A little behind with this post because of the holidays -- I also got confused and I think some of the things I picked up on the 2nd actually came out the week before. Nevertheless.
The Umbrella Academy: Dallas. The more I read this comic book the more I like it. The two guys at the beginning, in the masks, are absolutely terrifying, and I am starting to think that this book may have the potential to transcend its huge debts to the X-Men and Doom Patrol. In a world with Casanova and All Star Superman this book was just pretty good, but now that those series are off the table, this is one of the ONLY books I find myself looking forward to, though I am feeling pretty down about comics lately. Jesus shit those guys were scary.
Final Crisis: Secret Files. I call Shenanigans. Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones are listed on the cover and Frank Quitely was promised in the solicitations. Actually Morrison is listed second on the cover out of four names making me think he was the second most important person contributing -- actually, they listed the two writers followed by the two artists even though the second writer barely contributed to this. Basically the entire comic book -- certainly the only story in the comic book -- is Len Wein and Tony Sashstein's origin of Libra, which is a bad idea since most of his story is a rehash of his one comic book appearance from the 70s which DC already reprinted as a sort of Final Crisis preview six months ago. Then there is one page of nonsense by Ruka, one page of text notes about the anti-life equation by Morrison and four more pages of sketchbook material by Jones and Morrison that should have been in the original sketchbook comic. The Morrison prose is sort of interesting, and clears up a bit the connection between Seven Soldiers and Final Crisis -- though surely that should have been in the story and not as some kind of a director's commentary: this reminded me of nothing more than Richard Kelley's explanations of Donnie Darko: there is something to knowing that was what he had in mind but it is sort of his job to actually put that on the page somehow. Anyway Morrison's thoughts on the subject are, as I say interesting, but the are not 4 dollars interesting.
Batman 683. I enjoyed these last two issues of Morrison's Batman after really being annoyed with the conclusion to Batman RIP. I especially hated the ending to Batman RIP once I started reading around the internet -- apparently one of the working theories of Dr Hurt was that he was the evil self Batman rejected in the Tibetan Ritual, almost Batman's Casandra Nova. That is a GREAT idea and I cannot understand why that was not the reveal at the end. Certainly Morrison's Batman has a lot in common with his New X-Men run -- sporadically great and sporadically so badly made it is unreadable, with large swaths of awful art. One thing Batman 683 does wrong is that it adds insult to injury with the claim at the end of the issue that we should "Follow the Dark Knight to his Last Adventure in Final Crisis 6" -- after promising that Batman RIP was some kind of "final story" two issues later we get the next "final story." Obviously there is not going to be a final Batman story, but that does not mean you should just announce the end every few issues with no connection to what is inside. Maybe they did that in the old days or something, but in an auteur culture you just loose all your credibility.
This story was the high point in the run for me, a really nice tribute to Batman's history, and a brilliant idea about how Batman can make even his memories a weapon. The art was not great, but the end of this was really nice with the Lump and Alfred. I even liked how it was isolated from Final Crisis -- it felt right since it was basically all in Batman's mind. I look forward to reading the conclusion in Final Crisis 6 actually. This issue also featured one of Morrison's major anxiety of influence tropes -- the canonization of key moments of a character's history with his own contributions to that history prominently displayed. See All Star Superman, which hits major Superman moments (Luthor, Bizarro, Doomsday) but does not fail to give major time to Morrison's recent contributions, Solaris and the future Superman and Golden Superman from his DC One Million. See also New X-Men Here Comes Tomorrow, which pays tribute to the Sentinels, Days of Future Past, and Dark Phoenix but also Casandra Nova, Fantomex, and Sublime. Batman 682-683 takes us on a whole ride of Batman's history, but the end is a big kicker -- the Lump knows everything about Batman (wonderfully he can trust Batman to get revenge) but is dying. Batman says "you need a jolt to get you moving?" His memories -- his history -- destroyed the Batman clones, but you know what resurrects the Lump Neo style? MORRISONS CONTRIBUTIONS TO BATMAN"S HISTORY! "You need a jolt to get you moving" is followed immediately by memories of Batman's purification ritual in 52, the Thogal ritual, Damian, and the Batman of Zur En Arrh, all from Morrison's Batman run. That was the jolt Morrison thought the Batman mythos needed. Pretty good stuff.
That said this may be time for me to get off this book, unless the art gets better. Because that final image is really less than inspiring and I need something inspiring right now. If Quitely joins as is rumored I will pick it up; if not I may switch to the trade.
Showing posts with label Comics Out. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comics Out. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Friday, December 19, 2008
Comics Out December 17, 2008
I did not pick anything, but do tell me about comics out this week. I am thinking about picking up the post-Fraction Iron Fist at some point -- worth getting?
Friday, December 12, 2008
Comics Out Wednesday December 10, 2008
Final Crisis 5. Jog did an excellent review of this comic, I thought. His point that the issue is by no means great, especially on the art front, but that the second half has a lot of fun madness in it is how I feel about this issue exactly. I know that is completely a cop out as a review on this site so I will add a few thoughts of my own: the Rubik's cube thing was dumb, Mr Miracle popping back to life because he was wearing a vest after last issue's cliffhanger on that point was super weak (he cannot die, fine, that was established in Seven Soldiers, but make him "escape" death in a more interesting way), Darkseid is all talk -- all this stuff about never seeing a New God for REAL is all rhetoric: stop talking man and just fucking DO IT, ya know? Morrison needs J.G. Jones to sell this stuff: his pages here are great and I hope that Morrison will do some work, short but self-contained, with him again. The last page was kind of AWESOME, and I loved it. Overall I am still a little checked out in terms of the series as a whole because of the fill in artists, and the rumored editorial changes to the final issue, but I will keep getting it and basically liking it as a result of diminished expectations,
Punisher X-Mas Special. I read the first Scalped trade and I liked it OK; I thought this was very good too. It's a fun story that does a surprisingly good job being a solid self contained Punisher story and also a Christmas special without going off in a comic vein that would have been really easy given the topic. There is something really admirable about Aaron's ability to take the task of a holiday special seriously and deliver a GOOD STORY rather than an easy joke.
Punisher X-Mas Special. I read the first Scalped trade and I liked it OK; I thought this was very good too. It's a fun story that does a surprisingly good job being a solid self contained Punisher story and also a Christmas special without going off in a comic vein that would have been really easy given the topic. There is something really admirable about Aaron's ability to take the task of a holiday special seriously and deliver a GOOD STORY rather than an easy joke.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Comics Out November 26, 2008 (Morrison's Batman)
Spoilers on Batman, below.
The Umbrella Academy: Dallas #1. This was basically good -- the art work was fun and those time guys had a cool design. Gabriel Ba is why I get this book. The colors on the battle sequence were particularly nice, and I would like to see more comics embrace a really garish color scheme -- garish colors are such a staple of comics, and obviously a book like the JLA is going to have a mess of color, but I do like to see a book that takes it to a new level just to make it feel fresh. Umbrella Academy is not of the caliber of something like Dark Knight Strikes Again, but that is another book that really does a great job with color. Give me the color palate of Courage the Cowardly Dog or Chowder any day. But I am impatient to get to the meat of this post, so I am moving on quickly.
Batman 681. Tim Callahan is a good critic when you give him a good comic book, but in my mind, particularly with Morrison, he is far too forgiving of error. I do not mean for this post to be an attack on Callahan, but since he is one of the few critics I read on a regular basis he is going to have to stand in for some beliefs held by the comics community as a whole that I find frustrating. Here is what he writes about Batman 681 on his blog:
I do think Batman #681 is a three-and-a-half-star book, since it does plenty of things really well (basically all of the Joker stuff until his ambulance-fall-off-the bridge, the Club of Heroes arrival, the super-plans of the Batman, the flashback with the poison, the betting on Batman, the Zur En Arrh/Zorro in Arkham bit) and other things not so well (the rushed fragments of ending, the lack of a resolution or full explanation, some of the artwork). Still, as I mentioned in a comment on my annotations, I think Batman has been "by far" the best Marvel or DC ongoing series over the past six months. There's more to discuss in any single issue of this series than in a year's worth of other mainstream comics. And anything that provokes thought and discussion is better than something that doesn't as far as I'm concerned.
I disagree about the Joker stuff being on the good side: although there is something wonderfully ironic about his chilling speech to the Black Glove about how awesome Batman is and how they are totally unprepared, I was not crazy about his menacing "I'll get you later" fade out after killing a guy Morrison forgot to make me care about. The ambulance fall was, as I think Callahan implies, weak (though Damian's "What was an ambulance?" was a pretty awesome thing to say) -- coincidence is almost always lazy writing even when it is masquerading as a theme with all the gambling (the red and black did not add up to much more than a deck of cards and a color scheme Satan is associated with). I know this is supposed to be a crossover and I was only reading this book, but I hated the Club of Heroes arrival because they showed up heroically to fix a bunch of problems that I learned about the moment AFTER they arrived. The city is practically saved before I knew it was in trouble -- where is the drama there? The coffin flashback to Eastern training improved not at all on Kill Bill, and even the Princess Bride managed to think of a more interesting way to deal with poisoned cups. "ZurEnArrh" turns out to be derived from Thomas Wayne's claim that Gotham would probably put someone like Zorro in Arkham. Zorro in Arkham = Zur En Arrh. I don't hate that, I might even like it. It is an interesting bit of nonsense anyway. But it is such a mess because of the Dr. Hurt/Thomas Wayne connection -- the Batman of ZurEnArrh is derived from the REAL Thomas Wayne and that is what allowed Batman to beat Hurt? But Hurt knew the "trigger word" so maybe Hurt is Thomas Wayne? or I guess Satan just knows everything? What?
But even if I agreed with Callahan that all this was good, I cannot imagine giving a book three and a half stars for bad artwork -- the first thing that bothered me about page three, for example, was that it looks like Batman has a mustache and goatee; then I realized it was just shadow; then I realized that buried alive THERE IS NO LIGHT SOURCE -- maybe Daniel just wants US to be able to see in the dark, which makes sense for the scene (you cannot have three pages of black, because unlike the Tarantino comics have no access to sound), but then how are you determining where shadows fall? One the one hand this is just a quibble. On the other hand Daniels is just to lazy to care; Frank Quitely would never have let such a dumb thing on the page. "Rushed fragments of an ending" is a serious complaint alone worth more than half a star, especially since Morrison has been telling us for a year that his whole run was leading to Batman RIP. Morrison can stick a hell of an ending even on very messy books (New X-Men, Invisibles) but there was no saving this story. Dr. Hurt is who now? Satan maybe, Satan who lies about being Thomas Wayne? Alfred and Batman dismiss the idea, but I cannot tell if we are supposed to take their dismissals of the possibility at face value: if Hurt is OBVIOUSLY not Thomas Wayne why does he say he is? If it is some kind of mess with your enemy tactic it is really ineffective since neither Alfred or Batman seem phased by the issue. If the issue is in doubt why does it not bother Alfred or Batman more?
Tim Callahan writes -- and again I do not mean to go after him specifically, he is just a good example of what a lot of comics fans are saying right now -- "I think Batman has been 'by far' the best Marvel or DC ongoing series over the past six months." I do not know what "by far" is doing in quotes, but I am even less sure that this really the compliment Callahan implies it is.
And now we come to the kicker: "anything that provokes thought and discussion is better than something that doesn't as far as I'm concerned." Any major character written by an ambitious major writer that comes out this messy is going to generate a lot of discussion. A lot of that discussion is caused by a debate between people who see errors ("He implicitly promised us a big reveal on the identity of the Black Glove and Dr. Hurt, and he did not deliver") and justification of said "errors" as virtues ("Do you know how to read? He pretty clearly identified him as Satan. He just did not want to be OBVIOUS about it" or "ambivalence is a hallmark of literary fiction and even the best of recent genre fiction: look at the end of Heart of Darkness, the novel from which this issue gets its title, or even the ending of the Sopranos"). An comic book may spark a lot of debate, and the debate may be good, but that does not mean the comic book is good. If my friend gets shot in the face, it may make me think hard about my life, the brevity of it, and the people I care about, but the fact that it generated some good soul searching on my part does not mean it was a good thing that my friend got shot in the face, yeah?
A few points that I could not fit in the discussion above, just general details about the issue being a mess.
WAS Thomas Wayne and co drug addicts or is that just Hurt messing with Batman?
Batman stops being Batman (Nightwing with the cowl) but then someone else becomes Batman (the Bat-signal at the end: maybe Damian takes up the job? Is this what the next story will be about: Who is the new Batman and where is Bruce Wayne?)
I am pretty sure Bruce Wayne's black glove punching through the glass to get Hurt leader of the Black Glove -- and going down in a flaming helicopter is a lame ending by the way -- is ironic: "The Black Glove always wins" says Hurt, and indeed he is right, though not in the way he intended. There is something I really like about how Morrison wants to end this big epic with Batman punching someone, something of the pure superhero concept there. But the irony of Batman's black glove is marred because Morrison had him thinking for a moment he WAS the Black Glove, his own worst enemy, and this just muddies already muddy water.
Heart of Darkness is an overrated book, but that is a whole other post. Harold Bloom says Conrad ends with this non-sense about "The Horror! the Horror!" not because the character is in the dark, but because the author is in the dark. That seems to me to be going to far, as I think Conrad was genuinely interested in radical ambiguity and did his best with it. How this compares to what Morrison did here I do not know, but I think Morrison is just making mistakes.
I loved the end of the Sopranos, but that ambiguous ending is nothing like Morrison's, as it relied on the worship people had for the Sopranos, and the fact that this was it -- there was never going to be any more. As Brad pointed out to me, the end of the show was like a friend dying -- all you want is just five more minutes with the person, but you are always going to want five more minutes and the thing has to end. Many people thought Tony got killed at the end, and I can see the virtues of that argument, but in a larger way the show itself got killed. People expected a violent and shocking conclusion to a show that had always been about understatement, and Chase delivered tenfold on both levels: nothing was more violent and shocking, but also more understated, than that final, jarring, fade to black.
The Umbrella Academy: Dallas #1. This was basically good -- the art work was fun and those time guys had a cool design. Gabriel Ba is why I get this book. The colors on the battle sequence were particularly nice, and I would like to see more comics embrace a really garish color scheme -- garish colors are such a staple of comics, and obviously a book like the JLA is going to have a mess of color, but I do like to see a book that takes it to a new level just to make it feel fresh. Umbrella Academy is not of the caliber of something like Dark Knight Strikes Again, but that is another book that really does a great job with color. Give me the color palate of Courage the Cowardly Dog or Chowder any day. But I am impatient to get to the meat of this post, so I am moving on quickly.
Batman 681. Tim Callahan is a good critic when you give him a good comic book, but in my mind, particularly with Morrison, he is far too forgiving of error. I do not mean for this post to be an attack on Callahan, but since he is one of the few critics I read on a regular basis he is going to have to stand in for some beliefs held by the comics community as a whole that I find frustrating. Here is what he writes about Batman 681 on his blog:
I do think Batman #681 is a three-and-a-half-star book, since it does plenty of things really well (basically all of the Joker stuff until his ambulance-fall-off-the bridge, the Club of Heroes arrival, the super-plans of the Batman, the flashback with the poison, the betting on Batman, the Zur En Arrh/Zorro in Arkham bit) and other things not so well (the rushed fragments of ending, the lack of a resolution or full explanation, some of the artwork). Still, as I mentioned in a comment on my annotations, I think Batman has been "by far" the best Marvel or DC ongoing series over the past six months. There's more to discuss in any single issue of this series than in a year's worth of other mainstream comics. And anything that provokes thought and discussion is better than something that doesn't as far as I'm concerned.
I disagree about the Joker stuff being on the good side: although there is something wonderfully ironic about his chilling speech to the Black Glove about how awesome Batman is and how they are totally unprepared, I was not crazy about his menacing "I'll get you later" fade out after killing a guy Morrison forgot to make me care about. The ambulance fall was, as I think Callahan implies, weak (though Damian's "What was an ambulance?" was a pretty awesome thing to say) -- coincidence is almost always lazy writing even when it is masquerading as a theme with all the gambling (the red and black did not add up to much more than a deck of cards and a color scheme Satan is associated with). I know this is supposed to be a crossover and I was only reading this book, but I hated the Club of Heroes arrival because they showed up heroically to fix a bunch of problems that I learned about the moment AFTER they arrived. The city is practically saved before I knew it was in trouble -- where is the drama there? The coffin flashback to Eastern training improved not at all on Kill Bill, and even the Princess Bride managed to think of a more interesting way to deal with poisoned cups. "ZurEnArrh" turns out to be derived from Thomas Wayne's claim that Gotham would probably put someone like Zorro in Arkham. Zorro in Arkham = Zur En Arrh. I don't hate that, I might even like it. It is an interesting bit of nonsense anyway. But it is such a mess because of the Dr. Hurt/Thomas Wayne connection -- the Batman of ZurEnArrh is derived from the REAL Thomas Wayne and that is what allowed Batman to beat Hurt? But Hurt knew the "trigger word" so maybe Hurt is Thomas Wayne? or I guess Satan just knows everything? What?
But even if I agreed with Callahan that all this was good, I cannot imagine giving a book three and a half stars for bad artwork -- the first thing that bothered me about page three, for example, was that it looks like Batman has a mustache and goatee; then I realized it was just shadow; then I realized that buried alive THERE IS NO LIGHT SOURCE -- maybe Daniel just wants US to be able to see in the dark, which makes sense for the scene (you cannot have three pages of black, because unlike the Tarantino comics have no access to sound), but then how are you determining where shadows fall? One the one hand this is just a quibble. On the other hand Daniels is just to lazy to care; Frank Quitely would never have let such a dumb thing on the page. "Rushed fragments of an ending" is a serious complaint alone worth more than half a star, especially since Morrison has been telling us for a year that his whole run was leading to Batman RIP. Morrison can stick a hell of an ending even on very messy books (New X-Men, Invisibles) but there was no saving this story. Dr. Hurt is who now? Satan maybe, Satan who lies about being Thomas Wayne? Alfred and Batman dismiss the idea, but I cannot tell if we are supposed to take their dismissals of the possibility at face value: if Hurt is OBVIOUSLY not Thomas Wayne why does he say he is? If it is some kind of mess with your enemy tactic it is really ineffective since neither Alfred or Batman seem phased by the issue. If the issue is in doubt why does it not bother Alfred or Batman more?
Tim Callahan writes -- and again I do not mean to go after him specifically, he is just a good example of what a lot of comics fans are saying right now -- "I think Batman has been 'by far' the best Marvel or DC ongoing series over the past six months." I do not know what "by far" is doing in quotes, but I am even less sure that this really the compliment Callahan implies it is.
And now we come to the kicker: "anything that provokes thought and discussion is better than something that doesn't as far as I'm concerned." Any major character written by an ambitious major writer that comes out this messy is going to generate a lot of discussion. A lot of that discussion is caused by a debate between people who see errors ("He implicitly promised us a big reveal on the identity of the Black Glove and Dr. Hurt, and he did not deliver") and justification of said "errors" as virtues ("Do you know how to read? He pretty clearly identified him as Satan. He just did not want to be OBVIOUS about it" or "ambivalence is a hallmark of literary fiction and even the best of recent genre fiction: look at the end of Heart of Darkness, the novel from which this issue gets its title, or even the ending of the Sopranos"). An comic book may spark a lot of debate, and the debate may be good, but that does not mean the comic book is good. If my friend gets shot in the face, it may make me think hard about my life, the brevity of it, and the people I care about, but the fact that it generated some good soul searching on my part does not mean it was a good thing that my friend got shot in the face, yeah?
A few points that I could not fit in the discussion above, just general details about the issue being a mess.
WAS Thomas Wayne and co drug addicts or is that just Hurt messing with Batman?
Batman stops being Batman (Nightwing with the cowl) but then someone else becomes Batman (the Bat-signal at the end: maybe Damian takes up the job? Is this what the next story will be about: Who is the new Batman and where is Bruce Wayne?)
I am pretty sure Bruce Wayne's black glove punching through the glass to get Hurt leader of the Black Glove -- and going down in a flaming helicopter is a lame ending by the way -- is ironic: "The Black Glove always wins" says Hurt, and indeed he is right, though not in the way he intended. There is something I really like about how Morrison wants to end this big epic with Batman punching someone, something of the pure superhero concept there. But the irony of Batman's black glove is marred because Morrison had him thinking for a moment he WAS the Black Glove, his own worst enemy, and this just muddies already muddy water.
Heart of Darkness is an overrated book, but that is a whole other post. Harold Bloom says Conrad ends with this non-sense about "The Horror! the Horror!" not because the character is in the dark, but because the author is in the dark. That seems to me to be going to far, as I think Conrad was genuinely interested in radical ambiguity and did his best with it. How this compares to what Morrison did here I do not know, but I think Morrison is just making mistakes.
I loved the end of the Sopranos, but that ambiguous ending is nothing like Morrison's, as it relied on the worship people had for the Sopranos, and the fact that this was it -- there was never going to be any more. As Brad pointed out to me, the end of the show was like a friend dying -- all you want is just five more minutes with the person, but you are always going to want five more minutes and the thing has to end. Many people thought Tony got killed at the end, and I can see the virtues of that argument, but in a larger way the show itself got killed. People expected a violent and shocking conclusion to a show that had always been about understatement, and Chase delivered tenfold on both levels: nothing was more violent and shocking, but also more understated, than that final, jarring, fade to black.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Comics Out Wednesday November 19, 2008 (Post #1000)
I did not pick up any comics this week, but this is still an important post: POST #1000. Many thanks to the guest bloggers who got us there.
Review, discuss, and recommend this week's comics and comics news.
Review, discuss, and recommend this week's comics and comics news.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Comics Out Wednesday November 12, 2008
Again, I did not pick up anything this week. In the future, when I pick up no comics maybe I will get a trade -- I can try something new and give some first impressions here: things you folks have recommended. Unfortunately, this does not help us out today.
I did pick up a half-box. I found it inexpensive, and much better constructed than Superman Returns.
How to you guys store your comics? I have all mine in half boxes under the bed without (gasp!) bags or boards.
I did pick up a half-box. I found it inexpensive, and much better constructed than Superman Returns.
How to you guys store your comics? I have all mine in half boxes under the bed without (gasp!) bags or boards.
Friday, November 07, 2008
Comics Out November 5, 2008 (A Rant About The Comic Book Industry)
I got the Bachalo Spiderman book I missed last week, and I really like Bachalo and it was pretty good but that is not what I want to talk about this week. I want to talk about the fact that I did not pick anything up this week, and about the state of the comic book industry generally. This is based off of a talk I had with Brad last night.
With All Star Superman and Casanova on hiatus I do not have any books to really GET EXCITED ABOUT except for All Star Batman which comes out too infrequently. Not that there are not good books being published, especially by Fraction, but there is nothing coming out now that I await with breathless anticipation, as in the past I waited for The Authority, certain arcs of New X-Men, Planetary, and Dark Knight Strikes Again, and recently Fraction's Iron Fist - perfect meetings of concept and art and writer.
Someone asked Joss Whedon is he would continue to write comics or go back to TV and he said something like "I want to feed my children solid food." I do not know what the pay rate is in the comic book world -- does anyone know what comic book writers bring in on an annual basis -- but it does not seem to be enough. So you get talented guys like Bendis, who was a writer I was once very excited about what with Powers and Fortune and Glory, spreading themselves thin writing six books a month with minimal content. I do not think Bendis is untalented, or greedy: I think he has bills to pay and and I can respect that, though I dropped his books a long time ago. I think the smart move for guys like Bendis is to isolate a portion of their genius in books like Powers, so that they are consistently (if infrequently) making something perfect, make their other books to pay their bills, and look to smart fans to see the difference between the two. I lost interest in Powers in part because I think Bendis did -- he took imaginative energy away from that book and spread it thin and I stopped following him. Warren Ellis did the same thing with Planetary -- it was clear that he had lost a lot of interest in that book, especially in issue 26, but he never focused his powers in quite the same way again: it is not that Ellis is a bad writer, but again, he has spread himself thin. I can see the brilliance in lines and pages and issues, but never in whole runs after Planetary 14.
Then there is the movie industry, which has turned comic books stepping stone rather than an endpoint. Mark Millar whose work I quite liked for a long time, especially Ultimate X-Men, now writes movie scripts in comic book form (Kick Ass) when his writing does not just totally dip into mean, abject unpleasantness (Kick Ass again), and occasional total boredom (Fantastic Four). Frank Miller now splits him time between comic books and film.
Alan Moore retired, though before he did he struck the right balance between works of total genius (The first two League books, Promethea) and additional, forgettable stuff (Tomorrow Stories, much of Tom Strong). Over and over again he would return to stuff dripping in nostalgia -- like his thousandth painstakingly perfect rendition of some silver age tone and form -- but this never interfered with he best works (except maybe in the last volume of the League, but that may be a special case).
Grant Morrison is planning on retiring from superhero stuff except for Batman. I do not know if he is serious about that, or what his independent post-Final Crisis books will look like (they may be brilliant, as We3 was). But for now a b-list story from his JLA run has been elevated into some kind of major crossover event (because again, that is how you pay bills), which was not a complete disaster until it turned out the book needs fill in artists well below the caliber of JG Jones, including a fill in for the entire last issue. As we discovered in Final Crisis four J.G. Jones is doing a LOT to keep this book afloat, and when he leaves the story -- already maybe wonk-y --just sinks. And then you get stuff like Final Crisis: Submit which can serve no purpose other than to just add a little money to his pocket: the story is not bad necessarily but it is completely uninspired and unnecessary, especially as part of a book that prides itself on jumping past major moments in a maybe interesting way (jury is still out on that). His Batman RIP story is similarly maybe pretty good, except that it can be hard to tell behind the pencils of Tony Daniels. I once felt bad for Morrison and his trouble with artists, but now I think that often outside of Quitely he considers himself done when he finishes a script. The industry has been working out how to get the most out of Event Crossovers (Spin Offs? A 12 part story that runs through four books over three months?), but Seven Soldiers got closest to something really great. Seven Soldiers had a lot of potential -- though it tanked the ending -- but the format was exactly right: you get seven guys putting four books out in whatever time period (I forget how long Seven Soldiers lasted), and because the books have an odd relationship, the different styles become an asset rather than a detriment, and in any case can have a kind of internal consistency in their own titles (disregarding Mr. Miracle). Matt Fraction et al. did something similar for a while on Iron Fist where the brilliant David Aja was allowed to handle the main story, but a monthly schedule was kept up because of isolated flashbacks drawn by other artists so Aja might only be drawing 16 pages a moth or something.
Meanwhile guys like Bachalo and Ashley Wood languish without a writer to match their talents; Mignola does not even draw Hellboy anymore (though at least he found a suitable replacement). Brad told me that a lot of the best "comic book artists" do not even draw comics: story-boarding in Hollywood pays so much more.
I have no idea if this is practical -- and even if it was my voice is hardly going to make it happen -- but I want to see writers and artists who can recognize in their own writing the difference between works of genius and stuff to pay bills; I want that distinction subtly communicated to discerning fans like myself through a lack of fill-in artists and a willingness to let the book come out rarely as long as it is just right; and I want the film industry and the comics industry to get some kind of symbiosis going, rather than the film industry interfering with comics and comic book writers when certain trends strike Hollywood; and I want comic book writers to be paid more. Hell, double the price of Casanova and All Star Superman and All Star Batman. I will pay it just to keep those books just the way they are, and I will buy any books a writer puts out as long as that writer has one work of absolute greatness coming out on some kind of regular basis.
I am not asking any writer or artist to do a better job than they are doing right now; I just want to see what we have redistributed differently. The comic book industry has a lot of talent, and someone needs to be making sure a handful of books are perfect 10s, while the rest of the books are 4s. Because right now I am seeing too many 6s, and it is leaving me unsatisfied.
With All Star Superman and Casanova on hiatus I do not have any books to really GET EXCITED ABOUT except for All Star Batman which comes out too infrequently. Not that there are not good books being published, especially by Fraction, but there is nothing coming out now that I await with breathless anticipation, as in the past I waited for The Authority, certain arcs of New X-Men, Planetary, and Dark Knight Strikes Again, and recently Fraction's Iron Fist - perfect meetings of concept and art and writer.
Someone asked Joss Whedon is he would continue to write comics or go back to TV and he said something like "I want to feed my children solid food." I do not know what the pay rate is in the comic book world -- does anyone know what comic book writers bring in on an annual basis -- but it does not seem to be enough. So you get talented guys like Bendis, who was a writer I was once very excited about what with Powers and Fortune and Glory, spreading themselves thin writing six books a month with minimal content. I do not think Bendis is untalented, or greedy: I think he has bills to pay and and I can respect that, though I dropped his books a long time ago. I think the smart move for guys like Bendis is to isolate a portion of their genius in books like Powers, so that they are consistently (if infrequently) making something perfect, make their other books to pay their bills, and look to smart fans to see the difference between the two. I lost interest in Powers in part because I think Bendis did -- he took imaginative energy away from that book and spread it thin and I stopped following him. Warren Ellis did the same thing with Planetary -- it was clear that he had lost a lot of interest in that book, especially in issue 26, but he never focused his powers in quite the same way again: it is not that Ellis is a bad writer, but again, he has spread himself thin. I can see the brilliance in lines and pages and issues, but never in whole runs after Planetary 14.
Then there is the movie industry, which has turned comic books stepping stone rather than an endpoint. Mark Millar whose work I quite liked for a long time, especially Ultimate X-Men, now writes movie scripts in comic book form (Kick Ass) when his writing does not just totally dip into mean, abject unpleasantness (Kick Ass again), and occasional total boredom (Fantastic Four). Frank Miller now splits him time between comic books and film.
Alan Moore retired, though before he did he struck the right balance between works of total genius (The first two League books, Promethea) and additional, forgettable stuff (Tomorrow Stories, much of Tom Strong). Over and over again he would return to stuff dripping in nostalgia -- like his thousandth painstakingly perfect rendition of some silver age tone and form -- but this never interfered with he best works (except maybe in the last volume of the League, but that may be a special case).
Grant Morrison is planning on retiring from superhero stuff except for Batman. I do not know if he is serious about that, or what his independent post-Final Crisis books will look like (they may be brilliant, as We3 was). But for now a b-list story from his JLA run has been elevated into some kind of major crossover event (because again, that is how you pay bills), which was not a complete disaster until it turned out the book needs fill in artists well below the caliber of JG Jones, including a fill in for the entire last issue. As we discovered in Final Crisis four J.G. Jones is doing a LOT to keep this book afloat, and when he leaves the story -- already maybe wonk-y --just sinks. And then you get stuff like Final Crisis: Submit which can serve no purpose other than to just add a little money to his pocket: the story is not bad necessarily but it is completely uninspired and unnecessary, especially as part of a book that prides itself on jumping past major moments in a maybe interesting way (jury is still out on that). His Batman RIP story is similarly maybe pretty good, except that it can be hard to tell behind the pencils of Tony Daniels. I once felt bad for Morrison and his trouble with artists, but now I think that often outside of Quitely he considers himself done when he finishes a script. The industry has been working out how to get the most out of Event Crossovers (Spin Offs? A 12 part story that runs through four books over three months?), but Seven Soldiers got closest to something really great. Seven Soldiers had a lot of potential -- though it tanked the ending -- but the format was exactly right: you get seven guys putting four books out in whatever time period (I forget how long Seven Soldiers lasted), and because the books have an odd relationship, the different styles become an asset rather than a detriment, and in any case can have a kind of internal consistency in their own titles (disregarding Mr. Miracle). Matt Fraction et al. did something similar for a while on Iron Fist where the brilliant David Aja was allowed to handle the main story, but a monthly schedule was kept up because of isolated flashbacks drawn by other artists so Aja might only be drawing 16 pages a moth or something.
Meanwhile guys like Bachalo and Ashley Wood languish without a writer to match their talents; Mignola does not even draw Hellboy anymore (though at least he found a suitable replacement). Brad told me that a lot of the best "comic book artists" do not even draw comics: story-boarding in Hollywood pays so much more.
I have no idea if this is practical -- and even if it was my voice is hardly going to make it happen -- but I want to see writers and artists who can recognize in their own writing the difference between works of genius and stuff to pay bills; I want that distinction subtly communicated to discerning fans like myself through a lack of fill-in artists and a willingness to let the book come out rarely as long as it is just right; and I want the film industry and the comics industry to get some kind of symbiosis going, rather than the film industry interfering with comics and comic book writers when certain trends strike Hollywood; and I want comic book writers to be paid more. Hell, double the price of Casanova and All Star Superman and All Star Batman. I will pay it just to keep those books just the way they are, and I will buy any books a writer puts out as long as that writer has one work of absolute greatness coming out on some kind of regular basis.
I am not asking any writer or artist to do a better job than they are doing right now; I just want to see what we have redistributed differently. The comic book industry has a lot of talent, and someone needs to be making sure a handful of books are perfect 10s, while the rest of the books are 4s. Because right now I am seeing too many 6s, and it is leaving me unsatisfied.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Comics Out October 29, 2008
I did not get a chance to hit the comic book store this week -- although I know a Bachalo Spiderman book hit and I love all things Bachalo. Review, discuss, and recommend this weeks comic books and comic book news.
Is anyone else getting burnt out on comics? With All Star Superman done, and Casanova on hiatus, with no interest in Secret Invasion and Final Crisis getting on my nerves with fill in artists, I feel like I need more books to get really excited about. Tell me what I need to be getting.
Is anyone else getting burnt out on comics? With All Star Superman done, and Casanova on hiatus, with no interest in Secret Invasion and Final Crisis getting on my nerves with fill in artists, I feel like I need more books to get really excited about. Tell me what I need to be getting.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Comics Out October 22, 2008 (Final Crisis 4)
Final Crisis Submit. This bored me to no end. There were some New X-Men stories that struck me as shockingly bog-standard superhero fare, and this is going to join that group. It is what Victorian art critic John Ruskin would call "furniture pictures" -- not good enough to deserve praise, but not bad enough to deserve complaint. This criminal guy doesn't like superheroes, which you can tell because he says it over and over. He meets Black Lightning and he and his family bicker. Then the drive a bus away from monsters. The criminal guy -- he has the same powers as the bad guy from the Elektra movie. Then, ironically, he gets a superhero's powers and responsibility. The last page makes it clear that we are supposed to be devastated by the fact that the hero has become one of the bad guys, but I did not know this guy before, and was not in the course of this issue made to care about him. The whole cast of this issue is black -- is that significant in some way? This cannot be the first all-black superhero comic book (Milestone comics was a whole line like this), but I got the feeling that it was important for some reason. It seemed notable, but did not really add anything significant to the comic as far as I could see.
Final Crisis 4. As you all know, nothing bothers me more than fill in artists. I have no patience for them, unless they are isolated, as in Fraction's Iron Fist, to some kind of flash-back or something. I meet a lot of people who just do not care about things like aesthetic unity, or enjoy the artistic chaos -- a mode Morrison played with in the second to last issue of the Invisibles, and which I thought was a total storytelling failure, especially compared to the picture perfect Quitely Invisibles finale. Final Crisis 4 brings in a fill in artist and worse -- the final issue will be drawn entirely by a fill in for the fill in. While I will see this through to the end, it now has no hope for me of cracking into the top tier of Morrison stuff (We3, All Star Superman, etc.). At this point it seems like a throwaway idea for an issue of his 1996 JLA run. At the end of issue 3, it seemed like the whole world was taken over by the anti-life equation, but here it turns out there are a surprising number of survivors -- I guess since they all have stuff to do in their own books and the Final Crisis spin offs you can hardly make them all into evil Justifiers, though that would at least have had the virtue of thinking the thought all the way out to the end. The Ray is delivering underground Daily Planet papers like Black Lightning was, and this is boring -- I think maybe Morrison likes the bit of Americana here, but it is not working for me. The Dark Gods as animal hybrids is also just not as visually interesting as the Kirby Cosmic Insanity, although they do have there really creepy moments -- the final page is a thing of beauty, especially that weird mise-en-scene. Barbara says "They've wounded our people, our minds, or planet in ways we can barely imagine" and in ways I think Morrison and his guys are incapable of showing, because I have not seen enough to believe her. I will also say that I hate the anti-life equation thing: it seems like looking for a moment will turn you into a zombie, but then Barbara saw it "for a moment" and was able to shake it off -- why everyone can't do this I do not know, and I really do not see how all these Superheroes are fine -- did they just never check their email? And the language if it is boring: Work; Consume; Die; Judge Others; Condemn the Different; Exploit the Weak; Anti-Life Makes it One; All is One; Darkseid = Self; Justifiers. BORING: I get it, they are like mean people we all know. I know the spread of superhero faces is supposed be grim, but a lot of them seem to be fine, according to the screen, a fact confirmed by the pages that follow. The Black Canary Green Arrow scene was boring, but I Oliver vs the Justifiers was fun, because of how much the typify everything he hates. What was going on with Mr. Miracle I do not know. This is the first time I have seen him since he died pretty much the exact same way at the hand of the exact same guy at end of Seven Soldiers -- is this some kind of weird commentary on the double contradictory deaths of Orion in Final Crisis 1 and Death of the New Gods? I do not know. But the final page was great. I wish the whole issue was a great as that final page.
If the world was just, Morrison would make tons of money off of prestige products like All Star Superman and would not have to spread himself thing on a host of weaker books like Final Crisis Submit, and Superman Beyond 3D.
Final Crisis 4. As you all know, nothing bothers me more than fill in artists. I have no patience for them, unless they are isolated, as in Fraction's Iron Fist, to some kind of flash-back or something. I meet a lot of people who just do not care about things like aesthetic unity, or enjoy the artistic chaos -- a mode Morrison played with in the second to last issue of the Invisibles, and which I thought was a total storytelling failure, especially compared to the picture perfect Quitely Invisibles finale. Final Crisis 4 brings in a fill in artist and worse -- the final issue will be drawn entirely by a fill in for the fill in. While I will see this through to the end, it now has no hope for me of cracking into the top tier of Morrison stuff (We3, All Star Superman, etc.). At this point it seems like a throwaway idea for an issue of his 1996 JLA run. At the end of issue 3, it seemed like the whole world was taken over by the anti-life equation, but here it turns out there are a surprising number of survivors -- I guess since they all have stuff to do in their own books and the Final Crisis spin offs you can hardly make them all into evil Justifiers, though that would at least have had the virtue of thinking the thought all the way out to the end. The Ray is delivering underground Daily Planet papers like Black Lightning was, and this is boring -- I think maybe Morrison likes the bit of Americana here, but it is not working for me. The Dark Gods as animal hybrids is also just not as visually interesting as the Kirby Cosmic Insanity, although they do have there really creepy moments -- the final page is a thing of beauty, especially that weird mise-en-scene. Barbara says "They've wounded our people, our minds, or planet in ways we can barely imagine" and in ways I think Morrison and his guys are incapable of showing, because I have not seen enough to believe her. I will also say that I hate the anti-life equation thing: it seems like looking for a moment will turn you into a zombie, but then Barbara saw it "for a moment" and was able to shake it off -- why everyone can't do this I do not know, and I really do not see how all these Superheroes are fine -- did they just never check their email? And the language if it is boring: Work; Consume; Die; Judge Others; Condemn the Different; Exploit the Weak; Anti-Life Makes it One; All is One; Darkseid = Self; Justifiers. BORING: I get it, they are like mean people we all know. I know the spread of superhero faces is supposed be grim, but a lot of them seem to be fine, according to the screen, a fact confirmed by the pages that follow. The Black Canary Green Arrow scene was boring, but I Oliver vs the Justifiers was fun, because of how much the typify everything he hates. What was going on with Mr. Miracle I do not know. This is the first time I have seen him since he died pretty much the exact same way at the hand of the exact same guy at end of Seven Soldiers -- is this some kind of weird commentary on the double contradictory deaths of Orion in Final Crisis 1 and Death of the New Gods? I do not know. But the final page was great. I wish the whole issue was a great as that final page.
If the world was just, Morrison would make tons of money off of prestige products like All Star Superman and would not have to spread himself thing on a host of weaker books like Final Crisis Submit, and Superman Beyond 3D.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Comics Out October 16, 2008
I did not get anything this week, or see any comics news that grabbed my attention, but did anyone pick up the IDW reprints of Grant Morrison's 1990s Doctor Who stuff? Is it any good?
Also, I feel like it has been a long time since Final Crisis 3 and Superman Beyond 3D. Is any of the other Final Crisis stuff worth getting?
Review, recommend, and discuss this week's comics and comics news.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Comics Out October 8, 2008
I did not pick up anything this week, but do let me know what is going on. I know they announced that Green Lantern: Blackest Night will involve dead superheroes and villains coming back from the dead, which seems like a good way to one-up Marvel Zombies.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Comics Out September 10, 2008
I wanted the misprinted All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder with the curse words, but it does not really seem worth the trouble or the price. (Though if you have one, and are looking to sell for less for 25 bucks, let me know). My comic book store guy was surprised: "You're not a collector, are you?" I did not know what to tell him. I just love Frank Miller and what I love about Frank Miller is how over the top he is. A curse word variant just makes me laugh. Two things I wanted to say about this.
1. Is there any genuine claim -- rather than conspiracy theory -- that DC did this on purpose? I wonder if "R-Rated" variants will become the new hologram covers.
2. I have not read any surprise over the physical mechanics of how this went wrong, but I for one was really taken aback by the fact that whenever I see a black box in a dialogue balloon there is a real curse word under it. I always assumed that the script, and especially the printed page, just said "I'm the [insert seven letter black box here] Batgirl." I mean, this opens up a really weird dimension to the comic book page doesn't it? This is a step away from learning that someone draws an anatomically correct Superman BEFORE drawing the uniform on top of him. Wait till DC accidently prints that...
1. Is there any genuine claim -- rather than conspiracy theory -- that DC did this on purpose? I wonder if "R-Rated" variants will become the new hologram covers.
2. I have not read any surprise over the physical mechanics of how this went wrong, but I for one was really taken aback by the fact that whenever I see a black box in a dialogue balloon there is a real curse word under it. I always assumed that the script, and especially the printed page, just said "I'm the [insert seven letter black box here] Batgirl." I mean, this opens up a really weird dimension to the comic book page doesn't it? This is a step away from learning that someone draws an anatomically correct Superman BEFORE drawing the uniform on top of him. Wait till DC accidently prints that...
Friday, August 22, 2008
Comics Out Aug 20, 2008
My comic shop AGAIN had some kind of shipping problem (which they said effected the whole northeast -- true?). But review, discuss, and recommend this week's comics, and comics news.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Comics Out July 30, 2008
Again, I picked up nothing this week, as I am waiting for trades on a lot of books -- but do review your comics here and mention whatever was, for you, the most interesting things from San Diego Comic Con this week.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Comics Out July 16, 2008 and SPOILER FREE DARK KNIGHT REVIEWS WANTED
See here's the thing: by switching to trades on some of the books I read, I do not seem to be picking up many comics on a weekly basis anymore. I may have to rethink this.
Review, discuss and recommend the comics out this week and react to the new Dark Knight movie, without spoiling anything. The AV Club and Slate loved it.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Comics Out July 10, 2008
I have switched to trades on a lot of titles, so I did not pick up anything this week. But this is the spot to review, recommend, and discuss this week's comics. Proper reviews of the stuff you picked up this week would be great.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Comics Out July 2, 2008
Astonishing X-Men 25. Ellis is not my favorite writer, but two things are going to make me stay with this book, at least in the short term. First, I think Bianchi is a really interesting artist (especially on a book like this); I am not sure I love him, and I have no idea how Wolverine dislocated his hip on the cover, and I do not know why everyone is doing "Big Arms" when they appear in street clothes, and the muddy colors might drive me up the wall, but it sort of has my attention. Though the process of writing that sentence sort of made me change my mind about him. Second, I am a sucker for the X-Men. I am reading Claremont's entire run now thanks to Jason Powell, I invested heavily in Morrison and Whedon's runs, and Ellis is clearly set up as the new heir to the prestige stand-alone core-character X-Men run: he immediately makes fun of Whedon for the name Armor, and makes the costume choices central as Morrison and Whedon did on their first issues. The story does not have my attention at all now -- a serial killer, a genetic mutant, and spaceships (god, I do not share Ellis's fascination with spaceships, science, and random violence), especially as it lacks Morrison and Whedon's big theme openings, but I will stick with it.
Does anyone remember when Warren Ellis was all about how people who wrote superhero comics were total sellouts? And how, when someone on his forum asked him about how Morrison writing New X-Men made him feel, said "What can I say? Sometimes your friends fuck ugly girls." The more I think about it the more I think I did NOT like Astonishing X-Men 25. Still: sticking with it at least through the first arc.
Batman 678. After the conference at the Met I feel like I am seeing costumes issues everywhere -- but in both the comics I got this week, it really does seem important. My interest in this very messy, ugly and uneven run continues upwards -- the last page of this issue is the best page I have seen so far in the run, and I kind of wish Morrison had somehow started his run with it. It is everything I want to see in a Morrison Batman comic book. The magical black homeless guy ghost is kind of lame, as is much of the book, but Morrison tosses in enough interesting images and ideas -- I particularly like Hurt in the Batman outfit -- that I don't regret buying this series exactly.
In Comics News -- well actually, for no reason I can understand, I quit reading Newsarama after the format change. Something about it gets on my nerves. Let me know if I am missing anything this week.
Review, Discuss, and Recommend this week's comics. Buffy and Angel people -- feel free to spoil stuff even though I quit getting those books in issue format (and possibly in any format).
Friday, June 27, 2008
Comics Out June 25, 2008
Young Avengers Presents Hawkeye. A very nice little Matt Fraction yarn. Absurdly, I never noticed until I saw him drawing Avengers how much Brian Hitch owes to Alan Davis. (Is that right? How old is Hitch?). Anyway, Fraction's plan to surpass Morrison continues in his ability to get great artists to team up with him consistently.
Thor: Reign of Blood. Have not actually gotten around to this yet. But it looks pretty good.
Iron Fist 16. Does anyone in the comics industry have more heart than Fraction? The guy has a big heart, and does heartwarming really well. Nice to see Aja back for a whole issue two even if it is light on the ass-kickery. A nice end. The final page image from the next issue by the new team, however, does not look that promising.
Runaways 30. It was the lackluster art, with its dowdy figures, rather than the publishing schedule that made this series unpersuasive -- in spite of the fact that I am always really open to the tragic view of fate that made of the moral of this little story .
Final Crisis 2. The first page is a genius direct address to the reader, and "Spirit into Toy" is one of my favorite exclamations ever. But the various plot threads here still seem really fractured to me -- and not in a good way, and in my copy the reproduction of the art seemed wonky. Blurry maybe? Libra continues to bore, and the Alpha Lantern twist may have meant more to me if I knew who she was. The preacher bad guy New God continues to seem like a weak irony to me, and the imagery on the last page seemed odd, though I know someone is going to tell me the spacial relationships and perspective is SUPPOSED to be weird since they are bending space and time. I don't care; I don't buy it. I did really like when one character referred to the "boom tube" in quotes however -- that really captures the scene, as the New God condescendingly calls it what they pathetic Earthlings would call it. That was a nice detail.
In comics news, I hope to have a friend review Wanted as soon as possible, cause it will probably be Monday at the earliest that I get a chance to see it. And it is coming after Wall-E.
Thor: Reign of Blood. Have not actually gotten around to this yet. But it looks pretty good.
Iron Fist 16. Does anyone in the comics industry have more heart than Fraction? The guy has a big heart, and does heartwarming really well. Nice to see Aja back for a whole issue two even if it is light on the ass-kickery. A nice end. The final page image from the next issue by the new team, however, does not look that promising.
Runaways 30. It was the lackluster art, with its dowdy figures, rather than the publishing schedule that made this series unpersuasive -- in spite of the fact that I am always really open to the tragic view of fate that made of the moral of this little story .
Final Crisis 2. The first page is a genius direct address to the reader, and "Spirit into Toy" is one of my favorite exclamations ever. But the various plot threads here still seem really fractured to me -- and not in a good way, and in my copy the reproduction of the art seemed wonky. Blurry maybe? Libra continues to bore, and the Alpha Lantern twist may have meant more to me if I knew who she was. The preacher bad guy New God continues to seem like a weak irony to me, and the imagery on the last page seemed odd, though I know someone is going to tell me the spacial relationships and perspective is SUPPOSED to be weird since they are bending space and time. I don't care; I don't buy it. I did really like when one character referred to the "boom tube" in quotes however -- that really captures the scene, as the New God condescendingly calls it what they pathetic Earthlings would call it. That was a nice detail.
In comics news, I hope to have a friend review Wanted as soon as possible, cause it will probably be Monday at the earliest that I get a chance to see it. And it is coming after Wall-E.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Comics Out June 18, 2008
Angel -- I am switching to trades on Buffy and Angel from now on.
Nothing jumping out at me in Comics News.
I did see The Incredible Hulk, and it was terrible -- just borring. No chemistry or charisma from the cast at all -- how much more charming is Liv Tyler in her nintendo DS commercial than in the whole of Hulk?
And then CGI monsters punching each other over and over till one of them punched enough he won. I had flashes of Alien Versus Predator: Requiem.
Ang Lee's Hulk was on TV last night, and I watched it again. I did not fully appreciate the way this film worked the first time around -- say what you want about it, and it is not flawless, but there is something really stunning about the attempt to fuse an art house meditation on the nature of anger with a summer superhero blockbuster. The new Hulk could not even keep the anger theme straight. They decided excitement of any kind -- including sex -- would turn him into the Hulk, which really means you have no theme at all.
Nothing jumping out at me in Comics News.
I did see The Incredible Hulk, and it was terrible -- just borring. No chemistry or charisma from the cast at all -- how much more charming is Liv Tyler in her nintendo DS commercial than in the whole of Hulk?
And then CGI monsters punching each other over and over till one of them punched enough he won. I had flashes of Alien Versus Predator: Requiem.
Ang Lee's Hulk was on TV last night, and I watched it again. I did not fully appreciate the way this film worked the first time around -- say what you want about it, and it is not flawless, but there is something really stunning about the attempt to fuse an art house meditation on the nature of anger with a summer superhero blockbuster. The new Hulk could not even keep the anger theme straight. They decided excitement of any kind -- including sex -- would turn him into the Hulk, which really means you have no theme at all.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Comics Out June 11, 2008
Angel. This was all I got this week.
In Comics News, Lou Noble directed me to a great interview with Grant Morrison on Newsarama about Final Crisis in which he dismisses all the continuity DC has been building for a year:
"To reiterate, hopefully for the last time, when we started work on Final Crisis, J.G. and I had no idea what was going to happen in Countdown or Death Of The New Gods because neither of those books existed at that point. The Countdown writers were later asked to ‘seed’ material from Final Crisis and in some cases, probably due to the pressure of filling the pages of a weekly book, that seeding amounted to entire plotlines veering off in directions I had never envisaged, anticipated or planned for in Final Crisis. The way I see it readers can choose to spend the rest of the year fixating on the plot quirks of a series which has ended, or they can breathe a sight of relief, settle back and enjoy the shiny new DC universe status quo we’re setting up in the pages of Final Crisis and its satellite books. I’m sure both of these paths to enlightenment will find adherents of different temperaments."
It surprises me to no end that Morrison can work for DC and say things like this. You would think DC would rather not have one of their major writers call like 60 issues a scam based on the idea that this was all leading up to Final Crisis. Surely some people bought Countdown -- at a hefty pricetag -- only because of Final Crisis.
In Comics News, Lou Noble directed me to a great interview with Grant Morrison on Newsarama about Final Crisis in which he dismisses all the continuity DC has been building for a year:
"To reiterate, hopefully for the last time, when we started work on Final Crisis, J.G. and I had no idea what was going to happen in Countdown or Death Of The New Gods because neither of those books existed at that point. The Countdown writers were later asked to ‘seed’ material from Final Crisis and in some cases, probably due to the pressure of filling the pages of a weekly book, that seeding amounted to entire plotlines veering off in directions I had never envisaged, anticipated or planned for in Final Crisis. The way I see it readers can choose to spend the rest of the year fixating on the plot quirks of a series which has ended, or they can breathe a sight of relief, settle back and enjoy the shiny new DC universe status quo we’re setting up in the pages of Final Crisis and its satellite books. I’m sure both of these paths to enlightenment will find adherents of different temperaments."
It surprises me to no end that Morrison can work for DC and say things like this. You would think DC would rather not have one of their major writers call like 60 issues a scam based on the idea that this was all leading up to Final Crisis. Surely some people bought Countdown -- at a hefty pricetag -- only because of Final Crisis.
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