Pop Snark Hooligan!

The Art of Juli Adams

2007-08-31T15:32:00.000-07:00

Every year our local arts museum The Hockaday Museum of the Arts sponsors an arts festival in Depot Park. Depot is a small park on Main Street in Kalispell, but they cram it full of potters and statue makers, and crafts makers of all kinds, musicians, and artists... lots of artists. I usually don't go because the artists, while good, mostly concentrate on the local landscape and the local flora and fauna. I grew up here. I got local flora and fauna coming out my wazoo. If I want to see the local landscape all I have to do is look out the window.

The wife, however, thinks differently. Being the smashingly brilliant lady that she is and coming here from Illinois, she has a whole different level of appreciation for the local artists (not to mention art in general) than I do. So this year she dragged me to the thing, and imagine my surprise when I ran across this brilliant young lady from the Seattle Washington area.

Her name is Juli Adams and she's a brilliant painter. She also needs to be working in comics (which I gather she is currently not, too bad really.) Her stuff has a definite Slave Labor Graphics vibe to it, and it's just amazing.

Check out her website at Juli Adams.com.

She also has a blog at The Art of Juli Adams.

And if you have a yen to show some love for this wonderful painter, you can get her prints online at Ladieninscollectibles.com.

As the owners of five cats, we couldn't resist buying the print pictured at the top of the post. The print is called Showdown, and it captures perfectly that slow build to a hissy fit that all cats go through every so often.

Back from the dead, and ready to party!

2007-08-28T21:38:00.000-07:00

So okay, I haven't really updated this thing in eons, but I haven't exactly been idle either. Case in point is the new review of the excellent new graphic novel from Big Head Press, The Architect. Written by the great Mike Baron and drawn by artist without peer, Andie Tong, it's a stellar read and I highly recommend picking up a copy at your earliest convenience.

The review is located here and I think it turned out well. I really like the new magazine style layout of Blogcritics. The site is much easier to navigate than it was.

As a special note to anyone who cares about things like this, yes... I know that's a picture of The Probability Broach that accompanies the article. I'm pretty sure what happened is that the dingbat BC editor who put the final touches on my review temporarily got all lost and confused when he couldn't find a product picture of The Architect on Amazon.com, and instead of use an outside source for a picture or maybe... oh, I dunno... NO PICTURE AT ALL!!! He instead used something from the same company. Ah well, irritating to be sure, but not the end of the world I expect.

Because he hasn't updated in a while!

2007-04-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm totally using this without his permission, but he hasn't updated his blog in a while, so I'm hoping he'll notice this and throw his ravenous fans (like me!) a bone, and update his damned blog. This is the one comics project for 2007 that I am most looking forward to. Check it out!

Spartans Versus Persians and Once Again, Gerard Butler's Nekkid' Ass!

2007-04-10T21:29:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen 300 yet, you should drop what you're doing, call Mr. Moviephone, go get tickets, or whatever it is you do, and go see it. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. This movie kicks ass on so many levels, it's hard to decide where to begin. First, a bit of back story I think.

In a nutshell, in 480 BC, Persia invaded Greece with what was at the time, the largest army ever assembled. What we know of the invasion, we get from several sources, but the most detailed account, and the one with the most interesting bits, is by the Greek Historian Herodotus. The great Persian God-King Xerxes made a play to conquer Greece by threat and bribery, and when the two great city-states of Athens and Sparta told him to get bent, he invaded. While Athens navy held off the bulk of the invading ships, Sparta, which was hamstrung by an outdated set of laws that required the King to get approval from their oracle before declaring war, did nothing.

In a desperate ploy, the Spartan King Leonidas hand picks 300 elite soldiers to accompany him to a mountain pass known as The Hot Gates near Thermopylae. The mountain pass acts as a natural funnel where the Greeks can make a stand against an army whose numbers suddenly count for little. The rest is history as 300 Spartans and about seven thousand other Greek soldiers hold off an army of at least 100,000 strong, for three days. On the third day, the Persians are told of an alternate route around The Hot Gates. About to be outflanked, Leonidas orders the remaining soldiers into a retreat. He stays behind with his remaining Spartans and about 1,000 Thespian soldiers to cover the withdrawal.

Later, Leonidas' martyrdom galvanizes Sparta into action, and together with their Athenian counterparts, they hand Xerxes a defeat that begins a downward spiral that will end 150 years later when Alexander the Great ends the Persian empire on a more permanent basis. And you all thought history wasn't fun!

In 1998 the great comics writer and artist Frank Miller created a masterful retelling of this historical account. Setting up the characters with fully fleshed personalities and rendering them in his highly stylized trademark drawing style, resulted in a modern classic of the comics art form.

Enter Zack Snyder, fresh off his success remaking George Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead, Zack dives into the 300 project headfirst.

The result is 117 minutes of fun, and one of the best movies ever made. Because the Grecian topography has changed radically in the 2,500 years since the battle, location shooting would prove impossible. Instead, Zack filmed the entire movie in front of a blue screen. The backgrounds and scenery were filled in later by CGI. While I'm not completely sold on this technique (previously used in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, as well as the Matrix movies,) in this case, as with the previous Miller adaptation Sin City, the CGI allows the cinematographers and the set designers the freedom to adapt the comic panel by panel. It's a perfect fit. Not only do the characters look and act true to Miller's work, but even the scenes that were added to pad the story for motion picture pacing, look and feel like they're right out of Miller's story.

Gerard Butler is absolutely perfect as King Leonidas. He looks the part as do all the actors playing the Spartans. There are more six packs in this movie than at a frat house on pledge night. Butler turns in an Oscar worthy performance that makes Russell Crowe's Gladiator look like a little girl in a pink frilly dress. Leonidas opposite number Xerxes is played to absolute perfection by an almost unrecognizable Rodrigo Santoro. When these two fine actors are on scene together they bring every acting skill they've ever learned to bear, resulting in some of the most intensely brilliant scenes ever filmed. It's like watching a precision practice run from the George C. Scott school of caffeine frenzied scenery chewing. You will believe these two actors are opposing battlefield generals.

The writing is dynamic and fluid, allowing plenty of breathing room for the battlefield action. Scriptwriters Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon, with an able assist from the director, should be commended for turning out an outstandingly tight script. It even has the requisite one-liners, several of which are right out of Herodotus. When the Persian field commander yelled, "Spartans, throw down your weapons and surrender." and King Leonidas retorted, "Persians, come and get them." The whole theater cheered. Of course, with source material this good, it's hard to go wrong.

Larry Fong turns out a feast for the eyes, bringing his cinematography skills honed on several seasons of the TV show Lost. The combat is period specific, so there's lots of spraying blood and flying heads, but Fong shoots it all so well, that it hardly matters. Every scene is altered to look like it came right out of the 300 graphic novel, so it has the effect of making the gore more tolerable.

300 is a violent story, so it's not for younger kids. There's a lot of on screen gore, but again, it's stylized so the effect is muted, and I would have no problem taking a teen to see this. Just make sure you're a good parent and you watch this with them in case you have to explain things. This movie earned its R rating so go see it with that in mind and you'll be fine. It's a terrific, grandiose spectacle of a movie, based on one of the most enduring stories ever told. It's destined to become classic fare, and it'll definitely be a must own when it finally comes out on DVD.

101 Things I Love About My Wife

2007-04-01T01:11:00.000-07:00

So the other day my wife Courtney and I were driving in the car before work, coming back from getting an early dinner, breakfast for me because I work night shift. I was carping like I always do about what I was going to write about that night on my down time. Jokingly, she said something to the effect of "Write about how awesome your wife is." A few days later, here's what I wrote over two nights. All in all, it was one of the easier things I've ever written. I could have done 1000.

1. I love the way she smiles.

2. I love her sardonic, dry wit.

3. I love her black sense of humor.

4. I love the little noise she makes when she's exasperated with me. I can't really describe it but our bird mimics it perfectly.

5. I love the fact that I can't take her to the animal shelter without an hour long discussion about why we can't have just one more.

6. I love the fact that she loves animals.

7. I love the fact that she wants to go to college.

8. I love the fact that she has no idea what she wants to be when she grows up.

9. I love her sense of style.

10. I love her sense of color, design, and placement.

11. I love the color of her eyes.

12. I love the fact that she's not afraid to dye her hair, or get a tattoo, or get pierced in odd places.

13. I love the fact that she can never decide what she wants to eat...

14. ...and I love that every so often she knows exactly what she wants to eat.

15. I love the fact that she gets so frustrated with video games that she will throw the controller.

16. I love that she likes music...

17. ...and that she likes different music than I do.

18. I also love the fact that she likes electronica, but doesn't like Moby.

19. I love the fact that she seems genuinely interested in what I'm rambling on about, even when she's not.

20. I love the fact that she's patient with me.

21. I love the fact that she steals the covers...

22. ...and cocoons herself in them so tightly that the only way to get them back is to wake her up.

23. I love that she'll stay up all night with me watching re-runs of Roseanne.

24. I love the fact that she's an obsessive compulsive collector.

25. I love the fact that she collects naughty nic-naks.

26. I love the fact that she'll snuggle with me even though she's not a "snuggler".

27. ...except with the cats, but everybody snuggles them.

28. I love the fact that she'll trade movie quotes with me.

29. I love the fact that she's a wizard with the computer.

30. I love the fact that she's an impressive researcher.

31. I love the fact that she reads.

32. ...and that her reading list is as large and as backlogged as mine.

33. I love the fact that she prefers to wear slip on tennis shoes with no backs and no laces.

34. I love the fact that she won't make me give her long foot rubs when she knows my hands are sore and tired.

35. I love that she loves McDonald's breakfasts.

36. I love that she has a favorite kind of pen.

37. I love that she's a talented artist, but doesn't think so.

38. I love that she's stunningly beautiful but doesn't think so.

39. I love that she will fall asleep with the TV on, but the computer monitor must be off.

40. I love the fact that she has Courtneyisms.

41. I love the fact that she always wants to drive over the river on the back road.

42. I love that she has pen pals.

43. I love that she tolerates my quirks, moods, and foibles well.

44. I love that it's easy to tell when she's upset...

45. ...and easy to tell when she's happy.

46. I love that I can talk to her about anything...

47. ...and that she'll even talk about stuff she doesn't want to talk about given enough time.

48. I love the fact that she likes movies...

49. ...and that she's willing to try any movie I throw at her.

50. I love the fact that she's found several comics she likes, even though she's not particularly interested in comics in general.

51. I love that she hates Star Trek.

52. I love that she loves Dr. Who.

53. I love that she's tiny but mighty.

54. I love that she can sleep through almost anything.

55. I love that she'll game with my friends and I even though she's not particularly interested in it.

56. I love the fact that she has a great butt, however she insists that some of her jeans make it look better than others.

57. I love the fact that she loves the ocean and marine life of all kinds.

58. I love the fact that she knows how to properly set up and maintain fishtanks of all kinds.

59. I love that she loves to take pictures of everything.

60. ...and that she's really good at it.

61. I love the fact that she loves a good horror movie.

62. I love that she's generous, and loving, and kind.

63. I love the fact that she loves insects of all kinds.

64. I love the fact that she drinks Dr. Pepper like water.

65. I love the fact that she's constantly tinkering with her blog.

66. I love the fact that she's an atheist.

67. I love that sometimes I can introduce her to new music.

68. I love the fact that she can listen to a song twenty times in a row without blinking.

69. I love the fact that she's a Libertarian.

70. ...and that she calls me a Communist because I'm a bleeding heartliberal.

71. I love that she has no fear of offending anybody, ever.

72. I love the fact that I always learn something new about her every day I'm with her.

73. I love the fact that she's extremely polite.

74. I love the fact that she can out belch any man...

75. ...and that she says, "Excuse me." after every one.

76. I love the fact that she can curse fluently in several languages, but usually doesn't.

77. I love the fact that her sneezes almost always come in twos.

78. I love the fact that she almost always needs help to stop the hiccups.

79. I love that she'll hit the snooze button twenty times before getting up, even when I have the clock across the room.

80. I love that she thinks that the bed must be made every day.

81. I love that she likes 80's music.

82. ...and cheezy 80's cartoons.

83. I love the fact that she's loyal.

84. I love that she will never answer the door when I'm there, not even for the pizza guy.

85. I love that she can spend twenty hours straight web surfing, then tell me that there's nothing good on the internet.

86. I love that she loves to watch boxing.

87. I love that she's a creative and talented cook.

88. I love the fact that her foods must never touch, unless they're supposed to.

89. I love the fact that her favorite jet fighter is the SR71 Blackbird, even though she can never remember what it's called.

90. I love the fact that plastic wrap is okay to seal refrigerated containers with, but aluminum foil is not.

91. I love that Beethoven's Fur Elise will make her purr like a kitten.

92. I love that she ranks the cats in order of preference, and tells them this often.

93. I love that she's an outstanding gardener.

94. I love that she stays in touch with current news.

95. I love that she's addicted to Jeopardy.

96. ...and that she hates Wheel of Fortune.

97. I love the fact that she reviles Microsoft.

98. I love that she's the first person I want to see when I wake up...

99. ...and the last person I want to talk to when I go to sleep.

100. I love the fact that she lets me spoil her rotten.

101. Most of all, I love the fact that she picked me to share her life with.

Five Finger Exercises For The Damned

2007-03-17T16:46:00.000-07:00

When you do enough online reviewing (assuming you have something nice to say) you'll eventually start seeing snippets of your reviews crop up on various printed works. While it's a good feeling to know that the subject of one of your essays liked what you wrote enough to use it, it's a kind of dubious honor at best. After all, we all know that a critic doesn't really create anything right?

There's a certain kind of poetry in a well crafted essay, and the best critical essayists from Michele de Montaigne to Hunter S. Thompson, to Lester Bangs, to Harlan Ellison can make what is basically just an essay that says, "I liked it." or "I didn't like it and here's why." nearly as entertaining as the work that was reviewed.

One of the fun things I do when I'm writing a critical essay is to include the literary equivalent of a DVD easter egg. These are sentences that I've specifically written, that I think would make great cover copy. The trick is to work these in well enough so that they don't really jump out at you unless you're specifically looking for something cool to put on the back cover of your new graphic novel.

There's an art to writing good cover copy that transcends even the art of the critical essay. It's much harder to tell people how cool something is in just a few sentences than it is to use an entire essay. I've gotten good enough at it that at this point, that when someone picks out a few lines from one of my reviews for cover copy, it's almost always exactly the lines I wanted. So I thought I'd share with you all some of the practice runs I do on a regular basis, just to flex those specific writing muscles. Some of these are better than others, but they were all good practice, and they at least give you all a rare peek at my non comics related reading list. These are five finger exercises for those of us poor souls, damned to that special hell reserved for the most despised of all writers, the critic.

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite
Bar none, the best vampire novel since Bram Stoker's original, and Ms. Brite can write circles around the old bard. Lost Souls is hip, relevant, and more than a little responsible for most modern teen-agers wanting to dress in pale and black.

The Store by Bentley Little
Have you ever got the feeling while walking through Wal Mart that there was something...wrong? The feeling that just under the surface was something seething and evil. Bentley Little captures the true horror of the big box store in this masterpiece of genre fiction.

Collected Fictions by Jorge Louis Borges
Andrew Hurley does a stellar job of translating the finest short fiction of this master storyteller. This volume is a treasure mound of stories, and a must have for anyone who loves to read.

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Mrs. Madrigal is the landlord you always wanted but never got, and the stories are told through the eyes of her renters at 28 Barbary Lane. Classic coming of age fiction by an astounding writer. Maupin is a national treasure and his work should not be missed.

Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk
Palahniuk had the unfortunate luck of having his first novel Fight Club stick firmly into the heart of the pop culture zeitgeist, guaranteeing his succeeding work would be ignored. This is a collection of some of his best short fiction. Smashing reads all around.

Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem
Lethem is the best living short story writer who isn't Ray Bradbury or Harlan Ellison. Although the three are a fair comparison, Lethem shines brightly enough all on his own. This is his most recent collection of short fiction, and it's absolutely excellent.

Wicked by Gregory Maguire
A brilliant updating of L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz, told from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. Turns out she was a lot deeper than we ever gave her credit for, and her side of the story makes for an excellent read.

Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
All the mysteries, myths and magics of life on planet Earth are revealed through the parable of a love story that takes place in a pack of Camel cigarettes. Still Life With Woodpecker is a work of pure genius by one of the best modern writers.

Slippage by Harlan Ellison
Often mis-classified as a science fiction writer, Harlan Ellison consistently transcends the limitations of genre. Slippage is a masterpiece of collected short stories by the most amazing writer on the planet!

Angry Candy by Harlan Ellison
Required reading for anyone who has ever lost someone they care about. Ellison brings forth all the pain of lost loved ones and channels it into an amazing collection of scalpel sharp short fiction.

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Read the book before you go see the new Richard Linkletter movie. This book will make you think twice before going out to eat at any restauraunt that labels itself fast food.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
Even though the pandas come across as jerks, this is still the best English lesson of the new millennium. Truss makes the mind-numbingly boring subjects of grammar and punctuation fun by injecting them with wit and humor.

Classic Feynman by Richard Feynman
A collection of hilarious essays by the amazing physicist who's tragic death shortly after his investigation of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, keeps the conspiracy theory nuts in business to this day. Feynman makes Carl Sagan look like a piker when it comes to making advanced physics potable for the masses.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
Meet the amazing people who make and serve food in some of the world's best eateries. Master chef and gonzo journalist Anthony Bourdain takes us on a tour of back kitchens and dark alleyways around the world.

The not so secret reason why Cap #25 means nothing to your average comics fan.

2007-03-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

Captain America is strictly bush league!

This is also the reason that when John Byrne left The Uncanny X-Men so did I. Okay except for the stellar run by Paul Smith, but I can assure you I didn't read them, just looked at the pretty pictures. Okay...okay, I did pick up the Grant Morrison issues too, and I did enjoy the Jim Lee stuff as well. Sigh! I need help.

The Re-emergence of Paul Riddell and Why the Art of Writing is Not The Same As a Bad Crack Habit

2007-03-03T03:01:00.000-07:00

Many many years ago in those halcyon days of early 2002, I happened across this great web site called, The Healing Power of Obnoxiousness, or HPOO for short. It was an online archive for the critical essays of Paul T. Riddell, who's work I knew well from his days as a freelancer for Sci-Fi Universe and Film Threat magazines. Unfortunately, a few months after I found it, the web site went away. The archives were closed, and I wasn't even left with a signpost saying, "Move along. Nothing to see here." I felt like that little kid at the end of Shane, watching what was left of his hero ride off into the sunset. "Come back Paul, come back!" I never even got the chance to subscribe to his newsletter, the oh-so-marvelously named Hell's Half-acre Herald.

With the scuttling of his web site, Paul T. Riddell was gone, leaving a gaping wound in the field of genre criticism. The man who introduced me to the works of John Shirley, and the absolute genius who coined the term Cat Piss Man, had disappeared into the luminiferous aether. There were remnants though, like the image that still clings tremulously to life when you shut off one of those old tube driven television sets. If you search for them, you can still find some of his comics related work at Popimage, and at The SAVANT graveyard. His science fiction related essays and some of his movie reviews can still be found at: The Spark, and over at Dark Echo (-Edit point- Paul pointed out to me that his John Shirley review that's currently posted at Dark Echo is unauthorized. He has asked that the "editor" Paula Guran take it down, but she has so far ignored him. Should any of you desire to e-mail her and let her know what you think of this situation, she can currently be reached at: editor@juno-books.com ), and you can read a lot of the stuff he wrote as Edgar Z. Harris at this nifty archive site.

Then, about a year ago, just on a whim, I threw Paul Riddell through a Google search. I do that from time to time, checking up on former SAVANTeurs, and a host of other favorite Internet writers who don't bother to keep their own blogs. This particular day, the stars were properly aligned, and Google came up with a Livejournal blog called Sclerotic Rings. It was written by none other than the aforementioned prodigal son himself. Paul had changed up his writing style a bit to favor a more chatty, conversational atmosphere, but you could still see some of the old snark, as well as gleaming edges of that black sense of humor, especially in his responses to readers' comments. It quickly became one of my favorite places to frequent within this cacophony of electronically driven noise we call the world wide web.

Paul's been sick lately with a serious bout of bronchitis that really seems to want to morph into pneumonia, but in spite of all that he keeps updating. I have, however, noticed a disturbing trend in his posts lately. It seems to be bothering him that he's still writing, still sharing his black wit and razor keen insights with an audience. It really pisses me off when writers who actually know their craft and practice it well start referring to what they do as an addiction. Writing certainly seems like something you should be able to "quit anytime," like smoking crack or watching re-runs of Matlock, but it isn't. Writing is a state of being, and while an addiction may certainly seem that way, it is in fact something extraneous to your core. Simply put, you either are or are not a writer. To deny the fact that you write is to deny your own existence, and a true writer (and Paul is one in every good and noble way imaginable) will write, regardless of whether he ever gets anything published, or even if nobody other than long suffering friends and family ever sees it. Writers have no choice but to set pen to paper (so to speak.)

Paul and I share a mutual teacher in the great essayist and short story writer, Harlan Ellison. I've met Harlan on many occasions, and have even had several opportunities to chat with him. He once told me that, "a true writer will write, no matter what. They have no choice but to serve their muse. It is an incurable affliction of the soul." Confirming for me what I've always known. Writing isn't an addiction, it's an incurable genetic disease, like Tay-Sachs or neurofibromatosis. Criticism is the worst of these because, not only must you understand your own unconsciousness, but you've also got to understand the back brains of other writers as well, and what's worse, is that you have to be able to pull everything apart, put it back together, then be clear enough to demonstrate your work to the rest of the class.

The best critics make all this seem effortless. They can juggle four running chainsaws, pull the tablecloth without spilling the wine glasses, and steal your wristwatch all at the same time, without even blinking. Paul Riddell is definitely someone I count as one of the best of us, and he doesn't even work much with the critical essay anymore. There's hope for the future though. If you go here, you'll see why.

For now Paul is still writing, and hopefully it's just the bronchitis talking, and not a lead-up to another disappearance. In the meantime, if you have a yen for some of the most fun you can have while surfing the Internet, check out Sclerotic Rings. It's been re-named The Esoteric Science Resource Center, which is a little less obscure than sclerotic rings, as well as a little more appropriate. The site is a carnival, chock full of scientific weirdness, cool science related facts, useful information about reptiles, insects, carnivorous plants, dinosaurs, and the like. It contains pretty much every interesting morsel that falls across Paul's wide ranging information gathering tentacles.

Paul is what the folks back home call, "good people." His blog is fun, open, honest, and even though he's posting mostly science related McNuggets, he still writes with passion, fire and humor. You should stop by and say hi, and if you like what you read, throw the guy some money courtesy of his PayPal tip jar. If I'm not mistaken, all proceeds are currently going towards the construction of his dream greenhouse, which I believe he plans to fill with carnivorous plants. How he plans on feeding the little bastards is a place I don't want to go, at least until he suckers my wife into wanting one too.

Bad, Blonde and the Best Bond Ever

2007-01-10T18:51:00.000-07:00

I'll admit I was skeptical. I'd been burned by this whole Casino Royale thing before. The first Ian Fleming novel, and the worst Bond film ever made, (starring the painffully mis-cast David Niven) the original Casino Royale held the dubious honor of being the only utter failure of the entire James Bond franchise. (Though, that horrid re-make of Thunderball they called Never Say Never Again came awfully close.) Still and all, I'd read Casino Royale, and though it's one of Fleming's weakest novels, it's still brief enough and actiony enough to hold a film together. Hell, with the right scriptwriter Judith Krantz's Dazzle could be a decent movie. (No, not really. Pick your jaws up off the floor.)

This new Bond flick had me from the opening credits. It starts with a brief introductory piece just as they all do, except this time we get to see our man James qualifying for his 00 status, and it's an edge of your seat roller-coaster ride from there. Casino Royale boasts the best on foot chase sequence I've ever seen in any movie, and huge kudos to Daniel Craig for even being able to keep up with the stuntman who played his quarry.

Craig plays Bond like an experienced field agent who is just coming in to the next level of his spycraft. He's temperamental and brilliant, a bit impulsive and absolutely self assured. Craig layers it all on, creating the best and certainly most human James Bond ever. At its core though, the story of James Bond is the story of a superhero, and as believable as Craig makes his Bond, he never seems to loose sight of the fact that he's playing a super secret agent, and he's more than equal to the physical challenge that role demands.

That's the thing about Craig. He's not classically handsome like Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, or Timothy Dalton, and he's not cute like Roger Moore. Craig is a man who blends in fine in a crowd, and like the excellent actor he is, Craig plays James Bond as equally at home in the back streets of a third world country as he is in the power casinos of Montenegro. He's in superior shape (plenty of rippling abs for the ladies to be sure) and he moves like a hyperactive cat on amphetamines. You will believe this man is a secret agent.

The direction on this movie is stellar. Martin Campbell, who got superb mileage out of Brosnan in Goldeneye and had the good sense to cast Hallie Berry as the Bond girl, returns with a new cast. He proves unequivocally that he was the best choice to re-start the Bond franchise. Playing off of a letter perfect action script by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, Campbell shows us that he's become a superb cook, by serving up the tastiest Bond Film since Dr. No. The elements from the cinematography to the acting blend perfectly. This is a seamless action movie that gives us a Bond for the new millenium, while still working in all the classic bits that the franchise fans know and love.

The supporting cast is excellent as Dame Judi Dench reprises her letter perfect M. Jeffrey Wright is cast well as Felix Leiter, though he doesn't have much in the way of screen time, he does make the most of what he's given. Eva Green is spectactular as Vesper Lynd, and she proves she's every bit Bond's match, even up through her inevitable betrayal. Special props go to Mads Mikkelsen who gives us the best Bond villian since Joseph Wiseman first threatened Sean Connery. The absence of jump suited goons, a secret underground volcano lair and even orbital laser beam death traps is not missed. Mikkelson plays Le Chiffre as a walking time bomb, seething with rage and desperation. He's the perfect counterpart to Craig's ice cold Bond.

Ultimately Casino Royale succeeds as both a Bond film and as an action movie, and that's twice what I expected with this franchise re-start. If you go see this movie at the theater you will not be disappointed. When it comes out on DVD you might as well buy it, because you will want to watch it again and again. See this movie, you will not be disappointed.

Fantastic Four 2 trailer

2007-01-10T18:43:00.001-07:00

I don't care what anybody says, even if the rest of the movie isn't a tenth this cool, it still rates a must see.

10 of the Coolest people on the planet!

2007-01-08T22:08:00.000-07:00

In order to balance out my Karma a bit for that last post, I thought I'd put up a list of my favorite female role models. They are an eclectic mix to be sure.

Gail Simone - Arguably the best writer working in the field of comics today, Gail maintains a consistently excellent body of work. She uses humor to fuel solid action scripts that are packed full of modern pop culture references and snappy, intelligent dialogue. Unlike many of her peers, Gail takes great pains to maintain an active voice on the internet with her blog and by frequently contributing to relevant discussion boards. I also have it on good authority that in her free time she enjoys feeding live kittens and uppity internet journalists to her pet Sasquatch. Currently she is writing The All New Atom and Birds of Prey for DC.

Camille Paglia - A teacher, author and social critic, Camille is the advocate for rational feminism, and one hell of a lunch date. Since her breakout novel, Sexual Personae in 1990, Camille has written for Salon.com and is a managing editor for Interview magazine. Though she is most certainly a feminist, Camille has always been an outspoken advocate of fetishism, pornography, prostitution, and male homosexuality, which tends to get her in hot water with just about every conservative advocacy group on the planet. The author of two books of essays on the subject of modern feminism, she is currently working on her third.

J.K. Rowling - Recently voted the greatest living British writer by the readers of The Book Magazine, Rowling is the first author to become a Billionare by writing books. She earned 75 million dollars in 2005 just off the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and there's no end in sight with her upcoming release of the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows projected to top the 100 million mark by year's end. With all this fame and fortune, Rowling remains grounded by keeping up solid communication with her fan base via the internet, and numerous public appearances. She's an amazing writer that will hopefully continue to enjoy many years of continued success even after the Harry Potter craze has long since run its course.

Colleen Doran - Colleen has been a professional comics artist since she was a teenager. To date she has completed hundreds of graphic novels and monthly comics, with no signs of slowing down. Colleen has always been an outspoken defender of artists rights and an advocate for women in the comics industry. She has worked with superstar writers from Warren Ellis to Neil Gaiman, the later of whom even based one of the characters in his Sandman series on her. Colleen was one of the first American artists to appreciate the Manga artists coming from Japan, and has been instrumental in opening up the American comics market for Manga, and a host of talented Japanese creators. Currently, Colleen continues work on her creator owned project A Distant Soil, as well as providing the stunning artwork for J. Michael Straczynski's Book of Lost Souls project for Marvel Comics.

Ann Marie Lipinski - Anne Marie is currently the Senior Vice President and Editor of The Chicago Tribune, one of the world's most powerful daily newspapers. In 1988 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism for her series of articles detailing corruption in the Chicago City Council. She has since served on the Pulitzer jury twice. Currently, in addition to her day job, she is also serving on the board of visitors for the Poynter institute, the University of Michigan Journalism Fellows program, and the Stanford University Journalism Fellows program. She is a really busy person.

Dame Julie Andrews - What's not to love? During her career she's won the Emmy, The Grammy, and The Academy Award. She made the role of Eliza Doolittle famous enough on Broadway to get it optioned as a movie, only to get snubbed for the movie role by Warner Brothers. She gave us iconic performances as Mary Poppins and Maria Von Trapp, she's been knighted as a Dame Commander of the British Empire, and she has a 5 octave singing voice. Say what you will about Dame Julie's typecasting as sugary sweet bits of fluff, but you're not looking at her entire career, nor are you appreciating the subtlety that this master thespian brings to every role she plays. She's a wonderful actress and a true class act.

Gale Anne Hurd - Gale has done more singlehandedly to popularize science fiction and comics than just about anyone. As a motion picture producer, with her own Production company Pacific Western Productions, she's made a string of super films, including; The Terminator, Aliens, The Hulk, The Punisher, Aeon Flux, Armageddon, the list goes on. She has excellent taste in subject matter, even if the execution sometimes falls flat, and she's one of the most successful producers in Hollywood. She is also one of the most patient and understanding people on the planet, having been married to director James Cameron for four years. Currently, Gale is producing a new project for Howie Mandel, as well as the sequal to The Incredible Hulk.

Jane Pauley - From 1976 to 1979, the Today show was not to be missed. There was one reason for this and one reason only. It was the same reason, in fact, that put Dateline NBC on the map as well. Jane Pauley has been a Journalist and News Reporter in some capacity for most of my life, and she will always hold a special place in my heart. She has retired from television now, preferring to live the quiet life with her husband, cartoonist Gary Trudeau, but you never know. As modern television becomes less and less ageist (unless of course you're Barbara Walters), perhaps one of these days we'll see Jane Pauley taking over for Barbara Walters on The View, much as she did years ago with the Today show.

Dr. Sally Ride - This one's a no-brainer for any 10 coolest people list, but there's a good reason for that. Astrophysicist, Dr. Sally Ride was the first American woman in space. She was also the first female astronaut to complete two space missions. When the training for what was to be her third space mission was disrupted by the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, Dr. Ride was asked to serve on the board of inquiry. She would also serve later as an investigator for the board, in the wake of the Shuttle Columbia disaster. Dr. Ride is currently the founder and CEO of of Sally Ride Science, her company creates science programs written with an eye towards entertainment, as well as other science based publications for upper elementary and middle school students.

USAF Major Nicole Malachowski - Callsign "Fifi" tops my current list of the coolest, and she'd definitely the most badass. Major Malachowski cut her piloting teeth on the F-15 Eagle, clocking more than 1000 hours of flight time with it, including a combat tour in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In March of 2006 she switched to the smaller, more manuverable F-16 when she was selected as the newest member of the USAF Air Demonstration Squadron, better known as the Thunderbirds. To date she is the only female to ever serve as part of any armed forces air demonstration team, though The Navy's Blue Angels squadron has had females fly several solo missions in support of the main show. Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend that will see more female pilots in these high profile military roles.

***Note*** Yes, I know the picture says she's a Captain. She got promoted, it happens.

PS3 vs. Wii

2007-01-08T11:17:00.001-07:00

I absolutely love parody commercials, and parodies of parodies are even better, so here's mMy very first YouTube post. Special thanks to Laura for the find.

My Ticket to Happiness

2006-12-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

I know it's part of the whole online writing gig, that invariably my work is gonna show up on other sites or get linked to from others pages. But it still thrills me to no end when it happens. The idea that someone out there read my stuff and liked it enough to link to it is just the coolest thing on the planet. Check out this Wikki. Where's It At Sugar Kat! Wikki Page

I've been a fan of Ian and Woodrow's work for a long time. It's nice to see someone took the time to put this page together for them.

I Don't Like Mondays.

2006-12-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

I've really never been much of a fan of Bob Geldof, so it was kind of a suprise to me the other day when I heard this song on the radio and I actually liked it. It's one of the few Boomtown Rats songs that comes off more like something Queen would do. It also frightens me a little that I certainly understand the sentiment behind the song. Mind you, I'm not advocating mass murder at a schoolyard by any means... but every once in a while, something happens that makes me just see red.

I found this through Jeff Chon's excellent Shrillmatic blog, and it's an amazing piece of autobiography. I've spoken about the state of the comics industry several times with online friends Gail and Johanna, and though I don't comment on her blog a lot, I think Lea Hernandez is dead on accurate when she's ranted about the "frat house" mentality that exists at the big dinosaur publishers Marvel and DC.

Anyway, here's the link... We Need a Rape

Goodbye to the Architect of Dreams!

2006-11-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

Dave Cockrum was the chief architect in a microcosm of dreams set to four color harmony. His comics covers were bar-none the coolest around, and he had the distinction of being the only artist to ever sell me on an issue of Rawhide Kid (issue 151 still got it.) In his lifetime he designed some of the coolest costumes and drew some of the most fantastic comics stories I'd ever read. He was always one of my favorite artists, and one of the nicest guys on the planet to talk to at convention. Goodbye Dave, you will be sorely missed.

Dave Cockrum

November 11, 1943 — November 26, 2006

A Review of the graphic novel Shatter, a brief discussion of the universal forces, and some more pot shots at Michael Bay!

2006-11-09T21:28:00.000-07:00

Most scientists agree that there are four universal forces. These are the most powerful forces in the universe, starting with strong nuclear force which is the most powerful but affects things over the smallest distance. The middle two are weak nuclear force and electromagnetic force, and these are followed by gravitational force, which is the weakest of the four, but affects things over the longest distance. Coming in just under gravitational force, however, is an unspoken fifth universal force that is the true glue that binds the universe together. Gravity be damned, that force is nostalgia. Anyone who doubts this can go find out about Michael Bay's newest project, then get back to me.

Writers as varied as Garrison Kellior and Michael Chabon have built their careers on nostalgia. Artists like Alex Ross and Steve Rude have careers steeped in it, and let's not even get into the careers of Norman Rockwell, Stan Lynde, or Charles M. Russell.

Nostalgia is everywhere. Sometimes it's a force for good, like Pallisades Toys re-introducing Micronauts, and sometimes it's pure evil, like the aforementioned Michael Bay project. In comics, that unrelenting need to recapture a bit of history is obvious in works like; The Watchmen, The Dark Knight, Maus, The Sandman, Acme Novelty Library... I could do this list forever.

Back in the 80's there were several comics that I followed with the fervor of a hyper-motivated religious zealot. I tried never to miss an issue. For the record they were; American Flagg, Badger, Nexus, Grimjack, Mage, Cerebus, Starslayer, Miracle Man, and of course The Legion of Super Heroes. I'm sure there were others... The Rocketeer when it came out, Mars was periodically entertaining, occasionally Dynamo Joe and The Elementals. I'm getting misty-eyed just thinking about them.

Then there was Shatter. My best friend Will followed this thing devotedly. He bought every issue, and even followed Mike Saenz onto Donna Matrix. It took nearly a year of his browbeating me with this series before I finally gave it a chance. It was good. It didn't exactly blow my socks off or anything, but I liked it well enough. Peter Gillis' plot was a bit pedestrian, a futuristic crime noir complete with the cliche hard boiled hero, and the femme fatale. It was obvious that Gillis was a Blade Runner fan, and that was just fine by me.

From a story standpoint, Shatter didn't exactly set my world on fire, but the artwork was a different story. Working with an Apple MacIntosh and a dot matrix printer, Mike Saenz made magic. He pulled light, depth and shadow from a device that only a few years before could barely repeat the word "run" on an endless loop until you hit the escape button. This was something new, exciting, and endlessly interesting. It was the first time a comic had ever been produced using a tool that twenty-two years later is an integral part of the art form.

I liked Shatter. It was unique for its time. Over the years I've gone back and re-read those issues several times. It has always held up as a nostalgic reminder of one of my favorite eras in the history of comics.

And that's why I was happy to see AiT/Planet Lar publish Shatter as a graphic novel. It had been several years since I'd read the comic, and seeing it on the shelf at my local Borders was like welcoming back an old friend. Larry Young and Mimi Rosenheim understand all to well that fifth universal force, and they definitely know quality work when they see it. The new Shatter package is excellent. It's faithfully reproduced from the original black and white art, and the modern color process on the covers takes the artwork to whole new levels of excellence. It's got essays by the writer Peter Gillis, and by Mike Gold (the genius responsible for most of what was good from First Comics, Shatter's original publishing house.) There's a couple of other essays by luminaries who are fans of Shatter, and only Mike Saenz is conspicuous by his absence. It's a nice package, and a fine addition to the AiT/Planet Lar cannon.

Looking back at 1984, the year Shatter was published, it was a watershed year for science fiction. Blade Runner was only two years old, and everyone was still on the fence about its importance to the genre. Howard Chaykin was working on his science fiction magnum opus American Flagg. Later that same year, a little book called Neuromancer would plow into the metaphorical forearm of the genre like a cybernetic heroin overdose, leaving us with permanent track mark scars of chrome and neon.

Taken in that context, Shatter becomes all the more important for what Peter Gillis accomplished with his story. To swipe a turn of phrase from Larry Young, like fine sippin' whiskey, Shatter just gets better with age. The artwork suffers a bit with the passing of time, especially considering what we're used to in these latter days of 2006, but it still rocks. Hopefully one of these days Mike Saenz will revisit this project and apply some of our modern coloring techniques. Shater's artwork almost begs for it, and the addition of color would definitely alleviate some of the "dated" feel it has for today's comics readers, spoiled on a diet of digital processing.

For now though, Shatter works just fine the way it's presented. It's a nostalgic trip back to a fun time in comics. It was a time when a comics company that was neither Marvel or DC would take a chance on something that had never been done before. It was an era where that same upstart publisher took on the big two with a murder's row of indy titles, and actually managed to shake the pillars of heaven, for a time.

The Secret Reason Why Nobody Writes Good War Stories Anymore.

2006-10-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

When you make your living cutting brand new worlds whole cloth from your personal mental firmament, it takes a special kind of writer to splatter those brain children over twenty-odd pages of cheap newsprint on a regular basis. For those few writers that have the talent and the creativity, the rewards are minimal, so you'd better love what you're doing. In the minuscule litany of those who love writing comics, there are even fewer who stand out as supernova bright as Brian K. Vaughn.

Brian is the scribe responsible for Ex-Machina, which blows the doors off The Watchmen as an attempt to portray superheroes in a real world setting. His teen superhero series Runaways, offers a fresh and infinitely interesting spin on what it takes to be a hero, even as it blurs the lines between good guys and bad guys. His science fiction series Y The Last Man is a twisting journey of self discovery that pulls equal bits from Stephen King's The Stand and James Tiptree Jr.'s The Screwfly Solution, and beats them both in the grand smackdown of post apocalyptic speculative fiction.

So, it's no wonder that his stand alone graphic novel Pride Of Baghdad, which seemed like kind of a stupid idea on the surface, turned out so remarkably good. The high concept genesis of this little gem started its life as a news report about a quartet of lions that escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during the U.S.'s 2003 bombing of Iraq. Starving, frightened out of their minds, and half dead from exhaustion and exposure, the U.S. Army mercifully put them down. The twist on this is that the story is told from the lions' points of view.

I'm always wary of anthropomorphising animals. If taken too far you get extremist terrorist organizations like P.E.T.A. and its hyperviolent sock puppet A.L.F., or you get regurgitated pablum like Barney the dinosaur, and stupid people with too much money and way too much time on their hands who like to dress their pets up in leather bomber jackets and Harley Davidson paraphernalia. If done right though, you get fine religious allegory like Richard Adams' Watership Down and Neil Gaiman's Dream of a Thousand Cats, or a masterful deconstruction of the nature of revolution like George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Under less skilled hands this story could easily have turned into just another political screed about how bad the United States is and how the evil American Military cold-bloodedly gunned down four poor defenseless animals. It's not. Instead, Pride of Baghdad is a well crafted, impeccably told tale that is entertaining, poignant and tragic.

As a story, Pride of Baghdad works and works well. Brian walks the lions through the wreckage of Baghdad, and the Pride keeps a running commentary that explores heavy ideas like what happens to the civilians during a war, what is the price of freedom, and what happens when your caregivers suddenly go away.

The part that resonated most with me, was a scene where the lions come across a turtle and he recounts the ecological disaster that the Hussien government unleashed during Operation Desert Storm. I was in Saudi Arabia as part of that operation, and I can tell you that the turtle in this story doesn't even scratch the surface of the devastation that occurred outside the Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil fields.

But that's what I like about this story. Brian doesn't browbeat you with the obvious, nor does he ever give in to what was quite possibly the overwhelming urge to preach about how bad war is. We're reading the story, we get it, war is bad. He leaves it at that, preferring instead to concentrate on giving us believable characters and a great story.

The other half of Pride's creative team, Nico Henricson is relatively new to American comics. His first graphic novel, Barnum, was well drafted, if a bit stiff. With Pride of Bagdhad he pulls out all the stops. There are no humans to speak of in this tale, but they're not missed. Nico gives each of the animal characters a wide range of expression and movement that does bring out human qualities in them. This would detract from the realistic feel of the story, but Nico keeps the lions true enough to the source material that they are still believable as animals.

The backgrounds and landscape of Pride are phenomenal. Nico is a master of stylized detail and it's on full display in these pages. He gives us a guided tour of a little slice of hell on earth, and we come away the better for it.

There's no colorist credited, so it's a pretty safe bet that the color choices are Nico's. He applies a bit of a fade to the dull browns and oranges in the outside scenes, which gives the story an effect that recalls some of Ridley Scott's lensing choices during Black Hawk Down. It's a great effect that applies a sort of haze of war. It evokes a feeling of unease that keeps the idea that there is danger around every corner, just at the back of your mind where it should be for this type of story.

Pride of Bagdhad is solid work by a team that meshes well. It's an intense, sad story that is intelligent, relevant, and superbly drawn. It's a short film on paper that's worthy of an Oscar, or in this case an Eisner. Pick it up and give it a try. You will absolutely not be disappointed.

Deconstructing Deconstructing Lichtenstein

2006-10-18T22:27:00.000-07:00

I'll admit this right up front. Roy Lichtenstein was not my favorite artist. It never set right with me that he didn't credit the original artists whose work he was using, and I always found his line work far inferior to the original comics panels he was using. Still and all, his artwork was unique and over the years, I have found several of his pieces that I quite like. I do know that I appreciate the statement he was making with his reproductions, and I really enjoy the controversy over his work that goes on even today, seven years after his death.

So, it strikes me as kind of funny that David Barsalou should obsess about Lichtenstein's paintings to the point that he would put up a web site devoted to pairing blow ups of the original comics panels with poorly reproduced, micronized pictures of the original Lichtenstein paintings. The site is badly put together, but as the main point of this article, you can take a look at it at Deconstructing Lichtenstein.

See, here's the thing... if you're going to deconstruct the work of an artist, any artist, you make a much better argument if you're fair about your criticism. The very act of blowing up these comics panels, and drastically reducing the size of the Lichtenstein paintings has the effect of completely screwing up the artwork for comparison contrast.

In the case of the comics panels, the size change muddies the line work by taking it from its original published size to something approximating the size at which it was originally drawn. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but here's the thing. Comic Books are a completely collaborative medium. When you show a comics panel, you are showing work by not only the artist that pencilled the panel, but also from the artist that inked it, the colorist, the letterer, and dare I say it, the writer who came up with the scene in the first place. If you're going to do a true comparison, perhaps a reproduction of the original art would be a bit closer to fair.

In the case of the Lichtenstein paintings, you run into some different problems. I've seen Roy Lichtenstein's comics reproduction work in person, and the first thing that hits you about them is their sheer size. By altering that size, you completely change the meaning of the work. What was once a celebration of the comics medium, and a scathing social commentary, is reduced to nothing more than a swipe. I submit that it's completely disingenuous to compare and contrast altered artwork. A person coming to Roy Lichtenstein's art for the first time via Barsalou's website could easily mistake Lichtenstein for a comics artist. He isn't, and never in his life did he claim to be.

Another thing that's really annoying about the Deconstructing Lichtenstein site is the watermarks that Barsalou plasters all over his scans of the comics panels. It's distracting, it's annoying, and it makes you wonder why he was so quick to deface those comics panels, but not the Lichtenstein scans. This shouldn't surprise me really, but it does. Does Barsalou have so little respect for the comics artwork he's showing? If that's the case, then the logical conclusion would be that this is merely an attack on Roy Lichtenstein's legacy, and not in fact a deconstruction. Of course since Barsalou credits none of the original artists on his site, I'm thinking either this is an attack, or he's just not finished building the site.

When John Byrne draws his twentieth (or whatever) re-interpretation of the cover to Fantastic Four #1, we call it homage. When Lichtenstein re-interpreted the comics panels for his series of paintings, he called it homage too. It's one thing to call out a comic book artist for swiping other artist's works. Peter David has been doing this to Rob Liefeld for years. It's quite another matter, however, to exhibit drastically altered scans of painted, stylized reproduction art next to comic book art, and call it a critical deconstruction. You might as well vilify a movie for copying the book it was based on.

During his lifetime, Roy Lichtenstein made it very clear that this series of paintings were reproduced from the comics that he loved. If he made one mistake, it was that he never really went out of his way to credit his source material. So, If you're Russ Heath, Curt Swan, or any of the other artists whose work Lichtenstein used, but almost never credited, you definitely have a legitimate complaint. If you're going to go to bat for credit where credit is due, I'll be first on the bandwagon. Just don't compare apples to Lasagna and call it a critical deconstruction.

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation has an excellent website, dedicated to the man's life and works. In the cases where the Lichtenstein painting is a reproduced project, they have gone so far as to credit the source material. If you want to see what Roy Lichtenstein was all about, this is an excellent place to start.

Coolest Toys on the Planet Part 1

2006-10-17T01:27:00.000-07:00

It's part one, because there are definitely more of these posts to come. I've been focusing a lot on comics lately, and I figured I'd break it up a bit. Besides this is an easy type of post to do, and I feel more like a real blogger when I post more frequently, sooo....

I have an absolutely massive toy collection that is currently residing in our storage while we (that is my wife and I) get our shit together enough to find a place to live that doesn't involve packing us and our six cats into my parents' back bedroom. I've been collecting toys for as long as I can remember (at least as long as comics) and I just love 'em. This series of posts will cover some of the neatest, coolest, most unusual toys I've run across in my travels, and where to get them.

First up is the flat out best idea for a line of plush toys I've ever seen. The toys are from a company called Giant Microbes . You can still purchase these babies directly from the source, or from Think Geek which is a very cool online website, as well as the place from which all these images were kiped. Hopefully these guys will be around for a long time to come, and considering their source material, they could potentially have a larger variety of critters than TY.

The Pox/Syphillis (Treponema pallidum)

Mad Cow Disease(Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy)

Acne/Pimple (Propionibacterium acnes)

Common Cold (Rhinovirus)

Ebola(Ebola Virus) AKA: The T-Rex of microbes.

The Clap/Gonorrhea (Neisseria gonorrhoeae)

H.I.V.(Human Immunodeficiency Virus)

E. Coli(Escherichia coli)
Unfortunately, does not come pre-wrapped in its very own spinach leaf.

There's lots more available. Check out the web sites I mentioned for the full line. Each microbe comes with its own little info card that shows you a picture of the actual microbe, and gives you all sorts of fun facts about it. These definitely qualify as some of the coolest toys on the planet.

The Importance of Being Chon

2006-10-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

Back in my SAVANT days there was this one writer who could turn any string of random comics related words into sheer poetry. He was funny, and poignant, and absolutely my favorite of the SAVANT Crew. His name was... Paul T. Riddell.

But, my second favorite writer at SAVANT was definitely... Matt Fraction. Matt created SAVANT, and he eventually stopped writing about comics, and started writing them.

Third on the list was definitely the perceptive and talented Bryan Miller.

...And then there was Matt Terl who could turn a review of the most dog-assed garbage into a marvelous critique.

...Then of course there were all the power players, amazing writers all, including Larry Young, Christopher (Xtop) B. Sebela, Johanna Draper Carlson, Wendi Strang-Frost and her husband Sean Frost, Dan Curtis Johnson, Chris Juricich, and Patrick Neighly.

Then there was this Jeff Chon guy. His reviews were weird and hyperactive, and break-all-your-furniture funny. He wrote like Ambush Bug with emoting by William Shatner, and a swiped copy of Dennis Miller's desk reference set. He was the best of us. When SAVANT packed up its bags and moved to Key Biscayne, he briefly went to Sequart, where he lit up their fledgling web site like a pinball machine, before he disappeared.

Where was he? What happened to this reviewing rock star? Many theories abounded. One was that he'd died, overdosing on a speedball, and spending his last moments writhing in a puddle of his own vomit on the floor of a Parisian bathroom. One theory purported that he'd given it all up and moved to Polebridge Montana on the banks of the Flathead River, where he continues to this day fishing, trapping and living off the land. One theory suggested that he'd moved to the southern coast of Argentina to be with his beloved Mr. T.

Well, I'm happy to report that none of that is true. Like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes, he's back with his very own reali -T- show... no, wait. Let me start over...

I'm happy to report that he's back. Like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes, he's back, and he's just as witty and insightful as ever. Check out his blog Shrillmatic you'll be happy you did. (However don't touch the you tube post or you'll be scarred for life.) Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jeff Chon.

The Future History of Motor Geek

2006-10-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

A review of the Graphic Novel Moped Army by Paul Sizer.

For those of you who don't know what a moped is, check out The Moped Army Website. Basically, a moped is a reinforced bicycle with a 50cc engine that cruises you around at a top speed of about 30 miles per hour, and it has pedals in case the engine stops. If you don't know the difference between a moped and a scooter, it's really easy. Mopeds are bad-ass bicycles while scooters are motorcycles for pussies.

At Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo in 1997, three students got together and formed an organization. Part biker gang and part fan club, they named themselves The Decepticons after the Transformers toys, and the Moped Army was born.

Simon King, Daniel Robert Kastner, and Brennan Sang, the originators of the Moped Army, have seen their brainchild blossom into a national moped club, with chapters from Arizona to Washington State. But this is merely back story.

In 2003, comics creator and fellow WMU student Paul Sizer started working on his newest project. Sizer tabled his ongoing series Little White Mouse, in favor of the less demanding schedule of a graphic novel, and thus was born the subject of this review.

Paul Sizer takes well to the graphic novel format. Moped Army is a graphic gem that is impossible to put down once it's started. Sizer is that rare talent of a storyteller that can take the most innocuous of ideas and make them sing with magic, wit, and power. In this instance the plot hook is a spoiled little rich girl who has a crisis of conscience and falls in with the right crowd. Deeper beneath the surface of this slightly cliched plot hook, lies a study in class warfare and a revelatory tale about what happens when those societal lines are crossed.

The story is laid out for us by Simone. She's part of the upscale rich that have built their lives, literally, on the wreckage that they've left behind for everybody else. Through Simone, Sizer gives us a guided tour of their spangled misery, as we learn that being uber-rich doesn't really save us from our all too human emotions. Simone's life changes when an evening joyride with her asshole boyfriend and his gang, crashes head-on into The Moped Army. Tragedy ensues, and later Simone starts to alienate herself from her shallow, vapid "friends" as she tries to find some sort of redemption by "slumming it" with the people that live below her city in the sky. Eventually she finds acceptance and possibly even friendship as she's adopted by the very same people that she'd earlier stood by and watched as they were terrorized.

Sizer's well honed grasp of characterization serves him perfectly as he effortlessly mixes Simone, his redemptive character, into the stew of wildly different personalities that the moped army represents. More than just mere character archetypes, the different army members quickly establish their own personalities, and Sizer layers in countless seeds for future stories as bits and pieces of their histories are revealed.

While Simone searches for some sense of self worth, we are treated to stunning visuals of life in the year 2277, courtesy of Sizer's amazing pencils. He combines the stellar design work of a veteran graphic artist with an amazing knack for facial expression and movement. He gives us everything a speculative fiction fan could want, from grandiose cityscape vistas, to a rotting dilapidated under city, to insanely neat gadgets. In one sequence, Sizer brilliantly pits a futuristic air car against a 20th century moped. It's a scene reminiscent of the freeway chase in The Matrix, and it's absolutely brilliantly drawn.

Sizer's greatest strength as a writer and an artist is his ability to create deep, fully believable characters. He brings that talent full throttle with Moped Army, creating a large cast of characters where even the bit players are interesting and absolutely believable. He takes fewer risks with his artwork in Moped Army, preferring instead to concentrate on designing believable characters, and making the cityscape as realistic as he can. It works well enough to give the story a cohesion and a sense of familiarity that has the effect of putting you at ease in the midst of an uncomfortable story.

As a graphic novel, Moped Army is a sweet package. You get 120 pages of story, galleries, sketchbook pages, plus short bios of Simon King and Daniel Robert Kastner, the brains behind the real life version of the moped army. It's an expanded dance version of a DVD, and it's well worth the measly $12.95 Sizer's charging for it. The graphic novel is rated Mature(16+) because it has some language, and a bit of sexual content, but it's nothing your average teen-ager can't handle. Moped Army is available online from Paul's website or from finer comic book stores near you.

Dodging a critical bullet.

2006-10-05T22:52:00.000-07:00

Watch closely everyone as master comics reviewer Karen Healey beats the holy living crap out of Harper Collins, Neil Strauss, and Bernard Chang for excreting their big fat bag of violent, mysoginistic bile called How To Make Money Like A Porn Star!

I was going to review this thing, just to warn everybody away, but Karen is a poet and when you piss her off, it's like watching the literary equivalent of a Bruce Lee action sequence. She takes this review on with her typical mixture of eloquence and precision, stirs in a helping of pure extract of hatred, and serves up an essay that beats most of what I see in the Comics Journal on a regular basis. (Ya' hear that Deppey?) Her blog is called, Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed) , and it's one of the best comics themed blogs on the internet.

Let's Get Retarded!

2006-09-25T23:02:00.000-07:00

... or, Why it's never a good idea to let your marketing manager get all "creative" on you.

In a maneuver that smacks of one part desperation and two parts mind-boggling stupidity, Marvel Comics has announced they will have a crossover event with the CBS soap opera, The Guiding Light. In better news, the crossover will feature The Avengers, and S.H.I.E.L.D. In even better news, the announced writer for this high profile project will be Marvel's Marketing Director Jim McCann???? You know, I've been reading comics since the age of six. That means I've got 32 years of reading comics under my belt and I have never understood Marvel's propensity for not using high power talent on books that will receive inordinate amounts of exposure.

Here's the thing. Let's say you need a brick wall built, you don't want to do it yourself who do you have do the job? Do you hire a plumber, or an accountant? Not usually, no. You hire a bricklayer, or a general contractor, and he hires the bricklayer. You get someone with the skills and the background to do the job and do it well. Subsequently, if you need a story written that's going to net your company more media exposure than it's ever gotten before, do you hire an MBA? No. If you have unlimited access to Marvel Comics' talent pool, you hire Brian Michael Bendis or Mark Millar, and if it's a comic book, you put one of your top artists on the project, not some newcomer, or second stringer.

Of course, when you think about it, all of this is probably academic anyway. All you have to do is think about the viewing audience for The Guiding Light, and ask yourself how many soccer moms do you know that read comic books. In fact I'll do you one better. How many middle-aged housewives...(or husbands. Let's be fair, this is the new century, and I do catch "Days Of Our Lives", when I can.) (In my defense, I was programmed to be kindly disposed towards "Days" as a small child because Deidre Hall was my all time favorite Saturday morning superhero, Electra Woman.)... do you know that have even a passing interest in comic books? How many of them will see this big crossover as anything more than a week long annoyance?

The worst part of this whole thing is this: This idea could quite possibly work. Here's the thing. Soap operas are simply serial fiction, so they have at least that core concept in common with comics. If Marvel were to produce something in the way of let's say a graphic novel sized storyline, something that does some sort of major reveal for one of the recurring "Guiding Light" characters, keep the storyline under tight control, and dovetail a daily release with one week's worth of episodes or so. You'd have to make the dailies available across newsstands so that it showed up at your local supermarket, or at Borders and Barnes and Noble. Plus you could give comics retailers an incentive to carry the thing by giving them expanded editions to sell with different covers or production art, or something like that, this could work. The important thing would be to make damn sure it was well written, and stay the hell away from the super heroes. It could work, but it won't, because Marvel can't seem to think beyond the superhero genre.

Now really, how many of you out there thought anything more than, "Huh?" or "What the fuck?" when you heard this announcement? If any of you thought this was anything more than a monumentally stupid idea, let me know, and I'll send someone over to rip up your Chris Claremont collection.

Tom Beland's True Story Swear To God

2006-09-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

I have this thing in my head. It's kind of my own personal version of a computer installation wizard. You know, the one with the annoying little messages that say things like, "Do you want to proceed?" "Are you sure you want to proceed?" "Well, if you're really, really sure..." "Okay, last chance, are you really, really, really sure?" Sometimes the bastard gets stuck and years slip by while the article, story, or review I originally wanted to write sits on my mental back burner, smouldering and burning around the edges. Lately, I've developed some mental pot holders so I can now grab this baby off the back burner, scrape the crusty stuff off the edges, stir it up a bit, and serve it up with some sort of frilly garnish. Yes, tonight I'm giving you all something out of my very own mental crock pot.

Try not to think of it as leftovers, and I'll make it as tasty as I can.

Reviewing Tom Beland's work is a daunting task. He's got marvelous reviewers like Johanna Draper Carlson, Randy Lander, Don MacPherson, and Andrew Arnold who writes the Comics Love column for Time frikkin Magazine Online, planted squarely in his corner. The guy tends to be a perennial critical darling. He's been nominated for the Eisner Award. He's got his magazine coming out from Image Comics now, and a high profile writing gig for Marvel Comics coming up. He doesn't need my little ol' opinion of his work floating around out there. Then again, it never hurts to have one more person in your corner pitching for you.

My composition and rhetoric professor, the man who taught me the Montaigne style essay, and quite a lot about the critical review once told me, "While you're writing, you must remember this one truism. Just because it happened to you, doesn't make it interesting. If you can consistently break this rule you will never fail to entertain."

Tom Beland breaks this rule with marvelous style, grace, and precision. The core story is elegant in its simplicity. Tom meets this girl Lilly while waiting at a bus stop at Disneyland. The two hit it off and this chance meeting quickly turns into a long distance relationship. Lily is a popular morning show radio host in Puerto Rico, Tom is a newspaper columnist and cartoonist in Napa Valley California. After several abbreviated visits and a category five hurricane, Tom decides to move to Puerto Rico. That pretty much catches you up on the story so far.

True Story Swear To God is an absolutely perfect love story at its core. Beland proves himself an impossibly perceptive observer of human behavior. He's introspective to a fault, and he uses that amazingly precise internal eye to splay glimpses of his life onto the comics page. His family is slightly dysfunctional and extremely loving. Tom himself is by turns insecure and mildly neurotic. Only the character of Lily is seen without much in the way of flaws. I suspect that what Tom is doing here is filtering his perception of Lily through that initial haze of new love. Either that or she really doesn't have much in the way of flaws in which case Tom is in real trouble in future episodes.

One of the most amazing scenes is the first time we actually see Lily get angry. Tom and Lily set up a dinner party to introduce Tom to Lily's parents. The planning stages leading up to it are a little slice of new couple's hell wherein everything that can possibly go wrong does. They make it through and dinner goes off without a hitch, and at the end of it all as they're saying goodnight, all Lily's mother can do is admonish her for not wearing earrings. It's a priceless moment. We've all been there with our own relatives and Tom walks us through it all again, deftly giving us his perspective. Lily's reaction humanizes her and Tom's reaction to her makes us love them both that much more.

To sum up the totality of TSSTG by calling it a "chick flick on paper", is perhaps an accurate description. If that label is to be applied, it must take its place alongside classic fare such as When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless In Seattle, and The Princess Bride. Yes, it's that good.

Tom is a fabulous writer. He combines spot on dialogue with some of the most gorgeous exposition I've ever read.

"She's sleeping. Her body's so close, I can feel it move as she breathes."

"Here."

"In my arms."

"I feel a sense of serenity that I've never felt before with others."

"If my feelings are a painting... this moment would be the frame."

Within these five simple, elegant sentences he brilliantly sums up the unquantifiable feeling of being in love.

The artwork on TSSTG is, on the surface, deceptively cartoony. The characters are caricatured simply, but that merely adds clarity to the story. Tom's backgrounds are where he really shines. He gives us super detailed establishing shots to frame the location, then abandons them as the characters take the stage. This has the effect of making the dialogue jump off the page, and draws the readers' eyes to the characters which are the most important parts of the story. It's a visual trick that Dave Sim and Gerhard used masterfully well in Cerebus, and Jeff Smith used to impressive effect with Bone.

Together, the writing and the art make for a story that will have you crying and laughing out loud, often at the same time. It's brilliant, essential reading for anyone with a passion for meaningful human interest stories, chick flicks, or just a damn fine read.

True Story Swear To God is available from any local comics shop that has even a marginal clue. The first and second trade paperbacks are still available from AIT/Planet Lar, along with the 100 Stories collection of Beland's original mini strips. Recently TSSTG made the jump from Tom's own imprint Clib's Boy Comics, to Image. The first issue is out now, and it's a pretty good assumption that future graphic novels will be released with Image as well.

Michael Bay is Your Fault!

2006-09-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

My wife tells me that I don't just jump online and bitch about random stuff enough, so far be it from me to refuse her a rant. Let's see, what to rant about. Hmmm... over saturation of 911 survivor's guilt on all media outlets? Naah. Several friends still stuck in Afghanistan and currently getting chopped to bits by a re-energized, rebooted Taliban based out of Pakistan, who's supposed to be on our side in this whole "war on terror" thing? No. Ooh, I know. I'll rant about Steve Irwin's untimely death by stingray and all the Internet troglodytes that couldn't gather up the self control to let the rest of us mourn the untimely passing of a great conservationist in peace? Or perhaps the fact that Montana gas prices are still sky high, even though we use almost no Middle Eastern oil. You know, the same oil interests which our military boys are currently fighting to protect. Of course, it's kind of confusing when everybody seems to keep calling, "protecting our oil interests", "establishing a peaceful democratic Middle East."

Ah, screw it, Let's bitch about this whole Michael Bay/Transformers Movie scandal. In fact, let's just bitch about Michael Bay in general. Okay, so...Top 10 reasons why Michael Bay can bite my ass.

10. The Rock - Nicholas Cage? Check. Stupid, impossible plot? Check. Weak, embarrassing dialogue? Check. Insipid villain role that not even Ed Harris can salvage? Check. All this and Sean Connery still comes out smelling like a rose.

9. Armageddon - You, go wake up 20 million people and tell 'em this movie has more cheeseball climaxes than Linda Lovelace on a 12 day crack bender.

8. Bad Boys - Blah, blah, blah, Lawerence and Smith blow stuff up, blah, blah, blah.

7. The Island - Okay, so I haven't actually watched The Island, but after the total marketing saturation prior to the theatrical release, I still feel I've seen enough.

6. Bad Boys 2 - Bad Boys 2, Bad Boys 2. Michael Bay's got a crappy sequel for you. Works better if you sing it to the COPS theme song.

5. He's much prettier than I am. Just look at that face. He should be hosting Project Runway with Heidi Klum or something.

4. He can't hold a camera steady to save his life. This weird directorial disease has infected Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, and Michael Mann. If Cameron goes, you're all gonna pay!

3. He's singlehandedly dragged every closet Transformers fan kicking and screaming onto the Internet and whipped them into a rabid bitch fest reminiscent of a day spent with your browser stuck on Barbelith. Here's a clue for all of you. So he changed some of the robot designs. Fucking deal. It was a shitty cartoon to begin with and an even shittier line of toys. To think that Transformers spawned out of Microman toys... *shudder* talk about xenogenesis.

2. Pearl Harbor - Not even gonna touch that one. Sometimes there are simply no words.

1. He keeps making movies, and you people keep throwing money at him. He's like the Terminator. He won't stop, he'll never stop until we're all so lobotomized by loud explosions, witty banter and bad acting that we... oh, wait.

Mommy, mommy, why are all those fanboys turning blue?

2006-09-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

In 1986 Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons came out with a little 12 issue mini-series that promptly set the comics world on fire. The Watchmen re-invented the genre for the next decade, and today remains a seminal influence in the hearts and minds of creators of such luminary status as Joss Wheedon, Darren Aronofsky, and Niel Gaiman. It is widely reguarded as a literary masterpiece, and a natural for film adaptation.

In 1989 Joel Silver, the producer behind The Lethal Weapon franchise, and the Die Hard cash cow, teamed with Arnold Schwarzenegger to try to get The Watchmen movie into production. Armed with no script, and hamstrung by their choice of Terry Gilliam (who has a James Cameron-like grasp of budget, and plays really well with the other children) as director, the movie disappeared in a mess of studio infighting.

Then in 1991, President Regan's evil master plan of matching the Soviet "defense" budget until their economy tanked, effectively ended the Cold War, (at least in the popular zeitgeist.) This rendered The Watchmen's theme of Cold War anxiety effectively impotent, and plans for a movie were tabled indefinitely.

The tragic events of September 11th 2001 sparked a renewed interest in The Watchmen. Plot compression expert David Hayter, who condensed three decades of The X-Men into a passably watchable two hour movie, actually came up with a workable script. In 2002 wonderkind director Darren Aronofsky was given the option to direct Hayter's script. Aronofsky instead chose to take on The Fountain, ending it's tenure in development hell, but condemming The Watchmen to languish a little longer.

In 2005 Paul Greengrass, the brilliant director of The Bourne Supremacy, actually got most of the way through pre-production on The Watchmen movie before the studio pulled the rug out from under him, citing budgetary concerns.

It's now 2006 and Zack Snyder, the brilliant director behind the impressive re-imagining of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, has signed on to see if he can beat the odds. He has a few aces up his sleeve. He knows how to bring in a movie on time and within budget. He's working with Warner Brothers, who own D.C. comics, so they have a vested interest in seeing a successful Watchmen movie. Finally, he's a fan of the source material. Hopefully all these things will combine together, the planets will align properly, whatever, and we'll finally get our Watchmen movie.

Snyder's got his adaptation of Frank Miller's The 300 coming out shortly. I think I'll wait to see how that does before I start holding my breath... again.

Lego Watchmen and Lego Minutemen can be found at David Oakes wonderful online gallery here.

Reason #7,869 why Paul Sizer is the Coolest Dude on the Planet.

2006-09-01T19:04:00.000-07:00

Why I Hate Gail Simone!

2006-08-21T19:14:00.000-07:00

I know what you're all thinking. Some of you are wondering who is this Gail Simone and when did she piss in Dan's Cheerios. Others of you are wondering how I could possibly hate one of the nicest Comics writers on the planet, and some of you Bendis fans are cheering me on to a frenzy of Gail bashing goodness. Well...

Okay, you got me. I really don't hate Gail Simone. I just used that as an intro to sucker you all in here. In point of fact, aside from a somewhat unhealthy obsession with fish nipples, the color purple (that's the color, not the Spielberg movie), Disney stuff, and Canadians, she has always seemed quite congenial to me. I have been told on occasion that she eats live kittens, and that she killed and ate an internet journalist to get her Villians United gig, but the source is highly suspect. Gail is in point of fact, one of the nicest writers I've ever met.

What makes Gail unique is that she started her writing career on the internet, and she still takes great pains to maintain a strong internet presence. Over the years I have been lucky enough to correspond with her. Sometimes at length, other times just a quick, "Hey, nice article," but it's always nice to hear from her. For the record, Gail Simone is endlessly patient with her fans and eternally graceful to her detractors. She's funny, waaaaaay too self-effacing, and if it weren't for that whole internet journalist incident, she'd have long since been nominated for sainthood. So, my children, we gather here today in this small, overly cramped sideroom in the largest convention center in the world, to sing hosannas to the stunning creative talent that is the great and terrible Gail Simone. Beer and kittens are of course optional.

Gail Simone announced her presence on the internet with the authority of a born superhero fan who had the intestinal fortitude to ask a question that disturbingly, no one had really asked before. It was discussed in hushed whispers at the local comics store, and pondered over by the occasional casual reader of comics, but it was never discussed out in the open, and definitely never brought up in front of the potentially limitless audience of the internet. The springboard was a Green Lantern story by the great Ron Marz, wherein the hero's girlfriend ends up dead and stuffed into his refrigerator. Gail posited the question, "Why?" To paraphrase, "Why is it that comic book women always seem to end up raped, humiliated, folded, spindled, and mutilated in a wide variety of strange and interesting ways?" The answers she got to that simple question run the gauntlet from the simply asinine, "As regards the female characters thing, I'm afraid I think it's giving male creators a bum deal. The list does read pretty shocking at first until you think of everything the male heroes have gone through, too, in terms of deaths/mutilations/etc." to the downright disturbing, "Well, I think part of the problem for female characters is that, since our readership is dominated by males, they aren't perceived as having the same economic viability as many male characters." The whole sordid story is hosted for anyone who wants it at Unheard Taunts among other places. It's called Women in Refrigerators, and it's one of the most important essays ever written about the culture surrounding comics.

The next time the amazing Ms Simone crops up is with her ongoing column for Comic Book Resources called, You'll All Be Sorry, or YABS in the common internet parlance. With You'll All Be Sorry, Gail got the opportunity to prove that not only did she have a master's grasp of impressionistic writing, but that she also had some remarkably professional comedic chops. YABS became an internet darling and proved implicitly that Gail Simone could competently skewer every writer, artist, journalist, and fan on the planet, from her dead accurate parodies of icons like Frank Miller and Mark Millar, to easier targets like Dave Sim and John Byrne. My personal favorite is her spot-on parody of Planetary, wherein the three major players unearth the remnants of a certain modern stone-age family. It's written in near perfect Warren Ellis style, and it's absolutely hilarious. The You'll All Be Sorry archives are located on Comic Book Resources, and they're well worth a read or two, or three, or twenty.

At the gentle urging of Scott Shaw, I suspect something involving a flamethrower, wet spaghetti noodles, and a rusty ice pick, Gail submitted a script to Bongo Comics. The script in question was for their Simpsons line, and a writing career was born.

Gail's work for Bongo Comics is a testament to just how strong her writing skills really are. The most difficult aspect of writing a comic based on a popular cartoon is that you do it without the benefit of the voice actors. The readers come to the comic with a pre-set notion of how the characters sound. This requires letter perfect dialogue from the writer, and plotting that doesn't seem "out of character," to the audience. Gail succeeded admirably well with both these aspects, while still remaining consistently funny. Stand-outs from Gail's tenure at Bongo include: "Maximum Bart!" from Bart Simpson #2, "Battle of the Boy Bands" from Bart Simpson #3, and "Tales From The Kwik-E-Mart" from Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror #8 (which will make you think twice about your beloved breakfast cereal mascot. *shudder*)

Her next project was a three issue mini series for Oni Comics called Killer Princesses. Coupled with the phenomenal writer/artist Lea Hernandez, it was a perfect match. The synergy between these two creators is obvious on every page of this comic. To this day, there has yet to be an artist that Gail has worked with that has complimented her writing style as well as Ms Hernandez. Killer Princesses is a wild action movie on paper that oozes with black humor. If you think of the Charlie's Angels movies if they had a creative production team, then smack yourself upside the head with a gold brick wrapped in a slice of X-Men, you've about got it.

One of Gail's fans from her YABS days happened to be Joe Quesada, who obviously knows talent when he sees it. As Marvel Comics editor in chief, he extended her the offer of taking over their floundering Deadpool title. Gail jumped in with both feet, bringing Deadpool a relevant hipness, and a return to black humor, not seen since his Joe Kelley days. Five issues into her run, Deadpool was cancelled out from under her, and she was asked to re-imagine the book from scratch. The result was Agent X, which was fun, but it wasn't the same Deadpool goodness. Gail left the series after seven issues over "creative differences" with the editor of the series. I'm sure there's some juicy dish there somewhere, but Gail has been nothing but gracious about it in public. Though she would return a year later for three issues to wrap up the series which died in her absence, Gail would eventually sign an exclusive contract with DC, and to date she has yet to do anything more for Marvel.

Shortly before she jumpped ship to DC, Gail created The Marvelous Adventures of Gus Beezer. Gus was Peter Parker's nephew, and though he had no super powers, his imagination was good enough. Gus Beezer debuted in a series of three one shot issues, and though it was geared towards younger kids, it still benifited from Gail's multi layered scripting which worked equally as well for adults. Gus would recieve one final one shot before his creator defected to the competition. Any further adventures will probably be directed by much less skilled hands.

Which brings us to Birds of Prey. Gail took over the BoP series with issue #56. She followed the footsteps of Master action series writer Chuck Dixon. With an extremely tough act to follow, and tons of negative press surrounding the horribly inept Birds of Prey television series, Gail slammed into the comic series full force with a story that set the Birds against a criminal mastermind that captured the Black Canary, got the better of Oracle, and nearly defeated The Huntress. Gail's run on Birds of Prey proved to be immensley popular, and she continues her work on the series to this day. Now coming into her fourth year on the series, she continues to deliver consistently excellent stories, occasionally shaking up the status quo, and always maintaining her exceptional sense of humor. My absolute favorite story is her arc from #62-#65. Black Canary returns to China to visit her old Sensi who is dying. Unfortunately, Sensi also instructed master assassin Lady Shiva. Mayhem ensues when Canary and Shiva form an uneasy alliance when they discover their Sensi has been murdered. The story brings together all the great elements from Hong Kong action films and establishes Black Canary as one of the pre-eminent martial artists in the DC universe. (Gail was actually confronted at San Diego con this year by a fan who asked, if Black Canary is the number three martial artist in the DC universe, who is number one and two? Gail gave the standard dodgy answer, but I'll go out on a pretty safe limb here and say one and two are Batman and Wildcat, in that order.)

Gail's other work for DC has included stellar runs on Legion of Super Heroes, Justice League Classified, her Rose and Thorn mini series, a fabulous run on Action Comics, and two issues of Teen Titans which marked the controversial return of artist (and I use the term loosely) Rob Lifeld. She shows no sign of slowing down this year, writing the Villians United part of DC's big crossover event, and its spin-off series Secret Six. She's also starting work on the All New Atom series with her Action Comics artist John Byrne, and she's kick starting Gen 13 for the Wildstorm imprint.

Nearly all of Gail's work for Bongo and DC has been collected in Trade Paperback form, and may be found everywhere from Amazon.com to Borders and Barnes & Noble, and even better from your Local Comics Store. Her Marvel work is a bit harder to get, but with a little digging you can easily turn it up. Gail Simone has established herself as a brilliant and funny writer, with an already impressive comics resume. The best part of all this is that she'll only get better as time goes on. By the time she's been at this as long as Alan Moore or Frank Miller, she'll have long since established herself as their equal in the megastar pantheon of comics writers. Personally, I think she belongs there now, but I'm giving the rest of comics fandom a chance to catch up. They've got a lot of great reads to go through, and we probably shouldn't disturb them while they're deciding on legendary status.

If you want more Gail Simone goodness on the net check out The Gail Simone Index, Gail Simone's Blog: Bloodstains On The Looking Glass, and The Gail Simone Wikki.

Curses! Foiled Again!

2006-08-04T20:13:00.000-07:00

So, I was going to post a scathing indictment of "reality T.V." and how gullible most of the viewing public is, but then this mystery blogger who calls himself Kanrei beat me to the punch. Check him out, he's an excellent writer, and his blog is a by turns sobering and uproariously funny. He focuses on politics quite a lot, but he's a firm beliver in the "spoonful of humor helps the politics go down" theorem, so give him a read. Just to make it easier on you clicky impaired he'll be taking up residence as a fellow hooligan from now on, so you don't even have to google him. (Geez I just love using google as a verb. I can't wait 'till Websters catches up with that one.)

Anyways, the site is called The Kanrei Home for Wayward Lemmings and it's one of the good ones.

Money-Making Juggernaut Desperately Seeking Third Act. Must Apply in Person.

2006-07-22T20:27:00.000-07:00

I sincerely hope that Gore Verbinski's career doesn't end up swinging from the yard arm of what has become his Pirates Trilogy. This franchise, when all is said and done, will end up making more money than any three movies in history, and it will definitely be a life changing experience for him. He'll either end up doing Disney movies for the rest of his life, or he'll beat the odds and end up becoming this generation's Francis Ford Coppola, turning in a string of finely-tuned independent films that make absolutely no money, but are very good anyway. Time will tell.

The first movie was a grand adventure that encompassed three of my favorite things. It had zombies, always good, it had pirates, mostly always good, unless they are in any way associated with Roman Polanski. (Not that I dislike Roman's work, it's just that even he makes the occasional expensive piece of crap.)(Also, while I'm on a roll here with this long sidebar, a special slap upside his pointy little head, and a hearty "What the hell were you thinking!" to Steven Spielberg for Hook.) Anyway, the other thing the first Pirates movie had was the monkey. Best of all, Verbinski had the genius idea to combine all three elements to make a zombie pirate monkey. I was in heaven, the only thing missing from that movie is ninjas.

Of course the monkey is back, and still operating under the curse of the Aztec gold, which makes for some satisfying minor mayhem. Everybody else is back too, for much, much more of the same. Two and a half hours of more of the same, to be exact. Verbinski could have easily chopped 45 minutes out of this film and it would have worked just fine. The principles are all in different places in their lives... sort of. Elizabeth and Will are set to be married... big shocker there, and Captain Jack Sparrow is still... well, he's still Captain Jack. There isn't a lot of character development in this one, and that's a shame. After all the movie was two and a half hours long, plenty of time for some character building. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest seems to know it has a winning formula, and it sticks to it like a barnacle to the underside of a ship. Will is appropriately noble, Elizabeth is appropriately bold and brassy and willing to do what she feels is necessary to save the day, and Jack is... well, Jack.

The action and the special effects are appropriately amped up in true Jerry Bruckheimer fashion. I had problems with the triple swordfight scene, which suffers from a disturbing lack of witty banter, but it's still interesting. ILM takes a giant leap forward in its neverending quest to replace pesky actors, by turning in some of the best motion-capture CGI to date. Bill Nighly joins Andy Serkis as the best actor not appearing in this film, as the frightening, tragic, and completely CGI Davey Jones. The best part of the movie in my book is the introduction of Tia Dalma, the voodoo witch who somehow convinced the Disneyland park rangers that it was okay for her to take up permanent residence in the Blue Bayou ride. (When I mentioned moving in, they just chuckled nervously and asked to see my entry receipt. Good thing for them I don't know any voodoo.) Played by Naomie Harris (who is just as foxy in 28 Days Later, except with better teeth), Tia gets to be the confident and wise sage, and gets to set everything up for the next film. I like the introduction of the voodoo element to the Pirates mythology. I've always felt that voodoo and pirates go well together, and it's nice to see that Ted Eliot and Terry Rossio, the crack commando scriptwriting team, agree with me.

The ramp-up of the Will-Elizabeth-Jack love triangle is just weird. It doesn't play well, mostly I think, because of the actors involved. Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom have an on screen chemistry together that's spotty at best, and unfortunately they're up against Johnny Depp who has excellent chemistry with Orlando, Keira, Naomie Harris, almost all of the incidental characters he interacts with, and the big jar of dirt. Hopefully the third movie will give Will and Elizabeth a bit of time away from Captain Jack, and enough time to work out their issues, or even better kill one of them off. Either way, I have no doubt that once I see the third Pirates movie, I will be firmly convinced that this is most likely the best movie trilogy ever made.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is not the best movie, especially when compared to the first one, however, it is a passable second act of a trilogy. I wasn't happy with The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, Scream 2, The Matrix Reloaded, or Back to the Future 2 either. Trilogies are tricky things and I've found that it's usually best to hold off final judgment until all the dice are on the table. Having said that, I'll give Pirates DMC a big, "we'll see" until after I've seen World's End. I doubt I'll be disappointed. After all, it'll still have pirates, zombies and monkeys. Hell, if they can squeeze a ninja in there somewhere, it really will be the perfect movie trilogy.

AIT/Planet Lar: Part 6 Art, Design & Non-Fiction

2006-07-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

In the final chapter of my love letter to AIT/Planet Lar we get to see the Art & Design books, and the non-fiction graphic novels. AIT/Planet Lar has put together a varied and extremely versatile reading portfolio and hopefully, they will continue to do so for years to come. So, here's to you: Larry Young and Mimi Rosenheim for putting together one of the best publishing houses in the history of the graphic medium. May you have many more years of continued success in this business of putting dreams to paper. Kudos, and well done.

Come in Alone
by
Warren Ellis

The Making of
Astronauts in Trouble
by
Larry Young,
Matt Smith,
Charlie Adlard

Demo: The Twelve
Original Scripts
by
Brian Wood,
Becky Cloonan

Badlands: The
Unproduced Screenplay
by Steven Grant

Tales From Fish Camp:
A City Girl's
Experience Working
in an Alaskan
Fishing Village
by Danielle Henderson

Public Domain:
The Channel Zero
Design Book
by Brian Wood

True Facts
by Larry Young

Available Light
by Warren Ellis

Surviving Grady
by Tim McCarney,
Tom Deady

Credits: All cover scans are from the AIT/Planet Lar website, and are copyright by their respective artists and writers.

AIT/Planet Lar: Part 5 The Epic Tales

2006-07-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

The penultimate chapter of my six part AIT/Planet Lar love-in. These are the epic tales, the
ones that deal with long spans of time or larger than life characters. Demo was Brian Wood's grand epic, detailing what would happen if real people got super powers. It was originally published as 12 monthly floppies, and eventually collected into one omnibus edition. True Story Swear to God is the autobiography of Tom Beland , and it is by turns sweet, painful, anxious,
and always entertaining. The book 100 stories is an overview of the original comic strips that served as the impetus for Tom to start writing full-on comics.

Demo: The Collection by Brian Wood, Becky Cloonan

The monthly Demo floppies

The Foot Soldiers: Volume 1
by Jim Krueger, Mike Oeming

The Foot Soldiers: Volume 2
by Jim Krueger, Phil Hester, Bill Sienkiewicz

The Foot Soldiers: The Spokesman: Volume 3
by Jim Krueger, Steve Yeowell

Planet of the Capes
by Larry Young, Brandon McKinney

Hench
by Adam Beechen, Manny Bello

Sunset City
by Rob Osborne

Rock Bottom
by Joe Casey, Charlie Adlard

True Story, Swear to God: 100 Stories
by Tom Beland

True Story, Swear to God: Chances Are...
by Tom Beland

True Story, Swear to God:
This One Goes
to Eleven
by Tom Beland

AIT/Planet Lar Part 4: Historical Fiction

2006-07-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

Part four of my six part overview of the wonderful works from AIT/Planet Lar. Three stories of history based fiction by some of the best creators working in comics today.

White Death
by Charlie Adlard, Rob Morrison

Abel
by William Harms, Mark Bloodworth

Badlands
by Steven Grant, Vince Giarrano

AIT/Planet Lar Part 3: Cult Classics

2006-07-06T12:47:00.000-07:00

Part three of my six part AIT/Planet Lar love bomb. These are the "cult classics" which have a bit more experimental storytelling than the action comics. These are my absolute favorites in the pantheon, and as a special treat, I have included Darick Robertson's Space Beaver collections which are now unfortunately, and as far as I know, the only graphic novels that AIT/Planet Lar doesn't continue to keep in print. Enjoy.

Space Beaver: Volume 1
by Darick Robertson

Space Beaver: Volume 2
By Darick Robertson

Bad Mojo
by William Harms, Steve Morris

1000 Steps to World Domination
by Rob Osborne

Black Heart Billy
by Rick Remender, Kieron Dwyer, Harper Jaten

Doll and Creature
by Rick Remender, John Heebink, Mike Manley

Nobody
by Alex Amado, Sharon Cho, Charlie Adlard

The Annotated Mantooth!
by Matt Fraction, Andy Kuhn, Tim Fisher

Sky Ape: Waiting for Crime
by Phil Amara, Richard Jenkins,
Tim McCarney, Michael Russo

Sky Ape
by Phil Amara, Richard Jenkins,
Tim McCarney, Michael Russo

Sky Ape: All the Heroes
by Phil Amara, Richard Jenkins,
Tim McCarney, Michael Russo

Scurvy Dogs: Rags to Riches
by Andrew Boyd, Ryan Yount

And of course, the Scurvy Dogs floppies.

Issue 1

Issue 2

Issue 3

Issue 4

Issue 5

AIT/Planet Lar Part2: Good for All Ages

2006-07-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

Continuing my six part love letter to the good folks at AIT/Planet Lar, these are the comics that are good for all ages, boys and girls alike.

Colonia: Island and Anomalies
by Jeff Nicholson

Colonia: On Into the Great Lands
by Jeff Nicholson

Electric Girl: Volume 1
by Mike Brennan

Electric Girl: Volume 2
by Mike Brennan

Electric Girl: Volume 3
by Mike Brennan

Ursula
by Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba

AIT/Planet Lar: The Last Comics Publisher You'll Ever Need!

2006-06-29T22:31:00.000-07:00

So I had this long, overly complex post all prepared about how much I love AIT/Planet Lar, and about how cool Larry Young is and all the sage advice he's given me over the years. I even had a few rants ready to go about all the bad mouthing he gets on the fan boards, and what I think of those people, then I decided I'd rather accentuate the positive, so I threw it out. Instead, I decided to post a listing of every AIT/Planet Lar graphic novel to date, so that I could see it all spread out in one place, sans commentary. If you're curious about something you see here, go check out the AIT/Planet Lar website. Larry is a master at writing promotional copy and far better at pimping his product than I am. This one is purely a labor of love.

Incidentally, the best place on the entirety of the internet to get your graphic novels is Khepri.com. If they don't have it in stock they will absolutely knock themselves silly to get it for you. They're good people, just like the ones at AIT/Planet Lar. So, Let's get to it.

In the hopes that Blogger doesn't blow a fuse, I'm actually going to break this post into the same genre categories that Larry has on the AIT/Planet Lar website.

Action/Adventure

Astronauts in Trouble:
The Collection
by Larry Young,
Charlie Adlard,
Matt Smith

Astronauts in Trouble:
Live from the Moon
by Larry Young,
Matt Smith,
Charlie Adlard

Astronauts in Trouble:
One Shot, One Beer
by Larry Young,
Charlie Adlard

Astronauts in Trouble:
Space 1959
by Larry Young,
Charlie Adlard

Codeflesh
by Joe Casey,
Charlie Adlard

Continuity
by Jason McNamara,
Tony Talbert

Black Diamond:
On Ramp
by Larry Young,
Jon Proctor

Channel Zero
by Brian Wood

Channel Zero:
Jennie One
by Brian Wood,
Becky Cloonan

The Couriers:
The Ballad of
Johnny Funwrecker
by Brian Wood,
Rob G

The Couriers:
Dirtbike Manifesto
by Brian Wood, Rob G

The Couriers
by Brian Wood, Rob G

Giant Robot Warriors
by Stuart Moore,
Ryan Kelly

Full Moon Fever
by Joe Casey,
Caleb Gerard,
Damian Couceiro

Filler
by Rick Spears, Rob G

Johnny Dynamite
by Max Allan Collins,
Terry Beatty

Proof of Concept
by Larry Young,
Damian Couceiro,
John Flynn,
Steven Sanders,
Jeff Johns,
Paul Tucker,
John Heebink,
Kieron Dwyer

Last of the
Independents
by Matt Fraction,
Kieron Dwyer

Smoke and Guns
by Kirsten Baldock,
Fabio Moon

Switchblade Honey
by Warren Ellis,
Brandon McKinney

Shatter
by Peter Gillis,
Mike Saenz

Interim Memo: The Lawlor Update

2006-06-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

No joke, time goes by and people continue to do stuff even when you aren't constantly checking up on them. The review of Raven's Children was written several years ago, and in preparation for revising it, I did some checking up on Ms. Lawlor. She has in the intervening years literally exploded onto the internet, publishing work for Girlamatic and putting up her long running science fiction epic Kismet, as well as several other works in progress at Layla's Website. Layla also has her own Livejournal wherein I see that she laments the fact that people still hold up her Raven's Children work as representative of the skills she has now. Sheesh, she's also moved to Alaska.

Anyway, I want to go on record here by reiterating what I had originally surmised three years ago when I originally wrote this review. Layla Lawlor's writing and Artistic skills will only get better with time. Well folks, go check out her stuff. I wasn't wrong. A quick tour through the Kismet stories is like watching a timeline of artistic progression. She's better now than she ever was. Doesn't mean I love Raven's Children any less, just means she's growing. By the way, while you're over at Layla Lawlor.com, stop by the Raven's Children website, and order the second graphic novel, and what looks to be the conclusion to the Raven's Children storyline.

No Refrences to Either "Kung Fu Fighting" or "The Hustle" in this Title

2006-06-26T11:58:00.001-07:00

Being a review of the movie Kung Fu Hustle

I hate to come across as an obvious cliché, but I just love Hong Kong action movies. I think most guys do, really. We're programmed for it as small children. While I wouldn't consider myself obsessive about the genré (unlike pretty much every other aspect of pop culture), I am fairly well versed in the Hong Kong action movie canon. It started with Bruce Lee, for certain, but it soon spread to Sonny Chiba, Chow Yun Fat, Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Li Gong, the list goes on for pages, and it's of special note that I will move heaven and earth to go see any film with Michelle Yeoh in it, no matter how badly it reeks. Hong Kong directors have and still are turning out some of the most innovative and sublimely directed action movies. Tsui Hark, John Woo, Wong Jing, King Hu, Yimou Zhang, and Ronny Yu are as good as and oftentimes better than directors like Renny Harlin, John Frankenheimer, John McTiernan and Walter Hill. (Anyone who's thinking, "Geez he left Michael Bay off the list," can leave now.)

That's why when some amazingly bright producer at Miramax (gotta love Bob and Harvey) decided it would be a grand idea to bring Stephen Chow's movie, Shaolin Soccer, to The United States a couple of years ago, I was all sorts of excited about it. So excited, in fact, that I ran right out and completely missed it. It showed here in Kalispell, MT for like a week... maybe. Fortunately it's now out on DVD, so I can catch myself up later. If it's anything like Kung Fu Hustle, it should be great.

Kung Fu Hustle is a revelation. One part Hong Kong action movie, one part Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner cartoon, it brings a refreshing sense of humor to a genré that's notorious for taking itself way too seriously. (Jackie Chan excepted, or course.) The special effects are better than most of what's currently coming out of Hollywood, and Stephen Chow uses every part of his amazingly complete director's kit to maximum effect.

The visuals in this movie are a head-spinning delight to the eyes. Each scene is packed with layers of visual cues and graphic in-jokes that make me think I'm missing something by not being able to read Cantonese. That's okay though, because what I do get is that this movie is a nuclear explosion of funny. Stephen Chow is a master of comic timing. He has taken the natural grace and beauty of his Wing Chun Kung Fu style and translated it into a slap-stick worthy of the best works of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplain (or Daffy Duck, whichever you prefer).

The plot is simple; gangs take over town, townspeople fight back, gangs bring out ultimate bad guy, townspeople up the ante by dragging out, "The Chosen One." The characters are clichéd to the point of being icons, but that's the idea. Wah Yuen and Qui Yuen do a superb job of immersing themselves in their respective roles as unlikely martial arts masters. However, it's the on screen chemistry between Stephen Chow and his longtime compatriot Kwok Kuen Chan (they have this kind of Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez thing happening) that steals the show. The two are superb as master and snivelling toady, deftly switching roles by the movies end.

I can't recommend this movie enough. If you like martial arts flicks or even if you just like good cartoons, Kung Fu Hustle will delight and amaze you. Oh yeah, and you'll laugh your ass off, too.

Something that I forgot to touch on is how impressed I was with the wire work and the special effects in Kung Fu Hustle. It holds up easily in comparison to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and The Matrix Trilogy. It's a nice change of pace to see these special effects put to use comedically.

The dissolution of Miramax will no doubt put a hold on bringing more Stephen Chow movies to The United States. Unfortunately, I have yet to see an interview with Bob and Harvey Weinstein that mentions this at all. I'll update everybody when I know more. In the meantime, go enjoy what we have. Go see the movie. The subtitles will not harm you. Go... Go Now! You must not resist.

Another Loveletter to Saturday Mornings Long Past

2006-06-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

SPACEMAN One-shot
Mike Allred/Lawrence Mavrit
US $2.95
Oni Press

Every Saturday morning my little brother and I would get up at five thirty and sit with our noses plastered to the television screen, consuming massive amounts of cocoa frosted sugar bombs and watching Saturday Morning Cartoons. Six hours later, our mother, "God bless her," would peel our hyperactive little bodies off the ceiling. Twitching with massive sugar buzz and phosphor dot induced flicker vertigo, we were then banished to the hellish wilderness of "outside" for the duration of the weekend. But that was okay, because for those six hours, every week, we could escape our miserable little lives. During those precious few hours we could soar into outer space with Space Ghost or The Super Friends. We could explore exotic jungles with Tarzan and The Herculoids. Or, we could just get stupid crazy with Blue Falcon, Dynomutt, and the rest of the Hanna Barbera psycho circus.

Pretty much every comic book reader that grew up in the 70's and 80's grew up this way. So, it's no fucking wonder that three of the top selling comic books are all nostalgia-based retreads. It's a damn shame that drivel like G.I. Joe, The Thundercats, and Battle of the Fucking Planets will sell like crazy, while a brilliant piece of work like Mike Allred's new one-shot, "Spaceman," will fade out and die.

It's a given that comic book readers don't want a rockin', brilliant, science fiction story. They don't want cool, weird aliens and kick ass animation style artwork. Fuck no! They want sloppy plotting and bad dialogue, with artwork churned out by a committee made up of cut-rate draftsmen who will never understand why Alex Ross and Jim Lee are brilliant artists. They all want the same tired pabulum we always get.

It just makes me mad that Mike Allred and Lawrence Mavrit won't make truckloads of cash off this nostalgic time warp back to one of the best parts of our collective childhood. Mad, because that means I won't get any more Spaceman stories. I'm never going to see this work in graphic novel format, printed on high quality slick paper that would really show off Laura Allred's mind bogglingly gorgeous colors. I'll never get extra pages of behind the scenes goodies that show me everything that went into making this book. I'll never get to see the cool alien landscapes that Lawrence Mavrit didn't use. I'll probably never learn how they got that nifty translucent effect with the word balloons.

Spaceman is too fucking cool! It's a love letter from Mike Allred and Lawrence Mavrit to all of us who miss Saturday Morning Cartoons. Go buy this book and give me some hope that maybe a few of you out there don't have crap taste in reading material.

The Inevitable Death of Mainstream Superhero Comics and Who's Responsible

2006-06-26T11:52:00.000-07:00

THE PRO
Garth Ennis/Amanda Connor/Jimmy Palmiotti
US $5.95
Image Comics

The Pro is a one-shot that deals primarily with classic themes of honesty, and what it takes to be a true hero. It's a sweeping, grand "widescreen" tale that packs in wall-to-wall action, a large cast of supporting characters, and artwork by one of the best teams producing comics today. It's also the story of a foul mouthed, ill tempered, cut-rate prostitute that gets super powers.

Anyone who hates super hero comics will love this book. Garth Ennis, the man responsible for the masterfully done Preacher series from DC, does a surgically precise job of providing a red-hot liquid metal enema for the ass of a comic book establishment that has become mired in an inescapable cesspool of mediocrity.

Anyone who loves superhero comics to the exclusion of everything else, should be strapped to a chair with their eyes pried open Clockwork Orange style, while angry Sunday school teachers read this book to them on a never ending tape loop. It's parody, pure, simple, and heartfelt, that cuts right to the heart of what's wrong with mainstream superhero comics. The brilliant script, coupled with Amanda Connor and Jimmy Palmiotti's fine traditional superhero comics style renderings, provides an entertaining and somewhat gut wrenching slide reel of flat out speed, action and dead-on comic timing. The entire package is a wonderfully entertaining head-smash, that comes with a clear and quite loud message. "Mainstream superhero comics are broken and there isn't much more to do with them than let them die a slow, torturous death." Beethoven soundtrack is of course optional.

In fine Garth Ennis tradition, The Pro is by turns nasty, shocking, insightful, and funny. Best of all, it's truthful. Ennis has taken every sophomoric trope from every major adolescent male power fantasy, and lined them up squarely under the magnifying glass of his rabid comic wit. He has concocted the perfect treatise on the current state of the comics industry, and it's just as relevant today with the current glut of superhero films, and all that fat Hollywood cash flying around the offices of the big two, as it was a few years ago when the opposite was true, and comics were trying to be more like the movies. Ennis brings the current schism between comic book fans of the same old boring crap we always get, and the fans touting violent, bloody literary revolution to light with the same comic clarity as a Richard Pryor sketch or a Lenny Bruce rant.

When The Pro first came out, it was largely ignored by most everybody. It didn't sell nearly as well as it should have, and it was a sort of one trick pony to begin with, so action figures, Happy Meal promotions, and a movie deal were right out. However, it has gone back to press several times, and copies are still out there and easily available. Track this book down and buy it. If you have any history with superhero comics at all you will most likely enjoy it, and if none of this hyperbolic pimp fest entices you, hey, it's kinda' naughty too.

Garth Ennis hasn't done much outside the realm of The Punisher lately, and I just know that all you Ennis fans are as bored with it as I am, so do a little digging and find this little gem. You will not be disappointed.

2006-06-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

Little White Mouse Open Space #1
By Paul Sizer
Blue Line Pro Comics
US $2.95

It drives me absolutely fucking insane when I have to take extraordinary measures to find things that by all accounts should be easily accessible. In a perfect world, Paul Sizer would be recognized as the creative genius he is, and LITTLE WHITE MOUSE would be at my comics store, stacked ten issues deep every Wednesday and sold out by Thursday. I wouldn't have to tear my hair out trying to find the minuscule Blue Line Pro section in Previews. I could simply grab it off the shelf with my X-Men comics.

This is so not a perfect world, but there is hope. While the rest of the comics buying public is busy making MASTERS OF THE Fucking UNIVERSE the top selling comic for November, an elite cadre of comics fans who appreciate masterfully rendered artwork and top notch storytelling, are going that extra mile to dig LITTLE WHITE MOUSE out of the monthly Previews slush pile.

This story works as a great jumping on point for new readers, as Sizer takes the central character Loo away from her asteroid prison and into "open space", marking a dramatic shift in the series narrative. This is Paul Sizer's fourth LWM mini series and he still rocks. He re introduces all of the central characters by a short synopsis and creative use of several flashback sequences that actually help the story along rather than interrupting its narrative flow. It's a chance for all you cheap bastards out there who wouldn't afford the fifteen bucks for the graphic novels to jump in on one of the greatest comics to come along in a decade.

LITTLE WHITE MOUSE kicks ass! If you're not reading it, your life is empty, worthless, and devoid of meaning. Go to your comics store, give the guy behind the counter $2.95 and the info at the beginning of this review, and make him get LWM for you. If he can't or won't, he is obviously not worth your time and you should seriously consider shopping elsewhere. If you want, just order it online at www.littlewhitemouse.com. Trust me on this one folks. It'll balance out your karma for the whole MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE thing.

Killing Marvel Comics

2006-06-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

*** Retro A GoGo!***

Intro:
This is a piece I wrote for SAVANT a few years ago, right around the time the first Spider-Man movie came out. At the time Marvel had a man named Bill Jemas as its president, who they wisely promoted to somewhere other than spokesperson. I have to admit that under Joe Quesada, Marvel Comics has prospered. Right now, they are enjoying the current upswell in comic book movie popularity. I doubt their business practices have changed much since this was written, and I still have a sneaking suspicion that time will tell wether or not they've banked enough movie capital to keep them in business once superhero movies are no longer Hollywood vogue.

******

KILLING MARVEL COMICS
By Dan Traeger

I'm afraid the patient is terminal. Marvel Comics is dying. It's hemorrhaging money and like any drowning animal, it can't help lashing out at those of us who want to save it. Part of me wants to just let it go, but man, I'll miss my X-MEN.

A quick look at the last quarterly financial report from Marvel Comics Inc. to their stockholders breaks down like this:

*
12 million dollars profit from the Spider-Man movie.
*
3 million dollars profit from a change in their accounting procedures.
*
7 million dollars loss from day to day operations expenditures.

All in all, an 8 million dollar profit for the last quarter-- not bad! Not bad, that is, unless your company happens to be 170 million dollars in debt. So, assuming Marvel can keep drawing in a 12 million dollar profit each quarter from their various movie properties while keeping their daily operations expenditures in the miraculous seven million dollar range they should be operating in the black again in about a decade.

Recently, Marvel alleviated a big chunk of its debt going forward into the new fiscal year by converting a lot of its preferred stock into common shares. So, it's a step in the right direction, but they're still in debt, and until Marvel starts showing a profit independent of motion picture money, they are likely to remain so. Many companies operate at red line expenditure rates and do just fine. However, these companies succeed by putting out a limited amount of quality product and backing it up with great customer service. If you take away the money from the movie deals, and that's valid because it won't always be there, Marvel Comics is bleeding money like a chainsaw victim. They are aggravating the injury by making it standard practice to alienate their primary distribution system, while continually belittling and berating their consumer base.

The main wedge Marvel is driving between themselves and the comic book retail outlets is their policy of not overprinting their comics. Marvel's President and COO Bill Jemas claims that not only does this cut down on Marvel's printing costs, but it also helps reinstate a collectible factor to its books, thereby allowing retailers the opportunity to charge more for "scarce" recent issues. He has also stated on several occasions that this will have the added "bonus" of drawing speculators back into the comics fold. This is a statement of intent that is insulting to both retail stores and the comics buying public.

Jemas' comment about speculators is mind-boggling. Comic book fans and retailers alike have demonized the terrible gathering of faceless teeming masses that buy comics with the hope of reselling later at a drastically inflated price since the "collectible" rug yanked itself out from under the comics market, dropping it on its ass in the mid 90's. Speculators caused a lot of damage, sinking many comics specialty stores when they collectively realized one simple truth and then went away. The truth is that a worthless piece of shit comic with a lenticular, die-cut, holographic, glow in the dark, singing, dancing, gives you a blow job, and feeds your cat cover, is still a worthless piece of shit comic. They left behind a ravaged publishing industry that suddenly had a catastrophic reduction in its consumer base, and a lot of confused company executives that couldn't understand why any magazine with a print run of 100,000 to a million issues would never be collectible. Anyone ever see any "hot", "collectible" issues of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC or TV GUIDE less than 30 years old? But here's a clue Marvel, they're not coming back. Those of us who survived the mid 90's implosion know that, why don't you?

If you ever find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, dripping with cold sweat, and dreading the return of the speculation crowd, look at it this way. Several things conspired to draw speculators into the comics market. The sports card market imploded leaving lots of people looking for the next big thing. Marvel got a lucky break when it ended up with Mark Silvestri, Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee and Rob Lifeld who were all masters of self-promotion. These artists were working on Marvel's A List titles all at the same time, which caused even more hype. This snowballed when they left in unison to form Image Comics. Rival company D.C. then jumped on the collectible bandwagon to maximum effect with its Death of Superman media blitz. The odds of a promotional zeitgeist like this ever happening again are so astronomical that even Carl Sagan would have a hard time conceiving of a number that big.

Whether it offends your ethical sensibilities or not, retailers certainly make more money selling a hot comic for $25.00 than they do by selling it for the $2.50 cover price. Or do they? Anybody who tells me that it's better to sell 10 books at $25.00 each than it is 100 books at $2.50 is just not thinking. Yes, the dollar figures are the same, but comics are intrinsically soap operatic and therefore addictive. Human beings for the most part love a soap opera, and like good little crack whores, they will always come back wanting more. Even Marvel's marketing staff should be able to see that the potential for repeat business is much higher with 100 readers than with 10.

"But wait," you cry! "They certainly save money by not having a lot of unsold product sitting around." The major cost of printing a magazine is getting the pre press straight. Once a book goes to press, I'm told you even get a significant price break for a larger print run. Storage space for the overprinted books is negligible when looking at the big financial picture, especially when most publishing houses just destroy the unsold product after a certain length of time anyway.

Bill Jemas' statement of the intent on Marvel's no overprint policy is just one in a string of knee-jerk, short-sighted, quick fixes that will do more long term harm than short term good for both Marvel and the comics industry. Jemas has a big fucking mouth, but he's not a stupid man. He's merely a man saddled with the nearly insurmountable burden of running a publishing house in deep financial trouble. Either that or he's receiving kickbacks from E-Bay. Given the fact that he seems to be trying everything in his power to alienate fans and distributors alike, I'd say he's just desperate. His company is hurting and even negative attention is still attention.

It's terribly ironic that content wise, many of Marvel's books have never been better. They have successfully relaunched most of their top superhero books with A-list creative talent. They've single handedly made superhero comics cool again. What they haven't done is shown us what's next. Many of these books are bordering on three years old now, and fans are fickle even without a company mouthpiece to browbeat them. Marvel is swiftly coming into the time frame in the life cycle of any mass media publisher when the collective reader base commands something new. It starts with readers dropping second tier books. It's up to Marvel to show us where it ends. If their current state of their customer service continues, even Joe Quesada won't be able to save them.

So, what can you do about all this? Well, for starters, use your wallet. Half of what Marvel puts out is utter dog shit that you just buy out of habit anyway. So stop doing that, and when Marvel starts wondering why its numbers are dropping through the floor, you can tell them you're sorry, but your comic store was always sold out so you just stopped buying. Remember this. We are comic book fans. We are strong and powerful, and we have ultimate say over the type and price of the books these companies produce. Together we can kill Marvel Comics Inc. if we have to. If the speculators could melt down the entire comics publishing industry, we should be more than capable of taking down a company that thinks we're stupid enough to pay $50 for back issues of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN. We should at least be strong enough to get Marvel to sell us their fucking product at a reasonable price.

Here's a ray of hope for you. There are two comic book stores in my town. One store has the dubious practice of significantly marking up back issues that WIZARD Magazine says are "hot" and racking them in a prominent display, right next to the register. You know what happens to these books? They sit there for months until they finally get pulled into the half price dump box. Comic book fans aren't stupid; they just need a methadone program (or in this case a slap in the face.) This is one of the most insulting marketing tricks a store can use. As consumers, we have too many other options open to us to even think about paying $25 for a comic book that's been out less than a year. Screw the stores that mark up two month old comics with artificially inflated prices. They don't deserve your money. Go across town to the store that doesn't do that. If you don't find it there, wait for the Graphic Novel. If you're really desperate, order it off the Internet where you have all sorts of different pricing structures to choose from. Barring all that go read a book without pictures.

Much like a drug, you can live without Marvel Comics once you break the habit.

Idiots And Savants

2006-06-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

***Retro A GoGo***

Intro:
This was a recruiting piece I did for SAVANT. When I stack it into the whole "Dan Traeger" cannon, I think it still reads okay. It definitely accomplished what I wanted it to, at least within my limited sphere of influence. I still really like the anecdotal part of this one.

******

IDIOTS AND SAVANTS
by Dan Traeger

A special note before I start on this tear. The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author. Savant magazine and her editorial staff have nothing to do with this, other than the fact that they are, in this instance, serving as my own personal soapbox, which I will now proceed to stomp into toothpicks. All hate mail may be addressed to ruckus24@hotmail.com. Thanks.

Every Wednesday I make it a point to hang out and shoot the shit with Mark. This particular Mark is the owner and operator of Other Realm, the better of the two local comic stores here in Champaign\Urbana, Illinois. Mark and I have this long running argument about his not carrying minor Indy comics. For some bizarre reason, he thinks that a comic should actually sell if he's going to dedicate shelf space to it. I am of the opinion, however, that the damn things don't sell themselves. He should get up off his ass and stop pimping Marvel, D.C., Image, and Cross Gen, which all do a mighty fine job of selling themselves. I think he should start helping out the little guys who can't afford co-op advertising, massive four-color posters, and thirty pages in the front of Previews every month. The running argument seems to be having an effect on him. This Wednesday he had two entire shelves dedicated to minor independents.

I'm an activist by nature. I want my comic book store to stock more Indy titles, so I'm doing something about it. Mark can always count on me to buy at least one of anything interesting he takes a chance on, and he listens when I tell him what I like and what I don't like. It's a good trade off. My next project is to nag him until he starts shelving mini comics.

Included on these independent shelves were six copies of LITTLE WHITE MOUSE: OPEN SPACE #1, which he ordered for no other reason than that I asked him to. (That's putting it politely, but you get the drift.) This Wednesday was special to me because for the first time ever, he also racked a stack of Savant issues containing my Essential essay about LITTLE WHITE MOUSE. That's unusual because he rarely (and understandably so) gives up his limited shelf space. By Friday all six issues of LITTLE WHITE MOUSE: OPEN SPACE were gone, as well as about half the stack of Savant. For the better part of an hour I hung around on new comics day, talking with the regular customers, putting copies of Savant into their hands, and generally bullying them into buying off the new Indy rack.

That same day a young lady walked into the store. You could tell she'd never been in a comic shop before. She had that deer-caught-in-headlights-am-I-safe-here-look about her. Turns out she was a commercial art masters student, and she'd walked in thinking she might find some inspiration for her next project. Upon seeing row upon row of superheroes though, she almost walked out. Fortunately I was there. Don't get me wrong here, Mark genuinely does a good job of welcoming newbies into Other Realm, it's just that this happened to be new comics day, and he was kinda busy already being three places at once. So I spent ten minutes with her going over what she liked in movies, music and reading material in general. She left the store that day with BERNIE WRIGHTSON: A LOOK BACK, UNDERSTANDING COMICS, KINGDOM COME, and the SPIRIT ARCHIVES #1. She was looking a little green about the price tag she'd racked up until I remembered her mentioning an eight-year-old niece. With a nod of approval from Mark, I scooped a stack of POWERPUFF GIRLS comics out of his $.25 bin and gave them to her. The lady could not have been happier. I don't even work there, but damnit, it's my comics store and I want it to succeed. I think everyone should be reading and enjoying comics. I'm kind of an activist that way.

That is what activism means to me. You pick a cause and you do something to help out. It's one of the hardest things in the world to do, but when done right it can form a world superpower. For most of my life, the only tool I've had to help cater to my activist bent has been my big mouth. Now I get to add Savant to my bag of tricks. It's an online magazine that I can download in a PDF and print into something physical, something real. I regularly give copies of Savant out to lots of people, and some of them have also started printing copies, and handing them out on their own. I think of viral marketing as activism too.

At the urging of the editors, I've taken to writing for Savant over the last few months. It's a great place to share my thoughts about the industry, or my taste in comics with a lot of people I would otherwise never get to meet. I get instant feedback on Savant's Delphi forum, and I get to instantly explain or defend myself if I have to. Either way, we are all comic book fans and we are communicating. Once more we have achieved activism, grass roots activism even.

Lately, there's been some criticism that Savant is "repeating itself" or "preaching to the converted." Let me engage in a bit of activism here, and respond to these allegations. Maybe Savant is starting to repeat itself, but so what? Obviously nobody was listening the first time, so why not say it again. It is, in my opinion, a writer's solemn duty to say things over and over again in the vain hope that someone somewhere will finally fucking listen. Comic buyers still hide the fact that they read comics. They still buy shitty art and inept stories out of habit. They still buy enough of the most puerile crap imaginable to make shit like BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, TRANSFORMERS, and MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE top sellers, while solid intelligent fare like LITTLE WHITE MOUSE, SHADES OF BLUE, and FINDER have to struggle.

Those of you who think that Savant has lost its focus need to get over it. In case you weren't paying attention, the activism part is incumbent on you. Savant is merely a tool; a weapon to help you fight the good fight.

Savant is by its very nature a magazine with an activist agenda. They are beholden to no corporation. Their editorial policies are still open enough that if I want to say, "Fuck You!" in print, it'll happen. They still have a toolbox full of things those of us with a shine for guerilla marketing can use. Most importantly, if you think Savant's stated focus is no longer being served by its content, fucking change it. If you think you have a better idea then what you are reading, write it up and submit it. If you're incessantly bitching about something, even Savant, in any kind of public forum guess what… You're a fucking activist! Come write for us, the editors would love to have you. They are always looking for new contributors and new ideas, but they damn sure won't find any if you don't raise your hand and add your voice to the mix. Trust me, you'll fit right in with the décor.

There's just this one thing I wish everyone would think about. There are an awful lot of idiots out there. People with no opinion or half formed, stupid opinions abound. Some of these people think that everybody owns a computer with Internet access. Some of these people are currently trying to recapture lost bits of their youth by buying predigested spew masquerading as comics. Some of these people don't realize that Savant Magazine is a healthy, dynamic paradigm. It changes and it grows so it's not always going to be the same. People say that the magazine doesn't have the same vibe it did back when it started almost three years ago, and all I can say to that is YOU'RE GODDAMNED RIGHT IT DOESN'T; there's an almost completely different group of people writing for the magazine now. If it still felt and sounded exactly the same, something would be wrong. Savant has new writers now, and as far as I'm concerned, they all kick just as much ass as the old boys ever did. If we're smart, Savant will have new writers again and again and again, for as long as it's a going concern.

Savant is set up to preach the gospel of great comic books to the widest arena possible. However, it is up to you to be the activist. Savant is written and distributed by smart people who know the difference between a great story coupled with great art, and the primal urge to recapture one's youth. It's a chance to let those fuckers that hang out at the Starbucks in the Barnes and Noble know how you feel about the fact that they snicker at you while you're reading BOX OFFICE POISON or MAUS.

If you think there's a problem with Savant, step up and help try to fix it. If you're not part of the solution then really you're just being part of the problem. The comics industry has enough of those to deal with, so quit being part of the problem.

Magic, Myth and Mystery in the Frozen Lands of the Raven's Children

2006-06-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

RAVEN'S CHILDREN: SHADOW OF THE SNOW FOX
Layla Marie Lawlor
Susitna Mythographics
US $14.95, 144 pages
ISBN: 0971734003
AUG022326

When I was living in Champaign Illinois, there was this mini comic that was written, drawn and published by a local creator, Layla Lawlor. The book was called RAVEN'S CHILDREN, and to this day it is still one of my favorite mini-comics series. I had always wanted to meet her if for no other reason than to just say thanks for putting out a mini-comic that is consistently more entertaining than much of what I get from the big publishing houses. Normally you wouldn't think it terribly odd that we hadn't met, after all, creators are busy and they don't often afford much time to the outside world, and Champaign/Urbana is a pretty big town. There were more than a few Karmic forces at work though. We lived in the same town. We frequented the same two comics stores, (actually, there's only two) so by default we knew a lot of the same people. To top it all off, I'm a loud mouth who regularly pushed her work on unsuspecting customers with all the aplomb of a sugar-buzzing used car salesman, so I tend to be hard to miss.

It took me two years of pimping her work online and around town, before we finally ran across each other in G-Mart (one of the local comics stores.) I came away from that meeting with a newfound respect for anyone who chooses to work in that field.

The people who create mini-comics are amazing; especially those devoted enough to put them out on a regular basis. They usually are their own artists, writers, publishers, pr departments, etc. Unfortunately, much of the mini-comics catalog appears amateurish at best, and just unreadable at worst. Those of us who love the format have a tendency to excuse the sloppy artwork and rushed storytelling. There's a bit of a punk rock esthetic at work here, and we like it that way. It's a sense that anyone with time, inclination, and guts, can make their own comic. Every once in a while though, someone brings a voice to paper that rises above the chattering. A creator will spin silk out of rough-hewn cloth, and we as readers are left with a series equal to or better than anything published by a large company. Every so often a creator will show us unequivocally that it is always a bad idea to judge a book by its cover. Layla Marie Lawlor does this with RAVEN'S CHILDREN.

The owner of my favorite comics shop, Other Realm, first pointed out to me that Layla had collected the first five issues of her ongoing mini-comic into a graphic novel. Even though I'd been following her work since the first issue of the RAVEN'S CHILDREN mini, I bought the book anyway. The shop owner knew I was a sucker for a starving artist (still am) and that I'll always go out of my way to support an independent comics creator. Although I'm quite sure he thought it would distract me from the fact that he had next to nothing in the way of independent comics that week. I figured that at the least, I'd get to re-read RAVEN'S CHILDREN without having to crack into my somewhat dilapidated and love worn minis. What I got when I opened up this shiny new graphic novel was something unexpected, and absolutely wonderful.

The story is really what has always set RAVEN'S CHILDREN above the rest of the mini-comics pack. It's a sprawling, historical epic with occasional bits of fantasy and science fiction thrown in for good measure. Inspired by the Inuit Tribes of Alaska and Northern Canada, Layla has meticulously crafted a handful of dynamic societies and set them at odds with each other in an ongoing clash over territory and cultural differences.

The plot of "Shadow of the Snow Fox" evolves from a summit meeting between the Raven's Children clan and the Tolshay Kahn Empire. The meeting goes horribly awry when the sole translator, Jained, brings his personal politics and somewhat self-serving agenda into play, causing the Raven's Children to attack a far superior force. This results in a slaughter for the clan, which the Tolshay Kahn seem to write off as a failed diplomatic attempt, and Jained gets away with it. There's more. The story is stacked with nuance and layers of meaning. It would take me a novella to explain what Layla masterfully distills into 144 pages.

RAVEN'S CHILDREN is as grand and sweeping as Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels. Like much of McCaffrey's work, Layla uses science fiction and fantasy elements as backdrop, but the important elements of the story are the characters. She's figured out how to make fully realized people from different and sometimes diametrically opposed cultures come to life, by merely setting pen to paper. She's packed the story so densely with real characters that you almost don't realize that the whole story takes place on another planet. From Deneko, the cruel and stalwart war-chief of the Raven's Children tribe, to Jained the strange telepathic translator for the invading Tolshay Kahn Empire, to Ronin Kheheli, the reluctant provincial governor of the Tolshay Kahn, and Leesansut the impossibly strong slave woman indentured to the Raven's children tribe, Layla's characters crackle with energy and life.

The real stunner of the graphic novel though, was how well Layla's artwork represented. I had always dismissed Layla's artistic style as that of someone still learning her craft. She is still learning, just like any good artist should be. This is evident, as she gets better with each successive issue. But to my mind, her art was always decent, just not my cup of tea. However, her pen and ink renders translate much better when printed on 8 ½" x 11" glossy paper with real printing values. She puts across much crisper and cleaner line work when she's printing with something other than whatever Kinkos has on hand. The higher printing quality also shows off her wonderful use of the black and white format. Layla's characters and backgrounds achieve a sense of detail and fluidity that I've rarely noticed in her minis. Obviously, she's a lot more accomplished than I ever gave her credit for.

Layla has taken full advantage of the graphic novel format by including a bunch of extras. She gives us a covers gallery, an index of the major characters with a family tree, and a big section of footnotes (a la Carla Speed McNeil's FINDER.) More importantly, she has given us a tale packed to the hilt with heroes, villains, gods, monsters, love, life, and death, all wrapped up in a pretty bow of masterful dramatic tension. Layla's an emerging artist who will only produce greater works as time goes on. As it is, she's damn good now, and well worth reading.

Fractal Painting

2006-06-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

***Retro A GoGo!***

This was my introductory editorial when I took over editing duties for SAVANT's Toolbox section. Toolbox was a bunch of printable stickers, t-shirt designs, and viral marketing inserts designed around movies, DVDs and other cross promotable books. I had big plans to revamp and expand the whole section... ooh the plans I had. Before I could accomplish anything with it though, SAVANT imploded, and it seems the idea of comics activism went with it. Too bad, it's still a viable idea. As an article, this really doesn't hold up well. Delphi is mostly dead. Matt Fraction is well on his way to becoming a comics superstar in his own right. And SAVANT is a fond memory, and an internet ghost town.

******

FRACTAL PAINTING
by Dan Traeger

You can only smash your head against a brick wall for so long before something's gotta give. So, still dripping with arterial spray and picking chunks of my own gray matter out of my hair, I stumbled over to Matt Fraction's Delphi forum in search of help.

If any of you want to go read what happened, the thread is located in the "questions and queries" folder. It starts with, "I think I need some help from SAVANT's old guard." A lot of SAVANT's original writing crew hangs there and I thought it might be a good place to go for advice. See, I wanted to know why I wasn't having much impact on SAVANT's online community, no matter what I wrote. I thought there might be some trick to this online activism gig that I was missing. In a moment of weakness, I reached out for help from some of the writers who helped create SAVANT Magazine… and I got bitch slapped. Then my thread was stopped cold before I could respond or even say thank you. That's right, "Thank You." Sometimes you need someone to shake you up a bit.

I had forgotten something that Fraction knew all to well:"…online tribes descend into tribalism, hostile and intimidating to new voices."

It made me take a few steps back and think about things. It made me think about the online tribe I'd chosen and what I wanted to bring to that community. In order to figure that out, I first had to decide what I wanted from the whole comics nation.

So, I decided to make a couple of lists. I like lists. They help force chaos into pretty, well-ordered patterns. It's kinda like fractal painting.

Top 5 things I want from the comics nation.

1. I want creative genius to be rewarded with money and recognition, just like it is in other creative fields. Brian Wood, Paul Sizer, Renee French, James Kochalka… there's a long list of massively talented people I can't even begin to type out in full here who deserve a lot better from their chosen profession.

2. I want to be able to walk into any comics store and find a big fat indy selection packed with the good stuff from Slave Labor Graphics, Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, Oni, and IDW. I want the entire AIT/Planet Lar catalog racked right at the top with flashing lasers, blinking neon, flowers, balloons, confetti, gutted beanie baby carcasses, and the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, all loudly proclaiming that Larry Young is one of the most innovative, excellent, and important publishers putting out comics today.

3. I never want to see a weak, joyless, nostalgia fueled, piece of shit comic, based on any crappy licensed property, ever again crack comics top 100 bestsellers.

4. I want comics specialty stores to start acting like proper retailers and give me clean, well lighted, good smelling shopping, topped off with excellent customer service. Moreover, I want the retailers who already do this to stand up and be counted.

5. I want everyone I meet to know how cool comics are, and I want them to know how empty and worthless their lives are because they don't read them.

Once I had this in perspective, I then went back and looked at what I wanted to bring to my tribe, the SAVANT readers. It didn't take me long to figure out that the best way for me to accomplish anything here was to lead by example, thus, another list.

1. I will treat creators with the respect and admiration they deserve. Online, at conventions, or at signings, these people are rock stars and I will treat them that way. I will buy their books, and I'll make sure that everyone who comes to SAVANT knows where to go for great reads and how to avoid the dog shit.

2. I will buy the good stuff that comes from all of the indy publishers. I'm gonna pimp the holy shit out of their books, and I'm gonna use SAVANT to do it.

3. I will never again buy any comic tied in to a licensed property. And I'm gonna mercilessly fuck with anyone who does. You hear me Potter? You're not safe, buddy!

4. I'm gonna keep badgering my local comics shops, help them out when I can, and fight my battles one at a time. I will continue to effect changes in the way they do business by being a better customer.

5. I will keep preaching the gospel. "Comics are cool!" I will continue inviting new members into the tribe and accepting them with open arms, even if I don't like or agree with what they have to say. And I will arm every one of you, so that you too can go out and preach to the masses that aren't a part of the comics nation.

For the first time in its nearly three year history, SAVANT has added a new editorial position. For some bizarre reason, when Dave, Al, and Dan Carroll were sitting around trying to figure out who they knew that was psychotic enough to take it, my name came up. Of course, when they offered me the job, I jumped at the chance. It's a job much akin to master weapon-smith. It doesn't pay anything, and it's largely thankless, but I think it may be most important job on the website. I get to create and oversee the creation of the tools we use to spread the word that comics are cool.

I'm the new editor of SAVANT's toolbox section. That's the part of the website that gives you weapons to use against the filthy heathen hordes of non-comics people.

If we're a tribe then so be it. I'll provide the weapons. You provide the war party.

Interim Memo : Internet Cleanup and Conglomeration Nation!

2006-06-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

I'm probably being paranoid about this, but I think it's time to grab all my stuff that's still floating around in the old SAVANT ghost town. For those of you that don't know, I used to write for an internet webzine called SAVANT. It was a fun time in my life, and I turned in some really good work for them. Eventually, SAVANT collapsed under the weight of hubris, petty squabbling, and disinterest, but for a long run there, it was one of the best Comics Webzines going.

There's probably a post or two about SAVANT, and how not to run a webzine, but I'll save that for another time. Suffice it to say that for the next few days I'm going to be posting all of my old SAVANT articles and reviews here, so that I still have an electronic record of them when the SAVANT web space finally goes away. Some of the things are no longer relevant, some are pretty SAVANT specific, but in cases where I can, I'm going to rewrite a bit. If I run across something that won't take to a rewrite, and is outdated I'll mark it as a Retro Mojo! piece and be done with it.

Have fun, there's lots of good reading to be had, and hopefully by the time I'm done with this run, I'll have some new original content ready to go.

The Acid Dreams of Samuel Beckett

2006-06-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

THE METABARONS Volume 1
"Path of the Warrior"
Jodorowsky & Gimenez
STAR13289
Humanoids Publishing
$14.95

THE METABARONS Volume 2
"Blood and Steel"
Jodorowsky & Gimenez
STAR15080
Humanoids Publishing
$14.95

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm not perfect. I'm human just like everyone else. But I've tried to be open, understanding and liberal my entire life. I don't consider myself a racist or a sexist or really any other "ist" for that matter. Most of my favorite comic book writers are British, Scottish, or Irish, so I think I'm fairly open when it comes to my reading material. When it comes to European comics though, there is a black mark on my soul.

I've tried bits and pieces of European graphic literature over the years, mostly books from Germany, France and Spain. There has been only one common denominator that I've found over too many years of forcing myself to read these books. I loathe European comics with a dark, seething passion that one should only reserve for child molesters or rapists. Mind you, there are exceptions, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you about them. I can't stand Judge Dredd or 2000 A.D. I've never understood why Moebius is held up as a national treasure in both France and the United States. I love science fiction, but for years I've tried to make it through either a whole issue of METAL HURLANT or its American sister HEAVY METAL. The work just leaves me cold. I've tried reading these stories many times and I've always been left with a hard, burning chill that makes me want to light these mags on fire and dance like an aborigine on their crumbling ashes. I never understood why, and it always bothered me to my core.

I'm better now. Basing my decision solely on the recommendation of Warren Ellis (I don't know him personally, he recommended it through his forum or mailing list), I gave THE METABARONS a try. Now, I understand the beauty and complexity that can come from someone not working within the confines of my homeland. THE METABARONS changed everything for me.

Ostensibly the history of a clan of uber warriors, The Metabarons is a science fiction epic on the literary scale of Frank Herbert's DUNE, or Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION. The series creators are masters of plot and pacing. The art and story work with perfect synergy, as every bizarre plot twist and seemingly insignificant sub plot combines perfectly into an epic saga that spans generations of humanity. Alexandro Jodorowsky and Juan Gimenez have crafted a grand and decadent culture on an intergalactic scale. They have created a paradigm of human society, occupied by people so far advanced into the future that even the simplest of human emotions seems complex and alien. The sublime irony is that the central framing sequence is played out by two robots that seem closer to our current model of mankind than any of the story's human characters.

Borrowing just a bit from Waiting for Godot, the aforementioned robots narrate the first graphic novel, Path of the Warrior, as they wait for their master. The initial tale is primarily the story of Baron Othon Von Salza, the first Metabaron. It follows him from his early days as a marble miner on one of the most inhospitable planets ever created, through the series of tragedies and betrayals that result in his metamorphosis into the galaxy's most feared warrior and assassin. During the track of the story, we are made privy to the events of Von Salza's life that become Metabaron traditions in the second novel, and later in the comic book series. We are shown Von Salza's maiming, which results in the Metabaron tradition of replacing organic body parts with technology, as well as many other seminal events that give us a better understanding of things that happen later in the second graphic novel.

The second book, Blood and Steel, traces the bloodline through to the current (in continuity) Metabaron. Once again, the two robotic narrators take us back in time while they wait for a master who never shows. As the story of each successive Metabaron unfurls, we are given snapshots of the key moments in each of their lives. How the Metabaron traditions bind and shape each character's life, makes for one seriously mind-blowing exercise in plot, as well as a dynamic, enthralling read. Blood and Steel culminates with several Shakespearean level betrayals and a massive space battle that sets up the fifth Metabaron as the greatest warrior in the line.

Juan Gimenez may be one of the greatest artists of his generation. His page layouts are deceptively simple, preferring six and seven panel spreads. He rarely resorts to breaking panel borders, or moving beyond the even pacing of his standard layout. When he does, the effect is a visceral punch that jars the senses. You can smell the antiseptic reek of the imperial city. You can hear the explosions and feel the spatter of blood and alien ichor. There are no sound effects to be found anywhere within these pages. Gimenez' art would render them impotent. The detail of Gimenez' line work would give George Perez eyestrain. He also brings an organic esthetic to the page, sorely lacking in most of Perez' cannon. His use of color radiates an amazing feeling of reality that blends fluidly with his pencils. Throughout the entire series, Gimenez gives us a dramatic, sensual assault, that is, at times gut wrenching, but always beautiful.

The character of the Metabaron was originally introduced in Jodorowsky's other series, The Incal. After chewing through the two METABARONS graphic novels, I tracked down most of the Incal series. It works great as a primer to who and what the Metabarons are, but it's completely unnecessary to enjoy these two books. Warren Ellis' simple statement, "There is literally a new and mad idea on every page," is absolutely true. Jodorowsky and Gimenez throw away enough ideas on background details to fill a series that would make Robert Jordan jealous. They take us on a magical journey filled with fire, viscera, and blood, but leavened by equal parts courage, honor and love.

I never thought it was possible for me to enjoy a European comic series. Somewhere along the line, I think THE METABARONS flipped a switch in my head. Through this stunning work by Jodorowsky and Gimenez, I've garnered a deeper understanding and a greater appreciation of European creators as a whole. The more I read, the more I finally understand what the European artists and writers have accomplished by bringing their different cultural sensibilities to the crafting of sequential works of art. I've started giving other European comics a try, and on the whole, I've been well pleased. I've yet to make it through an entire issue of HEAVY METAL, but I'm taking baby steps. I have a lot of years worth of prejudice issues to deal with.

Playing Catch Up With Chinese Geisha?

2006-06-23T17:58:00.000-07:00

I try to stay fairly current with these movie reviews, but sometimes for one reason or another, one slips through the cracks. My wife and I went to see Memoirs of a Geisha when it first came out in theaters. She had read the book and was anxious to see how it translated, and I had liked Dion Beebe's cinematography on Chicago. Even though I hated Chicago's directing and editing, I was still willing to give Memoirs of a Geisha a go. There is also the fact that I will suffer through some seriously mind-frying, time-wasting crap for Michelle Yeoh.

So we went to see it and I liked it well enough, but I had some issues with it that I wanted to write about. The problem was that I was having trouble putting into words what was wrong. Like any writing that gives me fits, I shelved it. Sometimes it's best to let things simmer on a back burner for a while.

Several months later, Memoirs of a Geisha was released on DVD and I got the chance to watch it again.Finally, I figured out what I'd wanted to say in the first place.

Memoirs of a Geisha is the epitome of what Michael Crichton likes to call "faux zen", all style and no substance. Much like with his first movie Chicago, Rob Marshall has assembled an excellent cinematographer, a mediochre scriptwriter, and a phenomenal cast to tell an interesting story... badly.

Dion Beebe's images are phenomenal. All wet, flowing silk, juxtaposed with a fair representation of 1930's Japan, the cinematography is worth the price of admission in and of itself. Robin Swicord's scriptwriting, however is scattered in its pacing, and replete with hokey dialogue that sounds more than a bit improbable coming out of the mouths of these actors.

Then there's the actors. I mostly got over the fact that most of them aren't Japanese, shortly after I figured out that Arthur Golden, the writer of the source material, wasn't Japanese either. Besides, I really like Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Li Gong, Kaori Momoi and Kenneth Tsang, and Michelle Yeoh is, well... Michelle Yeoh. Together, these actors read like a who's who of Chinese cinema. In point of fact, the only primary who is actually Japanese is Youki Kudoh who masterfully plays the traitorous Geisha, Pumpkin. It's a bit academic that none of these actors are Japanese, but it is distracting that few of them actually look Japanese either. However, I did suspend my disbelief long enough to buy Charlton Heston as a Mexican narcotics officer in Touch of Evil, could I afford Ken Watanabe any less?

What is not academic though, is that none of these actors were asked to speak Japanese. I submit that every single one of them is capable of it, and it would have lent the movie a much needed air of authenticity. Robin Swicord's horribly choppy dialogue might have been smoothed over by a decent enough Japanese translator. My other big gripe is that none of the actresses really even try to act like Japanese women. If you've ever seen a Geisha show (either live or on film) the first thing you notice about them is a certain stylized fluidity and an absolute precision to every movement. This is a fact of the Geisha entertainer (even the ones practicing the diluted artform we have today) that seems to be utterly lost on everyone, except for Michelle Yeoh who at least tries.

The end result of all this mess is a movie that is big and beautiful with no ring of truth or even a hint of any deep feeling. What should have been a faithful representation of a bygone time, and a lamentation for a dying artform, seems more like a big, noisy, Gaijin interpretation of what we consider to be an interesting bit of Japanese esoterica.

Memoirs of a Geisha picks up an ancient and venerated artform, something as important to world culture as ballet or Kabuki or Shakespearean acting, and plants it firmly in the realm of pop culture. As much as I love the culture of pop, this just makes me sad. It's almost as if Rob Marshall, Robin Swicord and Arthur Golden have unintentionally reinforced the stereotype of the "ugly American" who cannot respect or understand what other cultures have to offer. It's almost comically ironic that this same stereotyped idiot is played so adeptly by Ted Lavine at the end of the movie.

In the final summation, I do recomment Memoirs of a Geisha. It does what it's supposed to, it entertains. But go into it expecting nothing more, and you should come out of it relatively unscathed, if a bit annoyed.

Worshipping at the Altar of the God Emperor of the B-Movie Intelligentsia, and Wondering If It Was Really A Good Idea To Bring All These Grenades.

2006-06-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

There are some movies that are just so terribly, terribly bad that right from the outset you want to claw your own eyes out so that you're no longer capable of witnessing the ongoing twenty car pileup that is unfolding in front of you on the screen. If by some miracle of intestinal fortitude you manage to stick it out until the closing credits, you have to repress the nearly overpowering urge to grab the greasy little teenager behind the box office counter and shake him while shrilly demanding the last two hours of your life back. Slither is not that movie. I know what you're thinking, it seems like it should be, but I can tell you with authority that it is indeed that rare gem that occasionally crops up within the played-out diamond mine that is the genre of B-Movies.

There's nothing really new or shocking about Slither. It's your standard; alien-slug-takes-over-local-hick, local-hick-starts-impregnating-local-trailer-trash-females, local-trailer-trash-females-spawn-an-army-of-alien-slugs, alien-slugs-create-an-unstoppable-army-of-shambling-oozing-zombies, movie. You know, a classic. The real twist comes in the writing. It's good. The dialogue is snappy and witty, the smart characters don't suddenly do stupid things, "Oh that's right, just walk backwards while you're alone in the woods while Jason Voorhees is out for his newest spree-kill evening stroll." Doesn't happen in this movie.

The writer in question is the amazingly talented James Gunn. If you look him up on the IMDB , you'll get four choices. You want the writer of the Scooby Doo movie. That's right, the Scooby Doo movie. He wrote the second one too. He's a master at turning ideas that seem like a bad idea on the surface into interesting and oftentimes fun movies.

James Gunn first came to my attention with a little movie released by one of my favorite B-Studios, Troma. The movie was appropriately titled Tromeo and Juliette, and although the directing was sub par, even for the *ahem* standards of a Troma film, the writing was outstanding. Gunn took a truly bad idea, a modern update of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette, put them a punk setting, and added wit and spark, turning it into the best film Team Troma ever did. Who knew that several years later Baz Luhrmann would try the same stunt again and make a ton more money at it, proving conclusively that a good idea is a good idea, and the only thing standing between you and instant fame and fortune is having an advertising budget the same size as 20th Century (isn't it about time they updated their name) Fox.

Gunn's second film was something that if you were quick, you could have caught it on DVD, maybe. It was a neat little story called The Specials, and it had the bad luck to be a big budget special effects extravaganza with the actual budget of an old English street urchin. Think Oliver Twist and you've got it. The Specials did star Rob Lowe and that guy from Wings... whashisname... Thomas Hayden Church, but neither of them were able to do anything with the supremely inspired but very insular script, and the movie pretty much tanked. It did have one of the best tag lines ever though, "The Specials, not as good as regular super heroes, but slightly better than you."

His third trick was reworking George Romero's original script for Dawn of the Dead into one of the best zombie movies of this decade. Gunn updated the setting, punched up the dialogue, and added enough extra characters to make this movie just under two hours of absolute zombie butt-kicking fun. Between this and the success of the second Scooby Doo movie, he finally got enough press with this one to convince Universal Studios that it might be a good idea to jump on board when it was time to release Slither. Which, except for a bunch of short films (that you can research on your own,) brings us up to date.

Slither is a bit intense for most folk what don't have strong stomachs, but if you have any love at all for smart, witty dialogue, actors who really shine, and a movie that really shows how much fun you can have with a b-movie setting, then Slither is definitely for you. If all this doesn't pique your interest, then go see it for Nathan Fillion. The man is an excellent actor who (if he plays his cards right) will have official leading man status in spite of himself. He plays the local sheriff who becomes the last best line of defense against this hostile alien takeover, and he plays the part extremely well. Michael Rooker is in rare form as the first to be infected by the alien slime worms, and even Elizabeth Banks (whom some of you might recognize as Betty Brant from the Spider-Man films) shows her true potential as a b-movie scream queen. (A dubious honor to be sure, but an honor none the less.)

If you missed Slither in the theaters, and most of you probably did, it's okay. The DVD is scheduled for release shortly, and according to James Gunn's Website it looks to be packed full of extra stuff, which is always a good thing.

One last thing for all you Serenity and Firefly fans. There is a great reference to the grenade gag in Serenity. Actually the movie is packed full of all sorts of sly nods and subtle references to the great b-movies that have come before. Nothing is over the top though, the main plot does a good enough job of that on its own.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand, as Sergio Leone Rolls Over In His Grave

2006-06-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

It was inevitable that I'd go see this movie. I've been a fan of The X-Men since 1975 when I picked up a copy of Giant Size X-Men #1. It sported a cover by the great Gil Kane and interior artwork by Dave Cockrum who I knew and liked from his run on Legion of Super Heroes. I suffered through another fifteen issues of mediocre plotting and insufferable dialogue from Chris Clairmont on the core title, until issue 108 when magic happened. For the next thirty-six issues, Marvel captured lightning in a bottle with writing by Clairmont and John Byrne, and art by Byrne and Terry Austin. That run of issues formed the gold standard by which all other X-Men books would be measured. The core creative values that these three artists expressed would be reflected many years later in the X-Men movies.

So, here we are in 2006, three decades removed from that excellent run of comics magic. In print, the only interesting thing happening with the X-Men is the new offshoot title Astonishing X-Men which is being written by Movie and TV writer Joss Wheedon with art by John Cassaday who is arguably the best artist working in comics today. The core X-Book has degenerated into a convoluted mess, and there are more peripheral titles and mini-series and one-shots than any sane person could ever hope to keep track of.

And everybody knows about the X-Men from the movies. Oddly, I'm okay with that. Marvel Comics has a long and distinguished track record of dropping the ball when it comes to cross promotion. The core X-Books are a trainwreck right now, so anyone picking up any of these series for the first time would be totally lost. And here we have X-3, The Last Stand. The newest X-Movie has taken its cues a bit too much from the X-Men comics.

All things considered, the movie isn't all that bad. It's just that it can't make up its mind whether or not it wants to be a good movie, or a cheesy action flick.

Let's start with the good. The principle actors in this move are for the most part, outstanding. It's nice to finally see Halle Berry's character get her day in the sun. Storm is a powerhouse, and an outstanding team leader, and Halle finally gets to show off some of those formidable acting chops that netted her an Oscar. James Marsden (Cyclops) gets removed from the story early on which opens up the team leader spot for Storm, and Halle works admirably well with the extra screen time. Hugh Jackman is always a joy to watch as Wolverine. He obviously loves playing the character (who wouldn't) and it shows. Patrick Stewart has little to do this time around, but he definitely does the best he can with what he has to work with. Kelsey Grammer is spot on perfect as The Beast, and Ellen Page does a fine job as the new Kitty Pryde.

The plot revolves around a "cure" that suppresses the mutant gene, effectively transforming any superpowered mutant into a normal human. It's a thinly veiled attempt to show the whole ongoing "is homosexuality curable" debate, and it works well enough. It's also a nice excuse to show the different philosophies involved with the various characters, from Storm's admonishment that, "There's nothing to cure," to Rogue's decision to actually volunteer for it.

Which leads us into the bad. The whole cure thing is funded by Worthington Industries, which brilliantly allows for the introduction of The Angel (played passably well by Ben Foster.) They set him up with a great storyline, but it soon gets tossed by the wayside in favor of an endless series of angry mutant cameos, and overbaked action sequences.

In the comics litany of The X-Men, they have always maintained an excellent rogue's gallery. It's nowhere near the legendary status of The Flash, or Batman's villains, but over the years the X-Men have collected an excellent array of bad guys. So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that once again we get to deal with Ian McKellen's Magneto as the main badness. Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, The Hellfire Club, Cassandra Nova, The Shadow King, all are missing from the movie cannon, and The Sentinels are relegated to a brief cameo appearance in a danger room session. McKellan does a great job as Magneto, but enough is enough. This movie has several scenes that undercut Magneto's character, relegating him to small and quite petty, instead of showing us that at his core, Magneto is a decent man, capable of compassion.

And finally, we have the ugly. The X-Men movies are at their best when they show us the small moments of humanity between the characters. Little touches like Wolverine turning the heat on when Rogue's hands are cold, or the exchange between Cyclops and Jean Grey that sets up the third movie. X-3 is devoid of those moments. It can take time for a stupid genitalia joke, but the moments of character have all been done away with. Zak Penn, who was one of the scribes on X-2 was paired with Simon Kinberg, who's credits include XXX: State of the Union and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and the mix is not a good one. If there was ever any trace of a heart in this script, it was exorcised in favor of big explosions and snappy, out of character quipping.

One last thing to satisfy the Mythbuster in me... I looked up the technical specs. on the Golden Gate Bridge. It's 1.7 miles long if you include the accesses (which they did in the movie) and since it's only 1.25 miles from Alcatraz Island to the mainland, the cheesiest scene in the movie is definitely possible, if you're a mutant master of magnetism.

A Small Taste Of What Happens When Someone Beats You To The Punch!

2006-05-31T23:29:00.000-07:00

The Wild is a delightfully charming fable about a father's search for his lost son. It's packed full of solid humor with plenty of multi-level comedy that works just as well for adults and children. Courtney and I went to see this the other day (I know this has been out for awhile, but we live in Montana. Gimme a break, sheesh.)and we had a ball.

While we both enjoyed the movie, there was one small problem. The film bears a disturbing similarity to Madagascar, which came out from Dreamworks several months earlier. I was a bit upset about this going in, but the movie was so good I got over it. While we were walking out of the theater, my wife summed up what we were both thinking perfectly when she pointed out what the filmmakers were actually doing. "This movie was a big fuck you to the makers of Madagascar." Sometimes I think there's a wizened Buddhist sage trapped within that beautiful 5'2" frame.

Where Madagascar was a moebius strip of shallow empty-headed sight gags, muddy, boring animation and worst of all David *shudder* Schwimmer, The Wild has heart, brains, and all sorts of courage. It's a strong parable about growing up, and what happens to a son when he finally realizes that his father really doesn't have all the answers. The animation is stellar, rife with lovingly crafted detail. The actors obviously had a great time working on this picture, with stand out performances by Kiefer Sutherland as the head lion and father in question, William Shatner as the wierdest cartoon bad guy ever, and the always hilarious Eddie Izzard as a koala... with a British accent? Eh, close enough for American ears.

When we got home, I did a little research and found out that The Wild was actually a script long before Madagascar ever came into being. In fact, further digging around on my part revealed that The Wild even started production well before Madagascar, but its release was pushed back by Disney when the Dreamworks cartoon crap factory (Shreck and especially Shreck 2 excepted) rushed Madagascar through production and beat them to the punch. It shows. For those of you who are fascinated by automobile accidents and the occasional train wreck, log on to The Internet Movie Database and check out the forum posts under The Wild.

Internet firestorms aside, The Wild is a far superior movie. Yes, the basic plotlines are similar, but the scriptwriting, the voice acting, and the luscious animation, all blow Madagascar to smithereens.

So, go check it out. You'll probably be able to rent it at the very least by the time you read this. The Wild is fun, funny, and appropriate for all ages, though it might be a little intense in places for younger kids. It's okay though, I know you're all good parents who would never ignore what their children are watching. Right?

Grabbing All The Power You Can, While You Can

2006-05-17T20:15:00.000-07:00

Since I promised you all more snark...

See, no matter how badly the United States government performs, In four years time... maybe eight if we're really unlucky, the balance of power will shift. We'll have a new leader, new policies, new priorities. Every four years we upset our leadership without firing a shot. That is why The United States is the greatest country on the planet. But...

What happens when the current leader decides he wants more than what we gave him when we elected him? What happens when he decides to start looking out for his own best interests and not ours like he's supposed to?

So, there's quite a few things that are bothering me about this president, (and I do mean above and beyond the way he was elected into office this term.) I'd heard rumours that President Bush has a nasty habit of attaching signing statements to legislation he's passed, little McNuggets of presidential wisdom that state in no uncertain terms his interpretation of the new law. He's certainly not the first president to do this, but...

There's a really frightening article from the Boston Globe here that details President Bush's penchant for interperative law. The scariest part of this article is the dastardly amount of times he states that the law in question applies to everyone but him.

President Bush has set himself up as the ultimate interpreter of the U.S. Constitution. He has taken upon the office of the Presidency, the bailiwick that that very same constitution reserves for the U.S. Judicial System. Every schoolchild in the U.S.'s poorly funded educational system knows how the three branches of government are divided and what the job of each branch entails. (Okay, you're right, stop laughing so hard. You'll start breaking furniture.)

Just so we're all clear here (because obviously our current President isn't) I'll break it down for everybody. The legislative branch of our government which consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives, makes the laws. The executive branch which consists of the president, the vice president, and the presidential cabinet are there to enforce the laws. The judicial branch which is made up of the federal courts system, including the U.S. Supreme Court, are there to interpret the laws. It's the job of the judicial system to determine whether or not a law works within the framework of our constitution. It's the job of our judicial system to decide to whom the law applies, not the President's.

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving congress no chance to override his judgements. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

This is a president who feels it's necessary to use sychophantic duplicity to work around laws crafted by a congress that is currently controlled by his own party.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files "signing statements," official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law.

All of these signing statements are available for anyone to read in the federal register. The globe article goes on to cover some of the more frightening ones.

This President obviously feels that he is above the law. With a Republican controlled congress, and a predominately conservative Supreme Court, is there no one willing to tell him no? Obviously not, because he's done this with more than 750 laws during his one and a half terms in office. With no one willing to tell him no (even the "liberal media" buried this story) shame on him, and shame on us for setting him up to be able to do this in the first place. Oh wait... that's right, we didn't. Kinda makes a good case for getting rid of that whole antiquated electoral college doesn't it.

Interim Memo 5-15-06

2006-05-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

Soooooo... Fuck Haloscan! I'm done with 'em, we're through, finished, ended, terminated with extreme prejudice. You know, people warned me about Haloscan too. All my friends said, "Dan, I know she's pretty and she seems like a nice girl, but eventually you'll turn your back on her and she'll eat all your comments and never give them back. But did I listen... noooooo. So fine, no more Haloscan. I'm back together with blogger comments, and they actually seem to have their shit together this time. We'll see. Baby steps, right? I Want My Records Back You Bitch!!!!!!

So, okay what else... anyone who bothers to peek back in my archives can see a general trend of loathing for blogging and the whole blog-o-sphere in general. I submit that this has still not dramatically changed, however, lately I've felt this bizarre craving to stay more in touch with my inner content producer. What this means for PSH? More rants... including more poppiness, more snarkiness, and more hooliganism. You'll still get periodic essays, and the movie reviews will still keep trucking along, but I feel the need to start bashing things on a much larger scale. Blame Mark Spurrier at The Great White Bear Speaks and my wife at The Daily Cat Chase , they've both been egging me on.

Just in case anybody happens to be flipping through and spots this post, here's a few new bloggers (well, new to me anyway) that I think are really cool and definitely fellow hooligans.

My new favorite cheesehead is Shawn who does the Cheese Is Moldy Milk blog here on Blogger. He's extremely intelligent, wonderfully entertaining, and a genuinely allright guy. His blog covers all sorts of topics and he has this wierd capacity to tolerate viewpoints other than his own. I'm not quite sure what this whole tolerance thing he's talking about is, but I'll look into it. In the meantime, stop by and say hi.

I honestly never thought I'd be saying this about a c... co... con *ahem* conservative blogger, but if you stop by Vintage Grass Stains you will be hailed and regailed by Miranda, who describes herself quite accurately as a Conservative South Dakotan Neo-Con. Don't hold that against her though, she's bright, witty, extremely intelligent, and she goes into any argument well prepared. She's probably a closet Libertarian.

Finally, in my ongoing quest to prove my theory that everything is better with zombies, check out Zombie-Slayer
you will be entertained. Though I'm still not convinced that he's right about Scientologists.

Anyways, keep watching... there's more posts a comin'.

A Larger Than Life Attack of Rampant Nostalgia, and the Perils of Finally Getting Your Dream Project.

2006-04-03T01:19:00.000-07:00

If I had more money than I could ever spend, I would personally bankroll the long delayed Watchmen movie. For those of you who don't read comics, The Watchmen was the seminal work of comics fiction during the Eighties. It was a fabulous, mind blowing read and something that was permanently tattooed into the grey matter of my post adolescent brain. If I had the cash, I would make it happen, If for no other reason than I think it should. So, I completely understand why Peter Jackson chose to remake King Kong. Every interview I've seen of him, he drips with nostalgic memories of the first time he went to see King Kong in the theater. He now has enough money and Hollywood political clout to do pretty much whatever he wants, so, yeah... Why not remake that one movie you always wanted to see updated with the new special effects, and modern day actors.

See, that's the thing. Lord of the Rings was something fresh and new to the big screen. Barring several miserable attempts to bring it to screen in animated form, J.R. Tolkien's life's work has defied Hollywood. Peter Jackson pulled off a hat-trick by giving us three wonderful films that not only did justice to the written work, but also made enough money to make their bankrollers happy. Unfortunately, for his follow up, he fell prey to that same overwhelming compulsion that keeps the action figure market well supplied with new victi...I mean repeat customers, nostalgia. I'm not saying that he shouldn't have, I'm just saying, "What a wasted opportunity." The man could have made any movie he wanted. I can think of a lot of stories that have been begging to come to the big screen for decades. He could have done Alfred Bester's, The Demolished Man, or The Stars My Destination. He could have made The Watchmen a reality, or dragged Will Eisner's The Spirit out of development hell.

Anything but a film that's already been remade once... badly I might add.

Well, all griping aside (yeah right) King Kong isn't too bad. The story is still pretty much, "Goofy movie director wannabe finds giant ape, with help from beautiful vapid blonde chick, he drags ape back to New York City, mayhem ensues." (Hmmm... not a bad pitch. Even came in under 25 words). The special effects are of course, the real reason to go to this film, unless of course you just really wanted to see Jack Black trying desperately to stretch his somewhat limited acting muscles.The special effects that make Kong work as a character are unprecedented. He comes off as a proud, tender, almost regal animal that shows way more humanity than any of the human stars. Adrien Brody isn't given much more to do than sleepwalk through the roll of Jack Driscoll, which he does admirably, and Naomi Watts is no Fay Wray, but she does okay. She's missing that vulnerable charm that Ms. Wray had in spades. There's a few scenes on Monster Island that definitely make this movie worth the price of admission (or worth a rent now,) but I was definitely disappointed by the whole package.

As with most Peter Jackson films, the new DVD release should be well worth buying for the extras, though I'll probably wait until around Thanksgiving to get the inevitable 7 disc box set. If you have the chance to go see this at the theater, it's worth a look, just don't go into it expecting anything more than a little over three hours worth of intense eye candy. Keep in mind the rule that all movies are better with monkeys, and try not to think about what could have been.

Harry Potter and the Joys of Adaptation

2005-11-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to start this off all chipper here, but I really did like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I didn't think I would, but I did, and I'm pretty sure I've figured out why. It's all the scriptwriter, Steven Kloves' fault, and I'm starting to fear for Order of the Phoenix, which he's not adapting.

The thing about movies that are crafted around a much beloved series of books is that rarely do they live up to expectations. Generally speaking, it doesn't matter if the movie is good, or if it holds up as entertaining. The main criteria always seems to be how close it is to the source material, and that's not fair. It's impossible to cram every ounce of detail in a 1000+ page novel into two hours of movie. The best adaptations have always been written by people who excell at editing. It's a unique skill to take a novel and pare it down into a script that flows well enough to drive the action, keep everybody entertained, and capture the salient points of the source material. Obviously, the more detailed and fully realized the novel, the harder that scriptwriter's job.

Fortunately for the Harry Potter series, Steven Kloves excells at his job. To date, he has done a masterful job of editing J.K. Rowling's work into fine movie script form. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is no exception. Yes, it's missing quite a lot of information, and Kloves takes a big risk in relying on what we already know about the Potterverse to bring in new characters, but it works. Goblet of Fire snaps along at a breakneck pace in a masterful attempt to cram as much information into two and a half hours of movie as it possibly can. The end result is that by the time you get situated with your soda and popcorn, switch seats out from in front of the nine year old brat that's kicking the back of your chair, shuffle through a half hour of badly produced commercials and mostly uninteresting previews, you find yourself getting up to leave the theater with the stunning impression that you have just been well entertained for the last few minutes. It's a shocker to find out you've been there over two hours. Any movie that can do that rates an A+ and multiple viewings in my book.

Mike Newell is a director who has always excelled at making movies that sound horrible in concept work extremely well, and I would never have thought to associate him with the Harry Potter series. His track record to date consists of an eclectic mix of non genre work including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pushing Tin, Donnie Brasco and the chick flick to end all chick flicks, Mona Lisa Smile. There's a real mad genius at work behind the scenes of the Potter franchise, and it makes me think that maybe someone like Anthony Minghella should tackel a Steven King novel or two. The combination works and works well. Newell draws outstanding performances out of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint who under a lesser director would be sleepwalking through their parts by now.

Principles aside, the secondary characters in this movie seem to be having fun too. David Tennant has a blast playing Barty Crouch Jr. and masterfully steals every scene he's in. Brendan Gleeson, the great character actor that tends to get cast in at least as many "We need someone Irish" roles as Colm Meaney, is outstanding as the new defense against the dark arts teacher Mad Eye Moody, and Ralph Finnes chews scenerey like Al Pacino on a two day crack bender, bringing exactly the type of insane, calculated menace that Lord Voldemort should have. Alan Rickman doesn't have a lot to do in this one. Snape really could have been completely written out of this movie, but we'll need him for The Order of the Phoenix. However, Rickman squeezes every ounce out of his limited screen time, and ends up presenting one of the funniest scenes in the movie.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire doesn't beat Prisoner of Azkaban for drama and sense of wonder, but it's very nearly as entertaining. You know you'll go see it anyway, so just relax and enjoy it. It's solidly entertaing, and a whole lot of fun, two and a half hours well spent.

The Unsung Hero of Genre Fiction

2005-11-18T01:22:00.000-07:00

There are few people working in the world of genre fiction in Hollywood who truly understand what they're doing. Typically a genre movie, especially a science fiction movie is pretty stupid, all things considered. Either its science is wonky, or there's no character development, or both, and it quickly degenerates into a messy spectacle of overgrown post adolescents blowing up models.The sad fact is that there is usually very little thought behind your average Sci Fi flick. The one genre that has the greatest potential to make its audience think without realizing that they're thinking, is invariably dumbed down into pre-digested crap. Mind you, I think it's important that the audience not realize they're thinking, after all, if you're too busy thinking, you just won't be able to enjoy your nastified butter-flavored slime covered popcorn, and your watered-down, mold flavored death tub of soda-esque fizzy liquid. When you want to think, you go see movies like The English Patient, or Magnolia, or Mr. Holland's Opus. You don't go to films like A.I., Minority Report, Gattaca, or Dark City. So, it's a rare and precious gem of a movie that can get its audience to think, without making them realize that they're thinking, and that's just what Joss Wheedon has done here.

Spinning out of his criminally short lived T.V. series, Firefly, Joss has created a larger than life fantasy world with a deep, well thought out backstory, and vivid, brilliantly realized characters. Admittedly, I'm biased in favor of this movie from the start, because I actually got to enjoy Firefly when it was first released to DVD, but I'm told by several people who went into Serenity cold, that it's completely enjoyable without the backstory that the T.V. series gives you. Serenity lifts the series characters into a bit more of a grand spectacle than what we saw on the small screen. The characters' backstories are truncated a bit, relationships are tweaked slightly, and Joss kills off three of the story's major characters, but its still a lot of fun.

The core story of Serenity is about the youngest character River, a brilliant teenager turned into a psychotic killing machine by the powers that be. She's set off on a rampage by a post hypnotic suggestion, that drags the Serenity crew to the edge of known space. It culminates in a toe to toe battle between the powers that be and the savage hordes they created. Serenity is a wild, fun ride with scads of interesting background story and a great central driving plot. It careens from planet to planet, and ends with a donnybrook that would make Cecil B. Demille weep. It's well worth your time to see at least once, and in the tradition of some of the best science fiction, there's so much going on in the background that it rates at least a second and third viewing.

Serenity, just like the ship that bears its name, is dirty and grimy and well lived in. The people we meet while traveling through Serenity's galaxy range from the sterile, antiseptic Star Trek worlds of the core systems, to the gritty frontier world pioneers, that have more in common with the desperados of a Sergio Leone western. This movie reflects the best and the worst of humanity in a world that has become a kaleidoscope of cultures.

Joss Wheedon, the show's writer and director is the unsung hero of the science fiction genre. He writes with an enthusiasm and a love for his material that is sadly lacking in most of today's science fiction movies. With Serenity, every ounce of this love is reflected up on the screen, from the excellence of his ensemble cast, to the gritty hyperrealism of the special effects, through all points in between. Go see Serenity, you won't be disappointed.

100 Factoids About Me!!!

2005-09-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

Being a bit of an overreactive response, and a five finger exercise in getting it out of my system.

It's no secret to my significant other or any of my friends that I kinda despise blogs and blogging in general. I don't really get in to the whole "telling people about my life" thing, nor do I really enjoy writing about politics or posting pictures, or prattling on about subjects that I don't know anything about. There are, however exceptions to every rule. The bloggers Courtney and I read on a repeating, if not always regular basis are each phenomenal in their own respects, and I have to admit, blogging is a great way to practice writing without destroying acres of prime timberland.

So anyways, I've seen a few bloggers do this meme and pin it to their sidebar, and I think this is a really good way to get to know a writer a bit better. The challenge was trying to come up with 100 interesting things about me while realizing tha fact that, just because it's about me, doesn't necessarily make it interesting. A lesson that many bloggers out there could stand to learn I think.

1. I do best on 4 to 5 hours of sleep per day.
2. My favorite movie is Citizen Kane.
3. Now thak Katie Couric is gone, I am no longer addicted to NBC's Today Show.
4. I absolutely hate to fly.
5. I've been skydiving several times.
6. I was once fired from Sub Pop records.
7. I am a total X-Box junkie.
8. I absolutely hate "reality" T.V.
9. I think that Alex Proyas and David Fincher are absolutely brilliant.
10. I am a recovering alcoholic.
11. I have a bachelors degree in English.
12. I minored in Theology.
13. One of my lifelong goals is to write and publish my own comic book.
14. My favorite writer is Harlan Ellison.
15. I play guitar, but not well.
16. I love DVDs with lots of bonus features.
17. I like graphic novels better than comics.
18. I love minicomics.
19. I hate country music.
20. I'm divorced.
21. I love toys, especially Legos and action figures.
22. Micronauts are my favorite toys.
23. One of my oldest and dearest friends is militantly gay.
24. Many years ago I gave up Rush, Van Halen, and Aerosmith for The Pixies, Radiohead, and Wilco.
25. I think that Pat Robertson is probably the Antichrist.
26. I think the new pope is a dangerous man.
27. I have a scar through the middle of my right hand.
28. I've been to every state in the U.S. except Alaska.
29. I have been swimming in the Red Sea.
30. I've been to Japan, Korea, Okinawa, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Israel, Egypt, India, Turkey, Iraq, Tibet, England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Greenland, Iceland, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Columbia, Nicaragua, Brazil, and many, many others.
31. I had a top secret security clearence for many years.
32. I was in the Air Force for six years.
33. I fought in the first Gulf War.
34. I speak pretty fluent German, though I'm rusty.
35. I have a working conversational knowledge of French and Arabic, though I'm rusty.
36. I worked on the Stealth Fighter project while it was still classified.
37. I have actually been inside Area 51.
38. I have dated a stripper...
39. That stole a lot of money from me...
40. And ended up stabbed to death outside some bar in Texas.
41. I love Rocky Road ice cream.
42. Tetras are my favorite aquarium fish.
43. My favorite web site is www.disinfo.com
44. My dream fling is Hallie Berry.
45. All of our cats are named after comic book or cartoon characters.
46. All of my favorite Aunt's cats are named after federal prisons.
47. One of my favorite girlfriends was a street musician in San Francisco.
48. I am deathly allergic to bananas.
49. I think that Gail Simone is probably the best writer working in comics today.
50. John Cassaday is definitely the best artist working in comics today.
51. I have a birthmark shaped like New Jersey on my left forearm.
52. I love making lists.
53. I am a closet poet.
54. I love my girlfriend Courtney more than anyone I have ever loved in my life.
55. I'm a sucker for 80s pop tunes.
56. I have eaten snake and chocolate covered cricket.
57. I recently discovered that I no longer despise asparagus.
58. I miss my black leather bomber jacket.
59. I hate buying new clothes.
60. I think Matthew Lesko needs a new hobby.
61. My favorite cartoon series is Underdog.
62. Followed closely by Space Ghost.
63. Followed closely by any Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny.
64. I love good coffee.
65. I hate decaff.
66. I have never been lost.
67. I love water skiing and snow skiing.
68. I'm a pretty decent ice skater.
69. I love palindromes.
70. I never feel truely comfortable unless surrounded by books.
71. I once got to drive an Army tank, but they wouldn't let me shoot the big gun.
72. I think the Mafia is preferable to open gang warfare.
73. In a perfect world I would be the new Pope...
74. Though I'm not Catholic.
75. I love cats.
76. I can ride a horse, well.
77. I've been bungie jumping twice.
78. I love independant animated short films.
79. Someday I want to go to Australia...
80. and New Zealand...
81. and Madagascar.
82. Three of my friends have comitted suicide.
83. Two of my friends have drowned.
84. One was shot by the Police.
85. One of my old girlfriends was killed by a drunk driver.
86. I am inordinately overprotective of my friends.
87. I am addicted to Diet Coke.
88. I sing in the shower.
89. Getting me to wear anything other than Jeans, T-Shirts and sneakers is like trying to give a cat a bath.
90. I can't seem to keep a pair of sneakers intact more than six months.
91. E-Books annoy the bejeesus out of me. They're just unnatural.
92. I still own the stuffed panda that I had as a child.
93. I've had seven of my permanent teeth pulled.
94. I don't have any tonsils or adenoids.
95. I am a bleeding heart liberal.
96. I think that Americans as a whole are frighteningly overreactive.
97. I am deathly afraid of loud, sudden noises, especially thunder.
98. I like Star Wars way better than Star Trek.
99. I hate fans at comic book conventions, but I don't mind fans at science fiction conventions.
100. I hate, hate, hated the Lord of the Rings books.

Cover it With Chocolate and a Miracle or Two

2005-08-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

Being a review of the movie
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

After the whole Planet of the Apes debacle, I swore to myself that I was done going to Tim Burton movies. I boycotted Big Fish when it came out, even though I like both Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney, and the story did look interesting. Fortunately, enough time had passed that when it finally came out on DVD, I caved in to the impressive media blitz that they somehow forgot to give it when it showed in theaters, I rented it, and it was really good. So, thinking maybe Tim Burton had finally learned a modicum of self restraint, I decided to give Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a chance.

This movie had a lot going against it with me. I love the original Roald Dahl story, and while I'm not a huge fan of the changes they made to the story for the original film, I am a huge fan of Gene Wilder, so I have a tendency to remember Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with a bit more fondness than it probably deserves. But, ultimately, I went, and I saw it, and I wasn't disappointed. It's quite possible that I even enjoyed it.

Sure, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has its flaws. Having one actor play all of the Oompa Loompas was a questionable move at best. (Even if it was the always excellent character actor Deep Roy.) Setting the songs from the novel to ridiculous modern bubblegum pop music was annoying, yet somehow fitting. I would gripe more about the added backstory about Willy Wonka's father, but it put Christopher Lee up on the screen, and that in and of itself earns the movie a whole lot of slack.

All in all it works as a fitting tribute to Roald Dahl's story. It adheres much more closely to the story of Charlie Bucket and his family. Freddie Highmore is appropriately precious as the superhumanly noble Charlie. The Bucket family gets a lot more screen time this time around. The Chocolate Factory is appropriately two parts charming, one part creepy, likewise Willy Wonka. Johnny Depp plays him marvelously well, and though I'd still rather see Alan Cummings in the role, (If you doubt me, check him out in Spy Kids... tell me he's not a perfect Willy Wonka.) Depp still pulls this off with charm, grace, and just a little bit of subdermal menace.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a kalideoscope of sound, light, and colors. Its' most intense scene is a conglomeration of burning dolls, but any kid who's had to suffer through the It's a Small World ride at Disneyland will completely understand, and they do recieve medical attention, so it's all good. The movie is appropriate for all ages, just as it should be. It has just the right amount of tolerable terror to keep any child enthralled. I didn't fidgett once. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory definitely marks a return to form for Tim Burton. It recaptures some of the magic that he'd lost in recent years, and serves up a scrumpdillyumptious spritzer of restrained manic energy, bottled up and served with sugar and fizz.

Remix, Rinse, Repeat!

2005-07-08T23:51:00.000-07:00

Don Simpson, the singular talent behind the non-pariel Megaton Man, and the outstanding, Bizarre Heroes comics, has his own blog here on Blogger. Recently, he wrote an essay reviling the paper tiger state of creators' rights, currently running rampant through the comic book industry, and calling the fans out for perpetuating a vicious buying cycle of pre-digested, regurgitated crap. It's a great essay by one of the most enduring independent creators in the industry, and it's definitely worth a read, if for no other reason than to see the bitter resolve that can fester from a lifetime spent railing against the large comics publishing houses.

If you are going to write for comics today, there are three publishers that make up the majority of the market. From a purely economic standard, everything else is small change. The big three: Marvel, D.C., and Image, have a bad set of business practices that have been beaten into creators since the beginning of the art form, called work for hire. A work made for hire is any work that becomes the property of the employer when it is specially ordered or commissioned from one or more of their employees. It's generally used to simplify copyright law concerning technical manuals, user guides, and things that are compiled by a group, like computer programs. The problem is that in the case of comic books, they really don't fall into the group created category. They are in fact cut whole cloth from the imaginations of two creators, a writer, and an artist.

Many of the original writers and artists who created the works we all know and love today were never told they were making work for hire product. They were, for the most part, depression era teenagers that were duped by the publishers into signing their creations away for pennies per page, sometimes not even receiving credit for what they had created. Many of the artists were never given back their original artwork, and nobody but the company ever made any money from licensing or reprints.

Today, creators have made some inroads against the work for hire mentality, largely due to the efforts of stalwart creators like Don Simpson. Some creators are now paid a reprint royalty, and all of the big three publishers have created umbrella imprints with provisions for creator owned properties. However, the damage was done a long time ago. Superman is wholly owned by AOL/Time Warner, and its subsidiary D.C. Comics, not Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, the two men who created him. Spider-Man is owned by Marvel Comics Inc., not by his creators, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

Stan Lee recently won a court case against Marvel Comics that entitled him to an undisclosed slice of the multi-million dollar Spider-Man franchise pie. Good on ya' Stan, but too little to late Marvel. Still and all, Marvel's settlement with Stan was a good bit of P.R. spin for a company that used to print its work for hire contracts on the back of its payroll checks.

Today, any writer or artist who wants to play with icons like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Captain America, or the X-Men will find himself generating revenue for the corporation, while the pockets of the original creators remain empty. Work made for hire that allows corporations the ownership of what is clearly the intellectual property of these creators is underhanded at best, and downright criminal at its worst.

The side effect of having corporate control over the most popular and instantly recognizable comic book heroes is that it has bred a culture of re-interpretation, and recycling. If the creators of an intellectual property like The Fantastic Four actually live long enough, they will get to see their ideas periodically redesigned by different artists, and re-interpreted by different writers. For comic books, this actually works, to a point. Just like with an original work, sometimes creative teams succeed, and sometimes they don't.

This brings me back around to Don Simpson's essay, Counterfeit Comics. In it, he proposes the thesis that, "any [comic] title produced by anyone other than the strip's original creator is counterfeit. "He goes on further to state that, "Fans have actually been conditioned to be intrigued by the announcement of new creative line-ups, new storyline tangents, renumbered series, etc."My problem with this isn't necessarily the message. However, it's more than a little disingenuous to single out the comic book industry and comics fandom as a whole for this, especially when his initial analogy is the music industry, which is just as guilty as the comic book publishers of stepping all over creator's rights.

The most galling thing about this essay, though, is that Simpson holds up music fans as a savvier buying public. He continues, "...the music industry (who occasionally experiments with things like The New Monkees and Broadway shows of old rock albums, but by an (sic.) large respects the integrity of their product and the intelligence of consumers.)"

This is the industry that created the terms remix and music sampling. The same industry that constantly buries the names of its songwriters in tiny, often hard to read liner notes, and promotes name branding and packaging above talent. This industry regularly and quite successfully dupes its audience into believing that talentless drudges like Celine Dion, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, and Vanilla Ice are artists, worthy of their money and attention. This industry regularly allows the re-interpretation and recycling of music in the form of the cover song.

Even Simpson's initial analogy doesn't hold water. The Beatles had ten albums under their fab belts before they finally released one that didn't contain music written by someone other than John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Cover tunes are a regurgitated staple to music fans. Case in point, The Ataris. This band has been around since the early 90s, but they didn't actually gain any sort of popular acceptance until they covered Don Henley's ode to mid 80s melancholia, Boys of Summer. The music industry is rife with this type of regurgitation. Countless bands made it by recycling old standbys.

Songwriters are as abused by the work for hire system as comics writers and artists, and the music buying public is more than willing to shell out good money after bad for prefabricated, unoriginal crap. I'm not saying comics fans are much better. After all, we did make superstars out of Joe Staton, Carmine Infantino, and Rob Liefeld, not to mention the incomprehensible love affair with Chris Clairmont.

However, having said all that, I will submit that re-interpretation is not always a bad thing. Henry Rollins and Bad Brains cover of The MC5's Kick Out The Jams, rocks way beyond the reach of the original. Concrete Blonde's moody, black within black version of Wave of Mutilation is far superior to the original Pixies tune (for me, that's blasphemy), and if you've never heard Shakira's cover of Back in Black or No Doubt's SKAed up version of Come on Eileen, you're really missing out.

My point here is that, to dismiss any re-interpretation or re-working as invalid because it wasn't done by the original creators is just ludicrous, especially with comics. This statement dismisses Alan Moore and Rick Veitch's Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, not to mention Moore and Gaiman's remake of Miracleman. It invalidates large portions of the careers of Frank Miller, Warren Ellis, Steven Grant, Kurt Busiek, George Perez, Jim Lee, Neil Adams, and Alex Ross.

The message is sound. Creators should strive for originality in everything they do, but they should also feel free to build on what other creators have left behind. I'll stop short of quoting Ecclesiastes here. Suffice it to say that there are very few original ideas left in this world. The act of creation is tantamount to beating dead men at their own game. It's terribly naive to think that one mass market is any more perceptive than another. The buying public is the buying public, no matter what, and big corporations will always go out of their way to leech away the buyers' money. The trick is cutting through the dross to get to the good stuff. Originality is in the eye of the beholder.

Director's Commentary - LWM Review

2005-07-06T19:50:00.000-07:00

This essay was another SAVANT child. It's a bit dated now, but it suddenly has a strange new relevance. A week or so ago, Paul Sizer contacted me and asked if I would be a beta reader for his new graphic novel Moped Army. Of course I said yes, and though I can't tell you all about it yet, I will say that anyone who buys this is in for a treat.

Paul now has his own publishing imprint called Cafe Digital, and you can get the Little White Mouse collections from there. He will also be soliciting them through Diamond Distributing (Hmmmm... maybe I'd better get him together with Khepri.com ), so your local comics store might carry them too. If they're savvy that is.

Paul is one of the coolest guys on the planet, and his work is criminally overlooked by comics readers. Little White Mouse is suitable for all ages, and it's a fantastic read. Buy yourself an early Christmas present. Hell, buy your best friend one too. They'll thank you for it, trust me.

Riding the stars with the Little White Mouse

2005-07-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

Little White Mouse- Perfect Collection 1&2
By Paul Sizer
$14.95 Blue Line Pro Comics

Little White Mouse is the best comic book you're not reading. It's your fault Paul Sizer has to sling hash at the local McPerkins, (the midnight shift t... for shame you people.) And it's your fault I can't find this book on the rack at my local comic shop. Every month I have to pour over every page of until my eyes bleed, in the futile hope that I'll catch this little mag before it disappears into the miasma of reorder hell. It sucks trying to track this comic down on a monthly basis. It seems nobody but me (and possibly the gals over at Sequential Tart) reads the damned thing, and worse, it has a microscopic publisher better suited to churning out Bristol board pages and sketchpads than putting out a regular comic book.

Fortunately for all of us, somebody at thought it might be a good idea to let Paul Sizer work his magic on two of the best graphic collections to grace the comics reading public since Bendis' last spined edition of Powers. Not only that, but (gasp) they're keeping it in print. Now you have no excuse. Go out and buy this comic! Buy two and give one to your indigent friend who always borrows your mags, but never seems to have enough money to get his own. Read this comic. It will clear up your acne, babes will suddenly find you interesting, and people will start taking you seriously. Well, probably not, but you'll get a damned fine read out of the deal. And your indigent friend will definitely be interested enough to pick up the next collection for himself. Though he probably won't get one for you.

I discovered Paul Sizer and his creation Loo (the title character) at the 2001 Wizard Convention in Chicago. He was crammed into the artists' ghetto at the back of the Con with the other forgotten creators. You've seen them, the artists and writers published by small independent companies (and the even lower creatures who eke out their meager existence self publishing.) They're the ones who stare at you with haunted eyes as you breeze by them in your blissful shopping frenzy. If you look at them you'll see faces painted with equal parts quiet desperation and hope (It helps if you wear sunglasses and look down as you pass their tables.) Blue Line Pro had just collected his first Little White Mouse mini series into their inaugural Perfect Collection, and they'd obviously spent enough money on the man to set him up with a giant velveteen display screen. Nobody else had a divider that big, so it was enough to draw me in.

On approach, I was met by an oversized poster of a little Japanese girl. I could tell she was Japanese by her huge wide eyes and her spiky black hair haphazardly tucked through a backwards baseball cap. (Ah, the benefits of a classic Manga education.) Standing there, looking up at her, three things struck me about this girl. First, she was irreverently chewing bubble gum, (cheeky, but not necessarily off-putting) second, she had a prominent band-aid on her right forearm, and finally, she was cocked, locked, and loaded with a classic science fiction BFG. (That's Big Fucking Gun for those of you who still retain luddite tendencies.) Even though we hadn't yet been properly introduced, I just knew this girl was going to be trouble.

I talked to Mr. Sizer for a bit, asking him the usual ignorant fanboy convention questions; "Who are you?", "What is this Mouse thing?", "What's so special about you that you rate this massive display screen when Carla Speed McNeil is over there making due with a lousy cork board?" He answered me politely, with an air of humility that I'd rarely seen in an artist who was obviously so talented. He gave me a brief outline of Little White Mouse and when I asked to see a copy, he wearily explained that his publisher had dropped the ball and hadn't yet brought the books in from the vans, so he really didn't have anything other than the promo art to show me. I was just about to move on when he did the weirdest thing. He stood up, shook my hand, and thanked me for stopping by his booth.

When I snapped out of the shock trauma of receiving genuine human contact within a feeding frenzy of corporate shilling and pushy consumers, it was the next day, and I was once again standing in front of the Blue Line Pro booth. I shelled out my fifteen bucks for the graphic novel to one of the BLP guys, and was about to grab one off the table, when Mr. Sizer twisted himself free from a group of chatty fans and personally delivered my book. I thanked him and moved on, not wanting to suck up any more of his time than I already had. The day after the con, I opened up Little White Mouse for the first time. Not only had Paul Sizer handed me a head sketch of Loo with the words "thanks Dan" scrawled under his signature, but he'd also given me one of the best graphic stories I'd ever read.

Sizer works magic with his prodigious array of penciling and inking skills, taking full advantage of the book's black and white format. From cover to closing, Little White Mouse looks like something laid out by a graphic design major with a penchant for breaking the bell curve. He uses broken panel borders to convey heightened emotion, smaller panels to speed up action, larger panels and splashes to slow down and freeze time. The Fever Dream section of the second collection particularly stands out as he uses a comical Manga format (a la Ben Dunn) cut with his own drawing style to highlight the difference between dream and reality. He takes a minimalist approach to backgrounds which serves to focus your attention on the characters and the story they are telling. Sizer's art style is unique, blending Geof Darrow's exacting line work with Masamune Shirow's sense of layout and design. The result is a melding of Japanese and American graphic sensibilities that is a delight to the eyes

The artwork is amazing, but what makes Little White Mouse great is its narrative. Like the first line of any good story, the art is the "hook" that draws you in, but it's the story's job to keep you there, and this tale will keep you turning pages well past your bedtime. Sizer takes one of the most overused tropes in science fiction, Robinson Crusoe in space", filters it through the eyes of an impossibly brilliant teenage girl, and succeeds in telling a tale that is unique in its vision and well stocked with vibrant, interesting characters.

The primary narrative is told by Loo Th'eng, affectionately nicknamed Little White Mouse by her grandfather (hence the title.) She and her sister escape from a transport ship shortly before it explodes, only to crash land on a mysteriously deserted mining asteroid. The station is still operating under the control of the central computer system which doesn't seem to realize that its human crew is dead. Loo's sister is killed on impact, leaving her stranded and alone. Her basic needs of food and shelter are provided, and Loo soon realizes that there may be hope of resurrecting her sister into a robot body from scraps of her personality that were imprinted onto the main hard drive of her shuttle's wrecked computer. It's a Herculean task that becomes an obsession for Loo that often overrides her driving need to escape her situation.

Loo's already been aboard the asteroid for a month as we pick up the story. Her only companions are two robots programmed to serve the station's long dead human crew, the ghost of one of the station's engineers, and her ever present journal. The journal serves as a convenient flashback device wherein we are introduced to Loo's family, and the circumstances which led up to her current situation. It quickly becomes apparent that the journal is Loo's main touchstone to sanity in the face of her overwhelming isolation. The story continues as Loo fills up her days by matching wits with the station's main computer which sees her as a disruptive threat as she goes about scrounging desperately needed parts from the station to rebuild her sister.

Sizer does a masterful job of thrusting us into the role of voyeur as he makes us privy to all the inner workings of his characters. At its core, Little White Mouse is a story about desperation and loneliness, and how we as human beings deal with those two personal demons. It is a tale filled with ingenuity, personal courage, and most of all hope. It's pretty much the entire human equation wrapped up in just over 200 pages of science fiction trappings. It's pure magic. Just read it, you'll love it.

The Little White Mouse Perfect Collections 1 and 2 are both currently available directly from Blue Line Pro Press, and every three months or so Previews solicits them again, so your local comic shop should be able to get them for you. It's well worth the hunt. The story is the showpiece, but these two books are also packed full of extra goodies. They have production sketches, fan art by other pros savvy enough to follow Sizer's work (including Geof Darrow), and promo artwork, all in glorious black and white.
Find these graphic gems and buy them. Paul Sizer is a genius and his work is criminally overlooked. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.

Director's Commentary - The Star Wars Essay

2005-06-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

While it's true that my Courtney is an evil taskmistress, it's also true that she's got a soft streak. Sometimes she'll take pity on me and let me slide. Case in point, my review for Star Wars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith.

The deal was, one review for each movie we go to, and I have to actually post the review before we go see another one. After reading a literal googleplex of blog reviews of the thing, I got kind of disenchanted with adding another post-it to the Star Wars pile. So, I begged and pleaded, but it really wasn't necessary. She let me off the hook in trade for a short jog down memory lane.

I know Star Wars will never truly go away, and I know the second trilogy is just as important to a whole new generation of kids. But it sure seems like the passing of an era.

The End of the Shaping of Dreams

2005-06-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

Being nothing even close to a review of the movie
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

I was seven years old when Star Wars came to the Fox Multiplex in Great Falls Montana. It debuted there on a Friday, and that was our family movie night. The evening in question will always be transcendent in my memory, but not for the obvious reason. For the first time ever, my little brother and I were turned loose on our own to go see a movie. We got to see Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo all by ourselves while Mom and Dad went to see an R rated feature we had never heard anything about. It was some space movie called Star Wars and Dad, being a longtime Star Trek and Twilight Zone fan, wanted to check it out. Back in the day you didn't usually take your five and seven year olds to an R rated movie. It just wasn't done.

I can still remember the look on my parents faces as they shuffled out of the crowded movie theater. Years later while serving in the Air Force during Operation Desert Storm, I would become intimately familiar with the term "shock and awe." We used it to describe the affect an initial bomb strike has on the populace of the designated city. That was what I saw on the faces of my parents that evening as they walked out of Star Wars for the first time... shock and awe. They said three words to us that night, "We're going again!" and after a quick stop to get tickets and snacks, we were seated into the second half of an impromptu double feature.

We went the next day too, twice. And the next day. Then twice the following weekend. We saw Star Wars about eight times during its first release, and probably ten times the following year when it was re-released. We had never seen anything like it. Star Wars was unique in its presentation, and pure in its vision. It changed everything about how films are made, how they're distributed, and how they're marketed.

It changed me too. Star Wars altered the course of my life by opening me up to the possibilities that the future could bring. I became a futurist, and a science fiction fan as a direct result of my initial exposure to Star Wars. For the past twenty-eight years, Star Wars has been an everpresent force in my life.

With the successive release of each new movie, George Lucas has built his movie franchise into an international pop culture treasure. The relative merits of the individual movies have been hotly debated over the years. While it's true that I have my favorites, just like everyone else, as a whole I love them all. I have, ever since the day that seven year old kid first stumbled out of the darkened theater, eyes full of shock and awe, with only one phrase on his lips and heart, "Let's go see that again!"

Now, twenty-eight years later, the seven year old kid is faced with the prospect that there won't be any new Star Wars movies. I think I'm okay with that, but it's heartbreaking in a way. I think this finally hit home for me during the scene in Revenge of the Sith where Anakin finally makes that last heart-rending decision to fully commit to the dark side of the force. I had tears in my eyes during that scene because I knew deep down that the Star Wars Saga that I grew up with was going away forever. From now on it will be transmogrified from a larger than life communal experience, to a mere nostalgia trip that we get to watch whenever we want on T.V. While as an adult I understand completely that George Lucas wants to move on to other things, but the seven year old kid in me feels like he's lost his best friend, his puppy, and his favorite toy, all on the same day.

So, here's to George Lucas, who gave us a lifetime of light and magic. Here's to the cast of the entire Star Wars Saga, the large group of friends that have been with us most of our lives to entertain and comfort us. Here's to the future and the infinite possibilities that it brings.

And as far as our collective inner seven year olds go, they're young. They'll get over it I suspect... in time.

D. T. 's Top 25 Horror/Monster Movies... and again, why.

2005-06-13T17:40:00.000-07:00

I was sitting here thinking that I hadn't posted to this thing in a while. So in a half-assed attempt to keep up some fresh content I give you my top 25 horror/monster movies. There really are a few posts in the works; one on why I hate blog memes, one on disinfo.com... and my long delayed review of Revenge of the Sith. They're coming.

Look at it this way, at least I haven't resorted to putting up my poetry...yet. :)

25. Videodrome David Cronenberg's very first mind scrambler, and a casting coup with Deborah Harry and James Woods in the lead roles. This movie is scary and just too weird. Do not watch this while high.

24. Lair of the White Worm Like all Ken Russell films it has a tendency to go for the gross-out, but it's made that much more palatable by his excellent direction, and his superb taste in cinematographers, the incomparable Dick Bush.

23. Innocent Blood Not the best horror movie John Landis ever turned out, but it rates right up there. Anne Parillaud, sexiest... vampire... ever.

22. Halloween III Season of the Witch I don't care what anybody says about this movie, I thought it was brilliant. It didn't belong anywhere near the Halloween franchise, but it was undeniably scary and good.

21. Bram Stoker's Dracula I disliked this movie until I bought the thing on DVD and gave it a really close look. It has so much background detail that it's almost overwhelming. Francis Ford Coppola does things with shadows and light in this movie that defy imagination.

20. Hellraiser This film is a sensual and frightening study of obsession, and it's just grand. Clive Barker has yet to write a story that translates well to the screen, but this one comes closest. Doug Bradley carries this movie with the scariest performance of his career.

19. The People Under the Stairs The best haunted house movie ever made without a haunted house. It's a funny and brilliant story, and Wes Craven pulls some outstanding performances out of everyone involved.

18. Dracula In 1931, Tod Browning created a 75 minute masterpiece, and star Bela Lugosi found the role of his lifetime. It's creepy and excellent, and Lugosi can chew scenery with the best of them.

17. Night of the Living Dead George A. Romero's zombie tour-de-force. This movie is a no budget classic. It's claustrophobic and relentless, and it still gives me the creeps to this day.

16. The Mummy The year after Tod Browning came out with Dracula, his cinematographer Karl Freund, directed The Mummy for Universal Studios. Who knew he'd turn out a cinematic masterpiece.

15. Poltergeist Even though it sported the most obnoxious tag line ever (and arguably one of the most memorable), Tobe Hooper created a scary fright fest, while persevering through rumors of producer Steven Spielberg having completed most of the direction. I don't buy it. The camera work and the actors performances don't feel like a Spielberg film.

14. The Amityville Horror Bar none, the most frightening haunted house movie ever made. Disregard the silly notion that it's "based on a true story." (I've been to the house, it's so not.) It's just a plain good story.

13. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tobe Hooper's second foray into moviemaking. With a story based very loosely on the Ed Gein murders, and a tweaked out William Shatner Halloween mask, Hooper created the slasher film sub genre.

12. Halloween If Tobe Hooper created the slasher film, John Carpenter certainly refined it with this movie. Sleek and eerie, Halloween is edge-of-your-seat tense. Jamie Lee Curtis is stellar as the beleaguered Laurie.

11. King Kong Forget the stupid 1976 remake, the original 1933 Kong is the one to watch. The biggest and best monkey of them all.

10. An American Werewolf in London This was the first John Landis movie I ever went to at the theater, and what an introduction. This movie is by turns funny and horrific, and the combination makes this the best werewolf movie ever made. That and Rob Bottin's groundbreaking special effects work.

9. The Scream Trilogy These three movies stand as the current pinnacle of both Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's careers. A set of brilliantly written films that stand the slasher film on it's ear. All three films are must-sees for any fan of the horror film genre.

8. A Nightmare on Elm Street Here's Wes Craven again giving us the only movie that still occasionally gives me nightmares. The Scream Trilogy is technically better, but I like this one best, because of the dead on killer, way over the top performance by star Robert Englund.

7. Phantasm What can I say. There's just something about a movie set in a morturary, and starring a little flying spiky ball that appeals to me. There's really no stand out performances here. The acting is universally bad, and so is the directing, but the cinematography is pretty, it's fast paced, and a whole lot of fun. And fun is what it's all about.

6. Dawn of the Dead I know, heresy right? No way. This version blows the socks off George A. Romero's 1978 original. Team Troma alum, James Gunn (The man responsible for introducing Tromeo and Juliet to thousands of unsuspecting Shakespeare fans), and first time director Zack Snyder, crafted a labor of love with this movie. Ving Rhames and Mekhi Phifer are the standouts here, though props should be given to Inna Korobkina for going along with the zombie baby birthing scene.

5. The Creature From the Black Lagoon I have a soft spot for gill men and evil sea creatures. With one exception, this is the best of the best. I love this movie for no other reason.

4. The Exorcist The most flat-out terrifying movie ever made. It messed me up as a kid, and I still get the uncontrollable shivers every time I see it. I still can't look at Linda Blair without seeing Regan's full on possessed face superimposed over the top of it. *brrrrrrrr* Let's move on.

3. Underworld Kate Beckinsale as a killer uber vampire in a world where Werewolves and Vampires are locked in an eternal struggle. The visuals and special effects in this movie are just phenomenal, and the story is mythic.

2. The Bride of Frankenstein There are few horror fans familiar with the works of James Whale that would argue that this film is not his masterpiece. It was the first horror movie I ever saw, and I will always love it. It's a well acted, brilliantly directed, love story wrapped up in a classic horror narrative.

1. Jaws I will always consider this the best horror film ever made. This movie is groundbreaking on so many levels, and a tribute to what a brilliant filmmaker can do when he's hemmed in by production problems and forced to improvise on the fly. Jaws remains one of the few movies that I consider a masterpiece, and it's definitely the best of its genre.

D.T.'s 25 Favorite Science Fiction/Fantasy Films... and why.

2005-05-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

Greg and Bill over at SciFiDaily have inspired me to make a list, and I love making lists. So, without further hooplah, here's my 25 favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy films (in order even) and a bit of why.

25. The Matrix Trilogy I love it when movies show me things I've never seen before. Even though the movies are derivative, liberally borrowed from the works of Harlan Ellison, William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, pick your cyberpunk author, the trick with any derivative work is to become something more than the sum total of its parts. When you add in the stunning visuals, the groundbreaking camera work, and the jaw dropping special effects, you get something really special.

24. The Back to the Future Trilogy I had absolutely no interest in this movie when it came out, but I ended up going to see it anyway because my girlfriend at the time thought Michael J. Fox was, "just so hot." Cut to several years later, and Robert Zemeckis had just finished filming the two sequals back to back, something unprecedented in Hollywood. With the added information from BTTF II and III, a convoluted mess of a plot becomes something intriguing, and fairly unique.

23. Mad Max 2 The Road Warrior Easily my favorite of the Mad Max Trilogy, and the first one I saw. Back before Mel Gibson got all pretentious, he was actually an actor that gave his all to a part. This was the first time I began to notice acting as a craft. I'd already read Along the Scenic Route by Harlan Ellison by then, and I wasn't terribly offended by the fact that they borrowed liberally from that story, which says something about its quality. I still wish H.E. had gotten some sort of nod though.

22. The Fifth Element Luc Besson's unique vision of the future was a study in set dressing and not so subtle social commentary. If I hadn't been a bit older when I first saw this movie, I doubt I would have liked it as much as I did. Everything about this future is a logical projection of modern society from the bizarre clothing, to the way media has been reduced to rapid fire sound bites, to the fact that big corporations dominate everything. It succeeds on so many levels for me, that I doubt I'll ever get tired of watching it.

21. Strange Days Oh what wonders we could have had if Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron had stayed together. This movie gave me hope that William Gibson's Neuromancer might one day make it to the big screen. And, you know seeing Angela Bassett running around in skin tight leather didn't hurt any either.

20. Legend Ridley Scott did for fantasy what he did for science fiction with Alien and Blade Runner (No hyperlinks, they're both on the list.) He raised the bar by ramping up production values, and adding his unique camera perspective. Legend still stands out as the only movie where I didn't find Tom Cruise utterly offensive. This movie has everything I could ever ask from a fantasy film, without the benefit of CGI.

19. Kaiju soshingeki Or as I first saw it in the US, Destroy All Monsters. This was supposed to be the end of the Godzilla series, and it was certainly the end of the good ones. As a lifelong Godzilla fan, Destroy All Monsters had all my favorite giant monsters in one place, stomping the bejeebus out of poor Tokyo. I couldn't ask for better.

18. Time After Time Yeah, I know the script was terrible, but I still adore the idea of H.G. Wells using the Argo to chase Jack The Ripper through time. This was the first movie where I'd seen Malcom McDowell play a good guy, and David Warner was inspired as Jack. These actors chew scenery better than Al Pachino coming off a five day crack bender, and whoever had the brilliant idea to pair them was either certifiable, or a genius.

17. Brazil If Terry Gilliam isn't the Orson Welles of our generation, I don't know who is. From his stubborn ability to tank a movie before he'll play ball with the studios, to his unparalleled screen vision when he does complete a movie, Terry will never have a massive catalog of films, but what he does have will always be high quality. Brazil was breathtaking and heartbreaking all in the same breath.

16. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy I've never made it a secret that I absolutely loathe the books. I appreciate the fact that they were groundbreaking, and scholarly, and that they legitamized the genre, blah, blah, blah... but they were boring, dry, and way too pretentious. The movies, however, were anything but. It seems that all I needed to make me actually like the Lord of the Rings story were lush visuals, and the excision of a lot of extraneous crap.

15. Spider Man2 Sam Raimi made the perfect comic book to film adaptation and I will always love him for that. By the time Spider Man 2 came out, I had finally let go of my "James Cameron or nobody" stigma with these films, and I was actually able to enjoy myself.

14. Aliens The first James Cameron film I ever saw was Piranah 2 The Spawning, and I've been hooked ever since. For me, Aliens was the epitome of action adventure films, and it (and Die Hard) are the two standards by which I hold all others.

13. La Cite des Enfants Perdus I know artists have an innate need to explore lots of genres, but I really wish that Jean-Piere Jeunet would make a straight up action adventure Sci Fi flick. I think it'd be mind blowing. Maybe something like Alan Moore's Halo Jones story. Anyway, this movie makes the list for the Jeunet visuals, the creepy/cool story, and of course Ron Perlman.

12. The Incredibles In my opinion, Brad Bird has achieved the current pinnacle of animated films. This is the best original superhero fantasy story on film to date.

11. Jurassic Park The most realistic dinosaurs ever. I still jump out of my seat at the velociraptor jump scene.

10. Superman This movie really did make me believe a man could fly. So much so that I immediately went out, tied a bath towel around my neck and jumpped off the roof of our trailer house. Didn't even break anything, but I didn't to it again. Though it was a lot of fun when I convinced my little brother to try it. We won't go into what happened to him.

9. Big Trouble In Little China Don't get me wrong, I love Escape From New York but for sheer joy of watching a movie, I'll go for Big Trouble any day. I totally wanted to be Jack Burton when I grew up. Then I grew up and realized that I actually wanted to be Kurt Russel. (You know minus the embarassing Disney Kid past) And I still think Kim Cattrall was a waaaaaay better Savik, (oh sorry, wrong movie.)

8. Wo Hu Cang Long Or Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon if you prefer. One of the prettiest fantasy movies ever made, and probably the closest thing to a blockbuster Ninja action flick that I'll ever get. *sigh*

7. The Valley of Gwangi What can I say. I love Dinosaurs, I love cowboys. I love this movie. It has been and always will be one of my favorites, and it's resisted the Hollywood remake bug for a good long time now. Surprising, considering how many best and favorites lists this movie inhabits.

6. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai A lot of my friends revile this movie because it's a direct riff on Doc Savage. I love the Doc Savage novels, and I've always thought of Bucckaroo as a modern updating. It's amazing to me how many actors in this movie actually went on to have decent careers.

5. Dark City Alex Proyas just wowed me with cool noir visuals and his script that combines the best tropes from hardboiled detective fiction, wierd science fiction, and outright horror. Depending on my mood or what I've watched most recently, this movie sometimes rates higher. But it will always be one of my favorites.

4. The Thief of Bagdad This one has my vote for best fantasy movie of all time. It always makes my top 10 best films ever made. The movie is a true delight to the senses every step of the way. The Douglas Fairbanks version can go take a flying carpet ride. For my money give me the Sabu version any day.

3. Alien 'In space, no one can hear you scream,' still send chills down my spine. I've loved this movie since I first saw it in the theater in 1979 and to this day, I still get facehugger nightmares. Ridley Scott was going to be the John Ford of Science Fiction, what happened?

2. Blade Runner 'Heem say you Brade Runnah. You go weed heem.' and pick your Roy Batty line, are still the most quoted movie lines around my group of indigent friends. It's too bad that Rutger Hauer decided that Marlon Brando's career was a good path to follow. Also too bad that Ridley Scott has stopped directing science fiction.

1. The Classic Star Wars Trilogy Don't get me wrong, even though they didn't make my top 25, I love the second trilogy too, especially Revenge of the Sith, but I was 7 years old when I first saw Star Wars, the perfect age to see it. Everytime I hear the John Williams signature and see those words 'A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...' that seven year old kid in me comes back and sits down for a couple hours to watch his favorite movie. I have so many good memories associated with the Star Wars films. I think that no matter what comes along next for Science Fiction and Fantasy, I will always compare it with the way Star Wars made me feel when I was a kid. George Lucas raised our generation now its time for him to step back and do something for himself. Amen.

Afterword:
I know, I cheated a bit by listing Trilogies as one film. Eh, sue me, it's my list. Where I've listed a Trilogy, I feel that though the individual movies within may be spectactular, combined with the other two, the whole becomes something transcendent. Oh, by the way...

*Special Runner Up Goes to: Pirates of the Caribbean See, I have this working theory that goes like this;

All movies are better with pirates.
All Movies are better with zombies.
All movies are better with monkeys.
Pirates of the Caribbean:Curse of the Black Pearl, would therefore follow as the perfect movie. Huh... well, like I said, it's just a theory at this point.

Unleashing Your Inner Funwrecker!

2005-05-25T00:04:00.000-07:00

Being a review of Dennis Culver's excellent mini-comic, Funwrecker.

The incomparable Dennis Culver has created an all-inclusive term that defines what it means to go through life with a penchant for social guerilla warfare. The term is funwrecker, and it's an important state of mind for anyone who takes it upon themselves to go out into the world to spread the message that comics are cool. As a raw concept, the funwrecker is firmly rooted in the absolute truth once stated by the late poet William Carlos Williams, "There's a lot of bastards out there."

Here's a simple and frightening truism for you all. There are people in this world who despise comics and will by association despise you too. Obviously this isn't news to anyone still reading comics past the age of say... 13. The funwreckers of the world will always stick up for themselves, calling out ignorance when they see it. They will slap down the people who decide to drop a slop bucket of stupidity on their day, and force feed it back to them in fun and creative ways. Funwreckers can define those moments in life where you decide to stand up and say, "Hey, you're an asshole, and here's why!"

Any person who goes out into the big scary world with the intention of spreading the good word about comics will eventually become a funwrecker, or that person will be summarily killed and eaten. Comics fans are vastly outnumbered, and the other side has a lot more in the way of social armament than we do. As a comics activist you have to be smarter, hipper, funnier, and way more informed than your audience. You also have to be willing to call out the hecklers and embarrass the hell out of them so they will stop fucking with your act.

Though I hadn't yet found a label for what I was doing, there was a defining moment when I realized that the good word "comics are cool" needed to be spread. It was the same moment that it first dawned on me that the stupid and the ignorant needed someone around to help reorganize the social gene pool. I became a funwrecker my freshman year in college.

Like a lot of beginning writers, I made the mistake of caving in to the bowel-shaking reptile brain thought that I hadn't clue one about how to write. In a flash of panic stupidity, I signed up for a two semester creative writing round table, with a stable, well tenured professor who actually had a few books under his belt. I would learn from this maestro who was secure in his talent and his creativity, and actually capable of passing this arcane knowledge on to the bubbling protomass of writer hopefuls.

I lasted about four weeks. The teacher turned out to be a mostly failed novelist with a passion for trying to assassinate the aspirations of anyone who had the misfortune to get themselves trapped in his classroom. They were four weeks of living Hell, much akin to being sunk up to my chin in a lake of boiling yak vomit, while fat imps practiced the cannonball around my head.

"Stories with first person narration are inherently bad and are therefore invalid." Off went the first imp. Sploosh!

"Any story under 1500 words in length is incomplete and therefore inherently bad." Kersplash!

He told a sixty year old lady who was auditing the class that she was "...too old to make any significant contribution with her writing." Most of us agreed she was the only one of us who had a clue as to what she was doing. Splosh!

Several of our first week's writing assignments were flunked, mine included, because when given the first line, "The apartment was a mess." we either punched up the language, or we simply didn't use that sentence as the first line of the story. (I was guilty on both counts.) "Kowabunga!" Sploosh!

The big assignment for our second week was a deconstruction and critique essay, to be presented orally to the class. We could choose any novel we wanted, talk as long as we wanted, as long as the final essay was over 1500 words in length. In my usual slacker fashion, I doped out the professor's routine, 2 to 4 students per day in alphabetical order. Naturally, I decided to blow off the assignment until the last second. As usual, events conspired to deprive me of slack time.

The fifth presentation was an outstanding, brilliant critique of Bernie Wrightson's excellently illustrated adaptation of the classic novel, Frankenstein. The man who gave it was a well established member of Las Vegas' underground 'zine scene, a longtime comics reader like myself, and a damn fine artist in his own right. He absolutely knew what he was talking about. He gave a great presentation, witty, insightful, and risky, considering the instructor.

True to form, our professor rejected his presentation outright. Didn't even criticize it, just casually flipped out, "and that's an F for you." The whole class was stunned, but after watching the professor pick his fingernails and generally do his level best to look overtly bored through my friend's presentation, I suddenly had a slow, boiling mad on that needed to be placated with an explanation. I jumped up out of my seat and calmly, through clenched teeth, growled, "Would you please explain to us exactly why you are flunking this presentation?"

He stared at me like I was an impetuous child, and sneered in his patronizing, matter-of-fact drone, "Comics are trash media and have no place in the classroom, let alone everyday life." I sat back down, shell shocked. At this point I decided, "Fuck these imp bastards. I'm getting out of here. I will not drink another gallon of yak vomit."

Our professor had two sources of pride in his weak, nasty little life. One was his fire engine red Fiat. I seriously considered bashing in his headlights and windshield, before I finally decided that driving a Fiat was its own reward. The other thing he always droned on about was his, "gothic horror masterpiece," The Mist. To my mind, this was an open invitation, the equivalent of, "I double dog dare you to ask the head cheerleader out on a date with her jock boyfriend standing right beside her." My sense of balance, Karma, call it what you will, snapped back into place a bit, when a quick search of the campus library turned up a pristine paperback copy that had been checked out exactly never.

The Mist took me two days to read. It was god-awful, as in, I'd read better from Judith Krantz god-awful. It was a horrible, smarmy little potboiler of a screed, with no drama, paper flat characters, and an ending that left you begging for the last few hours of your life back.
It was the perfect opportunity to see if our professor could take it as well as he dished it out. I completed my critique in two nights, and I bided my time. If this didn't work, I could still introduce the front of his car to my baseball bat, Fiat or no.

When the time came to make my presentation, I stood up in front of forty people and for about thirty minutes, I systematically shredded his, "gothic horror masterpiece." I was harsh, but I'd say I was as objective with it as I could be. I think I was more than fair when I ended with, "... In short, The Mist is an uninteresting bit of fluff derived mostly from the cast-off ideas long ago discarded by the worst forms of trash media." I walked back up to my seat through a standing ovation. Later that day, I was called into the Dean's office where I was politely asked to drop creative writing, and offered a place in a two semester comp/rhet class in trade.

It occurs to me that there are several interesting codas to this anecdote. My artist friend who critiqued the Wrightson book now works as a graphic designer in San Diego, and does side work as a storyboard artist for Disney. Not bad for a guy with purple spiky hair and more piercings than a well-used dartboard. The professor in question left UNLV the next year to concentrate on his new novel. As far as I know it has yet to materialize, and I can't help but feel that the world is a much better place for it. Several weeks after I "dropped" creative writing, the Fiat ended up with busted out headlights and four slashed tires. I swear I never went anywhere near the thing.

Dennis Culver has tapped into a stark truth with this minicomic. He takes us to a place that is sometimes uncomfortable, but always entertaining. Funwrecker serves as an inoculation for people who have been exposed to noxious infections like, "Comics are trash media and have no place in the classroom, let alone everyday life." If you want to learn how to go after the source of the infection, check out Dennis Culver .com His online journal will make you laugh your ass off, while shouting, "Oh Hell yeah! Been there!" While you're at it, show the man some love and order some of his minicomics too. He's the directing editor of The Black Label imprint from Absence of Ink Comics, and you can get all his stuff from their website.You won't be disappointed.

In lieu of a director's commentary...

2005-05-23T21:58:00.000-07:00

So, I was fishing around on Blogger the other day, mostly looking for other movie review blogs, just to see what was out there. In my meandering, I stumbled across one of the best online reviewers I've seen, and trust me, I've seen quite a few. So, anyone in need of some sharp, insightfull, witty commentary on what's new on the whole movie scene, go check out Courtney's Blog: Movie Reviews.

And if you want to see more from this marvelous movie reviewer, you can also go check out her main blog Courtney's Blog: My thoughts... or lack there of.

Oh and while you're at it... if you're curious about where she gets her prodigious writing talent, go check out her mom's blog Jamie Dawn's Mindless Blather.

Trust me, I will not steer you wrong here.

Don't Panic! It's not that bad

2005-05-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

Being a review of the movie The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I can't begin to tell you how much I really wanted to love this movie. Like most American kids, my first exposure to The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy came in the form of a wholly remarkable book that was expanded by its' author, Douglas Adams, from his original radio play. To say that the book and its' subsequent sequels changed my life would be somewhat of an overstatement, but it did open my eyes to a whole lot of new things.

To my 14 year old brain, this book was a mind blowing experience. Filled to bursting with intergalactic travel, impossibly clever devices and bizarre comedy shtick, it was the first time I'd read comedy mixed with my beloved science fiction. I was hooked.

Over the years, the Hitchiker's series has been one of the few I've read and re-read, and enjoyed multiple times. I can blame Douglas Adams for my first exposure to Monty Python, Black Adder, Dr. Who, The Prisoner, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett, just to name a few. His novels opened up whole new vistas for me. I even went so far as to send him a fan letter one time, thanking him for that.

In 1981, Douglas Adams transformed the Hitchiker's series into a mini series for the BBC. It debuted complete with sub standard special effects and a cruddy time slot (at least in the United States,) but it was well acted with sharp, witty dialogue, and in general, absolutely fabulous. So, with all this wonderful history behind the franchise, when the Hitchiker's movie was finally announced, it had a lot to live up to.

And on that note, it failed. I know, I know, I had unreasonably high expectations. But can you blame me? As a movie, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy isn't bad. It's just not spectacular. With each incarnation of the Hitchiker's series, be it radio, print, or TV, the main constant in Adams' reworkings has been change. The core story and characters remain the same, but the details get fiddled with. Rather than re-work the series in its existing medium like George Lucas did with Star Wars, Adams has always chosen to tweak the details as he transferred the story into different media. So, it was no surprise to me that the story was slightly different than what had gone before. I'm not prone to chronological snobbery, so I could handle the story being different. What I couldn't handle was the absence of Douglas Adams' razor keen wit, and his sharp eye for satire.

Is it funny? It has its moments, but it's not laugh-out-loud funny. Is it interesting? To a point, yes. I think the main problem is that it's just not what I wanted to see up on the screen. Am I suffering from, "I could have done it better," syndrome? Probably.

Martin Freeman is adequate as Arthur Dent, though he's a bit too competent in the clutch to really ring true to the source material. (Arthur was always a character who succeeded in spite of himself... In a Forrest Gumpian kind of way.) Mos Def is passable as Ford Prefect. There's been much ballyhooing about the casting of an African American in a role established by a British White Guy, but I hold with Douglas Adams' admonition that, "Arthur Dent should be British, everyone else should be cast based on merit." Sam Rockwell is horribly annoying as Zaphod, but considering I've always found Zaphod Beeblebrox a fairly annoying character anyway, he probably turned in the most dead on performance in the film. Even Zooey Deschanel, who was stellar as the big sister in Almost Famous, is only adequate as Trillian. The story's plot is just, okay. The performances are all just okay. The entire movie (except for a few absolutely jaw-dropping special effects) amounts to an amazing five finger exercise in mediocrity.

There are a few instances that stand out though. John Malkovich is inspired as Humma Kavula, a sinister cult leader. Anna Chancellor is great as Questular, Zaphod's vice president with a crush. These two characters were created specifically for the movie and they brought it a much needed sense of newness for me. The casting of Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin is inspired, but he's given little to do, and his innate paranoia has been written out so that he's now Marvin the manically depressed android.

As a whole, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy is simply adequate. It's not spectacular, and it's bursting with lots of missed opportunities to bring in Adam's razor keen eye for satire. It should have been a lot more than it was. Seeing this movie should have been similar to being hit over the back of your head with a very large brick, wrapped in a slice of lemon. It's not, but it's still worth a Saturday matinee. It will definitely be worth a rental, which is, I guess, better than most movie fare we're going to get this summer.

Director's Commentary - Sugar Kat Graphic Novel Review

2005-05-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

One of the coolest things about being an online reviewer is that every so often, the creator of the piece you're saying nice things about will get ahold of your review. If you're really lucky, they'll use what you said as a reviewer tag for their book. It's kind of getting published by proxy... except nobody pays you, and you don't really get any accolades other than from your friends that look at you like you're the most pathetic creature on the planet. Not as good as say, getting your first novel published, but pretty damn cool nonetheless.

Ian Carney, the genius writer responsible for many of my absolute favorite comics reads contacted me by e-mail, asking if he could use a blurb from the Sugar Kat review for their upcoming graphic novel collection, Your Ticket To Happiness . This was fairly mindblowing for two reasons. First was how the hell he even got ahold of the review considering SAVANT has been dead for just over a year (though the archive is still up.) The other brain scrambler was why on earth was he asking me to use my work as a blurb. Nobody had ever been that thoughtful towards me before. Maybe they're just more polite in England.

Anyone who wants to get ahold of a copy of Where's It At Sugar Kat? The Thin of the Land should order it online from Amazon.com (I actually much prefer Khepri, but they're out of stock. I'll have a post about Khepri later to tell you why.)
and if you're interested in where Sugar Kat comes from, check out Your Ticket To Happiness when it hits the shops. It's a collection of Ian and Woodrow's anthology comic Sugar Buzz, and it's sure to be spectacular.