Category: Reviews

Cleopatra in Space: The Thief and the Sword
By Mike Maihack
191 pages, Scholastic Graphix, $12.99

When Scholastic brought Mike Maihack’s webcomic Cleopatra in Space to print, it seemed like a perfect fit for their line. Unfortunately, the protagonist had as much to do with the real life Cleopatra as does the Queen of England. Target Practice was an Egyptian-flavored space opera with an overly familiar feel to it, much like the overhyped Amulet series from Graphix.

We now have the second volume and it does little fresh or different. In fact, it does less than volume one, slowing things down. Considering the annual release pattern, young readers deserve stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. Here, we start in the middle and reach page 191 without too much happening, leaving us with a cliffhanger that will frustrate the audience and make parents feel as if they wasted their money.

Maihack clearly studied comics when the decompressed storytelling of the late 1990s and 2000s were all the rage. At the time, graphic novel collections were increasingly valuable to the bottom line and six issue collections were the sweet spot. That meant pacing went way down and things dragged out. Here, Maihack spends lots of time watching people run, jump, fight, and so on without much of consequence happening. Similarly, he never deepens the characters so they remain flat, two-dimensional types rather than complex beings.

Maihack clearly knows how to tell a story and his character designs are good. His color palette is interesting and he brings some nice emotion to his story but that’s as far as it goes and for the price, more is expected. Heck, I’ll say, it’s demanded.

The Baby-Sitter’s Club: Kristy’s Great Idea
By Raina Telgemeier
180 page, Scholastic Graphix, $10.99

With the well-deserved success of Raina Telgemeier’s original graphic novels, it makes perfect sense for Scholastic to re-release her earlier efforts, adaptations of Ann M. Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club novels. Wisely, they freshened the 2006 material with added color from Braden Lamb and, like a fresh coat of paint, it feels brand new.

Martin launched her bestselling line of Young Adult novels in 1986, totaling 131 standard novels, an additional 15 Super Specials, plus assorted Mysteries, Super Mysteries, Special Edition Readers’ Requests and so on. The last original fiction was actually a prequel to this story, released in 2010.

In 2006, Scholastic hired Telgemeier to adapt the novels in the hopes of a new secondary line of works for readers. After four, sales didn’t meet expectations and they ended. But now they are back with volume one out now and the second due in July.

Telgemeier does a nice job visualizing the four main characters – Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Stacey. Her story moves breezily along, never dwelling too long on a scene or a baby-sitting experience. Some things get telegraphed such as newcomer Stacey’s secret but in keeping with Martin’s deft handling of teen issues, it plays out well.

It’s interesting to see how Telgemeier has grown as an artist in the last decade. Her style is easily recognizable but feels simpler here. Lamb’s color is a lovely layer to the storytelling and complements the artwork nicely.

The novels and this quartet of titles is clearly for a specific female audience but put it in their hands, and they will love it, coming back for more.

Many cultures initially believed you could not own the land, just use it. Then other cultures thought otherwise and ownership became the norm. Now imagine discovering that some intergalactic race owns the Earth and all its inhabitants. Pretty cool idea, no?

The Wachowskis don’t do much with this in the film Jupiter Ascending, a pretty misfire that has plenty of ideas and plenty of plot holes turning it into more of a mess than a state-of-the-art science fiction tale. It’s a shame really; these are the creators who blew our minds nearly twenty years ago with a little something called The Matrix.

The film, out this week from Warner Home Entertainment, starts on Earth and tells the story of the oddly-named Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis). She and her family her emigrated from Russia to America where they have a family-run housecleaning business. It’s not much of a career for a young woman and she hates it but she endures scrubbing toilets to raise the funds to buy a telescope to gaze at the stars as she once did with her father Maximillian Jones (James D’Arcy). Short of cash and desiring this treat, she was prepared to sell her eggs to complete her fundraising.

A funny thing happened during the harvesting process: aliens come looking for her. Before they can do away with her, for reasons as yet unknown, she is rescued by Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), yet another alien and Jupiter’s life will never be the same.

Through Caine and then Stinger Apini (Sean Bean), Jupiter begins to learn that she is somehow the reincarnation of House Abrasax’s matriarch, who was murdered some 90 millennia earlier. We’re told about Keepers and Entitled and those who strike their better lose their wings, and on and on. It all boils down to the climax of a long game being played by Kalique Abrasax (Tuppence Middleton), Titus (Douglas Booth) and emperor Balem (Eddie Redmayne). If Jupiter is killed then one of them can inherit the Earth or maybe marry one of the others and then kill her so the groom can inherit the Earth. Why? Apparently, we’re a hardy bunch and we’re a rich supply of the life essence that keeps these royals immortal. Truly.

The goal is to keep Jupiter from claiming her birthright but first she has to be convinced this is all real and then she has to go to the realm and deal with interstellar bureaucracy to establish her claim is legit.

There’s running, jumping, fighting, double-crossing, last-minute rescues, verbal byplay, true love, and every other stock element you want in your sci-fi popcorn films. What’s missing though is the gravitas that this is real and the stakes are high. Jupiter accepts this all with barely any wide-eyed wonder and is then all gung-ho to get involved. Things take a decidedly nasty turn when the emperor has kidnapped her family, including momma Aleksa (Maria Doyle Kennedy). She will surrender the Earth or watch her loved ones be killed.

There’s then more running and things blowing up and the world coming apart and somehow a series of nick of time rescues that stagger the imagination followed by two incredibly unbelievably moments of serendipity that makes you groan loudly because by the then, this story has gone off the rails.

The film is sumptuous to look at with amazing rocketships, costumes, cityscpaes, and tech gear, Everyone from Kunis to Redmayne is attractive and scrubbed to a glistening sheen. The special effects are lovely making you ignore much of the nonsense dialogue, thin characterization, and lapses of logic. Making fun of the government offices requiring a reincarnated heiress prove her legitimacy is a fabulous notion then the Wachowskis made it resemble Earth way too closely down to a cameo from Terry Gilliam, who did similar things in his own films.

The movie looks just fabulous in high definition with an impressive video transfer with matchless audio. None of it makes up for the nonsensical story, but boy, it’s pretty watch although Michael Giacchino’s score sounds crisp yet tired.

The film comes on Blu-pray disc, supported with the standard assortment of features, none of which feels out of the ordinary or particularly special, much like the film itself. We have Jupiter Jones: Destiny Is Within Us (7:00); Caine Wise: Interplanetary Warrior (5:00): The Wachowskis: Minds Over Matter (7:00); Worlds Within Worlds Within Worlds (10:00), letting us finally linger over the cultures, alien races, planets, fashion, androids and designs;  Genetically Spliced (10:00); Bullet Time Evolved (10:00), a look at the latest rev of their patented special effect;, and finally, From Earth to Jupiter (And Everywhere in Between) (10:00),  an attempt at sorting through the film’s plot.

How to be a Superhero
By Mark Edlitz
Bear Manor Media, 586 pages, $42.95/$29.95

Longtime readers of pop culture magazines have no doubt read interviews with actors who have donned capes, cowls, spandex, and prosthetics to portray heroes and villains drawn from comic books. I certainly was involved in my fair share of such interviews working at Starlog Press and its successors have continued, especially contemporary online outlets which are enjoying a bonanza of options.

Most of those interviews tend to be about the most immediate project with little insight or context about an actor’s association with a media property or being the latest in a long line to play the same role. And certainly, these interviews are sandwiched between news, features, and other topics. So, it’s a bit of a surprise that such a collection has not been attempted before.

Mark Edlitz, a hardworking writer with credits including The Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times’ Hero Complex, Moviefone, Sirius/XM Radio’s Slice of SciFi and Empire magazine online, has collected nearly four dozen interviews he’s conducted through the years and is releasing on June 1, How to be a Superhero. It’s not a guidebook or a real “how to” but provides an interesting glimpse into the performers who brought four-color idols to life.

Organized into eight categories, Edlitz introduces you to Caped Crusaders, Heroic Women, Antiheroes, Sidekicks, Supervillains, and so on. There’s even an Appendix that includes the performers he could not interview himself, culling choice quotes from a variety of sources so this is as complete a source as one might hope to find.

Edlitz’s overlong introduction sets the stage and clarifies to us who he considers to be a superhero, which feels like a justification to wax nostalgic about James Bond and including interviews with George Lazenby and Roger Moore. Additionally, he includes an out-of-left field, not terribly useful interview with Leonard Nimoy about Spock.

Overlooking those, the remainder of the book is treasure trove of interesting conversations with actors from Noel Neill and Jack Larson during the nascent television days through Clark Gregg, the coolest hero in a black suit on prime time today. In between, we get everyone you would expect and then some. Edlitz gets credit for speaking to the first Fantastic Four – Alex Hyde-White, Carl Ciafello, Rebecca Staab and Joseph Culp, who played Doctor Doom – in the never-released Roger Corman produced adaptation. Similarly, we also hear from Chip ZIen, who voiced Howard the Duck from that eponymous disastrous production.

Given how slightly defined the heroes were in film and on television in the 1940s-1960s, the actors themselves attempt to fill in the gaps and explain their work process. Then there’s Yvonne Craig who pretty much admitted she didn’t put much thought in to Batgirl given how little she was given to work with.

On the flipside, some of the book’s best comments come from Michael Rosenbaum, exploring the events that shaped Lex Luthor on Smallville. Kevin Conroy and Tim Daly, who voiced the World’s Finest heroes, also have some strong comments about what it means to be a hero.

Behind the camera, Tom Mankiewicz, who wrote for Bond and the Man of Steel, provides an informative glimpse into how 1970s fare was conceived while Ken Johnson talks adapting the Hulk to the small screen, mostly avoiding the horrible telefilms that tried to create a Marvel televised universe.

What would have helped the book was providing some context for exactly when each interview was conducted so we have a better idea how the performers were influenced by contemporaneous comics publishing and film competition. He also asks each subject for a question to ask the next one but they run in a chaotic order so it feels jarring rather than delightful.

As interesting as the words are, the pictures leave something to be desired, mostly public domain press pictures and far too few of them. Still, these are minor quibbles in what is an enjoyable reading experience.

With 20-something superhero pictures to come in the next few years, this book is a fine encapsulation of the pioneers who paved the way for today’s fare. Dealing with stereotyping, poor special effects, meager budgets, and ridiculously tight production made it hard to stand up for truth, justice, and the American Way so they are to be saluted and thanked for their contributions.