Pop Snark Hooligan!

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?

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.