Essential Captain America, Vol. 1

And after a brief delay, here we go...

First up is Essential Captain America, vol. 1.

A little background before we begin...

Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941, published by Marvel's predecessor Timely Comics.

With the dawn of WW II Cap was not alone in the patriotic style heroes who graced the pages of various comics from various publishers and, like most of those heroes, he didn't survive much past the end of the war -- disappearing by the early 1950's.  There was a brief revival of the character in 1953, refashioned into a patriotic Commie Basher to try to appeal to the 'Red Scare' days but this not only didn't work it provided a hiccup in the character's history which Marvel eventually had to deal with... but that is for another day.

In 1964 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby dusted the character off and gave him a prominent place with Marvel's still-rather-young superteam The Avengers.  With Cap seemingly catching on with readers it was time to give him his own title... sort of... which is also where we come in with this volume.

Cap actually began appearing in a title called Tales of Suspense which was a kind of two-in-one comic at that time.  Half of the comic was devoted to stories featuring Iron Man and the other half to Captain America stories.  The two heroes traded off monthly on getting the cover image and lead position in the comic.  Eventually, both Cap and Iron Man proved popular enough to be launched into their own series'.  The stories in this volume cover the years 1964-1968 and cover the transition from Tales of  Suspense to Cap's solo title with all of them being written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby.

So how is it actually?

Not bad.  There are a lot of Silver Age conventions here -- villains who give big monologuing speeches and insist on keeping the hero alive and around in order to 'gloat over their victory', clunky dialogue, and really, really, seriously bad pseudo-science (really).  At the same time, the stories are action-packed and move along at breakneck speed without any padding or long, drawn out, story arcs. 

On the flip side, that breakneck speed doesn't really allow for too much character development -- particularly for the villains.  The villains are villainous and we may get an origin story for them but they don't really become fully rounded characters here.

The other thing that sets these stories apart is a clear view of what was called "the Marvel style" at that time.  Marvel is credited with giving it's heroes faults, failings, and foibles and also with giving them soap opera style stories in the Silver Age.  With Cap this is manifest by him brooding about being a "man out of time", and feeling responsible for the death of his partner, Bucky, and also losing the love of his life in WW II and then in the modern era being drawn to a woman who resembled his lost love only for them to be kept apart due to him being a superhero and her being a S.H.E.I.L.D. Agent.

The problem is that, to a modern reader, these elements are a bit overdone.  Cap remarks on his "age" and how he should be an "old man" like other WW II vets are but at the time this comic was written WW II was only about 20 years in the rear view mirror!  The "old men" who were his fellow vets were likely only in their early 40's through their early 50's!  About half the cast of the recent Avengers movie were over 40 and I doubt any of those actors would have thought of themselves as "old men"!  Modern, changed attitudes about age have made a lot of Cap's meditations on the subject seem whiny.

And speaking of whiny... Cap's brooding about his past probably seemed novel and invoked sympathy in readers of the time but here the dialogue comes across as kind of emo.  This is exacerbated by the fact that, in the 1960's, comic books were almost exclusively sold at newspaper stands and on drugstore spinner racks.  As such, comic book fandom was seen as a bit more casual thing and writers felt like they couldn't take it for granted that a reader picking up a comic book may be that familiar with Cap's backstory.  As such, the issue of Cap's lost partner, Bucky, had to be brought up again, and again, and again.  This makes Cap seem as though he's wallowing in the tragedy... particularly if one reads a big block of these stories in one sitting. 

I will say this, though -- when Lee and Kirby began writing Captain America stories in the Silver Age they set those stories during WW II -- allowing them to write all-new tales of Cap and Bucky as a team for readers who were probably not old enough to have read the original stories in the 1940's.  This had the benefit of allowing readers to get to know the character of Bucky and thereby possibly feel the tragedy of his death a bit more.

Interestingly, in reading through this Essential volume you see Lee and Kirby dropping the WW II era stories suddenly in favor of writing stories of Cap's adventures set in the 'modern era'.  In fact, they drop this right in the middle of a story arc and simply hand wave away the end of the arc.  Apparently the WW II era stories were not striking a chord with readers and Marvel was receiving requests that they write stories about Cap in the then current time.  To a modern reader this change is kind of jarring and not extremely well done.

And any discussion of this thick tome would not be complete without a discussion of the artwork.  Jack Kirby was not nicknamed "the King" for nothing.  His artistic style would become justifiably famous and would go on to influence any number of other artists.  With the color stripped out of the Essential line it allows us to see and appreciate Kirby's line work.  Unfortunately, this volume features Kirby's work before he had quite reached the apex of his style.  You can see an evolution throughout the four years of comics backed into this volume but by the end he's still not quite where he would be.  Also, the more prosaic, superhero-style stories do not give him much chance to cut loose with some of his more imaginative designs.

As you can see in the panel above, taken from towards the end of the volume, Kirby is starting to branch out and the dynamism of his figural work is growing as well, but he's not quite there yet.  Wait till we get to the Thor stories... Kirby's work is gonna blow your socks off...

So, after this long, rambling post what's the final verdict?

If you want to see the roots of Captain America this is a pretty good place to start.  Since Marvel has never really had a company-wide reboot as DC Comics has most of these stories are all still in continuity with only a few little changes over the years. 

The WW II era stories are interesting but I have to admit that the modern era stories have a bit more weight as they start moving Cap forward in character development.  The tales, however, tend to be kind of bog-standard superhero fare with nothing terribly groundbreaking... yet.  The 'soap-opera' elements are also a bit clunky and corny by modern standards.  One can also use the volume to trace the evolution of Jack Kirby's influential art style.

On the whole, if you can tolerate some old-fashioned comic book writing styles and some ludicrous pseudo-science there are some good things to be gained from Essential Captain America, vol. 1.  Although I would, perhaps, recommend that you read it in bite-sized chunks rather than in marathon reading sessions.  I think some of the problems of plotting and writing do not become as annoying that way.  And hey, if nothing else, it's over 300 pages of comics for $20.  That's a pretty good bargain for several weeks' worth or more of reading entertainment.

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.

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.

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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 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 Chicago Comic Books: The Avengers Marvel Masterworks, vol. 1

So another thing I picked up at Chicago.... (note: not actual cover. I couldn't find a decent copy of the cover to the Masterworks edition to use here)

A few things out of the way first. The Marvel Masterworks series was Marvel's equivalent to DC's Archives editions. The Masterworks were originally published as hardcovers and consisted of, usually, an entire year's worth of comics from one title. The comics had been scanned from the original pages, cleaned up, color corrected and printed on glossy, high-quality paper stock. The bad thing about both the Masterworks and Archives lines is that they tended to be very expensive... like about $50 a throw.

In recent years, though, both DC and Marvel have realized that they would do better with some more affordable options and so DC has started offering the Chronicles line -- issues of the comics, in publication order, in color, and with a paperback cover instead of a hard one. Marvel just moved their Masterworks into a paperback format.

The Avengers were and oftentimes stil are Marvel's premire superteam -- their answer to DC's Justice League of America. In the beginning the team consisted of Iron Man, Thor, Ant Man, Wasp and the Hulk. Needless to say the Hulk didn't last long as a team member and was soon replaced by Captain America.

Just as an aside, though, to me Marvel's Avengers aren't the real Avengers. No, the real Avengers are British and consist of John Steed, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and, in a pinch, Dr. Richard Keel, Venus Smith, and Tara King. After all, they had the name first and they have been roundly more entertaining, stylish and witty.

So, this Marvel Masterworks Avengers volume collects the first year or so of issues of the comic book. It introduces the basic idea and introduces all the team members for those who hadn't been following them in their individual titles. It will be interesting for Hulk fans to learn that in these early days the Hulk wasn't quite the brainless smash machine he would become later and also Bruce Banner could just "Hulk out" at any time -- it wasn't necessarily tied to his emotions. He could also be changed from the Hulk back to Banner with the application of a Gamma ray beam.

On the whole, though, I have to say that I didn't like this. It isn't the fact that it's Silver Age and therefore contains some of the goofiest comic book science you will ever see. It isn't the fact that, being Silver Age, is also contains attempts at "hip" language which is simply painful. It isn't the fact that, as Silver Age, it also contains some of the weirdest, most nonsenical villains. Nope. All of that I can deal with. Unlike some people I actually like a lot of Silver Age stuff. I find quite a bit of it charming and entertaining and the goofier aspects are just laugh-out-loud silly which is fun... even if the original writers didn't intend to make you laugh. It's like MST3K -- the entertainment is in making good-natured fun of the stuff.

No, the problem I have with The Avengers is that the stories are actually kind of boring, there are holes in the plot where is feels like there are panels of action missing, and in the writers' attempts to add angsty, soap opera elements to the team the Avengers end up coming off as people who tend to overreact at best and who are whiney babies at worst. If you want to see how one introduces conflict within a team and does it right go read Tom Stillwell's Honor Brigade . Many of these early stories were written by Stan Lee and illustrated (and possibly co-plotted) by Jack Kirby and Lee's trademark "soap opera elements" -- the stuff that made Marvel stand out from DC back in the day -- just don't work here.

And then there is the Wasp. I'm probably going to get hate from Janet Van Dyne fans over this but I'm sorry -- the Silver Age version of the Wasp was too stupid to live.

The first problem was that she had something of a weak power set. Now, I'm not a person who thinks that just because a hero doesn't have a great power set that that won't make them a good character. I do firmly believe that almost all characters can be great with the right writer and the right approach. You almost have to set out to deliberately make a bad character in order to make one that is completely unwritable. But the Wasp -- whose power was that she could shrink down to the size of a wasp and when she did so she suddenly grew wings and could produce energy blasts which she called "wasp stings" -- was almost universally overpowered by the rest of the Avengers. Worse still, Stan and Jack tended to use the character only to provide distractions or annoyances to the villains... something that just didn't seem to add that much punch to the story. Other than that... her personality consisted of every bad female stereotype in the book. Going into battle she had to check her hair and make-up first and was more concerned that her battles with supervillains might muss her make-up than she was with the fact that said villains might destroy New York or such. She complained about having to go heroing when she would rather be shopping instead and she actively tried to make her quasi-love interest, Ant-Man (laster Giant Man) Henry "Hank" Pym jealous by flirting with the other members of the team (in the early days pretty much only Thor since no one knew who was under the Iron Man armor so no one knew what he looked like). If that were not bad enough, in her flirtation with Thor Janet often talked about how good looking he was... and then how much she wanted to see him cut his hair and wear a suit. That just goes right back to that annoying trope that all women want to get their hooks into a guy so that they can change him.

Is it true that there are women who are obsessed with their looks -- their clothes, their hair, their make-up? Yes. But it's still a really annoying stereotype to most women. But what annoys the hell out of me more is that in these early days the Wasp is the only female member of the team and as such there is not another female character to balance out this stereotype. yes, yes, I know that subsequent writers had her get 'better' and got rid of a lot of this sort of thing, but that doesn't change the fact that it was there then. Stan and Jack should have been ashamed of themselves for even thinking that this was a proper portrayal of a woman, even back in those days!

Okay, I'm down off my soapbox now.

There is some levity to be had in the usual bad comic book science and silly supervillain plots but the best stuff comes near the end when they introduce Captain America to the team. Rick Jones, nearly perpetual sidekick, had started out as the sidekick to the Hulk but then found himself, well, kicked to the side. He made himself an adjunct to the Avengers and then quickly endeared himself to Captain America. What is hillarious is that, in Stan's attempt to inject angst into the stories, we have Captain America beating himself up over losing his former sidekick Bucky in the waning days of WW II and seeing in Rick a lot of Bucky, and Rick, on the other side, wanting to be Cap's sidekick and yet worried about what the Hulk might think of this "betrayal" if he ever comes back. Seriously, it reads like a gay version of a cheap romance novel.

So, in the end, I'm not sure myself where to tell you to start reading The Avengers if you want to start reading them but I can tell you to definitely not start reading at the beginning... even if you do like the Silver Age. As for myself... well, I got this on deep discount and I can say that at my earliest opportunity it's going to get sold off to the local used bookstore. There's just no room in my overstuffed Comics Closet to hold something that annoys me this much.