I don’t celebrate, of course. Well, I do, sort of. I volunteer at the hospital, helping Santa deliver gifts to the kids who are in-patient. My Santa is Jewish. His wife (and elf) is Jewish. So am I. We are the Shabbos goys of Christmas.
Just because it’s not my holiday doesn’t mean that I ignore the season of comfort and joy. Coming so close to the New Year, it makes me think of how to improve myself and the planet for the next twelve months.
It is possible for me to get discouraged when I think about these things. There are so many important problems to be solved – climate change, income inequality, terrorism, racism, sexism etc. etc. I don’t have any ideas that are big enough to solve these. I can’t do it all by myself.
(Aside: Thinking I have to do it all by myself is a form of grandiosity.)
So, the challenge, as I see it, is to find a finite problem and a community that might be able to solve it. I think I’ve found the problem, and I think we, as the comics community, are up to the task.
A while ago, I read this story about the growing and unmet demand for story-hours for children, especially pre-school children. Research shows that the single most important thing contributing to a person’s success is having access to books as a child.
We are comics-lovers. We love to read. We should find a way to connect with under-served communities and read to their kids.
Here are some of the challenges:
We will need to find locations that are open to the public and safe for children under the age of five.
We will need to find a stash of appropriate books.
We will need to learn what laws cover activities like this, and take steps to be in compliance with them.
Here are some of my first thoughts, by number.
Some of the bigger and better comic book stores have reading areas. Perhaps they would donate an hour or two each week for this purpose.
There are excellent books for children in this age group in our medium. We might be able to raise money to purchase them, or contact the publishers for donations.
Perhaps there are lawyers who are comic book fans who could advise us.
These aren’t all the problems we would face, nor are my suggestions necessarily useful. It’s not a way to reach every child in need. If anything, the kids who need it most are the hardest to involve, since they are most likely to have parents who work several jobs, don’t speak English, or are just plain apathetic.
Still, it’s a start.
What do you think? Is this something we could do? Should we start in one space, and see if it works? Do you have other ideas?
Let me know in the comments. If you really want to get involved, send me an e-mail Martha@comicmix.com
Young Adult novels tend to work best when they are metaphors for their readersâ lives. James Dashnerâs Maze Runner trilogy certainly applied the zigs and zags of an adolescentâs development to that of a maze where the wrong turn can have devastating consequences. The books sold well and in the wake of The Hunger Gamesâ success, they were naturals for screen adaptation.
The first, 2014âs Maze Runner, was nowhere near as engaging with flat characters and a dumb, unsustainable society of teens. We were left with the gaggle of teens getting out from the maze and into its inner workings.
The Scorch Trials, out now oi Combo Pack from 20th Century Home Entertainment, immediately picks up from that moment as we trace the Gladers: Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), Minho (Ki Hong Lee), Teresa Agnes (Kaya Scodelario), Frypan (Dexter Darden) and Winston (Alexander Flores) as they go exploring unchartered territory.
Once they find Mr. Janson (Aidan Gillen), they are told their safe so we know long before they do that the gang is anything but safe. Right there is the filmâs problem as the worldbuilding is flabby, the character development is nil but the action quotient is high, trying to mask weak storytelling. Itâs a shame screenwriter T.S. Nowlin and director Wes Ball, returning for a second trip to dystopia, didnât take the time to deepen the players and make the audience care. Instead, they do a fine job with the running, jumping, and exploding but that reduces the cast and Dashnerâs story to the plot of a video game.
We learn the Flare virus remains a threat as does Ava Paige (Patricia Clarkson), representing the evil WCKD (get it?) but we are also introduced to The Right Arm, the resistance movement led by Vince (Barry Pepper) and a gaggle of others who will work with Thomas and Teresa to overthrow the bad guys in the third installment, The Death Cure, due in 2017.
At 131 minutes, the film could have used some tightening that would have allowed the characters to feel like people like chess pieces. The bloated production needed some nipping and tucking to help with a slow first half and better second.
Still, the high definition transfer at AVC encoded 1080p in 2.40:1 looks just swell so you can watch things blow up just fine, paired well with the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix.
The combo comes with Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD so they have you covered. The Blu-ray comes with a nice assortment of extras starting with Audio Commentary from Ball, Nowlin, producer Joe Hartwick, Jr. and editor Dan Zimmerman; Janson’s Report (Classified) (4:57) , an assortment of “confessionalsâ; Deleted and Extended Scenes (17:58) with optional commentary by Ball, Nowlin, Hartwick, Jr. and Zimmerman; Secrets of The Scorch (52:15) , a compilation of featurettes with the standard behind the scenes footage and cast and crew interviews; Gag Reel (15:02); and Visual Effects Breakdown (1:06) with commentary by Ball; Visual Effects Reel (29:55).
One unique touch is a Maze Runner comic book being included.
Merry X-mas ComicMixers! Spend Christmas Eve with us, as we review our Christmas lists and give some suggestions on what to binge-watch, read and listen to over Winter Break. You even get to watch us open our first present!
The first movie I ever reviewed was Attack of the Clones and I gave it a rave review, the kind of review I would never give it now that I consider it to be arguably the worst movie in the entire franchise. In my defense, I was 17 years old and mostly just didnât know better when it came to dialogue, character arcs, or any facets of compelling filmmaking that werenât balls-to-the-wall lightsaber fights. I walked out of every one of the prequels happy and only turned on them with time and perspective, and thatâs why Iâm afraid now to write about how thoroughly I enjoyed The Force Awakens because now these words might actually stick around.
From here on out Iâm going to talk about the plot so if thatâs not what youâre interested in, now is the time to head somewhere else.
There arenât a lot of new story beats in The Force Awakens, in fact it seems like it follows the road map from A New Hope faithfully, but after hearing George Lucas go on and on for years about how the prequels were supposed to ârhymeâ with the original trilogy this is hardly surprising. We donât come to Star Wars for original or complex plots, we come for the skillful implementation of iconic moments. This is a franchise that started by ripping off Hidden Fortress and hasnât had a great many original ideas since that werenât about selling toys in fun new ways. The Force Awakens is a story Iâve heard many times before in a more dynamic wrapping.
J.J. Abrams is a better director than George Lucas in every way that counts, and it is almost cruel how they show that off. The original trilogy understandably looks a little dated at this point three decades in the future but fancy visual effects aside the prequel trilogy has aged terribly, they simply donât share a visual vocabulary with their peers. The shots are largely static and the compositions boring; there seem to be more variety in the transitory wipes than in the set-ups. Abrams has a lot of flaws but he know how to move a camera and he knows how to shoot a good action scene and thatâs more than enough to knock this movie out of the park. Thereâs one sequence that feels like a lumpy, out of place, mashup of Firefly and Men in Black full of just-too-cutsey cameos, but other than that I was suitably riveted to my seat for the entire film and thatâs becoming more and more rare for me.
I love all of the new principal characters without reservation. John Boyega is utterly fantastic as Finn. Heâs able to display such a depth of turmoil, he instantly becomes one of the most kinetic characters in the entire mythos. Iâve been a huge fan of his since Attack the Block and Iâm thrilled to see him live up to all that promise and more here. Daisy Ridley is the new face of the franchise, and the way she shows the scars of her abandonment while similarly embodying the Luke Skywalker role for a new trilogy is most impressive. She doesnât get a striking hero shot gazing in to a binary sunset, but she nails everything else about being a Star Wars protagonist. Her facial expression work in the climactic battle is worth the price of admission alone. Oscar Isaac is underused but his charisma is so strong he looms large over the movie and is just so alarmingly good looking, Iâm not sure itâs safe to photograph him much more anyway. I liked Adam Driver more in his turn as Kylo Ren than Iâve liked him in anything else Iâve seen him in. He does about half the work in the biggest, most impactful scene in the movie and he feels right in that spot. Heâs everything that Alec Guinness, Harrison Ford, or Ewan McGregor brought to this franchise and those names are good company.
The Force Awakens is a good action movie, it builds off of and feeds the endless churn of mythos needed to keep Star Wars afloat as an intellectual property, it creates new and interesting characters, and it gives them compelling places to do exciting things in. I donât know what to want besides this. It isnât exactly the same as seeing A New Hope for the first time when I was five years old… but nothing ever will be. This is the modernization the franchise needed, and itâs as good or better than every sequel I ever chased through mediocre novels throughout the years.
Okay, wait a minute. You think you’re stacking gifts under the tree, but are you really? How do you know? Maybe you’re not the stacker but the stackee. Not the giver but the given. And about that tree: maybe it doesn’t really look like a tree. Or maybe it isn’t there. Maybe you’re not there.
Pause and take a breath.
Some savants tell us that there’s about a twenty percent chance that we are constructs, like avatars in computer games. Everything we are and believe to be real… isn’t. All just an illusion, and maybe a pretty shabby one at that.
The idea is older than you might guess. Way back in the Seventeenth Century, a brainy mathematician and philosopher named Rene Descartes suggested that a prankster of a demon kept you in a vat and not necessarily a big vat, either, because maybe you are no more than a brain. Maybe the only brain. Everything else is an illusion created by that snarky demon for reasons only snarky demons are privy to.
The idea was updated by the Wachowski siblings in their movie The Matrix. In that story, we humans are the captives of sentient machines who use our bodies as energy sources. We aren’t aware of our plight because the “reality” we experience is a humdinger of a simulation, courtesy of the machines. We languish in storage somewhere, enjoying or maybe loathing the show that we don’t know is a show.
The idea has sprouts elsewhere. Plato, the ancient Grecian savant, thought that everything we encounter is just a copy of an original that exists some non-terrestrial somewhere. Plato, in turn, inspired a group that became known as the neo-Platonists and some notions of a “heaven” are close to Plato’s hypothesis. (I could mention St. Augustine but I won’t because some of you, if you exist, might think I’m showing-off, and even if you don’t exist, I wouldn’t want you thinking ill of me.)
The notion that we’re make-believe creatures in a make-believe world has its attractions. It would explain why, for example, I have no memory of acts I must have committed hundreds of times and why, conversely, I have memory snatches of things that occurred when I was quite little. It also might relieve us of any responsibility for our actions. (Hey, it wasn’t me that broke your window, it was my programmer.) Of course, my lack of certain memories would have to be part of my programming. But wait. Could my lack of memories, and other anomalies, merely demonstrate a lack of competence in who or whatever is running the operation? Could our programmer be mentally challenged? Or a toddler paying with his equivalent of a pacifier? Maybe he’s named Junior and the adults have given him this stupid game to keep him quiet and you and I are part of the game.
Do we care? Is anything changed?
Well, ixpageoratsym. In Junior’s language that’s “happy holidays.” Go ahead – prove me wrong.
I went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens on opening night. That’s not incredibly impressive because so did almost everyone else. While I was on line for my overpriced movie snacks, I did overhear a very interesting conversation. Three guys in their late twenties, talking about the Bechdel test and if certain movies would pass or fail.
In case you don’t know what the Bechdel test is, here are some details. The Bechdel test (also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test) first appeared in Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For. In a strip published in 1985 “The Rule”, two women discuss seeing a film and one of them lays out these rules that we have all come to use. The rules are: 1) The movie has to have at least two women in it, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something besides a man. After the comic strip’s publication, it has also become common to require that both women have character names.
It has been applied to TV shows on a regular basis. I’m fairly certain that every episode of Buffy hasn’t passed this test. Teenage girls do spend a lot of time whining about their undead boyfriends in between saving the world from the bad guy. And my favorite comic book, The Life and Times of Savior 28, definitely doesn’t pass. (You should still read it though.) These examples don’t diminish the fact that this test, while far from perfect, is our only real judge of women in movies or any form of media.
So back to my eavesdropping. Here are three fairly young good looking albeit kinda hipster guys chatting about the Bechdel test and how movies need to change to better represent women. They were talking about the movie The Big Short in the context that women weren’t as involved with the real life events (which I don’t know is true) so that is why it probably won’t pass. They actually got really serious and intense in talking about the gender inequality in movies, especially in relation to the Bechdel test.
So, in overhearing all of this, I started to giggle. One of them caught my eye and we began to chat. I told them that the test had worked perfectly in their case because it made their discussion happen. When this comic was published, this conversation wasn’t happening on a movie concession line or probably anywhere else. When it finally started, it was women forcing the conversation upon men, as they explored the possibilities for equality in movies. Now, men are becoming equal partners in wanting to see change happen.
I’m not saying this change is going to be immediate; in fact it has been going on for longer than anyone’s lifetime who is reading this. Nevertheless, compared to 30 years ago when this was published, the conversation is happening on a public level. Yes, there are still people who deny the conversation exists, and we all know that equality is a hot button issue right now.
The world isn’t perfect and there is still a lot of room to grow. Sometimes the way things are really gets me down. But sometimes, I overhear the very best things and get re-inspired that we can change for the better.
I had a whole ‘nother idea for my column this week. Completely different. It wasn’t about Star Wars, it wasn’t Christmassy, but after I read Joe Corallo’s column that ran in this space 24 hours ago, the that idea was gone with the wind.
Just about all of us here at ComicMix write about the need for greater diversity in comics characters and creators, Joe more than most because that’s his beat. Yesterday he discussed the proliferation of women and their sad restriction to women characters. If you haven’t read his piece, the link is up there in my first paragraph. You should read it. Everybody should read it, so email or text the link to your friends, enemies, and casual acquaintances.
In case you haven’t thought about the subject, there is one great reason why our beloved medium needs greater diversity in characters and in talent that has nothing to do with equality of opportunity, although that is very important.
We need to encourage and support diversity because it expands the types of stories we can tell and we can read. Call it creative greed if you like, but offering a wider range of stories and a wider range of writers, artists and editors gives us a wider range of choice and brings in new ideas and concepts. Just as we as a medium needed to go beyond our historical fixation on superheroes, we also need to gather and offer a wider range of experiences that are common to people who are not white male heterosexuals.
In other words, expanding our entertainment options is a good idea. If you don’t want to experience a story about, say, left-handed German-speaking midgets, that’s your prerogative. But I’ll be damned if there’s nobody out there who can pull that off.
As Joe said, women need not be restricted to stories about women. They have even more to say about our society in general and all its myriad components. And this applies to every identifiable grouping of creators. When the comic book medium started giving work to black talent – other than the rare and occasional person here and there – many got their early assignments on titles such as Black Lightning,Luke Cage, Black Panther, Deathlok, Black Goliath and Vixen.
(By the way, did you notice how many 1970s black superheroes were named Black-something? Hey, guys, comics is a visual medium! You don’t need to telegraph the lead character’s race in the guy’s name!)
Okay. That’s a step up from the movies. Before Sidney Poitier, the parts given to most black performers were as idiots or musclemen or gamblers. And one can argue (with limited success) that black actors of that time had it better than Asians. Fortunately, in comics black creators quickly moved on to a wider range of material, an honor thus far not given to too many women. But that will change. I think. I hope.
However, I should point out that, as an editor, I had a harder time getting a fair and competitive page rate for black talent than I did for white folks. And I had a harder time getting a fair and competitive page rate for women than I did for men. I suspect that’s not as true today because we have evolved, our conscience has been raised, and the younger folk have a much better grip on what is fair.
Attaining diversity is not easy, and trailblazers always put up with a lot more shit than they should. It’s also an ongoing process. If your first name is Mohammad or Fatima, you probably know what I mean.
Which came first, the movie or the toy? Okay, I kid, but seriously – was there ever a more perfectly marketable movie character than that fat little orange-and-white droid, BB-8? From his appearance in the <a href=”
trailer, everyone seemed to fall in love with the little guy (me included). And then we learned that not only could we have one for our very own (and love him and hug him and pet himand call him George), but he wasn’t going to be just a collectible figure – he was going to be a rolling, beeping, interactive little friend just like in the movie. What could be better?
Well, a life-sized, autonomous BB-8; but until science attains the achievement of creating gen-u-ine droid companions for all of us, this is the next best thing. First of all, this little robotic guy was just designed to tug at our human heartstrings. With his rounded shape and head that are an almost cartoon-like cross between human and droid (less machine-shaped than R2-D2, but also less human-like than C-3PO), expressive sounds, quick movements, and loyal dog-like personality, he’s simply a sweetheart of a droid – exactly the loyal little pet-companion we’d all like. Second, Sphero’s product brings the movie character to life in a fun, interactive way, while still leaving room through its interface for updating and adding features via the BB-8 app (in fact, between my first and second test runs, they added four more personality interactions). Pretty cool!
I first encountered Sphero’s BB-8 in person at Dragon Con, where one of Peter Mayhew’s reps was playing around with Mayhew’s BB-8 during a room party; and as soon as I saw him, I understood what all the fuss was about (and decided I must have one). Like many people, I got to test-drive my BB-8 before Star Wars: The Force Awakens even came out (in the ultimate example of marketing leading a movie, we got to learn his character via the toy before even really meeting him on the big screen). But unlike some, I just got my little BB-8 a few days ago (and saw the movie last night). So I got to have fun with mini BB-8 just days before seeing his origin.
After playing around with my new toy, here’s what I’ve learned:
BB-8 is not too hard to use, once you’ve figured out the wordless instructions he comes with. Getting to that point can be a little difficult – despite the simple pictograms that seem like they should be easy to figure out, I also had to troll around a bit on Sphero’s online FAQ before I got the hang of a few things. However, they do have both the FAQ and <a href=”
video to help get people started; and once the features are figured out, they’re super easy to remember from use to use. It would have been nice to have it all right there; but then, in this day and age, it’s not surprising they’ve decided to put most of the more in-depth stuff online. In the end, it’s not such a bad system – since the FAQ answers most of the questions I wanted to know, once I found the FAQ it was more like a treasure hunt than an exercise in frustration.
The design and functionality of the droid seem really solid. The charging station is easy to use and also looks really cool (I’m considering giving it a place of honor on my desk at work, although I kind of fear some covetous person will try to reenact the movie by attempting to steal him away because he’s just so cute). The fully charged BB-8 can be played with for an hour before needing a recharge. The droid itself, which has already knocked into a bunch of my walls while “learning its environment,” seems pretty durable (and is supposed to be water resistant, although I’m wary of testing that). The Bluetooth communication range (once you’ve got it connected) is pretty far (for instance, I left him on “Patrol” and he went all the way around the corner and into my bedroom, probably at least 20 feet away through a concrete wall). He also has a speed adjustment, which makes him controllable on both smooth floors and carpets without causing him to, for instance, spin out of control by going too fast on a smooth floor.
There are a lot of cool features to this droid. You can “drive” him yourself via a directional joystick on the app that is really easy to use (and even drive in “reverse” so it looks like he’s running away backwards). You can give him (to date) twelve commands that will cause him to e.g. shake his head yes or no, go into panic mode, go in a straight line back and forth, or make a figure eight or a square. You can leave him on “Patrol” and he will just mosey around on his own (I left mine on Patrol for at least 20 minutes and he was still going when I stopped him). You can also give him voice commands such as, “Run away!” and your little droid will speed away. One caveat I will note regarding the voice commands: they are fairly reliable, but occasionally the app (and I’ve tested it on both the iPhone and Droid Maxx) doesn’t pick up your command, and notes it as an “unknown command.” Further, the “Come in, BB-8” command has not yet worked for me on either phone. However, generally speaking, they’re fun. And finally, you can record and view messages as holograms that look like they are emanating from the BB-8 when viewed through your phone camera screen (and it looks coooool).
You can totally troll your tiny hamster with a BB-8, or use BB-8’s interactive features to make silly videos. It’s pretty hilarious to play around with him in general, and despite being a little machine plus a clever bit of programming, he really takes on a personality through the controls, autonomous movements and noises he (or rather, the app) makes – the first time I tried the “It’s a trap!” command, for instance, my little droid immediately went and hid under the bed. Bless.
Although of course there are a limited number of things he can do thus far, the BB-8 is fascinating to play with because of the control you have, and still fun even after you’ve learned his basic tricks (and I can imagine he will be a hit at my New Year’s party or other places where people who haven’t seen one yet can play with him). Plus, Sphero said they’d be adding more functionalities, and so far, it looks like that’s holding true!
Of course, I’m always an advocate for more and better features, and since they plan to add to the droid’s functionality, here are some things I’d like to see:
Additional voice commands, and possibly customizable voice commands;
Additional movement buttons like the four new ones they just added;
The ability to save holographic messages to your phone and send them to others;
New holographic messages from The Force Awakens;
The ability to run the BB-8 while also using your camera for, e.g., Vine or other social media;
A “return to base” command that brings BB-8 back to his owner’s cell phone without the need to manually drive him.
While learning about my new droid, I also got to talk with the folks at Sphero about him; and while Sphero is being pretty tight-lipped about future features (darn it! I’m curious!), they did answer a few of my BB-8 questions. Here’s what they said:
Can you give us a brief history of the Sphero BB-8? How did it come to be as a product concept, and what went into its creation? How did Sphero’s background as a company and its past creations play into making this little guy a reality?
Co-founders of Sphero, Adam Wilson and Ian Bernstein along with Paul Berbarian (CEO, Sphero) went through the Disney Techstars accelerator program in the summer/fall of 2014. During this program, Bob Iger (CEO, The Walt Disney Company) became a mentor of the trio where he learned more about the original Sphero rolling ball that the company had already created and sold.
As Bob learned more about Sphero’s expertise, he showed the team a secret photo on his phone from the filming of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He had asked Paul, Ian and Adam if they could make a consumer version of the droid character, BB-8. Adam and Ian saw the opportunity at hand and had a proto-type to Iger within 24 hours. The rest was history.
Any fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes about the BB-8’s development, or its interaction with, e.g., the Star Wars movie creators and actors?
Daisy Ridley and John Boyega attended a “midnight madness” event in London on “Force Friday,” September 4, 2015 when all Star Wars consumer products became available. At this event, Daisy Ridley signed one of the BB-8 by Sphero products for the Sphero team.
Peter Mayhew (who plays Chewbacca) sent his own BB-8 by Sphero product to the Sphero corporate office to have the team who helped create the product, sign it.
There are a few tech specs, features and controls I wasn’t completely clear on even after reading the product info and FAQ. Here are a few areas where I’d like more info:
The product information indicates that we will be able to send the “holographic messages” but I was unable to discover how to do so. Is this feature active / on the way? How does it work?
At this time, holographic messages cannot be sent to one another. They are recorded within the app and can be viewed through the app in which they are recorded until deleted.
I know the BB-8 is supposed to learn and adapt to its environment and user, and develop a “personality.” How does it do that, and what indicators will a user see when it starts to do that?
His adaptive personality comes to life through animations and through other actions (for example, he turns red and appears flustered when he runs into another object)
Does the BB-8 really “map” its environment (e.g. obstacles, etc.), and does it remember it beyond the current session? When does it map – only in Patrol mode, or other times?
While BB-8 by Sphero does not utilize true mapping technology, he remembers where he goes (it’s outlined in the app when in patrol mode)
The head and antenna are super-cute, but I can see the potential for antenna damage or losing the head (mine already got stuck under a couch while on Patrol, but I rescued it). Will there be spare heads available to purchase?
Yes. Separate heads for BB-8 by Sphero will be sold separately in 2016 at our partner retailers.
Will it damage the BB-8/battery at all if it’s left docked and charging whenever it’s not in use? How long is the battery expected to last, and will there be a way to replace batteries?
No.
Sphero offers a 1 year warranty against manufacturer defect, but the battery is expected to last long after one year.
I saw in the user information that the body of the BB-8 is waterproof. This is my first Sphero product – do they perform in water (e.g. float or run underwater, respond to controls) and would it damage the product to try that out? (And would it work with the head, which is only water resistant, on top, or not?).
BB-8 has a waterproof body and water resistant head.
(Hmm, guess I’ll have to risk testing that one for myself?)
In related things, Sphero’s FAQ says, “The product experience will continue to be updated throughout its lifespan.” That’s great, because with a high-ticket item like this, the fact that there will be additional features added over time makes it more worth the price and people more likely to buy. What does that entail, or can you give us any sneak peeks into upcoming additions?
We are not able to share any sneak peeks at this time. But we promise to keep the content fresh.
(tears But I want to know nowwwwww!)
Oh well – even if I don’t know what the future holds for my tiny BB-8, I guess I can content myself with playing with his current functions and watching wee mini Squish talk to BB-8, give him hamster kisses, share snack time, and try to assist BB-8 in breaking out of Hamster Jail, a.k.a. her lovely playpen. Good times
And as for Star Wars: The Force Awakens itself, I’m still digesting the movie from a late viewing last night. But in brief: I thoroughly enjoyed it (and not just for BB-8), and it managed to throw a few surprises my way, as well. At the same time, it’s fascinating to see how much it echoes the first trilogy and manages to be exactly what Star Wars fans would expect while still feeling fresh. Through design (oh, those scrolling intros and old-school transitions!), camera work, and soundtrack, the aesthetics of the old and new movies match despite the long time gap between their creations. And throughout the movie, there are near matches to plot, setting, and character beats that were present in the first trilogy.
And yet, while watching the movie, it (mostly) didn’t feel too self-referential or re-hashed. And although the movie followed many tropes both generally and in line with what the first trilogy had done, it did also manage to buck a few expectations, which is always welcome. All-in-all, an enjoyable movie experience that fits well within the franchise, but is different enough to keep you thinking about it for a bit.
Which I will do, as I continue to roll around with my BB-8, the coolest movie tie-in merchandise I’ve owned to date. I recommend you get one too. And until next time, Servo Lectio!
In the late ’80s, Elektra: Assassin was possibly the very favorite comic of my brother and myself — he even bought an extra copy of the splash-page-filled climactic issue and covered a large portion of his ceiling with it. (I can still quote the important bit from memory: “And flesh/all flesh/will scream/and burn/and die” with the next page being the utterly perfect “and die/and die/and die/and die/and die.”
Does it hold up? Surprisingly well, actually. It uses some Marvel Universe furniture — SHIELD is important, with Nick Fury wandering through once or twice, and Daredevil shows up equally briefly in a flashback — but it’s really its own thing, a fever dream of politics and megadeath and violence and paranoia that’s set sometime that could be 1972 or 1986 or no year in particular. And for a book so over the top and full of grotesques, it’s got some of Miller’s most subtle writing — particularly impressive for those of us depressed at how Miller abandoned subtlety forever almost immediately afterward.
It’s set before Elektra’s death in Daredevil — probably. A presidential campaign is heating up, and a young, personable candidate (Ken Wind), who is a Democrat but never named as such, is winning over America with his sunny vision. Meanwhile, The President, who looks mostly like Nixon but could be Reagan if you squint hard enough, is paranoid and obsessed with nuclear war and his own machismo. And if you think you know which of those is a bigger threat to the world, you’re wrong. (This may be a hint of Miller’s later right-wing stridency, but it works perfectly in context.)
And in a small Latin American tin-pot dictatorship — propped up by SHIELD and the US more generally — a deeply mediocre and not overly intelligent SHIELD agent named Garrett is about to get in way over his head. The Beast — the supernatural being behind the secretive Hand organization of ninja — is trying to possess a human being, to further that plot I hinted at in the first paragraph. And Elektra is there to stop him, mostly by killing people in inventive and spectacular ways.
But Elektra is in over her head, too. She’s been captured and indoctrinated by the Hand at least twice, not to mention the time she just spent in a snake pit of a local insane asylum, and her fuzzy and confused mind is running almost entirely on instinct and pure willpower.
Unfortunately, Elektra and Garrett are the only ones who can save the world. From the Beast, and his dreams of megadeath. From Ken Wind. From the technological wizards of SHIELD’s ExTechOps division, and the cyborgs they create to chase the AWOL Garrett — including his ex-partner, Perry, who would have been a serial killer if he hadn’t found an easier, more legal way to kill lots of people.
Miller tells this story in the best example of ’80s style I know of, all stream-of-consciousness narrative captions from multiple points of view and overlapping screamed dialogue. He throws hints into the air to have them hit targets perfectly sixty pages later, and weaves it all together seamlessly. And this is Sienkiewicz at the height of his visual ambition, right before Stray Toasters, painting like a demon and shifting from photorealist to a child’s scrawl to slashes of color instantly to support Miller’s equally quick changes of mood. (I’ll also note that Archie Goodwin, one of the unsung heroes of comics, was the original editor, and I expect that he had a lot to do with making Elektra: Assassin as coherent and crisp and powerful as it is.)
Elektra: Assassin is a smart, fast-moving, overwhelming, psychological, all-encompassing thriller comic, set in the Marvel Universe but not of it, and a superhero story only by courtesy. It does things effortlessly on the page that are thrilling and amazing, and has amazing depths of subtlety for a book about a ninja-girl stopping a demon from blowing up the world. This is one major ’80s comic that completely holds up, and one of the real highlights of the careers of two hugely talented creators.
The other day at a comic shop I saw a flier for the upcoming Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! #1. It was advertised having writer Kate Leth and artist Brittney Williams attached. I think it’s great that the two of them are on this book, as I enjoy the work they’ve put out over at BOOM! Studios. However, it did start getting me thinking about the direction the comic industry is going. A direction that it may not want to go in.
We’ve seen the big two added more books with a woman lead. This has been great. A lot of them have at least one woman creator attached as well. We should absolutely be thrilled by that and support those efforts.
Just off the top of my head I can think of Amy Reeder on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Kelly Sue Deconnick’s recent Captain Marvel run, G. Willow Wilson and and Sana Amanat’s work on the new Ms. Marvel, Marguerite Bennett on the all woman’s Avengers team titled A-Force, and of course Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! just at Marvel.
Over at DC we have Amanda Conner on Harley Quinn, Amy Chu on Poison Ivy, Ann Nocenti followed up by Genevieve Valentine on Catwoman, Gail Simone followed up by Babs Tarr on Batgirl, Meredith Finch on Wonder Woman, Annie Wu on Black Canary, Marguerite Bennett and Marguerite Sauvage on DC Bombshells and Emanuela Lupacchino on Starfire.
That’s a pretty hefty list for right off the top of my head, and I could have even missed one or two. We should be proud of the comic industry for having more women being involved in the creative process. However, you’ll also see the problem I was getting at before. All of the women creators are working on comics starring women… and not much else.
Just to be clear, I am not at all speaking on behalf of any of the creators listed, or making any judgments on the work they choose to do. I think they’ve been doing incredible work, and I’ve picked up most of the mentioned titles that are currently available. My concern lies with the pattern of the big two pairing up women on women lead books while not doing that with books that have a man in the lead.
It’s very possible that some of these instances they asked creators the characters they wanted to work with and these are the results we have. I highly doubt that was every single instance. We have had a long history of men, particularly straight cis white men, writing women in comics. Many of which have been great. I thoroughly enjoyed Charles Soule on She-Hulk and Brian Azzarello on Wonder Woman. However, I’m starting to get concerned that we’re moving more towards compartmentalizing creative teams, and that’s not a good thing.
How many women can you name who’ve worked on Batman? Sure, you might have thought Devin Grayson right off the bat. You’ll probably be racking your brain for a while after that though. Becky Cloonan did a fill in issue on Scott Snyder’s run a few years ago. And yes, Genevieve Valentine is currently one of the eight writers on Batman and Robin Eternal, the other seven being men. We haven’t had a woman creator have a lengthy run on either Batman or Detective Comics. Mostly fill-ins.
Okay, how about Superman? Louise Simonson had a huge impact on the character. She was integral to the Death of Superman storyline, and she created Steel. You’re gonna need to think real long and hard to come up with too many more names than that. Sure, Ramona Fradon did many of the Super Friends comics, but that’s most of it. Justice League comics are even more male dominated. As are The Flash, Green Lantern, and so forth. Ramona did work plenty on Aquaman and Plastic Man, but we did already mention her.
How about over at Marvel? Let’s start with Spider-Man. Sara Pichelli did co-create Miles Morales with Bendis, but beyond that there isn’t much else. Louise Simonson did some work on Spider-man as well, but I did already mention her with Superman. And those examples aren’t exactly examples of long runs on Amazing Spider-Man or even Spectacular Spider-man.
And the X-Men? Louise Simonson and Ann Nocenti did a lot of work in the X-Universe, but again, both of them have already been mentioned for other contributions. I can also add Majorie Liu for her work on Astonishing X-Men, but you get the idea.
Again, to clarify, I am not knocking or belittling any of the contributions these creators have made. I admire the work they have all done and continue to do. I’m highlighting all of this to make the point that this is still a very male dominated industry, that women have not had all the same opportunities over the years as men whether it was deliberate or not, and that this should change. I also understand that the comic book industry is small. Smaller than I think we realize sometimes. Even still, this situation could be better.
I’m not asking for Superman to spin the earth backwards in time and fire the DC editorial teams of yesterday and replace them all with women. I’m not asking for Kitty Pryde to project herself back in time to do the same thing at Marvel. The past is the past. It was a different time, and there is very little we can do just dwelling on that. What we do have to do is acknowledge the past and understand it as we move forward.
I think Scott Snyder is doing great things with Batman, but maybe when he’s done with the title Genevieve Valentine or Amy Chu might have some great ideas of where to take him next. After seeing the kind of work that Amy Reeder has done on her title Rocket Girl with Image, maybe she’s got a great run for someone like Iron Man that she could be working on. Maybe the next big Superman creator will be a woman none of us have heard of yet.
I believe the best stories are yet to come. Many of the popular comic characters are decades old and have mostly been handled by male creators. One way to revitalize these decades old characters would be to get creators with different perspectives.
As a queer man have enjoyed a great deal of comics that involve exclusively straight characters. People from all backgrounds enjoy all sorts of stories. Someone with a different background could help flesh out other characters in these stories as well. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and many others have both men and women in their stories, and people from all walks of life.
It’s not only important to have representation in the main character or characters, but characters off to the sides and in the backgrounds as well. More women tackling comics like those I mentioned could be a way to help revitalize these titles, and hope it’s something that’s being considered.
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was possibly the very favorite comic of my brother and myself — he even bought an extra copy of the splash-page-filled climactic issue and covered a large portion of his ceiling with it. (I can still quote the important bit from memory: “And flesh/all flesh/will scream/and burn/and die” with the next page being the utterly perfect “and die/and die/and die/and die/and die.”
