Tagged: review

Review: ‘Speed Racer’ – Emile Hirsch Gets Behind the Wheel

So here we are, a mere two weeks into the Blockbuster Season and the veil of bedazzlement has already been lifted. If you are a fan of the original [[[Speed Racer]]] franchise, animated films, or even decent films in general, you will more than likely be disappointed with the film that should’ve been more accurately named [[[Speed Raver]]]. From start to finish, this film is very much like what an 8-year-old would do if he were given a crate of Pixie Stix and free run of a CGI studio, with no knowledge whatsoever about pesky details like story structure, character development or any shred of realism.

For those not in the loop, the story of Speed Racer surrounds not just the titular character (played by possibly one of the better actors of his generation, Emile Hirsch), but his über-supportive family. Pops and Mom Racer, played by John Goodman and Susan Sarandon, respectively. Balancing out the cast was Speed’s girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci), his obnoxious and extraneous little brother and pet chimp, and by far the MVP of the film, in Matthew Fox as Racer X.

The plot, or at least what one can gather about it after two hours in the theater, takes place in a world where car racing is king and the car-building Racer family takes aim at the allegedly fixed world of professional racing with their prodigal son, Speed. The plot is almost beaten into our heads for the first hour, with cartoonish performances and poorly rendered backdrops aiding along the way.

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Review: ‘Harbinger: The Beginning’ by Jim Shooter and David Lapham

I had forgotten how much superhero comics had changed in the past 15 years when I picked up Valiant’s new Harbinger: The Beginning collection ($24.95), which revives the book’s first issues from 1992.

It’s impossible to evaluate the stories without looking at the context of their era. True, [[[Harbinger]]] never reached the excessive silliness of Liefeld’s [[[X-Force]]], but it’s populated by edgy characters with dated nicknames like “Torque,” who spout even more dated phrases like “buttlick.”

Since the crash of the ’90s, comics have largely moved toward a more serious and realistic tone, and Harbinger (created by Jim Shooter and David Lapham) stands in stark contrast. All the same, in many ways the book holds up, probably no surprise since it once garnered a great number of fans.

What’s especially appreciable about Harbinger is how it strays from the superhero stereotype, something even today’s books struggle to do. The protagonist, Pete, is not a clear-cut hero; instead he’s an immature and often egotistical teen who doesn’t understand the dangers of his powers. The villain, Harada, is no great man, but his central goal is to protect the world from Pete.

As much as anything, Harbinger is about the folly of youth and the lessons to be learned from those mistakes. It falls into cliché and hollow edginess, but more often jumps in surprising directions and offers a new (again, in context) take on heroes.

Reviewing Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s ‘Essential Thor’

I don’t normally post links to reviews on other comics news sites, since we have so many of our own hitting the site here every day, but I had to make an exception for Tom Spurgeon’s recent review of the third volume of Marvel’s Mighty Thor "Essential" collection.

Thor has never been a favorite character of mine, as his dialogue always seemed a bit hokey and he’s pretty much the definition of a deus ex machina. But Spurgeon’s review of the collection, which features Stan Lee and Jack Kirby doing exactly what made them legends in the industry, has me contemplating a change of heart.

He describes the collected stories’ overall tone as "verily, there are asses over yon we doth must beat" repeated ad infinitum — which is a big selling point for me.

Spurgeon goes on to summarize the collection as follows:

It’s quite fun. The panels where Thor is not punching people so hard their light source changes are stuffed to the brim with either a) cool-looking Kirbyana almost always in the form of monsters and machinery, b) Volstagg, a fat coward who can bench press a bus, providing J. Wellington Wimpy-style comedy relief, or c) Thor screaming at someone about how awesome he is in preparation of punching them so hard their light source changes.

I love a well-written review, and this is certainly a great example of one. Head over to The Comics Reporter to read the rest of it.

Review: ‘Mome’ Vol. 11

The image at right isn’t the cover of the latest MOME ($14.99), Fantagraphics’ collection of vignettes from various cartoonists. That’s because the actual cover features full male nudity and a body gushing blood.

As much as that might create a challenge for the volume’s shelf presence, it sets a fitting tone for the stories within, all beautifully illustrated pieces that are in turn harsh, ugly, violent, depressing and hilarious.

The best of the lot is "Einmal Ist Keinmal," a wordless story from French cartoonist Killoffer (that’s his work at right, though not a page from MOME). His two-tone work, reminiscent of Jaime Hernandez’s art, elegantly portrays the life of a woman living in a world where all men literally look the same, featuring the grim, Cro Magnon-ish visage that Killoffer uses to represent himself. It’s a story that begs for repeated readings to decipher the author’s thoughts on the ugly side of masculinity.

The 20 other pieces are an assortment of new chapters in continuing stories, standalone pieces and a lengthy Gary Groth interview with Ray Fenwick (a must read for those interested in typography). Tom Kaczynski crafts a mournful diatribe against new age businesses and Nate Neal weaves a bizarre tapestry of cartoon oddity, among other highlights.

This is one of the more cohesive and consistent volumes of MOME, with a handful of great pieces and no weak links. Recommended reading, at least for those who like their comics with a nasty edge.

Review: ‘Sex and Sensibility’ edited by Liza Donelly

sex1-3981535What do women want? Sigmund Freud thought he knew, but we all know about him. After a few decades of feminism, it’s become clearer that the best way to find out what women want is… to ask them.

Sex and Sensibility
Edited By Liza Donelly
Hachette/Twelve, April 2008, $22.99

Donelly is a noted single-panel cartoonist and the author of Funny Ladies, a history of female cartoonists for The New Yorker. (She also teaches at my alma mater, Vassar College, which instantly inclines me to consider her a world-class expert on whatever she wants to be – we Vassarites have to stick together.)

Donelly collected nine of her colleagues – mostly single-panel magazine cartoonists, with a couple of editorial cartoonists for spice – and asked them to contribute cartoons on women, men, sex, relationships – that whole area. Two hundred cartoons later, [[[Sex and Sensibility]]] emerged. It’s divided into several thematic sections — Sex, Sensibility, Women, Lunacy, and Modern Love — and each cartoonist provided an essay about herself and her work, which are sprinkled throughout.

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Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #2 – Hot Prophecies

The hit BBC series Doctor Who is now in its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel, and since we’re all big fans here at ComicMix, we’ve decided to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic.

Every week, we’ll have our best Who-philes go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the "sonic screwdriver" equivalent might be) and call out all of the continuity checks, names dropped and storyline hints we can find to keep in mind for future episodes. We’ll post our analysis each Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode once it airs each Friday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel before reading our review.

Missed a week? Readers can view past "Doctor Who in Review" features via the links at the end of this article.

Keep in mind, we’re going to assume readers have already watched the episode when we put fingers to keyboard and come up with our roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!

Let’s begin now, shall we?

Season Four, Episode #2: "The Fires of Pompeii" (more…)

Name Dropping, by Mike Gold

I’ve been around the northeast quadrant a bit since the New York show a few weeks ago and I’ve seen a lot of people. Good people, old friends, new collaborators, strange and unusual folks. That’s what my life’s about, and I’m proud of that.

I enjoy going to the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention. Compared with, say, the mass of hustling humanity at comics shows in New York, San Diego or on WizardWorld, the Windy City show is like a weekend at the spa. Anthony Tollin was there along with his latest Shadow and Doc Savage trade paperbacks; we talk about them here all the time. I was able to have a solid conversation with frequent ComicMix commentator Russ Maharas, I got to go over the next Simone and Ajax plot with Andrew Pepoy for a bit, FOC (that’s “friend of ComicMix”) George Hagenauer gave Adriane Nash a swell history lesson on 1950s pin-up art, Rob Davis and Ron Fortier told me about a new project that fascinated the hell out of me, and I had the chance to talk with master cartoonist Jim Engel once again.

The next day we had lunch and dinner with FOCs Charlie Meyerson and his wife Pam (Charlie of Chicago Tribune fame; Pam’s a lawyer and bon vivant) and Rick Oliver and his wife Jade (Honest Rick of First Comics, Jade was a swell comics colorist). George, Charlie and Rick have given us a lot of advice and opinion ever since ComicMix was just a gleam in our eye – Rick is a major commenter in these precincts – and the whole bundle of ‘em are brilliant conversationalists.

Since the best thing to do in Chicago is eat until you burst, we were particularly fond of our dinner with the aforementioned Mr. Pepoy, Simone and Ajax colorist Jason Millet, Hilary Barta (Munden’s Bar, The Simpsons, The Thing, Power Pack, New Mutants, Alan Moore’s Tomorrow Stories), and writer / professor Len Strazewski (Prime, Justice Society, The Fly, Starman, Phantom Lady). Sort of like the fabled Algonquin round table, but a lot more snarky. (more…)

Review: ‘Blue Pills’ by Frederik Peeters

blue-9583352Blue Pills
By Frederik Peeters; translated by Anjali Singh
Houghton Mifflin, January 2008, $18.95

This is another one of those semi-autobiographical graphic novels; I’m not going to assume that this is all “true” (whatever that means), but I will note that Peeters’s bio says that he lives with his girlfriend, her son, and their daughter — and that [[[Blue Pills]]] is the story of a man named Fred, his girlfriend, and her son. (And the main character of this book mentions that he working on a graphic novel about their lives.) So keep that in the back of your head — some proportion of this book is true, though we don’t know how much.

Fred, the narrator of Blue Pills, is a Swiss cartoonist, still in his mid-20s, who’s lived in Geneva his whole life. He remembers Cati vividly from a pool-party late in his teens, but never really knew her well. When he moves into the apartment building where she lives, though, he comes to see more and more of her and her young son (called “the little one” or “L’il Wolf,” but not named). Before long, Fred and Cati are drifting into a relationship, and Cati has to sit Fred down and tell him something difficult — both she and her son are HIV-positive.

(The “Blue Pills” of the title refer to their drug regimen to stay symptom-free, though they’re never called that in the body of the book. The fact that most Americans will immediately think of Viagra when blue pills are mentioned is unfortunate, but neither Peeters nor Houghton Mifflin seems to have taken a moment to worry about it.)

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The Comics-to-Film Review: How ‘Iron Man’ Matches Up

If you read fellow ComicMixologist Matt Raub’s review of Iron Man, you already know the new Marvel Studios movie is a relentless blast of entertainment. Even for those who’ve never picked up an [[[Iron Man]]] comic, it’s a top-rate summer film.

But there are also those of us who have picked up an issue (or a few hundred) of Iron Man over the years, and for us the movie is a different experience, as we can’t help but compare and contrast it to the comics that have come before. So, in that respect, how does the film hold up?

Tony Stark is the place to start, as he’s always been the real draw of any Iron Man tale (though the costume is plenty cool). In the comics, Stark is a calculating man both as a hero and in the business world. He enjoys his wealth at times, but is more taskmaster than playboy.

Robert Downey Jr.’s take on the character is much more like the raconteur persona that Bruce Wayne takes on, only for the movie version of Stark, it’s no act. Much like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, Downey Jr. offers a weird riff on his role that’s entirely new and impossible not to enjoy. Count that as a win for the film.

The film’s plot, meanwhile, is essentially an updating of the classic Iron Man origin story, and the modernization is handled quite well. There’s nothing directly lifted from the comics, and instead the comic references come in an array of winks and nods (S.H.I.E.L.D., War Machine, Nick Fury, Tony’s drinking, etc).

My main problem with the movie is a fault it shares with the comics, in how the plot tries to incorporate real-world issues without really delving into them. Comic books regularly feature stories set in vague, war-torn countries in the Middle East, and the Iron Man film follows suit with its shallow usage of terrorism and Afghanistan.

But those are forgivable defects, and Iron Man easily makes a successful transition from page to screen, thanks to a director and cast that know what elements to take from the books, and which to leave behind.

Robert Downey Jr. and the ‘Iron Man’ Review

First off, right out of the bullpen, I want to warn readers that this review of Iron Man, the first self-financed feature film from Marvel Studios, WILL HAVE SPOILERS. Normally, I try to keep any stories involving a new release free of them, but as you will read, this film is just chock full of little “fanboy delights” which enhance the experience and are an important part of the overall product.

With that said, this film should be labeled “FFBF”, meaning “For Fanboys, By Fanboys” because director Jon Favreau seems to know what the comic fans wanted to see. One gets the impression that if he were sitting in the seats, he’d want the same thing from this comics-famous tale of a millionaire, arms-manufacturing playboy Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) who decides to craft a supersuit and fight evil. Over the course of the film, anyone familiar with the character and the greater Marvel Universe will likely enjoy the references (sometimes subtle, but not always) to things ranging from War Machine to the Mandarin… even to S.H.I.E.L.D.

So make sure to pay attention, and most importantly, stay in the theater until after the credits! (more…)

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