10/31/2015

Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye

Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Story: Terry Austin Pencils: Chris Sprouse Inks: Terry Austin Letters: Steve Dutro Colors: James Sinclair Design: Scott Tice Cover Art: Duncan Fegredo. Star Wars created by George Lucas.
Story: Terry Austin
Pencils: Chris Sprouse
Inks: Terry Austin
Letters: Steve Dutro
Colors: James Sinclair
Design: Scott Tice
Cover Art: Duncan Fegredo

Star Wars created by George Lucas

A 1996 graphic novel based on Alan Dean Foster’s 1978 novel, Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye tells a curious tale of what could have been. The Star Wars universe was still wide-open back then, so creator George Lucas could have gone down any number of avenues following the success of the original film. What he eventually took was an Asian martial arts inspired journey that smacked together Shaolin asceticism (and its demise at the hands of a traitor), samurai sword fighting, watered-down Eastern mysticism, combined with more Western fairy story elements and counterculture ideas. Foster’s plot follows a more conventional fantasy epic route. The heroes and villains race to recover a lost magical artifact which could shift the tide in the war between good and evil. The former are mainly represented by an earnest Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa. The latter are lead by a cranky Darth Vader. Needless to say, this macguffin will never be mentioned in the films, let alone just play any kind of role.

With the benefit of hindsight, writer/inker Terry Austin and artist Chris Sprouse take great pains to make sure the comic closely resembles the design aesthetic of the original film trilogy. Even the planet of Mimban where the story mostly takes place looks like a twin of Dagobah from The Empire Strikes Back. And there’s a giant worm that for all intents might as well be a rejected design for the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi. Sprouse possesses a meticulous, old-school drawing style reminiscent of Dave Gibbons, which he uses to reproduce the futuristic technology and the likeness of the film’s famous cast. James Sinclair complements the line art with restrained, relatively flat colors. The overall effect is a far cry from many of the later, more fanciful Star Wars comics published by Dark Horse. This book feels very minimal in its efficient storytelling. Not that this fidelity to the world built by Lucas always works. The designs for Mimban’s oppressed natives are pretty uninspired, even embarrassing by today’s standards. And the interior of the ancient temple where the climactic showdown takes place is so nondescript it leaves no lasting impression. Many times, the comic feels more claustrophobic rather than atmospheric.

Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Story: Terry Austin Pencils: Chris Sprouse Inks: Terry Austin Letters: Steve Dutro Colors: James Sinclair Design: Scott Tice Cover Art: Duncan Fegredo. Star Wars created by George Lucas.

Some of this can be blamed on the plot. Its small-scale, episodic quality means that nothing actually gets resolved, just left for future installments to deal with. Only this never happens because Lucas would decide to go in another direction. SOTME (never mind the morass of supplementary stories outside of the film timeline formerly labelled the "Expanded Universe") is more like the present crop of Marvel television shows than the Marvel movies. They may (or may not) be officially be part of the same universe, but the two are largely disconnected in practice, with the former appearing diminished in status when set next to the latter.

As the story’s aforementioned macguffin, the Kaiburr Crystal raises a host of questions which are left largely unanswered. It can enhance the user’s connection to The Force, but neither the Jedi Order or the Sith Lords seem to have been aware of its existence. Why? What other groups have been able to manipulate The Force in this manner, and what other objects of power are still out there waiting to be discovered? The crystal muddies the clear-cut binary that largely informs the conflict driving the Star Wars saga. But this is something Lucas simply ignored when he got around to writing TESB.

Unsurprisingly, the novel and its adaptation contain a number of elements a little discordant with present-day canon, something I imagine not a few continuity nerds out there have been bending backwards to resolve. [Spoiler Alert!] Vader doesn’t act as if he knows that Luke and Leia are his offspring, and those two certainly don’t behave like they know they’re siblings. Vader makes clear his desire to murder them in the most excruciating fashion possible using his lightsaber. And it’s hard to miss the mutual attraction between Luke and Leia. All this is pretty Freudian now. Austin and Sprouse keep things chaste, but there’s no getting around mood. The plot is calculated to throw these two good-looking people together into a more intimate working relationship.

Then there’s the casual sexism of the scene where Leia engages Luke in a flirty mud fight in retaliation for Luke slapping Leia earlier when he was trying to pass off as a master disciplining his slave for talking back to him. Not that Leia takes it lying down. If we ignore how canon has made this then innocent scene kinda creepy, this interaction is quaint, if unintentionally amusing.

Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Story: Terry Austin Pencils: Chris Sprouse Inks: Terry Austin Letters: Steve Dutro Colors: James Sinclair Design: Scott Tice Cover Art: Duncan Fegredo. Star Wars created by George Lucas.

That quaintness is emblematic of an early Star Wars when lighthearted action-adventure still set the tenor of the story. Before the franchise was weighed down by its own Campbellian self-importance. A universe where the ethereal Force could still be accessible through silly magic crystals, as opposed to those utterly serious and toootally plausible midi-chlorians.

10/30/2015

Supergirl: By Special Arrangement with the Jerry Siegel Family

Supergirl created by Otto Binder and Al Plastino. Played by Melissa Benoist.

Cringe-inducing lines such as "Oh my God. you're a lesbian" and "Why? Because she's just a girl?", two uninspired terrible bosses (I think a Veronica Palmer or a Sam Saperstein type would have been way cooler) and an annoying nerdy best friend stereotype notwithstanding, lead actress Melissa Benoist managed to make the Supergirl pilot an entertaining hour of television. The show has a genuine star In the making, and a mostly capable supporting cast. So maybe the writing will improve in future episodes and get over everybody being needlessly mean to Kara?

And could the people involved just maybe find a way to work in an acknowledgement of Supergirl's creators?

10/18/2015

Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians

Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians. Story/Art: Ricardo Delgado Colors: Ryan Hill Design: Sandy Tanaka Digital Production: Christina McKenzie, Chris Horn.
Story/Art: Ricardo Delgado
Colors: Ryan Hill
Design: Sandy Tanaka
Digital Production: Christina McKenzie, Chris Horn

Popular interpretations of the Mesozoic Era have leaned so heavily on North American dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex or Apatosaurus, that most people might even believe that the entire Cretaceous was populated by the same dozen species. So it's a bit off the beaten track when the focus moves elsewhere. In Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians, award-winning artist Ricardo Delgado shines the spotlight on North Africa. This gives him an excuse to draw a completely different ensemble of prehistoric creatures, which he portrays in his characteristic obsessively-detailed fashion. At this point, anyone who follows Age of Reptiles is primarily there to look at pretty art portraying some rather vicious animals locked in a life-and-death struggle.

Delgado's art hasn't significantly changed since working on The Journey, but the new setting allows him to expand his visual vocabulary. In contrast to the vast open spaces with its parched minimalism found the earlier work, Ancient Egyptians takes place in what looks to be a lush rainforest. The comic is positively bursting with life in every panel: Trees tall enough to hide the largest sauropod. Rivers teaming with coelacanths, freshwater sharks, rays, turtles, mollusks, and a wide variety of early crocodile species. All this gives colorist Ryan Hill more opportunities to explore a richer color spectrum, though he still ties everything together with the usual earth tones. Hill lends a much needed clarity to Delgado's art as the extra amount of detail can sometimes obscure the action. He tends to render everything with the same fine line, whether it's a cloud in the sky or an adult theropod, and this can flatten the perspective when all the reader has as a reference point is the dense underbrush.

Delgado's approach to storytelling also remains the same. His overt inspirations are spaghetti westerns and samurai tales, in this particular case Yojimbo. The hero of Ancient Egyptians is a wandering male Spinosaurus (the only dinosaur he positively identifies in the afterword. I'm guessing the species of the rest). Shortly after entering the forest, he runs afoul of its largest denizens, a very belligerent Paralititan herd. These are a species of super-sized sauropod, FYI. He tries to steer clear of rival gangs of Carcharodontosaurus and of Afrovenators. And he finds time to mate with a female of his species. The story culminates in a bloody showdown that alters the local power balance.

Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians. Story/Art: Ricardo Delgado Colors: Ryan Hill Design: Sandy Tanaka Digital Production: Christina McKenzie, Chris Horn.

Whatever his creative influences, Delgado has become too devoted to the naturalistic mode to apply a lot of anthropomorphic attributes. His eschewing of any dialogue eliminates any distraction from his art, but it renders opaque the interior lives of his subjects. There isn't anything that could be recognized as conscious thought or character development in the conventional sense, though it's still apparent that dinosaur actions are compelled by a tangle of powerful drives which are either satiated or thwarted. This straightforward behaviorism is reinforced by a linear approach to storytelling and deliberate pacing. The one thing Delgado does to break up the monotony is to shift attention away from the Spinosaurus at regular intervals. The narrative simply moves through the course of several days as the cast eats, hunts, fights, kills, sleeps, or copulates. Ancient Egyptians is about as Darwinian a comic being sold right now.