Very much along the lines of Ron Padgett, James Tate is a very funny poet. I thought I would try out the new technology and make this commonplace book entry a reading of his "List of Famous Hats," a prose poem of one paragraph. If you want more James Tate, I highly recommend his "Selected Poems" where you will find this poem, and many more like it.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #16, part b
[This post is part of a series of posts looking at Claremont's X-Men issue by issue. For more in the series see Jason Powell's name on the toolbar on the right.]
“Dearest Friend”
Claremont picks a curious subject for this one. The a-side of this one is about Wolverine and Weapon Alpha, but the b-side is set in the past and stars ... Banshee. This is fine with me; the world has no shortage of solo Wolverine comics. But this one – in which Sean Cassidy and his cousin Tom compete for the same woman, a beautiful blond motorcycle enthusiast named Maeve Rourke – should more appropriately have gone in Classic X-Men #10, which featured Black Tom as a villain. And #10b (a Wolverine solo story) could then have gone here. Curious.
At any rate, the lack of any momentum from the a-side makes “Dearest Friend” feel a little less urgent than other Claremont-Bolton backups, but on its own terms it’s as solid as any of the others. In the continuity department, it explains the source of the rivalry between Sean and “Black” Tom (they loved the same woman; of course, we should have guessed!) and also plants the seeds for a Claremont Spider-Woman arc published in 1981 involving Black Tom and Maeve’s daughter, Theresa.
As a plain-old love story, it’s light-hearted and quite sweet. It begins with a chase scene that ends with Banshee and Maeve flying off a cliff and almost plunging into the Atlantic, and Bolton has a lot of fun with Sean’s Superman-style rescue, flying Maeve to safety just inches before they hit the water. Claremont also has fun playing with the bantering relationship between Sean and Tom at a time before it became the insane, comic-book-style antagonism of Uncanny #101-103. The best bit: When Sean flies Maeve to Cassidy Keep (screaming all the while, since that’s how his power works), they arrive to the image of Tom in a bathrobe, looking sleepy and unkempt. “Sean – dear, idiot cousin,” he says. “There’s a time and place to flaunt your special gift. Here, at three past midnight, isn’t it.”
As it has to, the story ends with Maeve choosing between her two suitors (she goes for Banshee, surprise, surprise), and there’s even a handy bit of plotting that ties the antagonist from the Act One chase scene into the turning point of Act Three. Right out of the screenwriters’ handbook, that one.
It’s worth noting that in writing the main stories in Uncanny X-Men – as well as the spinoff titles, New Mutants and Excalibur – Claremont was always keen to throw in subplots that would keep readers coming back. A standard issue of a Claremont X-comic has a cut every few pages to a different, often entirely unrelated, scene. But in these Classic X-Men backups – limited to done-in-one stories only 12 pages in length, and typically following a single character arc rather than several – Claremont demonstrates his genuine talent for rock-solid plotting and tight, focused characterization.
I’d like to think there are a large portion of X-Men fans out there who, if they read these Classic X-Men backup stories, would have a reaction akin to Dana Whitaker after seeing The Lion King. “I didn’t know Claremont could do that! Did you know he could do that? I didn’t know he could do that.”
“Dearest Friend”
Claremont picks a curious subject for this one. The a-side of this one is about Wolverine and Weapon Alpha, but the b-side is set in the past and stars ... Banshee. This is fine with me; the world has no shortage of solo Wolverine comics. But this one – in which Sean Cassidy and his cousin Tom compete for the same woman, a beautiful blond motorcycle enthusiast named Maeve Rourke – should more appropriately have gone in Classic X-Men #10, which featured Black Tom as a villain. And #10b (a Wolverine solo story) could then have gone here. Curious.
At any rate, the lack of any momentum from the a-side makes “Dearest Friend” feel a little less urgent than other Claremont-Bolton backups, but on its own terms it’s as solid as any of the others. In the continuity department, it explains the source of the rivalry between Sean and “Black” Tom (they loved the same woman; of course, we should have guessed!) and also plants the seeds for a Claremont Spider-Woman arc published in 1981 involving Black Tom and Maeve’s daughter, Theresa.
As a plain-old love story, it’s light-hearted and quite sweet. It begins with a chase scene that ends with Banshee and Maeve flying off a cliff and almost plunging into the Atlantic, and Bolton has a lot of fun with Sean’s Superman-style rescue, flying Maeve to safety just inches before they hit the water. Claremont also has fun playing with the bantering relationship between Sean and Tom at a time before it became the insane, comic-book-style antagonism of Uncanny #101-103. The best bit: When Sean flies Maeve to Cassidy Keep (screaming all the while, since that’s how his power works), they arrive to the image of Tom in a bathrobe, looking sleepy and unkempt. “Sean – dear, idiot cousin,” he says. “There’s a time and place to flaunt your special gift. Here, at three past midnight, isn’t it.”
As it has to, the story ends with Maeve choosing between her two suitors (she goes for Banshee, surprise, surprise), and there’s even a handy bit of plotting that ties the antagonist from the Act One chase scene into the turning point of Act Three. Right out of the screenwriters’ handbook, that one.
It’s worth noting that in writing the main stories in Uncanny X-Men – as well as the spinoff titles, New Mutants and Excalibur – Claremont was always keen to throw in subplots that would keep readers coming back. A standard issue of a Claremont X-comic has a cut every few pages to a different, often entirely unrelated, scene. But in these Classic X-Men backups – limited to done-in-one stories only 12 pages in length, and typically following a single character arc rather than several – Claremont demonstrates his genuine talent for rock-solid plotting and tight, focused characterization.
I’d like to think there are a large portion of X-Men fans out there who, if they read these Classic X-Men backup stories, would have a reaction akin to Dana Whitaker after seeing The Lion King. “I didn’t know Claremont could do that! Did you know he could do that? I didn’t know he could do that.”
Monday, March 03, 2008
David Mamet's Red Belt.
You know what I like -- fancy dialogue and ass kicking. It is one of the reasons Kill Bill appeals to me so much. And now David Mamet has a mixed martial arts movie coming out. Awesome.
I do not know what the guy from Home Improvement is doing here, or Paolo from LOST, but I trust me some David Mamet, and I know I like the guy from Serenity and Dirty Pretty Things.
I have been watching 24 and The Unit on DVD and my head keeps coming back to this fantasy football idea: I wish David Mamet would write 24. That way I could get large scale plotting, and also dialogue I can remember. Right now those traits are isolated one on 24 and one on The Unit, and never the twain do meet.
On the subject of David Mamet, I recently got into a conversation with a friend about Mamet's wife, Rebecca Pidgeon. My friend Erin, and Sara, hate her because she is stilted and weird, and, they say, an awful actress only in these movies because she is Mamet's wife. But to me, David Mamet creates an alternate universe where everyone can talk in this fascinating, mannered way, a style practiced with a metronome. Like the overblown dialogue of Sin City many actors get it, and many do not, but Pidgeon, to my ear, is one of the few who appears to be a native of whatever alternate universe land this language comes from. A land where words are made up of distinct syllables carefully weighted and measured, and curse words are the stuff of poetry. These clips involving her are not great, but they are all I could find on YouTube.
The trailer for the Spanish Prisoner:
A scene from State and Main:
[If you have not seen these films, or Spartan or the underrated The Edge, you should see them immediately if these clips interest you even only a little.]
It is something about the way she pronounces vowels and weighs the syllables. Everything is distinct -- giving the impression that language, you know, matters, as more than a vehicle for getting stuff communicated.
I do not know what the guy from Home Improvement is doing here, or Paolo from LOST, but I trust me some David Mamet, and I know I like the guy from Serenity and Dirty Pretty Things.
I have been watching 24 and The Unit on DVD and my head keeps coming back to this fantasy football idea: I wish David Mamet would write 24. That way I could get large scale plotting, and also dialogue I can remember. Right now those traits are isolated one on 24 and one on The Unit, and never the twain do meet.
On the subject of David Mamet, I recently got into a conversation with a friend about Mamet's wife, Rebecca Pidgeon. My friend Erin, and Sara, hate her because she is stilted and weird, and, they say, an awful actress only in these movies because she is Mamet's wife. But to me, David Mamet creates an alternate universe where everyone can talk in this fascinating, mannered way, a style practiced with a metronome. Like the overblown dialogue of Sin City many actors get it, and many do not, but Pidgeon, to my ear, is one of the few who appears to be a native of whatever alternate universe land this language comes from. A land where words are made up of distinct syllables carefully weighted and measured, and curse words are the stuff of poetry. These clips involving her are not great, but they are all I could find on YouTube.
The trailer for the Spanish Prisoner:
A scene from State and Main:
[If you have not seen these films, or Spartan or the underrated The Edge, you should see them immediately if these clips interest you even only a little.]
It is something about the way she pronounces vowels and weighs the syllables. Everything is distinct -- giving the impression that language, you know, matters, as more than a vehicle for getting stuff communicated.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #16, part a (UXM #109)
[This post is part of a series of posts looking at Claremont's X-Men issue by issue. For more in the series see Jason Powell's name on the toolbar on the right.]
“Home Are the Heroes”
Dave Cockrum’s favorite of the new X-Men was Nightcrawler, and he doesn’t seem to have liked Wolverine at all. (Peter Sanderson has pointed out that, for all his ostensibly toughness, Wolverine is almost a comic character during the Cockrum run: he gets his clothes burnt off, tossed around by Colossus, smacked down by Cyclops, and talked down to by a leprechaun.) John Byrne, a Canadian, took a quasi-patriotic interest in Wolverine, and part of his agenda upon taking over from Cockrum seems to have been to make Wolverine cool. (It seems fair to say that he succeeded. Just ask Hugh Jackman.)
The start of that campaign is in this issue, in which Byrne and Claremont pick up on a thread from Giant-Sized X-Men #1 – when Wolverine quit his job as a Canadian super-agent, his superior told him he’d regret it – and debut a character dressed in the Canadian flag who’s come to America to bring Wolverine back. Wolverine was called “Weapon X” when he worked for the Canadians, so the new superhero is called “Weapon Alpha.”
It’s a little silly, granted. Surely, most readers have to laugh when Weapon Alpha brags to Wolverine, “My battle suit is the ultimate product of Canadian technology.” (But remember, this is the Marvel Universe version of Canada, the ones who figured out how to give a guy razor-sharp adamantium claws.) But it would be sillier if we didn’t have Byrne and Austin giving the action scenes so much bite. The sequence in which Colossus transforms from flesh-and-blood to metal in mid-punch is a classic (though Byrne claims to hate the sequence now). Once again, the detailed rendering by Austin makes it that much cooler.
There are also interesting character bits going on in “Home Are the Heroes.” With his giant space epic at last complete, Claremont does what is often referred to as a “breather issue.” The fight with Weapon Alpha provides some action, but it is in many ways incidental. The meat of the comic occurs earlier, with the return of some characterization (and, of course, soap opera melodrama). Banshee and Moira become pretty much an official couple when he kisses her on Page 2. That same page introduces Storm’s attic-full of plants, a deft touch that illustrates the amount of thought Claremont was starting to put into the lives of these characters.
Nightcrawler calls back Amanda, the girl he met back in Uncanny #98 (note the Errol Flynn poster in the background – very possibly Byrne’s idea). He suggests a double-date with Colossus and Betty (also from Uncanny #98), but Peter says no, he wants to finish writing a letter to his parents, and then accompany other X-Men on a picnic. Nightcrawler is the incurable romantic, out for a night on the town; Colossus is the family man who prefers the simpler things. (Also, Neil Shyminski, please note the Star Wars reference here: It is one of Nightcrawler’s “favorite films,” and Nightcrawler is said to resemble a “wookie.”)
And Wolverine goes hunting, but not to kill anything. “It takes no skill t’kill,” he says. “What takes skill is sneakin’ up close enough to a skittish doe t’touch her...” Wolverine is a wild man, but not in the predatory sense. His desire is to be so at one with nature that it accepts him. Anyone reading these stories in Classic X-Men would’ve gotten a sense of these traits much earlier, because the new pages and Bolton backups were written with the characters’ personalities already in place (Storm’s attic full of plants is in issue 3, for example, and Nightcrawler calls Errol Flynn his “idol” in issue 4). But to view this story in its original context, it’s striking how much Claremont suddenly gives us in this one issue. Already he is increasing the dimensionality of these characters, and in doing so striking upon the key to why they will eventually become so beloved, the stars of the best-selling superhero comic in America for decades.
I am again struck by Nightcrawler’s place in the world of the four core members of the “new” team. Colossus, Storm and Wolverine all feel ill at ease in their city environs. Storm surrounds herself with plants; Colossus dearly misses the “emptiness” of his homeland; Wolverine yearns to be at one with the forest. Only Nightcrawler, the so-called “misfit,” prefers the opposite. He wants to go to the city, a beautiful woman on his arm, and see a sci-fi film. It’s curious that Nightcrawler – the only one of the four who is not outwardly human – also does not share the naturalist-streak that other three possess. To be honest, striking though the contrast is, I’m not sure where Claremont is going with it.
[One minor thing to notice, is a nice art detail -- a sound effect that follows the plane of a beam of energy, rather than being angled on the flat "window" the reader is looking through to read the comic book.]
“Home Are the Heroes”
Dave Cockrum’s favorite of the new X-Men was Nightcrawler, and he doesn’t seem to have liked Wolverine at all. (Peter Sanderson has pointed out that, for all his ostensibly toughness, Wolverine is almost a comic character during the Cockrum run: he gets his clothes burnt off, tossed around by Colossus, smacked down by Cyclops, and talked down to by a leprechaun.) John Byrne, a Canadian, took a quasi-patriotic interest in Wolverine, and part of his agenda upon taking over from Cockrum seems to have been to make Wolverine cool. (It seems fair to say that he succeeded. Just ask Hugh Jackman.)
The start of that campaign is in this issue, in which Byrne and Claremont pick up on a thread from Giant-Sized X-Men #1 – when Wolverine quit his job as a Canadian super-agent, his superior told him he’d regret it – and debut a character dressed in the Canadian flag who’s come to America to bring Wolverine back. Wolverine was called “Weapon X” when he worked for the Canadians, so the new superhero is called “Weapon Alpha.”
It’s a little silly, granted. Surely, most readers have to laugh when Weapon Alpha brags to Wolverine, “My battle suit is the ultimate product of Canadian technology.” (But remember, this is the Marvel Universe version of Canada, the ones who figured out how to give a guy razor-sharp adamantium claws.) But it would be sillier if we didn’t have Byrne and Austin giving the action scenes so much bite. The sequence in which Colossus transforms from flesh-and-blood to metal in mid-punch is a classic (though Byrne claims to hate the sequence now). Once again, the detailed rendering by Austin makes it that much cooler.
There are also interesting character bits going on in “Home Are the Heroes.” With his giant space epic at last complete, Claremont does what is often referred to as a “breather issue.” The fight with Weapon Alpha provides some action, but it is in many ways incidental. The meat of the comic occurs earlier, with the return of some characterization (and, of course, soap opera melodrama). Banshee and Moira become pretty much an official couple when he kisses her on Page 2. That same page introduces Storm’s attic-full of plants, a deft touch that illustrates the amount of thought Claremont was starting to put into the lives of these characters.
Nightcrawler calls back Amanda, the girl he met back in Uncanny #98 (note the Errol Flynn poster in the background – very possibly Byrne’s idea). He suggests a double-date with Colossus and Betty (also from Uncanny #98), but Peter says no, he wants to finish writing a letter to his parents, and then accompany other X-Men on a picnic. Nightcrawler is the incurable romantic, out for a night on the town; Colossus is the family man who prefers the simpler things. (Also, Neil Shyminski, please note the Star Wars reference here: It is one of Nightcrawler’s “favorite films,” and Nightcrawler is said to resemble a “wookie.”)
And Wolverine goes hunting, but not to kill anything. “It takes no skill t’kill,” he says. “What takes skill is sneakin’ up close enough to a skittish doe t’touch her...” Wolverine is a wild man, but not in the predatory sense. His desire is to be so at one with nature that it accepts him. Anyone reading these stories in Classic X-Men would’ve gotten a sense of these traits much earlier, because the new pages and Bolton backups were written with the characters’ personalities already in place (Storm’s attic full of plants is in issue 3, for example, and Nightcrawler calls Errol Flynn his “idol” in issue 4). But to view this story in its original context, it’s striking how much Claremont suddenly gives us in this one issue. Already he is increasing the dimensionality of these characters, and in doing so striking upon the key to why they will eventually become so beloved, the stars of the best-selling superhero comic in America for decades.
I am again struck by Nightcrawler’s place in the world of the four core members of the “new” team. Colossus, Storm and Wolverine all feel ill at ease in their city environs. Storm surrounds herself with plants; Colossus dearly misses the “emptiness” of his homeland; Wolverine yearns to be at one with the forest. Only Nightcrawler, the so-called “misfit,” prefers the opposite. He wants to go to the city, a beautiful woman on his arm, and see a sci-fi film. It’s curious that Nightcrawler – the only one of the four who is not outwardly human – also does not share the naturalist-streak that other three possess. To be honest, striking though the contrast is, I’m not sure where Claremont is going with it.
[One minor thing to notice, is a nice art detail -- a sound effect that follows the plane of a beam of energy, rather than being angled on the flat "window" the reader is looking through to read the comic book.]
Friday, February 29, 2008
Comics Out February 27, 2008
All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder 9. Scott has already reviewed this for us, but let me say two things. First let me plug the Batman book linked in the toolbar on the right; the essay I contributed to it explains why I love this title even though, like almost everyone else, I started out hating it. If you hate this book, my essay might turn you around. Second, as an artist as well as a writer you have to think Frank Miller's real reason to write this issue was to play up the visual absurdity -- yellow Batman and yellow Robin serving lemonade in a yellow room with the Green Lantern standing around unable to do anything about it. This issue continues to support the claims in my essay -- Miller brings the crazy, and the crazy is good for a character like Batman, who is such a franchise at this point. But their prank -- both with the yellow and with verbally harassing Green Lantern who is, in Miller's hands, more than a little dumb (Miller hates cops and hates space cops most of all) -- turns serious. The emotion is maudlin but it should be -- this is not a realistic portrayal of emotion. This is the emotion of a Mickey Spillane novel. And Mickey Spillane, if you missed the memo, is awesome. ALSO: how easy is it going to be for DC to roll out an anti-Green Lantern Batman action figure? All toy companies ever do is get a mold, then put slightly different paint jobs on it (jungle Batman, Winter Batman), and toss in some props (vine, sled). All they need now is some yellow spray paint and a drink pitcher from Barbie's pool set.
Batman 674. I liked Morrison's writing here, and now I am wondering if his Batman run will be a failed masterpiece along the lines of his New X-Men run -- some great ideas, some great stories, some great artists, some bad artists, some misfires, some serious weak points. At least he fully has my attention again. The answers to who are the other Batmen was pretty satisfying, as was the narration about the king of crime. The art is OK, and we will see where we go from here. As for Morrison's claim that his Batman is 35 and has basically been through everything the stories say he has, it surprising me that Morrison has such a rational explanation. To me the irrational history of these characters was the best part of them, because that chaos requires strong revision. And all of Morrison's frustration with Miller evidenced in interviews and the comic book itself suggest that this is not mere history for him.
Kick Ass 1. Not as pointlessly sadistic or unlikable as I heard over at Newsarama, though surely electrocuted testicles was too far -- being tied and beaten by criminals would have been enough for anyone who can think of violence as anything other than sexual. But overall, not great either. The main character is not as unlikable as Wesley Gibson, but there Millar wanted the audience to see themselves in the main character. Here I cannot help but think that his target audience is Hollywood, and we are all here to make that happen for him, like the friends drug up to see a band play for no reason other than that there is someone in the audience who could give them a contract and it would be best to hear us cheer.
There was a con but I did not keep up with it. Let me know if there is anything I should know in comics news.
Batman 674. I liked Morrison's writing here, and now I am wondering if his Batman run will be a failed masterpiece along the lines of his New X-Men run -- some great ideas, some great stories, some great artists, some bad artists, some misfires, some serious weak points. At least he fully has my attention again. The answers to who are the other Batmen was pretty satisfying, as was the narration about the king of crime. The art is OK, and we will see where we go from here. As for Morrison's claim that his Batman is 35 and has basically been through everything the stories say he has, it surprising me that Morrison has such a rational explanation. To me the irrational history of these characters was the best part of them, because that chaos requires strong revision. And all of Morrison's frustration with Miller evidenced in interviews and the comic book itself suggest that this is not mere history for him.
Kick Ass 1. Not as pointlessly sadistic or unlikable as I heard over at Newsarama, though surely electrocuted testicles was too far -- being tied and beaten by criminals would have been enough for anyone who can think of violence as anything other than sexual. But overall, not great either. The main character is not as unlikable as Wesley Gibson, but there Millar wanted the audience to see themselves in the main character. Here I cannot help but think that his target audience is Hollywood, and we are all here to make that happen for him, like the friends drug up to see a band play for no reason other than that there is someone in the audience who could give them a contract and it would be best to hear us cheer.
There was a con but I did not keep up with it. Let me know if there is anything I should know in comics news.
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