Category: Reviews

Box Office Democracy: Pixels

pixels-2-7639899

I remember rather clearly the first time I saw the trailer for Pixels. It has a cool introduction about sending examples of 1982 culture in to space and then it quickly moves on to some quick shots of the attack and then the coup de grace of the giant Pac-Man crashing through midtown Manhattan eating a fire truck. For the first minute of the trailer it looked like a movie I would like and then they revealed that Adam Sandler was the star of the movie and all of my interest vanished. I know the kind of movies Adam Sandler makes and they aren’t clever or original, they’re outdated and formulaic. This wouldn’t be a fun deconstruction of old arcade games like Wreck-It Ralph or even a fun action movie like The Last Starfighter. The best-case scenario for Pixels was as the home of a spectacular fart joke. It wasn’t.

There’s nothing in Pixels that feels substantial enough to criticize. The plot is a mess and full of contradictions starting with the premise that aliens recreated video games down to glitches in the 1982 code of Galaga (a crucial plot point for Sandler to prove his credentials early in the film) from a video tape of children playing the game. The aliens communicate through the images of 80s pop culture icons and it’s a nice device, one of the only things that feel that way in the whole film, but other than some exposition thrown in the third act we never learn anything about this menace other than they attack using video games. The movie pretends to venerate this bygone era of arcade gaming but then makes choices that anyone who has even a passing familiarity with the subject matter knows are complete bunk like cheat codes in Pac-Man or Q*bert, famous for his garbled voice and word balloons filled with symbols, giving extensive exposition in English. It feels like everything about the movie was hammered out over lunch one day and no one ever thought about it again. I almost feel stupid complaining about it because I’ve already thought about it more than everyone who worked on the movie.

All of the characters in Pixels are paper-thin nothings but the women seem to get a particularly short end of the stick. The female lead (Michelle Monaghan) is a Lieutenant Colonel and in charge of some nebulous DARPA team but all of her character traits are defined by men she is attracted to (Sandler), she was cheated on by her husband, and she doesn’t want her son to be harmed. She might even do better than Jane Krakowski who plays the First Lady of the United States who doesn’t understand that her husband is busy with his job and demands he make time for ludicrous public dates in some kind of effort to become some shrew singularity. There’s the ideal virtual woman of video games (Ashley Benson) who doesn’t talk even when brought to life by these aliens even when other characters that never talked in their games talk. None of these characters in a vacuum would be that big of a deal but when they’re all like this and even the off-screen female characters are treated poorly (slutty pilates instructor, ex-wife who has an affair with fertility doctor) it adds up to a sour taste in the mouth. Luckily it doesn’t linger because nothing in this film is capable of holding the minds o the audience for more than a few minutes,

Pixels is similarly unkind to nerdy men, a demographic in far less peril in film but one that deserves better than this movie. These characters are all just aspects of the sexless loser nerd stereotype that has persisted for 30 years and should feel outdated at this point. The movie installs a central principle of its anchor relationship that nerds are better kissers because they appreciate it more. The movie wants to play on this nostalgia for pop culture icons and is then spectacularly unkind to the people who would feel most warmly about it. When The Big Bang Theory is doing dramatically better at characterization than your feature film it’s time to scrap the whole thing and move on.

I wish I thought Adam Sandler cared that this is a bad movie. He’s made so many bad movies in a row, produced so many bad movies in a row, that I have to believe he’s either completely insane and believes these movies are fantastic or he knows they’re good enough to get paid, get to the next one, and keep supporting whatever golden yacht lifestyle he lives. I wish he made better movies, selfishly, so I wouldn’t feel compelled to go see these wretched things to review them. We’ve all heard the stories coming out of his next film, The Furious Six, and we can probably guess this isn’t getting any better. Adam Sandler can do better than this, he has before, and I wish he cared enough to do better again.

REVIEW: Silicon Valley the Complete Second Season

silicon-valley-11-203-no-copy-smiling-e1437705433873-5530850It’s a challenge to begin watching a show during its second season. After all, the characters have been introduced, the dynamics established and the backstory in place. Season twos tend to show evolution as the cast and crew all find their rhythm but don’t always remember to reintroduce themselves in case newcomers have wandered by.

I had been hesitant to try Silicon Valley, the Mike Judge-created series on HBO, largely because we sat through the wildly uneven first season of AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire and felt that was our technology quota of television. So, when HBO invited me to review Silicon Valley the Complete Second Season, I decided to take the plunge. First, there was watching it video Digital HD, not disc, and there was exploring something new.

The show is funny and engaging, as much an office workplace dramedy as it is a commentary on our growing connection virtually, and less so as human beings. These ten episodes were filled with characters, mostly well realized, all well-acted.

Silicon Valley S2This band of misfits run Pied Piper, a music app, and the season opened with back and forth over ownership issues, an all-too-common problem with intellectual property these days. Apparently PP was created while members of the team worked for Hooli and their CEO Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) wants it, meaning its valuable, a plus to the team. Of course litigation tends to scare people off and sure enough this complicates locating investors willing to weather the storm.

As a result, they accept the offer from the eccentric Russ Hanneman (Chris Diamantopoulos), whose actions take the PP team into uncomfortable territory. What could have been an interesting breakout character felt like a retread of the dude who took over ACN on HBO’s sister program The Newsroom. Opposing him and acting as the moral voice at times was Richard (Thomas Middleditch), who seems to grow stronger as a leader throughout the season. Of course, there sometimes comes a price to be paid which happens in the season finale. The app gets a real world test so we build up to that moment and deal with the aftermath along with the percolating court case.

There’s some nice chemistry with Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) as they prank one another that allows the series to veer into other tech realms such as Kickstarter.  Then there’s Jared who is the team optimistic and perhaps its quirkiest member.

For a 30 minute series, it has a large sprawling cast, made larger by many new additions notably Laurie (Suzanne Cryer), the new CEO at Raviga Capital. The arrival of so many new faces, including Carla (Alice Wetterlund) at the Hacker Hostel, also meant others got diminished screen time and overall, it’s hard to provide more than a handful of characters any depth.

The storylines drew tighter by the ninth episode and the tenth and “Two Days of the Condor,” the final episode proved the most satisfying with moving storylines along and making a marked social commentary with a human life at stake. Things came to a climax and reset the status quo as things settle down but Raviga, the new investors in Pied Piper want Richard out and he’s fired. From what I saw this season, it was totally justified.

Overall, the series is funny and often wildly so, but it also presents a skewed view of software engineers (I know, I’m married to one) as well as corporate shenanigans. Judge, who did give us the brilliant Office Space, seems to be stretching credulity now and then in the interests of being quirky. Props, though to the real tech, tech theory, and law that was infused throughout the season, grounding it when it could otherwise floated away as a lightweight series.

The show is definitely entertaining and easy to binge so here’s a chance to catch up. The Digital HD release is as pristine as the cable broadcast and streams cleanly with good picture and audio. Will I be around for season three? Probably, there’s enough here to like and the 30 minute slices are good so it doesn’t wear out its welcome.

 

REVIEW: Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts

Thanbatman-unlimited-animal-instincts-e1423777012811-5504814kfully, today you are offered a larger variety of Batman flavors so in theory you should find one interpretation that appeals to you. Prefer mindless action, there’s the Arkham video games. Like driven dramas, there’s the Batman monthly from Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo. Prefer your Batman with a bit of a character and a soul, there’re dozens of graphic novels to pick from.

The same holds true for the direct-to-video films from Warner Animation. For the slightly older audience there are the darker films, the most recent was Batman versus Robin and next is the long-awaited adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns. But Warner has wisely come up with a more all-ages version as seen in the recently released Batman: Unlimited – Animal Instincts. The new film runs the same length as the others, 77 minutes, and does not skimp on colorful action.

Admittedly, this story is actually more about Batman (Roger Craig Smith) and his team plus their friends so you get your pick of champions to cheer for. In addition to the caped crusader, you have Nightwing (Will Friedle), Red Robin (Yuri Lowenthal), Flash (Charlie Schlatter), and Green Arrow (Chris Diamantopolous). On the side of evil, you can hiss at Killer Croc (John DiMaggio), Penguin (Dana Snyder), Cheetah (Laura Bailey), Man-Bat (Phil LaMarr), or (Silverback (Keith Szarabajka).

Including the Emerald Archer and Scarlet Speedster are definitely there as product placement for their respective CW series, but it’s nice to see them anyway. Collectively, it’s also a tie-in to the Mattel-branded toy line and this box set does come with a Man-Bat so there’s that.

As for the story, the Penguin has recruited the animalistic rogues Silverback, Cheetah, and Man-Bat.  Why? Well, that’s the mystery that keeps the audience guessing until late, so the plotting is well done. Each hero and villain is individually introduced through action, each laying out clues to follow.

The heroes are clear cut, as are the villains, which is appropriate for the younger viewers this is primarily aimed at. There are some shadings to the motivations and you can’t help feel sorry for some of the characters who are victims of circumstance.

I’m also impressed that the script from Heath Corson, whose earlier efforts left me bothered, does a nice job of differentiating the characters, notably the byplay between straight-laced Barry Allen and the more fun-loving Dick Grayson. Here, they’re treated as being roughly the same age as opposed to the source material that matches Allen with Bruce Wayne.

There’s plenty of action to enjoy from speed to trick arrows to fisticuffs. Credit to director Butch Lukic for giving the film a distinct look and for keeping the action flowing without feeling as gratuitous as some of the other offerings.

If you like this, next month comes Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem with the promise of 22 animated shorts for later this ye

0

Comics Reviews (July 22nd, 2015)

From worst to best of what I bought. Which, erm, wasn’t much.

Old Man Logan #3

This is increasingly just becoming a case of “old Wolverine wanders plotlessly through a variety of Battleworld realms,” which… is actually a genuinely awful premise for a comic, and I’m not sure why Marvel has decided to waste such talented creators on it. Within the confines of this there are some good moments; the scene with Boom Boom is absolutely lovely. But the overall package is astonishingly pointless.

Uncanny X-Men #35

A fun little issue that would have been quite pleasant had this denouement come at the pace Bendis wrote it for, but that is infuriating wheel-spinning at the pace this is actually playing out. I believe we’re three months now til the next issue of this? Stupid. In any case, a charming Goldballs-centric issue, and I continue to like Bendis’s take on the X-Men, not least because I’m seemingly dropping the line in All-New All-Different Marvel.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #16

This ends up salvaging the week, with one of the most Norse-feeling takes on Norse mythology that Marvel has done. I’m fascinated by the way in which Loki, over the course of this run, has been reconstituted so many times that they’re only sort of a singular character anymore, instead becoming, quite literally, a narrative force. With apocalypses all around, and Secret Wars really just being used as an excuse for one, the honing in towards a definitive statement on What Loki Is makes for genuinely interesting reading – I’m eager to see how this resolves next issue, which is more than I can say for a lot of Marvel right now, where I’m increasingly more interested in what’s next than what’s actually going on now.

Originally published on PhilipSandifer.com.

Box Office Democracy: Ant-Man

ant-man-new-heiest-clip-9910433

Ant-Man is the latest anticipated failure from Marvel Studios, the film that will finally break the spell that Marvel has on box offices and show that they can make films that people don’t like and that don’t make very much money, a Cars 2 if you will.

This isn’t that movie.

Ant-Man is totally charming and breathes fresh air in to the parts of the superhero formula that are beginning to feel particularly stale with some fun heist elements and a killer supporting cast. Besides, Doctor Strange feels more like the Marvel failure movie, right? All the pressure is on you, Benedict Cumberbatch; how long can all these people be fooled by your pasty charms?

Taken at the very broadest strokes, Ant-Man is the first Iron Man movie repackaged. New and potentially dangerous technology invented by a wise benevolent scientist with a bit of an attitude is turned in to a weapon for evil by his unscrupulous bald business partner and action comedy ensues. Where Ant-Man veers off the path is by splitting their Tony Stark into two parts: Michael Douglas plays the genius scientist Hank Pym, an elderly version of the Stark superego, and Paul Rudd is the hunky wisecracker safecracker Scott Lang, Tony’s id but with better hair and tighter clothes. There’s nothing groundbreaking, clever, or even particularly surprising to be found in the plot but it all works well enough and Rudd’s charm is capable of saving scenes that otherwise would be pretty insufferable. (For further reference, see most of This is 40.)

The supporting cast is what saves this movie from some rather poorly thought out subplots. Lang is supposed to be doing all of this dangerous stuff to stay out of jail and reconnect with his young daughter and those interactions and the ones with the cops determined to put him back in jail are the kind of things that most movies turn in to the worst kind of crap but Ant-Man fills that part of the movie with Judy Greer, Bobby Cannavale, and Wood Harris… and I can’t be mad at having to watch those actors. Similarly the movie revolves around a heist and includes Lang’s old criminal buddies whoa re there to provide comic relief and while David Dastmalchian doing “generic foreigner” is rather grating, Tip Harris is quite good as the getaway driver and Michael Pena steals every scene he’s in as Lang’s closest criminal confidant. Seriously, forget the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe— I would much rather watch Cannavale, Harris, Dastmalchain, Harris, and Pena play cops and robbers than see whatever part Rudd has to play in Civil War.

That’s the tragedy of the Marvel movie set up though, isn’t it? The things I liked about Ant-Man were in the fringes and not so much in the Ant-Man parts, which were fine, but kind of whatever and because of the way these movies are scheduled I know there’s not even an opening for a sequel until the winter of 2019. I suppose if this were some revelatory breakout hit they might be able to get it in a little sooner but it wasn’t and they won’t and so I’m more or less stuck waiting more than four years and two installments of Avengers to get back to the good stuff here. These are good problems for Marvel to have, too much good stuff in their movies to get back to in a reasonable amount of time, but it puts a weird kind of pressure on the other films. If there are parts of Inhumans or Captain Marvel that are particularly bad I’ll be sitting there thinking “this is where we could have gotten more Ant-Man, but no” and that’s not entirely fair. And I’ll definitely be thinking it while watching Cumberbatch screw up Stephen Strange who should absolutely not have a British accent.

0

Comics Reviews (July 15, 2015)

As always, from worst to best of what I voluntarily paid money for. Also, if you’re the sort who only swings by for these, you should know that book two of my epic history of British comics, The Last War in Albion, kicks off on Friday. Book Two is on Watchmen, and should be a fun time. Do drop by. I’ll have a bit of an intro to it/recap of Book One up tomorrow as well.

Years of Future Past #3

At no point during the course of reading this issue could I have articulated what the point of its existence was. I am writing this mere minutes after finishing it, and I am already forgetting it.

Silver Surfer #13

I know this book is a Doctor Who homage, but there’s a thin line between homage and rip-off, and “let’s rewrite The Big Bang only as a Jack Kirby pastiche” is on the wrong side. Fun, but tough to feel good about.

Guardians of Knowhere #1

Thus far, Guardians of the Galaxy only without Star Lord and as an overly black (literally) book drawn by Mike Deodato is, thus far, not an electrifying premise, although as usual Bendis makes the ebb and flow of fuck all happening entertaining.

Hawkeye #22

It’ll be perfectly fine shoved at the back of the fourth and obviously weakest Hawkeye collection, like “Return of the Good Gumbo” at the end of the shitty sci-fi volume of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, but not actually as good as that.

Crossed: Badlands #80

An inevitable and effective ending with all the happiness you’d expect, but ultimately the Homo Tortor arc feels like a missed opportunity that fizzled instead of exploding.

Mercury Heat #1

Good stuff, but it’s firmly the second-best take on classic 80s British comics of the week, and so it’s got to go here in the rankings. Basically, good premise, but there’s enough heavy lifting to do in terms of explaining the rather baroque hard-SF mechanic that the book doesn’t get a ton of opportunity to actually do anything. But it’s no worse a start than True Detective Season Two.

Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders #1

A Muslim woman becomes Captain Britain, then gets plunged into a Judge Dredd pastiche. Yes, of course my reasons for liking this comic are in part political, but screw it. The multiversal conception of Captain Britain and Judge Dredd were always political, as readers of this site well know. This is a beautiful homage to British comics in a fun romp of a package. It’s delightful that Secret Wars allows such silliness.

Trees #11

It’s clear that Trees is not a book about momentum. And I won’t lie, I think Ellis’s experimentation with things you should have trade-waited for is a bit frustrating at times. But I don’t care; that last panel transition is fucking beautiful, and as far as I’m concerned, worth eleven issues of buildup. Now I just need to clear the time to reread those eleven issues so I understand it.

Where Monsters Dwell #3

Well that certainly escalated. Which is quite right; without abandoning the mad excess of his premise, Ennis finds an entirely new angle on it here, and the results are outright hilarious.

Siege #1

It’s the most inside-baseball thing imaginable; a structural rewrite of S.W.O.R.D., Gillen’s debut Marvel book, which nobody read. It mashes up bits of Young Avengers and Journey into Mystery. It has giant zombie ants with writing on their DNA. Gillen wasn’t lying with “Nextwave as a tragedy,” especially with an absolutely majestic final act that’s at once obvious and brilliant. Everything you hope for from Gillen throwing a Marvel Universe farewell party, basically.

Crossed +100 #6

My God, this was a bleak piece of pessimistic brutality. And, of course, brilliant. The fact that Avatar is continuing it feels almost as dumb as Before Watchmen, but on its own merits, as a self-contained story, it’s a ruthless skewering of an entire rhetoric of broken utopianism – an uncompromising viking funeral for the entire classic history of science fiction. Just in time for the Hugos.

Originally published on PhilipSandifer.com.

Box Office Democracy: Minions

minions-4303690Minions has been taunting me for weeks. As part of the promotional campaign for this movie Universal decided to cover the old Cinerama dome on Sunset Boulevard with inflatable versions of the films stars reaching for a giant banana. It’s a cute enough gimmick I suppose but I go to the gym in a building directly behind the dome so for about an hour a week three times a week the view from my gym has been dominated by massive inflatable Minion asses. If the exercise bikes I prefer somehow became untethered I would pedal myself directly in to the backside of a five story Minion.

After seeing the film I think I got most of the experience just watching them endlessly reach for that banana, as that’s about as much story as the movie Minions actually bothers with.

The Minions, as characters, are empty vessels. Their personalities only extend one adjective deep before you get to the common Minion traits like hungry or covetous. In a way this has led to the success of the characters as they are whatever the viewer imagines them to be (this is why they’re so perplexingly meme-able) but there’s no actual character underneath. Each scene is driven either by external factors or an often-nonsensical want. Sometimes Bob is really emotionally invested in the safety of his teddy bear but when that isn’t driving him through a scene it’s never even pictured. I feel like I’m asking too much of a silly little kids move that is such a transparent cash grab but when the characters don’t resonate the actions have no stakes and I just can’t laugh at these jokes past the first fifteen minutes. Something has to make you care about the story and it never happens.

The humor of Minions is not for me but I don’t think it wants to be. This is slapstick humor for a generation who don’t have Saturday morning cartoons to watch. People fall over, people het hit with stuff, people slip and fall, all the hits really. There’s nothing wrong with this per se; it’s been the foundation of comedy for all of recorded history but there’s precious little new ground to break and I’m not sure I think Minions is even trying.

There’s no effort apparent throughout Minions but honestly, why would there be? This is a franchise born from another successful franchise, it’s sold countless t-shirts and toys and even has a theme park ride, and everything from here on out is found money for Universal. It’s a monster that feeds on its own popularity and nothing we can say or do will stop it. Or it’s just a silly kids movie and I should really just relax.

0

Comics Reviews (July 8th, 2015)

First of all, these reviews are now being cross-posted to ComicMix, which means I should possibly introduce myself for the people who just clicked on a link there and found themselves here. So, hi everyone. I’m Phil Sandifer, this is my blog. It’s a geek media blog, running a history of British comics called The Last War in Albion on Fridays, a rotating feature (currently a Game of Thrones blog, switching over to an occultism-tinged take on the Super Nintendo in a few weeks) on Mondays, and occasional other features, currently including weekly reviews of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It’s also got the archives of TARDIS Eruditorum, a sprawling history of Doctor Who. And, obviously, on Wednesday, new comics reviews.

We keep the lights on here via a Patreon , and if you enjoy the site, I ask that you consider kicking a dollar a week my way.

Reviews tend not to involve giving a letter or number grade to things, but instead ranking them relative to each other. So these, as with every week, are ordered from the worst to the best, with the caveat that I paid my own money for all of them, whether out of an expectation of quality or out of the bleak pathology that is comics fandom. Except that’s a lie this week, which we’ll get to. But first:

The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #2

The problem – which was present in the first issue, but largely overshadowed by the sheer energy of the thing, is that this book gives every sign of trying to have it both ways. It’s unabashedly aimed at the still-vocal chunk of comics fandom who appreciated that our version (and yes, I just gave away my allegiances) of Spider-Man was married; who thought that was an interesting way to set the comics version of a pop culture icon apart from all the others. But it’s also seeming to set up a critique of the structure, being based on how having a family necessitates reconceptualizing Peter as the sort of person who says, “that’s what daddies do. We do anything to keep our families safe. ANYTHING.” And who then has nightmares about the awful things he’s done already. As I said, in the first issue of this things moved fast enough that you could avoid dwelling on this contradiction. Here… they don’t, resulting in the unsatisfying spectacle of a comic that’s primarily about the tension of whether or not it’s going to be an insult to the readers it’s marketed to.

Archie #1

I got an advance review copy of this, and it was not purchased. I might have picked it up, especially given that this was a light week, but we’ll never truly know.

In any case, it’s pretty good, but unable to escape the gravity of its own futility. Which is to say that, quite aside from any ethical issues about the relationship between Archie Comics, the direct market, and crowdfunding, let’s not forget the fact that the abandoned Kickstarter for these Archie books was never going to meet goal. Which is to say that, culturally, we do not give a shit about Archie right now. He’s an archetypal example of the popular culture icon famous for being famous. Nobody actually likes Archie.

So here we have Mark Waid and Fiona Staples writing a comic that’s trying desperately to change that. It’s a good team. Staples is a great artist, as Saga proves, and she does well here. It’s going to be very depressing when her three issues are done and whoever replaces her suddenly whitewashes Riverdale. Waid writes a competent high school romance. But… at the end of the day, you’re still stuck with a property defined by the fact that it established many of the cliches of its genre many, many decades ago, as opposed to by the fact that anyone has come up with anything interesting to say about it today.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #14

I admit, I’ve not been thrilled with the arc on this book since ServeYouInc was defeated. The lack of a villain leaves it feeling a bit directionless. Here the plot meanders through some sort of inchoate cosmic crisis, with the emotional heft coming from the idea of the TARDIS getting mad and abandoning the Doctor, deeming him “unworthy.”

Sadly, one does not expect Matt Smith to regenerate into a woman in response to being deemed unworthy. The final page cliffhanger is interesting, but one doubts the licensing will let Titan actually explore its implications in a meaningful way, so the result is a sort of reversion to the mean for Doctor Who comics, as opposed to the sort of thing that has in the past made this an extraordinary run of them.

Saga #30

I actually followed what happened in this issue, which is a pleasant change from my usual “wait, who are all these people that aren’t Marko, Alana, and their daughter again” reaction to this comic. The ends of arcs tend to do that with Saga for me – it gets flabby in the middle sections, but any time the narration kicks up I tend to be pretty happy with it. So basically, a rare case of Vaughn not writing for the trade.

Injection #3

It’s increasingly clear that Injection is one of those periodic Warren Ellis comics that amount to him creating a narrative container for dumping his current cultural and intellectual obsessions into. These are often a bit narratively messy, and this is no exception; Ellis is being willfully leisurely introducing his cast (this is the first point there’s any sort of roll call, such that I now want to dig up #1 and #2 with an eye towards actually knowing who these people are), and most of them are just standard Ellis characters anyway. And, of course, Ellis has now released most of the underlying ideas here as an ebook collection of his recent lectures.

Doesn’t matter. Warren Ellis in a philosophical mood is just one of those things that always works in comics. And this is a prime example.

Providence #2

The methodical slow burn of this continues, with the supernatural finally making its first decisive interjection (and note the way the panel layout shifts as Robert goes underground). This is very much a late career Alan Moore masterpiece, long on allusion and philosophical digression, requiring an hour or so of Googling to fully appreciate, and with a lengthy text piece to boot. Which is good. I mean, this is actually a comic one will plausibly get its cover price ($4.99) worth of value from, which is more than you can say for anything else on the list this week. If nothing else, it’s a comic where Lovecraftian horror is a metaphor for being gay and also for horrifying and impossible caverns beneath the earth full of unfathomable monsters.

Originally published on PhilipSandifer.com.

Box Office Democracy: Terminator Genisys

If you have somehow made it this far without seeing the last theatrical trailer for Terminator Genisys then I urge you to stop reading this now and go see the movie. There is a terrible spoiler in the previews for this movie and if you’re still pure in this regard go and don’t look back. Everyone else stick around because I am pissed.

(more…)

The Back Half of Scary Go Round by John Allison

John Allison has spent most of the past twenty years chronicling an ever-proliferating series of strange events in and around the small British town of Tackleford, somewhere in darkest Yorkshire. More impressively, he’s done all of this in public, on the Internet, most days of the week, for free. And he’s done it in comics form.

First up was Bobbins , which I haven’t made a serious study of yet, but was in the traditional newspaper strip-comic format and focused on the staff of Tackleford’s City Lights magazine, with perhaps some supernatural eruptions. After Allison closed that down around the turn of the millennium, he launched a new series with a somewhat overlapping cast of characters called Scary Go Round , which itself ended in 2009. SGR was formatted like a comics page, which made it easier to collect in book form and (possibly) allowed Allison to write more complex stories and include more of his quirky humor and details in each update. It also was clearly fantasy: characters visited Hell, were turned into zombies, and battled giant monsters to save the world. (Though Allison’s offhand tone and character-based plotting turned all of those elements into something very different from what you’d expect.) That strip was entirely collected into eight volumes, though — in the way of the webcomic — it’s also still all available online, as are Allison’s other strips.

For the next round of stories, Allison switched format again, to a double-tier newspaper style, which gave him a similar number of panels per page to SGR but with a more compact feel. That strip was called Bad Machinery , and it followed up the end of SGR to focus on two “teams” of tweens at the local school, who solve mysteries in competition with each other. Allison still includes supernatural elements, but they tend to be more subdued in Machinery than they were in SGR, making his stories better controlled and more focused on characters. He also clearly designed Machinery for eventual book publication, with long story arcs that each fit cleanly into a single book. (See my reviews of the three Machinery books to date: one , two , and three .)

Allison has also made a number of related print comics in various formats over the years — including Expecting to Fly , which appeared online first — and there’s a 2013-2015 run of Bobbins , just to confuse things even more. Since Machinery in its turn ended last year, he produced a transitional story called “Space Is the Place ” (with part of the Machinery cast going to a space camp in Wales). And he’s also been writing a monthly comic called Giant Days — confusingly, this is also the title of a major SGR storyline, plus an earlier sidebar print project — for a different art team, which may or may not have a Tackleford connection. (I haven’t seen it yet, since it’s only in floppy form so far.)

So Tackleford is a place that Allison knows well, and has been telling stories about in a variety of ways for a long time. It’s his Yoknapatawpha County or Castle Rock — the core of a world that extends out to many places. With that said, though, Machinery feels more focused on Tackleford than SGR did — maybe because the main characters of Machinery were kids, and limited in their ability to go other places and do other things.

I’ve been a fan of Machinery for a while, but only recently started diving back into Allison’s archives. The first four SGR collections are currently unavailable to most readers in book form — I believe ebooks are still obtainable in the UK, but not elsewhere due to a stupid recent tax law in that backwards country — but books five through eight are still out there, most easily obtainable in the US from Topatco . And so that’s how I got those books — Great Aches, Ahoy Hoy!, Peloton, and Recklessly Yours — and finally read a big wodge of SGR for myself.

What strikes me most about this slightly-less-formed version of Allison’s world is how consistent he’s been in his concerns: his stories have focused on smart, sarcastic women with a goal in mind — Shelley Winters as the exemplar for SGR, Charlotte Grote for Machinery, with plenty of others including Amy Chilton and Dark Esther — in a world of slightly slower, bemused men who end up along for the ride.

Unlike the Machinery books, each SGR volume collects a number of stories, adding up to about eleven months for each book. (More or less, to allow for full stories in each one.) Allison also includes notes on each storyline and some sketches and similar material at the end of each book, in the old way to entice freebie online readers to actually pay money for something.

These books, covering the strips from early 2006 through the end in late 2009, show serious growth in Allison’s art style, from a cleaner version of the look he began SGR with in 2002, drawn on a computer, through a hand-drawn middle period and a brief “hand-drawn, but much bigger originals” period before settling back onto the computer. (Where I think he’s stayed ever since.) The first story of Great Aches is in that early, flat-computer-color style, but everything else has a energetic hand-drawn look which well suites Allison’s frenetic characters and zigzag pacing.

The stories are a bit sillier and more anarchic than Machinery, and Allison’s notes make it clear that he spent this period making it up as he went along, diving into long stories without necessarily having a clear idea of how he’d get to the end. But even if the stories are somewhat shaggier and less formed, they’re still Allison stories, with unlikely turns of plot and deflation always waiting in the wings. And his dialogue was whip-smart from well before this period, full of witty asides and great cross-talk that always feels plausible enough while still not conforming to the way real people ever did or would talk. (That is a good thing: people talk badly almost all of the time. Fiction is to make things better and more interesting.)

So, in conclusion: John Allison is awesome. Buy his books, read his comics, enrich him with your dollars and pounds and more exotic currencies. Start here, start with Bad Machinery, go crazy and drop all the way back to the beginning of Bobbins in 1998 to get the full John Allison experience from the beginning. It’s all good. 

Note: I’m not including the usual Amazon links this time, because that’s a very bad way to read and/or buy Allison’s older work. You can get the Bad Machinery books there if you want, but the others are available other places more easily. And, honestly, for a webcomic you should just read a bunch of it online first — surely we understand that by now?

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks