The second part of the eleventh episode of Brad Winderbaum's Emmy award winning Satacracy 88 is up at itsallinyourhands.com.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #4, part a (incorporating X-Men #96)
[Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Claremont's X-Men. For previous work in this series click his name in the tool-bar on the right.]
"Night of the Demon"
The issue begins with Cyclops having an argument with the narrator, which is ... kind of weird. The narrator is haranguing Scott about the death of Thunderbird, saying, "You and the X-Men saved the world ... but you'd lost a man to do it - and try as you might, you can't balance those scales ... can you, Cyclops?" "No," says Scott. "Can you?" the narrator repeats. "No," Scott says, a little louder. "CAN YOU?" "NO!" Claremont didn't ever really use second-person narration in X-Men after this issue. You can kind of see why.
Still, this is Claremont's first crack at fully plotting and dialoguing an X-Men story, and you can see his ideas about the characters starting to be developed by him and Dave Cockrum, and rapidly taking the place of Len Wein's more pedestrian notions. We see the classic contradictions beginning to take shape: Nightcrawler has the look of a demon, but his personality is out-going and fun-loving. (Wein's original conception of Nightcrawler was that he be more tortured.) Storm is a beautiful and naive native girl, but she's also incredibly powerful and has an iron will. Wolverine is an old, experienced soldier, but also psychotically unpredictable. (Wein's conception of Wolverine was that he was a rebellious teenager.) All of these contradictions are brought out in this issue, while still leaving room for a super-heroic brawl (albeit with a throwaway antagonist). There's also an encompassing aesthetic contradiction as well in these early X-Men issues. As Claremont proceeds to try to build in a stronger sense of psychological complexity than had been seen in superhero comics before now, the characters nonetheless all dress in bright primary colors. Blue, yellow and red dominate the X-Men uniforms at this point, with a bit of green (Banshee) and black and white (Storm) thrown in.
It may be a fanboyish thing to say, but the most fascinating X-Man, even in these earliest issues, is Wolverine. There's a vigorous dynamic established by the fact that the team is working and living alongside this guy who might disembowel them at any moment. In this issue, Wolverine gets mad at Nightcrawler for laughing at him, so he leaps at him and tries to slash him apart. Kurt, naturally, just teleports out of the way, and Banshee says to Wolverine, "You could've killed Nightcrawler then, you know." Wolverine's reply is a terse, "Yeah - I know." Then a few pages later, Kierrok smacks down Nightcrawler, and Wolverine becomes enraged, attacking Kierrok while screaming, "Nobody beats on Wolverine's buddies!" and then he goes to town on the demon with his claws. Already Claremont was giving Wolverine some interesting contradictions, of the kind that would later make Wolverine such a fan favorite among comic book fans, and - 25 years down the line - movie-goers.
There is a scene in this issue that's unique to Classic X-Men #4, not having appeared originally in X-Men #96: It starts as a corny comedy bit, with Storm going skinny-dipping in the mansion's pool only to be discovered by the male X-Men, much to the consternation of them all - except Wolverine, who finds it funny. Storm, who was strutting around topless when Professor X first recruited her, doesn't understand what all the fuss was about. She is telepathically chastised by Professor X to "use more discretion" in the future, and we segue into a scene between him and Moira MacTaggert, wherein Moira observes that the new X-Men are challenging Charles "in ways the old ones no longer could," and that they're "pulling [him] from [his] shell." It's a simple turn of phrase, but a very canny way to segue (retroactively) between the stodgy Professor X of the '60s and the more dynamic version that Claremont would create.
[Geoff Klock: Now that I will be reading these issues alongside Jason, I will drop in small comments from time to time. Here I would just mention the quaint moment where Storm says "That bolt of energy from the cairn -- there's no time to avoid it--*" Mystery Science Theater would be quick to point out that she had time to narrate the thing, but not to get away from it. I am starting to get to a place where I can find stuf like this charming rather than annoying.]
The issue begins with Cyclops having an argument with the narrator, which is ... kind of weird. The narrator is haranguing Scott about the death of Thunderbird, saying, "You and the X-Men saved the world ... but you'd lost a man to do it - and try as you might, you can't balance those scales ... can you, Cyclops?" "No," says Scott. "Can you?" the narrator repeats. "No," Scott says, a little louder. "CAN YOU?" "NO!" Claremont didn't ever really use second-person narration in X-Men after this issue. You can kind of see why.
Still, this is Claremont's first crack at fully plotting and dialoguing an X-Men story, and you can see his ideas about the characters starting to be developed by him and Dave Cockrum, and rapidly taking the place of Len Wein's more pedestrian notions. We see the classic contradictions beginning to take shape: Nightcrawler has the look of a demon, but his personality is out-going and fun-loving. (Wein's original conception of Nightcrawler was that he be more tortured.) Storm is a beautiful and naive native girl, but she's also incredibly powerful and has an iron will. Wolverine is an old, experienced soldier, but also psychotically unpredictable. (Wein's conception of Wolverine was that he was a rebellious teenager.) All of these contradictions are brought out in this issue, while still leaving room for a super-heroic brawl (albeit with a throwaway antagonist). There's also an encompassing aesthetic contradiction as well in these early X-Men issues. As Claremont proceeds to try to build in a stronger sense of psychological complexity than had been seen in superhero comics before now, the characters nonetheless all dress in bright primary colors. Blue, yellow and red dominate the X-Men uniforms at this point, with a bit of green (Banshee) and black and white (Storm) thrown in.
It may be a fanboyish thing to say, but the most fascinating X-Man, even in these earliest issues, is Wolverine. There's a vigorous dynamic established by the fact that the team is working and living alongside this guy who might disembowel them at any moment. In this issue, Wolverine gets mad at Nightcrawler for laughing at him, so he leaps at him and tries to slash him apart. Kurt, naturally, just teleports out of the way, and Banshee says to Wolverine, "You could've killed Nightcrawler then, you know." Wolverine's reply is a terse, "Yeah - I know." Then a few pages later, Kierrok smacks down Nightcrawler, and Wolverine becomes enraged, attacking Kierrok while screaming, "Nobody beats on Wolverine's buddies!" and then he goes to town on the demon with his claws. Already Claremont was giving Wolverine some interesting contradictions, of the kind that would later make Wolverine such a fan favorite among comic book fans, and - 25 years down the line - movie-goers.
There is a scene in this issue that's unique to Classic X-Men #4, not having appeared originally in X-Men #96: It starts as a corny comedy bit, with Storm going skinny-dipping in the mansion's pool only to be discovered by the male X-Men, much to the consternation of them all - except Wolverine, who finds it funny. Storm, who was strutting around topless when Professor X first recruited her, doesn't understand what all the fuss was about. She is telepathically chastised by Professor X to "use more discretion" in the future, and we segue into a scene between him and Moira MacTaggert, wherein Moira observes that the new X-Men are challenging Charles "in ways the old ones no longer could," and that they're "pulling [him] from [his] shell." It's a simple turn of phrase, but a very canny way to segue (retroactively) between the stodgy Professor X of the '60s and the more dynamic version that Claremont would create.
[Geoff Klock: Now that I will be reading these issues alongside Jason, I will drop in small comments from time to time. Here I would just mention the quaint moment where Storm says "That bolt of energy from the cairn -- there's no time to avoid it--*" Mystery Science Theater would be quick to point out that she had time to narrate the thing, but not to get away from it. I am starting to get to a place where I can find stuf like this charming rather than annoying.]
Friday, November 02, 2007
Free Form Comments
Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If a week goes by and I have failed to add you to the blog roll TELL ME TO DO IT AGAIN, and KEEP TELLING ME UNTIL IT GETS DONE. I can be lazy about updating the non-post parts of this site.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.
WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is availible on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post. You can propose what you will, I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music and books.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.
WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is availible on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post. You can propose what you will, I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music and books.
Russell Edson’s “The Parental Decision”
One of Blake’s best poems is “The Mental Traveller.” A close reading of the thing here is beyond our scope, but essentially it is a terrifying, hallucinogenic vision of the cycle of history in the fallen natural world – a cycle we must escape if we are truly to be free. It only has a few archetypical characters that morph in a cycle. Here are some representative lines.
And if the babe is born a Boy
He’s given to a Woman Old
Who nails him down upon a rock
Catches his Shrieks in Cups of gold
She binds iron thorns around his head
She pierces both his hands & feet
She cuts his heart out at his side
To make him feel both cold & heat
Her fingers number every Nerve
Just as a Miser counts his gold
She lives upon his shrieks & cries
And She grows young as he grows old
Till he becomes a bleeding youth
And she becomes a virgin bright…
[In the end, the poem cycles back to the beginning –]
Till he becomes a wayward Babe
And she a weeping Woman Old
She nails him down upon the Rock
And all is done as I have told
Russell Edson’s weird little poem “The Parental Decision” takes Blake’s visionary allegory of world history and wrecks it by translating it into the mundane day-to-day world of household decisions. Here is the whole poem.
A man splits into two who are an old woman and an old man.
They must be his parents. But where is the man? Perhaps he gave his life for them …
I ask the old couple if they’ve seen their son.
The old woman says, we’ve decided not to have any children.
If modern poems seem weird and impossible to understand, it is often the case that you are just missing another text that the poem you are reading is thinking of.
And if the babe is born a Boy
He’s given to a Woman Old
Who nails him down upon a rock
Catches his Shrieks in Cups of gold
She binds iron thorns around his head
She pierces both his hands & feet
She cuts his heart out at his side
To make him feel both cold & heat
Her fingers number every Nerve
Just as a Miser counts his gold
She lives upon his shrieks & cries
And She grows young as he grows old
Till he becomes a bleeding youth
And she becomes a virgin bright…
[In the end, the poem cycles back to the beginning –]
Till he becomes a wayward Babe
And she a weeping Woman Old
She nails him down upon the Rock
And all is done as I have told
Russell Edson’s weird little poem “The Parental Decision” takes Blake’s visionary allegory of world history and wrecks it by translating it into the mundane day-to-day world of household decisions. Here is the whole poem.
A man splits into two who are an old woman and an old man.
They must be his parents. But where is the man? Perhaps he gave his life for them …
I ask the old couple if they’ve seen their son.
The old woman says, we’ve decided not to have any children.
If modern poems seem weird and impossible to understand, it is often the case that you are just missing another text that the poem you are reading is thinking of.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Comics Out October 31, 2007
Batman 670. Morrison’s dully retro 70 Batman thing continues. The three girls, who are probably old comic book characters I do not know are boring, and the Silken Spider looks ridiculous doing her “sexy” wavy-arm squat dance. The art is pretty good, but also very Neal Adams in places, which is what is wanted, but not exactly keeping me on my toes. Making Bat-Gas standard issue may please retro-folks who just think the idea is great, but I am not one of those people. Ra’s al Ghul, again, is not impressing me for the same reason – I read this already in reprints. The issue almost kicked into gear with Damian – I was surprisingly pleased to see him back, and I love that he is still in the Robin uniform and cloak. That speaks volumes, and is the only thing in the issue worth keeping. Damian is the only character in the book to have any life to him. His family romance is the only conflict that feels like something original.
X-Men Messiah Complex. Flat, like no man’s business flat. Starts with the X-Jet and a view of five characters inside. Each is introduced with a name plate thing, and each gets a line of dialogue. Here they are.
“You picking up anything? We should be close by now.” “Nothing … which is a bit troubling.” “What do you mean?” “It’s a whole town fulla people, and xxx ain’t hearin’ any of their thoughts.” “It’s a trap.”
Look at E for Extinction if you want an example of how to reintroduce your cast for a big X-Event, cause this is a mess. Most of these lines could be assigned to other characters – they are not particular to character and just dully advance the plot in the least interesting way. Plus the second to last line is Wolverine’s and the last line is Angel’s, spoken with his hand on Wolverine’s shoulder, sympathetically. Why? I have no idea. He is basically just making something Wolverine said explicit. Dumb. The whole issue is like that.
Silvestri does a good Emma in spots (and several other characters as well), but does she have to look like she is posing for Maxim for a nothing scene like when she says to Scott “no orders for me?” Is that I joke? The context would suggest it is not, but there it is. And I think Silvestri accidentally made Xavier look evil, which is just distracting, as was the too-small caption telling us “A few hours earlier” (that confused the heck out of me). Also Silvestri has Nightcrawler looking down from the plane on the town but I do not see how he could see down out of that window unless the plane was at a major angle, an angle not implied by the art elsewhere. The thing ends with a creature, whose purpose in this issue is to establish, I think, that the baby is alive (other he would not be hunting it) – but for God’s sake, that is the most boring creature design I have seen since playing Metroid: Whatever for the Game Cube.
There is a trailer for the Wanted movie on the web, but I have not seen it yet. Wizard magazine had the words “Grant Morrison vs Neal Adams” on the cover but I have no idea what that is about.
Review, discuss, and recommend this week’s comics and comics news.
X-Men Messiah Complex. Flat, like no man’s business flat. Starts with the X-Jet and a view of five characters inside. Each is introduced with a name plate thing, and each gets a line of dialogue. Here they are.
“You picking up anything? We should be close by now.” “Nothing … which is a bit troubling.” “What do you mean?” “It’s a whole town fulla people, and xxx ain’t hearin’ any of their thoughts.” “It’s a trap.”
Look at E for Extinction if you want an example of how to reintroduce your cast for a big X-Event, cause this is a mess. Most of these lines could be assigned to other characters – they are not particular to character and just dully advance the plot in the least interesting way. Plus the second to last line is Wolverine’s and the last line is Angel’s, spoken with his hand on Wolverine’s shoulder, sympathetically. Why? I have no idea. He is basically just making something Wolverine said explicit. Dumb. The whole issue is like that.
Silvestri does a good Emma in spots (and several other characters as well), but does she have to look like she is posing for Maxim for a nothing scene like when she says to Scott “no orders for me?” Is that I joke? The context would suggest it is not, but there it is. And I think Silvestri accidentally made Xavier look evil, which is just distracting, as was the too-small caption telling us “A few hours earlier” (that confused the heck out of me). Also Silvestri has Nightcrawler looking down from the plane on the town but I do not see how he could see down out of that window unless the plane was at a major angle, an angle not implied by the art elsewhere. The thing ends with a creature, whose purpose in this issue is to establish, I think, that the baby is alive (other he would not be hunting it) – but for God’s sake, that is the most boring creature design I have seen since playing Metroid: Whatever for the Game Cube.
There is a trailer for the Wanted movie on the web, but I have not seen it yet. Wizard magazine had the words “Grant Morrison vs Neal Adams” on the cover but I have no idea what that is about.
Review, discuss, and recommend this week’s comics and comics news.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
