[Graham Tedesco-Blair has been looking at Ennis's Punisher Max series. Last week he sent me a revision to one of the paragraphs in his last review, but I forgot to make the change for him. My bad. Here it is. The paragraph that begins "Pittsy and Frank keep smashing the tar out of one another" should look like this:]
Pittsy and Frank keep smashing the tar out of one another, when we get an odd call back to Morrison's Arkham Asylum, of all things. Morrison is about as un-Miller as you can get these days, though he had yet to start his attempted subversion of Millar's Batman, bear in mind. Pittsy stabs Castle through the hand with a shard of broken glass, recalling that famous scene in the aforementioned book, the one than snaps Batman out of his scared and tired trance, and the same thing happens here with Frank, who uses it as an opportunity to chuck Pittsy out of the window, where he's impaled onto the sharp spikes of the fence below. Even then, though, this isn't enough to kill him, so Frank jumps off after him, landing feet first on Pittsy's chest, and driving him further onto the spikes. That old school mafia archetype is hard to put down, after all, but perhaps it can be temporarily distracted by a crazy Scottish magician?
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Lost Season 6, Episode 6: Sundown
My spoiler-ho review of the latest episode of LOST is up at smartpop. Here is a sample you can click to read the whole thing.
The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie for a pretty obvious reason: as the second act of the story, the bad guys are winning. As Dante learned writing the Divine Comedy, it is always more fun to hang out with bad guys than good guys. This far into season 6 of Lost we are clearly in the second act of the final season, and, right on schedule, the bad guys are in glorious form. I can only assume that while I am writing this a series of Youtube clips are being thrown together, scoring the final moment of “Sundown” — The Man in Black’s bad-ass slow-motion walk away from the temple with his crew — to any number of songs, including “Damn it Feels Good to be A Gangster” and “Little Green Bag” from Reservoir Dogs.
Something I did not say over there:
Neil has a theory that the Alt-U is not a different timeline but the result of some time travel mojo that has yet to happen -- that basically we are witnessing how everything will resolve for our characters, the ending engineered for them by Jacob and The Man in Black after the events of the island play out. The fact that a late episode is called "Happily Ever After" supports this, as does the fact that Sayid is in the thrall of The Man in Black, and his Alt U story does not take such a happy turn as the others have. A punishment perhaps, and an appropriately ironic one: the Man in Black said he could see his true love again, and indeed he does -- in the arms of another man.
The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie for a pretty obvious reason: as the second act of the story, the bad guys are winning. As Dante learned writing the Divine Comedy, it is always more fun to hang out with bad guys than good guys. This far into season 6 of Lost we are clearly in the second act of the final season, and, right on schedule, the bad guys are in glorious form. I can only assume that while I am writing this a series of Youtube clips are being thrown together, scoring the final moment of “Sundown” — The Man in Black’s bad-ass slow-motion walk away from the temple with his crew — to any number of songs, including “Damn it Feels Good to be A Gangster” and “Little Green Bag” from Reservoir Dogs.
Something I did not say over there:
Neil has a theory that the Alt-U is not a different timeline but the result of some time travel mojo that has yet to happen -- that basically we are witnessing how everything will resolve for our characters, the ending engineered for them by Jacob and The Man in Black after the events of the island play out. The fact that a late episode is called "Happily Ever After" supports this, as does the fact that Sayid is in the thrall of The Man in Black, and his Alt U story does not take such a happy turn as the others have. A punishment perhaps, and an appropriately ironic one: the Man in Black said he could see his true love again, and indeed he does -- in the arms of another man.
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 I forget, remind me. Remember these comments can be directed at all the readers, not just me.
ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore.
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 I see a big free form comment that deserves more attention, I will pull it and make it its own post, with a label on the post and on the sidebar that will always link to all the posts you write for this blog. I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music, books and iPhone apps.
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.
AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore.
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 I see a big free form comment that deserves more attention, I will pull it and make it its own post, with a label on the post and on the sidebar that will always link to all the posts you write for this blog. I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music, books and iPhone apps.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Uncanny X-Men #258
[Jason Powell continues his EPIC look at ever issue of Claremont's X-Men, in the process inspiring other people not only to love Claremont MORE, but also to do their own issue by issue projects.]
“Broken Chains”
Why did Claremont turn Psylocke Asian?
The character’s transformation into a ninja is explainable in the context of Claremont’s extended Miller homage. Indeed, the eventual plan was to have the Hand succeed where they fail during the Mandarin trilogy, brainwashing Wolverine into their master assassin – a development that would have lasted a year. (Editorial nixed it, and when the time came Claremont had already quit anyway.)
But the desire to transform Betsy into a different ethnicity seems purposeless. I say “seems” because as I write this, there have just been some fantastic comments made to the blog entry for Uncanny 247, wherein Gary and others helped to beautifully explicate some of my difficulties with that issue’s ending. So while I’m inclined to say that Psylocke’s transformation was arbitrary and ill-considered, I will wait and see if any commentators can shed some light.
(I tend to put Storm’s transformation into a child in the same category. Developments like Ororo’s and Psylocke’s feel very much like the massive narrative chess game that was Claremont’s X-Men ended with “Inferno,” and that everything afterward amounts to him just idly pushing the pieces around on the board.)
“Broken Chains”
Why did Claremont turn Psylocke Asian?
The character’s transformation into a ninja is explainable in the context of Claremont’s extended Miller homage. Indeed, the eventual plan was to have the Hand succeed where they fail during the Mandarin trilogy, brainwashing Wolverine into their master assassin – a development that would have lasted a year. (Editorial nixed it, and when the time came Claremont had already quit anyway.)
But the desire to transform Betsy into a different ethnicity seems purposeless. I say “seems” because as I write this, there have just been some fantastic comments made to the blog entry for Uncanny 247, wherein Gary and others helped to beautifully explicate some of my difficulties with that issue’s ending. So while I’m inclined to say that Psylocke’s transformation was arbitrary and ill-considered, I will wait and see if any commentators can shed some light.
(I tend to put Storm’s transformation into a child in the same category. Developments like Ororo’s and Psylocke’s feel very much like the massive narrative chess game that was Claremont’s X-Men ended with “Inferno,” and that everything afterward amounts to him just idly pushing the pieces around on the board.)
Monday, March 01, 2010
Women in Refrigerators 10 Years Later
[Scott takes a discussion from ten years ago and evaluates how it holds up today. He sent me this a while ago but we have had so many regular posters on here, it sat in the pipeline for a while -- Sorry Scott. If it makes you feel better I have one in the pipeline too (expect it Monday).]
For those of you unfamiliar, It was a little over 10 years ago that Gail Simone and a few of her fellow comics creators/fans noticed what they felt to be a disturbing trend in superhero comics, a trend they named ‘Women in Refrigerators’ after the event in 1994’s Green Lantern 54 where Kyle Rayner returns home to discover his girlfriend has been murdered and stuffed into his refrigerator by Major Force (Ron Marz would later defend this scene by explaining that, since the censors would not allow them to show the full picture, many assumed that she had been dismembered when, in fact, she had only been crammed WHOLE into the refrigerator… because that’s SO MUCH better). While often used as a blanket term to refer to any wrong done to a female character, it is more specifically linked with something bad being done to a female character who is close to the hero in some way for the purpose of a plot device, usually one that involves having the hero ‘undergo a baptism of fire’ of sorts or to ‘raise the stakes’ and force the hero to consider and, sometimes, cross a line that they normally wouldn’t cross.
To document this phenomena, they created this website which not only list all the female characters who have had atrocities visited upon them that range from being depowered to being raped or murdered, but also contains responses from various comics professionals (some of whom are the guilty parties in the abuse of these characters) where they will often attempt to apologize or, at least, defend/explain their actions (interestingly, Geoff Johns, who weighs in at one point on this subject is given kudos for his portrayal of the, at the time, newly created Courney Whitmore (Stargirl) whom Simone describes as “ a delightful creation… the kind of young girl character I’ve been hoping for.” So, despite our issues with him here on the blog, maybe there’s some stuff he gets right.).
For those of you unfamiliar, It was a little over 10 years ago that Gail Simone and a few of her fellow comics creators/fans noticed what they felt to be a disturbing trend in superhero comics, a trend they named ‘Women in Refrigerators’ after the event in 1994’s Green Lantern 54 where Kyle Rayner returns home to discover his girlfriend has been murdered and stuffed into his refrigerator by Major Force (Ron Marz would later defend this scene by explaining that, since the censors would not allow them to show the full picture, many assumed that she had been dismembered when, in fact, she had only been crammed WHOLE into the refrigerator… because that’s SO MUCH better). While often used as a blanket term to refer to any wrong done to a female character, it is more specifically linked with something bad being done to a female character who is close to the hero in some way for the purpose of a plot device, usually one that involves having the hero ‘undergo a baptism of fire’ of sorts or to ‘raise the stakes’ and force the hero to consider and, sometimes, cross a line that they normally wouldn’t cross.
To document this phenomena, they created this website which not only list all the female characters who have had atrocities visited upon them that range from being depowered to being raped or murdered, but also contains responses from various comics professionals (some of whom are the guilty parties in the abuse of these characters) where they will often attempt to apologize or, at least, defend/explain their actions (interestingly, Geoff Johns, who weighs in at one point on this subject is given kudos for his portrayal of the, at the time, newly created Courney Whitmore (Stargirl) whom Simone describes as “ a delightful creation… the kind of young girl character I’ve been hoping for.” So, despite our issues with him here on the blog, maybe there’s some stuff he gets right.).
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