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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #25, part a (UXM #119)
[This post is part of a series of posts written by Jason Powell looking issue by issue at Claremont's X-Men. For more in this series click Jason's name in the toolbar on the right.]
“Twas the Night Before Christmas”
This issue concludes the two-part battle between the X-Men and an entirely forgettable villain called Moses Magnum. It begins with a sequence of the X-Men invading Magnum’s secret headquarters that, while exciting, doesn’t make much sense. To wit: Cyclops, Sunfire, Wolverine and Colossus are tunneling underneath the ocean, waiting for Nightcrawler to teleport inside the complex and activate a tracer that will tell Cyclops and Sunfire where they should burrow up. Without Kurt’s signal, they might miss the mark and “punch through to the ocean instead of Magnum’s base.” But when Nightcrawler activates the homer, Cyclops and Sunfire seem to immediately start firing upward. Did they coincidentally just happen to be that close to Nightcrawler when they received the signal?
It isn’t the finest action story in the Byrne/Claremont run, unfortunately. Moses is touted as being a powerful opponent, but he doesn’t fight the X-Men for long before he turns tail and run. Granted, it’s because he wants to go activate a machine that will destroy Japan, but still – if he’s so tough, why not take care of the X-Men first, then proceed to Japan’s destruction?
Instead, we get a retread of the Savage Land arc’s climax, with a single X-Man pitting his power against the villain and his destructive machinery. Last time, this meant Cyclops pitting his eye-beams against a “god,” and was appropriately exciting. This time, it is Banshee’s scream (visually a much less impressive power) doing the work, and the force he’s battling is described as “some kind of energy beam,” which as a turn of phrase is lacking a certain apocalyptic foreboding. The only twist is in the after-effects: Like Cyclops, Banshee won the fight; unlike Cyclops, he may have burned out his power doing it. Over the next few issues, we’ll learn that Claremont is making this change stick: Banshee remains powerless for months and then eventually quits the team, which is a surprising way to go. But we don’t know yet that where Claremont is heading, so at the moment the wrinkle feels somehow less than satisfying.
With the story over after only 13 pages, Claremont and Byrne devote the entire final quarter of the comic to an epilogue, containing nice character moments that are more engaging than the ostensibly action-packed section that preceded them. During a Christmas party, we see Wolverine approach Mariko, with Storm noting to herself, “I have never seen Wolverine sound or act so ... gentle. It is a pleasant change.” Colossus, meanwhile, points out a significant difference between him and the rest of the team: “I have a family,” he says. “I think I am the only X-Man with a real home, with ... roots, and tonight of all nights ... I miss them.” Once again, Claremont is exploring different dimensions of his cast, surprising the reader (and possibly himself) with the character moments that come from what he finds.
And to cap it all off, Claremont and Byrne place Jean with other cast-off X-Men (Havok, Polaris and Madrox the Multiple Man), and prepare to ship them all off to Muir Island to live with Moira MacTaggert. The characters are thus positioned for their involvement in the resolution of the “Mutant X” subplot (introduced way back in Uncanny #104 and then completely ignored for over a year). Claremont has a habit of introducing subplots and then ignoring them for months on end. This is the first blatant example, but far from the last or the most egregious.
Finally, a quick note on the newly interpolated pages illustrated by Kieron Dwyer: In them, we learn that Moses Magnum was given superpowers by an odd-looking villain called Apocalypse. Chronologically, this is one of the earliest times that Apocalypse’s agenda comes into conflict with the X-Men’s, but actually it’s a huge ret-con. Apocalypse didn’t really first appear until the mid-80s, created by Claremont’s pal Louise Simonson to be the core villain in the spin-off title X-Factor. The character’s appearance here thus feels pretty anachronistic, and doesn’t necessarily add much. (And for the continuity obsessed, it’s a direct contradiction of an issue of Hulk, which revealed that Moses Magnum was given his powers by entities known only as “Them.” Hey, some people care about this stuff.)
“Twas the Night Before Christmas”
This issue concludes the two-part battle between the X-Men and an entirely forgettable villain called Moses Magnum. It begins with a sequence of the X-Men invading Magnum’s secret headquarters that, while exciting, doesn’t make much sense. To wit: Cyclops, Sunfire, Wolverine and Colossus are tunneling underneath the ocean, waiting for Nightcrawler to teleport inside the complex and activate a tracer that will tell Cyclops and Sunfire where they should burrow up. Without Kurt’s signal, they might miss the mark and “punch through to the ocean instead of Magnum’s base.” But when Nightcrawler activates the homer, Cyclops and Sunfire seem to immediately start firing upward. Did they coincidentally just happen to be that close to Nightcrawler when they received the signal?
It isn’t the finest action story in the Byrne/Claremont run, unfortunately. Moses is touted as being a powerful opponent, but he doesn’t fight the X-Men for long before he turns tail and run. Granted, it’s because he wants to go activate a machine that will destroy Japan, but still – if he’s so tough, why not take care of the X-Men first, then proceed to Japan’s destruction?
Instead, we get a retread of the Savage Land arc’s climax, with a single X-Man pitting his power against the villain and his destructive machinery. Last time, this meant Cyclops pitting his eye-beams against a “god,” and was appropriately exciting. This time, it is Banshee’s scream (visually a much less impressive power) doing the work, and the force he’s battling is described as “some kind of energy beam,” which as a turn of phrase is lacking a certain apocalyptic foreboding. The only twist is in the after-effects: Like Cyclops, Banshee won the fight; unlike Cyclops, he may have burned out his power doing it. Over the next few issues, we’ll learn that Claremont is making this change stick: Banshee remains powerless for months and then eventually quits the team, which is a surprising way to go. But we don’t know yet that where Claremont is heading, so at the moment the wrinkle feels somehow less than satisfying.
With the story over after only 13 pages, Claremont and Byrne devote the entire final quarter of the comic to an epilogue, containing nice character moments that are more engaging than the ostensibly action-packed section that preceded them. During a Christmas party, we see Wolverine approach Mariko, with Storm noting to herself, “I have never seen Wolverine sound or act so ... gentle. It is a pleasant change.” Colossus, meanwhile, points out a significant difference between him and the rest of the team: “I have a family,” he says. “I think I am the only X-Man with a real home, with ... roots, and tonight of all nights ... I miss them.” Once again, Claremont is exploring different dimensions of his cast, surprising the reader (and possibly himself) with the character moments that come from what he finds.
And to cap it all off, Claremont and Byrne place Jean with other cast-off X-Men (Havok, Polaris and Madrox the Multiple Man), and prepare to ship them all off to Muir Island to live with Moira MacTaggert. The characters are thus positioned for their involvement in the resolution of the “Mutant X” subplot (introduced way back in Uncanny #104 and then completely ignored for over a year). Claremont has a habit of introducing subplots and then ignoring them for months on end. This is the first blatant example, but far from the last or the most egregious.
Finally, a quick note on the newly interpolated pages illustrated by Kieron Dwyer: In them, we learn that Moses Magnum was given superpowers by an odd-looking villain called Apocalypse. Chronologically, this is one of the earliest times that Apocalypse’s agenda comes into conflict with the X-Men’s, but actually it’s a huge ret-con. Apocalypse didn’t really first appear until the mid-80s, created by Claremont’s pal Louise Simonson to be the core villain in the spin-off title X-Factor. The character’s appearance here thus feels pretty anachronistic, and doesn’t necessarily add much. (And for the continuity obsessed, it’s a direct contradiction of an issue of Hulk, which revealed that Moses Magnum was given his powers by entities known only as “Them.” Hey, some people care about this stuff.)
Monday, April 28, 2008
Ping33 on LOST as the Faerie Kingdom
[This was a comment Ping33 made on my review of the most recent LOST episode; since it was really interesting, and much bigger than the post to which it appear as a comment, I thought I would bump it up here.]
It's fairly clear to me what the nature of the island is: It's faerie-land. Between the stealing of children, the displaced time and the healing effects it has every single one of the standard faerie tropes. Ben is the human become king ala the children in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. The fact that he was not "born on the island" as he first claimed is a key point, but like the kids in Narnia he was "born again" on the Island. Under this reading: Jacob Becomes Oberon.
Why can't women become pregnant? The long stated inability for Faeries to have children and necessity for them to steal human ones.
When did Clare's child become safe? When he was baptised! Then he was no longer at risk of being stolen (and replaced with a changeling?)
How to easily explain the Dharma logos elsewhere in the globe? multiple entry points to the faerie realm. Why, in the flash forwards is everyone (except Kate) Miserable? Because they've 'eaten the food' and left a part of themselves in the faerie land and are now can not feel complete in the mundane world.
Lost ticks all of the boxes religiously, perhaps there hasn't been much written about this because its so damn obvious... Maybe I missed the critical entry on this very blog. But I can't get into any kind of discussion about the mysteries of the show without mentioning it.
[Ping, when you say it like that it all seems really obvious; but for all the individual observations which I discovered on my own, I had not assembled them together in this way. What makes LOST fascinating to me is they way its mythology collides -- everything you have said makes sense, as does the theory that the island is Purgatory, or that it is some kind of singularity, or that the smoke monster is a cloud of nano-bots (a theory the creators have actively rejected); what knocks me out is the way these are are layered on one thing, and I hope the ending reveal, whatever it is, provides a way to not simply dissolve these readings as mostly mistaken.]
[What do you make of Jacob being "bound" in some kind of magic circle of ash? That kind of apparently "magic" mystery has more in common with your faerie-theory than all the sci-fi stuff.]
It's fairly clear to me what the nature of the island is: It's faerie-land. Between the stealing of children, the displaced time and the healing effects it has every single one of the standard faerie tropes. Ben is the human become king ala the children in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. The fact that he was not "born on the island" as he first claimed is a key point, but like the kids in Narnia he was "born again" on the Island. Under this reading: Jacob Becomes Oberon.
Why can't women become pregnant? The long stated inability for Faeries to have children and necessity for them to steal human ones.
When did Clare's child become safe? When he was baptised! Then he was no longer at risk of being stolen (and replaced with a changeling?)
How to easily explain the Dharma logos elsewhere in the globe? multiple entry points to the faerie realm. Why, in the flash forwards is everyone (except Kate) Miserable? Because they've 'eaten the food' and left a part of themselves in the faerie land and are now can not feel complete in the mundane world.
Lost ticks all of the boxes religiously, perhaps there hasn't been much written about this because its so damn obvious... Maybe I missed the critical entry on this very blog. But I can't get into any kind of discussion about the mysteries of the show without mentioning it.
[Ping, when you say it like that it all seems really obvious; but for all the individual observations which I discovered on my own, I had not assembled them together in this way. What makes LOST fascinating to me is they way its mythology collides -- everything you have said makes sense, as does the theory that the island is Purgatory, or that it is some kind of singularity, or that the smoke monster is a cloud of nano-bots (a theory the creators have actively rejected); what knocks me out is the way these are are layered on one thing, and I hope the ending reveal, whatever it is, provides a way to not simply dissolve these readings as mostly mistaken.]
[What do you make of Jacob being "bound" in some kind of magic circle of ash? That kind of apparently "magic" mystery has more in common with your faerie-theory than all the sci-fi stuff.]
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Scott on The Most Underrated Albums
[Guest blogger Scott takes a look at the most underrated albums. I am still wrapping my mind around the fact that my favorite indie songster -- John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats -- genuinely loves the Backstreet Boys, as much as he loves Ace of Base. I mean, am I actually going to download the Backstreet Boys Black and Blue and put it on my iPod? I have been known to make decisions because I don't want to be "that guy" but Darnielle makes me feel like that is just cowardly. I also fear if my Backstreet Boys album got anywhere near my Wu-Tang, my iPod would implode.]
For the purpose of this post, I’m thinking of ‘underrated’ as not albums that are great but just unknown but albums which were viewed largely as commercial or critical failures or were made by artists who are often not taken seriously.
Here are a few of my own:
U2, Pop- much of the criticism aimed at this album has less to do with the album itself than it has to do with the PopMart tour that followed. I always have to remind people that “Yes, they rode out in a Giant Mirror Ball Lemon for the encore but the Giant Mirror Ball Lemon isn’t on the album.” Granted, the album does suffer because the band rushed to finish it (they had already booked the tour) and, as a result, the album came out over-produced. If they would have had a few more months, they might have stripped away some of the often-distracting tape loops and samples and just let the songs be themselves. They actually did this on their best of 1990-2000 collection where they stripped down “Gone” and “Discoteque.” That being said, the tunes themselves are still solid despite the slightly busy production.
Key Tracks: “Mofo”, “Gone”, “Wake Up Dead Man”, “Please”
REM, Up- Another victim of misdirected anger; following Bill Berry’s departure the band decided to try something different and, I think, it works. Unfortunately, the band would drive this ‘something different’ into the ground over the next two albums and, as a result, Up often takes the blame. I’ve always felt that the lo-fi, keyboard driven songs with just a slight hint of Pet Sounds thrown in for good measure provided a nice change of pace from the straightforward volume of Monster and New Adventures In Hi-Fi.
Key Tracks: “Lotus”, “Daysleeper”, “Walk Unafraid”, “Falls To Climb”
Hole, Celebrity Skin- This album should have been a classic and I don’t know why it didn’t take off and explode. I mean, Courtney Love was even SOBER at this point so she couldn’t sabotage its success. “Boys On The Radio” should have been the new “American Pie” and “Awful” is just about the catchiest song ever written. This is the only album that Melissa Auf De Maur made with the band and her vocal harmonies compliment the newly sober Love’s voice exquisitely.
Key Tracks: “Boys on the Radio”, “Awful”, “Celebrity Skin”, “Malibu”
Courtney Love, America’s Sweetheart- This album is a train wreck…. But it’s a beautiful one! Love was obviously a mess when she recorded this album but, oddly, it works. When she screams herself raw at the end of “Sunset Strip” singing “Rock Stars, Pop Stars, Everybody dies” it sounds incredibly….authentic.
Key Tracks: “Mono”, “Hold On To Me”, “Sunset Strip” “Never Gonna Be The Same”
Def Leppard, Slang and Yeah! – The former was called an attempt by the band to ‘go grunge’ in the mid 90’s when, in fact, it was really more their attempt to make their own personal Achtung Baby. The grunge influence only extended towards a less polished and produced sound overall, the more prevalent influence here is dance, techno and industrial music. It was an attempt by a band to try doing something different in order to keep themselves vital at a time when, no matter what they did, they were going to get slammed by critics. The latter (Yeah!) is a collection of covers of, mostly, 70’s glam-rock songs and, while the covers don’t manage to redefine the songs in any way, they do manage to update them and, at the same time, make them their own. Part of the genius of this album was the fact that, instead of standards, they went with songs that, at least stateside, are lesser known or long forgotten; as a result, the songs sound fresh and you’re less likely to be thinking of the original versions when you hear them. More importantly, I like this album because it just sounds like they had fun making it; that’s what more of rock should be about: a group of good musicians playing/having fun with the music that they love.
Key Tracks: (Slang) “Truth?”, “Slang”, “Work It Out” (Yeah!) “20th Century Boy”, “Rock On”, “Waterloo Sunset”, “Stay With Me” (guitarist Phil Collen takes over on the vocals on this one and manages to out ‘Rod’ Rod Stewart).
And, if you’re tired of everything being overated or underated, check out this Spin article, “Give Me Centrism Or Give Me Death”, where Chuck Klosterman lists the ’10 Most Accurately Rated Artist in Rock History.’ I found it to be both funny and insightful.
For the purpose of this post, I’m thinking of ‘underrated’ as not albums that are great but just unknown but albums which were viewed largely as commercial or critical failures or were made by artists who are often not taken seriously.
Here are a few of my own:
U2, Pop- much of the criticism aimed at this album has less to do with the album itself than it has to do with the PopMart tour that followed. I always have to remind people that “Yes, they rode out in a Giant Mirror Ball Lemon for the encore but the Giant Mirror Ball Lemon isn’t on the album.” Granted, the album does suffer because the band rushed to finish it (they had already booked the tour) and, as a result, the album came out over-produced. If they would have had a few more months, they might have stripped away some of the often-distracting tape loops and samples and just let the songs be themselves. They actually did this on their best of 1990-2000 collection where they stripped down “Gone” and “Discoteque.” That being said, the tunes themselves are still solid despite the slightly busy production.
Key Tracks: “Mofo”, “Gone”, “Wake Up Dead Man”, “Please”
REM, Up- Another victim of misdirected anger; following Bill Berry’s departure the band decided to try something different and, I think, it works. Unfortunately, the band would drive this ‘something different’ into the ground over the next two albums and, as a result, Up often takes the blame. I’ve always felt that the lo-fi, keyboard driven songs with just a slight hint of Pet Sounds thrown in for good measure provided a nice change of pace from the straightforward volume of Monster and New Adventures In Hi-Fi.
Key Tracks: “Lotus”, “Daysleeper”, “Walk Unafraid”, “Falls To Climb”
Hole, Celebrity Skin- This album should have been a classic and I don’t know why it didn’t take off and explode. I mean, Courtney Love was even SOBER at this point so she couldn’t sabotage its success. “Boys On The Radio” should have been the new “American Pie” and “Awful” is just about the catchiest song ever written. This is the only album that Melissa Auf De Maur made with the band and her vocal harmonies compliment the newly sober Love’s voice exquisitely.
Key Tracks: “Boys on the Radio”, “Awful”, “Celebrity Skin”, “Malibu”
Courtney Love, America’s Sweetheart- This album is a train wreck…. But it’s a beautiful one! Love was obviously a mess when she recorded this album but, oddly, it works. When she screams herself raw at the end of “Sunset Strip” singing “Rock Stars, Pop Stars, Everybody dies” it sounds incredibly….authentic.
Key Tracks: “Mono”, “Hold On To Me”, “Sunset Strip” “Never Gonna Be The Same”
Def Leppard, Slang and Yeah! – The former was called an attempt by the band to ‘go grunge’ in the mid 90’s when, in fact, it was really more their attempt to make their own personal Achtung Baby. The grunge influence only extended towards a less polished and produced sound overall, the more prevalent influence here is dance, techno and industrial music. It was an attempt by a band to try doing something different in order to keep themselves vital at a time when, no matter what they did, they were going to get slammed by critics. The latter (Yeah!) is a collection of covers of, mostly, 70’s glam-rock songs and, while the covers don’t manage to redefine the songs in any way, they do manage to update them and, at the same time, make them their own. Part of the genius of this album was the fact that, instead of standards, they went with songs that, at least stateside, are lesser known or long forgotten; as a result, the songs sound fresh and you’re less likely to be thinking of the original versions when you hear them. More importantly, I like this album because it just sounds like they had fun making it; that’s what more of rock should be about: a group of good musicians playing/having fun with the music that they love.
Key Tracks: (Slang) “Truth?”, “Slang”, “Work It Out” (Yeah!) “20th Century Boy”, “Rock On”, “Waterloo Sunset”, “Stay With Me” (guitarist Phil Collen takes over on the vocals on this one and manages to out ‘Rod’ Rod Stewart).
And, if you’re tired of everything being overated or underated, check out this Spin article, “Give Me Centrism Or Give Me Death”, where Chuck Klosterman lists the ’10 Most Accurately Rated Artist in Rock History.’ I found it to be both funny and insightful.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #24, part b
[This post is part of a series of posts written by Jason Powell looking issue by issue at Claremont's X-Men. For more in this series click Jason's name in the toolbar on the right.]
“Vacation”
We’re now entering the phase of the title’s history wherein almost every issue inches the series closer to the sublimely climactic nine-part “Dark Phoenix Saga.” Claremont and Bolton’s final “Classic” collaboration gets the ball rolling, with a Jean Grey solo story also featuring Jason Wyngarde, aka Mastermind, one of Lee/Kirby’s original Brotherhood of Mutants from the 1960s.
(Note: The original presentation of the “Dark Phoenix Saga” made Wyngarde’s identity as an old Silver Age villain a surprise reveal, but I prefer that it being laid out explicitly from the very beginning, as it is in “Vacation.” It’s not the greatest surprise, really, because Mastermind was such a lame villain in the earlier comics. Claremont’s change here is an improvement – he makes Mastermind seem much more formidable, right off the bat.)
“Vacation” begins with Jean in Greece, where she quickly hooks up with local charmer Nikos, who is quickly revealed to readers as Mastermind. The ground covered here doesn’t really add anything in terms of plot – Mastermind’s slow seduction of Jean is given ample play in the Byrne/Claremont run as originally presented.
Where this story really triumphs is in its tone, far more sultry and suggestive than anything Claremont and Byrne could’ve gotten away with in 1979/80. Even before things get heated story-wise, John Bolton subtly signals us as to where it’s going with some of the most sensuously beautiful panels he’s produced for “Classic X-Men.” Note simply the greenery surrounding Jean and Nikos on the fourth page; its teeming lushness alone already suggesting the proper frame of mind for the ambrosial romance to follow. As the story progresses, sexuality is infused into other aspects of the story as well – particularly Jean herself: her wardrobe, her expressions, her body language. Bolton’s skill here is phenomenal.
Claremont’s ornately lavish language is once again perfectly in sync with Bolton’s images. Over a panel in which Jean – outfitted in a toga-like dress – dances with Nikos, the narration reads, “The music strikes a resonant chord in her blood. The strong drink of the islands ignites that blood. And Nikos’ touch fans the flames white-hot.” As should happen in any great comic book story, the words and images here are playing off each other perfectly, winding the sexual energy tighter and tighter, and priming it to explode.
However, since “Vacation” – for all its sultry subtext – is still a code-approved comic, so the climactic explosion must happen in relatively tame iconography: Bolton simply gives us a panel of the Phoenix bird erupting behind Jean (though it is punctuated by a powerfully emphasized “Oh, YES!” in her dialogue). The moment of release, then, is not nearly as persuasive as the coiled sexual tension that preceded it, but then, this story is meant as something of a prologue. Claremont may have deliberately left us wanting more.
So, the Claremont/Bolton series ends with a bang. Bolton will draw nearly another dozen backup stories for “Classic X-Men,” but Ann Nocenti (having just stepped down as editor of the series to make way for Bob Harras) will take over the writing of them. They will not be covered in this series.
For the record, there are four more Claremont-penned backups to be covered: they will appear in Classic X-Men #29, 41, 42 and 43. None are illustrated by John Bolton unfortunately, but all four will be covered at the appropriate points in this blog series.
“Vacation”
We’re now entering the phase of the title’s history wherein almost every issue inches the series closer to the sublimely climactic nine-part “Dark Phoenix Saga.” Claremont and Bolton’s final “Classic” collaboration gets the ball rolling, with a Jean Grey solo story also featuring Jason Wyngarde, aka Mastermind, one of Lee/Kirby’s original Brotherhood of Mutants from the 1960s.
(Note: The original presentation of the “Dark Phoenix Saga” made Wyngarde’s identity as an old Silver Age villain a surprise reveal, but I prefer that it being laid out explicitly from the very beginning, as it is in “Vacation.” It’s not the greatest surprise, really, because Mastermind was such a lame villain in the earlier comics. Claremont’s change here is an improvement – he makes Mastermind seem much more formidable, right off the bat.)
“Vacation” begins with Jean in Greece, where she quickly hooks up with local charmer Nikos, who is quickly revealed to readers as Mastermind. The ground covered here doesn’t really add anything in terms of plot – Mastermind’s slow seduction of Jean is given ample play in the Byrne/Claremont run as originally presented.
Where this story really triumphs is in its tone, far more sultry and suggestive than anything Claremont and Byrne could’ve gotten away with in 1979/80. Even before things get heated story-wise, John Bolton subtly signals us as to where it’s going with some of the most sensuously beautiful panels he’s produced for “Classic X-Men.” Note simply the greenery surrounding Jean and Nikos on the fourth page; its teeming lushness alone already suggesting the proper frame of mind for the ambrosial romance to follow. As the story progresses, sexuality is infused into other aspects of the story as well – particularly Jean herself: her wardrobe, her expressions, her body language. Bolton’s skill here is phenomenal.
Claremont’s ornately lavish language is once again perfectly in sync with Bolton’s images. Over a panel in which Jean – outfitted in a toga-like dress – dances with Nikos, the narration reads, “The music strikes a resonant chord in her blood. The strong drink of the islands ignites that blood. And Nikos’ touch fans the flames white-hot.” As should happen in any great comic book story, the words and images here are playing off each other perfectly, winding the sexual energy tighter and tighter, and priming it to explode.
However, since “Vacation” – for all its sultry subtext – is still a code-approved comic, so the climactic explosion must happen in relatively tame iconography: Bolton simply gives us a panel of the Phoenix bird erupting behind Jean (though it is punctuated by a powerfully emphasized “Oh, YES!” in her dialogue). The moment of release, then, is not nearly as persuasive as the coiled sexual tension that preceded it, but then, this story is meant as something of a prologue. Claremont may have deliberately left us wanting more.
So, the Claremont/Bolton series ends with a bang. Bolton will draw nearly another dozen backup stories for “Classic X-Men,” but Ann Nocenti (having just stepped down as editor of the series to make way for Bob Harras) will take over the writing of them. They will not be covered in this series.
For the record, there are four more Claremont-penned backups to be covered: they will appear in Classic X-Men #29, 41, 42 and 43. None are illustrated by John Bolton unfortunately, but all four will be covered at the appropriate points in this blog series.
Friday, April 25, 2008
LOST, season 4, episode 9
On the beach, they find the body of the ship's doctor with his throat cut, then hear the claim that the doctor is fine back on the ship, catch Davies in a lie, and force him to admit they are not here to rescue them. Locke's camp is attacked by soldiers looking for Ben, Ben's daughter is killed in front of him when he refuses to cooperate, and so he unleashes the smoke monster on them all. In a flash-forward possibly involving time travel, we learn how Ben recruited Sayid, and we see him confront Widmore -- Widmore "changed the rules" when he killed Ben's daughter, Ben cannot kill Widmore for some mysterious reason, and so Ben is now setting his sights on Penny, as Widmore has his sights on the island.
I had low expectations for the first post-strike episode, but this was as good as Lost has ever been, one of my favorite episodes yet. The only weak point was the fakeout discussion that turns out to be about Risk. I have seen that gag before on Buffy and I am pretty sure LOST has already used it in an earlier episode (when the discussion was over the golf game). I think they just wanted Hurley's "we're all going to die" for the commercial.
The body of the doctor may be bringing up the "copy" problem from the teaser video for season 4 -- but that is out of my scope this week. Two things about the beach plot. One. Nice that Bernard, the guy who built the SOS, would know morse code; that was a nice call-back when a lesser show could have just had some random guy know morse code out of nowhere. Two. I think the fact that Jeremy Davies still has a tie on is one of the best costume design choices in recent memory -- in an instant, I know what that character is all about.
With the degeneration of Locke, Ben has become my new favorite character, and not just because of his awesome hair, his array of exciting outfits on display in this episode, and his collapsable baton -- what an interesting choice for him, non-lethal but cruel being the point I think. His motionless reaction after his daughter was killed was stunning -- he was genuinely surprised that his verbal tricks could not get him out of this. He pulls of kicking ass in the desert equally well. The calling of the Smoke Monster was a thing to see.
"He changed the rules" is a great new mystery, and simply stated. Widmore's claim that the island has always been his and that he wants is back is intriguing; perhaps he is the origin of Dharma, and their feud is from when Ben killed all the Dharma people and went native. Why Ben cannot kill him I do not know, but I wonder if they are not both going to be overwhelmed by the true "owners" of the island in the end. And you have to love that Ben appears in a winter parka in the desert shaking -- was he transported through space and/or time like the polar bear? And why is he wounded and wearing Halliwax's jacket (Halliwax is the name of one of the Dharma guys right -- the guy from the videos, I think). Just the costume choice creates this whole mysterious back-story I look forward to hearing about.
Finally, I have one of my favorite visuals that encapsulates everything I love about Lost. Ben, in the nice suburban house, goes through a door that opens into a minimalist grey metal bunker of James bond suits and passports, then opens ANOTHER panel behind the suits to reveal ancient stone carvings. That is everything LOST is about, in 45 seconds.
I had low expectations for the first post-strike episode, but this was as good as Lost has ever been, one of my favorite episodes yet. The only weak point was the fakeout discussion that turns out to be about Risk. I have seen that gag before on Buffy and I am pretty sure LOST has already used it in an earlier episode (when the discussion was over the golf game). I think they just wanted Hurley's "we're all going to die" for the commercial.
The body of the doctor may be bringing up the "copy" problem from the teaser video for season 4 -- but that is out of my scope this week. Two things about the beach plot. One. Nice that Bernard, the guy who built the SOS, would know morse code; that was a nice call-back when a lesser show could have just had some random guy know morse code out of nowhere. Two. I think the fact that Jeremy Davies still has a tie on is one of the best costume design choices in recent memory -- in an instant, I know what that character is all about.
With the degeneration of Locke, Ben has become my new favorite character, and not just because of his awesome hair, his array of exciting outfits on display in this episode, and his collapsable baton -- what an interesting choice for him, non-lethal but cruel being the point I think. His motionless reaction after his daughter was killed was stunning -- he was genuinely surprised that his verbal tricks could not get him out of this. He pulls of kicking ass in the desert equally well. The calling of the Smoke Monster was a thing to see.
"He changed the rules" is a great new mystery, and simply stated. Widmore's claim that the island has always been his and that he wants is back is intriguing; perhaps he is the origin of Dharma, and their feud is from when Ben killed all the Dharma people and went native. Why Ben cannot kill him I do not know, but I wonder if they are not both going to be overwhelmed by the true "owners" of the island in the end. And you have to love that Ben appears in a winter parka in the desert shaking -- was he transported through space and/or time like the polar bear? And why is he wounded and wearing Halliwax's jacket (Halliwax is the name of one of the Dharma guys right -- the guy from the videos, I think). Just the costume choice creates this whole mysterious back-story I look forward to hearing about.
Finally, I have one of my favorite visuals that encapsulates everything I love about Lost. Ben, in the nice suburban house, goes through a door that opens into a minimalist grey metal bunker of James bond suits and passports, then opens ANOTHER panel behind the suits to reveal ancient stone carvings. That is everything LOST is about, in 45 seconds.
Comics Out April 23, 2008
Batman 675. Bruce Wayne tries to break up with his girlfriend as the eyes on fingers guy attacks; Robin and Nightwing discuss Batman's psyche; Talia, Batman's son, and an archer named Merlyn get a prologue, and the girlfriend discovers the Wayne-Batman connection. Tim Callahan says that Morrison is not served by the 90s art here, and then moves on to discuss the strengths of the story, but I simply cannot -- or will not -- get over how bad this all looks, and how bad much of Morrison's run looks. The conversation between Wayne and his girlfriend relies heavily on their facial expressions, but Benjamin is not Barry Kitson, and the scene looks absurd. I think Wayne is laughing at one point but you really can't tell from the art. Wayne seems to have walked in from a Liefeld comic -- his face is a patchwork of random lines; in a patterned suit he looks like a no-personality gangster. Look at Damian's face when he takes the blindfold off -- when did he get to be 40 and bloated? Check out the second panel of Merlyn with his bow and arrow and explain the unnatural Liefeld-esque stance; and remember the blog that made fun of Liefeld by asking "How many teeth in a mouth? A hundred right? I'll just draw a hundred"? Check out the teeth on the second to last page, and then turn back to the cover -- two separate Morrison artists made this mistake in one issue. As for the story? Morrison is at the top of his game on Superman, and the bottom of his game here, and I have argued it is the fear of Miller. That said, is this dialogue, form this issue, a parody of Miller's intentionally repetitive Vale dialogue on All Star Batman #1:
Yes you're witty and charming and clever, but underneath there's something deep and dark and terrible, isn't there? Underneath that wit and charm there's something so cruel.
I do not know what it is, but I am pretty well sick of it. I am very much in the mood to cull my comics down to the titles I actually enjoy on a regular basis, and not the ones by writers I generally, or used to, enjoy.
In comics news, there is still a lot of fallout from the NYCCC, including a Grant Morrison video, but basically I am not keeping up with it.
Yes you're witty and charming and clever, but underneath there's something deep and dark and terrible, isn't there? Underneath that wit and charm there's something so cruel.
I do not know what it is, but I am pretty well sick of it. I am very much in the mood to cull my comics down to the titles I actually enjoy on a regular basis, and not the ones by writers I generally, or used to, enjoy.
In comics news, there is still a lot of fallout from the NYCCC, including a Grant Morrison video, but basically I am not keeping up with it.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Brad Winderbaum and the end of Satacracy 88
A message from Brad:
Dear friends, family, and associates,
I'm excited to announce that the first of the THREE FINAL EPISODES of Satacracy 88 is up at itsallinyourhands.tv.
Thanks to our amazing cast and crew, it's some of the best work we've ever done. I'm proud to share it with all of you.
Though the series will reach its climax over the next two weeks, this is not the end of the line for 88. Right now we are developing the next chapter of her life as one of The Knights of a Hundred Sorrows.
I can't say too much more about it yet, except that it will begin to unfold slowly in places familiar to 88 and Futurist fans and will soon grow into an epic online adventure.
It is because of the continuing support of our fans that we have been able to bring our story to the conclusion it deserves. For that, I am eternally grateful.
Thanks for tuning in to watch our work over the past two years. It's been an exciting ride and I can't wait to go on more adventures with you in the future.
All the best,
Brad
Dear friends, family, and associates,
I'm excited to announce that the first of the THREE FINAL EPISODES of Satacracy 88 is up at itsallinyourhands.tv.
Thanks to our amazing cast and crew, it's some of the best work we've ever done. I'm proud to share it with all of you.
Though the series will reach its climax over the next two weeks, this is not the end of the line for 88. Right now we are developing the next chapter of her life as one of The Knights of a Hundred Sorrows.
I can't say too much more about it yet, except that it will begin to unfold slowly in places familiar to 88 and Futurist fans and will soon grow into an epic online adventure.
It is because of the continuing support of our fans that we have been able to bring our story to the conclusion it deserves. For that, I am eternally grateful.
Thanks for tuning in to watch our work over the past two years. It's been an exciting ride and I can't wait to go on more adventures with you in the future.
All the best,
Brad
Scott on the JLI Part 3
The Quaintness of The Cold War and Guy Gardner: DC’s very own Wolverine!
The 2nd issue of the series opens with a bit of a mystery (I say ‘a bit of a mystery’ since the reader can figure out most of it for themselves) involving the matter of how Dr. Light found herself to be a member of the League. It would seem that a mysterious man claiming to represent the league approached her a few days earlier and presented her with a signal device. It’s pretty obvious that the mysterious man is Maxwell Lord; it’s also pretty obvious that he gave the device to Dr. Light since her position in the UN provided the perfect opportunity to force the new League into action with the manufactured terrorist threat they faced in the first issue. However, it’s still unclear why Lord is manipulating them.
In his typical fashion, Guy Gardner offers to coerce the information from Dr. Light, which draws the ire of Black Canary. At this point in the series, Black Canary is sadly one-dimensional and, basically, doesn’t do much more than react to Guy. It’s kind of like your typical Sam-and-Diane dynamic without any of that nasty sexual tension.
Guy: She’ll be in love with me besides. Just like you, Canary—Right?”
Black Canary: What I’d love, Guy, is to knock you across the room.
Mister Miracle: Gardener, you’re a Green Lantern – can’t you comport yourself with a little dignity?
Guy: “Comport?” Did he just say “Comport”? (muttered) What the hell does comport mean?
In the documentary just released with the Justice League: The New Frontier DVD, they mentioned that, during the international era of the League, the schtick would take over more and more and the series would become sillier and sillier, culminating in the Kooey Kooey Kooey story (Booster and Beetle buy an island or something… I forget). However, at this early point in the series, it manages to be both funny and a pretty action packed superhero comic; a point that was kind of missed in the ‘reunion stories’ of this league (Formerly Known As The Justice League and I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Justice League…. Although those stories do have their own charm). Interestingly, while Giffen was known for his humor, having recently authored Ambush Bug, since most of the laughs in the series come from the dialogue much of the credit can be given to Dematteis who did most of the actual scripting. The wit is fast paced and sharp and, anyone who has read the way he writes Spider-man and Luke Cage in New Avengers has to wonder if a young Brian Michael-Bendis wasn’t paying very close attention to this series.
Speaking of the Avengers, the main action of this two issue arc is focused around the Champions of Angor (though they are never referred to as such here), a group of heroes from a parallel universe who are basically pastiches of Avengers characters from another dimension (Earth 10 now, I think) who were introduced in a Justice League comic back in the early ‘70s in a publicity stunt the same month that the Avengers first encountered Squadron Supreme; the translation being: The Silver Sorceress = The Scarlet Witch, Wandjina = Thor, Blue Jay = Yellow Jacket. Going back to Dr. Light’s dilemma from the previous issue, these heroes have decided to do more than just beat up bad guys. After their own home world was destroyed by nuclear war, they have come to our world not to take over or rule, a la the Authority, but just to get rid of nukes, plain and simple (for a more thorough and eloquent exploration of this same theme I recommend Superman IV: The Quest For Peace…. Kidding). After destroying the nuclear arsenal of Biayla (a small island nation that seems to be the DCU’s Cuba), the group ends up aligning itself with the country’s president Colonel Rumaan Harjavti, a sort of Fidel Castro as played by Danny Devito, who prods them in the direction of the USSR’s sizeable arsenal. To an extent, the main plot of this story seems a bit dated. The fear of nuclear holocaust and tensions with Russia were a hot topic in the 80’s and even fueled both Watchmen and, to a lesser extent, The Dark Knight Returns. Today, of course, we are no longer in danger of nuclear annihilation…. Right? Ok, well at least there’s no more international tensi-… Ok, so maybe the story isn’t so dated after all. In fact, given the current climate, this story seems almost quaint.
The Marvel inspired origin is appropriate for the Champions considering their conflict with Justice League is based on a prevalent Marvel trope, some kind of misunderstanding: One hero or team of heroes encounters another and, not realizing the noble intentions of the other, they end up fighting. In their first encounter with one another, Guy Gardner, as always, rushes in headfirst. He’s sort of the team’s Wolverine… but things work out a bit differently for Guy: he is quickly fried by Wandjina for his impetuousness only to be all the more humiliated when Captain Marvel, -- who was described by Kyle Rayner in Morrison's JLA as "the man with the child in his eyes", is the one who rescues him.
Captain Marvel: In case you haven’t noticed… Captain Whitebread just saved your life.
Guy (his hair frazzled and bearing a classic Maguire expression that can best be described as ‘an embarrassed pout’): I Noticed! I Noticed!
So, the crucial difference between Guy and Wolverine is this: When Wolverine rushes in, even if he is struck down, he comes out looking like a badass; when Guy rushes in he comes out looking like … well… just an ass (and how badass can anyone seem in comparison to Batman… not to mention Blue Beetle…). This fallibility does help make him a bit more tolerable; if he were a jerk that was always right, then he would be… well, he’d be Batman (or, at least, Frank Miller’s Batman).
It’s worth noting that, not only do the Champions of Angor look like Marvel characters, they sound like them too. They typically speak in a heightened melodramatic fashion that would not have been unfamiliar to a mid-70’s marvel reader. Here’s a sample of their dialogue as they rid Biayla of its nuclear arsenal:
Wandjina: Fools! […] We don’t give a damn about your boarders and boundaries—about your petty disputes!
Silver Sorceress: No, indeed! What we care about is ridding this world—all worlds—of these abominable weapons of destruction! […] This nation will never make war again!
This pathos-laden speech stands in stark contrast with the playful banter of the League:
Blue Beetle: You think it’s too late to petition for a NEW Green Lantern? Hey, Bats—Maybe you could wear the ring?
Batman: It would only get in my way [nice touch—Batman is so badass he doesn’t need a power ring… more on this later]
BB: … yeah…. Besides who’d ever buy a super hero called the “Green Batman”? I mean that’s almost as dumb as…
Batman: The Blue Beetle?
In reading these two exchanges, The Champions come off as sounding like they’re from a completely different dimension than the league. It’s also worth pointing out that the Batman/Beetle exchange was taking place in the middle of the story’s action without distracting from it.
At the beginning of the 3rd issue, the League (in Beetle’s Bug) are pursuing the Champions when, suddenly, Beetle puts on the breaks (in MaGuire ‘funny face’ watching; Beetle is shown with a terrific expression of lip-biting terror just before he hits the breaks). So, what is it that has the great Blue Beetle so intimidated that he halts his pursuit? He’s just realized that the Champions of Angor have crossed the Russian border.
Blue Beetle (to Batman): You’re not thinking of going in there?! I mean what if we’re shot down? Do you know how much this bug cost me? Batman?
First of all, I’d just like to point out the humor in this line of dialogue: Of course Batman has an idea how much the Bug cost… he’s spent a fortune on his own arsenal. Secondly, the conflict regarding the Russian border is something relatively fresh at the time this comic was published; again, one of the operative buzzwords in superhero comics at this point was ‘realism.’ In the old days, a group calling itself the Justice League of AMERICA trounced around the world doing whatever it pleased in the name of saving the world; it’s a miracle more international incidents didn’t happen. As part of the increased ‘realism’ of this period, comics began to attempt to realistically reflect the international tensions of the world. Sometimes, this would be taken to rather ridiculous extremes; who can forget when Joker achieved diplomatic immunity after murdering Robin (Jason Todd) by being appointed an Ambassador by the Ayatollah Khomeini (seriously, I’m not making that up…sadly)? However, for a super-team that needs to be able to save the world on a daily basis, being confined to the borders of your own country can be a bit of a hindrance to say the least. This arc is a pretty brilliant way for Giffen to set us up for the team going international at the end of this volume.
The 2nd issue of the series opens with a bit of a mystery (I say ‘a bit of a mystery’ since the reader can figure out most of it for themselves) involving the matter of how Dr. Light found herself to be a member of the League. It would seem that a mysterious man claiming to represent the league approached her a few days earlier and presented her with a signal device. It’s pretty obvious that the mysterious man is Maxwell Lord; it’s also pretty obvious that he gave the device to Dr. Light since her position in the UN provided the perfect opportunity to force the new League into action with the manufactured terrorist threat they faced in the first issue. However, it’s still unclear why Lord is manipulating them.
In his typical fashion, Guy Gardner offers to coerce the information from Dr. Light, which draws the ire of Black Canary. At this point in the series, Black Canary is sadly one-dimensional and, basically, doesn’t do much more than react to Guy. It’s kind of like your typical Sam-and-Diane dynamic without any of that nasty sexual tension.
Guy: She’ll be in love with me besides. Just like you, Canary—Right?”
Black Canary: What I’d love, Guy, is to knock you across the room.
Mister Miracle: Gardener, you’re a Green Lantern – can’t you comport yourself with a little dignity?
Guy: “Comport?” Did he just say “Comport”? (muttered) What the hell does comport mean?
In the documentary just released with the Justice League: The New Frontier DVD, they mentioned that, during the international era of the League, the schtick would take over more and more and the series would become sillier and sillier, culminating in the Kooey Kooey Kooey story (Booster and Beetle buy an island or something… I forget). However, at this early point in the series, it manages to be both funny and a pretty action packed superhero comic; a point that was kind of missed in the ‘reunion stories’ of this league (Formerly Known As The Justice League and I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Justice League…. Although those stories do have their own charm). Interestingly, while Giffen was known for his humor, having recently authored Ambush Bug, since most of the laughs in the series come from the dialogue much of the credit can be given to Dematteis who did most of the actual scripting. The wit is fast paced and sharp and, anyone who has read the way he writes Spider-man and Luke Cage in New Avengers has to wonder if a young Brian Michael-Bendis wasn’t paying very close attention to this series.
Speaking of the Avengers, the main action of this two issue arc is focused around the Champions of Angor (though they are never referred to as such here), a group of heroes from a parallel universe who are basically pastiches of Avengers characters from another dimension (Earth 10 now, I think) who were introduced in a Justice League comic back in the early ‘70s in a publicity stunt the same month that the Avengers first encountered Squadron Supreme; the translation being: The Silver Sorceress = The Scarlet Witch, Wandjina = Thor, Blue Jay = Yellow Jacket. Going back to Dr. Light’s dilemma from the previous issue, these heroes have decided to do more than just beat up bad guys. After their own home world was destroyed by nuclear war, they have come to our world not to take over or rule, a la the Authority, but just to get rid of nukes, plain and simple (for a more thorough and eloquent exploration of this same theme I recommend Superman IV: The Quest For Peace…. Kidding). After destroying the nuclear arsenal of Biayla (a small island nation that seems to be the DCU’s Cuba), the group ends up aligning itself with the country’s president Colonel Rumaan Harjavti, a sort of Fidel Castro as played by Danny Devito, who prods them in the direction of the USSR’s sizeable arsenal. To an extent, the main plot of this story seems a bit dated. The fear of nuclear holocaust and tensions with Russia were a hot topic in the 80’s and even fueled both Watchmen and, to a lesser extent, The Dark Knight Returns. Today, of course, we are no longer in danger of nuclear annihilation…. Right? Ok, well at least there’s no more international tensi-… Ok, so maybe the story isn’t so dated after all. In fact, given the current climate, this story seems almost quaint.
The Marvel inspired origin is appropriate for the Champions considering their conflict with Justice League is based on a prevalent Marvel trope, some kind of misunderstanding: One hero or team of heroes encounters another and, not realizing the noble intentions of the other, they end up fighting. In their first encounter with one another, Guy Gardner, as always, rushes in headfirst. He’s sort of the team’s Wolverine… but things work out a bit differently for Guy: he is quickly fried by Wandjina for his impetuousness only to be all the more humiliated when Captain Marvel, -- who was described by Kyle Rayner in Morrison's JLA as "the man with the child in his eyes", is the one who rescues him.
Captain Marvel: In case you haven’t noticed… Captain Whitebread just saved your life.
Guy (his hair frazzled and bearing a classic Maguire expression that can best be described as ‘an embarrassed pout’): I Noticed! I Noticed!
So, the crucial difference between Guy and Wolverine is this: When Wolverine rushes in, even if he is struck down, he comes out looking like a badass; when Guy rushes in he comes out looking like … well… just an ass (and how badass can anyone seem in comparison to Batman… not to mention Blue Beetle…). This fallibility does help make him a bit more tolerable; if he were a jerk that was always right, then he would be… well, he’d be Batman (or, at least, Frank Miller’s Batman).
It’s worth noting that, not only do the Champions of Angor look like Marvel characters, they sound like them too. They typically speak in a heightened melodramatic fashion that would not have been unfamiliar to a mid-70’s marvel reader. Here’s a sample of their dialogue as they rid Biayla of its nuclear arsenal:
Wandjina: Fools! […] We don’t give a damn about your boarders and boundaries—about your petty disputes!
Silver Sorceress: No, indeed! What we care about is ridding this world—all worlds—of these abominable weapons of destruction! […] This nation will never make war again!
This pathos-laden speech stands in stark contrast with the playful banter of the League:
Blue Beetle: You think it’s too late to petition for a NEW Green Lantern? Hey, Bats—Maybe you could wear the ring?
Batman: It would only get in my way [nice touch—Batman is so badass he doesn’t need a power ring… more on this later]
BB: … yeah…. Besides who’d ever buy a super hero called the “Green Batman”? I mean that’s almost as dumb as…
Batman: The Blue Beetle?
In reading these two exchanges, The Champions come off as sounding like they’re from a completely different dimension than the league. It’s also worth pointing out that the Batman/Beetle exchange was taking place in the middle of the story’s action without distracting from it.
At the beginning of the 3rd issue, the League (in Beetle’s Bug) are pursuing the Champions when, suddenly, Beetle puts on the breaks (in MaGuire ‘funny face’ watching; Beetle is shown with a terrific expression of lip-biting terror just before he hits the breaks). So, what is it that has the great Blue Beetle so intimidated that he halts his pursuit? He’s just realized that the Champions of Angor have crossed the Russian border.
Blue Beetle (to Batman): You’re not thinking of going in there?! I mean what if we’re shot down? Do you know how much this bug cost me? Batman?
First of all, I’d just like to point out the humor in this line of dialogue: Of course Batman has an idea how much the Bug cost… he’s spent a fortune on his own arsenal. Secondly, the conflict regarding the Russian border is something relatively fresh at the time this comic was published; again, one of the operative buzzwords in superhero comics at this point was ‘realism.’ In the old days, a group calling itself the Justice League of AMERICA trounced around the world doing whatever it pleased in the name of saving the world; it’s a miracle more international incidents didn’t happen. As part of the increased ‘realism’ of this period, comics began to attempt to realistically reflect the international tensions of the world. Sometimes, this would be taken to rather ridiculous extremes; who can forget when Joker achieved diplomatic immunity after murdering Robin (Jason Todd) by being appointed an Ambassador by the Ayatollah Khomeini (seriously, I’m not making that up…sadly)? However, for a super-team that needs to be able to save the world on a daily basis, being confined to the borders of your own country can be a bit of a hindrance to say the least. This arc is a pretty brilliant way for Giffen to set us up for the team going international at the end of this volume.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Lindelof and Cuse interviewed on the AV Club
Lost comes back tomorrow. For now, the AV Club has a great interview with LOST's creators, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. I actually have not read interviews with them before, but they are surprisingly open and refreshing -- addressing (fairly) frankly fan complaints about this and that and giving solid answers.
Free Form Commments
Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If a week goes by and I have failed to add you to the blog roll TELL ME TO DO IT AGAIN, and KEEP TELLING ME UNTIL IT GETS DONE. I can be lazy about updating the non-post parts of this site. Remember these comments can be directed at all the readers, not just me.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.
WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is available on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post. You can propose what you will, I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music and books.
If you think what you have to say -- new topic or comment on an existing topic -- would be better to hear than to read, use the CALL ME button on the toolbar on the right.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.
WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is available on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post. You can propose what you will, I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music and books.
If you think what you have to say -- new topic or comment on an existing topic -- would be better to hear than to read, use the CALL ME button on the toolbar on the right.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #24, part a (UXM #118)
[Guest Blogger continues his issue by issue look at Claremont's X-Men; for more in this series, see the toolbar on the right.]
“The Submergence of Japan”
Although Neal Adams didn’t draw the Silver Age X-Men issue that introduced Sunfire (#64), that issue is embedded in the Adams/Thomas run. This may account for why – as the Claremont/Byrne homage to Neal Adams continues – the X-Men stop in Japan here, and team up with Sunfire.
Claremont and Byrne add yet another dimension to Wolverine – he is growing in leaps and bounds from the loud-mouth comic relief of the Cockrum era – by here making vague allusions to time spent in Japan by the character before he joined the team. There is a significant exchange early on between Wolverine and Cyclops after the former reads from a Japanese newspaper:
Cyclops: “You read Japanese?”
Wolverine: “Yup.”
Cyclops: “I ... didn’t know.”
Wolverine: “You never asked.”
Cyclops: “My mistake. Next time I’ll know better.”
This is the third such moment in the Claremont/Byrne run – not only containing a revelation about Wolverine’s character but, perhaps more importantly, conveying Wolverine’s casualness regarding the revelation. In issue #109, Storm told Wolverine she had “misjudged” him after she learned that he doesn’t kill when he hunts. His reply: “I could care less.” In the Savage Land arc, after Wolverine claims to be able to communicate with a tiger, Storm says that there is “more to [Wolverine] than meets the eye,” and his retort is self-deprecating: “At my size, babe, that ain’t hard.”
It is not just the implied depth of Wolverine – in terms of experience, skill and history – that makes Wolverine such a distinctly cool character, but the tension created when those implications butt up against his own nonchalant, shoulder-shrugging attitude toward himself.
The seeds are also planted in this issue for a resolution of the antagonism between Scott and Wolverine, when Logan meets Mariko Yashida. She will become Wolverine’s long-distance romantic interest for the duration of Claremont’s run on X-Men (only to be perfunctorily killed off mere months after Claremont departs). With Wolverine set up to be in love with Mariko inside of six months, the Scott-Jean-Wolverine love-triangle is effectively neutralized. On the one hand, it could be viewed as facile, but on the other, it’s an early indication of Claremont’s willingness to have characters evolve. He could have milked the love triangle for a long time (writers who followed him often did), but Claremont always finds it more interesting to have character relationships mutate.
At the time of Uncanny #118’s publication, another title Claremont was writing – Iron Fist – had been cancelled and recently folded into another comic book series, “Power Man,” to become the unlikely but predictably titled hybrid “Power Man and Iron Fist.” Claremont was no longer writing the character, but that doesn’t stop him here from guest-starring two members of the series’ cast – the female co-stars, Misty Knight and Colleen Wing – in the Japan arc. The seeds are planted by Claremont here for a romance between Scott and Colleen.
This is where the “each thinks the other is dead” schism established in Uncanny #114 starts to strain suspension of disbelief: At the end of Uncanny #117, Misty saw Jean and exchanged a few words with her just before getting on a plane to Japan. Now she and Colleen are hanging out with the X-Men. We are to believe that Misty never mentions at any point that she happened to see Jean alive just before she left the United States. By the time we get to issue #122, Scott will have told Colleen about his dead girlfriend Jean, but – again – this will never get back to Misty and prompt all the pertinent parties to compare notes.
To this day, co-plotter John Byrne still defends these plot holes. (I once asked him about it on his message board, but made the mistake of being self-deprecating at the end of my message, closing with “Am I thinking too hard about this?” Byrne’s one-word reply to me: “Yes.”)
No awesome Byrne/Austin panels this time; Ric Villamonte is the fill-in inker. It’s a definite step-down in quality, although Byrne’s choreography of the four-page action sequence (the X-Men vs. the Mandroids) is once again dynamic.
There’s a creatively pseudo-scientific explanation by Claremont of a bit where Banshee and Cyclops combine their powers: “Banshee’s sonic scream counters Cyclops’s optic pulse on a fractionally different vibration frequency ... the two opposing patterns creating such titanic molecular stresses that the armor literally shakes itself to bits.” Over the next few years, until he started regularly shaking up the team membership, Claremont would continue to find new (if over-the-top) ways such as this to keep the same half-dozen or so superpowers fresh and interesting.
“The Submergence of Japan”
Although Neal Adams didn’t draw the Silver Age X-Men issue that introduced Sunfire (#64), that issue is embedded in the Adams/Thomas run. This may account for why – as the Claremont/Byrne homage to Neal Adams continues – the X-Men stop in Japan here, and team up with Sunfire.
Claremont and Byrne add yet another dimension to Wolverine – he is growing in leaps and bounds from the loud-mouth comic relief of the Cockrum era – by here making vague allusions to time spent in Japan by the character before he joined the team. There is a significant exchange early on between Wolverine and Cyclops after the former reads from a Japanese newspaper:
Cyclops: “You read Japanese?”
Wolverine: “Yup.”
Cyclops: “I ... didn’t know.”
Wolverine: “You never asked.”
Cyclops: “My mistake. Next time I’ll know better.”
This is the third such moment in the Claremont/Byrne run – not only containing a revelation about Wolverine’s character but, perhaps more importantly, conveying Wolverine’s casualness regarding the revelation. In issue #109, Storm told Wolverine she had “misjudged” him after she learned that he doesn’t kill when he hunts. His reply: “I could care less.” In the Savage Land arc, after Wolverine claims to be able to communicate with a tiger, Storm says that there is “more to [Wolverine] than meets the eye,” and his retort is self-deprecating: “At my size, babe, that ain’t hard.”
It is not just the implied depth of Wolverine – in terms of experience, skill and history – that makes Wolverine such a distinctly cool character, but the tension created when those implications butt up against his own nonchalant, shoulder-shrugging attitude toward himself.
The seeds are also planted in this issue for a resolution of the antagonism between Scott and Wolverine, when Logan meets Mariko Yashida. She will become Wolverine’s long-distance romantic interest for the duration of Claremont’s run on X-Men (only to be perfunctorily killed off mere months after Claremont departs). With Wolverine set up to be in love with Mariko inside of six months, the Scott-Jean-Wolverine love-triangle is effectively neutralized. On the one hand, it could be viewed as facile, but on the other, it’s an early indication of Claremont’s willingness to have characters evolve. He could have milked the love triangle for a long time (writers who followed him often did), but Claremont always finds it more interesting to have character relationships mutate.
At the time of Uncanny #118’s publication, another title Claremont was writing – Iron Fist – had been cancelled and recently folded into another comic book series, “Power Man,” to become the unlikely but predictably titled hybrid “Power Man and Iron Fist.” Claremont was no longer writing the character, but that doesn’t stop him here from guest-starring two members of the series’ cast – the female co-stars, Misty Knight and Colleen Wing – in the Japan arc. The seeds are planted by Claremont here for a romance between Scott and Colleen.
This is where the “each thinks the other is dead” schism established in Uncanny #114 starts to strain suspension of disbelief: At the end of Uncanny #117, Misty saw Jean and exchanged a few words with her just before getting on a plane to Japan. Now she and Colleen are hanging out with the X-Men. We are to believe that Misty never mentions at any point that she happened to see Jean alive just before she left the United States. By the time we get to issue #122, Scott will have told Colleen about his dead girlfriend Jean, but – again – this will never get back to Misty and prompt all the pertinent parties to compare notes.
To this day, co-plotter John Byrne still defends these plot holes. (I once asked him about it on his message board, but made the mistake of being self-deprecating at the end of my message, closing with “Am I thinking too hard about this?” Byrne’s one-word reply to me: “Yes.”)
No awesome Byrne/Austin panels this time; Ric Villamonte is the fill-in inker. It’s a definite step-down in quality, although Byrne’s choreography of the four-page action sequence (the X-Men vs. the Mandroids) is once again dynamic.
There’s a creatively pseudo-scientific explanation by Claremont of a bit where Banshee and Cyclops combine their powers: “Banshee’s sonic scream counters Cyclops’s optic pulse on a fractionally different vibration frequency ... the two opposing patterns creating such titanic molecular stresses that the armor literally shakes itself to bits.” Over the next few years, until he started regularly shaking up the team membership, Claremont would continue to find new (if over-the-top) ways such as this to keep the same half-dozen or so superpowers fresh and interesting.
Magic Pen Game
My friend Alex sent me this link. His friend Raymond identified it as a rip off of a game discussed on Slate a while back, but this version is the one I like better, so that is what I am linking to. I have not had much time to play it, but it is really cool.
Magic Pen
Magic Pen
Monday, April 21, 2008
Matt Fraction on Warren Ellis's Whitechapel This Week
Links count as posting. Marc sent this to me. Thought I would share. This is Ellis
From today (Monday) until Friday, Matt Fraction, co-creator and author of CASANOVA and THE FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE and writer of PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL, THE ORDER and the forthcoming INVINCIBLE IRON MAN (and co-writer of UNCANNY X-MEN & IMMORTAL IRON FIST) and one of my best friends in this business will be hanging out in this thread on my message board Whitechapel to take questions, jabber about baseball and bands I don't like, and
basically shoot the shit and talk about whatever he wants to talk about.
From today (Monday) until Friday, Matt Fraction, co-creator and author of CASANOVA and THE FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE and writer of PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL, THE ORDER and the forthcoming INVINCIBLE IRON MAN (and co-writer of UNCANNY X-MEN & IMMORTAL IRON FIST) and one of my best friends in this business will be hanging out in this thread on my message board Whitechapel to take questions, jabber about baseball and bands I don't like, and
basically shoot the shit and talk about whatever he wants to talk about.
AMC TV Sci-Fi Video Blog Thing: The Superhero Parody Movie
I happened to be in the comic book store when some guys from AMC were filming something for their blog. I am in this for 2 seconds and I do not say anything even remotely interesting. Also the interviewer is really tall, and makes me look even shorter than I am at 5'3". But still: me on the internet somewhere requires a hyperlink on this site.
AMC TV Sci-Fi Video Blog Thing.
AMC TV Sci-Fi Video Blog Thing.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #23, part b
[This post is part of a series of posts written by Jason Powell looking issue by issue at Claremont's X-Men. For more in this series click Jason's name in the toolbar on the right.]
“Nightcrawler’s High Adventure”
If there is something in Claremont’s massive X-ouvre that is underrepresented, it is probably his sense of fun. Since Claremont’s way of maintaining drama over years and years of serialized stories came to be so dependent and swerves into negative story values with increasingly high stakes (i.e., things go from good to bad, then bad to worse), he doesn’t often call upon his natural sense of whimsy. The Claremont/Bolton backups — placed chronologically in an earlier, less angst-filled period in the run and also having the benefit of being self-contained rather than part of a serialized narrative — gave Claremont more room to be playful, and never more so than in this, his penultimate “Classic” collaboration with Bolton.
This story is 100% angst-free, following Nightcrawler as he becomes stranded on an exotic tropical island and must rescue a beautiful woman from some sort of demonic cult. Perhaps in a deliberate attempt at symmetry, Claremont puts this story – which has the feel of some classic adventure film from the golden age of cinema – alongside the reprint of the Farouk comic, which had a similarly retro feel. Even the “High Adventure” of the title invokes a more simplistic, or perhaps iconic, type of action story.
Bolton, as willing and able as ever to draw anything, crafts entertaining images of Nightcrawler swinging through the jungle on vines or punching villains square in the jaw (Claremont’s dialogue accompanying the latter is “Leave her be, you fiend!”)
Claremont meanwhile, messes with his audience just a touch. Typically, with series such as Excalibur for example, Claremont will change the tone of his writing when he’s doing comedy, signaling immediately what to expect. In “High Adventure,” though, the flavor of the narration is more in keeping with Claremontian melodrama, which allows Claremont to throw in a few cute punchlines that don’t seem as telegraphed as they sometimes are in his comedy pieces.
In this case, when Nightcrawler is hypnotized and laid out on a slab to be sacrificed by the demon priest at the end, Claremont primes us to expect a more dramatic escape. Note the narration in the panel of the priest lifting the knife: “Blood for a crown, a life for the throne. The sacrifices perish, that he may continue to rule.” One barely notices Tom Orzechowski’s wittily applied “bamf” sound effect that transitions the panel into slapstick of the next, wherein the knife comes down on an empty slab and shatters.
Claremont is also a fan of sexual innuendo, but of the more innocuous, “wink, nudge” variety, and we get a cheeky example of it here, with the woman whom Nightcrawler’s rescued uttering an archetypal “damsel” line, “However can I possibly repay you?” and Nightcrawler’s smug reply, “Oh ... I’m sure ... we’ll think of something.” There’s a contrast to be struck against the Colossus story of the previous issue – the sexual element of that story was right on the surface, but in the context of Peter’s naivety, it had a kind of sweet innocence. The sexuality of Nightcrawler’s innuendo here is not nearly so explicit, but in context Nightcrawler comes off as much more rakish. At this point, Claremont has been thinking about these characters for 10 years, and he’s thought about them from lots of angles, enough so that he can now comment upon and contrast their different attitudes toward sex.
“Nightcrawler’s High Adventure”
If there is something in Claremont’s massive X-ouvre that is underrepresented, it is probably his sense of fun. Since Claremont’s way of maintaining drama over years and years of serialized stories came to be so dependent and swerves into negative story values with increasingly high stakes (i.e., things go from good to bad, then bad to worse), he doesn’t often call upon his natural sense of whimsy. The Claremont/Bolton backups — placed chronologically in an earlier, less angst-filled period in the run and also having the benefit of being self-contained rather than part of a serialized narrative — gave Claremont more room to be playful, and never more so than in this, his penultimate “Classic” collaboration with Bolton.
This story is 100% angst-free, following Nightcrawler as he becomes stranded on an exotic tropical island and must rescue a beautiful woman from some sort of demonic cult. Perhaps in a deliberate attempt at symmetry, Claremont puts this story – which has the feel of some classic adventure film from the golden age of cinema – alongside the reprint of the Farouk comic, which had a similarly retro feel. Even the “High Adventure” of the title invokes a more simplistic, or perhaps iconic, type of action story.
Bolton, as willing and able as ever to draw anything, crafts entertaining images of Nightcrawler swinging through the jungle on vines or punching villains square in the jaw (Claremont’s dialogue accompanying the latter is “Leave her be, you fiend!”)
Claremont meanwhile, messes with his audience just a touch. Typically, with series such as Excalibur for example, Claremont will change the tone of his writing when he’s doing comedy, signaling immediately what to expect. In “High Adventure,” though, the flavor of the narration is more in keeping with Claremontian melodrama, which allows Claremont to throw in a few cute punchlines that don’t seem as telegraphed as they sometimes are in his comedy pieces.
In this case, when Nightcrawler is hypnotized and laid out on a slab to be sacrificed by the demon priest at the end, Claremont primes us to expect a more dramatic escape. Note the narration in the panel of the priest lifting the knife: “Blood for a crown, a life for the throne. The sacrifices perish, that he may continue to rule.” One barely notices Tom Orzechowski’s wittily applied “bamf” sound effect that transitions the panel into slapstick of the next, wherein the knife comes down on an empty slab and shatters.
Claremont is also a fan of sexual innuendo, but of the more innocuous, “wink, nudge” variety, and we get a cheeky example of it here, with the woman whom Nightcrawler’s rescued uttering an archetypal “damsel” line, “However can I possibly repay you?” and Nightcrawler’s smug reply, “Oh ... I’m sure ... we’ll think of something.” There’s a contrast to be struck against the Colossus story of the previous issue – the sexual element of that story was right on the surface, but in the context of Peter’s naivety, it had a kind of sweet innocence. The sexuality of Nightcrawler’s innuendo here is not nearly so explicit, but in context Nightcrawler comes off as much more rakish. At this point, Claremont has been thinking about these characters for 10 years, and he’s thought about them from lots of angles, enough so that he can now comment upon and contrast their different attitudes toward sex.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Comics Out April 16, 2008
The Amazing Spiderman 557. One of my favorite Bachalo devices is the close up on an image that would usually be reduced -- he uses it to show moments of realization. Bachalo does a quiet one on page one of this comic (or at least that is what it looks like to me). For all my complaining when artists re-use images, Bachalo never bothers me when he does it -- perhaps because his images are so complex to begin with, perhaps because I am just giving him an irrational pass because he is so charming, perhaps because he cartoony style (as opposed to Cassaday's photo-realism, if that is the right word) makes it work -- though it bothers me when Oeming does it on powers; Oeming is too thin for my taste. The reach around from one panel to another was fun, though I have seen it many times before. Well's need for Morrison here, which I mentioned last week, may have been the inspiration, but Bachalo did fun stuff like this in Steampunk -- about which I have blogged before. The hobo-calvary was genuinely cute, but did anyone see a McFarlane influence on the last image on the second to last page? All in all, pretty good.
The New York Comic Con is this weekend. There is going to be a lot of news, which I will do my best to keep up with. I probably will not do that good a job, so if you see something, let me know. I always miss stuff in the flood on con news.
Two questions:
Did Matt Fraction have a story in something called X-Men: Divided we Stand? Cause if he did I am going to have to get that. I don't know how I am supposed to remember this stuff. Someone remind me when his Thor book comes out.
Why is the New York City Comic Con -- a major city for Jews and an industry that employs and was founded on so much Jewish talent -- being held on the two days of passover? Bendis, I know from Fortune and Glory, actually hosts a Seder at his house. I guess everyone who needs to be somewhere by dinner, and maybe it is not that many people, will just duck out early, but it seems weird to me.
The New York Comic Con is this weekend. There is going to be a lot of news, which I will do my best to keep up with. I probably will not do that good a job, so if you see something, let me know. I always miss stuff in the flood on con news.
Two questions:
Did Matt Fraction have a story in something called X-Men: Divided we Stand? Cause if he did I am going to have to get that. I don't know how I am supposed to remember this stuff. Someone remind me when his Thor book comes out.
Why is the New York City Comic Con -- a major city for Jews and an industry that employs and was founded on so much Jewish talent -- being held on the two days of passover? Bendis, I know from Fortune and Glory, actually hosts a Seder at his house. I guess everyone who needs to be somewhere by dinner, and maybe it is not that many people, will just duck out early, but it seems weird to me.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Name Your Favorite Cover Songs
The clips of Young@Heart covering Coldplay’s “Fix You” and Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” – thanks to Scott – have started a thing: name your favorite cover songs. Give the YouTube clips if you can. Maybe I will compile this into a thing later.
Here is mine, the second totally transforming the first:
Ace of Base’s “I Saw the Sign”
The Mountain Goats’ “I Saw the Sign”
Here is mine, the second totally transforming the first:
Ace of Base’s “I Saw the Sign”
The Mountain Goats’ “I Saw the Sign”
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Scott on NIN Vs Cash
[Guest blogger Scott wrote this as a response to my post about Young@Heart's cover of Coldplay's "Fix You." I am glad we have more stuff about music on here now.]
Trent Reznor's "Hurt"
Johnny Cash's "Hurt"
A few years back, Nine Inch Nails’ Industrial-aggro-ballad "Hurt" became an unlikely swan song for Johnny Cash. Without changing a single word, Cash managed to take what many had seen as a whiny, self-pitying tune written by Trent Reznor at the height of his popularity and transform it into something far more poignant.
Sometimes, a performer is able to completely change the meaning of a song simply by being who they are. Cash changes very little in the arrangement of the song other than removing the percussion. Most of what he brings to the table is his voice; instead of Reznor’s nasal whine we get Cashes distinctive baritone, a little worse for wear due to his declining health, which brings a level of authority to the lyrics that Reznor just isn’t capable. As the Who once said “It’s the singer not the song, that makes the music move along.”
Reznor’s lyrics are completely transformed in his hands and take on whole new meanings that Reznor couldn’t have even imagined when he wrote them.
“The Needle tears a hole, that old familiar sting. Try to kill it all away but I remember everything.”
When a Gen X musician sings about a “needle” in the mid 90s, he is obviously singing about heroin addiction. When Cash sings it, it could be about his own battles with addiction, but it also conjures images of a sick, old man in a hospital having to undergo IV after IV. Also, when Reznor sings “I remember everything” he’s talking about a couple of decades; Cash is singing about a lifetime.
“Everyone I know goes away in the end.”
Keeping with the theme of addiction, the Nine Inch Nails version is obviously Reznor feeling sorry for himself. Everyone “goes away” because he, and more specifically his addiction, pushes them away. For Cash, they go away because he’s old and all of his old buddies are dying (Waylon Jennings passed about a year or so before his recording of the song). Again, Reznor’s problem is preventable; he can stop if he really wants. Cash’s problem is, however, inevitable; as you get older people you know will die.
The chorus provides another excellent example, when Reznor Sings “You can have it all, my empire of dirt,” he is singing of an ‘empire’ that is, at best, a few years old and, since that empire was built by a man best known for writing a song with the chorus “I wanna fuck you like an animal”, there are many who would, indeed, classify it as one made of “dirt.” However, when Cash sings the same line, he is coming from the perspective of a legendary musician with a legacy a half-century old. For him to call his empire ‘dirt’ is a much more powerful statement of a man who has a greater perspective on what truly matters in life.
The final line of the song displays exactly what makes the Cash version superior:
“If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself. I would find a way.”
When Reznor sings this line, he is still a young man; if he truly wanted to ‘start again’, he could. This is why the song comes off as whiny; it’s a hopeless song written by someone who still has hope but is too blind to see it. When Cash sings the line, it is too late for him to ‘start again’; he’s old and he’s dying. He can’t start again. In Reznor’s hands, the song is a suicide note; in Johnny’s, it’s a last will and testament.
Trent Reznor's "Hurt"
Johnny Cash's "Hurt"
A few years back, Nine Inch Nails’ Industrial-aggro-ballad "Hurt" became an unlikely swan song for Johnny Cash. Without changing a single word, Cash managed to take what many had seen as a whiny, self-pitying tune written by Trent Reznor at the height of his popularity and transform it into something far more poignant.
Sometimes, a performer is able to completely change the meaning of a song simply by being who they are. Cash changes very little in the arrangement of the song other than removing the percussion. Most of what he brings to the table is his voice; instead of Reznor’s nasal whine we get Cashes distinctive baritone, a little worse for wear due to his declining health, which brings a level of authority to the lyrics that Reznor just isn’t capable. As the Who once said “It’s the singer not the song, that makes the music move along.”
Reznor’s lyrics are completely transformed in his hands and take on whole new meanings that Reznor couldn’t have even imagined when he wrote them.
“The Needle tears a hole, that old familiar sting. Try to kill it all away but I remember everything.”
When a Gen X musician sings about a “needle” in the mid 90s, he is obviously singing about heroin addiction. When Cash sings it, it could be about his own battles with addiction, but it also conjures images of a sick, old man in a hospital having to undergo IV after IV. Also, when Reznor sings “I remember everything” he’s talking about a couple of decades; Cash is singing about a lifetime.
“Everyone I know goes away in the end.”
Keeping with the theme of addiction, the Nine Inch Nails version is obviously Reznor feeling sorry for himself. Everyone “goes away” because he, and more specifically his addiction, pushes them away. For Cash, they go away because he’s old and all of his old buddies are dying (Waylon Jennings passed about a year or so before his recording of the song). Again, Reznor’s problem is preventable; he can stop if he really wants. Cash’s problem is, however, inevitable; as you get older people you know will die.
The chorus provides another excellent example, when Reznor Sings “You can have it all, my empire of dirt,” he is singing of an ‘empire’ that is, at best, a few years old and, since that empire was built by a man best known for writing a song with the chorus “I wanna fuck you like an animal”, there are many who would, indeed, classify it as one made of “dirt.” However, when Cash sings the same line, he is coming from the perspective of a legendary musician with a legacy a half-century old. For him to call his empire ‘dirt’ is a much more powerful statement of a man who has a greater perspective on what truly matters in life.
The final line of the song displays exactly what makes the Cash version superior:
“If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself. I would find a way.”
When Reznor sings this line, he is still a young man; if he truly wanted to ‘start again’, he could. This is why the song comes off as whiny; it’s a hopeless song written by someone who still has hope but is too blind to see it. When Cash sings the line, it is too late for him to ‘start again’; he’s old and he’s dying. He can’t start again. In Reznor’s hands, the song is a suicide note; in Johnny’s, it’s a last will and testament.
Free Form Comments
Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If a week goes by and I have failed to add you to the blog roll TELL ME TO DO IT AGAIN, and KEEP TELLING ME UNTIL IT GETS DONE. I can be lazy about updating the non-post parts of this site. Remember these comments can be directed at all the readers, not just me.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.
WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is available on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post. You can propose what you will, I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music and books.
If you think what you have to say -- new topic or comment on an existing topic -- would be better to hear than to read, use the CALL ME button on the toolbar on the right.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.
WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is available on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post. You can propose what you will, I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music and books.
If you think what you have to say -- new topic or comment on an existing topic -- would be better to hear than to read, use the CALL ME button on the toolbar on the right.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #23, part a (UXM #117)
[This post is part of a series looking issue by issue at Claremont's X-Men -- for more in the series see the tool bar on the right.]
“Psi War”
After a two-ssue Savage Land arc focusing entirely on the core cast, Claremont and Byrne return to the peripheral characters: Jean, Charles and Lilandra. Jean, we learn, is moving out of the mansion. (The reason she gives is not very convincing, but some interpolated pages in Classic X-Men 21, part a, set this scene up quite effectively; another example of why I prefer the “Classic” versions of these comics to their original versions in Uncanny.)
With Xavier now alone in the mansion, and believing all the other X-Men to be dead, he is convinced by Lilandra to leave the planet entirely and become her royal consort when she is finally officially crowned as the Shi’ar Empress. Thus do Claremont and Byrne remove both characters from the cast for quite some time.
However, none of this happens before a flashback revealing more of Xavier’s backstory. Chronologically, Claremont places this in the gap between two other Professor X flashbacks that saw print in the Silver Age: Charles’ time in Korea, when his stepbrother, Cain, became the Juggernaut (Uncanny # 12); and his adventure in Tibet (Uncanny #20) when the supervillain Lucifer crushed his legs. This whole idea may have been mostly Claremont’s; Byrne was not a huge fan of complicating character histories this way.
At any rate, this story sees Xavier coming to Cairo. First, in a contrived coincidence, his pocket is picked by a young Ororo; then Xavier enters a saloon to do battle with telepathic mutant crime lord Amahl Farouk. Farouk is set up immediately as the archetypal “evil mirror image of the hero” for Xavier. As Geoff Klock has pointed out, Xavier’s true arch-enemy, Magneto, has a wonderfully asymmetrical relationship to Xavier. The one is a telepath; the other controls metal. In that asymmetry there is, oddly enough, a sort of realism. But it does leave a gap open in X-Men mythology for an Evil Telepath, so Claremont obligingly gives us one with Farouk.
All of the scenes set in the interior of the saloon are lovely, Byrne and Austin evoking a tangibly “Casablanca”-esque feel. Slightly less evocative but still fun are the pages set on a telepathic level of reality. There are retroactive echoes of “The Matrix” here; Farouk’s explanation that physical laws do not exist in a “domain of the mind” are not unlike Morpheus’ lectures to Neo.) Best of all, however, is the sequence on Page 15 of three almost identical horizontal panels, with Xavier sitting at his table on one end, Farouk at the other. Xavier stands up; Farouk falls on his face. Xavier casually puts his hat back on as he walks out the door.
Generally speaking, Claremont characters are not usually “cool.” They are many other things, of course – charismatic, dynamic, fascinating, sweet, adorable, intense, tragic – but the only consistently cool character in Claremont’s large menagerie of X-characters is Wolverine.
But, in those slick panels on Page 15, Professor Charles Xavier comes pretty damn close.
One other thing that has to be noted, because it is so fantastically subtle: In the last panel of Page 5, Xavier is looking at two framed photos, one of the original five X-Men in their blue-and-yellow Kirby costumes, the other of the “new” X-Men. The cool bit: the picture of the original team is a painstaking recreation of the splash page of Lee and Kirby’s X-Men #7, which actually began with the team having their photograph taken. It’s the kind of detail you can’t imagine anyone but John Byrne taking the time to add.
“Psi War”
After a two-ssue Savage Land arc focusing entirely on the core cast, Claremont and Byrne return to the peripheral characters: Jean, Charles and Lilandra. Jean, we learn, is moving out of the mansion. (The reason she gives is not very convincing, but some interpolated pages in Classic X-Men 21, part a, set this scene up quite effectively; another example of why I prefer the “Classic” versions of these comics to their original versions in Uncanny.)
With Xavier now alone in the mansion, and believing all the other X-Men to be dead, he is convinced by Lilandra to leave the planet entirely and become her royal consort when she is finally officially crowned as the Shi’ar Empress. Thus do Claremont and Byrne remove both characters from the cast for quite some time.
However, none of this happens before a flashback revealing more of Xavier’s backstory. Chronologically, Claremont places this in the gap between two other Professor X flashbacks that saw print in the Silver Age: Charles’ time in Korea, when his stepbrother, Cain, became the Juggernaut (Uncanny # 12); and his adventure in Tibet (Uncanny #20) when the supervillain Lucifer crushed his legs. This whole idea may have been mostly Claremont’s; Byrne was not a huge fan of complicating character histories this way.
At any rate, this story sees Xavier coming to Cairo. First, in a contrived coincidence, his pocket is picked by a young Ororo; then Xavier enters a saloon to do battle with telepathic mutant crime lord Amahl Farouk. Farouk is set up immediately as the archetypal “evil mirror image of the hero” for Xavier. As Geoff Klock has pointed out, Xavier’s true arch-enemy, Magneto, has a wonderfully asymmetrical relationship to Xavier. The one is a telepath; the other controls metal. In that asymmetry there is, oddly enough, a sort of realism. But it does leave a gap open in X-Men mythology for an Evil Telepath, so Claremont obligingly gives us one with Farouk.
All of the scenes set in the interior of the saloon are lovely, Byrne and Austin evoking a tangibly “Casablanca”-esque feel. Slightly less evocative but still fun are the pages set on a telepathic level of reality. There are retroactive echoes of “The Matrix” here; Farouk’s explanation that physical laws do not exist in a “domain of the mind” are not unlike Morpheus’ lectures to Neo.) Best of all, however, is the sequence on Page 15 of three almost identical horizontal panels, with Xavier sitting at his table on one end, Farouk at the other. Xavier stands up; Farouk falls on his face. Xavier casually puts his hat back on as he walks out the door.
Generally speaking, Claremont characters are not usually “cool.” They are many other things, of course – charismatic, dynamic, fascinating, sweet, adorable, intense, tragic – but the only consistently cool character in Claremont’s large menagerie of X-characters is Wolverine.
But, in those slick panels on Page 15, Professor Charles Xavier comes pretty damn close.
One other thing that has to be noted, because it is so fantastically subtle: In the last panel of Page 5, Xavier is looking at two framed photos, one of the original five X-Men in their blue-and-yellow Kirby costumes, the other of the “new” X-Men. The cool bit: the picture of the original team is a painstaking recreation of the splash page of Lee and Kirby’s X-Men #7, which actually began with the team having their photograph taken. It’s the kind of detail you can’t imagine anyone but John Byrne taking the time to add.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Young@Heart, and the Power of Clips (Commonplace Book)
Young@Heart, a new movie in theaters now -- and which I have not seen -- is a documentary by Don Argott about Bob Silmans's weird project to teach a choir of senior citizens songs by Sonic Youth, Coldplay, and the Ramons. Stephen Walker reviewed the film for the AV Club and wrote this:
Argott unwisely maintains a respectful distance from him and avoids asking tough questions, like whether teaching confused seniors a Sonic Youth song is broadening their horizons, or imposing his own arty taste on folks who'd rather sing the Irving Berlin songbook. Argott similarly stumbles in including homemade Young At Heart "music videos" that come off as cheesy and condescending instead of cheeky and irreverent. Which is a shame, because there's a wealth of great material here, especially a shattering performance of Coldplay's "Fix You" by a soulful mountain of a man named Fred Knittle. In this transcendent, goosebump-inducing moment, the facile gimmick of senior citizens performing the music of their grandchildren's generation disappears, giving way to something truer and more profound: a great singer connecting on a primal level with the heart of a terrific song. It's a wonderful sequence that deserves to be in a deeper, better film.
Trolling around on YouTube confirms Walker's opinion: most of the videos are cheesy and condescending (especially "I Wanna be Sedated"), and there are seeds of a better film in the cover of Fix You (though I am not sure I would go as far as Walker in his estimation of it). I will not bore you with the lesser clips, or the trailer for the film, which you can find on your own anyway if you are so inclined, but I do want to add to the commonplace book this week "Fix You"
I am becoming interested in clips. I did not see Be Kind Rewind because I bet the reviews are right and that Gondry is not much of a storyteller; but I still watch the trailer occasionally because it is really fun. I think I may have bought Death Proof because I like the final 18 minutes. I bet the YouTube clip of Fix You is all I will ever need from Young@Heart. There is so many gems hiding in the mediocre stuff and YouTube and the like has the ability to sever it from the whole in what could really be a powerful way. Or does everyone already know this, and I am the last one to be leaving the sinking ship called aesthetic integrity?
Examples from your own experiences?
Argott unwisely maintains a respectful distance from him and avoids asking tough questions, like whether teaching confused seniors a Sonic Youth song is broadening their horizons, or imposing his own arty taste on folks who'd rather sing the Irving Berlin songbook. Argott similarly stumbles in including homemade Young At Heart "music videos" that come off as cheesy and condescending instead of cheeky and irreverent. Which is a shame, because there's a wealth of great material here, especially a shattering performance of Coldplay's "Fix You" by a soulful mountain of a man named Fred Knittle. In this transcendent, goosebump-inducing moment, the facile gimmick of senior citizens performing the music of their grandchildren's generation disappears, giving way to something truer and more profound: a great singer connecting on a primal level with the heart of a terrific song. It's a wonderful sequence that deserves to be in a deeper, better film.
Trolling around on YouTube confirms Walker's opinion: most of the videos are cheesy and condescending (especially "I Wanna be Sedated"), and there are seeds of a better film in the cover of Fix You (though I am not sure I would go as far as Walker in his estimation of it). I will not bore you with the lesser clips, or the trailer for the film, which you can find on your own anyway if you are so inclined, but I do want to add to the commonplace book this week "Fix You"
I am becoming interested in clips. I did not see Be Kind Rewind because I bet the reviews are right and that Gondry is not much of a storyteller; but I still watch the trailer occasionally because it is really fun. I think I may have bought Death Proof because I like the final 18 minutes. I bet the YouTube clip of Fix You is all I will ever need from Young@Heart. There is so many gems hiding in the mediocre stuff and YouTube and the like has the ability to sever it from the whole in what could really be a powerful way. Or does everyone already know this, and I am the last one to be leaving the sinking ship called aesthetic integrity?
Examples from your own experiences?
The LOST Schedule
The LOST schedule is confusing but let me summarize TV Guide for you.
April 24 -- season 4, episode 9 -- the first post strike episode (10pm)
May 1 -- season 4, episode 10 (10pm)
May 8 -- season 4, episode 11 (10pm)
May 15 -- season 4, the finale part 1 -- one hour (10pm)
BREAK
May 29 -- season 4, the finale part 2 -- which will be 2 hours long. (9pm)
The good news is we get an extra hour of LOST this season. The bad news is there is no LOST on May 22 -- because they need the slot for a two hour Grey's Anatomy finale which airs after the Ugly Betty finale. What I cannot wrap my mind around is why you would CALL the final three hours a season finale, but air the first hour two weeks before the second two hours. I guess they are all closely connected -- and we will see how it fits together when it airs-- but where is the harm in just calling it episode 12, 13, and 14 but titling them X part one, X part 2, and X part 3?
But the point here is they negotiated an extra hour -- which in a 13 episode season is kind of a lot.
April 24 -- season 4, episode 9 -- the first post strike episode (10pm)
May 1 -- season 4, episode 10 (10pm)
May 8 -- season 4, episode 11 (10pm)
May 15 -- season 4, the finale part 1 -- one hour (10pm)
BREAK
May 29 -- season 4, the finale part 2 -- which will be 2 hours long. (9pm)
The good news is we get an extra hour of LOST this season. The bad news is there is no LOST on May 22 -- because they need the slot for a two hour Grey's Anatomy finale which airs after the Ugly Betty finale. What I cannot wrap my mind around is why you would CALL the final three hours a season finale, but air the first hour two weeks before the second two hours. I guess they are all closely connected -- and we will see how it fits together when it airs-- but where is the harm in just calling it episode 12, 13, and 14 but titling them X part one, X part 2, and X part 3?
But the point here is they negotiated an extra hour -- which in a 13 episode season is kind of a lot.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #22, part b
[This post is part of a series of posts looking issue by issue at Claremont's X-Men. For more in this series see the tool bar on the right.]
“Solace”
As with last issue, Claremont and Bolton continue in Frazetta mode, with a solo Storm story set before the X-Men finally leave the Savage Land. Bolton’s splash on Page 2, an elegant figure drawing of Storm (exquisitely colored by Glynis Oliver) sets the tone, and Claremont’s baroque narration matches the beauty of the illustration: “More and more, she finds herself coming into conflict with her most fundamental beliefs. Thus far, it’s been a case of resistible [sic] force meeting immovable object ... but slowly – with glacial inexorability – she feels that relationship begin to change. And is terrified.”
The departure point for this story is Storm’s guilt over the death of Garokk, and her concern that her life as a member of the X-Men will lead her into more situations whereby she is responsible for the death of another. This time, she only failed to save a life. How long before she finds herself forced to take one? This is another example of Claremont introducing a thread of characterization much earlier in the chronology. This internal conflict for Storm will be touched on only sporadically over the next few years of Uncanny, but will become quite explicit when artist Paul Smith takes over.
In “Solace,” however, the theme is addressed more obliquely as the story takes some fantastic turns. Storm dives into a pool of water where she spots a diver in danger from an undersea predator. During the rescue attempt, Storm enters a portal into another dimension, and later learns that the diver she saved is the “warlord” of that dimension, a kindly and beautiful woman called M’rin. For any reader with doubts over where the story is going, Claremont erases them when Storm awakes from a nightmare and calls out “Mother!” to M’rin. The orphaned Storm has at last found a mother figure. (It’s perhaps surprising that Claremont never thought to do a story like this before 1988, when Classic X-Men #22 was published.)
Storm spends the next several days helping M’rin in battle against the older woman’s enemies, finding that when she is in this other dimension, she is “nothing like [she is] at home.” She is less gentle, fiercer and more wild. She’s also tempted to stay with M’rin rather than return to the X-Men, but chooses not to because of her “responsibilities [and] obligations.”
On a symbolic level, Storm is choosing not to stay in a world where she is free to do what she wants, where her own conscience’s demands would be replaced, or supplanted, by the comfort of a parent’s approval; a place where – with a “warlord” for a mother – she would never have to feel guilty about the death of a foe, and could enjoy a kind of eternal childhood. Instead, Ororo returns to the more demanding world, the “responsibilities, obligations” of her life with the X-Men. She chooses adulthood.
This is Claremont and Bolton at their most elegant. The childhood/adulthood theme is not as explicit as Claremont’s themes sometimes are, and is reinforced in subtle ways: Note that when she’s in M’rin’s dimension, Storm actually looks a little younger than she did in the gorgeous Page 2 splash. Meanwhile, everything in M’rin’s dimension is like something out of a children’s fantasy. (Even M’rin’s giant “warhound,” C’Jime, visually alludes to the Luck Dragon in “The Neverending Story,” of all things.)
[You are very kind here, glossing "resistible" with a "SIC" when it is the OPPOSITE of what is meant!]
“Solace”
As with last issue, Claremont and Bolton continue in Frazetta mode, with a solo Storm story set before the X-Men finally leave the Savage Land. Bolton’s splash on Page 2, an elegant figure drawing of Storm (exquisitely colored by Glynis Oliver) sets the tone, and Claremont’s baroque narration matches the beauty of the illustration: “More and more, she finds herself coming into conflict with her most fundamental beliefs. Thus far, it’s been a case of resistible [sic] force meeting immovable object ... but slowly – with glacial inexorability – she feels that relationship begin to change. And is terrified.”
The departure point for this story is Storm’s guilt over the death of Garokk, and her concern that her life as a member of the X-Men will lead her into more situations whereby she is responsible for the death of another. This time, she only failed to save a life. How long before she finds herself forced to take one? This is another example of Claremont introducing a thread of characterization much earlier in the chronology. This internal conflict for Storm will be touched on only sporadically over the next few years of Uncanny, but will become quite explicit when artist Paul Smith takes over.
In “Solace,” however, the theme is addressed more obliquely as the story takes some fantastic turns. Storm dives into a pool of water where she spots a diver in danger from an undersea predator. During the rescue attempt, Storm enters a portal into another dimension, and later learns that the diver she saved is the “warlord” of that dimension, a kindly and beautiful woman called M’rin. For any reader with doubts over where the story is going, Claremont erases them when Storm awakes from a nightmare and calls out “Mother!” to M’rin. The orphaned Storm has at last found a mother figure. (It’s perhaps surprising that Claremont never thought to do a story like this before 1988, when Classic X-Men #22 was published.)
Storm spends the next several days helping M’rin in battle against the older woman’s enemies, finding that when she is in this other dimension, she is “nothing like [she is] at home.” She is less gentle, fiercer and more wild. She’s also tempted to stay with M’rin rather than return to the X-Men, but chooses not to because of her “responsibilities [and] obligations.”
On a symbolic level, Storm is choosing not to stay in a world where she is free to do what she wants, where her own conscience’s demands would be replaced, or supplanted, by the comfort of a parent’s approval; a place where – with a “warlord” for a mother – she would never have to feel guilty about the death of a foe, and could enjoy a kind of eternal childhood. Instead, Ororo returns to the more demanding world, the “responsibilities, obligations” of her life with the X-Men. She chooses adulthood.
This is Claremont and Bolton at their most elegant. The childhood/adulthood theme is not as explicit as Claremont’s themes sometimes are, and is reinforced in subtle ways: Note that when she’s in M’rin’s dimension, Storm actually looks a little younger than she did in the gorgeous Page 2 splash. Meanwhile, everything in M’rin’s dimension is like something out of a children’s fantasy. (Even M’rin’s giant “warhound,” C’Jime, visually alludes to the Luck Dragon in “The Neverending Story,” of all things.)
[You are very kind here, glossing "resistible" with a "SIC" when it is the OPPOSITE of what is meant!]
Friday, April 11, 2008
Comics Out April 9, 2008
Serenity: Better Days 2. The art is OK, but having to draw the faces to match the actors looks like it is often more trouble than it is worth -- Kaylee on page 2, for example. Check out Kaylee's face during the sex scene -- isolate her face on the page and tell me she does not look somewhere between ill and bored. There is a cute exchange about showering, but the thing is pretty lackluster, especially the ending bump, which would be sub-par even for a commercial break -- the end of an issue is not the same as the end of a television show, but the month long hiatus requires more than a random rifle butt to the head.
The Amazing Spiderman 556. This is hard to review without images. I will have to learn to work the scanner. In short, I love the art enough to ignore the story and dialogue. Zeb Wells needs to read some Morrison -- I would recommend JLA Classified 1 -- to learn how to write both techno-babble, and an intimidating weird speech from an other worldly god.
In Comics News the current team on Iron Fist leaves at issue 16. It seems disappointing, but these guys are not dead and will surely go on to do other amazing work. The book will forever live in my heart because of Dog Brother #1, and learning who David Aja is.
Also, you have to love this: a proper All Star crossover I can get into, even if it is just a cover.
I am sure I will never get my real dream team -- A Batman/Superman story with Morrison and Miller co-writing, and Miller on art, with covers by Quitely. Someone should lock these guys in a room knowing Miller and Morrison would not get along, and just see what they come up with. I bet it would be coo-coo bananas.
The Amazing Spiderman 556. This is hard to review without images. I will have to learn to work the scanner. In short, I love the art enough to ignore the story and dialogue. Zeb Wells needs to read some Morrison -- I would recommend JLA Classified 1 -- to learn how to write both techno-babble, and an intimidating weird speech from an other worldly god.
In Comics News the current team on Iron Fist leaves at issue 16. It seems disappointing, but these guys are not dead and will surely go on to do other amazing work. The book will forever live in my heart because of Dog Brother #1, and learning who David Aja is.
Also, you have to love this: a proper All Star crossover I can get into, even if it is just a cover.
I am sure I will never get my real dream team -- A Batman/Superman story with Morrison and Miller co-writing, and Miller on art, with covers by Quitely. Someone should lock these guys in a room knowing Miller and Morrison would not get along, and just see what they come up with. I bet it would be coo-coo bananas.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Oscar Wilde and Tracy Jordan
"The artist is the creator of beautiful things."
"All art is quite useless."
-- Oscar Wilde
"You all look good, NBC tour! Like a solid gold candy bar!"
-- Tracy Jordan
Tracy Jordan's weird compliment (exclaimed in the second episode of 30 Rock) is based in Wilde's philosophy of art. Beautiful things ("You all look good!") are quite useless, like a candy bar that you cannot eat, but that is made of gold.
"All art is quite useless."
-- Oscar Wilde
"You all look good, NBC tour! Like a solid gold candy bar!"
-- Tracy Jordan
Tracy Jordan's weird compliment (exclaimed in the second episode of 30 Rock) is based in Wilde's philosophy of art. Beautiful things ("You all look good!") are quite useless, like a candy bar that you cannot eat, but that is made of gold.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Free Form Comments
Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If a week goes by and I have failed to add you to the blog roll TELL ME TO DO IT AGAIN, and KEEP TELLING ME UNTIL IT GETS DONE. I can be lazy about updating the non-post parts of this site. Remember these comments can be directed at all the readers, not just me.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.
WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is available on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post. You can propose what you will, I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music and books.
If you think what you have to say -- new topic or comment on an existing topic -- would be better to hear than to read, use the CALL ME button on the toolbar on the right.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.
WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is available on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post. You can propose what you will, I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music and books.
If you think what you have to say -- new topic or comment on an existing topic -- would be better to hear than to read, use the CALL ME button on the toolbar on the right.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #22, part a (UXM #116)
[This post is part of a series of posts looking issue by issue at Claremont's X-Men. For more in this series see the tool bar on the right.]
“To Save the Savage Land”
John has discussed on his online forum that a mantra he’s heard leveled against him for most of his artistic career is that his “old stuff is better.” At one point not long after he left X-Men, a more specific variation on the complaint was that his work had become less detailed. Byrne’s response was that the people who liked all the detail in his X-Men artwork were actually not John Byrne fans; they were, without realizing it, Terry Austin fans.
A prime example of Byrne’s point is the amazing double-page splash on pages 2 and 3 of Uncanny #116, depicting the “City of the Sun God.” Byrne’s talent for design contributes hugely to the awe-inspiring visual, but Austin’s contribution – all that intricate linework, implying that the structure contains layers and layers of complexity beyond the surface – is just as significant. The Byrne/Austin remain one of the best examples ever seen of great penciller/inker chemistry on a mainstream superhero comic book.
It’s already been noted that the issues from this period are an extended Adams homage, but the specific plot to this one more precisely recalls the original Savage Land story by Lee/Kirby in Uncanny X-Men #10. In that issue, as in this one, the X-Men were split when half the team was captured natives for use in a ritual sacrifice. Claremont, by John Byrne’s accounting, hadn’t read the Lee/Kirby run at this point in his career, although Byrne had. The plot of this issue may be largely Byrne’s doing.
Byrne also continues his agenda to make Wolverine a fan favorite with the first half of “To Save the Savage Land,” as it depicts Wolverine displaying a new ability (to communicate with Ka-Zar’s pet sabretooth tiger), acting as a competent substitute leader when Cyclops is captured, and – most significant of all – deliberately taking an enemy’s life. Up to this point, readers had certainly seen Logan try, and there was lots of talk of Wolverine being a “psycho.” But here, Byrne has Wolverine walk the walk. It is something of a seminal moment in the series. (Byrne’s visual of Storm reacting to the moment gives it a particular gravitas.)
Having had his fun with his favorite of the “new” X-Men, Byrne then moves on to his favorite all-time team member, Cyclops, who in this issue proves that his optic blasts are equal in power to – per Claremont’s dialogue – “forces that were ancient before [the human] race was born!” That’s fairly impressive. As Byrne continues to exert more influence over the direction of the series, he will give Cyclops increasingly more impressive bits. By the time Byrne leaves in 1980, Cyclops will be one of the coolest superheroes in comics, but – as we’ll see – without Byrne to safeguard his favorite X-Man’s integrity, Scott Summers will undergo a very gradual diminishment over the first half of the 1980s, culminating in a devastating story turn (not written by Claremont) that ruins Cyclops for the next 20 years. (It will be up to Joss Whedon and John Cassady to resuscitate him.)
Once again ending an X-Men victory on a negative turn, Claremont closes with Storm attempting to save Garokk from a plunge to his death, but failing after an acute attack of claustrophobia. Her shame over the failure lasts only a page however, so Claremont and Bolton’s backup in this issue expands upon the bit.
(Meanwhile, we will eventually learn in Uncanny #149 that Garokk survived via the inverse of how the X-Men escaped Magneto’s volcano base. They escaped by tunneling down into the Savage Land; Garokk escaped to Magneto’s volcano.)
[I'm sorry -- what was "the devastating story turn (not written by Claremont) that ruins Cyclops for the next 20 years"?]
“To Save the Savage Land”
John has discussed on his online forum that a mantra he’s heard leveled against him for most of his artistic career is that his “old stuff is better.” At one point not long after he left X-Men, a more specific variation on the complaint was that his work had become less detailed. Byrne’s response was that the people who liked all the detail in his X-Men artwork were actually not John Byrne fans; they were, without realizing it, Terry Austin fans.
A prime example of Byrne’s point is the amazing double-page splash on pages 2 and 3 of Uncanny #116, depicting the “City of the Sun God.” Byrne’s talent for design contributes hugely to the awe-inspiring visual, but Austin’s contribution – all that intricate linework, implying that the structure contains layers and layers of complexity beyond the surface – is just as significant. The Byrne/Austin remain one of the best examples ever seen of great penciller/inker chemistry on a mainstream superhero comic book.
It’s already been noted that the issues from this period are an extended Adams homage, but the specific plot to this one more precisely recalls the original Savage Land story by Lee/Kirby in Uncanny X-Men #10. In that issue, as in this one, the X-Men were split when half the team was captured natives for use in a ritual sacrifice. Claremont, by John Byrne’s accounting, hadn’t read the Lee/Kirby run at this point in his career, although Byrne had. The plot of this issue may be largely Byrne’s doing.
Byrne also continues his agenda to make Wolverine a fan favorite with the first half of “To Save the Savage Land,” as it depicts Wolverine displaying a new ability (to communicate with Ka-Zar’s pet sabretooth tiger), acting as a competent substitute leader when Cyclops is captured, and – most significant of all – deliberately taking an enemy’s life. Up to this point, readers had certainly seen Logan try, and there was lots of talk of Wolverine being a “psycho.” But here, Byrne has Wolverine walk the walk. It is something of a seminal moment in the series. (Byrne’s visual of Storm reacting to the moment gives it a particular gravitas.)
Having had his fun with his favorite of the “new” X-Men, Byrne then moves on to his favorite all-time team member, Cyclops, who in this issue proves that his optic blasts are equal in power to – per Claremont’s dialogue – “forces that were ancient before [the human] race was born!” That’s fairly impressive. As Byrne continues to exert more influence over the direction of the series, he will give Cyclops increasingly more impressive bits. By the time Byrne leaves in 1980, Cyclops will be one of the coolest superheroes in comics, but – as we’ll see – without Byrne to safeguard his favorite X-Man’s integrity, Scott Summers will undergo a very gradual diminishment over the first half of the 1980s, culminating in a devastating story turn (not written by Claremont) that ruins Cyclops for the next 20 years. (It will be up to Joss Whedon and John Cassady to resuscitate him.)
Once again ending an X-Men victory on a negative turn, Claremont closes with Storm attempting to save Garokk from a plunge to his death, but failing after an acute attack of claustrophobia. Her shame over the failure lasts only a page however, so Claremont and Bolton’s backup in this issue expands upon the bit.
(Meanwhile, we will eventually learn in Uncanny #149 that Garokk survived via the inverse of how the X-Men escaped Magneto’s volcano base. They escaped by tunneling down into the Savage Land; Garokk escaped to Magneto’s volcano.)
[I'm sorry -- what was "the devastating story turn (not written by Claremont) that ruins Cyclops for the next 20 years"?]
The Academic Job Market (Commonplace Book)
A guilty pleasure of mine is the pessimistic rhetoric -- occasionally bordering on the apocalyptic or revolutionary -- surrounding the famously dismal academic job market. Once on the right wavelength, it can be as fun to read as any pulp novel. Here is a choice quote from the Chronicle of Higher Education this week:
Essentially, as Bousquet explained, the "job market" is a fiction that coerces us into competition with each other instead of asking questions about the constructed nature of the academic workplace. The primary purpose of graduate programs, he argued, was not to produce degree-holders but to provide cheap, non-degreed teaching labor for the universities. The predicted job crisis had been solved by an influx of graduate students encouraged by the prospect of future job opportunities. That was the new job system, and it was working perfectly well. As a result, the completion of a doctorate in the humanities now marked the logical end of one's academic career rather than the beginning of it. We were waste products who needed to be flushed from the system to make way for the next serving of exploited "apprentices." Higher education -- which I had always assumed to have my best interests at heart -- had become a kind of pyramid scheme with us at the bottom, the new academic proletariat.
Essentially, as Bousquet explained, the "job market" is a fiction that coerces us into competition with each other instead of asking questions about the constructed nature of the academic workplace. The primary purpose of graduate programs, he argued, was not to produce degree-holders but to provide cheap, non-degreed teaching labor for the universities. The predicted job crisis had been solved by an influx of graduate students encouraged by the prospect of future job opportunities. That was the new job system, and it was working perfectly well. As a result, the completion of a doctorate in the humanities now marked the logical end of one's academic career rather than the beginning of it. We were waste products who needed to be flushed from the system to make way for the next serving of exploited "apprentices." Higher education -- which I had always assumed to have my best interests at heart -- had become a kind of pyramid scheme with us at the bottom, the new academic proletariat.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Scott on JLI part 2
[Guest Blogger Scott continues his look at the JLI. For more in this series see the toolbar on the right.]
"What? You Call This a Justice League?"
Maguire is most well known as “the guy who draws funny faces,” a claim he addresses in his bio to the latest JLI reissue by saying that what he actually draws are “Expressive Faces.” This is certainly true; in Scott McCloud’s latest work on the art of comics, Making Comics, he explains the art of expressive faces. This is hard to do without visuals but I will try my best. McCloud notes that there are 6 basic expressions: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Joy, Sadness and Surprise. Each of these can further be expressed in a range of mild, moderate, and strong. In order to evoke more subtle emotions, these expressions can be combined to varying degrees. For example: mild disgust + mild sadness = puzzlement.
If we look at most superhero comics that preceded Maguire (most not all), artists tended to, for the most part, utilize only 5 of these (Anger, Fear, Joy, and Sadness) and only a few of the combinations and, even then, usually only in the moderate to strong range (or, in the case of Rob Liefeld, one expression: the almighty grimace!). In Maguire’s art, he incorporates the full range of subtlety. Instead of just having characters that are ‘angry’ or ‘happy’ we get characters that are ‘mildly amused’, ‘befuddled’ and, my personal favorite, ‘peeved’! This would contribute greatly to the humanity that this series would bring to these characters as well as influence many artists who would follow.
His art begins shaping the series from the very beginning, before you even have a chance to open the first issue. In a recent interview with Wizard, Jim Lee mentioned the cover of Justice League number 1 among his favorites. He pointed out that Maguire draws the heroes from a downward angle. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of film knows what this means: a downward angle makes characters appear smaller and less powerful. Conversely, an upward angle can denote power and a sense of awe. Think of all the recent Alex Ross drawn covers to team books that have used the upward angle in order to rise the subject to the status of god-like reverence and you can appreciate how unique this cover is. In an act of further defiance, we find Guy Gardner, the most unlikely candidate for league membership, front and center with a classic Maguire expression of smug arrogance saying, “You wanna make something of it?” Right away, this creative team is telling us “This ain’t your daddy’s Justice League.”
Giffen and Co. had no choice in who would make up this version of the League; they were simply handed the roster, as it was spun-out of the Legends mini-series. That being the case, it would have been very easy for them to relegate Guy Gardner to the sidelines and bring him in only when they had need for a power ring. Instead, they go with it; Guy is the first character that we see on the very first page of the series. Not only is he the first character we see but, when we see him, he is already entertaining thoughts that he will be leading the new League:
“Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen—my name’s Guy Gardner and I’m a Green Lantern. Correction: I’m the Green Lantern. None of those other jerks can hold a candle to me. No doubt you’re wondering why I called you all here today. Simple: I’m declaring myself commander-in-chief of the spanking new Justice League. Any objections?”
In this short space of time, not only has he declared himself leader but he has also belittled the other two more well-known and respected Green Lanterns. To fully appreciate this, you have to understand that Guy Gardner was pretty unknown at this point; it was this very series that would give him the notoriety that he has today (much like X-men did for Wolverine… ok, so maybe Guy never became that popular but before this series he was really unknown).
Shortly afterwards, Black Canary arrives and the two have the following exchange:
BC: … our old headquarters never seems to change […] I can still feel the ghosts here … hovering…
GG: OOO, spooky! I bet Rod Serling’s around here somewhere too! Doo Doo Doo Doo, Doo Doo Doo Doo!
Just as Black Canary begins to engage in your prototypical maudlin monologue, so common in team books of this era a la The New Teen Titans and Uncanny X-men, she is quickly cut off by Guy who berates her for her sentimentality. I’ve read a few issues of the Detroit-era League, and it seemed as though they were very much trying to emulate that formula of melodrama used in other team books of the time. This is Giffen’s way of sidestepping it; instead of going for the heartstrings, he goes for the funny bone. While Guy may not have literally become the team’s leader, he certainly did help lead the book in the direction it was about to take.
He then says: “Hey, Babe—it’s the eighties. Alan Alda’s out… Sylvester Stallone is in.”
This is appropriate because A) Alan Alda was certainly guilty for many a maudlin monologue himself in his M*A*S*H days and B) Guy Gardner was chosen to be a Green Lantern by a rogue faction of the Guardians of the Universe to be a more proactive, take-no-prisoners kind of Lantern: he is supposed to be the Rambo of the Green Lantern Corps (or the Punisher to make a more apt comic comparison).
As the other team members begin to arrive, Guy manages to pretty much offend everybody. When Mister Miracle’s sidekick, Oberon, introduces himself Guy quickly brushes him off, “What’s the matter, Sneezy—the other six dwarves couldn’t make it?”
The disagreements quickly degenerate into a scuffle and, upon his arrival, Batman observes “It never fails… put more than two of them in the same room together and…”
Dr. Fate begins to put a stop to things using magic but Batman stops him, walks straight up to Guy Gardner, looks him dead in the eye and says “Sit down.” Gardner quickly complies.
In this very light series, most of the humor regarding Batman is the result of his lack of a sense of humor. In a later issue Black Canary will remark, “I seem to remember him making a joke once… about five years ago.” This would inform much of the way Batman would be depicted in future incarnations of the League: he is quickly established as the team’s ‘straight man’, he is the hero who, despite his lack of powers, the other members are both intimidated and slightly creeped out by. To treat him as any less would provoke the ire of many a fan (especially give the character’s new found respect at this time as a result of The Dark Knight Returns). That’s one of the great advantages of this particular line-up: being made up of lesser known heroes allowed Giffen and Dematteis a lot more freedom in their depictions of these characters. In other words, they weren’t likely to get many angry letters from disgruntled fans demanding Blue Beetle be treated with more respect.
At this point in comics’ history, there was a movement to depict superheroes more ‘realistically’; how would superheroes function in the ‘real world’? While works like Watchmen took this concept to its more serious extremes, Justice League looks at the lighter side of this: the egos, the in-fighting, the media coverage as well as the logistics of the smaller day-to-day dilemmas that might plague superheroes. As a great example of this, we see Dr. Light distraught over the fact that her signal device is going off while she’s at her ‘day job’ at the UN; after all, what does the member of a superteam do when their ‘super beeper’ goes off in the middle of a business meeting? This sort of thing wasn’t really ‘new’ to the superheroic genre; Marvel had been doing this sort of thing since the sixties (I’m reminded of an early Lee/Ditko Spider-Man story where he attempts to cash a reward check only to have the bank reject him because he cannot conclusively prove that he’s really Spider-Man and not just some jerk in a costume). It was, however, a fresh approach to the Justice League who are typically depicted as the Demi-Gods of the DCU.
Another dilemma facing Dr. Light was the subject of much discussion in superhero comics at this time:
“I’ve got to address the general assembly in five minutes […] If it’s a choice between zapping super-villains and feeding the hungry… well…then there is no choice.”
Works like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns endeavored to question whether or not superheroes could really make the world a better place. Here, Dr. Light has answered that question: not if all they did was beat up super-villains. Still, you have to admit, a comic where the Justice League did nothing but propose resolutions to the U.N. would be pretty dull.
Shortly after this, we get the main ‘action’ of this issue as a group of terrorists break in and take Dr. Light and the rest of the U.N. hostage. They’re a pretty rag tag bunch but their leader has been equipped with a bomb that we are told will explode if his heart stops beating. As serious as this would be in the real world, this is hardly a threat of Justice League proportions; after all, previous incarnations kept the world from being destroyed. A few poorly trained, modestly armed terrorists hardly seem like that much of a problem; surely, this is a task that could easily be handled by The Teen Titans… actually… it’s a bit below them too…. How about the Outsiders? Yeah, let’s go with them. On the other hand, this is the team’s first mission; Giffen and company probably wanted to take it slowly. Remember, at this point they had no idea what Blue Beetle was capable of. Dr. Fate disapears mysteriously (as omniscient mystic types have a tendency to do that) before the rest of the team can arrive; this is a rather convenient disappearance when you consider that a sorcerer as powerful as Fate could have easily removed the bomb by saying something backwards... or something like that. The rest of the team, under Batman’s leadership,quickly takes out most of the terrorists and evacuates the general assembly leaving their leader to commit suicide in an attempt to set off the bomb. It fails and, in the last few panels, we see Maxwell Lord watching the events unfold on television as he remarks, “Maybe I should have given him the firing pin.”
So who is this mysterious Maxwell Lord and why is he manipulating the new Justice League? An evil mastermind bent on world domination? A new super-villain with the power of a radioactive wombat perhaps? The answer would prove to be something much, much worse: a slick, 1980’s businessman! Terrifying!
"What? You Call This a Justice League?"
Maguire is most well known as “the guy who draws funny faces,” a claim he addresses in his bio to the latest JLI reissue by saying that what he actually draws are “Expressive Faces.” This is certainly true; in Scott McCloud’s latest work on the art of comics, Making Comics, he explains the art of expressive faces. This is hard to do without visuals but I will try my best. McCloud notes that there are 6 basic expressions: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Joy, Sadness and Surprise. Each of these can further be expressed in a range of mild, moderate, and strong. In order to evoke more subtle emotions, these expressions can be combined to varying degrees. For example: mild disgust + mild sadness = puzzlement.
If we look at most superhero comics that preceded Maguire (most not all), artists tended to, for the most part, utilize only 5 of these (Anger, Fear, Joy, and Sadness) and only a few of the combinations and, even then, usually only in the moderate to strong range (or, in the case of Rob Liefeld, one expression: the almighty grimace!). In Maguire’s art, he incorporates the full range of subtlety. Instead of just having characters that are ‘angry’ or ‘happy’ we get characters that are ‘mildly amused’, ‘befuddled’ and, my personal favorite, ‘peeved’! This would contribute greatly to the humanity that this series would bring to these characters as well as influence many artists who would follow.
His art begins shaping the series from the very beginning, before you even have a chance to open the first issue. In a recent interview with Wizard, Jim Lee mentioned the cover of Justice League number 1 among his favorites. He pointed out that Maguire draws the heroes from a downward angle. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of film knows what this means: a downward angle makes characters appear smaller and less powerful. Conversely, an upward angle can denote power and a sense of awe. Think of all the recent Alex Ross drawn covers to team books that have used the upward angle in order to rise the subject to the status of god-like reverence and you can appreciate how unique this cover is. In an act of further defiance, we find Guy Gardner, the most unlikely candidate for league membership, front and center with a classic Maguire expression of smug arrogance saying, “You wanna make something of it?” Right away, this creative team is telling us “This ain’t your daddy’s Justice League.”
Giffen and Co. had no choice in who would make up this version of the League; they were simply handed the roster, as it was spun-out of the Legends mini-series. That being the case, it would have been very easy for them to relegate Guy Gardner to the sidelines and bring him in only when they had need for a power ring. Instead, they go with it; Guy is the first character that we see on the very first page of the series. Not only is he the first character we see but, when we see him, he is already entertaining thoughts that he will be leading the new League:
“Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen—my name’s Guy Gardner and I’m a Green Lantern. Correction: I’m the Green Lantern. None of those other jerks can hold a candle to me. No doubt you’re wondering why I called you all here today. Simple: I’m declaring myself commander-in-chief of the spanking new Justice League. Any objections?”
In this short space of time, not only has he declared himself leader but he has also belittled the other two more well-known and respected Green Lanterns. To fully appreciate this, you have to understand that Guy Gardner was pretty unknown at this point; it was this very series that would give him the notoriety that he has today (much like X-men did for Wolverine… ok, so maybe Guy never became that popular but before this series he was really unknown).
Shortly afterwards, Black Canary arrives and the two have the following exchange:
BC: … our old headquarters never seems to change […] I can still feel the ghosts here … hovering…
GG: OOO, spooky! I bet Rod Serling’s around here somewhere too! Doo Doo Doo Doo, Doo Doo Doo Doo!
Just as Black Canary begins to engage in your prototypical maudlin monologue, so common in team books of this era a la The New Teen Titans and Uncanny X-men, she is quickly cut off by Guy who berates her for her sentimentality. I’ve read a few issues of the Detroit-era League, and it seemed as though they were very much trying to emulate that formula of melodrama used in other team books of the time. This is Giffen’s way of sidestepping it; instead of going for the heartstrings, he goes for the funny bone. While Guy may not have literally become the team’s leader, he certainly did help lead the book in the direction it was about to take.
He then says: “Hey, Babe—it’s the eighties. Alan Alda’s out… Sylvester Stallone is in.”
This is appropriate because A) Alan Alda was certainly guilty for many a maudlin monologue himself in his M*A*S*H days and B) Guy Gardner was chosen to be a Green Lantern by a rogue faction of the Guardians of the Universe to be a more proactive, take-no-prisoners kind of Lantern: he is supposed to be the Rambo of the Green Lantern Corps (or the Punisher to make a more apt comic comparison).
As the other team members begin to arrive, Guy manages to pretty much offend everybody. When Mister Miracle’s sidekick, Oberon, introduces himself Guy quickly brushes him off, “What’s the matter, Sneezy—the other six dwarves couldn’t make it?”
The disagreements quickly degenerate into a scuffle and, upon his arrival, Batman observes “It never fails… put more than two of them in the same room together and…”
Dr. Fate begins to put a stop to things using magic but Batman stops him, walks straight up to Guy Gardner, looks him dead in the eye and says “Sit down.” Gardner quickly complies.
In this very light series, most of the humor regarding Batman is the result of his lack of a sense of humor. In a later issue Black Canary will remark, “I seem to remember him making a joke once… about five years ago.” This would inform much of the way Batman would be depicted in future incarnations of the League: he is quickly established as the team’s ‘straight man’, he is the hero who, despite his lack of powers, the other members are both intimidated and slightly creeped out by. To treat him as any less would provoke the ire of many a fan (especially give the character’s new found respect at this time as a result of The Dark Knight Returns). That’s one of the great advantages of this particular line-up: being made up of lesser known heroes allowed Giffen and Dematteis a lot more freedom in their depictions of these characters. In other words, they weren’t likely to get many angry letters from disgruntled fans demanding Blue Beetle be treated with more respect.
At this point in comics’ history, there was a movement to depict superheroes more ‘realistically’; how would superheroes function in the ‘real world’? While works like Watchmen took this concept to its more serious extremes, Justice League looks at the lighter side of this: the egos, the in-fighting, the media coverage as well as the logistics of the smaller day-to-day dilemmas that might plague superheroes. As a great example of this, we see Dr. Light distraught over the fact that her signal device is going off while she’s at her ‘day job’ at the UN; after all, what does the member of a superteam do when their ‘super beeper’ goes off in the middle of a business meeting? This sort of thing wasn’t really ‘new’ to the superheroic genre; Marvel had been doing this sort of thing since the sixties (I’m reminded of an early Lee/Ditko Spider-Man story where he attempts to cash a reward check only to have the bank reject him because he cannot conclusively prove that he’s really Spider-Man and not just some jerk in a costume). It was, however, a fresh approach to the Justice League who are typically depicted as the Demi-Gods of the DCU.
Another dilemma facing Dr. Light was the subject of much discussion in superhero comics at this time:
“I’ve got to address the general assembly in five minutes […] If it’s a choice between zapping super-villains and feeding the hungry… well…then there is no choice.”
Works like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns endeavored to question whether or not superheroes could really make the world a better place. Here, Dr. Light has answered that question: not if all they did was beat up super-villains. Still, you have to admit, a comic where the Justice League did nothing but propose resolutions to the U.N. would be pretty dull.
Shortly after this, we get the main ‘action’ of this issue as a group of terrorists break in and take Dr. Light and the rest of the U.N. hostage. They’re a pretty rag tag bunch but their leader has been equipped with a bomb that we are told will explode if his heart stops beating. As serious as this would be in the real world, this is hardly a threat of Justice League proportions; after all, previous incarnations kept the world from being destroyed. A few poorly trained, modestly armed terrorists hardly seem like that much of a problem; surely, this is a task that could easily be handled by The Teen Titans… actually… it’s a bit below them too…. How about the Outsiders? Yeah, let’s go with them. On the other hand, this is the team’s first mission; Giffen and company probably wanted to take it slowly. Remember, at this point they had no idea what Blue Beetle was capable of. Dr. Fate disapears mysteriously (as omniscient mystic types have a tendency to do that) before the rest of the team can arrive; this is a rather convenient disappearance when you consider that a sorcerer as powerful as Fate could have easily removed the bomb by saying something backwards... or something like that. The rest of the team, under Batman’s leadership,quickly takes out most of the terrorists and evacuates the general assembly leaving their leader to commit suicide in an attempt to set off the bomb. It fails and, in the last few panels, we see Maxwell Lord watching the events unfold on television as he remarks, “Maybe I should have given him the firing pin.”
So who is this mysterious Maxwell Lord and why is he manipulating the new Justice League? An evil mastermind bent on world domination? A new super-villain with the power of a radioactive wombat perhaps? The answer would prove to be something much, much worse: a slick, 1980’s businessman! Terrifying!
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Sara's MFA Open Studio (Comment Pull Quote)
[Just a reminder from Sara. I will be there the whole time Saturday for sure.]
The Brooklyn College MFA program is having a Spring Open Studios Exhibition - which I helped to organize.
Here is the website.
The dates and times are
Friday, April 11th, 6pm-10pm and
Saturday, April 12th, 3pm - 8pm.
Come for the free booze, stay for the free art.
The Brooklyn College MFA program is having a Spring Open Studios Exhibition - which I helped to organize.
Here is the website.
The dates and times are
Friday, April 11th, 6pm-10pm and
Saturday, April 12th, 3pm - 8pm.
Come for the free booze, stay for the free art.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #21, part b
“First Love”
The Frank Frazetta influence in John Bolton’s work is quite strong. (Claremont and Bolton’s collaborations before these backup stories were two sword-and-sorcery-style fantasy stories, “Marada the She-Wolf” and “The Black Dragon.”) With the a-side comics at this point being set in the Savage Land, where dinosaurs, savages and bikini-clad native girls all coexist, Bolton seems right at home.
“First Love” expands on the tantalizing (if uncharacteristic) bit from Uncanny X-Men #114, featuring Colossus and two female members of the Fall People going to visit a “special island.” That thread is here woven in to a story that also works as a sequel to the Colossus solo story published in Classic #5, in which Colossus fell for a beautiful Russian dancer, Anya, who rejected him when she saw him use his mutant power. (Interestingly, Anya is also the name given to Magneto’s daughter in a story that saw his wife flee from him in a very similar scene – set in Russia, no less. This implicit parallel between Magneto and Colossus was never expanded upon by Claremont, although a later writer followed up by having Colossus join Magneto’s Acolytes.)
Colossus is seen here in a state of depression. Not only is he still dwelling on Anya’s rejection, but the heat of the Savage Land is tough for Peter to bear and – in a cute touch – the humidity is so great that the paper of his sketch pad is too saturated to be drawn upon.
The story then kicks into adventure mode, as Colossus – too affected by the heat to even transform into metal –attempts to save a trio of native women from an attacking tyrannosaurus. There are a great couple of pages that are pure Frazetta, depicting Colossus bashing the dinosaur’s eye out with an axe.
That night, the two surviving girls ask Colossus to accompany them to an island to perform “a last ceremony.” Naively he accepts, and upon arrival is invited to make love to both of them. “What better way to honor a fallen friend,” says Nereel, the more forthright of the two girls, “then [sic] by hopefully creating a new life?” Peter, being the most innocent and naive of the X-Men, tries to get out of it. The tyrannosaur shows up conveniently, and this time – with the sun down – Peter is able to effect his transformation, and – in another striking Bolton panel – snaps the dinosaur’s jaws. Hearing the women’s surprised reactions to his transformation, Colossus is again reminded of Anya’s rejection, and his anger feeds into him dispatching the dinosaur with more violence than he might have otherwise.
Redemption, unsurprisingly, comes in the final page. Nereel and her companion are, of course, not turned off by Peter’s mutancy – are, in fact, surprised that he had even expected such a thing. “I was just thinking of someone I once cared for,” Peter explains. “How she fled when she saw me like this. I feared you might do the same.” Bolton sells us on Nereel’s terse reply: “She was foolish. We are not.”
Colossus is sold as well, leading to what may be, published in 1988, the first known occurrence of a mainstream Marvel superhero engaging in a threesome.
“First Love” walks a strange line. In trying to write a redemptive love story between Peter and the Nereel character, Claremont is perhaps a bit hamstrung by his earlier work, which featured Colossus very distinctly going off with two girls rather than one. When Claremont closes the story with two women both kissing on Colossus and the narration “For the first time, he’s discovered love,” are to presume he has fallen in love with both of them? There’s a definite cognitive disconnect here, between the story’s camp trappings and its attempt at something more heartfelt.
In spite of that, Claremont and Bolton sell the story effectively, and it actually works well in practice. Any other male member of the X-Men in a story like this would not have been convincing – a lecherous quality would have dominated the tone. But Claremont hammers home the point of Colossus’ naivety so well that Peter’s surrender at the end to an orgy with mohawked girls in fur bikinis actually does seem kind of sweet.
[Note: AWESOME. I love this series.]
The Frank Frazetta influence in John Bolton’s work is quite strong. (Claremont and Bolton’s collaborations before these backup stories were two sword-and-sorcery-style fantasy stories, “Marada the She-Wolf” and “The Black Dragon.”) With the a-side comics at this point being set in the Savage Land, where dinosaurs, savages and bikini-clad native girls all coexist, Bolton seems right at home.
“First Love” expands on the tantalizing (if uncharacteristic) bit from Uncanny X-Men #114, featuring Colossus and two female members of the Fall People going to visit a “special island.” That thread is here woven in to a story that also works as a sequel to the Colossus solo story published in Classic #5, in which Colossus fell for a beautiful Russian dancer, Anya, who rejected him when she saw him use his mutant power. (Interestingly, Anya is also the name given to Magneto’s daughter in a story that saw his wife flee from him in a very similar scene – set in Russia, no less. This implicit parallel between Magneto and Colossus was never expanded upon by Claremont, although a later writer followed up by having Colossus join Magneto’s Acolytes.)
Colossus is seen here in a state of depression. Not only is he still dwelling on Anya’s rejection, but the heat of the Savage Land is tough for Peter to bear and – in a cute touch – the humidity is so great that the paper of his sketch pad is too saturated to be drawn upon.
The story then kicks into adventure mode, as Colossus – too affected by the heat to even transform into metal –attempts to save a trio of native women from an attacking tyrannosaurus. There are a great couple of pages that are pure Frazetta, depicting Colossus bashing the dinosaur’s eye out with an axe.
That night, the two surviving girls ask Colossus to accompany them to an island to perform “a last ceremony.” Naively he accepts, and upon arrival is invited to make love to both of them. “What better way to honor a fallen friend,” says Nereel, the more forthright of the two girls, “then [sic] by hopefully creating a new life?” Peter, being the most innocent and naive of the X-Men, tries to get out of it. The tyrannosaur shows up conveniently, and this time – with the sun down – Peter is able to effect his transformation, and – in another striking Bolton panel – snaps the dinosaur’s jaws. Hearing the women’s surprised reactions to his transformation, Colossus is again reminded of Anya’s rejection, and his anger feeds into him dispatching the dinosaur with more violence than he might have otherwise.
Redemption, unsurprisingly, comes in the final page. Nereel and her companion are, of course, not turned off by Peter’s mutancy – are, in fact, surprised that he had even expected such a thing. “I was just thinking of someone I once cared for,” Peter explains. “How she fled when she saw me like this. I feared you might do the same.” Bolton sells us on Nereel’s terse reply: “She was foolish. We are not.”
Colossus is sold as well, leading to what may be, published in 1988, the first known occurrence of a mainstream Marvel superhero engaging in a threesome.
“First Love” walks a strange line. In trying to write a redemptive love story between Peter and the Nereel character, Claremont is perhaps a bit hamstrung by his earlier work, which featured Colossus very distinctly going off with two girls rather than one. When Claremont closes the story with two women both kissing on Colossus and the narration “For the first time, he’s discovered love,” are to presume he has fallen in love with both of them? There’s a definite cognitive disconnect here, between the story’s camp trappings and its attempt at something more heartfelt.
In spite of that, Claremont and Bolton sell the story effectively, and it actually works well in practice. Any other male member of the X-Men in a story like this would not have been convincing – a lecherous quality would have dominated the tone. But Claremont hammers home the point of Colossus’ naivety so well that Peter’s surrender at the end to an orgy with mohawked girls in fur bikinis actually does seem kind of sweet.
[Note: AWESOME. I love this series.]
Friday, April 04, 2008
Comics Out April 2, 2008
Casanova 13. I am busy putting together a list of my must read prestige books -- All Star Superman, WE3, Assault on Weapon Plus, Dark Knight Strikes Again (nothing that would surprise any of you) -- and this one is right on the top of the list. I love this book for the same reasons I love the others on that list -- at no point to I have to say things like "Oh, yeah, the Invisibles is great but the art is spotty in parts," or "Seven Soldiers is awesome but the end maybe leaves a little to be desired." I love the fluid line work and the colors -- like drawing with water. I love the crazy things the characters say: ""I'm a robot inside of a robot inside of another robot. I'm like a nesting doll that gives blowjobs steeped in existential ennui." And I love how Fraction thinks: I like how he balances the science fiction "cheat" -- not really a cheat since the existence of perfect replica robot people has been a core part of this book since early on --. Let me start that sentence again. I like how he balances the science fiction "cheat" to get out of the events of last issue (they were all robots) with the idea that even if you have a mad sci-fi escape maybe you should reject it for emotion and a blind faith in the power of the unique.
Punisher War Journal 18. Marvel with the product placement. Very disturbing. I have to believe it could be incorporated into the image more naturally. I mean I know they are in a guitar store, but the ad is to poorly incorporated it looks like a sticker has been placed over the art. I am not always against product placement -- people use products and GMC, for example, has some awesome product placement on 24. I don't even drive a car and now I associate the brand with the one thing that can save America. I am not saying Marvel should stop, but they should find a way to not make it so jarring. Cause it makes me hate comic books. Also, Chaykin continues to elude me.
Amazing Spiderman 555. Bachalo, on the other hand, I get. Bachalo I love. Bachalo would do a hell of a Casanova volume -- this is a guy who can do what that book needs: cute girls, and dense visual information. Check out the cover of this Spiderman issue to see how he has reached a compromise with people who say he is too cluttered: the image is a cluttered as he gets, but the colors isolate our heroes so we can see, nice and fast, what is going on. The same spare use of colors for the interior snow scenes is just beautiful and iconic. Bachalo draws a great Wolverine, though I suppose you could argue he is too cartoony. You can't argue such a thing for Spiderman. Bachalo is great for Spiderman, which is a character who needs to be a lot of fun, especially the Brand New Day version. The white borders are nice, especially with the snow, and cute girls Bachalo can draw like no man's business. Bachalo makes me want to date Betty. I know every time I write about Bachalo and cute girls -- and I write it a lot -- I sound shallow, but I think superhero comic books need cute girls and the ones that get all the attention are often no more than grotesque ... things. A note to the writer however -- grab a book on verse. There is more to writing poetry -- even Dr. Strange's speeches -- than the occasional rhyme. The use of rhythm was MAKING ME NUTS.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer 13. Oh, fine. Whatever. It is not terrible. I will keep getting this book. But you cannot make me review it every month.
Angel 6. Same here.
I also picked up an AMAZING oversized Ashley Wood book -- and I love Ashley Wood -- called Zombies vs Robots vs Amazons (and Amazons is code for lesbians), but that will need its own post I think, to capture all the greatness. Hint: the genre-mash up -- and that is kind of my thing -- is good, but the ART is what makes it work.
Punisher War Journal 18. Marvel with the product placement. Very disturbing. I have to believe it could be incorporated into the image more naturally. I mean I know they are in a guitar store, but the ad is to poorly incorporated it looks like a sticker has been placed over the art. I am not always against product placement -- people use products and GMC, for example, has some awesome product placement on 24. I don't even drive a car and now I associate the brand with the one thing that can save America. I am not saying Marvel should stop, but they should find a way to not make it so jarring. Cause it makes me hate comic books. Also, Chaykin continues to elude me.
Amazing Spiderman 555. Bachalo, on the other hand, I get. Bachalo I love. Bachalo would do a hell of a Casanova volume -- this is a guy who can do what that book needs: cute girls, and dense visual information. Check out the cover of this Spiderman issue to see how he has reached a compromise with people who say he is too cluttered: the image is a cluttered as he gets, but the colors isolate our heroes so we can see, nice and fast, what is going on. The same spare use of colors for the interior snow scenes is just beautiful and iconic. Bachalo draws a great Wolverine, though I suppose you could argue he is too cartoony. You can't argue such a thing for Spiderman. Bachalo is great for Spiderman, which is a character who needs to be a lot of fun, especially the Brand New Day version. The white borders are nice, especially with the snow, and cute girls Bachalo can draw like no man's business. Bachalo makes me want to date Betty. I know every time I write about Bachalo and cute girls -- and I write it a lot -- I sound shallow, but I think superhero comic books need cute girls and the ones that get all the attention are often no more than grotesque ... things. A note to the writer however -- grab a book on verse. There is more to writing poetry -- even Dr. Strange's speeches -- than the occasional rhyme. The use of rhythm was MAKING ME NUTS.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer 13. Oh, fine. Whatever. It is not terrible. I will keep getting this book. But you cannot make me review it every month.
Angel 6. Same here.
I also picked up an AMAZING oversized Ashley Wood book -- and I love Ashley Wood -- called Zombies vs Robots vs Amazons (and Amazons is code for lesbians), but that will need its own post I think, to capture all the greatness. Hint: the genre-mash up -- and that is kind of my thing -- is good, but the ART is what makes it work.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Chowder
Sara introduced me to a great cartoon on Cartoon Network called Chowder. It is a bit like Sid and Marty Croft re-imagined with a bit of kid-friendly Adult Swim anarchy and maybe a little Food Network thrown in.
I have linked to a highlights YouTube video below, but it fails to show two of my favorite things: the occasional use of claymation, and Schnitzel, a character who expresses himself by varying the tone of a single nonsense word, "Radda." You can see those things, and get introduced to what it is basically about, in this Cartoon Network commercial:
This YouTube video, 5 minutes of highlights, captures quite a bit of what makes it great.
The colors for one thing -- the show has surely one of the best color palates since Courage the Cowardly Dog. And though you cannot see as much of this as I would like in the clip, notice how Chowder's outfit has a pattern on it that stays stationary, like part of of the background, when he moves -- as if his shirt was an empty space moving over a pattern behind it. It is hard to appreciate in clips, but it is kind of mesmerizing on TV.
I have linked to a highlights YouTube video below, but it fails to show two of my favorite things: the occasional use of claymation, and Schnitzel, a character who expresses himself by varying the tone of a single nonsense word, "Radda." You can see those things, and get introduced to what it is basically about, in this Cartoon Network commercial:
This YouTube video, 5 minutes of highlights, captures quite a bit of what makes it great.
The colors for one thing -- the show has surely one of the best color palates since Courage the Cowardly Dog. And though you cannot see as much of this as I would like in the clip, notice how Chowder's outfit has a pattern on it that stays stationary, like part of of the background, when he moves -- as if his shirt was an empty space moving over a pattern behind it. It is hard to appreciate in clips, but it is kind of mesmerizing on TV.
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