Retro Comic Book Reviews

A.K.A. Comics you might have missed but really shouldn't have.

For the inaugural RCBR we have Matthew Loux's 2006 OGN (that's Original Graphic Novel) for those who don't speak comic book abbreviations) SideScrollers.



"Side-Scrolling" usually refers to a video game in which the characters move from left to right across the screen encountering various enemies and obstacles which must be defeated in order for the player to move on to the next level and eventually win the game.

Side-scrolling games are among the favorite video games of recent high school graduates Matt, Brian and Brad. They are prepared to while away their summer playing games, discussing pop culture, eating junk food, and pursuing new shipments of action figures at the local big box store.

Their planned routine, however, is interrupted by a day of adventure as Matt learns that the girl he secretly has a crush on, Amber, is planning to go to the big rock music show with Dick the school bully and football jock. More to the point, Matt, Brian and Brad discover that the bully intends to seduce Amber to make her just another notch on his belt. Matt, Brian and Brad's attempts at stopping Dick's plans put them on the run from Dick and his football buddies.

Along the way the three friends must deal with a troop of angry "Girlie Scouts", a Satanic cat, an escaped scorpion, and various elements of mischief and mayhem. Will Matt be able to defend Amber's reputation? Will Brad escape the Satanic cat with his soul intact? Will all three ever get to the big rock show? Tune in to find out!


SideScrollers has some swearing and sexual innuendo so this is not a comic for the little kiddies. But for anyone who remembers the early films of Kevin Smith this graphic novel will touch a chord. Action moves from satire to the ridiculous and absurdly impossible but always with a genuine sense of humor and a deft touch. No matter how silly the action gets (like a talking South American Bark Scorpion) the characters remain oddly grounded in their emotions and motivations.

Also, the pop culture references fly fast and furious -- mostly movies and video games -- so those unfamiliar with the culture may be a bit lost but for those of us who are denizens of that world the conversations are familiar... and funny. Writer and artist Loux also never misses a chance to throw in a good-natured little jab at those bits of pop-culture. Sometimes the jabs come in the form of dialogue but sometimes they are hidden in the background artwork.

And that does lead us to a discussion of the artwork. The comic is in black and white and Loux has a style that is... well... highly stylized. His figures look and move like exaggerated cartoon characters -- which also ramps up the hilarity throughout the comic. The whole thing looks like it's built for animation -- in a good way.

If you're a gamer geek, sci-fi geek, comic book geek or any combination thereof then check this graphic novel out. SideScrollers is guaranteed to get a laugh out of you -- or at the very least a grin.

You can order SideScrollers from publisher Oni Press.

Compound Geekery Film Fest! "Spider-Man 2"

2004 saw the sequel to the summer blockbuster Spider-Man.

Let's just jump right into this one, shall we?

The Plot: Two years have passed since the events of the first movie. Peter Parker has a small, run down apartment in the city and struggles to balance his life with work, going to college and, of course, being Spider-Man.

In addition to this his relationships with his friends are also strained -- Harry Osbourne is still obsessed with the idea that Spider-Man killed his father and he accuses Peter of protecting Spider-man because the wall-crawler helps him earn his pay with the photographs he takes; and Mary Jane Watson has grown tired of waiting for Peter and is dating another guy. And if that were not bad enough, Peter's beloved Aunt May is also in financial straights and is also still mourning the loss of Peter's beloved Uncle Ben -- a death that Peter still blames himself over.

In the midst of all of this, Peter meets and befriends famed scientist Otto Octavius -- who is about to unveil a new fusion device to create abundant, cheap, and clean energy. Tragedy strikes, though, and Octavius's machine goes out of control. In the ensuing destruction Octavius's beloved wife is killed and the four computerized arms Octavius used to work the machine are now fused to his back.

Unbalanced, and with the machines whispering in his head, Octavius decides to turn to crime to get money to rebuild his experiment and try again. This brings him into conflict with Spider-Man.

As Peter's life spirals out-of-control, though, he finds his powers as Spider-Man waning. Disgusted with forever being the loser in life Peter finally gives up being Spider-Man "forever". Bad timing for Peter since Octavius has made an unholy bargain with Osbourne to capture Spider-Man for Osbourne's revenge.

With the city and Mary Jane in danger can Peter rediscover the hero within himself?

My Take: At one point in time I considered this movie the best of the Spider-Man franchise... and to a certain extent it still is but, after the passage of time a number of cracks begin to show in the film.

One of the biggest problems with this movie is that it completely fails to understand that character of Peter Parker. In the comics Peter was the perpetual "lovable loser" whose actions as Spider-Man always seemed to throw a monkey wrench into his life. This is balanced, however, by Peter's quick wit and sarcastic attitude as Spider-Man. In the films Peter comes off less as the "lovable loser" and more as an emo dork mostly by dint of the removal of Spider-Man's snappy banter. In the comics Spider-Man tends to keep up a running line of comments and insults designed to drive his enemies crazy while maintaining his own sanity. In the movie Spidey is nearly silent during all the fight scenes and when he does speak it isn't with a quick one-liner or a clever insult. On top of this pretty much ALL the humor in the movie comes AT Peter's expense. We don't laugh at the situations he finds himself in nor do we laugh WITH him... no, we laugh AT him because Peter Parker is a big ol' dork. It really doesn't endear the character to us.

There are also a lot of plot holes which tend to get noticed on repeat viewings. For example, Octavius's arms are an amazing invention in and of themselves and could revolutionize a number of dangerous jobs. He could make a mint off of marketing them but nope, they get ignored in favor of the big, dangerous, fusion reactor. Also, the artificially intelligent arms seem to convince Octavius to continue his experiments and, honestly, what do artificially intelligent arms WANT with a fusion reactor anyway? Why encourage this? Come to think of it -- what WOULD artificially intelligent arms want out of life anyway?

And then there's Mary Jane. *Sigh*. The character pretty much exists as an object in this film. She is the object of Peter's desires and later she becomes the bait in Octavius's trap for Spider-Man. She drifts along through most of the film, letting others define her and waiting on approval or approbation from those others. Despite Peter's constant waffling on their relationship and despite her repeated telling him that she's tired of not being able to depend on him she keeps going BACK to Peter and keeps giving him more chances despite saying that she won't. It is only at the end that she seems at all proactive in matters... but before that she has to play the screaming damsel in distress -- putting the final capper on her trifecta of female character tropes.

The film is also filled with rather heavy-handed, schmaltzy, moments, at least one deliberately cheesy musical montage which, all things considered, doesn't really doesn't belong in this film, and a complete lack of emotional subtlety in several scenes. Oh, and the script also beats the "Spider-Man No More" motif into the ground like a tent peg.

When it comes to some aspects of the movie, though, I admit I'm torn. On the one hand, the character of Otto Octavius -- a pretty much out-and-out villain in the comic books -- becomes much more sympathetic in the film. It is interesting to actually get to know him as a person rather than a cardboard cutout of a villain but on the other hand making him a kind of victim of his own mental unbalance caused by the robotic arms also kind of dilutes his villainy. I also love that the script writer worked in some nicely subtle themes of hubris with Doc Ock. In Greek drama and literary tradition hubris was an overweening pride which caused one to eventually try to set oneself up on the level of the gods. At which point the gods would smite said mortal for getting above their station. It's a common theme -- myths like that of Arachne and Niobe display this -- and that's what we get here with Octavius. His pride in his work and his absolute self-assurance cause him to ignore the fears and cautions of others and in the end it costs him dearly. Of course it also doesn't hurt that Alfred Molina turns in a really nice performance here at Octavius.

And that leads me to the performances... Really, Molina is the best of the bunch. Up to that point actors playing villains in comic book movies tended to take things over the top, ham it up, chew the scenery, etc. Molina resists that temptation. Oh, make no mistake, he takes it up TO the top here but he wisely doesn't step over the line. It makes for a really refreshing villain.

Toby Maguire, having come to prominence in the award winning Cider House Rules stepped into the Spider-Man role and certainly brought vulnerability and a dorky kind of charm but... it wears thin. Particularly here where he spends most of the movie alternating between two facial expressions -- a goofy grin and soulful, blue, whipped-puppy-dog eyes. The latter one gets overused waaaayyyy too much and becomes annoying rather than affecting.

Kristen Bell... well, we've already gotten into the problems with her character of Mary Jane and her performance plays up to the role but never exceeds to try to elevate the character above the script.

James Franco as Harry Osbourne is... well, kind of uneven. Franco here can't decide if he wants Harry to be quasi-slimy businessman or young man haunted by the death of his father and driven by revenge to the point of it eating up every good think in his life. In years since this film Franco has turned in some much better performances so I tend to blame a combination of the script and him being an actor who needed a little more seasoning for his problems here.

Spider-Man 2 being a movie about a guy who swings around New York on webs also stands or falls on the special effects. The good news is that seven years later a lot of the CGI still holds up pretty well. The bad news is that some of it doesn't. There are several sequences which now look like video game footage... and not in a good way. Also, there is a scene in which a powerless Peter rushes into a burning building to rescue a little girl. The green screen work with the fire is really, painfully obvious and the filmmakers might have been better off going with more practical effects and using a stuntman for the whole scene instead of part of it.

Overall.... eh, it's an entertaining enough film and it's still the best of the three under the helm of Sam Raimi as director. The franchise is due to be rebooted with a new movie already in production. We'll see if a second go-round gets more right or more wrong with the characters.

Compound Geekery Film Fest! "Hellboy: Sword of Storms"

Animation again!

This one probably gets overshadowed by the two live-action Hellboy movies but that's a shame because Hellboy: Sword of Storms is really GOOD!



Let's jump right in, shall we?

The Plot: Hellboy is sent to Japan with B.P.R.D. (that's Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) agent Kate Corrigan to investigate when strange events appear to surround a Japanese professor of folklore. The two get much more than they bargain for when the folklorist proves to be possessed by the demons Thunder and Lightning. As if that were not enough, Hellboy finds himself the bearer of the enchanted sword which can free Thunder and Lightning from their imprisonment. And this would be a bad thing as not only are Thunder and Lightning ticked off enough to want to bring some serious destruction on the Earth they also will awaken their "brothers" -- seven dragons sleeping across the globe.

Hellboy finds himself transported into a mystical realm populated with beings from Japanese mythology and folklore (and most of them hostile) while Kate and another B.P.R.D. agent try to track down the possessed folklorist. Now Hellboy must find a way back to reality without freeing the demons but if he fails... all hell is gonna break loose.

My Take: This 2006 direct-to-DVD offering is, quite simply, awesome. While it followed up the modest success of the first Hellboy live action movie it is NOT a continuation of the live-action movie's continuity. Writer/artist/Hellboy creator Mike Mignola once said that there are basically three continuities -- the continuity of the comic book series, the continuity of the live action movie and the continuity of the animated movies. There are things that all three share in common but they do not overlap. And, me, personally, I don't have a problem with this. I read the comic book series' and I own the animated movies and I've seen and own the live action movies as well. All of them bring something different to the plate.

Between the live action movies and the animated ones, though, I have to say that the animated Hellboy movies are *closest* to the comic books.

But focusing on THIS movie... One thing that Sword of Storms has going for it is that Hellboy creator (and writer and artist) Mike Mignola wrote the story for the film along with Tad Stones who has an extensive history of executive producing a lot of popular animated TV shows -- including many from Walt Disney. Stones, along with Matt Wayne then adapted the story into a screenplay. This kind of collaboration has left the film feeling like a cohesive whole as well as being really true to the characters.

As I mentioned, this film pulls more from the comics than from the live action movies although the voice cast is nearly the same as the movie cast -- Ron Perlman is Hellboy and Selma Blair voices Liz Sherman but, in a departure from the first film, actor Doug Jones -- who played Abe Sapien in the first film only physically while the voice was provided by actor David Hyde Pierce -- now is given the chance o voice Abe Sapien. The movie cast is also joined by Peri Gillpen who gives voice to Kate Corrigan. All of the actors, despite most being more used to being in front of a camera than a microphone, do an excellent job with the script -- although it should be said that Selma Blair's performance is perhaps a bit *too* low key but not enough to be distracting.

The story is not only deeply interesting, everything in it works and works well. The Japanese setting and use of Japanese figures from mythology and folklore make this film stand above the usual supernatural fare of vampires, werewolves and zombies (although there is an opening gambit with some zombies... but at least they're ancient Mayan zombies enslaved to a bat-god so that makes them a little different. And how often do you get to type the phrase "ancient Mayan zombies enslaved to a bat-god"?). The animators also do a good job with this -- keeping their own, stylistic look for the film while at the same time adding traditional Japanese art influences. The script also really allows for some nice characterizations -- something that often gets overlooked in animation for favor of slam-bang action. Here little touches and simple lines of dialogue tell the audience of how the B.P.R.D. as a whole is more like a family (and for those familiar with the movies, don't expect to see Hellboy and Liz's romance reflected here. The animation is a different world with Liz, Abe and Hellboy being more like two older brothers to Liz) and how, in many ways, the extraordinary is so much a part of their daily life that it becomes the ordinary. Take, for example, the scene in B.P.R.D. headquarters when it is revealed that they can't find Hellboy's tracking signal anywhere on Earth. Abe and Liz shrug it off as "Again?" and other agents start reeling off lists of times Hellboy has disappeared off the planet on one mission or another. It's a hilarious scene made all the more so by how blase everyone involved is about the situation. All this is not to say that there isn't any slam-bang action because there is plenty of that as well. Hellboy fights his way past various threats in his usual wisecracking, bashing style. The film runs an hour and twenty minutes but feels full and satisfying for that.

As a warning the film has a PG-13 rating and there is a bit of blood and a couple of mild swear words but, honestly, there's actually less swearing and less blood here than the previously reviewed Justice League: New Frontier.

If you love supernatural action-adventure stories with both humor and heart then there is no way you can go wrong with Hellboy: Sword of Storms. Trust me and check this one out.

P.S., if anyone is a fan of or familiar with the Hellboy comics Sword of Storms also manages to seemlessly incorporate the fan-favorite Hellboy short comic "Heads" into the overall movie story. The animators do an astoundingly good job at translating the story from the page to the screen and it's delight to get to see an actual adaptation of one of the comic book stories.

The Compound Geekery Film Festival! "Hulk"

• So we're starting out with, chosen at random, 2003's Hulk. Also sometimes known as The Hulk.
  
  

The Hulk was created for Marvel Comics in 1962 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Originally the character was colored gray but the inks of that time period could not create a consistent shade of gray each and every time. So at the behest of the colorist Lee changed the Hulk's color to green.

Lee has stated that his two influences in the creation of the character were Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Later writers would also add elements of Beauty and the Beast to the character as well.

Over the course of decades there have actually been different versions of the Hulk and different elements added to and subtracted from the characters of both Bruce Banner and the Hulk.... but we'll get into that a little later. For the most part the Hulk in the comic books has always been able to talk but many people are probably more familiar with the TV series from the 1970's in which body builder Lou Ferigno played the Hulk as pretty much mute with the exception of grunts and growls.

But that's probably enough of that -- let's take a look at the movie...

The Plot: David Banner is a scientist working for the military to try to find ways of allowing humans to recover from serious injuries -- even to the point of being able to regenerate severed limbs. When his request to move toward human testing is denied he begins experimenting on himself. When his son is born he realizes that his experiments on himself have yielded genetic changes in his son.

When the military uncovers his unorthodox experiments, however, he is ordered to shut down his research. Enraged, David Banner goes to extreme measures... something happens and little Bruce Banner locks away his memories...

Years later Bruce Krienzler is a researcher working to produce rapid healing in humans using a combination of nanotechnology and radiation therapy. Bruce's partner in research is also his former love Betty Ross. Their results are up to that point fatal when an accident in the lab exposes Bruce to the nanotechnology and radiation and he miraculously survives. But something has been awakened in Bruce... something that feeds on his emotions and the hidden genetic changes in his body. Bruce's dark past is about to come back to haunt him in a big way...

And that past takes a physical form as well. David Banner is out of prison and looking to reconnect with his son... but his motives may not be so pure...

The Hulk has now been given life and Bruce is trapped in a nightmare of power and rage...

My Take: This film was largely polarizing. critics were split on it with some loving it and others panning it. The comic book fan community largely hated it and it did not perform well at the box office despite being anticipated as a Summer blockbuster.

Here's the thing about the movie... It's a GOOD movie... It just isn't a good HULK movie.

Director Ang Lee, riding high after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon threw himself into the movie wholeheartedly -- actively working to make the film look like a comic book. From the fonts on the opening credits to many of the transitions, the movie looks more like a comic book brought to life than pretty much any other comic book film in the last decade. The screen is split into panels in places and other sequences look like splash panels.

The cinematography here is simply gorgeous -- long shots of desert scenery which blend with CGI to transform into the interior of the human body or lichens growing on tree stumps. At another point a photograph comes to life and draws the audience into a flashback. It's wonderful, wonderful stuff and all contribute to a dreamlike atmosphere.

Which is another thing here. Dreams play a big role in the film. Characters seem to often have prophetic dreams or they dream of the past. Sometimes flashbacks actually prove to be part of someone else's dream and all of the dreams contain heavy symbolism. Dreams and emotions all wrap up inside one another and the whole film has a quiet, hypnotic, dreamlike feel to it -- including the score by famed composer Danny Elfman.

And this is the problem. It's a Hulk movie. If there is anything the comic book Hulk is known for it's the phrase "Hulk smash!" This quiet, slow paced film which digs deep into the psyche of it's characters is totally foreign to the big, hulking bruiser of the comic books who regularly tears up city blocks. The film is also missing quite a bit of Bruce Banner's angst. Bruce was virtually created angsty in the comics. A man tortured by the fact that he had to live with this rampaging Id always waiting to be unleashed. For the movie Bruce is more bewildered by his new alter ego than tortured by it.

The movie also makes a few other missteps like:

some of the symbolic imagery being so terribly obvious it's less "symbolic" and more "bash you over the head with a sledgehammer".

Nick Nolte's performance as David Banner is well.... 'psychotic father is psychotic.' There is no real subtlety and it's amazing that none of the characters call the cops on creepy David Banner since he does everything to be as creepy and obvious as possible that he is mentally unhinged.

The "Hulk Dogs". Ohhhh, these things received howls of laughter from fans... and deservedly so. Using Bruce's DNA David Banner manages to turn his three mean dogs (which seem to follow him around everywhere for no good reason) into Hulk-like creatures. The CGI was laughable then and really hasn't aged well now and the execution of the idea in general doesn't make them seem threatening but instead a joke. Despite that though I gotta say that the idea behind it also makes me really uncomfortable as a dog lover. This jerk mutates his dogs and then the Hulk bashes them around violently and smashes them to bits. *Wince*!

The film also waits a little too long to give us our big, bad villain. We spend a little too much time dealing with everyone's psychological make-up and repressed memories and we don't get a real enemy for the Hulk until the last twenty minutes of the film or so.

Related to that, the final fight scene is simply an incomprehensible mess. We really don't understand what is going on or why and therefore it turns the climax into an anti-climax.

::::

As a comic book reader... well, I've got to confess I was never much of a Hulk fan but one of my friends was and I grew up on the old TV series. I know enough about the character to see the comic book influences in the movie as well as the way they diverted from them. In the original comics Betty Ross was not originally a scientist -- although the change here works okay and doesn't seem out of step for the character.

Also, the original origin story was much more suited to the Cold War setting of the original comic book -- a young teenager named Rick Jones accidentally wandered onto a testing site for a new Gamma bomb. Seeing him, Bruce left the safety of the block house and rushed out to try to save the youth. The countdown not able to be halted and with no time to clear the area, Bruce threw Rick into a ditch and covered him with his own body, shielding him from the radiation... yeah, I know, radiation doesn't work that way. It's comic book science and it was the 1960's.

For the movie it gets an update with technobabble about "Nanomeds" and gamma radiation. For the film Rick Jones is jettisoned for Bruce and Betty's lab assistant who is working on the equipment in the lab when he accidentally causes a short circuit which sets the sequence off. Bruce rushes into the containment room, puts an oxygen mask on the young man so he won't breathe in the "Nanomeds" (although now Bruce, himself does) and then throws himself over the machinery with fires the gamma radiation -- using his body to absorb the radiation. And yeah, radiation STILL doesn't work that way.

Do the changes work? Eeehhhh... sort of. I think it adds a new layer of complexity that isn't necessary as instead of Bruce spontaneously mutating to form the Hulk it now becomes the combination of genetic changes inherited from his father with combine with the radiation and the Nanomeds to make him become the Hulk. It requires the idea of this kind of perfect storm of coincidence to create the character that strains the cables on the suspension of disbelief bridge.

The psychological issues were also a later addition to the comics books. At first the Hulk was simply a matter of Id vs. Superego but round about the 1980's or 1990's writers added something new to the mythology by introducing the idea that Bruce's father had been an abusive jerk and as a child Bruce had witnessed his father beating his mother but repressed the memories. These repressed memories helped fuel his equally repressed rage which led to the Hulk.

This film took the basic idea that Bruce's father had some anger management issues as well as hints that Bruce had a naturally repressed personality and built from there. With these additions, though, I'm still on the fence as to whether they work or not. On the one hand, the scenes in the film are strikingly done but on the other hand they don't really fully integrate into the characters -- this part of the film remains more David's story than Bruce's.

There is also the problem of David Banner -- Bruce's father. Rather late in the film he develops super powers of his own... which leads to David becoming basically the Absorbing Man -- although they don't call him this. The Absorbing Man is a long-time comic book villain. He was originally introduced as an enemy of Thor but he went on to cross into other books fighting other Marvel heroes including the Hulk and the Avengers. His powers are pretty much like you would think based on his name -- he can absorb the attributes and properties of anything he touches. So he might become as hard as steel after touching a steel girder or he might become as shifting as sand after touching a pile of sand. In the comics, however, the Absorbing Man was a former wrestler named "Crusher" Creel and he had no connection really to Bruce Banner or the Hulk. That the character's attributes are just kind of merged into the David Banner character last minute seems a waste of a perfectly good villain and, again, a needless complication. The Hulk has a number of different, excellent villains of his own and any one of them could have been used here instead of this mish-mash of villainy and psychosis.

Looking at the more technical aspects of the film -- it's true that one difficulty that has always stood in the way of the character was finding a way to realistically bring the Hulk to life. The TV series used a body builder in green body paint and a bad shaggy wig but there was always something lacking in that. By 2003 CGI had advanced to the point where the filmmakers thought a good computer generated version of the Hulk would be possible to incorporate into the film. Eeehhh... not quite. In the darker scenes it works but in scenes set in bright daylight the CGI has just not aged well. The Hulk figure looks cartoony at worst and like a video game character at best.

The acting performances, though, are all around good. Relative unknown then Eric Bana is, perhaps a bit *too* low key as his Bruce Banner but there is also a kind of innocence to his performance -- a man who is slowly having the world he thought he knew ripped apart around him and he doesn't really understand how or why. There is also something genuine feeling with the emotions he conveys in his scenes with Jennifer Connelly's Betty Ross.

And speaking of Jennifer Connelly her character actually has a nice little arc -- which is sadly something that the female characters in films like these rarely get. She's a bit witchy a borderline snarky when we first meet her but as she becomes more deeply involved in events and as she comes to learn more about Bruce than even he knows himself she begins to peel back her own layers as she tries to help him uncover his hidden past. Her performance is understated which is, in one way, great but in another way yet another understated link in a whole understated chain of a film where understatement and comic book characters don't really get along too well.

The highlight here is Sam Elliot who seems pretty much incapable of turning in a bad performance. He doesn't allow his character of General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross to remain one-note. When he first appears we are prepared to dislike him as a hard-nosed, inflexible military man but as the film goes on we see him capable of compassion and understanding but caught up in something unexpected and honestly believing that, while Bruce Banner may be innocent and harmless, the Hulk is a dangerous threat and having to make the decision to be willing to end the life of an innocent in order to stop the threat.

Nick Nolte as David Banner is actually the weak point of the story. In a film full of good performances Nolte seems like a ham by comparison. As I mentioned before, he seems to actively play the character as trying to be obtrusive and obvious. He might as well have a flashing neon light over his head from his very first scene saying "Villain, Villain, Villain." And because of his performance in scenes where we're supposed to be drawn to feel sympathy for him we end up feeling nothing.

In the final equation....

2003's Hulk is worth a watch -- particularly if you aren't too familiar with the character. If you remember the TV series, though, and are expecting that then put that idea right out of your head.

Also, if you're expecting a wham-bang big action flick then this is NOT going to be the movie for you either.

If, however, you're interested in a beautifully and creatively filmed drama about complex interpersonal relationships then give this a try. It is a little slow in places shows that the comic book movie can be more than just big explosions and trope filled plots. The problem is that, as a Hulk film, it could have used just a bit more action and some better villains. Still, it's worth a watch.

Summer Movie Round-Up: Green Lantern

Okay, I'm a comic book fangirl and more significantly I'm a Hal Jordan Green Lantern fangirl.

It' probably best for the uniformed to understand that there have been a number of Green Lanterns from Earth -- John Stewart (who featured in the Justice League animated series as well as the follow up series Justice League Unlimited, Guy Gardner, and Kyle Rayner. But for me, Hal's my favorite.

The other thing you should probably know is that Hal was created in the 1960's and at the time he was introduced he was pretty much like a lot of DC heroes of that era -- square-jawed, stand-up, establishment authority figure. Over the years Hal's backstory has been tweaked to give him a few more flaws -- recklessness, irresponsibility, and a wandering eye when it came to the ladies.... Alright, so he's a himbo.

Anyway, it's the more modern Hal we meet in this movie.

As far as sticking to the comic book origins... well, as I've said, he's had tweaks to his over the years and this story pulls a bit from several of them but it isn't a page-to-screen direct translation... but then again, I can't remember the last comic book movie I watched that was.

The plot is pretty simple: Hal Jordan is a reckless test pilot who, as a child, watched his own test pilot father die in a plane crash. In the wider universe a war against evil is being waged with the alien Green Lantern Corps acting as a police force for the universe. A dark and terrible force was once imprisoned but has now escaped and it targets the Green Lantern Corps member that imprisoned it -- Abin Sur. Wounded and dying, Abin crash lands on Earth and orders his ring to find a successor for him. The ring chooses Hal Jordan.

Now Hal is thrust into a world he never dreamed of and one he feels ill prepared for. There is no time for him to find his way slowly -- he must either rise to the task of being a hero or else die along with all the Earth.

So what did I think?

Well, the film has some flaws. A lot of the humor is rather sophomoric and really not that funny. Peter Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond chews more scenery than an army of termites and his villain set-up is poor and lacking. And speaking of villains -- the movie suffers from having one too many and not developing either quite well enough.

The CGI costumes all the Lanterns wear took some heat from fans and non-fans alike but overall they didn't bother me for the most part. The only place where they really didn't work was the necklines (really noticeable in close-up shots) and with the masks.

The story also follows the pretty standard "hero's journey" trope -- so no surprises there -- but I found Ryan Reynolds' Hal Jordan to be rather charming and genuine in the scenes where Hal lets his guard down. Which is another thing the film does well -- show how much of what we see of Hal is bravado and bluster hiding a vulnerable core.

Most of all, though, what I walked away from this film with was a 'cosmic' feeling. It really hadn't occurred to me how many superhero movies lately have followed this trend of being "grounded". It's like filmmakers feel as if the movies won't be taken seriously enough unless they keep at least one foot firmly planted in the dirt. It's also why I've been skeptical of talk of an Avengers movie or a Justice League movie. If you're bringing together a team of heavy hitters then they can't just be battling some villainous corporate raider or some big city mob boss. The heavy hitters need Earth shaking, nay universe shaking threats. The heavy hitters need something that is worthy of a team of some of the most powerful beings. Green Lantern finally delivered at least a little peek at that kind of scope. I also enjoyed that the filmmakers fully embraced the idea of the Corps instead of shying away from it. One of the franchise's strongest elements has always been this idea of other beings from other planets who do this job as well.

Here in the film we meet Sinestro, Kilowog,and Tomar-Re, and in the background of scenes are others Lanterns recognizable to comic book fans like Stel and Bodikka. Back in the day the comics would occasionally swerve off and do an entire story about one of these alien Lanterns. Eventually there was entire spin-off book that focused on nothing BUT these alien Lanterns. We got Mogo -- who is a living planet (Yeah, seriously, a living planet... and it's coool!), Rot-Lop-Fan -- an alien from a planet that exists in perpetual darkness and so his people are all born without eyes. He is completely blind and has no concept of the color green therefore. They get around this creatively by translating the color into a musical tone -- F# -- and so Rot-Lop-Fan considers himself not a Green Lantern but rather a bearer of "the F# Bell". Trust me, it's not as weird as it sounds... Okay, it IS as weird as it sounds but it's weird in a GOOD way.

So, yeah, I really enjoyed the fact that the filmmakers went full-bore and didn't just divorce Hal from the Corps for this first film.


Final summation -- the film has problems, it could use a tighter focus, but it was a lot of fun and it brought back some of the epic scope I've found missing in superhero films lately. And I think that, given a chance for a sequel, the filmmakers could build and improve upon this and tell and even bigger and better story. In the meantime -- go see this, don't bother springing for the 3-D, get a bucket of popcorn and turn your brain off for two hours. There are worse things you could do... And judging from the trailers there are worse films coming...

Summer Movie Roundup -- So Far

Okay so between last weekend and this weekend I've been trying to get caught up on the big Summer blockbusters.

And here's what I think so far....

Thor

It was okay but I really wanted to love it… and I didn’t.

All the emotional beats felt rushed… or incomplete. I kept waiting to feel like I was getting to KNOW these characters and then, just when I was on the verge of it the scene was over!

Jane Foster played by Natalie Portman never came alive for the same reason. She talked passionately about her research but she never talked passionately about the WHY of her research. Why was she doing this? What did she hope to gain for herself? For humanity? What was her ultimate goal? Knowledge is good but knowledge for knowledge’s sake is empty and that’s all we ever got from her. Plus, while the movie tried to give us a romance between her and Thor it never felt that authentic because the two of them just didn't get to spend that much time around one another.

Also, while in the original comics Foster was a nurse there was really no reason to necessraily transform her into a physicist either. The story would have worked just as well and maybe even better if they had updated her and made her an EMT.

Hemsworth COULD emote it’s just that we’re never given enough scenes of him emoting. We never see the impact of being exiled really hit him. I mean, he had basically a good relationship with his father – they basically cared for one another – and then he does something that screws him up so bad he is not just turned out of the house he is sent somewhere where he has no friends, no family, no contacts, no support, no aid, and no way back home on his own… and that never seems to hurt him that badly. Where’s the anger? Where’s the righteous indignation? Where's the hot-head whose hot-headedness got himself into this mess in the first place?

Although I will say this... Shirtless Hemsworth with the low slung jeans... Oh, yeah, that was nearly hot enough to make the theatre catch on fire. Thank you movie makers for giving us a little beefcake for a change. Now.... more please. Because one scene like that just wasn't enough.

Loki… Geez, Loki is a mess. He goes through so many different motivations for why he does what he does that you get plot whiplash. In the end you STILL don’t really understand why he’s doing all this. It doesn’t even make sense if you accept the theory that he is clinically insane. As the villain of the piece he is seriously lacking.

SHIELD… Yeah, SHIELD are a bunch of stupid douchebags here. And they are that way because…. The plot says so apparently. I mean, they take Foster’s research and her equipment which she even states she built herself… and they leave Foster out of the loop. Which is just STUPID. Really, SHIELD just couldn’t approach her and co-opt her? It makes so much more sense because then they get the equipment AND her. As it is, SHIELD operatives have to waste precious time learning how to operate her equipment and going over her data and sorting it out. It would be faster and easier to tap her knowledge – it reduces the time on study so hey can hit the ground running AND they get her training their scientists. It’s a two-for-one sale! But no, according to plot tropes the government agency has to be stupid and heavy handed.

And that’s the other thing… the plot here was just too formulaic. I mean, yes, it’s a comic book movie and that means there will be a formula but unlike other comic book movies this one never seemed to be able to run the formula with enough charm and wit and occasional surprises that we don’t CARE about the formula. Even the jokes here are tired retreads that you just see coming a mile away.

And the special effects? Really not that crazy about them either. The scenes of Thor flying weren’t all that great and Asgard looked like the Emerald City of Oz and a lot of the scenes looked like models… and I don’t mean that in a good way. On top of that, while the imagery for Bifrost, the bridge to and from Asgard, wasn't bad it really didn't seem that imaginative to me either. And in the end, the whole thing boiled down to "dimensional cannon" -- although they didn't call it that. I couldn't help it, in the theatre I just thought to myself "It's a dimensional cannon like you might see in Doctor Who. Which is alright for Doctor Who but a little bit less than what I was expecting for a multi-million dollar movie. The armor wasn’t bad, the Destroyer was good and the helmets, when the characters wore them, added a nice Jack Kirby (original artist who co-created Thor) look to the proceedings.

I know, going by the above you might think I hated the movie but I didn't. It was just that it was merely "okay" and I wanted something I could walk out of the theatre going "Man, that blew me away!" I'll give the script this as well -- it gave us a "nice" ending but we didn't get the full-on happy-sappy ending -- and I kind of like that. It sets up for a sequel... or the Avengers film Marvel has waiting in the wings... but it also gives us just a little bittersweetness to give things some emotional weight which was lacking.

All in all, if you haven't seen this one yet... go ahead and wait for the Redbox rental.

The OTHER Problem with the New, New, New (We Really mean it This Time), New DC Comics

So yesterday I ranted a bit about the reboot of the DC Universe although, for the most part, I'm so jaded by events and reboots and being told by comic book companies that "Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again!!!" only for everything to go back the way it was a year or two later that I could really care less about this latest reboot. All that being said (and yeah, that's a bit of a run on sentance there isn't it? Sorry) I still feel some things need to be said from a practical point of view. And, from that practical point of view, I think the reboot is just going to end up boomeranging and coming back and biting DC in the backside in a few years. I could be wrong but honestly, I don't think so.

But there's something else DC is doing with this reboot that I think is also pretty wrong-headed and that's keeping a lot of this under wraps.

Now I understand the value of surprise and shock announcements. I understand the usefulness of keeping people waiting on the edge of their seats to learn more but in this case it's just not really a good idea.

Here's why.... Pull Lists.

For the non-comics initiated... most comic book fans get their comic books from comic book shops... or online comic book retailers. Back in the old days you got your comic books off of spinner racks or magazine racks at the local convienience store or grocery store or the like but as the comic book market became both incresingly specialized in focusing on comic books and yet more diverse with small press publishers and mature readers titles comics left the convenience store and went to the comic book shop.

Most comic book shops offer to their regular customers a "pull list", also called a "reserve list" or a "subscription list" among various other names. By whatever name you want to call it, it amounts to the same thing -- You tell the owner/manager/guy behind the counter at your local comic book shop what titles you want then, every Wednesday when the new comic books come out, the owner/manager/worker will pull out one copy of each of the titles you requested from the shipment and set it aside for you. Then, when you go in to your comic book shop all you have to do is pick up your stack.

This service has several benefits -- for one thing it saves you time since all you have to do is go in, grab your stash, and pay for it. For another you don't have to scour the shelves looking for the latest issues of whatever titles you're interested in. It also means that you don't accidentally forget a title you meant to pick up. For another thing it insures that you get a title that you want if it's something that your comic book shop doesn't regularly carry they will usually special order it for you. And finally, if a title ends up being hugely popular and sells out before you can get to your comic book shop it guarantees that you still get a copy of the sold out title.

The thing is that most comic book shops also have to place their orders for which titles they want and how many copies of those titles three months in advance. A lot of comic book shops pass this deadline on to their customers -- meaning if you want a new title you have to have it added to your pull list three months before the new #1 launches.

So this entire DC reboot will be taking place in September -- about three months from now -- and what is DC doing? They're doling out information in drips and drabs. For the most part we're being informed of the titles and the people writing and drawing those titles but aside from that we're getting nothing.

Back in the 1990's and to a certain extent still today for some people just hearing that a writer or an artist was going to be working on a comic would be enough to make some readers rush right out and put it on their pull list sight unseen. And I suppose there's nothing wrong with that... but I and many like me have been burned before; a good writer or a good artist who is just not a good fit for the character they're writing or drawing. I don't read comic books *just* because of who is writing or drawing them. I read for the characters and the stories.

And so, we get to the heart of the problem of DC's trying to drum up excitement by telling us nothing... those who are like me have no idea if we want to put ANY of these comics on our pull lists because we don't know what they're about! I need to be making these decisions now for my pull list in September and yet I don't have all the data I need to make those decisions. It isn't enough to tell me that Voodoo #1 will be written by Ron Marz with art by Sami Basri -- I need to know what it's going to be ABOUT. What is the premise? Who is the title character? What does he/she do?

I've been burned by bad comics before and at the prices now being charged for single issues I'm not about to put something on my pull list without a better idea of what it's going to be about. And I'm not alone out there. So DC Comics again gets a failing grade on not understanding that it's all well and good to try to drum up excitement by withholding information but that all comes with a downside as well.

The New, New, New, New (We Really Mean it This Time), New DC Comics

*Sigh*.

Okay, I guess, as a geek girl, I should address this. It's been in the news lately. DC Comics is apparently "rebooting" their universe.... Again. Although also apparently DC doesn't want to CALL it a reboot. Screw that noise, it's a reboot.

This isn't the first time DC has done this. It won't be the last time they do it either I'm willing to bet. And don't think DC is alone in this -- Marvel has had it's share of reboots as well -- it's just now it's DC's turn.

The non-comics initiated among you might be asking "What's a 'reboot' and what's the big deal?" Well, as many comic book writers and fans have said over the years, comic books have the thing that most any ongoing series has -- "history" and "continuity".

"History" is just what it sounds like -- the history of the title. "History" tells us that Batman was created in 1939 and has been published under one title or another pretty much continuously since then. "History" also tells us that Bruce Wayne became Batman when his parents were killed right in front of him as they were walking home from the movies one night. "History" tells us that Batman has a sidekick named Robin and that Robin has had a number of different kids under the mask over the years -- Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and now Damian Wayne.

"Continuity" refers to internal consistency within the comic book. For example, going back to Batman, originally we were told Bruce's parents were both shot. Later, readers were told that his father was shot and his mother suffered a fatal heart attack in shock. Later still it went back to both of them being shot. That's a lack of internal consistency. If we are told Bruce Wayne is an orphan then we expect him to remain an orphan and not have his parents suddenly pop back up out of nowhere. If we are told a certain character has a law degree then we do not expect to suddenly be told that they actually dropped out of law school before they finished their degree.

Some continuity problems are caused by new writers coming in and not being completely familiar with the continuity of a character. Other times continuity changes are required as a result of changing times. For example, in Iron Man's original origin story Tony Stark was injured and captured by the Vietcong during the Vietnam War and built his first suit of armor to escape and keep his damaged heart operating. Obviously if this origin still stood Stark would no longer be the young playboy of the comic books but rather pushing retirement age. So the basic broad strokes of the origin are kept but the wars being fought and the armies who captured him have changed over the years.

But then there are deliberate continuity changes designed to alter a story or change a character in hopes of bringing in more and new readers. These are known as "Retcons" -- short for Retroactive Continuity. For example, let's go back to our lawyer character above. For years Our Hero (tm) may have been a crusading lawyer by day and a costumed superhero by night. And then, suddenly we learn that he actually never finished law school and that for all this time he's actually been practicing law illegally.



Shock! Surprise! Our Hero's (tm) life is thrown into disaray! He loses his law practice, he is disgraced! What happens next?! Well, that's the hook, isn't it?

I won't completely bash retcons -- some have worked and actually worked pretty well and told very interesting stories in the process. The vast majority of them, however, were what you would expect -- ham fisted, forced, illogical, attempts to change a character that didn't really need changing to begin with.

So what does all this have to do with a reboot?

Well, the thinking from On High -- A.K.A. the publishers, CEO's and Executive Editors -- tends to be that one can have too much history and continuity which in turn make it difficult for new readers to jump on board.

Over the last decade or two it has been a demonstratable fact that mainstream (i.e. not Japanese Manga) comic book readership has been shrinking. Fewer and fewer people buy and read comic books and those who still do are an aging population. Whereas one the average age of a comic book reader was in their teens and then their twenties now the average age is in their thirties. Comic book companies want to hook younger readers to augment this... and also so that maybe those readers who are fourteen now will still be reading comic books when they hit thirty-four.

So the solution to luring new readers on is to basically reset the universe. Most of the time this has been done in the past it hasn't been a complete reset but rather a partial one... although a complete reset HAS been done in the past. This time, however, it looks like DC is going for the complete (or nearly so) reset of their universe. Older characters get de-aged to a younger point in their lives, their pasts -- histories and continuities erased -- it's all a blank slate for writers to basically start all over again and try to lure in new readers.

It's just there's a problem with this. In trying to lure in new readers with promised stories starting out on the "ground floor" they run the risk of alienating their current reader base who have been following these characters for years and enjoying the character developments and have little interest in seeing old plot tropes rehashed.

For example, a personal favorite of mine -- Booster Gold. Booster was a character who was born and lived in the 25th century. When he disgraced himself and ruined his life he hatched a scheme to steal items from a superhero museum, travel back in time to when no one knew him, become a superhero and then parlay that into wealth and fame. Over the years, however, personal problems, tragedies, and friendships have instead led Booster down a different path. He's grown, matured, changed, and given up on wealth and fame in order to do the right thing. He's also found a new calling, not as a traditional superhero but rather as a time traveler who protects the past and the future from those who would change events to suit their own desires. And now potentially all that growth and character development could be wiped out resetting him to the money-hungry bumbler he started out as. Needless to say I am not necessarily pleased at this prospect.

The other problem with the line of thinking the higher-ups are operating from is the idea that history and continuity are stumbling blocks. They aren't. As comic book reviewer Linkara once recently said -- the best way to jump into comic books is simply to find a title or story that sounds interesting and read it. Most of the time nowadays new writers come into titles every year or so and each new writer seems to start fresh with their own ideas many of which are NOT linked to a lot of history or continuity. And if something comes up in a comic which is not clearly explained then there are plenty of places on the internet where one can find the answers without a lot of difficulty. There are also always new #1's being launched with wholly new characters where new readers can jump on and there are stand-alone mini and maxi-series always being published as well. And, thanks to more and more libraries carrying trade collections new readers can often try out a title without any danger to their bank account! Just go to your local library, find a trade that looks interesting and check it out. If you like it you can seek out more or maybe start picking up an ongoing series at your local comic shop if you don't like it you simply return it to your library -- no harm, no foul.

The problems with rebooting entire universes like this is that, in the end, new readers don't necessarily know what's going on anymore (A Superman comic where Clark DOESN'T love Lois Lane?!) and long-time readers find that all of their beloved character development has been thrown out the window (A Superman comics where Lois and Clark aren't married?!). This sort of thing leaves no one happy in the long run.

Comic Book Peeved

I'm off on a comic book rant. You still have time to escape and save yourself......

Still here?

Okay.

Round about 2000 a new comic book publishing company came on the market with a big splash. CrossGen Comics was the brainchild of millionaire Mark Alessi and he launched his scheme with lots of flash and splashy marketing.

The initial idea behind CrossGen was that it was designed as a coherent comic book universe. Each title had some ties to each other title and all could be read together or separately. Alessi also had a unique and yet old-fashioned way of handling the creative teams in that most of the writers, pencilers, inkers and colorists worked from the main studio in Florida. This hearkened back to the old days of the "Bullpen" at the publishing houses like Marvel and DC but by 2000 most writers and artists and Marvel and DC worked from their homes scattered across the country and even in other countries and they simply e-mailed scripts and art back and forth amongst themselves and the publishing headquarters. Alessi's bringing everything "in house" was supposedly a way of maintaining quality control and keeping costs down.

Another idea Alessi had, which was actually a pretty good one, was to have built-in 'skip' issues which allowed the creative teams to have some breathing room. Every fifth issue or so a 'guest' penciler, 'guest' inker, and/or 'guest' writer took over. These were almost always staggered as well so that readers didn't have a fill-in writer and a fill-in artist on the same issue... usually. This helped to keep the comics coming out on time and it also allowed some new artists to get some experience under their belt as Alessi usually used promising young artists for the fill-in stable.

And CrossGen comics *might* have worked. It really might have if Alessi hadn't gone overboard...

The company started with four titles -- Sigil, Mystic, Meridian, and Scion -- and those four titles spanned a number of genres -- Sigil was sci-fi adventure, Mystic was fantasy/sorcery, Meridian was a fantasy/coming of age story, and Scion was swords and knights. Each comic, however, took place on a different alien world which had some elements which put one in mind of Earth. Alessi took it as a point of pride that CrossGen did not put out a single title featuring a superhero. Although that is not to say there were not super powers present.

The thing which linked each CrossGen title was that, in the first issue of each comic one character was given a mysterious symbol by an equally mysterious person. This Sigil allowed them to tap different powers and their powers seemed to be related to their personalities. For instance, Samandahl "Sam" Rey, the hero of Sigil and a former soldier, found he had the power to reshape matter -- or rip it apart at the atomic level creating powerful explosions. While Giselle, the main character of Mystic found that her Sigil allowed her to access all the various kinds of magic which existed on her planet -- despite the fact that she had little interest in studying the various arts.

Eventually, overreach and bad business decisions doomed Alessi. He was trying to get into digital comics a good decade too early before there were all the current platforms to support them, and he far, far too rapidly expanded his line of titles. If he had been smart he would have stuck to the initial four titles for at least a year or two before expanding the line. Instead, between 2000 and 2003 the company added 12 titles in addition to the existing four! In addition to that CrossGen created a sub-imprint called Code 6 comics to publish comics which were jointly owned between the creators and CrossGen Entertainment. There were three titles published under the Code 6 banner.

Then, in 2003 the whole thing finally blew up. Rumors had steadily leaked that the company was bankrupt and unable to pay it's creators. The creative teams were rapidly jumping ship and eventually CrossGen formally filed for bankruptcy. Disney then sought and bought the rights to all of the CrossGen created characters.

For a time fans wondered about this. Disney was not really known for producing comic books and I (and many along with me) assumed that Disney would end up using the characters as fodder for their endless animated TV shows. Certainly they could have done worse. It has always bewildered me that Disney never turned Merdian into either an animated TV series or a live action one or an animated or live action movie. After all, the main character and story were squarely in Disney's demographic of young girls. The heroine of Meridian was a 14 year-old girl named Sephie who, upon the death of her father, finds herself inheriting the position of leadership of her people. She must then fight to stop her evil uncle from taking over the world all the while maneuvering through the perils of growing up, politics, and war. See? Perfect Disney heroine.

Instead Disney merely sat on the characters. In 2007 they allowed another small press publisher, Checker Publishing, to produce trade collections of the final issues of CrossGen's original comics run -- the stories that were never collected in trade because CrossGen died before they could be. But once those were produced the license ran out and Disney had no interest in renewing.

Then, last year, Disney bought out Marvel comics. Now that Disney had a comic book publisher under their belt they allowed Marvel access to the CrossGen stable...

And here's where we start getting to the rant.

Marvel decided to relaunch two of the CrossGen titles in order to test the waters. One of the titles they chose was Ruse. Now Ruse was originally CrossGen's answer to a Sherlock Holmes comic book. The main character, Simon Archard, solved mysterious mysteries in the city of Partington on the planet of Arcadia. There was a healthy dose of Steampunk to the story as Arcadia was a planet where technology advanced based on Victorian lines. There was also, however, a healthy helping of the supernatural. Under CrossGen Simon's snarky and independent assistant, Emma Bishop, was the Sigil Bearer with an ability to seemingly stop time but unable to use this power except in dire circumstances.

With the Marvel relaunch the decision was made to jettison the whole "Sigilverse" idea of CrossGen. This really didn't make much impact on Ruse as writer Mark Waid (who wrote much of the original run) seldom used the Sigil aspects of the series. So now Ruse takes place on Earth in the Victorian Era (rather than on a planet somewhere in the future), Emma Bishop has no powers but the city is still called Partington and it exists alongside London and there are still supernatural elements about.

On the whole the comic is delightful and a lot of fun... you should check it out.

BUT the other title Marvel decided to go with... was Sigil.

I LOVED the original Sigil run. It was fascinating and complex. Sam was a foot soldier, not a general or a leader, and he had been cashiered from the military and had turned mercenary along with fellow soldier and friend Roiya. When Sam recieved his Sigil Roiya was killed. Thanks to a mysterious man named JeMerik Meer, however, Roiya's soul was bound to her and Sam's starship. She was literally a Ghost in the Machine. Meer joined the group along with Zanniatti Oribatta, a young woman who had married the abusive leader of the planet Tanipal so that she could spy on him. Oh, and did I mention the war? The humans of this planetary system are at war with the Saurians -- a lizard-like race. More disturbing is the revelation that the Saurians literally "are what they eat" -- they take on the attributes and even knowledge of the things they eat and recently they've been eating the humans they take captive in the war... Over time Sam finds himself reluctantly pushed into the role of leader in the war and he discovers as well just how powerful his Sigil lets him be...

The comic ended without a resolution to the final story arc as CrossGen died. For a while, though, it was a really terrific space-opera romp. There was action and adventure, there was romance and mystery there was character development and kick-ass villains. It was everything you could want in a sci-fi movie but so rarely get.

So imagine my surprise when I go to my comic book shop and see an issue of Sigil on the stands and instead of seeing something like this:


I get this:


So I'm thinking: "Where's Sam? Where's Roiya? Where's Zanni? Where's are the spaceships? Who is this chick?"

I leaf through it and discover to my horror that everything I loved about Sigil is gone. Despite my disinterest the owner of my comic book shop slipped a copy into my bag for free. He was a fellow CrossGen fan and I guess he was hoping if I read it I might like it.

I read it anyway.

I didn't like it.

It wasn't *just* that my sprawling sci-fi epic was gone (although that alone would be enough to make me curse this change) it's that what they've replaced it with is unimaginative drivel.

That girl on the cover? That's Samantha "Sam" Rey, a 16 year-old high school student still dealing with the after effects of her mother's death a year ago in an as-yet undetailed accident. Sam is struggling in school, dealing with a female bully, and now seems to be suffering from strange dreams and even waking trances in which she sees another time, maybe even another world, where pirates fight for an unknown treasure. And now it seems that that world may be more than just a fantasy created by an overstressed mind. The world just might be real and Sam just might have a place in it.

GACK!

The whole story is filled to the brim with paint-by-numbers plotting, stilted dialogue, characters who are overused stereotypes at best and paper dolls at worst. Even Sam's reaction to her mother's loss seems stereotypical and stilted as she goes and actually sits on her mother's grave and talks to her mother (at the risk of being late for school. I mean, seriously, she can't wait until after school to visit her mother's grave? Or wait until the weekend? Is she doing this daily? If so I really don't think that's necessarily healthy from an emotional standpoint.) There's nothing here that makes you care. The whole thing is so murky that you don't really know who's fighting or why. You don't know where or when Sam is, you don't know who the good guys are you don't know who the bad guys are, you don't know what's a stake, and, quite frankly, you aren't given a reason to care. It's okay to be mysterious in a first issue in order to hook a reader in but you have to give the reader SOMETHING! I've complained about this before (and I'll probably complain about it again somewhere down the road) a first issue has still got to give readers a reason to CARE. We have to know what the stakes in this game are. What happens if the good guys lose? What happens if the bad guys win? CAN our heroine be killed here? We've just not got enough to go on!

So, in short, if you're on old CrossGen fan (like me) or a new comic book reader go ahead and pick up Ruse but dear God stay away from Sigil.

Death in Comics, pt. 2: Shock to the System

Now we're going to dig in a little bit and look at one of the first ways death has increasingly been used in comic book stories....

Shock Value.

The shock value death is one designed to startle the audience out of their complacency. It is meant to make the audience feel fear (usually for the hero(es) ) or anger (usually at the villains) or sadness (usually at a tragic turn).

As with all things, a shock value death isn't a bad thing when it's done right. Countless action-adventure and horror movies have used the sudden death of a character to startle the audience. You're sitting there, you think you know where the story is going next, you're actually quite comfortable with the story then...... BAM! Death. Cue more drama or action, or characters running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

There are a few things, though, to using the shock death...

For one thing, it does have to be a surprise -- you can't telegraph this one. Action hero sidekicks and red shirted crewmen from the original Star Trek series are really not likely candidates for a shock death. These types of characters might as well have targets painted on their chests. It isn't a matter of *if* they will die it's a matter of *when* they will die. If you want to go with a true shock death you have to go with a character or a situation where death is not expected. For example, in original Star Trek if you had one of the red mini-dress chicks beam down and get killed that would be a shocking death because, by and large (not entirely, mind you) women in Trek were fairly off-limits when it came to death... unless they were actually the villains. But I digress. The point is that there used to be certain rules and certain characters were kind of "off limits" for death... the girlfriend of the hero, kids, cute family pets... those sorts of characters.

Over time, though, because those characters were "off limits" they eventually began being targeted for shock death because the audience was used to them surviving. The problem with that is that, eventually, readers and audiences caught on to that scheme as well to the point where now no one really goes in thinking anyone is truly "off limits".

The other way of providing a death with shock value is not with the character but rather with the timing. There are certain situations and certain points in any story where the audience really isn't expecting a death. Picture a scene in a restaurant. It is expensive, romantic; there are candles on the tables, and seated at a table for two is a young couple. They are earnestly discussing their relationship. The music on the soundtrack swells to a romantic crescendo... and suddenly the man has a seizure and keels over dead. Shocking because it's unexpected and it comes at a point where everything is telling you this is a romantic moment. You are in an emotional mode to be receptive to that romantic moment. The last thing you are expecting is sudden death. Or, another example -- a character seemingly takes a sniper's bullet. OMG she's been shot! But she stands up and opens her jacket to reveal she was wearing a bulletproof vest. She's fine! You breath a sigh of relief.... suddenly a sniper's bullet strikes her head -- she's dead. You were not ready for this moment. The rules of writing state that you have rising action followed by falling action. You just passed a rising action moment and you know it so you are ready for the falling action and, indeed, the scene seems to go into that mode when.... sudden death!

Now, as I said, these tools of the trade are just that -- they're tools, neither good nor bad. Shock value deaths can provide a lot to a story. They can push a plot along, they can make sure the audience is fully invested in the story, they can invoke an emotion in the audience that the creator wants to invoke. But they also have to be used cautiously.

The audience, you see, are not idiots. We're savvy. We're onto the ways and means writers of various stripes use to jerk our emotional chains. And if a writer is going to use a shock death they have to invest in it. It has to truly come out of the blue, or it has to involve a character the audience wouldn't ever, ever *ever* expect to be killed.

And here's where far too many comic book writers have gone wrong with using the shock death. Too many of them think that just killing a hero at all is enough to be shocking. Well, years ago it probably would have. However, nowadays there are probably more dead superheroes than there are currently living ones. It isn't a big thing to kill a hero anymore but too many writers think that this is all they have to do. The result of this is that the audience isn't shocked and more to the point they think less of the writer for trying to use a cheap and easy shock value death.

The other thing about comic book shock value deaths is that the writers aren't really willing to lay anything on the line. As I said before, it isn't shocking to kill off a red shirt in Star Trek and likewise it isn't shocking to kill off a hero who has been on a shelf somewhere for ten years. For a shock death to be really effective in many ways the audience has to be invested in the character who dies. You can't introduce a character on page one of a comic, kill them off on page ten and expect the audience to be shocked. Most comic book readers know anymore that if a writer brings in a character that no one has seen or heard from in five years or more then very likely they will be cannon fodder before the end of the story arc -- sometimes before the end of the issue. Not. A. Shock.

And here's the thing. Failed shock value deaths are bad. They're really bad. Because if the audience isn't made to feel the emotion the writer wanted them to feel then the writer has failed and more to the point the *reader* knows exactly what the writer was trying to do and that he or she failed at it. It also means that the death is worthless. And that is also something that is increasingly ticking off comic book fans. A failed shock value death cheapens death, usually then seems unnecessary, and adds to the growing cynicism over death in comics. It's "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" in a way -- if the writer doesn't get an emotional response he/she keep trying and trying and trying but it will become harder and harder and harder to get the response he/she wants and in the meantime people stop caring about the deaths at all because they have become increasingly useless and meaningless.

Shock value death do still have their place in comics and they always will. When done right it can make you gasp out loud and wait with baited breath to see what happens next. But when done too often and done poorly it simply makes it harder to enjoy it when it's done right.

Death in Comics

Okay, this is an editorial. I'm not claiming that my views are the correct ones or the only ones or even necessarily the best ones; all I'm saying is: This is how I feel...

Comic books have been "not kids' stuff" for a very long time now. If you think that they are something for kids I can show you panels in regular comics (as in not graphic novels and not "Mature Readers" comics) where characters get their heads smashed in, where a character is raped off-panel, where a character is seen shooting up heroin, etc. And really, even back in the day when they were considered a child's reading material people might be surprised at the level of violence. I know of several comics in which rival gangsters filled a room with lead courtesy of Thompson Sub-Machine guns. Granted, there is no blood but there is a visible hail of bullets and the people in the room are shown falling backwards in death -- usually with cries of "Oh!" or "Urk!" on their lips. No, what most people think of as comics come from the goofy, neutered, 1950's.

But all that is aside. My point is that death has long been a part of comic books. Bad guys killed people, bad guys in turn often died through their own greed or Machiavellian machinations. Sometimes they were killed by the good guys but usually in a "fair fight" shoot-out. In short -- characters died.

But somewhere along the line there was a subtle shift to death in comic books. Long-term supporting characters died and left an impact on both readers and the characters in the comic books. Batman's faithful butler Alfred was killed in 1964 while heroically saving Batman from a falling rock (just.... go with it. He later got better and I believe the whole sequence has now been erased from continuity). Nearly a decade later comic fandom would be shocked by the death of Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker's girlfriend in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man. In point of fact, this one, pivotal death is considered as the end of the Silver Age of comics. Gwen had been a supporting character and Peter's "true love" for a number of years before being tossed off a bridge by villain the Green Goblin after the Goblin discovered Spider-Man's true identity of Peter Parker.

There would be other deaths... many other deaths. "Event" comic mini-series such as Crisis on Infinite Earths would be known for their body counts. There, not only were heroes killed but entire worlds were wiped out of existence. And it set a standard that no event comic was complete without a significant body count.

All of these things were meant to show the audience that the stakes in the game were high. Characters could die. Important characters could die. Even favorite characters could die. Just like in the real world bad things could happen to good people and actions could have consequences.

But this had an unfortunate side-effect -- many comic book deaths became about someone else rather than being about the character. Many characters died not because of things which they did but rather who they were. The stories of their deaths were not really about them but rather about another character -- usually the hero but sometimes the villain.

This has become more prominent in recent years -- death for shock effect, death to try to boost sales, and death as a cheap, writing shortcut. And I, for one, am sick of it.

Part of the problem comes from the issue of the person who is being killed is not the focus of the story. For a time this was particularly noticed among female characters leading to (then) comic book columnist and commentator Gail Simone (now bestselling comic book writer) to pen an essay which became a website -- Women in Refrigerators. The name came from a now infamous sequence in the title Green Lantern in which the titular hero comes home only to find out one of his enemies has killed his girlfriend Alex and stuffed her in the refrigerator.

Most people get the focus wrong and they think the outrage is that any character has been killed. Or else they think that the argument is that female characters should be untouchable and nothing bad should ever happen to them because they're women. But that's missing the point entirely. The point is that a character has been killed or depowered or raped or tortured or something else entirely to shore up another character.

In the case of Alex above there, she wasn't killed because she was a superhero. The person who killed her wasn't her enemy. Nope, she was killed off only to deliver angst to the titular hero and send him off on a revenge spree. In short, she became a plot device, not a character.

This can be contrasted spectacularly with the 1976-1977 X-Men story arc known as "The Dark Phoenix Saga". In the time leading up to the story a near-death experience led long-time character Jean Grey to unlock new and near god-like power levels -- leading to her shedding her old code name of Marvel Girl and adopting a new one -- Phoenix. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". With a little push from some villains, Jean tipped over into the dark side -- including wiping out an entire inhabited alien star system. Her friends and teammates managed to bring her back to her senses but she was soon put on trial by an alien empire for her destruction of the star system. Her friends fought to keep her from being sentenced to death for her crimes but in the end Jean could feel her control slipping away and the darkness growing. Knowing that she could never live like that she opted to kill herself. Now that is a story in which the character who dies is the focal point of the story. Jean didn't die to create angst for her teammates, nor did she die to show how much of a badass some villain is.

But that is what gets missing today. Comic book deaths aren't about the characters who are being killed -- they're about other characters. And we'll take a deeper look at this next post as we study comic book death as a writing shortcut.

The Sting of the Green Hornet....

So, yeah, just got back from the movie.

I didn't bother with the 3-D version this time. For the type of movie this was supposed to be I felt like it wasn't necessary.

Anyway, as something of a Green Hornet fangirl (was listing to the radio shows back when I was about 17 and I own one of the old serial movies which were produced) I was..... surprisingly okay with this film.

The Green Hornet was created for radio -- station WXYZ in Detroit to be specific -- and so didn't really have much of an origin story to begin with. No tragic background, no real, defining moment -- just a young man who decided to do something about crime and corruption.

In the original stories Britt Reid was the son of Daniel Reid, newspaper publisher. Daniel, getting up there in years, decided to semi-retire and put his son Britt in charge of the paper. When Britt chose to become the Green Hornet he intended to be a hero but due to some people mistaking the Hornet's motivations and thinking that because he wore a mask he was a criminal he got branded as such. Initially, he tried to disabuse people of this notion but he soon quit and decided to embrace it. And he later learned he was following a family tradition of sorts because Britt himself was the great-grandnephew of the Lone Ranger.

So this new movie really did have a chance to start with a clean slate. And it does -- taking twists and turns that the original radio writers probably would have been scandalized by. And you know what? I don't mind. The movie is it's own thing.

Maybe because the Green Hornet is a character that has lain fallow for so long that's why it feels more open to reinterpretation. Unlike characters like Batman or Iron Man which have been published at least in monthly comic books for years if not actively appearing in cartoons or live action on a regular basis the Green Hornet doesn't have any recent mythology that people would be familiar with and therefore be offended by.

For me, personally, I just see it as a kind of reboot of the character. Seth Rogan and director Michael Gondry have taken elements of the original -- Britt's father as a respected newspaper publisher and editorialist/journalist, the newspaper's name of the Daily Sentinel, Kato, the sleeping gas gun, and the costumes, the desire to do go and save the city from it's own corruption, and being considered villains instead of heroes -- and mixing it together with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor and some good-natured ribs at superhero comic books and movies.

Make no mistake about it -- there is cheese here -- enough cheese for a fondue party that serves 100. There is also a lot of humor -- little is taken seriously. But at the same time there is a lot of humanness. Rogan's Britt Reid doesn't become a badass fighter overnight (or with the help of a ten minute training montage either) nor once he and Kato decide to do all this do they immediately and automatically know what to do or where to go. There is some real humanity in this as you have two characters who are fumbling their way toward destiny.

It also helps that Rogan and co-star Jay Chou (Kato) have good onscreen chemistry and the movie wisely spends quite a bit of time setting up their friendship, their brotherhood, and the ups and downs it faces. Despite the presence of Cameron Diaz in this film she's not the girlfriend or the love interest here. The relationship at the heart of this film isn't a romantic one -- it's a friendship based one. And THAT is honest-to-God refreshing for a change!

There is also a nicely conflicted relationship with Britt Reid's father. James Reid is a jerk and we dislike him from the start but later revelations begin to change at least some of those beliefs. This is reflected by Britt as well. There are things his father did that he can understand and other things that are going to take a little longer to sort out but he reaches a kind of peace with the man -- a complex, not simple peace. And that's refreshing as well since most superhero parents tend to be portrayed as near-saints when they are tragically killed and which then enshrines their saintliness. Not so much here.

In all fairness, there are some jokes that fall a little flat and the villain, crime boss Chudnofsky, doesn't really work for me... not in the way he's intended to. In point of fact, I actually find him rather boring in almost every scene he's in. Also, there is a "plot twist" that if you honestly don't see coming you're not paying attention. There are also scenes which are so over-the-top they break your suspension of disbelief.

I also have to say that, on a personal level, I have a little problem with the body count. The Green Hornet and Kato seem a bit loo casual about killing. Avoiding killing people was a hallmark of the original character and I know, you're going to say that it was a different time period and a different audience and that is true; but it also played into the character -- the Green Hornet liked to out-think and out-swindle his enemies rather than engage in big shoot-outs with them.

All-in-all, an entertaining film with some real room for growth if it earns enough money to warrant a sequel. There is a lot of humor, some really great action sequences courtesy of Jay Chou, and a heavy dose of humanity. I can't see that springing the extra dough for 3-D is worth it and if you're on the fence about this one see it in matinee or rush hour showing for cheaper.