask him something. For example, I was in charge of tea lounge that night and Yvonne's music was loud and could be heard from his room down the hall. A fellow facilitator went down the hall to ask him to turn in down and I soon heard a loud, friendly voice "YOU DON'T LIKE MY MUSIC?" It wasn't yelling. Just a very loud question. I'd hate him to be my enemy, as even his gregarious voice frightens me and makes me want to cry.

Annie: No funny stories or anything, but I'm just proud of her since she had the hardest time learning English.

Rejean, Lucien, Patricio and Fernand: Very nice fellows. Once again, no amusing stories, but they were incredibly likeable and made teaching worthwhile.

I really enjoyed teaching these people and they made it really worthwhile. A lot of fun was had, people dressed as the opposite sex and I got a polyester Superman cape.

The people dressed as the opposite sex thing (Mr. & Mrs. ELP) was kind of creepier than intended, not because of the clothes thing (but yuck none the less) but when each couple comes out the get to do a dance and most of the dances where salacious and... gropey.

And despite the hardships and awkward moments, I would gladly do this again, though I have no idea what the future may hold. But for now I would like to get some good steady work and have time for my friends. And hopefully move out before I turn twenty five in April.

Still, it feels weird now that I have no current obligations to the ELP. While there is a sense of freedom, there is also a sense of fear for the future. Time to look for work.

I'm back for a bit

2006-06-26T13:39:00.000-03:00

Just thought you'd like to know that I'm free until the evening of June 6th.

If you're wondering were I was, I was teaching English as a second language on the STU campus. Basically, the students (and the teachers) are only allowed to speak English for the duration of the programme, so they have to learn without shortcuts. I was teaching section one (lowest proficiency) which was, for the most part, a pretty good class. They were quite friendly and eager to learn (in most cases), but there were a few problems. One was with a Quebecois student who was a good student, but was really hyper. Like 13-year old on a sugar bender hyper. Hyper like a grown 19 year-old man shouldn't be. Nice guy, but very irksome.

The biggest problem, however, was with a young Mexican who just seemed like he wasn't interested in learning. It reminded me of the South Park episode in which they see the wax museum of stereotypes including the greedy jew and the studious Chinese. Randy, pointing at a brown skinned janitor leaning on his mop sleeping then says "look what we have here. The lazy Mexican stereotype." "oh, no" says the Mexican, "I was just cleaning and then I feel asleep. Oh, I'm so sleepy." Hey was not a bad person, but easily one of the worst students in class in that every time I asked him to read a sentence he'd go, "aaaah, come on," then sigh heavily. Come on what? "ah, come on, I already showed up here and take up physical space and now you expect me to participate in an activity? You're crazy!" Still, he definitely learned a few things before the end.

All-in-all it was a really enjoyable experience and most of the people were nice. There were a few jerk students, but luckily there were also a lot of good people. Also, I realize that I like middle aged French ladies. I don't mean I'm physically attracted to them, but their a lot of fun to hang around with and have a better (and raunchier) sense of humour than anglophones of the same age. So for every irritating Frenchman I hate, I'm comforted in knowing that when they become middle aged French women, they'll be much more tolerable to be around.

Things I read while away:

Batman: The Long Halloween & Dark Victory: These two books detail two of the Earliest years of Batman's career and depict Gotham's transformation from a mob-run town to a town besieged by madmen (the Joker, Two-Face, Scarecrow, etc.). The first story is certainly good and the second ain't bad either. Both are murder mysteries (the first involving the Holiday murders and the second involving the Hangman murders, which are a copycat of the former, except the weapon of choice is different) and the ending to both are rather disappointing. I don't know, I like not being able to solve the mystery until the last second, and when I get to the end, it should feel like the killer is the only one that makes sense in terms of the story. Still, here the answers aren't entirely satisfactory. Still, watching the transformation of Gotham is pretty cool, the character development works and the expressionistic style of Tim Sale's art makes Jeph Loeb's merely decent script come alive.

Fell #1-5: This may be the best new comic to come along in a good while. Written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Ben Templesmith (who is now sick of drawing vampires), the series focuses on Detective Richard Fell who finds himself working in a strange and feral city called snowtown. The city is covered in sigils (the sigil looks like an S with a diagonal line through it) that are supposed protect the city from dark forces. So far there is no actual supernatural elements in the story, and if the writer does decide to go in that direction (which seems unlikely at this point) it looks like it will be extremely subtle.

Each issue is extremely well plotted, but what I love is that the writer gives you some bang for you buck. Ellis created this series with the intent to give readers a good cheap comic for those working class blokes who may not have the cash to spend on the casual comic. Fell contains only one ad (on the back cover) and 16 pages of story (as opposed to the usual 24 pages) and costs one-two dollars less than the average comic book. He makes up for the page count by cramming a lot of story in each page without giving it the feeling that the story is rushed. Each story is clever, simple and surprising and manages to fit a great deal of tension and character. Plus, there are four pages of fan letters, script samples and commentary by the writers on were the ideas for each story came from.

And though there are no supernatural tales, the ideas are taken from real life facts and ideas like the true tale of a wife murdering her husband with a rum enema, Cambodian smoke children, the validity of "the Anarchist's Cookbook", floating corpses and the idea that schizophrenic people smell wrong. Plus Ben Templesmith evolves as an artist (and stops drawing vampires) to deliver an art style that I know longer get tired of looking at (he was a good artist before but after a while it would all look and feel the same). This might be the only comic around where I don't want to wait for the trade.

Sandman Vol. 9-10: The books that end the series are really very good, but the climatic ninth book, while great, was a little disappointing. I really preferred the final volume (which is really more of an epilogue which really gives the series a sense of finality. The ending of volume nine makes sense in terms of story and I'd hate to call it anti-climatic, but I still have a few problems with it, which I won't go into here (I may lend it to Aiden and it would spoil a lot for him). there are a lot of loose ends, but that's intentional considering the point of the story and the ideas it plays with (mortality, responsibility and change).

My one desire, however, is for Gaiman to one day give Delirium (the embodiment of crazy) her own series. The dialogue for her character is always good, but it is even better when you can imagine the attitude in which she says her lines. Plus, she's so sweet. It isn't easy to sell the line, "I am walking with a fish" but Gaiman makes it gold! But to be fair, it is rare (or intentional) that Gaiman doesn't come up with an important character who isn't likeable or interesting within this series. Death, Fiddler's Green, Mervyn Pumpkinhead, Cain and Abel (they were in comics before, but Gaiman really made them his own), and Lucifer to name a few manage to remind me why it is such a shame to say goodbye.

Books of Faerie: This one is disappointing. A spin-off from both Sandman and Books of Magic, this series is essentially the life story of Queen Titania (dat fairy queen what shows up in A Midsummer Night's Dream). The writing and art are both pretty forgettable, which is a shame because there was a lot of potential in the story and I never get the idea that Titania is a particularly charismatic, righteous or clever queen and I never get the feeling she's grown from her human roots to the strong queen she appears to be in Sandman. A lot of potential, but no results.

Cable Vol. 1-2: Cable's a character I really really hate. Not just because he was created by Rob Liefeld (though that doesn't help) but more because there wasn't much about him that was interesting. He's a cyborg from the future with an extremely militaristic attitude and wearing nothing but a scowl. There just wasn't any soul in the character. On David Tischman and Igor Kordey's run on the book, they manage to respect Cable's convoluted history and use it to their advantage.

Cable's main goal in life was to kill Apocalypse, who was to ruin the future he came from. But with Apocalypse dead, Cable is without a role to play in the Marvel universe. He soon gains a new motivation: make the future better by fighting in hot spots that no other hero goes to fight: he faces the Shining Path (who are now using mutants) in Peru, ethnic cleansing in Albania (where some ethnic Albanians' solution involves cloning) and facing other threats that are "ripped from the headlines" as they say, and are given a sci-fi touch. It's never as easy as good versus bad. Frankly, most characters in the series are rather unsavoury. Cable knows that he alone can't end these conflicts or save the world but he can save a few lives and stop the conflicts from getting worse. Cable was interesting and different, and it's a shame it was cancelled so quickly.

Avengers: celestial Madonna: Wow, this was... bad. Collecting a supposedly classic Avengers arc from the mid-70's, it follows the story of the Avengers newest member, Mantis, as it turns out she's both the Celestial Madonna (and with birth the universe's messiah) and extremely annoying. She talks in the second person (instead of saying "I want cheese", she would say "this one wants cheese"), which I guess the way Vietnamese martial art monks turned bar girls turned superheroines talk. The art isn't bad for it's time and there are fun ideas bandied about, but the story is terrible. I wondered if it was "good for it's time" but I decided no last night after comparing it to some Avengers issues from the later sixties. It's just bad. Luckily it was on sale in the shop, but if I could go back in time I'd not by this book... and save JFK... and Phil Hartman.

Avengers: World Trust: I was really expecting this book to be good. It's written by Geoff Johns, one of the most prolific and critically acclaimed writers today, and has a nifty premise, but the pacing is weak and it really falls apart at the climax. The premise is that all of the world capitals disappear from the Earth, each replaced with a strange void, and the Avengers are called upon to take over the world until they can solve the Crisis. This feels, simultaneously, too long and too short. It takes a while for the threat to show up and though the villain is supposed to be heralding a greater threat, he's beaten to quick and the huge threat is dispatched too quickly. On the plus side it is fun seeing who superheroes would deal with political problems and Iron Man solving the budget crisis for many nations.

There's is also a great story after the titular one entitled "Heart Broken" in which the radioactive hero Jack-of-Hearts has to spend 14 hours a day siphoning off his dangerous radioactivity in a blank room with nothing to pass the time (any book or game he would bring with him would just disintegrate anyway) and the knowlegde that one day his powers will kill him... and many others. Still, despite that it is pretty disappointing.

That's pretty much what I've read over the Summer, not counting some Sci-fi short stories. But I didn't mention them because none of them sprung to mind as being really great (with the exception of Harlan Ellison's Jeffty is Five, William Sanders' The Undiscovered, Nicholas DiChario's the Winterberry and Bruce Sterling's Mozart in Mirrorshades) I also have already bought 4 more comics (because Strange was having a thirty percent off everything sale and I found a sweet deal at a flea market) so I'll definitely have something to read over the break. Lucky me.

See Ya'll

2006-05-17T15:28:00.000-03:00

Though this is my first post in a month, this will most likely be my last post for a while. But then my last post was my last post for a while.

So let's get started.

Where I'm going: Starting tomorrow, I'm going to be living on STU residence as a part of my work with the English Language Programme. Basically, I'll be taking part in SUBMARINE, a program that teaches English to those who know little or no English. The students ages will range from greatly from 18 to... whenever people die. As to my understanding there will be students, business men and people from all walks of life to learn English for whatever reasons (in most cases for work and school).

It's going to be pretty hard on them because when the lessons begin, they will sign an agreement to speak English for those five weeks, and nothing else. There will be word games, social situations, singalongs and all sorts of activities to make sure they are completely saturated with English. Also there will be almost no access to TV or the internet for both teachers and students, so that should make communicating difficult for a while. Still, I'll probably be able to get on the internet once or twice a week. Also, though I leave tomorrow, I lessons don't begin until Monday, so I don't know what exactly is happening on those days (I was told it was a workshop, but what kind remains a mystery.

After the first five weeks, I'll have about a week or so off and then the next 5 weeks starts (assuming they still want me), so I'll pretty much be gone most of the summer. Since there won't be much to do after work, I'm stockpiling some comics to read. And I got a lot, since I'll likely just tear through them after a long work day.

What I've Read Recently:

Switchblade Honey: This one-shot by Transmetropolitan creator Warren Ellis was created when he imagined what it would be like if British foul-mouthed character actor Ray Winstone was the captain of the Starship Enterprise. Though it started out as a dumb joke in his head in which Winstone, a blue collar man's man, was a captain who played dirty, constantly belittled his straight-laced crew and refused to solve problems in a manner that required some bullshit technical explanation.

The final product of Switchblade Honey, however, turned out to be a lot smarter than that. The premise is that the an alien herd-mind (who we see only in silhouette), has declared war on humanity (after some humans ate their kind in what can only be described as a diplomatic faux pas) and humanity is losing. Badly. So badly in fact, that mankind is forced to ask for help from two former high-ranking officers arrested for treason. They are given a fast and powerful ship and their choice of prisoners to make up their crew. After forming a crew made up of talented but screwed up individuals, they are sent out on their own to act as guerrillas. Other Earth ships won't recognize their call sign and they won't answer to anyone, meaning they could run out on this losing battle at any time.

What I like about this one-shot is that it perfectly demonstrates what Warren Ellis is all about: cynical optimism. Like the crew of the Switchblade Honey, Ellis seems to have a low opinion of mankind, but at the same time he begrudgingly loves humanity, despite all of their countless faults and sins. The crew of the Honey know it's humanities' fault that the war started and that they were all arrested for doing the right things when it's inconvenient to their superiors (such as stealing another officers thunder in a manner that saved civilian lives or biting the dick off the rapist), but still, they think humanity is worth saving, even if it means throwing away their own lives in a suicide mission when they could just escape.

I also appreciate Ellis brings back the sense of wonder to sci-fi without resorting to sci-fi technobabble. That's not to say there aren't scientific explanations for the various sci-fi concepts (such as a spaceship capable of turning the sun into a weapon and hacking into enemy ships to open all the air locks), but the creator clearly knows what he's talking about and explains his concepts pretty clearly. As I said Ellis is a cynical optimist and that's generally how he approaches his sci-fi: when we get the big reveal about the sci-fi concepts he's toying with, we are presented with the wonder of discovery and what is possible as well as the ugly side, such as how such beauty can be tainted by mankind's arrogance or selfishness. That's not too say he makes things black & white or even simplistic in their shades of grey. But while his optimistic attitudes in his books usually follow the joy of discovery, this series seems to be more about the redemptive qualities of mankind. Mankind might suck most of the time, but we're still worth saving.

He has a great cast and the story is very entertaining, but I would have also liked to see this as a series. I hope he makes more some day.

Civil War #1: This is the first part of the huge Marvel crossover which begins with the hero team New Warriors (who are supporting themselves with their own reality TV series) hunt down a bunch of escaped super-villains in the town of Stamford, Connecticut to boost their ratings. But it ends in tragedy when the villain Nitro defends himself by blowing up a good part of the town, killing over 800 people.

The reaction to this forces a Superhero Registration Act (which had been floating around the Marvel universe for a couple months) to be passed, splitting the hero community. One side feels it makes perfect sense for super-heroes to work in the employ of the government and become a legitimate part of society. After all, they'll even be provided with training, a paycheck and a license to do what most of them have been doing for free. One of the other side, many heroes feel that this takes something away from them and by giving their real names to the government, they're leaving their loved ones open for attack. Many heroes would rather work for the rights of the people rather than become government tools. Captain America chooses the latter side (he may be Captain America, but it's the people that Cap fights for, not the government) and quickly becomes targeted by an overzealous new head of SHIELD (Nick Fury is MIA). When he escapes it becomes obvious that Cap will become the leader for the renegade heroes, Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic and Yellowjacket become the leaders of the governments heroes. Meanwhile the watcher shows up, acting as an omen of bad things to come.

Civil War is good, but it's big problem is that it didn't exceed my expectations. Though I agree with both sides to a certain extent, the supporters of the Registration Act seem to be the antagonists so far. Still, that's mostly because of the overly extreme reactions of SHIELD and the actions of the government. I like the fact that writer Mark Millar really captures the kind of reaction of the public would have in the wake of this catastrophe (freaking out and immediately looking to place blame) and the last meeting the heroes have before the war begins is also interesting. It kind of gives readers a chance to see who is picking what side and how this will effect the Super-hero world as a whole (expect a lot of teams breaking up). Still, as I said, it sort of meet my expectations in that there were no surprises. Hopefully, that will change will later volumes. Still, at least the Steve McNiven art looks fantastic.

52 Weeks 1-2: Though there have been weekly American comics in the past, most didn't last very long and none of them had this scale. In the wake of DC's most recent giant crossover, Infinite Crisis, the DC Universe was saved and the Earth is still standing. All of DC's series skip ahead a year after the Crisis and it gives all the series to have a fresh start, all while adding some mystery (where has Batman been the last year, who the new Wonder Woman is and are why Superman has spent a year without super-powers).

52 is a weekly year-long series which covers the events of the "missing" year through the eyes of 6 characters: Renee Montoya (a Gotham Detective who was fired and spends her nights getting piss drunk), the Question (a creepy objectivist vigilante obsessed with the truth), Black Adam (a god-like super-villain with a sense of justice who now rules a country in the Middle East), Booster Gold (a disgraced athlete from the future who travels back into the past to become a famous hero), Steel (a engineering hero planning to use his knowhow to help rebuild the world after the crisis) and Ralph Dibny (an ex-detective hero with stretching powers and some suicidal tendencies due to his wife's recent murder).

The epic 52-part story is only begun, but the first two issues are pretty good. Still, I'm going to wait for the trade paperback, but these issues are really bringing the fun back to the DCU. Definitely, this series is about reinventing the DCU, and while Crisis was sort of a commentary on the grim and gritty story telling and the arguments about what super-hero comics should be, this series seems to be about leading by examples of what super-hero comics should be. It's all over the map (in a good way) hinting at many stories to come, all of which seem epic. Booster Gold's future seeing robot seems to be giving Booster bad info, hinting that someone is screwing with the time stream. Meanwhile, Montoya is being stalked by the Question, who may have big plans for her. Plus, someone is kidnapping mad scientists and Steel has denied her daughter access to her supersuit until she proves she's worthy of it. This isn't just a dark super-hero tale or a light one, but it's a little of everything, showing the strength of what super-hero comics are capable of: blending in perfectly to any other genre and storytelling style.

With four of the biggest writers in comics (Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns and Mark Waid) working on one weekly series seemed like all sorts of problems. Firstly, weekly series has, for the longest time, has been though of as undoable. The other is the "too many cooks" scenario and finally the scale of the project, but despite all of these potential faults, the series is looking very good and should read very well when all collected.

Good stuff. And I've also got lots of good stuff to read while I'm gone.

What I will read:

Sandman Vol. 9-10: My Sandman collection is finally complete. I'm finally going to read the last two volumes of the Neil Gaiman epic and finish off this amazing series. Unfortunately, I kind of know how it ends but still it's really the journey that's important. I kind of wish I had time to reread the previous volumes since most of the stories will probably tie together and it's been a long time since I've read certain volumes. Still, I ca't wait.

Spider-Man's Tangled Web Vol. 4: Another one of my series is complete. This one is an anthology in which tales are told from the point of views of Spidey's friends and enemies and just people who are effected by is existence. This final volume is mostly the humour issues, though there's a nice looking J. Jonah Jameson origin issue. It also includes "Alphabet City", one of my favourite humour stories about about a loser villain named Typeface (who has a spelling theme) who finds himself stalked by a grammar-obsessed creep named Spellcheck. Hi-larious.

Fell #1-4: An experimental comic series by Warren Ellis where he makes cheaper comics by limiting the page number to 16 and adds more panels to his pages to cram as much story as he can in each self contained issue. I haven't read it, but I like Ben Templesmith's art and, from what I understand, it's never made clear what genre Fell is (even after reading several issues) it seems interesting. It follows a detective in a small, corrupt and creepy town which may or may not have paranormal activity.

New X-Men Vol. 3 Hardcover: The final volume of Grant Morrison's much praised run on X-Men with some great art. Not much to say about this except it's a shame that some far inferior writers did some of the best plot points in X-Men history.

Batman: The Long Halloween & Dark Victory: I always heard these were good, but I never read them.

Well, that's my life. See ya, later.

D for Disappointment

2006-04-09T13:09:00.000-03:00

This is sort of late, but Darcy's recent post made me want to write about V for Vendetta, a film that bugged the Hell out of me. Now, I never ask film adaptations to be direct and without changes (though Sin City was as close as any film had ever got. Only noticable difference is that Jessica Alba never showed off her cans). I never think of myself as a "purist" (a disgusting word in my opinion). It's just that the film adaptation of V for Vendetta was good but took away everything that made the original so good. I have no problem with change, but the biggest one was making V a person rather than being more human than human (at the risk of whipping out that cliche. I guess I'll just list my major problems with the film, but cause I like my paragraphs in point form, the simple man's paragraph.

* V is a nice guy in the film. No! Nonononono! V is an enigma. That's how I know him. He often speaks and explains his actions via cryptic quotes from books, plays, film and songs. That moment in the beginning when V appears in an extremely theatrical manner and explains who himself to Evey is essentially how V should be acting throughout the film. He doesn't think like a human. He is above that. He's not emotionless and he can be gentle, but the way he sees humans is the way that humans might see a dog or an insect. He doesn't think he's better than them and he doesn't patronize them (can a man really patronize a dog?) but he wants to help them. If he explained himself fully and bluntly (like he does in the film) then man wouldn't really understand him. He's got to help humanity embrace the proper way of life (anarchy, not to be confused with chaos) with subtlety, which unveils itself as a grand master plan. That brings us too...

* V's masterplan in the film doesn't work for me. Sure he's going to destroy the old order and he knows the ultimate sacrifice he'll have to make, but he seems to trust that mankind will do good afterwards. In the comic, V's masterplan is much more complex and sensible. It makes little sense at first but as we begin to see the big picture, we see how brilliant and masterful V's plan (and Alan Moore and David Lloyd's story) is. He's ten steps in front of everyone and he has no problems letting people know that.

* The film has no Fate. In the original, the masses depended on Fate to make them feel more at ease. Fate is a computer that would tell the people (via radio) the news the need to know and even tells you what the weather will be to the minute. Because of Fate everyone feels comfortable and safe. But what people don't know is that while Fate exists, it has no radio voice. That voice is provided by Lewis Prothero (who appears in the film as sort of a British Bill O'Reilly) and he does a good job and has a voice that exudes confidence and in turn, gives the people confidence in there government. But when V strikes and drives Prothero mad, then there must be a new voice for Fate. The new voice quivers and stutters a bit. It's a new voice and it lacks confidence. And now the people lack confidence, if just a little. But in the film we never get the feeling that people love their government or that people are afraid to speak or act. I don't think Fate HAD to be in the movie (despite being a very important plot point in the comic), but I would like to see examples of the judgment and actions of the people changing over the course of the year.

I guess I have many more problems that I could go on and on about (V and Evey don't fall in love and their relationship is so much more complex than that), but my feeling is that V is a good movie that just pales in comparison to the original, and watching the movie after reading the book is a frustrating experience. There are two moments that perfectly capture the feel of the original: the surprisingly gentle scene in which V kills Delia (they take one notable liberty, but the feel is still there) and the scene in which Evey is captured, tortured and everything that happens until her "freedom" (though, the latter is undercut by an apology). Plus the sets and art direction does a good job keeping everything drab and grey (that's England for you).

So if you see the movie, don't read the book first. It will ruin it for you.

In other news, here are some comic book movies I'm looking forward too:

Superman Returns: Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor? Brilliant. I like Gene Hackman, but his Lex Luthor was really more like the character of Funky Flashman (a huckster who is a thinly veiled spoof of Stan Lee) only more sinister. Gene Hackman certainly had a perfectly evil Luthor and rather clever, but the Luthor I love is less goofy and plays mind games with people for fun (like destroying a poor waitresses life by offering her everything she could ever want). It's not just that he's a criminal, but the man hates Superman with a passion and wishes him the worst kinds of harm. While Superman is the perfect fantastical superhuman, Luthor is almost the perfect human (except physically). He's a master of many sciences, a captain of industry, a criminal overlord and his strategies are beyond reproach. But while Superman is the ideal human of an optimistic world, Luthor is more like the cynical evil of the cruel real world. In short Superman is Christ and Luthor is the Antichrist. Or Satan. I haven't decided yet. Kevin Spacey seems like a perfect choice for someone so sly, subtle and intense and is reason enough to check it out. Sure, it just looks like it will be good but come on. Kevin Spacey!

We3: It's like Homeward Bound... except that the animals are lethal killing machines. The government has kidnapped three household pets and have rewired there brains and put them into large mechanical suits and turned them into a most unusual SWAT team. The team consist of Bandit (the dog/the heavy), Pirate (the rabbit/demolitions), and Tinker (the cat/stealth assassin). They have already completed a few missions and have trained to be a team and can even talk to each other. But when the government orders the project decommissioned, the scientist who made it all possible refuses to let her animals die frees them. Is the world ready for housepets with army-devastating firepower? And what weird weapons will the government use to stop them.

From the mad mind of Grant Morrison comes one of his least bizarre works, though the premise still retains his trademark innovation. The mini-series that the film was basd on perfect for a movie in that it was of perfect length for a movie (three short issues) and had amazing action scenes and bloody violence, yet was poignant and touching with the animals being really likable. Yes, they can talk, but when you read how they talk they are clearly still animals. Bandit just wants love, to be recognized as a "gud dog" and to find a home. Tinker wants nothing more than to be left alone but follows the others around anyway (despite hating almost anything that isn't him) beacause they need each other to survive. And Pirate just wants safety and a nice patch of grass. Equal parts horribly violent and touching, if done correctly We3 could be the most unusual action film of all time.

30 Days of Night: The premise of this action/horror flick is that vampires are among us, but they never really get the chance to let loose and go on killing sprees for fear of being discovered. But one vampire hears of a small town in Alaska that has no alcohol, is completely isolated and has 30 days of night. Then he calls some friends and decides that it's time for a vacation.

A fun little comic, this was originally pitched as a movie but no studio took it. It was then made into a comic, which got Steve Niles a lot of attention and since then Steve has been considered the #1 horror comics writer working at the moment. Though only big for three years, he has proven quite prolific and his attention is putting the comic based on a screenplay on the big screen. In all honesty, even as a comic this is a popcorn movie, albeit a fun one. If the writer tries to make it like an 70-80's John Carpenter movie (like say, Assault on Precinct 13 in Alaska with vampires) then it should be good.

300: Based on the 5 issue mini-series by Frank Miller (Sin City), this is the story of the battle of Termopylae and the 300 spartans who were forced to fight a much larger army. Rather than trying to just be your average "historical" (the quotation marks not that I use the term loosely)epic like Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven, the film will be more of a personal story of one of the soldier forced to fighted against insurmountable odds. I never read the book but the are is amazing and every time I go to strange the $40 hardcover is staring me in the face saying "BUY ME!" Frank Miller isn't as involved with this film like he was with Sin City, but Frank is definately looking forward to it. And so am I.

Please Buy My Raffle Tickets

2006-03-16T00:06:00.000-04:00

No puns or jokes here, just a despate plea. I just need to sell my raffle tickets for CHSR. The prizes are three lots of comics:
1. The Alan Moore Collection, which includes Across the Universe, The Killing Joke and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow.
2. The Ultimate X-Men Collection, which has Ultimate X-Men 1-4
3. The Big Collection, which includes a ton of different stuff including: Batman: Mad Love, Metabarons, Simpsons Round Up, Rex Mundi, Dr. Spectrum, Ultimate Nightmare, Superman - Secret Identity issue 4 and a couple other things I forgot.

The draw is on April 3rd and it's two dollars a ticket. Just throwin' that out there.

Also, Nathan drew my attention to this a while back. Funny, usually I find these things out for myself. Anyway, Frank Miller was once a great creator who seems to have gone, fittingly enough, bat-shit insane. Despite bringing some of the greatest comic stories of all time (The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, Sin City, Ronin) he's had some flops, but no really big ones until The Dark Knight Strikes Again, his 2001 sequel to the 1986 classic Dark Knight Returns. That was a frustrating work because it wasn't all bad. There were some brilliant moments (the Atom trapped in a petri dish fighting microscopic monsters, Captain Marvel's death, Frank Miller's rendition of Plastic Man), but the book felt hectic, disorganized and it seemed as if Frank was trying to throw as much ideas into one book as possible. Plus, it has a really bad story and very unsubtle and juvenile social commentary. Plus Lynn Varley's weird ass colors and pixels is pretty questionable.

His work on All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder is currently sucking at a 12th grade level and though he was the man who revitalized the Batman character in the eighties, he writes the character as extremely unlikable and inconsistantly amoral. And while he has done some great satire in his day, it doesn't look that's were he's heading with Holy Terror, Batman! There's a chance that he's actually planning to surprise the readers with clever story, but I'm becoming doubtful of his talents despite all the credit he's built up. This is what I'm expecting from it.

Is that a hallucinogenic tuber growing out of your chest or are you just happy to see me?

2006-02-14T23:42:00.000-04:00

Nothing's going on in my life and Valentine's arrived again to remind me how soul crushingly alone I am, so I'll just bring up some more comics trivia and info for the heck of it. And since it's Valentine's Day I decided to go with a theme: weird sex! Interestingly, most of the entries come from comics written by Alan Moore. Coincidence? Probably not. So let's get freaky.

Plant One on Her

The majority of weird sex stuff I can think of comes from Alan Moore's run from Swamp Thing. The series broke a lot of ground because it was the first mainstream series in a long time not to follow the dreaded comics code, and allowed the creators to not having to worrying about censor themselves. Featuring mature themes and go strange places and allowed for experimentation as well as powerful and unrestrained storytelling.

While the first freaky sexual event is pretty nasty, as it features Swamp Thing's human friend Abby Cable (maiden name: Abby Arcane) has found out her husband Matt (who's been a bit of a loser as of late) has a great new job at Black River Recorporations and a new house. But Abby feels really uncomfortable with for some intangible reason and seems to glimpse something maddening before the world returns to normal and she's forgotten what made her ill at ease. But after Abby and Matt have sex, the feelings been stronger. She soon realizes something's wrong when she sees a book about a serial killer, who shares the looks and name of one of Matt's co-workers. And she was supposed to have died long ago. Eventually Abby realizes something is wrong with Matt but it turns out even worse than she thought: the flesh is Matt, but the soul is that of her evil dead Uncle Anton Arcane. Nasty. You are sick, Anton! She's your damned niece.

On the much sweeter (but still weird) side of intimacy is when Abby and Swampy, who have been in an unspoken relationship for a while, admit their love for each other. But Swamp Thing is just a plant with a human mind and despite his power, he feels he cannot be intimate with her physically. So after some thought he walks into the water and plucks a tuber from his chest, washes it off, and gives it to her to eat. She decides she isn't disgusted by this and eats it, asking if this is a metaphorical thing. "No... Not entirely" he says as everything goes strange... Soon Abby starts seeing strange visions and discovers that it also her to absorb a portion of Swampy's experience and begins to experience the world's beauty the way a plant elemental does. The rest of the issue is a strange sort of free-style poem in which Abby sees the cycle of live and experiences a temporary zen-like experience where she sees how all life is connected. Beautiful... but your still eating chest-tuber.

Towards the end of Alan Moore's run, Swamp Thing's essence (he's no longer simply confined to a body as the series continues since he can manifest himself in any plant life) is ejected from the Earth and he find's himself traveling the universe in an attempt to find a way back. At one point he finds himself manifesting in a techno-plant spaceship-like lifeform floating through space looking for a mate. Swamp Thing manifests freaks out and gets the hell out of there. The spaceship (who's morals are not ours) sees beauty in his being and turns back time in order to catch him when he first manifests, then takes a piece of his essence in order to harbour young. So Swamp Thing is essentially rape by a lonely plant-ship and let go. This issue is narrated by the ship who tells her young and hopes that he realizes that he created such beauty. Crazy.

It's still cheating if there's no touching

Meanwhile, Grant Morrison is a writer known for being crazy and writing all sorts of crazy scenarios (like his series The Filth, in which the world is threatened by the pornomancer Tex Porneau and his giant sperm). His run on the X-Men was considered by those with taste to be the best since it's heyday in the 70's when it first got really good. And he also did what no writer has tried before: breaking up Cyclops and Jean Grey for reals.

Basically it begins when Cyclops, fresh from his trip from the grave. It seems since his death (and being possessed by Apocalypse) has caused a rift in their relationship that neither wish to address. So psychic bitch and former villainess Emma Frost offers to act as a sex therapist for Cyclops. But soon it becomes obvious that their relationship is simply series of psychic sex scenarios in which Emma and Cyclops make brain love and exchange pillow talk... even when Cyclops is in the middle of a mission. But soon Jean finds out, barges in on their psychic sex scene and things go downhill from their. The worst part: Emma has sex with Cyke while wearing the outfit Jean wore when she was the Dark Phoenix, an evil entity that at a fucking sun. Creepy.

Do you believe in magic?

In Alan Moore's crazy series Promethea (about the adventures of a story made flesh), young Sophie (who is this generation's Promethea) gets some info from a groadie old sorcerer/pervert in exchange for the promise of sex. Well, a deal's a deal but the issue when the deal is sealed becomes a metaphor for how magic works and Promethea/Sophie finds the experience educational and allows her to become stronger as a person. That's all well and good, but try and explain that that having sex with a disheveled 60 year-old is an important step in changing the world for the better.

Size Matters

One Avengers issue that caused a hubbub because it contain a hint at somewhat interesting sexual habits of Yellowjacket and the Wasp, a super-hero couple with shrinking powers. We see the Wasp seemingly alone in bed giggling when a sweaty Yellowjacket comes out frome under the blankets drenched in sweat saying: "OK sweetie, your turn." I never actually read the issue if that famous/infamous scene was toned down or what have you but it caused quite a stir when preview pages first showed up.

Three or more in a bed

In the highly unusual series Shade, the Changing Man, the title character's relationship with his girlfriend Katie was odd. Not just because Shade shared her with another woman (an oddball named Lenny), but because of the very nature of Shade. Ya see, Shade was an alien espionage agent from the planet Meta who gets chucked into our world. Because of his dementia-related reality controlling powers (coming from his Madness Vest), he ends up lodged in the body of a serial killer just as he's executed. So, after she falls in love with Shade, Katie's technically sleeping with a man who's living in the body of her parents' killer. Also Shade later becomes a woman. And a lamp. And a jerk. It's on odd series.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this or were disgusted by it. See you later.

Comic quote of the week:
(In reference to a gala)
Emma Frost: --my family's extremely generous support for generations, and the very year it becomes public knowlegde that I'm a mutant, I am for the first time left off the guest list. Tell me, dear Walter, would you like to spend the rest of your life obsessed with the works of Leroy Neiman? I mean, sexually?

Comics 101

2006-01-30T23:49:00.000-04:00

Since there's nothing really going on in my life that's worth mentioning I just thought I'd amuse myself and anyone with the patience to read this to answer some comics related questions before you ask them. Or after. Whatever.

Joker

Here's one I got recently from Darcy.

One thing I don't quite get about Batman Begins is, unless the original Batman was way different than the comics or something, how and why are they working The Joker into the next movie if Jack didn't turn into The Joker until seemingly several years after Batman Begins takes place? And if the answer is "the next movie will take place several years later" then wouldn't that just be the first Batman movie all over again? I'm confused.

Well, Batman Begins itself isn't entirely faithful to Batman's origin story but it makes up for it by being faithful to what the character and origin are about. Batman did not actually meet Ra's Al Ghul until he was Batman and actually spent his entire teen years traveling the world learning every skill imaginable (chemistry, investigation, martial arts, acrobatics and escape artistry, for example) and became a master of all trade.

The Joker's origin was never actually revealed (Joker himself thinks of is memory as "multiple choice"), most fans agree that the origin presented in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's awesome comic The Killing Joke is the official one. Basically the Joker(who is never named) was originally former lab assistance who quit to become a comedian who just couldn't get work. This wouldn't be so bad for him if he wasn't trying to support a wife pregnant with child. He's in such need of money that he agrees to help some crooks rob the chemical plant he used to work with. But as soon as he agrees the police come into the bar and tell him his wife died when a baby-bottle heater she was testing had an electrical short.

Unfortunately for the poor guy, the crooks are forcing him to stick to the job (despite the fact that he lost the very reason to continue) and act as the patsy by dressing up as a guy called the Red Hood and pretending to be the ringleader. Unfortunately, Batman shows up and catches the crooks. Batman is about to get the nameless comedian when the comedian (having a hard time seeing with his red hood on) falls a chemical vat and emerges as the Joker. He's now completely nuts. Before he thought his life was a joke, but now he realizes the world is a big joke, and he wants to show the world.

But his origin isn't all that important. What I like about the Joker is that when he's written well, he's funny and scary at the same time. He's also an egotistical joke artiste. The point of the crimes isn't money or power or even the body count, but each crime is a sort of joke. It means something to the Joker and the only way to predict his actions are to figure out where his "joke" is headed. And that's pretty hard since the best jokes are the one's with the punchlines you don't see coming. And Batman doesn't have much of a sense of humour.

Marvel and DC

I'm just going to clear things up here:

DC Characters:
Superman
Batman
Wonder Woman
Green Lantern
Flash
Aquaman
Green Arrow
The Teen Titans
Dr. Fate
Captain Marvel

Marvel Characters:
Thor
Spider-Man
Captain America
X-Men
Fantastic Four
Iron Man
Hulk
Daredevil
Dr. Strange
Captain Marvel

That clears things up... Waitaminute.

OK, I'll explain the Captain Marvels real quick. Way back when (the 40's) there was a Captain Marvel published by neither company (Marvel didn't even exist yet). Captain Marvel was a young boy who could become a manly super-hero when he said SHAZAM! DC sued him after a while after he became really popular. DC claimed that Cap was too close to Superman in powers and appearance. They won but since then they have had trouble with so many superman imitators, they decided they couldn't sue every time some there was some super-powered hero in a cape.

Years later, Marvel Comics realized the name Captain Marvel was going untouched so they made their own Captain Marvel: an alien invader turned super-hero. Meanwhile DC bought the rights to Captain Marvel, causing a problem between the two companies. They eventually reached an agreement: they can both have their own Cap Marvels but DC couldn't use the name on their title. Instead DC called their series SHAZAM!, after the famous magic word.

Anyway, Aiden has asked me if there are any differences between DC and Marvel (in terms of aesthetics, I assume) and I thought about it for a while. There is a definite difference in feel but that difference is a bit more intangible. Still, here are some of the most obvious differences:

In the DC Universe, heroes (with a few exceptions like Batman and the Doom Patrol) are trusted by the public, for the most part. People love Superman, the Flash and the rest and see them as bigger than celebrities. They are somewhere between celebrities and gods and while the more stalwart heroes don't bask in their own fame, they accept it, with some heroes even attending public events (Hey, Superman ain't a glory hog, but he still wants the people to trust him).

In the Marvel Universe, the people are polarized on the issue of heroes. Some think of them as just vigilante's and superthugs that can be as bad as any villain and take issue with anonymous character's taking the law into their own hands. Though the Avengers and Fantastic Four are loved by the public (for the most part), mutants, super-human vigilantes and other types aren't quite so popular. The biggest example of this is Spider-Man, whom half of society seems to love (especially kids and teenagers) and the other half seem to hate and/or distrust. Sure, everyone loves Captain America and Iron Man, but they are very public figures and are really just normal humans. Fellows like Thor and the X-Men, on the other hand, are odd and mysterious to regular folk. If there is a reason that superhumans are more popular in DC is that the public's first exposure to superhumans in the thrities where benevolent, but in Marvel the first major super-powers where the Human Torch (a well meaning but scary-looking flaming robot) and the Sub-Mariner, who flooded cities, attacked civilization and generally acted as an amphibious terrorist.

Another main difference is locale. In DC, most of the cities are fake (though often loosely based on real places). In Marvel, there's really only one city: New York City. Pretty much every hero hangs there.

And finally, DC continuity is a lot trickier than Marvel. First of all there are two eras: Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis. In Pre-Crisis, Superman could push planets around, punch them to dust and could do pretty much do anything the script required him to do. He was more powerful than God (except for his weaknesses to magic and kryptonite).

There were many also many alternate realities with different histories: In one Superman first appeared in the late thirties (like he did in real life) while in another he appeared later (this was to explain why Superman and his cast weren't really old). There were also a different Flash and Green Lantern for the two major universes (Earths I and II), but they were only related by named and power rather than origin or identity (in fact, Flash from Earth I got his name from comic books that depicted the adventures of Flash from Earth II).

As you can guess this tended to get confusing so to clear things up, writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez initiate Crisis on Infinite Earths, in which an amazingly powerful entity was destroying universe after universe to make way for his anti-matter universe. He was defeated but in the end, the surviving three universes where merged into one and history was rewritten. The characters where more or less the same, but with slight differences (Superman is still the most powerful character, but he isn't as ridiculously powerful as he was before). The problem was that since then, there seems to be a few continuity problems left. And sometimes things are retconned for no good reason.

There's also Vertigo comics, DC's mature readers comic line, which mostly consists of creator owned series (in fact their newest coup was getting American Splendor), but began as a line that contained mature reader books within the DC universe (Sandman, Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Shade the Changing Man, Hellblazer). The only book left is Hellblazer (and the occasional Sandman spin-off), and though they supposedly take place in the DC universe, they aren't really treated like they are part of the DCU anymore. So, basically they aren't part of the DC Universe in any of the current stories.

Marvel is a lot simpler. Character's age, but they do it very, very slowly. This is referred too as Marvel Time. When Spider-Man began fighting crime he was 16 and in the current comics he's about 24. So about 9 years have past in the Marvel universe and for the most part, that has been pretty consistant.

Will Eisner

He's the man considered to be the most important creator ever to work in the medium. There were comics before him but everything that happened after was because of him.

His comics were revolutionary. The use and interplay of panels did things that were never done before (like guys getting punched so hard, they were hit from one panel to the other). He created splash pages adn would play with images and shadows.

Don't be fooled by the fact that this entry is so short. All that must be said is that he created comics as they are now.

Alan Moore

He's the man generally regarded as the best writer in comics. He's creepy looking, isn't he? Well, he's a creepy guy. But God can he write.

He wrote Watchmen, which is widely regarded the greatest comic of all time, as well as many other lauded work. Unlike other books at the time, Watchmen was sparse, cinematic and contained no thought bubbles, captions and sound effects. It was a very grim 12-issue series about a murder mystery involving retired superheroes. Ironically, this series and The Dark Knight Returns (widely regarded as the runner up best comic ever) triggered the much maligned grim and gritty period of the later eighties and nineties.

His first major American work was a 42-issue run on Swamp Thing, which he established his style and a lot of the ideas as well as a poetic style that was very different than Watchmen. Though it was, in part, a horror series, it focused on elemental mysticism, life on Earth and alien ways of thinking (such as plant philosophy).

He's also a practicing magician and he worships the snake-diety glycon. Sure he's crazy, but it's a fun crazy.

Jack Kirby

Considered to the greatest artist in comics. His style is quite dynamic (he likes drawing characters with on outstretched arm) and angular. And no one can draw crackling energy quite like him. He also pretty much designed half of the Marvel universe. After he stopped working with Stan Lee he worked with both DC and Marvel on his own projects. These series were imiginative and strange but were also quite goofy, so they didn't catch on like his previous work.

That's all I feel like typing for now. I hope you now understand a little more about the most underrated medium of all time.

A Pretty Good Year for Comics...

2006-01-05T00:36:00.000-04:00

As a comics fan, I have to say there was a lot more good than bad this last year, and there was actually more stuff I'm on the fence about than stuff I outright hated, so that's a pretty good sign. I just thought this year I'd point out some of the high points and shit points in this year in comics:

Damn Fine Flicks:
This was a great year for comic films. Batman Begins, Sin City and A History of Violence weren't just good flicks, they were great and each had their own unique and interesting style that showed that the creators really got the books.

Batman Begins: Probably the most flawed film on the list, but still damned good. Basically, the film chronicles Bruce Wayne's training as well as his first year as Batman. Thankfully the film didn't try to simply remake the classic Batman story Year One (though there are a couple of references) and really focuses on showing how and why Batman operates the way he does and the building of the legend. Christian Bale is a great Batman (and he can move his friggin neck), Michael Caine even better as Alfred, the bad guys are actually worthy threats (unlike the last three flicks) and the film has an interesting original story. I hope the Superman flick is as good as this (fingers crossed). Still, the romantic subplot is pretty tacked on (like all the Batman films except the awful Batman Returns) and Batman doesn't really do any of the brilliant detective work I love the character doing.

Still, despite some misgivings, it's easily the best Batman film of all.

Well, maybe Mask of the Phantasm. Mark Hamill is the best Joker ever.

Oh, also the Adam West flick. "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb." Classic.

Sin City: My favourite comic book movie flick of the year. Actually, probably of all time. Style to spare, a warped sense of humour and a shockingly faithful adaptation to one of the most expressionistic comics of all time. The casting is all perfect, but Mickey Rourke as Marv proves to be one of those characters who is the epitome of testosterone-filled bad-assery. The other stories were good, but "The Hard Goodbye" has always been my favourite for it's simplicity and the extreme likability of Murphy. Sure, he's a nasty, cruel and seemingly unkillable legbreaker, but he has an admirable sense of loyalty and chivalry.

Sin City has some of the best art direction I've ever seen in a film and Robert Rodriguez proves again that he's a one man movie machine: composer, director, editor, producer, sound mixer, cinematographer and even visual effects. I mean, I've never seen anyone whose put so much of himself into his own movies, especially not for the big budget films that he's making these days (though he always finds neat ways to cut costs. Almost all of his DVDs have 1 minute (or was it 10 minute) segments on cheap movie making. Frankly, I'm proud of Mr. Rodriguez for leaving the director's guild to let Frank Miller get some co-director credit for the film. I really don't trust guilds on the whole, and though it may make his career a might tougher (living without whatever the guild provides... or does. What do they do?), I think he made the right choice.

A History of Violence: I was iffy on the movie for the first few 10 minutes (despite a great opening) mostly because of the cheesy "everyone-living-happily-in-a-quiet-community-where-everyone-knows-everyone-until-a-dark-secret-is-revealed" vibe but the film more than redeemed itself and proved to be one of the best films of the year. I like the fact that the violence of the film actually tends to start as "cool" film violence but then lingers on the fallen and injured and we see how disgusting and unpleasant violence can really be.

I also like the fact that it isn't just a "violence is bad" flick. What it is saying about violence is that generally unpleasant part of life but it does serve a purpose. It gives no definite answers but it forces the viewers to ask when is violence justified and just how we are supposed to live with it.

I like Cronenburg's "new flesh" films well enough, but I like the fact that he's getting away from that for a while with films like History of Violence and Spider. I'm really looking forward to what's he'll do next.

Fantastic Four & Elektra: I didn't see either but both looked really bad. I'm going to trust my gut on this one and avoid them. Shame, Fantastic Four was a favourite of mine and they have the best villain in comics, who was completely more or less ruined for the film.

Best Comics of the Year:

Seven Soldiers of Victory: It's one great series within seven great series. Basically, it's 7 mini-series that can be read as separate mini-series but also forms a greater whole as one epic mini-series. Taking some of DC comics more forgettable characters, writer Grant Morrison (master of the bizarre and brilliant) crafts a tale with 7 radically different heroes. Though they never meet, they end up unintentionally helping each other battle the evil Sheeda: aristocratic gods (that is to say that they are to gods what aristocrats are to commoner's) who are plotting to hunt down Earth's heroes... for leisure. The books are as follows:
frankincense: He's fighting evil... one body part at a time. Frankenstein must fight the evil Sheeda all while constantly loosing body parts but gaining new ones from fallen foes. IU nice odd super-hero horror comic.
Zatanna: She's a backwards-talking sorceress in SA: Spellaholics Anonymous. But now she's got to fall off the wagon again to save the world.
Mister Miracle: He's a flashy David Blaine-esque escape artist who discovers that he might just be an avatar to one of the New Gods. But unfortunately, the it looks like his psychologist might be an evil demon.
Bulleteer: She thought that her super-powers were the result of an accident in her husband's laboratory. Turns out her husband turned her into a super-powered metallic beauty because he's a superherophile whose into superior porn. Creepy.
Klarion: It's like Salem in the 1600's... only in reverse. A clan of witches living underground are worried about a boy's obsession with the surface world. That boy is the sinister hero Klarion, who must protect their evil brood from their own conservative world views... and an evil entity named Melmoth.
Shining Knight: One of the lesser-known knights of Camelot, Sir Justin came close to defeating a Sheeda in the form of an evil queen, who sends him far away. When he wakes up, he discovers himself in world of tainted Earth and air, strange men speaking a strange language taking pushing him into a steel carriage and who use a strange weapon to blow his horses head open. Surely, thinks Justin, a world this mad must be the work of the Sheeda. Can an Olde English-speaking knight survive New York City?
The Manhattan Guardian: He's a one-man masthead for a newspaper that doesn't just report crime... it fights it. All thanks to their new mascot/resident superhero. Can he and the ever-helpful Newsboy Legion stop a war between subway pirates?
All of these series are great and have sweet art by a host of different pencillers. I can't wait to see how the finished product is.

Legion of Super-Heroes: Great series, but I don't think it's getting the attention it deserves. Basically it's about a future where there is peace across the galaxy and there's no more conflict. What do the Legion of Super-Heroes say to that? "Fuck You." They know that just because people say they aren't necessary doesn't make it true and this legion of alien teenagers want to make the world a better place, defending the people from threats that the people deny exist. As a fun twist (like the original series it was based off of) only a few of these 30th century heroes actually have "powers", but since the team consists of different species from different worlds, a lot of them have their own strange innate abilities.
Each member is given a code name based on their power and gender (ie, Sun Boy, Lightning Lad, Karate Kid) and is allowed to enter "the Clubhouse" a giant base which the team resides.
Some of the more interesting members are Dream Girl (whose race has precognitive powers and is extremely carefree about her adventures since she usually knows how they'll turn out), and Collossal Boy (who comes from a race of giants and would rather be called Micro Boy because of his abilities to shrink and have adventures with the "little people"). With a cast of hundreds, one would think the group would be far to unweildy to write about and make them all interesting, but writer Mark Waid definately makes it work. Bravo.

All-Star Superman: Only one issue came out and its already on of my new favourite series. Now this is how Superman is meant to be: infinitely strong yet gentle, sympathetic yet stoic. No worrying about continuity or all that crap. No Superman brooding about the nature of his being or trying to be relevant. This is about Superman tackling real problems like alien invaders and Super-intelligent dinosaurs.

Promethea: Finally the apocalypse that's been promised through the series arrives and ipes out the Earth. Funny how that's a happy ending, huh?

Ultimates: Finally the traitor is revealed, heroes are sent to jail and we learn the truth about Thor... then we learn the truth about Thor. I was iffy when it came to the alien invasion story arc last year, but this year there's a much stronger thiller involving a super-hero arms race, heroes turning morally ambigious and the fall of America: both the Captain and the country. And It was sooo worth it.

Series that remain good but there's nothing special to sa about them this year: Walking Dead, 100 Bullets, Y - The Last Man, Fables, and Ultimate Spider-Man.

Stuff I'm on the fence about:
Infinite Crisis: I pretty much saw the big revelation at the end of issue three coming, but still there's a lot to like in the story. Unfortunately there's way to many extra stuff a reder needs to buy to help complete the tapestry of the story and while it looks like it's all tying together really well, I'm not sure it was worth about every DC book getting involved with the story. Bleh.

House of M: This crossover (from Marvel) as a lot more fun, but unfortunately the cool after math has spawned too many aftermath related mini-series and it sounds like the next crossover is still being set up while the readers and books are still dealing with the aftermath of the last one. Slow it down Marvel. Still, I like seeing what every Marvel heroes' fondest dream lives would be and how it all turns to shit (especially for Spider-Man). It was fun, but too much is being made of it.

Shitty Stuff:

Anything written by Chris Claremont: You're the man who made the X-Men popular. you have a lot to be proud of. But you suck now Chris. You have to accept it. Maybe it's time you rest on your laurels... before they're all gone. Wait, is that mixing metaphors. Come to think of it, I've never even seen anyone resting on laurels before. What's the deal?

All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder: Wow, Frank Miller wrote some great Batman stories but... this is awful. Unbelievably awful.
Here's some actual sample dialogue:
(After seeming to murder cops with the afterburners on his Batwing and kidnapping/rescuing Dick Grayson and telling him that he's no his "soldier")
Dick Grayson: Wh-who are you?
Batman: Who am I? What are you, retarded? I'm the GODDAMN BATMAN!

Wow, really? Cause you sure don't sound like him. Don't get me wrong, every writer has their own interpretation of Batman (take Adam West for instance) but while I've accepted a range of Batmen, this feels really unBatman. It's really more like some psychotic abusive asshole Dad. Maybe played by R. Lee Ermey, the delightfully sadistic and much spoofed drill sarge of Full Metal Jacket fame.

Superman is supposed to show up in issue four. I imagine he's going to use his heat vision to burn out the eyes of orphans and then use a bazooka to blow up an orphanage while saying "I'm from Krypton, cockfuck!"

While there are probably a lot I'm over-looking, these are the only things that spring immediately to mind.

Yay, Materialism!

2005-12-30T00:38:00.000-04:00

I had a longer post, but I accidently pressed the "turn off the computer" key on my computer (for the third time today, but the other times were because I was taking off the keys on my keyboard to thoroughly clean it) and I don't feel like retyping the preamble. To sum up in point form:
* nice, quiet Christmas
* tasty homemade treats
* Anna sent mom a letter about Grammie
* Mom cried
* I teared up
* I became sort of jealous of Anna (She remembers Grammie more vividly than I and she expressed her feelings in a well-written letter that I was jealous of as an aspiring writer)
* Lots of turkey to use up.
* Spent two days in a row in Pajama pants (ooooooooooooh, yeah)

Here's what I got for Christmas:

Corinthian Cream Wafers: Delicious treats in a nice can.

Terry's Chocolate Orange: A Christmas tradition.

Sniff tissues: It's a Christmas tradition (I had a really runny nose as a child).

An Ice Scraper: Mom, I love you but... the Hell?

Cartooning Kit: I got this last year. I really should use it.

Mouthwash pocket paks: I like 'em.

A Toothpaste and a Pen: I love getting a fresh new toothbrush and I like pens. But what sort of sick fuck thinks that they must be sold in the same package? Now, how about some panty hose and a spork? This is a product for crazy people, by crazy people.

Gorillaz - Demon Days: A sweet CD, but I haven't had time to listen to it all. Still, I really like a Gorillaz style of cross-genre tunes. Plus it's nice to know that comic artist Jamie Hewlitt is still getting work drawing the band.

Frank Black - Honeycomb: Not as sweet as some of his other stuff, but still really good.

Simpsons Mini-Calendar: It contains some classic Simpsons moments. Also, Smarch.

Sweater and Socks: Warm and fuzzy.

13 Hours of Noir: a cheap little DVD collection with 9 public domain noir flicks. They don't all look that great but there are some premises in there. I only watched "Detour" which had a great premise, but little pay-off.

Wolverine Action Figue: Damn cool. He's about to pounce on my Heap figure as we speak.

Shadow of the Collossus: I want to play this sooooo bad. Now I have to wait till the PS3 comes out, (assuming my budget will allow it). Or maybe see if Jordan would sell his PS2 after he gets his PS3. Come on Jordan, unless the PS3 decides not to have backwards compatibility with PS one, you won't need it. Do it! Do the deed- *ahem* sorry.

The Comic Book Encyclopedia: Really big and informative, though I have issues with the lengths of certain entries, plus there's way to much unimportant and uninteresting golden age info. Also, some of the info on certain recent projects seems unimportant enough to not be listed. Also ,some entries could have better pictures. And there's the occasional typo that is distracting but other than that it's pretty cool.

The Quitter: Harvey Pekar's (American Splendor) most personal work and first new work for DC. Looks like it's going to be a great read.

Superman: Secret Identity: Awesome! One of my favourite comics, this is the tale of a man named Clack Kent. As a boy, he hated being a Kansis farmboy named Clark Kent, mostly because the name and background is too similar to a certain fictional man of steel. Growing tired of nothing but Superman-related birthday gifts and stale jokes, he's sick do death of the character and his name. But while on a camping trip, Clark discovers that he has more in common with Superman than just a name. A great, touching story of gorwing up and growing old.

Vinamarama: I haven't got it yet, but I was told I would. I'm really looking forward to reading it. It's about an Indian 20-something who is engaged to be married to a girl he's never meet, must look after his young brother and must find away to save the world from being destroyed by an ancient force. A romantic comedy on the cusp of the apocalypse.

$40 gift certicate for Strange Adventures: I assume this is from the twins, but there was no identification oon either the envolope or the certificate. I used it to buy:

Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 14: these things come out faster than I can by them. I love the book but please give me at minute! Stop being so prolific Bendis!

Doom Patrol: Down Paradise Way: Super-powered schizoids! Sentient transvetite streets with frilly gun shops! A fictional super-hero teaming up with a non-fictional fictional superhero team. This books like having David Lynch doing the Fantastic Four.

Tippy Tippy Tay

2005-12-23T00:00:00.000-04:00

Well, we had our final annual all night get together last Saturday/Sunday and the next day we had said had a going away party for the twins and frankly, I'm still a bit tuckered. I think I could use a break from my friends. But nonetheless, I had a great time. Here's a quick log of what happened in those three days.

Saturday, 1:34PM -Arrived at Jordan's late. It wasn't my fault, but I kind of wish it was, since Jordan being pissed off is hilarious. He was watching a poorly animated cartoon about pixies trying to become Christmas elves. So, does this mean that elf is a rank rather than a creature or are these guys just trying to change species? If these are different races and Santa only desires help from an elven race, does that make santa racist? And in what way where the species different. I was clearly way in over my head here. Clearly, this is a subject that Oliver Stone should handle in his next film. It would have to be better than that piece of shit Alexander film.

2:20ish PM - After we watched Jordan mess around with Katamari Damashi (or is it Damacy. For some reason I remember some un-Japanese like spelling) for a while, we played Mario Kart Double Dash. That game does not get old. Of course, then again, we don't play it that often, but I love it. There's something fun of the teamwork of the game, especially with Aiden. Now there's a teammate. Now don't get me wrong, I like Darcy and Jordan, but Jordan is the bossy type and Darcy... we'll it's not his playing so much as his personality. I can't put my finger on what it is about Darcy that doesn't make him my choice but I guess it's that. I like him and I have no problem with his personality (except when he smells or tries to dry hump me) but it doesn't seem appropriate for the game. I just don't feel that he wants to win. I know he'd like to win but he doesn't want it.

Jordan, on the other hand, has the "winning edge". That's the name of the switchblade he'll cut you with if he feels that, as a teammate, you impede his winning. I'd much rather be his hated enemy with than his hated teammate. After all, he makes a more than worthy opponent and I still have someone to fall back on.

Aiden makes a great other player because he knows how to support my so-so game playing and turn my second place into first. He found a way to take a seemingly shallow and empty supporting player role (on his insistence) in which he just shoots stuff, and made up for my weaknesses in cornering and trap evasion. Plus we were all about the blue sparks. Bravo Aiden. Even when we weren't number one... I wasn't on Jordan's team. Oh, and I felt like a winner or something.

6:00-ish PM- Dinner was good. I suck at old arcade games. I know that they're hard... but man do I suck.

7:30-ish PM - Jordan's a timewasting dick. Driving around with Trevor on top of us might seem fun to you, but the joke didn't really get any funnier. Strange how Trevor actually believed you when you said you were taking him to your place for, like, the third time. Some people never learn.

8:40-ish PM - We played Karaoke Revolution. It was awesome. None of us sang well, but half of us sang competently and used the right pitch that the game wanted, so good enough for me. The twins did well towards the end, but the problem is that they are even more shy than Jordan, and he aspires to be a recluse. The hardest parts were the bits of song no one seems to remember (I assumed that there was just mostly refrain in "Play that Funky Music.") I was the overall victor, but I think that Jordan was a damned good contender and even beat me in a song neither of us had heard of (probably because it was terrible). I think I did as well as I did because most of my song picks were eighties hits, and I have a thing for the music of the eighties. They have a certain melody that I follow better than generations of music. I think everyone wanted to play again, but Jordan didn't want to have his money wasted on board games.

12:50-ish PM - Pictionary. I really don't remember this game sucking as much as it did. It was cute for a half hour, but FOUR FUCKING HOURS OF THE GAME IS FUCKING ANNOYING. I also don't remember the terrible rule set. I hate the "all play" turns, which are seemingly all of them. I think it's dumb in principle cause often when we did simultaneous pictures, we'd would kinda point to the guy closest to the truth. I like idea of making crappy drawing and trying to get people to figure out what it means is fun. Unfortunately it doesn't last as long as the game thinks it should.

4:00 PM: Scattegories - This is a fun game. Unlike Pictionary and Taboo, which is about conveying a simple idea with limitations, it is more about trying to think of an original and less obvious answers with keeping in the guidelines. Still, I had issues about some player's choice of hero. I really don't know whose less of a hero: Kelsey Grammer or King Kong. Very depressing.

6:00 PM: Taboo - Great game. The last time we played this the best part was Darcy screwing up and saying things he specifically wasn't supposed to say. This time the best part was Jordan going psycho when his players couldn't figure his clues out. Oh, Jordan, you're hatred and your competitive nature are so entertaining.

Monday:

That was a pretty good time. Does anyone know how to light a stove anymore? Very informative... that's all I can think of.

A serious post

2005-12-08T18:04:00.000-04:00

You may not be interested in this post in that it deals with a personal loss. If you are looking for frivolity please wait until my next post. There might also be typos since I think the keyboard is rather insensitive.

My Grandmother had past away this past Monday. She will be missed by many just as she was loved by many.

Frankly, I haven't had a really good cry yet and the loss itself hasn't really sunk in. And it usually doesn't take much to make me cry. It just feels weird and I wan to cry but I could only cry for short intervals during the past week.

I found out on Monday night and on Tuesday I just went to work like nothing happened. I knew what had happened and I knew things were supposed to be different, but it didn't really feel that way.

I didn't cry really cry until I arrived in Moncton on Wednesday and even then I was only for a few short minutes. We went to the wake that day, which was rather uncomfortable. I spent a good amount of time in the coffee/tea room, drinking what can loosely be referred to as tea, but is in fact brown hot-sugar milk, since I felt like having a lot of sugar. The wake was not as uncomfortable as I thought it would be and there was as much laughter as there were tears. I guess I expected everyone to subdue any sort of joking but if anything, I think the loss and the need for comfort made us joke around more and made us feel a bit better. The funeral home was friendly and respectful, bu my one complain is seeing the body. Frankly, I though I would cry longer after seeing the body, bu I was more comfortable with it than I expected, but I had to comfort my mother, who began to cry loudly before the body. What was most discomforting about it was the fac had some imperfections removed, making it not look like a real body.

I actually perferred the wake to the funeral mass today. I wasn't uncomfortable or offended by the mass, but I felt that there was a bit more closure in the wake and the wake was a bit more personal. I also acted as a pallbearer (I don't remember or feel like looking up the actual spelling). This was my first funeral, and in my heart I wish it was my last, but we all know that's not true. I just though you should all know.

I'll most likely show up for anime Saturday night, but don't try to "act" natural, because there is nothing more unnatural than someone acting natural. Don't worry about me, I think I'll be normal, if a bit more soft spoken. Just warnin' ya that if I spotenious start crying (and I doubt I will), you'll know why.

I Feel So Good, But I Feel So Bad (But I'm Getting Better)

2005-11-28T23:26:00.000-04:00

I meant to post this much sooner but I've been sick and working and shut up! I got some good news involving me, who is apparently awesome.

1. I will now be teaching two students each Saturday: an 11th grade student who needs help with his English class and a 7th grade student who needs help with English in general. Sure, both seem to speak fluent English, but so does Aden and just look at his spelling. So I got that going for me.

2. I will be writing comic reviews for a webzine called PopMatters, which I'm looking forward to since it brings me just a little closer to legitimacy. The e-mail I got from them said that they liked my reviews and I just have to send at least one comic review every 2 weeks and that they may send me free books. The only problem is they said they like my reviews of Infinite Crisis and Loveless... neither of which I have never read, let alone reviewed. Then they sent me a letter of apology for that mistake and said all the other information still stands. Yay me.

3. My comic book radio show (Four Color Sound, which airs every Saturday morning at 11 a.m. and Mondays at 6 a.m.) had its first interview with Gibson Twist, a local writer whose work has appeared in 24 Hour Comics Day Highlights 2005. 24 Hour Comics Day is an event started by Scott McCloud in which comic creators from all over the world must complete a 24 page comic within 24 hours. Crazy! Gibson only got 10 pages in, but the story actually feels pretty complete, and the comic was actually good enough to merit one his comic being put into the Highlights book. Gibson turned out to be a really nice guy and a catchy pen name and really enjoyed doing the interview. he had done Morningside earlier in the month, but that was only about 5 minutes. We gave him a full forty, plus co-hosting duties. Sweet. That broadcast will also be the first one we PodCast. It's probably best to start with a big name. Well, a name anyway. Shut up, I think he's cool.

So lots of nice things happening lately. But I've also been sick and feeling like crap. The sickness comes in ebbs and flows but now I'm feeling mostly better and not shitty. Lets just see how long that lasts.

Thing I'm obsessed with at the moment:

All-Star Superman: This is easily the best Superman comic to come out since "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" (though if you want to debate it go ahead). The only thing that comes close is Superman: Secret Identity, but to be fair, that was a Superman comic without Superman in it. Sort of. It's complicated.

Anyway, All-Star Superman is a new series designed to tell stories featuring "classic" Superman, who isn't married, hasn't died and isn't bogged down in continuity. The only Super-knowledge you need to know the common knowledge sort of stuff: Superman good and can do anything. Lex Luthor is bad. Lois Lane is a spunky journalist. She puts up with Clark and loves Superman. Who is Clark. Nice and simple.

With the first issue, writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely make Superman better than he's been in years. They now making a good Superman story is now to try and make Superman "cool," but rather having him being an epic, awe-inspiring but gentle figure who can tear the Earth in two but just wants to help people. They know how to make Lex Luthor into a brilliant villain who is so smart that he knows how to take care of the man who can do anything. And Lois... Well, as long as you remember to make her feisty, just and turned off by naivete without being a bitch then you've got her right.

The book begins with Superman saving a spacecraft that is trying to "steal fire from the sun" in order to study it. Unfortunately Lex Luthor has sabotaged the mission with a human bomb and Superman has to stop it. Superman does (cause he's Superman) with the help of new superpowers he acquired from the sun (Superman's powers stem from the radiation of Earth's sun on his alien biology). Unfortunately the benevolent scientist named Quintam (who planned the mission to the sun) tells Superman that he has sucked in so much solar energy that his cells are bursting that the seems and he only has a short time to live. Now Superman faces his final mission: saying goodbye to the world he once protected and doing everything that needs to be done.

Awesome book! Luthor has never been more nasty. For example: Luthor, being taken away by the police after tricking Superman into flying into the sun and causing his inevitable death says "Yes, take me away boys. I know it's for my own good. Take me away... before I do something really terrible to Superman." Man, that guy is fucking EVIL!

Things I've Seen

2005-11-15T13:39:00.000-04:00

Just a quick overview of things I've seen and read lately:

The Warriors: I was really looking forward to seeing this movie and while it wasn't bad, it wasn't really all the great either. The premise is that in New York City, a man named Cyrus wants to unite all the gangs against the police. All of the gangs attend without fighting or maiming each other until (in film cliche fashion) he is shot and killed. A poor small gang called the warriors are blamed and now it turn out all of the gangs are united... against them. Can our anti-heroes make it home in one piece?
The idea is fun, and I like that the gangs are often strange and ridiculous (a gang of baseball fans called the Baseball Furies and a gang of mimes called the highhats for example), but the movie itself is lacking. There is a lot of potential for this to be both a kick-ass action flick or a suspenseful edge of your seat thriller, but the fact is the audience can see the traps coming from a mile away (most notably a painfully long seen in which half of the group is partying with the Lizzies) and the suspense and action scenes are not all that suspenseful or action packed. Not a bad movie, but it had a lot of wasted potential. Especially disappointing is the finale in which the Warriors face of against the Rogues, who are easily the least intimidating gang in the film.

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory: I saw this with my parents the other night when we were looking for something to cheer my parents up. Frankly I wanted to see this for a while since it was one of my favourite books as a child and I never really like the 70's adaptation (Gene Wilder's great potrayal as Wonka aside), so I was interested in seeing this version. While this this film takes some unnecessary liberties (Wonka's childhood), I was pleased with the final result, though I was hoping it, like the book, would feel a little more fucked up (sure you got near deaths and singing migdets, but it should feel like you won't know whether the kids are a live or not until the end).
Tim Burton's films can be really hit (Ed Wood, Big Fish) or miss (Batman, Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes), and this film was a hit, albeit a flawed one. I love the overall style of the film and the set, for the most part, are outstanding, particularly the first room of the tour. The Oompah Loopmahs are a lot less creepy this time around (which is funny, because the actor who potrays them all, Deep Roy, is one creepy looking midget). The musical numbers are all distinct adn catchy (especially "Augustus Gloop"), the kids are all suitably nasty and Johnny Depp is great as the socially awkward and funloving-yet-bitter Willy Wonka. I really like Depp as a character actor, as evidenced in film like Ed Wood, and I am very much looking forward to the Libertine
Still, the film falters a bit when it's trying to be touching, though thankfully it is not a painfully saccharine as some other family films. I mean, as much as I loved Elf, the last 15 minutes really sucked! Also, Charlie, the title character, is given surprisingly little to do during the famous tour despite being the title character. Anyhoo, the point is the film is a good family film, despiute it's many faults.

Paul Moves Out: This is a very generic feeling semi-autobiographical "graphic novel," but despite that it is actually pretty good. Probably because it has a certain sweetness to it that I like. There isn't really one story or a real point to the narrative except having the creator capture fond and painful memories artistically. I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it, but it is a nice sweet book from Drawn & Quarterly, who tend to bring out my favourite indie books.

Shakespeare Legends

2005-11-06T11:55:00.000-04:00

Jordan, Aiden and I beat X-Men Legends, and while it was a fun game it was heavily flawed. The story was really pitiful and the levels tended to get really repetitive after a while. Not only that, but I felt that Jordan's insane need to destroy everything took a lot of the fun out of the destructable environments. Dude, even if there is a health packet hidden in the very hard to reach pipes, its not going to be worth the effort. The cut scenes were also horrible, featuring a very goofy looking team of X-Men (especially Wolverine). The game also had a lack of boss battles and several scenes where villains pop up to taunt our heroes, then run away (a scene with the Blob jumping of an aircraft carrier was particularly perplexing).

Still, there's nothing like the terrifying feeling of fighting an army of giant sentinels or beating up non-generic mutants. Good stuff. Possibly my favourite part of the game was the Skirmish, which turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected. Still, the problem with having other characters wail on each other is that you can't do it with your own character's build (lame) and if characters are mismatched, it can be a long boring fight to the finish.

Looking forward to X-Men Legends 2 though. There seem to be a lot of improvements (most notably the cut scenes, which now look much better) and a lot of fun characters to mess around with (yay, Scarlet Witch!). I'm hoping the stories a little better and the villains more interesting (and with more variety), but as I understand it, a lot of the generic bad guys are still monotonous. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to it.

I also started tutoring a teenager named Jun Park. He is close to fluent in English, but he still needs help with a many words. I'm helping him with his work on Romeo and Juliet (which would definitely give anyone trouble if English isn't there first language) and teaching him a few new words along the way. It's pretty enjoyable, though a bit awkward since the mother was in the same room reading out newspaper, circling words she's trying to learn. Luckily, she wasn't intrusive in anyway and both mother and son seem rather nice. Looks like I'll be making an extra $10-$20 a week.

Post-Halloween Post

2005-11-01T01:51:00.000-04:00

OK, I plan to update more often than that, so apologies to the two, maybe one person who checks this blog (you know who you are). I just didn't have anything interesting in my life to talk about and until such time will simply review comics and whatever. And since it was Halloween, I thought I should review the films I watched for Halloween, which were all pretty good. So in no particular order:

The Crazies

I watched this film last, but in retrospect I sort of wish I watched it first simply because it is the least scary. In fact, this isn't so much a horror film as it is a really depressing and violent drama (in my opinion). But that's not to say that it is a bad film, it just didn't feel as Halloween appropriate as the other films I watched this year.

The premise of this 1973 George Romero picture is that a small town is quarantined after a biological weapon is accidentally released into the water supply. The weapon is a virus that causes people to become insane, often violently so, and is highly contagious. The town is put under martial law as the government sends soldiers in containment suits and gasmasks to round up civilians and force them into the high school gymnasium to make sure they don't get out, inadvertently creating a dangerous powder keg. Meanwhile, a firefighter, his pregnant fiance and three others try to make their way out of the city, unsure if it is safe to remain in the city.

This is one of those films that people will point out is "still relevant today," mostly because it is about the US government's extremely poor handling of a dangerous and volatile situation (this film having been made during that whole Vietnam thing). In this film, the government basically forces one of the creators of the virus onto a plane into the town without any real resources, despite his argument that he would accomplish very little just by being on the scene. The meanwhile, the sergeant on the scene knows that he really doesn't know how to handle the situation but tries doing the best he can after being thrown into a frustrating situation. He realizes that the government completely screwed up the situation and that his presence accomplishes very little. The government (represented by a room of generals and scientists) in a detached, bored and uncaring manner discuss simply destroying the town while eating sandwiches and oranges. The films satire is definitely not subtle but it gets the point across that its easier for a government to completely blunder something if they allow themselves to be so far removed from the event.

This was all well and good, but the aspect of the film that I really liked was the story of the group of five trying to escape as they slowly go insane. One thing I notice when George A Romero films are reviewed is that no one comments on his well crafted characters. Frankly there always people I would find very uninteresting in a normal situation but in the face of tragedy and death are compelling. For example, I loved the characters in the Dawn of the Dead because they were normal people deciding what to do in a world where there was no more normalcy. The scene where a dying man asks his friend to kill him if he turns (both to save themselves and out of fear of becoming "one of those things) is powerful engaging stuff. This film is no different: a father notices that his daughter is the first in the group to go crazy, though it seems to be a sad gentle sort of crazy. She the only thing left in his world after his wife dies and he still wants to protect her, even if she is a threat to the rest of the group. The father soon starts going insane and confusing his paternal feelings for her with romantic ones. Then there's the man who realizes that he's going insane and is trying his hardest to keep his head together in the face of violent urges (although it seems he might have been a violent gun nut before his insanity kicked in). I just like the fact that Romero can add some genuine emotion in what could have just been a thriller about a town of crazy people. It really makes you care what happens to the characters.

The Crazies is a very 70's movie. It's also a compelling look into what people do in a completely doomed situation. It's interesting that despite the title, the crazies don't show up that often in the film (though we see almost everyone is crazy by the end) and the main threat for out heroes are the usually faceless soldiers who themselves don't really understand the situation except to shoot or capture "the crazies." The fact that their in white containment suit with gasmasks give the soldiers an appropriately ominous (and anonymous) look to them. We get the feeling that these guys don't really know what their doing and that the situation is driving them a little nutty too (we see that a either several soldiers or one recurring one are/is stealing other people's property as they raid houses) and that the whole damned situation is insane. While this film isn't nearly as strong as Dawn of the Dead, it's still an often ignored gem worth checking out.

My Little Eye

I've seen this in Blockbuster before but I assumed it would be simply another forgettable direct-to-video thriller. But last year My Little Eye was a film that was featured on a film prof's Halloween marathon that Aiden and I attended (though we only saw the first two films). While there are countless variations on the idea of thrillers involving reality TV (I'm actually more sick of the commentary than reality TV itself), there was something about this one that sounded really interesting. Five people are get on a reality webcast in which they can each win a million dollars as long as they all stay within a house four six months strait. They may exit the house but they cannot leave the property and must be in before curfew. There are also camera's everywhere, so there isn't much they can do that isn't scene on camera. Every week they are given packages containing food and supplies and they have a few luxuries (video games, books) from home, but no access to TV, the internet or telephones.

Time goes by and everyone gets along rather well (even with Rex, the usual "jerk" that ends up on these shows), but on day the weekly package arrives carrying only bricks and a small letter. It states that the grandfather of one of the residents has died and a funeral will take place in a few days. The other residents argue over whether they should convince him to stay or not and if they do how can they convince him. Soon, other things start happening that make the players think that all is not right with the game. The furnace stops working (in the dead of winter), a package is received containing a gun and five bullets and the characters suspect that there is someone waiting on the outside property at night. Even stranger, it seems that some of these things allude to some of the more unpleasant aspects of the residents' histories. While some think that this is simply an attempt by the company to spice things up. But when a man comes in from the cold claiming that he's never heard of them, they get concerned. At first they think maybe it's just that the internet is a big place and they're easy to miss, but they soon begin to wonder who exactly is watching them... and why.

This is one of those films you might think has a big twist at the end, but it doesn't. The answer is given right before the final act and while it isn't surprising, it is satisfying and intriguing and makes the characters realize the situation their in. They characters themselves aren't that interesting, but it is interesting to watch their situation progress as they are put under progressively increasing duress. Rex shows that he is more than just the jerk and seems to realize before anyone else that something is wrong, but convinces others to stay. I also get the impression that Rex really needs that money but there is really never an explanation given as too why (though, apparently, the test screening version was 4 hours, so maybe that explain some things).

Some plot elements didn't really work for me (Rex hoarding food and cigarettes, the thankless and forgettable character of Danny and generally anything he did), but the real strength of the film is the sense of isolation and paranoia. Even when the characters aren't paranoid, there's a generally uneasy feeling from the camera's POV that occurs throughout much of the film. We hear lots of whirring and what sound like scrambled staticy voices (a need DVD extra is that you can watch the film with the voices unscrambled, which gives viewers a better idea of what happened when, and make the continuity feel a bit more well constructed). And as I said, while the ending isn't surprising, it is still fairly good, and there is one nice twist that I didn't see coming separate from the revelation of what the game really is.

I'm a sucker for horror and suspense films that deal with isolated characters: John Carpenter's The Thing, Duel (I'm counting lonely empty highways), and Cube. I prefer my thrillers to have a small tightly knit cast, so that when someone dies, it means something. Too many horror films where characters are fodder for the big bad, I like films where the characters are in situations in which they need to rely on wits, and trust in order to face the threat. Also, when you focus on a small cast, the audience is given a chance to see them fleshed out more and how they handle a seemingly impossible situation.

My Little Eye is a great thriller despite using a reality show as a plot device. The pace is decent and the progression and end are satisfying, making this a fun and creepy little horror flick.

Creepshow

This is probably the film I enjoyed the most of the three, despite the fact that it's not really as good as the other two. Some of the stories are not that strong and can be quite predictable, but what it lacks in brains, it makes up for in heart.

Sure, you might not think a horror anthology called Creepshow might not have a heart, but it does, albeit a warped on. The film is a loving homage to EC Comics, a horror comics company in the fifties that was known for it's great art and literate (if formulaic) stories. The most popular comics include Tales from the Crypt (later turned into the acclaimed TV series), Haunt of Fear and Mad (later changed into Mad Magazine. Yep, that Mad Magazine). The company was pretty much destroyed, unfortunately by McCarthyism and the dreaded Comics Code. Basically Frederic Wertham wrote a book called Seduction of the Innocent (which sounds like a direct-to-video erotic thriller) in which he claims comics are corrupting America's Youth.

With comics under fire and targeted by the House of Un-American Activities, several comic companies teamed up to create the Comics Code (which was enforced by the government), which would regulate all comics and comic companies. EC bravely said no, so the other companies put them out of business with silly rules such as saying that crime can never pay or be made to look enjoyable, that the undead cannot appear in any comics and that the words like "horror" cannot be used in the title. EC tanked and DC ended up buying Mad, which was republished as Mad Magazine (magazines don't have to worry about the Comic's code). Still, though there were around for about only 10 years, EC comics had a huge effect on writers and artists of the time.

Creepshow is an anthology directed by George Romero (him again) and written by Stephen King that pays homage to the great horror comics of yesteryear. The film begins as a father yells at his son and slaps him for reading "shit," namely a comic book called Creepshow. He throws the comic in the trash and we are shown the stories within:

The first story is Father's Day, which is the weakest of the lot. Basically an old murdered father wakes up 7 years after his death to reclaim his Father's Day cake that was denied to him on the day of his death. Clearly, he's an incompetent zombie because he mistakes his bickering nieces head for a cake and pouts frosting and candles on it. According to one article, Stephen King admitted that Creepshow was supposed to be an anthology with stories that were about 5 minutes each, rather than 15-25 minutes like they are in the film. His description was "Dad comes from the grave, chases his bickering family around, kills them, the end." Not much really changed, except it's longer than it needed to be and isn't really too interesting.

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrell is a much better story and is surprisingly funny at times (and keep in mind all of these stories are pretty tongue in cheek), mostly because of the bearable and somewhat funny performance of writer Stephen King as a backwoods hick. Said hick finds a meteor in his backyard and decides to sell it to the university (which leads into a humourous dream sequence in which he takes it to the Dept. Of Meteors at the university and gets a whopping $200 dollars for it!) but when he tries to cool it down it breaks in two. Jordy, deciding that the university wouldn't pay for a broken meteor tries to fix it, only to get a mysterious ooze on his hands. He tries to wash it off, but a few hours later a strange grass-like substance starts to grow on his hands. This one is grimly funny and somewhat madcap and while not perfect is still fun.

Something to Tide You Over... is, in my opinion, the best segment thanks to both the writing and the performance of Leslie Nelson as the despicable villain. A rich man named Richard(Nelson)'s wife is cheating on him so Richard visits the other man(Ted Danson). The other man apologizes but the Richard doesn't care about that, but rather that someone took something that was "his" and now they both must pay. Richard concocts a ghoulish plan to make them pay but Richard soon finds that he's about to get a taste of his own medicine.

The Crate is a fairly standard monster story in which a university professor discovers that a monster hidden in a crate might be the best way to deal with his drunk domineering wife (played by Adrianne Barbeau).

And They're Creeping Up on You finds E.G. Marshal as an evil tycoon (is there any other kind) in a sterile, germfree apartment who finds that his apartment is under attack by cockroaches.

In the end, we see a couple of garbage men examining the comic and notice that someone sent away for a free voodoo doll...

This was such a fun movie, even though it has a lot of problems. But the sheer enthusiasm of the film for it's material more than make up for it. Many scenes have a crazy comic book style to them (including some scenes made to look like comic panels) and an intentionally goofy feel that captures the spirit of the old comics well. It also follows (for the most part) the basic formula: bad things happening to bad people. What I love about the old comics is there sense of poetic justice in which we see a horrible person (usually pretty normal but still evil) facing a cruel and unusual punishment. There is a sense of karma in those books and in the end, the bad guys get what they deserve. Admittedly, some get worse than they deserve (such as Jordy Verrel and the Drunk Wife), but man is it satisfying and relieving to see Leslie Nelson and E.G. Marshal get what they deserve.

Creepshow is far from perfect, but it was clearly made with a lot of love and it was just so much fun I can forgive it's misgivings. Good show.

There, so from now on I'll try to post more often, OK?

Rue Britainnia

2005-10-10T22:00:00.000-03:00

Yay! Slightly damaged merchandise! Strange has been selling slightly damaged (fringed spines slightly dog-eared covers) and previously read comic trades.

And now I will review them. My segue ways need work.

Wolverine: Blood Hungry

This is a little easy to miss book for a number of reasons:
1) There are already tons of Wolverine books out there so this one is easy to miss.
2) It never really made much of an impression on readers and the only thing really worth noting for continuity freaks is the introduction of the forgotten villain Cyber.
3) It was originally published in the late eighties in the anthology Marvel Comics Presents, a book which wasn't really known for it's quality stories.

Still, I'm glad that they published this little forgotten story because it is a fun and quirky story featuring Peter David (Hulk, Spider-Man, countless Star Trek novels) and Sam Keith (The MAXX, Four Women, Zero Girl) before they hit it big. The art's somewhat ugly and the story uses the oldest Wolverine cliche of all (Wolverine confronts an old friend/enemy from his past who tries to kill him), but otherwise the story is fun and the book is cheap.

Wolverine, who is in the criminally run nation of Madripoor hanging out with his oddly-named girlfriend/gangster Tyger Tiger, catches wind of a familiar sent that frightens sends chills up his spine. When Tyger asks Wolverine to spy on her competition, one General Coy, only to find that yet another of Wolverine's old nemeses is there on business. And he happens to be the only one Wolverine's afraid of.

Much of this story takes place in a weird quasi-flashback where Wolverine remembers Cyber through a Freudian metaphorical dream in which Wolverine is a high school student and Cyber is the gym coach who takes his gal. Sam Keith's creepy yet slightly cartoony art is more suited to this part of the story more than the lackluster fight scenes near the beginning and in the climax. Keith's art is more acquired to his surreal thrillers rather than super-hero comics, but he still does a good job here. I mentioned that the art is ugly, which it is, but it is an appropriate and well-crafted kind of ugly. Still the subpar coloring doesn't make it look as good as his later work.

For those who have read the MAXX (or have seen the series), they'd know that Sam Keith can handle weird dreams and surreal situations, which makes him well-suited to the hallucinations in the book, but it probably would have been better if he handled that aspect and some other artist did the reality aspect of the book. As I said the fights are pretty weak, but the dreams look great. The visuals are both humourous and creepy, such as Wolverine being sliced to pieces by Cyber, and the exaggerated style is well suited to this aspect of the book.

Still, the real strength of the book is David's writing, who manages to take a very generic Wolverine story and make it clever and funny. Cyber is a generic looking and acting villain, but David gives him all the best dialogue in the book (General Coy: "Greetings. I am Coy." Cyber: "I myself am painfully shy.") and is charming enough to be interesting. There is also an amusing series of scenes in which General Coy and Tyger Tiger are discussing how to deal with the whole Cyber debacle. They eventually hammer out a deal in which they don't kill each other and decide to blame aliens for what may be interpreted as weakness on their parts.

While it isn't the most noteworthy Wolverine comic out there but it is a fun short and relatively cheap read.

3 out of 5 Stars

Captain Britain

Like the previous book, this one is also a relatively easy to miss trade featuring two popular creators before they hit it big: Alan Moore (Watchmen, Swamp Thing, Promethea, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Alan Davis (X-Men). It's hardly surprising that this book is relatively forgotten despite being Alan Moore's only book for Marvel. This is because the book was originally published exclusively in the UK and Captain Britain has never been a popular character in any country.

Captain Britain begins with the Captain trapped in an alternate universe where super-heroes are hunted down by the government. Being the last hero on the planet, the Captain's plans are to fight the power, but when he has to face the Fury ("It kills super-heroes") and its omnipotent creator, the Captain just wants to run before he's killed. Will he survive? Uh... no. No, he won't.

Alan Davis art isn't as strong as it is later in his career but he does a decent job, especially with the weird goofy alien stuff, the reality-warping stuff and the Fury (who is a really creepy villain), but he really isn't my cup of tea in this book. Good stuff but far from the top of his game.

Same goes for Alan Moore, who tells a good story, but one full of holes. First of all, the book only collects the stories more has worked on, so when the book begins it is clearly in the middle of a storyline and who the characters are is sort of unclear. Then there is the introduction of the villain Arcade who shows up to promise to help one of the villains kill Cap bur then never shows up again. I don't know if they left a non-Alan Moore issue out that explains what happens with that story, but it seems like a plot thread that goes no where. The book also moves ahead to several months in the future in a really jarring fashion which kind of bugs me.

Still Alan Moore adds some humour to the book, which is already fairly silly in principle. One scene has Captain Britain fighting an alternate universe-version of himself (Captain Englande) who asks if he knows what he's getting into. Britain responds: "Of course I know what I'm getting into. I'm in a parallel universe fighting an alternate version of myself alongside a group of parahuman mercenaries who want me to help the wrongly accused majestrix of... Do you ever get through a sentence and find yourself unable to believe your actually saying it?" Englande answers no and beats Britain with a stick.

The villains Jim Jaspers and the Fury are actually rather scary bad guys, which is hard to do in comics. Both are seemingly unkillable, but at the same time, they are a lot more competant and dangerous than the usual lumbering unbeatable forces found in comics. In fact when the two villains battle eachother in the climax, it is a battle that ends up spanning space, time and reality, making for a strange epic battle.

Still the book doesn't really add much to the super-hero genre and its easy to see why this is Alan Moore's more forgotten work (with the exception that it named the Marvel universe Earth 616, which is a term still used by fans today). Still I like the idea of Captain Britain from countless alternate universe (such as Captain Empire, Kommandant Englander, and Captain Airstrip-One) , but a lot of this stuff feels like a warm up for similar ideas that Alan Moore accomplishes better in his later works. Still it is well worth picking up for Alan Moore fans who are looking for some of his more obscure work.

Three out of Five Stars

Everyone else was doing it

2005-10-04T23:44:00.000-03:00

I think this is proof that I'll easly jump on a bandwagon I was once disgusted by if people I like do it. After all, I spontaneously decided to set up my own web log (or blog) about a month after Jordan and Aiden started their own blogs (or web logs) and have no idea if I'll update regularly or say anything of interest or importance. Next thing you know I'll get a cellphone with a ringtone, a sure sign of madness.

Anyhoo, the point is basically to get things off my chest and share my own thoughts, as well as talk about comics, movies, TV, books and anything that distracts me from real life. I plan to post once every three days or so or whenever there is something interesting for me to comment on.