[Guest blogger Scott talks about pop music in film. I discuss one film at the end.]
Too often, popular music in film is used as nothing more than a marketing gimmick. However, when done properly, a good tune can elevate a scene to a whole new level. The Graduate is probably one of the earliest examples that I can think of where popular music, quite literally, is used as the score of a film. As I mentioned in my post last week, “The Sound of Silence” serves as a theme of uncertainty throughout just as “Scarborough Fair” serves as the love theme for Ben and Elaine. The Graduate set a standard that would eventually reach its apex a decade later in The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, one of the most enduring and commercially successful soundtracks of all time. Since then, pretty much any movie that is attempting to have its finger on the pulse of pop culture has an accompanying soundtrack. Of course, some are more successful, both commercially and artistically, than others.
A couple of my favorite examples come from Cameron Crowe’s underrated (or at least underappreciated) Almost Famous. The film has been described by Crowe as a ‘Love Letter’ to the rock music of the 70s and nowhere is that more apparent in this, the movie’s most famous scene:
Here, the band and their entourage who had been fighting with one another, are brought back together through the magic of music; the reason why they came together in the first place. However, there’s another reason I love this scene and it lies in the choice of the song “Tiny Dancer.” Yes, this is, of course, a song that sounds great when you have a group of people singing along to it but there’s more to it than that: Almost Famous is, essentially, a love story about a groupie, Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) and the song “Tiny Dancer” is, you guessed it, a love song about a groupie. For those of you not ‘hip to the lingo’, “Seamstress for the Band” or the more ambiguous “Costume Girl” were (are?) common euphemisms given to groupies. Basically, it was a way of putting a group’s “road girlfriends” on the payroll without it being considered prostitution. So, in short, this scene isn’t just great because of the ‘Love of Music’ bringing the band back together, thus keeping in line with Crowe’s “Love Letter” to music, but also because the song chosen for this scene serves as a sort of summary to character arc of Penny Lane’s character.
Of course, rather than emphasis, music can be used to provide a contrast or a subtext to a scene. Here’s one of my favorite examples using a traditional score from Road to Perdition.
Even though the action in this scene is violent, basically a massacre, the music played over the scene (notice how the sound slowly faded out at the beginning and the end of the scene leaving only the score) is quiet and haunting, reflecting the conflict in the relationship between the Tom Hanks and Paul Newman characters (without spoiling too much… they had a father/son relationship that Newman betrayed by doing something really horrible to Hanks early on in the film).
Of course, popular music can be used in much the same way. Perhaps one of the best examples is the use of Stealer’s Wheel’s jubilant “Stuck in The Middle” for the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino is arguably a master of this ‘contrasting song’ trick).
In one of my favorite examples from Almost Famous, Patrick Fugit rushes to save an overdosing Kate Hudson and while the wonderful use of “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” got the lion’s share of the attention, it is the song at the end of the scene that is used the most interestingly.
In case you didn’t notice, the song being played as Hudson is having her stomach pumped is Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour”; this is hardly the kind of song that one might normally pair with a young woman vomiting but, as soon as we see the look on Fugit’s face, we understand why: He’s completely smitten with her. It doesn’t matter that she is engaging in what is, quite possibly, the most repulsive action that a person can perform; she’s still beautiful to him because he’s completely head over heels in love with her.
So, what are some of your favorite uses of popular music in film? Just off the top of my head I’m already thinking “Bohemian Rhapsody” in Wayne’s World and “Hold Tight!” in Death Proof (It’s the song played right before the head on collision)…. I could go on and on with this one… hopefully you guys will too!
[Grosse Pointe Blank makes great use of a pop soundtrack:
My favorite bit, not on YouTube, is when he goes into the minimart that now stands where his childhood home had been. Live and Let Die plays, sort of capturing his anger, and it stops as soon as he enters -- except if you listen closely, you can hear that it has not stopped at all: it is playing as Muzack on the minimart sound system.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Cove West on Marvel and Lovecraft (Comment Pull Quote))
[In the comments to Jason's post on Uncanny X-Men 160, Cove West wrote -- in three parts -- about the Lovecraft mythos as it appears in Marvel Comics. Comment pull quote? Comment pull essay.]
HP Lovecraft and the N'Garai.
Jason, you asked way back in #150 about the gist of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Essentially, it's that there were these "Great Old Ones" (GOO) who were the original inhabitants of Earth, became dormant during the Age of Man, and were always on the verge of reawakening and destroying us all. The GOO were pure evil, but in a mindless force-of-nature way (they didn't cackle or plot or anything); it was usually their TAINT of evil, not the Old Ones specifically, that appeared in the stories. The villainy often came from humans who either had GOO-tainted ancestry (and sometimes were physically mutated) or who came into contact with a relic of the Old Ones that drove them mad. For Marvel Universe analogues, the Celestials are the most prominent (though they were more sci-fi oriented and tended to be more amoral than evil), and demon gods like Shuma-Gorath are almost direct pastiches.
But the more specific Cthulhuan beings in the MU are the Elder Gods -- Chthon, Set, Gaea, Oshtur, and Atum the Demogorge. The Elder Gods are more humanized than Lovecraft's creations, and Gaea and Oshtur (and Atum, sometimes) are benevolent (the GOO were always malevolent). Still, Chthon and Set are pretty close to what Lovecraft was doing -- Set got the tentacled, aquatic-themed aspects; Chthon got the demonic, mythic-mystical aspects. When it comes to the X-Men, however, Chthon is the important one.
The development of the ideas behind the Elder Gods is extremely convoluted. It begins with Roy Thomas on DR. STRANGE, who created a bunch of Lovecraftian demons with vaguely GOO-ish origins. Then Thomas brought Conan into the MU and things got askew: Robert E. Howard, Conan's creator, was a colleague of Lovecraft's, and Conan's mythos includes some ACTUAL Old Ones, so Thomas began distingiushed his analogues from the real things with the term "Elder Gods." But around the same time, other Marvel writers started on a Marvel-unique eschatology, a mish-mash of Classical myth (Gaea, Atum) and the Cthulhuan-inspired (Chthon). However, Thomas's Conan mythos remained just as relevant -- it figures prominently into the creation of Atlantis and the Savage Land, and the Hyborean Era is a major part of both Earth's and Asgard's past. Over time, Conan's major foe, Set, was included in the modern Marvel tales, and eventually the hierarchy settled into the powerful Elder Gods -- Set, Chthon, Gaea, and later, Atum and Oshtur -- and the secondary Primal (or Hyborean Elder) Gods -- Crom, Mitra, Ymir (the Asgardian Frost Giant), Shuma-Gorath, and others (Set is also in this, uh, set). The GOO used by Thomas in CONAN probably should be included as Primal Gods in the MU, but by the time the rules were established, Marvel had stopped using them. And to further confuse things, there are also the Elder RACE -- long-lived humans of the Hyborean Era such as Thulsa Doom (the guy James Earl Jones played in the Conan movie) -- and ElderSPAWN (who are ALSO sometimes referred to as Elder Races), who are now established to be human-like species created by the Elder Gods -- Set's Serpent Men, Oshtur's Bird Men, and maybe even a few of the Savage Land creatures. Hell, there's even a HyPERborean Era, which borrows from the tales of Clark Ashton Smith (who was also a friend of Howard's and Lovecraft's) and includes both Cthulhuan and Hyborean stuff.
Confusing, isn't it? The online Marvel Appendix helps sort some of it out, but even then, it can make your head explode. So just think how Claremont felt when he was trying to navigate it in the anything-goes stage of 1982!
Claremont's part in this begins in GIANT-SIZE DRACULA #2 (Sept 74), where he introduces a demon, Y'Garon, who is trying to use a "Sa'arpool" to summon the "Elder Gods" and "the Triad" (I don't have this issue, so I'm going by the Handbooks for this). Fairly generic demon story, but the reference to "Elder Gods" is important; at the time, I'm pretty sure "Elder Gods" referred specifically to what Roy Thomas was doing in CONAN -- thus, they were actually the Primal Gods. The next event comes in UNCANNY #96 (Dec 75), where Claremont and Cockrum create Kierrok and the N'Garai, whom Kierrok says are the "Elder Gods" who used to rule the Earth, a pretty explicit Lovecraft reference. But the pivotal event comes in MARVEL TEAM-UP #79 (Mar 79), a Claremont/Byrne tale featuring Spidey and Red Sonja. Here, the Hyborean sorceror Kulan Gath makes his first modern-day appearance, declares himself a priest of the N'Garai and a Sorcerer Supreme, and attempts to summon the "Elder Gods" through another Sa'arpool.
The clues are scattered, but Claremont seems to be saying that the N'Garai are the same as the Primal Gods of the Hyborean Era, that Y'Garon was trying to summon Kierrok in G-S DRACULA #2, and that the N'Garai are equivalent to Dr. Strange's Vishanti. He's putting forth the N'Garai as the Marvel's GOO analogues.
However, Marv Wolfman, Mark Gruenwald, and others were concurrently building Chthon up as the Big Bad Evil, especially in AVENGERS #185-87 (July-Sept 79). At some point, they tied Chthon to Gaea -- who, as Thor's mother in Marvel canon, was firmly established as a supreme goddess -- and developed the actual Elder Gods concept. As Set had already been making modern-day appearances since 1969, it made sense to tie him to the Elder Gods as well, and in effect tying the entire Thomas-Conan mythos to them. But over in UNCANNY, Claremont was still calling the N'Garai "Elder Gods" and treating them as though they were the GOO-analogous Primal Gods of the Hyborean Era, neither of which was Marvel canon anymore.
And then things came to a head with Belasco. As created by Bruce Jones in KA-ZAR #11 (Feb 82), Belasco SHOULD have been a servant of the Primal Gods of Conan's time, that every reference to "Elder Gods" should be in the same vein as Roy Thomas's CONAN "Elder Gods" (ie, guys like Shuma-Gorath or Crom) -- especially considering that Jones was writing for CONAN and SAVAGE SWORD at the time. But Claremont either thought Jones was referring to his "Elder Gods" or decided it didn't matter, so when Belasco shows up in UNCANNY #160 (Aug 82), Claremont never makes a distinction. In any event, Claremont intends that Belasco's masters are the N'Garai, and that should Belasco succeed, the N'Garai's return would be tantamount to instant end-of-the-world-ness (per the Lovecraft homage).
Which brings me to the reason for this long-as-all-get-out post: to reconstruct exactly how monumental #160 was supposed to be, the purpose of Limbo, and how dangerous Magik was intended.
UNCANNY #150 had multiple references to the actual Great Old One Cthulhu, who in the MU was a Primal God but carries the more-powerful connotation of Lovecraft's version. #159 is Dracula, who as Lord of Vampires in the MU, is the ostensible "high priest" of Chthon. Belasco completes the triumvirate, but also acts as a kind of videogame "end boss" -- defeating Belasco is the ultimate triumph over evil. Or to use BUFFY parlance: Belasco's the Big Bad who makes Magneto (as the Cthulhu priest) and Dracula (as the Chthon priest) the Little Bads. It's more thematic than explicit (Magneto wasn't actually a priest of Cthulhu, of course), and Claremont never makes Belasco quite as Big Badly as he seems to think he is, but Claremont's clearly in the mindset of trying to put the X-Men in a Lovecraft story.
Looking at Belasco, it seems clear that Claremont intends him as the heir to Kulan Gath's mantle as N'Garai high priest. Making Magik the inheritor of Belasco's mantle, then, is a HUGE deal. UNCANNY #190-191 is a nice indicator of Illyana's potential in that regard, but remember that Kulan Gath was a Sorcerer Supreme (at least, in Claremont's stories; I think everyone else ignored that); Illyana taking down the Enchantress in Asgard is simply a mild display of the power of her inheritance.
But I think her magic was only a part of the danger. The other part (and thanks Jason for reminding me that I forgot to mention it before) is that it seems, from the general flow of the N'Garai stories from G-S DRACULA #2 and MTU #79, is that the final sa'arpool to free the N'Garai... is Illyana herself (if it'd been Kierrok's cairn, Gath surely would have known about it if he knew about Y'Garon's sa'arpool, which he mentions). Sorcerer Y'Garon uses Sa'arpool #1, is defeated by Dracula; sorcerer Kulan Gath uses Sa'arpool #2, is defeated by Spidey and Red Sonja; so what is it that sorcerer Belasco uses in #160? Illyana. It seems like Claremont is indicating that Illyana's mutant power to control the Stepping Discs is itself the sa'arpool, that she wasn't yet strong enough to fully use it, and that the Bloodstones would somehow allow Belasco to tap that power when she was. But in the MAGIK mini, the N'Garai decide to cut out middle-man Belasco and back Illyana, content that she will be their creature by the time she can fully use her inner sa'arpool. So the more Illyana uses her power, the more she'll corrupt, and the closer she'll get to opening the forbidden door and destroying all life (because if the N'Garai return, like Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, they can't be stopped).
Sound familiar? Claremont DID refer to both Magik and Phoenix as Darkchild.
I should mention Limbo, too. If the N'Garai's dimension represents the Hell of Claremont's theology, then Limbo isn't just a convenient name, it's what the place actually is: the place between Earth and Hell. And in that regard, I wonder what that means for S'ym and N'astirh and the rest -- were they actual N'Garai, somehow stuck in the limbo of Limbo? Anyway, Claremont was using it mainly metaphorically: when Illyana had lost two-fifths of her soul, she was able to use her sa'arpool power to go to the dimension two-fifths of the way between Earth and Hell; had she lost all her soul, she could go all the way. The difference between Jean and Illyana, I think he was going for, was that Illyana would actually have a choice -- power itself corrupted Jean, but it's the abuse of the power that corrupts Illyana.
So yeah, I think Claremont's progressive shift from the Lovecraftian to the Dantean really kneecapped a lot of the story he'd built. And I wonder why that happened. Did he flinch from rehashing Dark Phoenix? Did the overall decision to ignore his "Elder Gods" for Chthon and Set, thereby demoting the N'Garai to simple demons, deflate his interest in the story? Or did the Lovecraftian angle simply lose its appeal as he got older? SOMETHING happened to make him give up Illyana's fate to Weezie in "Inferno" and change the original intent of the N'Garai Saga that "Inferno" ostensibly completed. Maybe I'll spot something once we get to #190-91 -- because, yes, there's parts of this story still to come!
HP Lovecraft and the N'Garai.
Jason, you asked way back in #150 about the gist of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Essentially, it's that there were these "Great Old Ones" (GOO) who were the original inhabitants of Earth, became dormant during the Age of Man, and were always on the verge of reawakening and destroying us all. The GOO were pure evil, but in a mindless force-of-nature way (they didn't cackle or plot or anything); it was usually their TAINT of evil, not the Old Ones specifically, that appeared in the stories. The villainy often came from humans who either had GOO-tainted ancestry (and sometimes were physically mutated) or who came into contact with a relic of the Old Ones that drove them mad. For Marvel Universe analogues, the Celestials are the most prominent (though they were more sci-fi oriented and tended to be more amoral than evil), and demon gods like Shuma-Gorath are almost direct pastiches.
But the more specific Cthulhuan beings in the MU are the Elder Gods -- Chthon, Set, Gaea, Oshtur, and Atum the Demogorge. The Elder Gods are more humanized than Lovecraft's creations, and Gaea and Oshtur (and Atum, sometimes) are benevolent (the GOO were always malevolent). Still, Chthon and Set are pretty close to what Lovecraft was doing -- Set got the tentacled, aquatic-themed aspects; Chthon got the demonic, mythic-mystical aspects. When it comes to the X-Men, however, Chthon is the important one.
The development of the ideas behind the Elder Gods is extremely convoluted. It begins with Roy Thomas on DR. STRANGE, who created a bunch of Lovecraftian demons with vaguely GOO-ish origins. Then Thomas brought Conan into the MU and things got askew: Robert E. Howard, Conan's creator, was a colleague of Lovecraft's, and Conan's mythos includes some ACTUAL Old Ones, so Thomas began distingiushed his analogues from the real things with the term "Elder Gods." But around the same time, other Marvel writers started on a Marvel-unique eschatology, a mish-mash of Classical myth (Gaea, Atum) and the Cthulhuan-inspired (Chthon). However, Thomas's Conan mythos remained just as relevant -- it figures prominently into the creation of Atlantis and the Savage Land, and the Hyborean Era is a major part of both Earth's and Asgard's past. Over time, Conan's major foe, Set, was included in the modern Marvel tales, and eventually the hierarchy settled into the powerful Elder Gods -- Set, Chthon, Gaea, and later, Atum and Oshtur -- and the secondary Primal (or Hyborean Elder) Gods -- Crom, Mitra, Ymir (the Asgardian Frost Giant), Shuma-Gorath, and others (Set is also in this, uh, set). The GOO used by Thomas in CONAN probably should be included as Primal Gods in the MU, but by the time the rules were established, Marvel had stopped using them. And to further confuse things, there are also the Elder RACE -- long-lived humans of the Hyborean Era such as Thulsa Doom (the guy James Earl Jones played in the Conan movie) -- and ElderSPAWN (who are ALSO sometimes referred to as Elder Races), who are now established to be human-like species created by the Elder Gods -- Set's Serpent Men, Oshtur's Bird Men, and maybe even a few of the Savage Land creatures. Hell, there's even a HyPERborean Era, which borrows from the tales of Clark Ashton Smith (who was also a friend of Howard's and Lovecraft's) and includes both Cthulhuan and Hyborean stuff.
Confusing, isn't it? The online Marvel Appendix helps sort some of it out, but even then, it can make your head explode. So just think how Claremont felt when he was trying to navigate it in the anything-goes stage of 1982!
Claremont's part in this begins in GIANT-SIZE DRACULA #2 (Sept 74), where he introduces a demon, Y'Garon, who is trying to use a "Sa'arpool" to summon the "Elder Gods" and "the Triad" (I don't have this issue, so I'm going by the Handbooks for this). Fairly generic demon story, but the reference to "Elder Gods" is important; at the time, I'm pretty sure "Elder Gods" referred specifically to what Roy Thomas was doing in CONAN -- thus, they were actually the Primal Gods. The next event comes in UNCANNY #96 (Dec 75), where Claremont and Cockrum create Kierrok and the N'Garai, whom Kierrok says are the "Elder Gods" who used to rule the Earth, a pretty explicit Lovecraft reference. But the pivotal event comes in MARVEL TEAM-UP #79 (Mar 79), a Claremont/Byrne tale featuring Spidey and Red Sonja. Here, the Hyborean sorceror Kulan Gath makes his first modern-day appearance, declares himself a priest of the N'Garai and a Sorcerer Supreme, and attempts to summon the "Elder Gods" through another Sa'arpool.
The clues are scattered, but Claremont seems to be saying that the N'Garai are the same as the Primal Gods of the Hyborean Era, that Y'Garon was trying to summon Kierrok in G-S DRACULA #2, and that the N'Garai are equivalent to Dr. Strange's Vishanti. He's putting forth the N'Garai as the Marvel's GOO analogues.
However, Marv Wolfman, Mark Gruenwald, and others were concurrently building Chthon up as the Big Bad Evil, especially in AVENGERS #185-87 (July-Sept 79). At some point, they tied Chthon to Gaea -- who, as Thor's mother in Marvel canon, was firmly established as a supreme goddess -- and developed the actual Elder Gods concept. As Set had already been making modern-day appearances since 1969, it made sense to tie him to the Elder Gods as well, and in effect tying the entire Thomas-Conan mythos to them. But over in UNCANNY, Claremont was still calling the N'Garai "Elder Gods" and treating them as though they were the GOO-analogous Primal Gods of the Hyborean Era, neither of which was Marvel canon anymore.
And then things came to a head with Belasco. As created by Bruce Jones in KA-ZAR #11 (Feb 82), Belasco SHOULD have been a servant of the Primal Gods of Conan's time, that every reference to "Elder Gods" should be in the same vein as Roy Thomas's CONAN "Elder Gods" (ie, guys like Shuma-Gorath or Crom) -- especially considering that Jones was writing for CONAN and SAVAGE SWORD at the time. But Claremont either thought Jones was referring to his "Elder Gods" or decided it didn't matter, so when Belasco shows up in UNCANNY #160 (Aug 82), Claremont never makes a distinction. In any event, Claremont intends that Belasco's masters are the N'Garai, and that should Belasco succeed, the N'Garai's return would be tantamount to instant end-of-the-world-ness (per the Lovecraft homage).
Which brings me to the reason for this long-as-all-get-out post: to reconstruct exactly how monumental #160 was supposed to be, the purpose of Limbo, and how dangerous Magik was intended.
UNCANNY #150 had multiple references to the actual Great Old One Cthulhu, who in the MU was a Primal God but carries the more-powerful connotation of Lovecraft's version. #159 is Dracula, who as Lord of Vampires in the MU, is the ostensible "high priest" of Chthon. Belasco completes the triumvirate, but also acts as a kind of videogame "end boss" -- defeating Belasco is the ultimate triumph over evil. Or to use BUFFY parlance: Belasco's the Big Bad who makes Magneto (as the Cthulhu priest) and Dracula (as the Chthon priest) the Little Bads. It's more thematic than explicit (Magneto wasn't actually a priest of Cthulhu, of course), and Claremont never makes Belasco quite as Big Badly as he seems to think he is, but Claremont's clearly in the mindset of trying to put the X-Men in a Lovecraft story.
Looking at Belasco, it seems clear that Claremont intends him as the heir to Kulan Gath's mantle as N'Garai high priest. Making Magik the inheritor of Belasco's mantle, then, is a HUGE deal. UNCANNY #190-191 is a nice indicator of Illyana's potential in that regard, but remember that Kulan Gath was a Sorcerer Supreme (at least, in Claremont's stories; I think everyone else ignored that); Illyana taking down the Enchantress in Asgard is simply a mild display of the power of her inheritance.
But I think her magic was only a part of the danger. The other part (and thanks Jason for reminding me that I forgot to mention it before) is that it seems, from the general flow of the N'Garai stories from G-S DRACULA #2 and MTU #79, is that the final sa'arpool to free the N'Garai... is Illyana herself (if it'd been Kierrok's cairn, Gath surely would have known about it if he knew about Y'Garon's sa'arpool, which he mentions). Sorcerer Y'Garon uses Sa'arpool #1, is defeated by Dracula; sorcerer Kulan Gath uses Sa'arpool #2, is defeated by Spidey and Red Sonja; so what is it that sorcerer Belasco uses in #160? Illyana. It seems like Claremont is indicating that Illyana's mutant power to control the Stepping Discs is itself the sa'arpool, that she wasn't yet strong enough to fully use it, and that the Bloodstones would somehow allow Belasco to tap that power when she was. But in the MAGIK mini, the N'Garai decide to cut out middle-man Belasco and back Illyana, content that she will be their creature by the time she can fully use her inner sa'arpool. So the more Illyana uses her power, the more she'll corrupt, and the closer she'll get to opening the forbidden door and destroying all life (because if the N'Garai return, like Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, they can't be stopped).
Sound familiar? Claremont DID refer to both Magik and Phoenix as Darkchild.
I should mention Limbo, too. If the N'Garai's dimension represents the Hell of Claremont's theology, then Limbo isn't just a convenient name, it's what the place actually is: the place between Earth and Hell. And in that regard, I wonder what that means for S'ym and N'astirh and the rest -- were they actual N'Garai, somehow stuck in the limbo of Limbo? Anyway, Claremont was using it mainly metaphorically: when Illyana had lost two-fifths of her soul, she was able to use her sa'arpool power to go to the dimension two-fifths of the way between Earth and Hell; had she lost all her soul, she could go all the way. The difference between Jean and Illyana, I think he was going for, was that Illyana would actually have a choice -- power itself corrupted Jean, but it's the abuse of the power that corrupts Illyana.
So yeah, I think Claremont's progressive shift from the Lovecraftian to the Dantean really kneecapped a lot of the story he'd built. And I wonder why that happened. Did he flinch from rehashing Dark Phoenix? Did the overall decision to ignore his "Elder Gods" for Chthon and Set, thereby demoting the N'Garai to simple demons, deflate his interest in the story? Or did the Lovecraftian angle simply lose its appeal as he got older? SOMETHING happened to make him give up Illyana's fate to Weezie in "Inferno" and change the original intent of the N'Garai Saga that "Inferno" ostensibly completed. Maybe I'll spot something once we get to #190-91 -- because, yes, there's parts of this story still to come!
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Jacket Blurbs
Slate has an article up about the art of the blurb, a literary form I have long been fascinated with in part because of Harold Bloom's hilariously overwrought blurbs. The article gives a link to a really interesting website that collects blurbs about poetry -- though I was skeptical, it really is as great as the article claims.
Jason Powell on Uncanny X-Men #163
[Guest blogger Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men Run. For more in this series, see the toolbar on the right.]
“Rescue Mission”
At this point in his run, Claremont seems generally to have pulled free of the long shadow of his work with John Byrne (as well as that of Kirby, Lee, Adams, et al). Recent months have seen him take the series in directions not at all predicted by anything seen previously in an X-Men comic – proof that Claremont alone has the imagination and creative wherewithal to steer the X-Men into exciting and surprising directions, irrespective of his artistic partner.
Still, a job is a job, and the relentlessness of the monthly deadline – combined with Claremont’s own recognizable writing idiosyncrasies and quirks – make it inevitable that he will still repeat himself from time to time. (Ultimately, the same is true of any writer in a serialized medium.)
In the present issue, there are distinct shades of the middle act of the Dark Phoenix Saga, wherein Wolverine and Cyclops were the lynchpins of the X-Men’s escape from the Hellfire Club. Here, Wolverine is once again the catalyst for an escape, this time from the Brood (whom the X-Men all seem to spontaneously nickname “sleazoids” – a prime example of Claremont’s aforementioned quirkiness). Furthermore, Claremont seems to be heading Carol Danvers towards a Phoenix-like transformation. Danvers’ arc will eventually play out fairly innocuously, but readers at the time of this issue’s initial release must have heard danger-alarms when reading Carol’s dialogue on Page Six: “Fire ... burning within me – so bright, so ... beautiful.”
The more interesting bit with Carol Danvers actually occurs pages earlier, when Wolverine off-handedly references having once rescued her from the KGB. That seed will blossom to awesome effect years later, during Claremont’s four-part Genosha storyline with Marc Silvestri in Uncanny issues 235-238. For the moment, it’s an intriguing bit of back-story, tossed out in that off-handed manner that Claremont employs so well when it’s called for.
After the initial sequence with Wolverine and a disconcertingly Phoenix-like Carol, “Rescue Mission” settles into an entertaining dead heat. With Claremont and Cockrum back in sync after the previous issue’s weird creative dissonance, the X-Men once again seem right at home in a sci-fi milieu. Cockrum’s action sequences are infused with effervescent fun, while the feminist in Claremont takes clear delight in bolstering the X-Men’s male-heavy lineup with gun-wielding females Carol and Lilandra. (Toward the end of his Uncanny run – the Jim Lee era – Claremont will make fun of his fetish for tough, armed females twice inside six months. Uncanny #276 will actually contain the phrase “bad, beautiful babes with really big guns.”)
Meanwhile, the less amusing penchant for sexualizing Kitty Pryde again rears its ugly head – even on the cover, which depicts Kitty in a ravaged dress and covered in gashes. The trend seems even more tasteless in the wake of the deliberately disturbing material from Uncanny #160.
Wolverine’s angst is nicely handled in “Rescue Mission.” Suffering from premature survivors’ guilt at being the only X-Man not implanted with a Brood egg, here Logan can think of no better way to express his grief than to try and murder the alien queen. It’s perfectly in character – even poignant, in its way – and contributes to the overall sense of dread that Claremont weaves regarding the whole Brood-egg concept, which will go on to play out expertly over the next few issues.
“Rescue Mission”
At this point in his run, Claremont seems generally to have pulled free of the long shadow of his work with John Byrne (as well as that of Kirby, Lee, Adams, et al). Recent months have seen him take the series in directions not at all predicted by anything seen previously in an X-Men comic – proof that Claremont alone has the imagination and creative wherewithal to steer the X-Men into exciting and surprising directions, irrespective of his artistic partner.
Still, a job is a job, and the relentlessness of the monthly deadline – combined with Claremont’s own recognizable writing idiosyncrasies and quirks – make it inevitable that he will still repeat himself from time to time. (Ultimately, the same is true of any writer in a serialized medium.)
In the present issue, there are distinct shades of the middle act of the Dark Phoenix Saga, wherein Wolverine and Cyclops were the lynchpins of the X-Men’s escape from the Hellfire Club. Here, Wolverine is once again the catalyst for an escape, this time from the Brood (whom the X-Men all seem to spontaneously nickname “sleazoids” – a prime example of Claremont’s aforementioned quirkiness). Furthermore, Claremont seems to be heading Carol Danvers towards a Phoenix-like transformation. Danvers’ arc will eventually play out fairly innocuously, but readers at the time of this issue’s initial release must have heard danger-alarms when reading Carol’s dialogue on Page Six: “Fire ... burning within me – so bright, so ... beautiful.”
The more interesting bit with Carol Danvers actually occurs pages earlier, when Wolverine off-handedly references having once rescued her from the KGB. That seed will blossom to awesome effect years later, during Claremont’s four-part Genosha storyline with Marc Silvestri in Uncanny issues 235-238. For the moment, it’s an intriguing bit of back-story, tossed out in that off-handed manner that Claremont employs so well when it’s called for.
After the initial sequence with Wolverine and a disconcertingly Phoenix-like Carol, “Rescue Mission” settles into an entertaining dead heat. With Claremont and Cockrum back in sync after the previous issue’s weird creative dissonance, the X-Men once again seem right at home in a sci-fi milieu. Cockrum’s action sequences are infused with effervescent fun, while the feminist in Claremont takes clear delight in bolstering the X-Men’s male-heavy lineup with gun-wielding females Carol and Lilandra. (Toward the end of his Uncanny run – the Jim Lee era – Claremont will make fun of his fetish for tough, armed females twice inside six months. Uncanny #276 will actually contain the phrase “bad, beautiful babes with really big guns.”)
Meanwhile, the less amusing penchant for sexualizing Kitty Pryde again rears its ugly head – even on the cover, which depicts Kitty in a ravaged dress and covered in gashes. The trend seems even more tasteless in the wake of the deliberately disturbing material from Uncanny #160.
Wolverine’s angst is nicely handled in “Rescue Mission.” Suffering from premature survivors’ guilt at being the only X-Man not implanted with a Brood egg, here Logan can think of no better way to express his grief than to try and murder the alien queen. It’s perfectly in character – even poignant, in its way – and contributes to the overall sense of dread that Claremont weaves regarding the whole Brood-egg concept, which will go on to play out expertly over the next few issues.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Streebo records Ellis at Heroes Con 2006
Here is what he said about it when he sent it to me:
"I just uploaded some footage of Warren Ellis that I've been holding onto since 2006. It was shot on a cel phone - but it features a few minutes from his Night With Warren Ellis event. It was never meant to be professional nor for public consumption - but I figure there are some out there that would appreciate it. I have a much longer clip of Ellis from the same event - but am having troubles converting it into a manageable size for youtube."
"I just uploaded some footage of Warren Ellis that I've been holding onto since 2006. It was shot on a cel phone - but it features a few minutes from his Night With Warren Ellis event. It was never meant to be professional nor for public consumption - but I figure there are some out there that would appreciate it. I have a much longer clip of Ellis from the same event - but am having troubles converting it into a manageable size for youtube."
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