Comment Pull Quotes: Retelling Classics, and Line in the Sand Movies

[Two very good comments that got buried this week that I want to draw attention to again (I never should have lost track of comment pull quotes: that was a great feature, and exactly what this place is all about)].

Streebo wrote

Since there are no free form comments as yet - I thought I would pose this question to the blog. What is your opinion on the retelling or refashioning of classic stories?

I ask this because Rob Zombie's Halloween II was released this weekend. It is a follow up to his remake of the John Carpenter classic Halloween. Horror fans roundly criticized Zombie's Halloween remake before it was ever released - simply because it was a remake. They never gave it a chance to stand on it's own merits.

Most horror fans' arguments against Zombie's film started and ended with the fact that it was a remake of a classic - and it was not an exact copy of said classic. They were insulted by the fact that the film had an entirely different tone and aesthetic to it than John Carpenter's film. Terrence McKenna said it best, that the only obligation a work of art has is to be self-interesting.

I think perhaps I'm more accepting of remakes because of my training as a comic fan. We are used to our heroes being refashioned every three years. I think there was a question in there somewhere.

[A VERY good point. At least one difference is tradition: without a tradition people are just not willing to accept it. Once we get to the 5th Halloween reboot maybe people will be more forgiving, because there are good examples of good reboots in the past. Morrison's X-Men only makes sense if you also look back at Giant Size X-Men or whatever, but Rob Zombie has no reboot precursor or whatever.]

TelosandContext wrote

Inglorious Basterds is a new entry on my list of "line in the sand" films. If you don't like this movie, you stand on the other side of the line with THEM.

[What are the films a love for which creates a Us vs Them mentality? I have still not thought through this myself, but I like the idea that this is a category of film. (Although when I admitted I found Duck Soup to be not that funny many people called me a THEM and stopped reading this blog altogether after sending nasty notes so maybe it is not such a good idea: I repeat: MAYBE I WAS JUST HAVING A BAD DAY! THESE THINGS HAPPEN! MAYBE IF I WATCHED IT WITH YOU!).]

Comments of the Week

Three comment threads to pay attention to this week:

Doug M, in the comments to Jason's post on Uncanny X-Men 169, pointed out that CYCLOPS IS GALACTUS'S FATHER IN LAW. His point was that Maddy Prior was a bad character idea and led to all these continuity problems, but I cannot help but like this kind of insanity. It is why I read comic books.

Check out Troy Wilson's Be A Book Hero campaign, which he let people know about in the free form comments. (Be a Book Hero has also been added to the blog roll).

And check out the comments to Jason's review of God Loves, Man Kills: a surprising amount of the 38 comment thread consists of a debate between Neil Shyminsky and Plok on the quality of the Beatles' All You Need In Love, and a meta-debate about debates of this kind. You will forgive them for the unfortunate habit of referring to the song as AYNIL; from now on it we can all agree to shorten it to "All You Need."

Troy Wilson on Dark Knight (Comment Pull Quote)

In the comments to the post about the Dark Knight this week Troy wrote:

The problem wasn't that every sandwich could have a bomb in it. The problem was every sandwich did have a bomb in it.

The context of that is my revised opinion on the film, which am going to re-write here:

There is a lot to like in the Dark Knight. I thought the reports of Ledger were being overblown because of his death but I was wrong: he is worth the price of admission, and there are great moments even when he is not around, including the motorcycle v truck street fight, the interrogation room scene, and the prisoner's ferry. But the pacing is kind of a disaster. In Tim Burton's Batman there is a cute scene where Vale and Wayne ditch the huge dining hall and go have a sandwich in the kitchen. Nolan's Batman cannot have a scene like that without putting a bomb in the sandwich. It would be possible to do a good Batman movie with a two and a half hour run time, but by never giving the audience a moment of down time, the film feels four and a half hours long.

Comment Pull Quote?

I was going to get a comment pull quote, but instead, let me direct you to all the comment threads this week, in which we had a record, close to 150 comments -- concentrated especially in Scott's discussion of live Hip-Hop and Jason's post on X-Men 132; in those posts we had almost 80 comments in two days. Check them out.

Prof Fury: Comment Pull Quote (Casanova Spoilers)

In the comments section of my Casanova review this week, Prof Fury said,

"I myself am only turned on by the credits sequences of Italian neo-realist films, so I read pages of Zeph/Cass having sex with but trifling interest, of course."

Brilliant.

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.

Chris Millward on Do Previews Detract or Enhance (Comment Pull Quote)

Chris Millward wrote in the Lost season 4 episode four discussion:

What are others thoughts on watching previews vs. not?

There have been many cases where the preview goes so far beyond what was necessary to make me interested in a movie/show that I regret having watched it. I still watch previews/trailers for movies (though trepidly), but for serials such as Lost, House, Heroes, etc. I already know I'm going to watch the show. I'd rather not be thinking while watching the show, well I know that Jack is going to be standing there doing ____, and I know that at some point he will be ____, and the show only has 10 minutes left, how are they going to make that happen. There are times when exploiting foreknowledge can end up bettering the experience, but that seems rare with marketing-driven previews. For the most part, I'd rather take in the narrative in a single serving.

An example of being in love with a premise and then having too much revealed in the trailer: Children of Men. The setup, a future with no children, was amazing. For me personally, I wish they hadn't revealed in the trailer that there was a single pregnant woman. There was plenty of opportunity to build tension in the trailer (his relationship with the rebel leader, Orwellian government, a mission of great importance) without the reveal.

Anyway, its a two way street, because I definitely see the benefit to trailers. I just wish there was some way to spark interest without giving away the farm (or a significant piece of the farm).

Open question: Any instances come to mind where previews either enhanced/detracted from the viewing experience?

[I can certainly think of times when previews have done both. For the most part I do not care what happens in the story I want to see how it is told, so I do not care about spoilers. Often I need a spoiler to get me interested -- I did not start watching LOST for example until I heard about that hatch. But now with LOST I would never want anything spoiled by someone who had seen farther ahead than me -- I would not want someone to tell me about a twist. But also, with LOST, I want to be invested in it on a week to week basis. I think guessing at things is part of the experience, as is being ramped up by previews of next week's episode. On the other hand the previews really bothered me when I saw season 3 episode 6 because they called it the "fall finale" and really, it was just an episode, and I felt let down. So I am in a total muddle about this, and, like Chris would like to hear what people think.]

Heath Ledger, Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee

I would have forgotten about an off-handed comment I made a few weeks ago were it not for Streebo and Neil -- who both mentioned it on their blogs. Since I was part of the discussion I figured I would put it up here as well.

Discussing the trailer for the upcoming Batman movie, Neil Shyminsky said

"Having watched the trailer, I'm also noticing a lot of similarities between Ledger's Joker and The Crow: the aesthetic, the posture, the stare. Which all, again, seems very un-Joker-like."

At which point I responded

"Un-Joker like is only half the problem. The real problem is why on on earth you would want the Crow haunting your movie?"

It is not just that there is this connection between Heath Ledger dying before Dark Knight is out and Brandon Lee dying before The Crow came out. It is also that Brandon Lee's death itself recalls the death of his father, Bruce Lee, before finishing HIS final film, Game of Death. All three actors died playing characters whose job it was to bring death to others in a dramatic, fun way.

I think the thing that really strikes a chord with everyone in these cases is that when you discover that the actor died, you are also faced with this uncanny knowledge that they will return shortly -- when Dark Knight, The Crow or Game of Death hits theaters. It reminds us that the feeling of immediacy that we get from movies is just an illusion. Like literal stars, there is this sense that by the time the light of movie stars gets to us, they may have burned out already.

Movies, TV, Short Stories, Novel (Stephen Frug Comment Pull Quote)

Stephen Frug wrote in a comment last week, on the subject of the Wire (the comment pull quote does not necessarily have to be from this week):

It seems to me that this whole "watching people change" is one of the thing that well-done serial TV has going for it: showing convincing change because there is time and space and context to do it. It's our cultural equivalent of those long 19th-Century novels; and it fundamentally can show character change in a way extremely difficult to do in the more compressed space of a film, a shorter novel or a graphic novel.

(Comics, as a serial medium, ought to be good at this... but I can't think of any examples that have been; partly because the best comics tend to be shorter runs or unified graphic novels, and long runs just don't sustain their quality long enough. But I'd love counter-examples.)

To this I want to add an observation. There used to be this distinction between the "big screen" of cinema and the "small screen" of television, with "small screen" often being a pejorative. But TV went all wide-screen, and on a lot of high end shows the season or even the series rather than the episode became the main narrative arc. Northern Exposure is all about the episode, 24 about the season, and Lost about the full six-season series (though of course all of these have smaller acts inside them -- even a Northern Exposure episode is broken up into four acts).

As you all know I have a habit, sometimes a bad one, of talking about pop culture in terms of high culture and vice versa. Admittedly this whole analogy could be off. But I used to think of movies as the novels -- sometimes trilogies -- and TV as being like short stories. And like the novel and the short story, I though of movies as having more gravity. But now movies -- even the kind that come in trilogies -- feel small compared to Dickensian fare like The Wire. Movies have become the short story while, as Stephen Frug points out, quality TV has become the 19th century novel.

Pricing is similar, though of course there are exceptions (a 12 dollar movie will be between 76 minutes and two hours and forty minutes). But there still seems to be a formal dissonance: you have to GO OUT to a HUGE SCREEN to see a small story, and you stay in and watch a small screen to see a HUGE story. But then again, maybe that makes perfect sense. You used to go out to see plays which often required unity of time and space, and then could go home and read War and Peace by the fire.

I do not really know what my point is here, except I think it would be an interesting experiment to see a movie theater play a TV show on a big screen in, say, two hour units over 12 days. Especially since we all go the other direction and watch movies meant for the big screen at home, on DVD.

Truth v Fiction in Art (Comment Pull Quote)

Mitch reivewed the Farnsworth Invention this week, and in that review he wondered

Can an ending still be true to the story if it isn’t actually true to the source material?

I wrote

I think folks around here will already guess I think it CAN, and also that to a certain extent IT MUST. Oscar Wilde famously complained that the problem with life is that it has not sense of dramatic structure, or proportion, or timing. Art, said Wilde, was our chance to teach life its proper place. That being said, it still may be the case that in Sorkin may have gone too far in simplifying the ending -- not because it is false, but because it suggests that the audience is too dumb to understand complexity. Changing the ending of such a recent piece of history, he should also have been prepared for the backlash -- it is not like he is making 300.

HCDuvall, in the comments, is our Pull Quote of the Week. Here is what he said:

I think the creative impulses might be the same in film, to sum up in a dramatic. Witness the The Aviator, one of the many Scorsese films that makes me sit there and think that he should either cut the thing in half or make a Ken Burns length mini-series.

As for fiction and truth, I’m borrowing the phrase from a Sandman comic, but the power of fiction is that it can tell true things without being true. But another facet is that fiction can play with real people. It’s one thing to write a romance now that says Mary Boleyn left the court to her sister for true love and family, it’s another to make a movie about Jonathan Nash and skip over the abandoned wife and kid who he once told, more or less “I like the new one, he’s smarter” (a Beautiful Mind), for sheer dramatics. Which is a longwinded way of saying these endings may be true the story, but if the story isn’t true to life, then why are you telling it this way? If the story is meant to be saying something else, why not use “pure” fiction? I believe when based on facts it is important to be true—if the ending needs modified facts, the ending isn’t wrong, it’s the story you’re telling that’s broken. It’s like building a stagecoach out of car parts or something. Somebody’s being simpleminded, but it’s not necessarily the driver. It’s a disservice.

I'm not so much arguing against dramatic license, I hope, as contrived simplicity and I realize that Geoff is too, taking it from the audience pt of view. The thing about Wilde’s statement and it’s ilk, though, and this might just be a peeve of mine, is that when melding facts and truth with entertainment and art, that life is complex is the first to fall to “true endings” and commercial drives…People get a lot of their fact from fiction. I let Sorkin off the hook for that astronaut moon urban legend he included in the play (The version I heard had Neil Armstrong, which Sorkin didn’t use, and when I mentioned that to my viewing companion when I saw the play, she figured Sorkin probably had it righter than me—and we were both wrong).

I’ll finish off with another wordy example of things, to say that I know these things are harmless but it’s so easy to lose sight of how easy mixing is (and elsewhen I’d argue unnecessary). So there’s this place in New York hidden away in behind a big curtain, in the middle of the lobby of a swank midtown hotel. The place has vinyl fake wood walls, great burgers, cramped booths, and long lines. And last time I was there a tourist sits down next to my group, he’s an airline pilot, and he says whenever he’s in New York from Israel he gets a burger before he flies out. And the man says how before they built this hotel this divey place with beer pitchers below room service with $20 burgers was here and the owner wouldn’t sell out, so they built around him. Thing of it is, and I didn’t correct him, that’s bull. The place has been open maybe six years. It’s a great harmless story, but it’s marketing. Get in the habit of letting facts go to suit fiction and you can sell anything.

James and Neil Shyminsky on Astonishing X-Men (Comment Pull Quote)

In my post on Astonishing X-Men this week I was having a hard time articulating exactly how to feel about Whedon's repetitions of himself, of Claremont, and of other science fiction -- whether his revisions were enough to justify telling the story, or if has some big revision still coming, or if the apotheosis of Cyclops is enough. I was thinking if this in part because of Neil's posts, which I linked to, and Neil commented:

I'm still incredibly ambivalent about where I stand on Whedon's numerous repetitions and revisions, which I think is pretty clear if one were to read all of my blogs about the various issues: what I criticize grumpily in one issue I find reason to laud in the next; what I declare to be new, (like the riffing on Dune, science fiction in general) someone else identifies as old - but maybe old and better; and when I say that something is old but better, (like Cyclops breaking loose to save the team) someone will inevitably respond by saying that it's merely old and has, in fact, been done better before. And so I, too, am constantly revising my position. It's frustrating, but exciting in its own way, too.

Even in comparing your and my comments, I notice that we often catch the same repetition but value it in qualitatively very different ways. And I think you're right to say that our conclusions, ultimately, will hinge on how Whedon wraps the whole thing up. There's really a lot riding on the ending of this thing.

Then James comes in and comments with this:

It really doesn't matter to me if Whedon is repeating, improving, or just cutting and pasting Claremont scripts and getting John Casaday to draw them: this is the most fun I've ever had reading X-Men comics.

You can argue, and I might, that repetition makes a book less fun (because you are seeing something you already saw). But as fans of a genre with very tight storytelling conventions, we know there is fun to be had watching the same thing over and over again. I wonder if Whedon's Astonishing X-Men will end up succeeding just on the virtue that it is more fun than anyone has seen on the X-Men for a while. James's comment made me feel a bit like a guy watching a magic show and saying "but he didn't really cut the woman in half." Well of course he didn't, but there was a split second there, where he made it almost look like he did, and even though we know better, it was kind of fun.

I am going to keep thinking about this. In a weird way, Whedon's run on the X-Men has me thinking more than Morrison's run, if only because always knew how I felt about every issue of Morrison's X-Men. With Whedon, not so much.

Comment Pull Quote (or a lack of one)

This has been a big week for comments for some reason:

17 comments on Rob Liefeld (including one attempt at a reasoned defense if you can believe it, and a rant from Streebo),

23 on Morrison v Miller (including a very smart point by Ping comparing the two),

11 on Comics Out This Week,

21 on Free Form Comments (including some stuff on Darjeeling and Best of the Year lists),

and a total of 21 comments on two posts about Beowulf (including one from a guy who was just really offended that Beowulf's rep was slandered -- who knew people cared about Beowulf so passionately? I did not agree with him but you get points on this blog for caring about poetry so much).

So the long and the short of it is I cannot pick a comment pull quote. I am just directing you to those conversations if you are missing them.

Me and Marc discuss Continuity and Curmudgeoness (Comment Pull Quote)

[An old comment pull quote I found searching for conversations to add to the toolbar.]

Geoff Klock wrote

Mark Waid established "hypertime" in the post-Kingdom-Come Kingdom Come stories -- the idea that story lines do not have to be wiped out to create a coherent continuity (the first Crisis) -- all the universes of every story exist at once and borders can always be crossed (the second Crisis). For the record the only reason I know that is that Frank Quitely drew one of the post Kingdom Come Kingdom Come books (I cannot for the life of me remember what they were called: Kingdom Come Again? Kingdom Commer? Kingdom Come 2?). It didn't stick, and Johns is going to try again. This is where DC is going with all their countdown stuff I think. They even used Ellis's Bleed in Green Lantern, since Ellis made a big deal of this structure of universes with the Snowflake in Planetary. Frankly watching these guys develop the structure of a multi-verse so that continuity glitches will not keep them awake at night is very boring. Just give me a well told story with good art. I don't care if it does not have a clear place in your neat little universe structure, you big engineering geeks with your graph paper and your mechanical pencils trying to figure out the real world physics of the light saber.

Marc Wrote

Geoff: Is it just me, or have you elevated to curmudgeon status of late? As said in Wedding Crashers, "It's like pizza, baby! It's all good!"

This isn't the 60s, when Stan Lee was doing campus lectures and that era's college kids were the first to take their comics to the dorm with them. Nor is it the 80s, when comics "finally grew up" (quote from every third writer on comics for a non-comic forum from 1985 on).

This is the 00s, where the first generation of direct market geeks (in the club, so I can say so) has gotten their pens into the major companies. They're smart enough to realize that they can have their universe the way they learned it, especially the DC folk. And so you have what's been going on lately.

Also, the profile of someone who reads Casanova or something else from its rack buddies probably is someone who gre up on comics and wants a bit more. You're simply not going to get someone off the streets to read now if they haven't already read somewhere from ages 6-18. So there is a need for mainstream comics to be the mindless, pulpy fun they are. Every so often, they stretch their boundaries and come up with a homer (let's say, Green Lantern: Rebirth or our beloved JLA:Classified 1-3) but for the most part it's business as usual from month to month. The reason that a Seven Soldiers or a Planetary or a Casanova exists (and you can see a progression amongst them)is because someone wants to create, in the comic medium something with more to say than the average monthly. There's room enough in my love of the form for all types.

Also, the rag on continuity is pretty mean-spirited. Continuity is not for that, but for freedom to tell all types of stories without having to lock it down to one universe. It's not so someone can shrug off why Clark had rimless glasses in one book, but not in the other. AND it's doubly mean from someone who hung his theoretical book on what some might call a cynical cash-grab x-over between licensed properties and a half-assed X-Men ripoff. (Not me, though; I read your book and have spent the last two years mining the biblio for new material.)

Geoff Klock wrote

Marc: I have been in curmudgeon satus lately, which is a nice way of saying I have been mean and in a bad mood. You are nice to be so nice, if you see what I mean.

I find myself frustrated with a lot of things lately, not the least being the fact that everyone seems so happy with everything all the time -- every comic book that comes out seems to get a five star review at newsarama. Paul O'Brien really set me off this week, giving New X-Men 140 an A. I can not understand how people can "appreciate" both his A and my F at the same time without their heads exploding -- the things I called mistakes he did not mention at all. That was an overreaction, and I am sure O'Brien is a good guy and I am going to contact him soon for a little debate on this subject. I know that is not true that everything on newsarama gets a great review, but there are days when I FEEL like it is, when I see a horrbile book getting a great review, and start looking for ANYONE who is feeling the way I do. The way I feel is that some kind of quality control is important, and that when everyone loves something and I demonstrate -- DEMONSTRATE rather than the "SPAWN SUKS / SPAWN RULZ" school of criticism -- there is no category for me other than killjoy jackass.

Your use of "mindless" in "mindless pulpy fun" is what throws me. You make it sound like I am objecting to mindlessness, but what I am objecting to is bad storytelling. If you are focused on reparing the structure of your fictional universe rather than storytelling your priorities are screwed up and it is going to show. And look what a mess of a story Infinite Crisis is. Civil War is not quite the same thing but the same principle applies: when editorial mission trumps storytelling bad things happen.

"Love of all types" is what I cannot embrace and it makes me look like a horrible person. When applied to people it is a nice idea: we should all care about different kinds of people and accept them for what that can do rather than for what they cannot. But I am not sure that comic books are like people in this regard. I think with a comic book it should be easier to say "well I see what it is trying to do and it does it, but what it is trying to do is stupid."

Also, life is short, and I try to just find the "homers" as you put it. People who do not distinguish between the two -- for example people who LOVE WE3 AND Runaways -- throw me off track by telling me that the books are both fantastic. WE3 is fantastic; Runaways is only pretty good at best. It is good, don't get me wrong, but it is nothing like WE3. So that is a big source of my frustration.

"Continuity is for the freedom to tell all types of stories without how to lock them down to one universe". Well, for a while it was trying to lock characters down to a single universe; now they are working on establishing something the structure of the multi-verse, or whatever, where characters can go from the main universe to the Kingdome Come one -- where one rule explains all the transitions. This will do what you describe, allow for lots of different stories. But what if no one cared about continuity so closely? What if no one needed to explain that continuity glitches were caused by the Pre-crisis Superboy punching the universe very very hard? What if we could just accept that the DC universe is a bit of a mess, with characters being in the same (Batman and Superman) but sometimes different (Batman and Wildcats) worlds that crossover sometimes for whatever reason? It seems like a small complaint on one level, except for the amount of money people are expected to spend to follow DC's world building -- Road to Infinite Crisis, Identity Crisis, OMAC project, Rann-Thangarr War, Spirit of Vengance, Infinite Crisis, 52, Countdown, all the spinoffs and so on.

Batman's Son (Comment Pull Quote)

[There was NEVER a rule that said my comments were off the table for a comment pull quote!]

When I reviewed Morrison's Batman this week I said I liked Batman's son. In the comments, James pointed out that I did not in Morrison's first arc. Here is what I told him.

James -- you are right. I did not love him. But as of this issue he has an interesting family romance conflict. His mom is a bad guy. His biological dad is a superhero. His grandfather -- who seems a little weirdly incestuous with his mother, as if they are his parents -- considers him property. If the grandfather gets his way, and takes over the kid's body, then the grandfather will be his daughter's child, and one of Batman's villain's will become Batman's son. And just to toss things up even more the kid is still wearing the Robin Uniform -- even though he is Batman's biological son, he knows how close Batman is to Batman's surrogate son Robin, whose place he wants. Morrison is building a lot of interesting conflict here with this character, who I suddenly have sympathy for because he is so overdetermined.

For the record, I still think Morrison's Batman has been mediocre. But this one thing was well done in the most recent issue.

Thacher on Spiderman: One More Day (Comment Pull Quote)

[I think I may be pulling to many comments now, but I really like the one the way this one is worded. Also it is the weekend, so i get to be lazy. This comment is from the Comics Out post on Wednesday.]

Thacher wrote:

On Newsarama, when they posted preview pages of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, one person posted commented that the brown pigeon that is seen on the first page is similar to the brown pigeon that was in the first issue, and then surmised that the brown pigeon was in fact Mephisto, and he would attempt to offer Peter a deal. I found it to be the most totally ridiculous, out-there theories anyone pulled out of their asses. Then I read the issue today.

That pigeon was totally Mephisto.

After knocking around time and space with Dr. Strange, begging everyone good or bad on earth to save his aunt, but no one can (not even, I guess, the X-Men kid who can heal people with his touch). Despondent, he leaves, and the pigeon morphs into a little girl, who makes a menacing offer of help.

Is it wrong to think that a hero who makes a deal with Satan becomes extraordinarily irredeemable? I mean, I know a spider-marriage is unacceptable, but is a spider-faustian deal?

James on All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder 7 (Comment Pull Quote)

[How did I fail to notice how hilarious this line from issue 7 is? Thanks you James.]

I wanted to mention something from All-Star Batman #7 that lept out at me, but I haven't seen picked up on. Batman mentions someone who can fly, and "the idiot doesn't even know he can". I thought that was a great line akin to DKR's "why do you think I wear a target on my chest"? It offers an explanation for the first Superman comics where he couldn't fly, and simultaneously paints Batman as such a badass that he knows more about Superman's powers than Superman does.

Ping33 On the Top Ten Video Games (Comment Pull Quote)

Ping gave us his top ten list this week in Free Form Comments. I have only played a handful of videogames since they got all complicated and novely and world-building, but I am proud to say that two of that handful are on Ping's list -- Jet Set Radio Future (which I always called Radio Free Europe for no reason), and Super-Metroid (that was the Nintendo Cube one right?). And they were great. Except Metroid had terrible creature designs. Generic bug-aliens. On Radio Free Europe you could design your own graffiti and spray it on everything.

I would also say that the Simpsons Game for the Game Cube was one of my favorites, if only because of the perfect way labor got split up between Sara and Me -- she likes to look for stuff and I like to race around, and the game had both, so we teamed up and won.

Also you have to love classics like Super-Mario brothers, if only because the Japanese have such an instinctual grasp of the everyday life of working class Italians.

Here is Ping:

Top 10 Games of all time (no order)

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (yeah bitch! better than Ocarina of Time, the graphics are timeless and all zelda games are basically the same anyway)

Joust

Jet Set Radio Future

Halo

Starcraft

Nights: Into Dreams

Super Metroid

Every Extend Extra

Wipeout

RESERVED FOR THE NOW (Bioshock... Hopefully Mass Effect)

Comment Pull Quote (Jason Powell blurb)

From Jason Powell, a comment on "Grant Morrison's JLA Classified 3" (Thursday):

I promise not to sully or diminish my experience of your fine writing here by ever opening the actual work under consideration.

Awesome. I should print a version of this on my business card. I should write introductions to books, then ask people, in the introductions, not to read what comes next so as not to mess up their reading of my intros.

[I am having second thoughts about the Comment Pull Quote posts. I think they are too incestuous. I feel like I am going to grab the same few people every week. We will see.]

Neil Shyminsky and Jason Powell Can Work It Out (Comment Pull Quote)

[Last week I had the idea to do a post every Sunday pulling a good quote from the week's worth of comments and giving it its own post. The post from a week ago today that announced that idea generated the best discussion this week, including some great stuff on Batman and criticism. But the award this week has to go to Jason and Neil on the Beatles -- which began life as an analogy for the collaboration of Morrison and Williams in Batman].

Neil said...

One of the reasons that the Beatles 'We Can Work It Out', for instance, works so well is in the bridge, where McCartney sings a high, almost manic melody and Lennon contrasts it with a low, nearly monotone, and vaguely snarling harmony. McCartney's optimism is completely undermined by Lennon's boredom, leading us to believe that McCartney's confidence in the chorus/verse is wholly unfounded.

Jason said...

I know it's a digression, and Neil sorry to disagree, but ... man, I hate that popular interpretation of "We Can Work It Out." Lennon’s section doesn’t undermine McCartney’s section. It complements it. (Sorry if that word is starting to be overused in this thread.)

To call McCartney’s section optimistic and Lennon’s section bored is to ignore the lyrical content. There’s not a lot of optimism in McCartney’s line, “There’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long.” And Lennon’s section is not bored – it’s urgent. “Life is very short, and there’s no time...”

There is contrast in the music of the two different sections, and I agree that the tension between McCartney’s high-flung melody and Lennon’s dogged single-noted-ness does is part of what makes the song so engaging. But Lennon’s single-note style (which he utilizes in most of his work as a Beatle) is a result of Lennon’s songwriting style, which was to avoid extemporaneity in order to get his point across in as naturalistic a way as possible. He writes melodies that imitate the way he speaks. He sings “Life is very short” on a single note because that’s how he’d say it, not because he’s bored.

I also don’t see mania in McCartney’s bit. It sounds as controlled as any McCartney’s melodies – but that’s probably getting a bit subjective. The mistake, I think, is to see McCartney’s relentless “we can work it out” as optimism rather than an attempt to win an argument (i.e., my way is right, your way is wrong). It’s almost overbearing, in a way, and when it’s read in that light, Lennon’s text flows quite naturally from McCartney’s. If anything, the dichotomy being struck is not optimism/boredom, but rather personal/universal. (McCartney is about “my way” and “your way,” and Lennon’s is about “life.”) Lennon isn’t knocking the foundation out of McCartney’s verse/chorus – he’s providing it.

Neil said...

Jason - I don't necessarily see a contradiction in my labeling McCartney's vocal 'manic' and your calling it 'overbearing'. In fact, I think they're entirely consistent - manic and overbearing would actually serve as a perfect description of McCartney's method as a songwriter and performer with the Beatles. I also think that optimism and 'i'm right' work well with McCartney in this context. The song, reportedly, is about his relationship with Jane Asher, which was falling apart at the time. He was desperately clinging to it (while controlled, it's also near the top of McCartney's range, and 'life is very short' is very staccato, almost screamed), confident they'd figure it out, but also wanting to dictate its terms.

But I certainly have to disagree with your interpretation of Lennon's vocal. The single-note style, for one, has nothing to do with naturalism - it's because he wrote songs on his guitar, and since he wasn't a very good player he preferred progressions that required limited hand movement. But even if I were to agree that Lennon's vocal sounds like it's being spoken, anything less than McCartney's intensity provides a contrast whereby that same intensity is made to seem excessive.

I'm perhaps reading too much of their biographies into the song, but I don't think that's unfair with the Beatles. Lennon sounds bored to me because this song was written during his incredibly depressed period. He doesn't care if he wins the argument, his delivery sounds snide because 'fussing and fighting' is all he and Cynthia ever do. He's 'asking once again', but he knows it's useless - it's still incredibly intimate, not at all universal. When we read that on to McCartney's performance, we get the sense that he may be equally hopeless - but only because Lennon's there to provide the subtext.

Jason said...

“The song, reportedly, is about his relationship with Jane Asher, which was falling apart at the time. He was desperately clinging to it (while controlled, it's also near the top of McCartney's range, and 'life is very short' is very staccato, almost screamed), confident they'd figure it out, but also wanting to dictate its terms.”

Hmm. I see where your “manic” and my “overbearing” dovetail. But then, as you note above, McCartney’s mania spills over (in the form of staccato, high-pitched singing) into the bridge that you claim completely undermines it.

“But I certainly have to disagree with your interpretation of Lennon's vocal. The single-note style, for one, has nothing to do with naturalism - it's because he wrote songs on his guitar, and since he wasn't a very good player he preferred progressions that required limited hand movement.”

The phenomena of a single-note melody and an uncomplicated chord progression are not necessarily connected, and I don’t think they are in Lennon’s case. A wide, far-flung melody can be sung over a single chord. (Example: the first line of “When I’m Sixty-Four,” everything up to “many years from now” is over a single chord, for example, with the first change happening on “now” – unless I’m misremembering/mishearing). Meanwhile, the same note can be sung over complicated and rapidly changing chord progressions. (For example, the Lennon-composed “If I Fell” changes chords on almost every word, but the notes of his melody move in small increments. Also, a listen to other songs in the Beatles canon shows that even when Lennon has devised a harmony vocal on a progression built by McCartney, he still very doggedly will keep things on a single note if the progression allows it.) Melody need not be dictated by what chords can or cannot be played. The reason Lennon’s melodies are low on incident and tend to lack a lot of jumps in intervals is because Lennon sought melody in a naturalistic way, i.e, seeking out a note for the new chord that was as close as possible to the note he’d previously sung. Which is to say, he didn’t fuss over complicated melodies – life was too short. :)

“But even if I were to agree that Lennon's vocal sounds like it's being spoken, anything less than McCartney's intensity provides a contrast whereby that same intensity is made to seem excessive.”

But again, as noted above, the bridge also contains McCartney’s vocal right on top of it. If you’re arguing that “desperation” characterizes the “optimistic” verse/chorus, then doesn’t that desperation carry over into the staccato and high-pitched plaintive cry of “life is very short and there’s no tiiiime”?

“I'm perhaps reading too much of their biographies into the song, but I don't think that's unfair with the Beatles.”

I agree, perfectly fair, but at the same time ...

“He doesn't care if he wins the argument, his delivery sounds snide because 'fussing and fighting' is all he and Cynthia ever do. He's 'asking once again', but he knows it's useless”

This all seems like a lot of “reading in” to stuff that isn’t actually in the text of the song. Other than implication based on vocal tone, there’s nothing to suggest he doesn’t care, or that his “asking once again” is useless. Indeed, if he thinks it’s useless, why is he asking again? I’d say “asking again” implies the opposite, that he thinks there’s a point in asking.

“it's still incredibly intimate, not at all universal.”
If it’s all about Cynthia, then yes, it is. But I think that’s too much reading in. “Life is too short for fussing and fighting, my friend.” That’s contextualizing one argument in the frame of life in general.

“When we read that on to McCartney's performance, we get the sense that he may be equally hopeless - but only because Lennon's there to provide the subtext.”

I realize it might be hairsplitting, this argument, because I of course agree that the two sections enrich each other – I just don’t think it’s an “optimism”/”pessimism” dichotomy. It is McCartney who sings, “If we see it your way, there’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long.” That – along with his worry that he might eventually not be able to “go on -- is as pessimistic as anything in Lennon’s bridge, so I can’t see how it is Lennon who is solely providing that darker angle, either as text or subtext.

(You know, it suddenly strikes me as hilarious that we’re arguing about a song that itself is about an argument. Try and see it my way, Neil! Do I have to keep on talking till I can’t go on?)

Neil Said...

Hey Jason - great discussion. I'll make only a couple quick comments.

"Indeed, if he thinks it’s useless, why is he asking again? I’d say 'asking again' implies the opposite, that he thinks there’s a point in asking."

Because I think that Lennon is going through the motions. I don't have my copy of 'Revolution in the Head' nearby, but I seem to recall that this song was written only months after other Lennon pieces like 'Nowhere Man' and 'Norwegian Wood'. There's a certain nihilism and self-defeating angle to a lot of his lyrics at this time. Lennon hasn't quite figured out what he wants out of life just yet, and so he's asking simply because he's supposed to. And don't the lyrics admit this much? 'There's no time for fussing and fighting my friend' is contrasted with 'so i will ask you once again', as if they realize it's an inescapable trap that demands a certain performance that will never yield a desirable result.

"'Life is too short for fussing and fighting, my friend.' That’s contextualizing one argument in the frame of life in general."

Except that the Beatles, and Lennon in particular, tended to draw the great majority of their material directly from their lives. There's a personal story behind nearly everything John wrote. I would also be remiss if I didn't point out that Lennon himself would later claim that every song he wrote was about him and spoke to specifically to his own life. But he had a certain revisionary streak. :)

"(You know, it suddenly strikes me as hilarious that we’re arguing about a song that itself is about an argument. Try and see it my way, Neil! Do I have to keep on talking till I can’t go on?)"

But if I see it your way, there's a chance that things my fall apart before too long!

And it's a song about an unending argument, no less. It's really just a metaphor for the internet, isn't it? :)

Criticism in the Comments (Comment Pull Quote)

[I just had an idea: we have lots of smart and/or important discussions in the comments, but I fear there are a number of readers who do not post here that also do not read the comments. How about Sundays I take a comment from the week and give it its own post here, to make sure it is not missed by incurious readers, like the discussion of heart in Casanova with Jason Powell and Matt Fraction last week?]

Unfortunately, this idea was inspired by a negative comment made today on a post from four days ago, but the guy makes at least one fair, if old, point, and I thought I should bring my response forward. It would make me nuts if anyone read it but did not read my response, and it makes me nuts thinking there are people who are thinking what he is thinking and not saying anything.]

So here it is. The Brian's comment was cut and pasted, so any mistakes are his own. I corrected a word on my post, because, well, it's my blog. Ha.

Brian said...

I'm not even particularly fond of this arc so far- although I think it's going somewhere- but I find the statement that your favorite Morrison story was his JLA: Classified arc.

It was pointed out by a Wizard writer, talking to Douglas Wolk about his book and mentioning yours as a point of comparison, that your book was all text-based and didn't talk about the art at all. That's a very real criticism, as art is a huge part of comics.

I'm sure a comparison could be made between this Batman story and the JLA story: three issues apiece and involving some of the same characters, issue 668 even making reference to a mind-controlling ape, but I just feel the need to point out that these Batman issues win on an art level. Not like this makes a good comic automatically- Killing Girl is still pretty bad, actually- but those JLA issues have one massive flaw in a place where this arc finds much of its power.

It's also worth noting that your lack to engage the visual side of things is missing out on a lot of the implied history of reinvention.

Brian said

I know you address the art in these reviews- you think the style comes off as a mishmash on the page, which I think speaks to an inability to read the image.

Geoff Klock said

I am well aware that the criticism that my book does not talk about art is a serious one. I always defend it the same way: The ground-breaking book on poet and painter William Blake was written by Northrop Frye, but he mostly just talked about the words. So did many of the people around that time. Blake studies was starting out and everyone did what they could do best. Now, everyone loves to point out that weakness, but there is no way to deny that Blake studies would be nowhere without Frye. My superhero book is not as ground-breaking as Frye's but the point is the same -- I wrote what I was good at writing about, and never said that was the last word on the subject.

Second, I was 21 when I wrote it and that was seven years ago.

Third, Reprinting art in an academic book -- not easy, or cheap.

Fourth: One of the main aims of this blog has been to look more at the art. I have many posts here about visual style. It has been something I have been working on for years, because I know it is important. Go read some of the comments on the New X-Men posts and you will find people telling me that I am spending far too much time focusing on art, that it does not matter that much. I disagree and say so, and continue on talking about the art.

Fifth: My comments on Batman are a bullet point review. A first impression. Now, with Tim Callahan, more will be coming, and the art will be discussed. Again -- I never said that Batman review was everything that could be said.

Sixth: you can say that my claim about style shows an inability to read the image, but notice how you offer no evidence, reasons or examples. If you think the style is unified -- not a crazy or uncommon claim and one that we are all going to get into again with Tim Callahan -- be be a little more specific at how that can be.

I am going to avoid talking about your grammar and tone of voice. I am going to avoid grammar because I make mistakes like you make here all the time. I am going to avoid talking about tone of voice because everyone can see it, and it does not need pointing out.

That last paragraph there uses a fancy rhetorical device with a 14 letter name -- it involves talking about something by claiming you are not going to talk about it. Ain't I a stinker?

The last two paragraphs of mine are cheap, yeah? I never know how to respond to internet criticism. Talk all nice, and you look like a push-over. Talk mean, and you become a message board psycho.