Ye Ed brays:
Our pal Denny O’Neil suffered a double tragedy. He had to go to the dentist. His computer stopped working.
I don’t know if the two are related. It seems unlikely, but I’m into string theory so anything is possible. Either way, that sounds like a real sucky day to me.
Denny’s dental travails will be resolved. Denny’s computer will be fixed. And then we can all get back to the real issue…
Who’s stronger, The Thing or Donald Trump?
You know the drill; worst to best of what I bought.
But first, something I didn’t buy, because it’s free.
Electricomics
Out today for free for iPad, this is the digital comics platform Leah Moore and company have been working on, featuring, among other things, Alan Moore and Coleen Doran’s “Big Nemo.” Which is unsurprisingly the highlight of the package here, with a series of clever uses of the virtual page and its mutability that evoke the playful wonder of McCay’s work in a new medium. It feels like it ends on the title page of what should have been a much longer comic, though. The Garth Ennis strip is also neat, but the other two feel more interested in their own whizz-bang gimmicks than in actually being interesting, and the app is still a bit sluggish, resulting in frustrating reading experiences for both of them. Still, well worth the price, and they’re apparently still smoothing it out, so hopefully it’ll end up as a more functional package in a few weeks. Still hard to see this having much in the way of legs as a platform, but a fun little oddity of the world.
As for paid stuff…
18 Days #3
The art takes a turn towards abject mediocrity, the plot seems to wander off completely from anything it had been doing, and Grant Morrison’s not even in the credits as doing anything but “creating” a series that’s just a retelling of classical Hindu mythology. Wretched.
Daredevil #18
Fine, in the sense that there’s little wrong with it as such, and it’s nice that Waid was given leave to avoid there only being Secret Wars at the end of his run, but the truth of the matter is that he stayed on this book at least a year too long, and probably closer to two. It’s never been bad, but the energy had long since drained, and the denouement, despite bringing Kingpin in, did very little to change that. And the Shroud’s plot seems totally unresolved.
Doctor Who: Four Doctors #4
This lost rather a lot of pace for me, with an ending that’s much more “what’s happening” than “what’s going to happen” and the limitations of Neil Edwards’s art getting in the way of the story sometimes. (His Tennant and Smith can be very indistinguishable in the middle distance.) There are fun bits, but this event is starting to look like it’s going to underwhelm.
Silver Surfer #14
There’s really not such a thing as a Michael Allred comic that’s not fun to look at, but this has to be the most one note comic I’ve seen in a while; it starts with a tone, carries that same tone to the end of the comic, and then, well, ends, generally without doing much. Strange and lazy-feeling, frankly.
Miracleman #1
The best part of this comic is the edit to Neil Gaiman’s script to refer to “The Original Writer.” So nice to see the project still haunted by its past. In any case, following one of the biggest pieces of rank bullshit in recent comics memory when Marvel fucked up the printing in an iconic scene of their overpriced reprint comic and then didn’t issue replacements, thus screwing collectors who were already, shall we say, impatient with paying $5 for less than twenty pages of story, I’m back on the horse with this godforsaken money sink for the simple reason that I’ve never actually read the Gaiman material, so I’m curious. It’s… not Gaiman’s best work; the psychedelia in the lead-up feels strained, like he’s trying too hard to hit a style that’s just not natural for him. But it’s still a fascinating piece of work, and a pleasure to read a bit of 1990 Gaiman that most people haven’t. Man, though, Buckingham has improved as an artist in the past quarter century.
Thors #3
A fun Thor/Loki interrogation scene occupies the bulk of the issue, which moves along nicely as a result, but overall the degree to which Secret Wars is a millstone around Marvel’s neck right now is a real problem. It’s not this book’s fault at all, but the sour taste of Marvel in effect charging $4 extra for the series because it’s so late really does spoil things, as does a pretty flat ending. Still, the interrogation scene is fun.
Lazarus #19
Some good plot twists here, although for an arc with this high stakes, this is really feeling kind of… sedate. I like this issue – leaving Forever dead for most of it is a nice way to tell the story that doesn’t overstay its welcome. So I’m hopeful the end of the arc will spark a bit. But for the amount that’s happening, I’m finding myself strangely detached from this book.
The Dying and the Dead #3
In some ways, given how badly the schedule here is borked, a flashback issue that traces alternate history instead of following up on the apparent main characters is wise. It’s apparently going to be a while before #4, so something off in its own little corner is a good idea. Still, hope this book gets its act together, because while this is a good issue, it’s not a sustainable approach.
Providence #4
It’s frankly not a good week when what’s a fairly middling issue of Providence is the only credible candidate for the top slot, but that’s how it is. This is a somewhat understated issue, with some interesting implications for the larger plot, but not a lot happening here. One also gets the sense that we’re setting up a more general shift in the comic – having plowed gamely through “Shadow Over Innsmouth” and “The Dunwich Horror,” the only real remaining top tier Lovecraft story is “Call of Cthulhu.” With eight issues left, then, we’re clearly going to have to veer towards some more obscure stuff, which suggests a change in tone and pace. So this feels a bit transitional. And yet it’s still denser, smarter, and longer on reread value than anything else in the pile, and the only thing that feels like it offers anything like value for its cover price.
The past few days of comic news has been a wowza of roller coaster articles and announcements. I spent hours trying to decide what topic to tackle. Which sucked. A lot. It was way too difficult to settle for one tidbit to chat about. Then I realized, “My column, my format!” I also realized that I’m adult enough to have chocolate ice cream for dinner. So here’s my personal favorites of the week.
In my good slot, we have the exciting announcement of Ashley A. Woods joining Marvel as an artist. I’ll be honest, I had never heard of Woods. Once I checked out her work, I’m just so eager to see what she can do with the Marvel characters. Her upcoming book Niobe is abso-freaking-lutely gorgeous.
That isn’t the only reason that this is big news. It is exciting to see a woman joining the Marvel team and even more exciting that this is a woman of color. If the word on the web is correct, this is the first African-American woman to be a creator at Marvel. That’s pretty big @#^%!* news. And, I’m sure that Woods could teach the guys over there a few things about female proportions.
In my bad(?) slot, I’ve got DC rumors that the head honchos have told everyone to “stop batgirling” or being creative. The reason I went with the question mark on the end of that bad is because this could be a bad thing or an ok thing. It really depends on how they do it.
Truth is, if they don’t do a complete 180 on everything they have done creatively, it could just trickle through their other books rather than tidal wave. Large universes tend to get muddled and crazy pretty quickly. Perhaps this could be a way to keep this world easy for new readers to follow. I just hope they don’t destroy all the innovative progress they have made.
And for interesting, I recently read about the Middle East’s rising interest in comics. Comic cons have been popping up all over the place and new comic creators are developing new characters and stories. Some comics are used to as a veiled way to fight sexism or explore Muslim traditions.
Comics are a great way to embrace the best and worst parts of your world, in an engaging and descriptive way. Since comics are such a mainstay in the US, we rarely talk about other countries comic industries. While it may have been an American influence at first, it sounds like other cultures in the Middle East are using it to do their own thing.
So those are the three things I couldn’t decide between. I’m betting that there is at least one thing you hadn’t heard about. One thing is sure though. Comics, they are a-changin’.
American Ultra would have been the coolest movie in the world in 1996. It has the lovable loser slacker protagonist with a quirky hobby and a mundane job, it has plenty of sudden graphic violence, and it even has a plot that’s a metaphor for parental issues.
Unfortunately, the last 19 years haven’t been particularly kind to these tropes, and this movie that would have easily swept the Independent Spirit Awards two decades ago instead feels less special and more tired. It doesn’t sink the movie, it’s still frequently a blast and features one of the most best ensemble supporting cast I may have ever seen but this is a movie that in another era could have been a home run and it’s disappointing to see it just be a long double.
While not a fantastic reflection on the originality of the film, American Ultra lends itself very handily to mash-up comparisons. It’s Chasing Amy meets A History of Violence, it’s Slackers crossed with The Bourne Identity, it’s SubUrbia having a baby with The Transporter. Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) is a stoner convenience store clerk who draws an ambitious if nonsensical comic book in his spare time. Unbeknownst to Mike he is an old CIA asset that due to a power struggle within the agency has been targeted for termination. When the CIA assassins come to kill him Mike discovers he’s an amazing killer. The ensuing chaotic escalation of this operation ends up bringing everyone in Mike’s life in to the orbit of this violent struggle especially his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) who is the cliché suspiciously-attractive girlfriend of a total loser. There are enough clever twists and fun tweaks to the formula here to make the film exciting but maybe they go a little too far as there are all these vestigial bits of plot hanging off the edges like threads that they forgot to weave in to the main fabric of the story.
While both Eisenberg and Stewart are quite good— in fact, both seem to be trying very hard to shake of the notion that they are budget-friendly versions of bigger stars— the real winning performances in American Ultra come from the supporting cast. Topher Grace chews scenery hard as the smarmy evil CIA supervisor and I’ve seen him do this douchebag performance so well so many times I’m beginning to wonder if he’s not like that in real life and that’s probably the mark of an exceptional performance (or an exceptional jerk in real life, but I hope not). Connie Britton usually acting across from Grace does a great job bringing a grounded energy to those scenes, but when she’s doing scenes with any other characters she switches gears and becomes the scene stealing performer we know she is. Walton Goggins is a terrifying presence as the CIA lunatic killer Laugher turning in a performance that is 100% chilling nightmare fodder. The cast is so embarrassingly deep that Tony Hale and John Leguizamo, both national treasures and utter delights in this film, feel criminally underused but there just isn’t room for more of them.
By the time I’m writing this it’s pretty apparent American Ultra didn’t find its audience. We’ve even gotten the 2015 signature move of the underperforming movie and someone involved in the production has taken to Twitter to complain about the results of their labors. It’s a shame, this movie deserves better and I hope that eventually people discover this movie on Netflix or wherever because it deserves to be seen and to be appreciated. Not because it’s screamingly original or clever but because it’s an example of exceptional execution and the good work a solid cast can do to carry a middling script. American Ultra is a film that deserves better than it got from America this weekend and better than it got from whoever came up with this terrible non-descriptive title.
The BBC is giving us all a grand Christmas present – Alex Kingston will return to Doctor Who for the Christmas special as The Doctor’s Paramour and assassin, River Song.
Day one of filming the eleventh Doctor Who Christmas special starts this week and is written by lead writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat, produced by Nikki Wilson and directed by Douglas Mackinnon (Doctor Who, Sherlock).
Award-winning Alex Kingston comments on her reappearance:
“To be honest, I did not know whether River would ever return to the show, but here she is, back with the Doctor for the Christmas special. Steven Moffat is on glittering form, giving us an episode filled with humor and surprise guest castings. I met Peter for the first time at Monday’s read-through, we had a laugh, and I am now excited and ready to start filming with him and the Doctor Who team. Christmas in September?, why not!”
Steven Moffat, lead writer and executive producer adds:
“Another Christmas, another special for Doctor Who – and what could be more special than the return of Alex Kingston as Professor River Song. The last time the Doctor saw her she was a ghost. The first time he met her, she died. So how can he be seeing her again? As ever, with the most complicated relationship in the universe, it’s a matter of time …”
River Song’s timeline with The Doctor has always been a topic of great discussion among fans. From her point of view, her first appearance in Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead was the last time she saw The Doctor, having died and all. Up until the recent episode The Name of the Doctor, all of River’s appearances have been from earlier in her life / timeline – only in the latest one have we seen her from after the events of that first (well, I say “first”…) meeting. So there’s no knowing from whence we’ll be seeing her appear this time.
As fans of their relationship know, there’s one very important moment we’ve yet to see – The Doctor has not yet presented her with the souped-up version of the sonic Screwdriver she used with such style in the Library. And considering Christmas is traditionally when presents are exchanged, who’s to say this isn’t when it’ll happen?
Curse you, Moffat, we haven’t even gotten to the premiere of the new season (September 19, as if you didn’t know) and you’ve already got us looking ahead to Christmas.
Nope. This is not an old guy rant about how you-all young’uns are ignoring comic books because you’re too busy enjoying the movies and teevee shows being made out of those same comic books. I’m beginning to think that if you lust for heroic fantasy, maybe the plethora of such fare in our theaters and our sundry home electronics will serve your needs.
Back when I was doing public relations for DC Comics, which was so long ago it was well before my pal Martha Thomases was doing public relations for DC Comics, I was fond of telling the press that we had it all over movies because we weren’t restricted by reasonable special effects budgets. We only were restricted by the imaginations of our writers and artists, and that posed no problem at all. We had, and we continue to have, lots of people with wonderful ideas along with the ability to get those visions inside the reader’s brainpan. We could blow up a planet on page one, resurrect that planet on page two, populate it on page three and then blow up the new place on page four.
Today… well… we’ve got computers and brilliant people who never see the light of day to put all that in a movie at a reasonable price and at reasonable speed. And then a bunch of other moloids add music and sound effects and maybe some 3-D crap. Movies – and, now, television – can boldly go where comic books always have been… and get there first.
Better still, the consumer’s cost per minute is far lower in these new venues. Movies and cable bills are expensive, but two hours worth of comic books can run you maybe forty bucks.
This is not to suggest I no longer enjoy comics. To paraphrase a famous ape-fighting gun nut, they’ll have to rip that comic book out of my cold dead hands. And I hope it’s a goddamned expensive one. But this does offer me the opportunity for praise my fellow American publishers that are not owned by mammoth movie studios for moving well beyond traditional superhero fare. Today we can tell virtually any type of story, even true ones, and if that story is well-told and well-marketed we’ve got a pretty good shot at not losing the rent on it.
Maybe we haven’t quite reached the level of selling comics to, say, bored grandmothers who pine for their days of child-rearing. There are very specific comics in other countries, particularly Japan and Belgium, that cater to audiences we rarely think of in the American quadrasphere. But we’re almost there.
Today I am more interested in the new Marvel Netflix series than I am in the post-Battleworld Marvel comics. I am much more interested in the next season of Flash and Arrow than I am in DC’s next reboot – or their previous dozen reboots. That’s where the superhero mojo lives these days.
I see coming up with superhero comics that are more involving than other superhero media as a challenge to our comics creators. Having worked with at least four generations of such talent, I know this will be a wonderful thing to behold. However, right now I’m in the middle of producing at least a half-dozen original graphic novels (editors get to multitask, which is another word for “short attention span”). Some sort of fall into the category of heroic fantasy, maybe, but most do not.
As far as I’m concerned, happy days are here again.
When I saw the first trailer for Straight Outta Compton I leaned over to my girlfriend and said, “Oh my God, are they making the story of N.W.A into a white savior movie?” and she looked back at me with fear in her eyes. It was a bad trailer, rather an unrepresentative one, which made it look like a movie about Jerry Heller trying to get the police and the music establishment to treat his clients with respect. That would have been a terrible movie, a tragic misrepresentation of the struggles that really took place. The movie we got is a powerful touchstone piece in documenting and dramatizing the rise of West Coast gangster rap.
I wish Straight Outta Compton felt as old as it is. That we could look at the events of this movie, now a quarter of a century gone, and think of them as the past when instead it feels like the present. The world they show us to contextualize the writing of “Fuck tha Police” feels very much like the world we see so very often on the news or in our own communities. The anger and the despair and the hopelessness of the situation feels so current and relevant and it only magnifies these feelings to know we’ve accomplished so little in the intervening years when it comes to policing minority populations. These are powerful scenes, the most affecting ones that I can remember seeing on the topic and if this movie does nothing but inspire this feeling of discontent in a few more people it will be a remarkable success.
Luckily, it does a few more things very well. The acting is generally superb; especially O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s work pretending to be his own father, a task that I have to imagine is one of the strangest tasks an actor would ever have to attempt. Corey Hawkins does a good job of playing Dr. Dre with the quiet rage I’ve always associated with him and showing it build, ebb, and flow in a natural manner. It’s an inexperienced cast and that inexperience sometimes shines through but they generally do great work. I was quite impressed with the scope of the picture, it starts as an N.W.A piece but then branches out through everyone’s respective solo careers and it helps to illustrate how influential these men were in launching other enterprises and helping along the careers of so many others. It stops short of getting into Ice Cube playing a police captain in the 21 Jump Street franchise and the irony therein but I suppose it was already a long film. Straight Outta Compton also does its part in establishing that Suge Knight is a real-life cartoon supervillain and I think that is an important detail to share with future generations that might watch this movie.
There’s a problem with the way Straight Outta Compton handles its female characters. Most of the women on screen in this film are some manner of groupie, party girl, or otherwise objectified woman with barely any lines. The exceptions are wives and mothers and while it’s nice to have that change of pace that isn’t really a less sexist depiction. Every woman is either a Madonna or a whore with nowhere in between. This is an accurate reflection of how bad the gangster rap movement was for the status of black women but one would hope that time and perspective might lend itself to a more nuanced look back. I don’t need the characters in the film to say or do things differently than they really happened but it would have been nice to get some indication that the filmmakers know this kind of conduct is wrong or damaging.
The music biopic is a genre that feels perpetually stale, and Straight Outta Compton is definitely not a stale film. It has all the little issues that biographical films will always have, character and event compression makes for some moments that feel as fantastical as people commanding ants through a metal helmet but there’s a passion and an energy I haven’t felt in one of these films in a long time, maybe ever. This is an important band who did important things at an important time and it’s important to remember their struggle and try to contextualize it for people who weren’t there or who couldn’t pay it the proper attention. If not for this movie there was a real danger that Ice Cube and Dr. Dre would be remembered by the next generation as an actor and a headphone mogul and if this movie keeps their other work in our collective consciousness it is doing our culture a great service.
Actor Billy Bob Thornton has give us some incredible movie roles, but did you know his passion is shared standing on stage with his band, The Box Masters? Billy talks about how music has influenced his life and about which of his movie characters were his favorites. Plus it has been a decade since Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the Gulf Coast. Experts from ANGRY PLANET (Pivot TV) and The Weather Channel weigh in on the way the forecasting has changed since that storm and the possibility of it happening all over again.
Happy upcoming Labor Day Weekend, everyone! I hope you’re all celebrating with a nice break from your usual labors.
Of course, for convention-goers, Labor Day Weekend also means celebrating with Dragon Con a.k.a. (unofficially) the Mardi Gras of fandom cons. There’s a lot to love about Dragon Con. One of those things is the variety of fandom experiences it offers – including the robust schedule of panels featuring everyone from celebrities to fans, the Walk of Fame where you can stroll around and say hello to guests (and purchase photos or autographs if desired), the excellent and varied Dealers Room, the Artist Alley and Art Show, the stellar costume contest and parade, the workshops, the music, and more.
Another thing to love is definitely the vibe of the Con, which I’d describe as a 24-hour hang-out/party with organized events. One contributor to the vibe is that it’s set up as a hotel con, which gives it a convivial, “let’s all hang out during after hours” feel (as opposed to a convention center con where people all wander off in different directions after the exhibit hall and main events close). Another thing is that it’s able to stay a hotel convention despite its size (with over 57,000 attendees in recent years) due to spreading out over five main hotels, three of which are so close they are connected by walkways. And, of course, its reputation as a big con for costumers, and as a place where some of the costumers’ creations literally rival the real thing, means the backdrop of the individual con experience has a continual festival-like air. Add to that the room parties and late-night congregation around centrally-located hotel bars (which also make it easier to catch up with more friends in a short period of time), and Dragon Con TV for when you’re in need of some down-time but still want your con experience to be going on in the background, and Dragon Con really is a 24-hour fandom Mardi Gras.
That’s why it’s one of my favorite cons, and why I’m so hyper-excited right now, as I look forward to all the great panels, guests, and friends I plan to see. It’s also a con that takes significant prep (especially if you plan to do three…wait, scratch that, five costumes over the course of the con), and so that’s why I must leave you all now to attempt the monumental task of figuring out my schedule and packing everything without exceeding flight weight limits. (Eep!)
So until next time, enjoy your long weekend, say hi if you see me at Dragon Con, and Servo Lectio!
With just 48 hours left, Paramount Pictures and Omaze have released one final video, featuring Simon Pegg, for their contest where the winner will have a walk-on role in Star Trek Beyond. The Justin Lin-directed 50th anniversary feature film has been shooting for several months now and has a July 16, 2016 release date.
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