Dueling Fandoms

I've been enjoying Wednesday Comics so far, but it's never even occurred to me that this project would appeal to casual readers. Both the genre overwhelmingly represented and the format used are more likely to either attract DC's traditional fan base or dilettantes like me. If the series does pick-up new readers, then I have the same question as I did for Marvel Divas: Where are they supposed to go to next? Just like its Marvel counterpart, Wednesday Comics adapts an unorthodox approach to old and familiar characters. But it's so different from DC's corporate shared universe that I can't imagine many new readers who liked it sticking around to become full-time DC fans.

While I can't make it to Comic Con, I would like to be there if only just to witness the feared showdown between Twilight fans and traditional comic book fans. As far as I'm concerned, the Brigid Alverson hosted roundtable was preaching to the choir - the fanboys are overreacting to the perceived invasion of their hallowed grounds by hordes of screaming fangirls. Still I couldn't help noting a bit of defensiveness among the participants when the topic of shojo manga readership was brought up. Now in no way are those two reactions morally equivalent. God knows that manga fans and especially female comics book fans have had to put up with plenty of bullshit from the industry through the years. And they continue to do so. I'm just saying that fans sometimes feel the impulse to be a tad overprotective when someone expresses a disinterest in their beloved pastime. Lecturing doesn't help when done in that tone.

Sarah Palin

In the words of General MacArthur, we are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction

Celebrity Portrait: Sarah Palin

Getting back to working on traditional pen and ink.

Design Classic: Hasselblad 500 EL Data Camera

The camera used by the Apollo 11 crew was a modified Hasselblad 500 EL with a Carl Zeiss Biogon C 5.6/60 mm lens. The originals were left on the Moon. The accompanying film magazines were modified 70 mm magazines which could handle up to 200 exposures. Those came back to Earth.

An Uneven Trinity

In his series of Wonder Woman related posts, Noah Berlatsky argues that DC's problems with the character stems from their inability to wrap their minds around William Moulton Marston's highly idiosyncratic personal vision. Of course it could be said that other properties like Superman and Batman have also been watered-down from their original conceptions. But it doesn't help that rehashing Marston's contentious brand of gender politics, which Berlatsky considers important to Wonder Woman's identity, would not sit well with the majority of writers or the current fan base.

In his most recent post Berlatsky tackles what I think is a more obvious reason for Wonder Woman's diminished status - Superman. Neither he nor Wonder Woman were originally designed to interact with each other, but are forced to do so within that piecemeal corporate entity called the shared universe. Both characters are meant to represent the highest form of heroism, but when made to coexist in the same fictional plane, one ends up playing second fiddle to the other:

"WW is different than Superman in a lot of ways. But she's the same in that her point is really to be a paragon; the quintessence of heroism...So when you put her in a story with Superman...well, one of them has to lose focus. If it was Marston, of course, that one would be Superman, and it would be all about how men, even superman, have to submit to women, and love their submission, and so forth. But, alas, Marston's dead, and what we get instead is the much more conventional idea that women (even wonder women) are mostly there to serve as supportive figures in male psychodrama."

Which brings me to the other character to be constrained under a similar arrangement. The one that, when he was being published by another company, actually gave Superman a run for his money:


Seeing them stand side by side makes visible the DC habit of collecting characters who are basically embodiments of generic heroism. Wonder Woman's gender at least gives her some level of visual contrast. While hardly the most dignified role, making her a glorified personal assistant, close ally, best friend, potential love interest etc. to Superman at least guarantees her some visibility during the annual super-hero pile-up. DC can also pay lip service to her as the world's greatest female super-hero even when she's not allowed to be the world's greatest hero. That's a lot of BS of course.

Captain Marvel is an idea that seems to have walked out of a child's daydream of what a cool adult should be like. It's not the specific powers that matter because he is power. He's The World's Mightiest Mortal: He's a marvel. He's a superman. That may have been true when he was part of Fawcett's line-up, but what happens when after a long period out of the limelight he moves to DC and meets his rival male counterpart? How do you settle which superman should be the greatest?

You can make them fight for dominance like typical males:

But the outcomes of many of these battles were never in doubt because they're never allowed to unseat Superman's place in the DC Universe. Forget that Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are beings who should be able to exploit Superman's supposed weakness to magic, or any other hair splitting arguments that fans can come up with. What matters is that Superman has been locked into his primary role as the quintessential super-hero. DC initially shunted off the Fawcett characters to their own parallel universe. But even after they were merged into DC's main universe, Captain Marvel has remained a consistent second or third stringer. If anything, separating him from familiar settings and supporting characters has made him more of an orphan within DC. Meanwhile Superman benefits from a universe which treats him as an integral member: He gets to tussle with evil New God Darkseid on a semi-regular basis. He gets outwitted by Batman at every opportunity. He fights alongside Wonder Woman in DC's version of Ragnarok. And it's Superman and Wonder Woman who have Earth-shattering sex while Marvel barely registers as a presence before getting clobbered by Braniac in Dark Knight II. This is not a question of whether this is fair. This is fiction after all, and DC has assigned Marvel a smaller role.

What's unfortunate is that just as with Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel's original qualities tend to get diluted within DC's environment. The essence of his appeal is the idea that an average child could be wholly trusted with the use of godlike power. He was conceived in an era when super-powers were still treated more as a wondrous gift than as an unsought for responsibility. From the Whiz Comics pages that I've read, he possessed a certain goofball charm that hardly anyone today cares to replicate. But I don't think anyone at DC has believed in that premise for a long time. On the contrary, Marvel's perceived immaturity and naivete are sometimes treated as a dangerous liability, and used against him in Post-Crisis stories like Legends and Kingdom Come.


Superman's seniority also leads him to assume a paternal role towards Captain Marvel's Billy Batson identity. In the recent Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder, the still neophyte Billy at first revels in the use of his newly received powers. But when this leads to tragedy, he loses all self-control, forcing Superman's intervention. While the inevitable confrontation between Marvel and Superman doesn't devolve into the usual slugfest, Clark Kent becomes Billy's mentor because the kid obviously needs moral guidance and adult supervision.


It doesn't come as a surprise to me that the recent Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil by Jeff Smith works very well as a "back to basics" approach, partly because of the noticeable absence of DC Universe elements. But speaking us someone who would on some level find it emotionally satisfying to see The Big Red Cheese upstage the Man of Steel, to most fans the character may simply have grown too old-fashioned, stale, familiar, and that his best days are already far behind him.

Design Classic: Nikon F Camera System

Has it been fifty years already?

Not Another List

When The Comics Journal assembled their list of 100 best comics of the century in 1999, their staff had the good sense to parenthetically add "English-Language" to the list's description. This poll of 187 critics for the 50 greatest films is similar in it's provincialism. The choices are both conventional and lean heavily Anglo-American, especially its top ten. Like any "Best of" list that targets works of art or entertainment, it's a reflection of the biases of the people involved and the context in which it was created.

Jumping Late on The Wednesday Comics Bandwagon

Wednesday Comics is a perfect distillation of super-hero nostalgia. DC's decades-old stable of characters are in themselves enough to evoke nostalgia. But the format used predates those characters and taps into America's rich history of newspaper cartoon strips. It would seem to naturally repudiate the currently favored "decompressed" storytelling style, and it forces the artist to effectively maximize use of the one-page chapter while minimizing concerns about composing coherent long form visual narratives.

Anyway, here are my three favorite pages in no particular order:


Sgt. Rock and Easy Co. by Adam Kubert and Joe Kubert
Adam Strange: Strange Adventures by Paul Pope and Jose Villarrubia
Metamorpho The Element Man by Neil Gaiman, Mike Allred, Laura Allred and Nate Piekos

And my honorable mentions:

Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook
Hawkman by Kyle Baker
Wonder Woman by Ben Caldwell
Deadman: The Dearly Departed Detective by Dave Bullock, Vinton Heuck, Jared Fletcher and Dave Stewart

More on The Cult of Moe

Moe Magnet Sasami

"She looks like she has an elementary school girl's head on a woman's body," my father, a child psychiatrist, commented on one of the first pieces of manga art he ever saw. That was 10 years ago, when I'd just started working at VIZ and very little manga was available in English, but if he'd said the same thing in 2009, I could have shown him the elementary school girl's body too.
- Jason Thompson

Jason summarizes the moe phenomenon in his ComiXology article, which he traces back to 70s lolicon and fan art that fixated on the young female protagonists of Hayao Miyazaki, and forward to today's otaku subculture. I first tried to tackle the moe subject matter in my Yotsuba&! post. Whereas I concentrated more on the paternalistic attitudes behind the more "pure" expression of moe, Jason covers the larger issues of traditional male chauvinism, prurient sexual fetishes, the graying of Japan's population, and the wish-fulfillment traits of fandom.

What's interesting is how successfully the cult of moe has been mirrored outside of Japan despite manga's relatively late popularity in the West. My own first recollection of moe would be with fan reactions to the female cast of Tenchi Muyo!, in particular the prepubescent Sasami*. For others it may have been Sailor Moon. While others might claim Neon Genesis Evangelion as their first encounter with moe. Whatever the case, the current success of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star, Moon Phase, et al. demonstrates how much the concept has been embraced by Western fans. That would seem to indicate that despite the Japanese origins of the term, the underpinnings of its appeal are no longer purely Japanese. It could be explained as a response to recent common trends/social changes found within industrial countries. Or perhaps moe simply reverberates with something older and more traditional? It's not as if paternalism and chauvanism are exclusively Japanese attitudes.

----
*Referred to at the time by Carl Horn as The Sasami Effect

Macheads Use Ubuntu

Only a true master can understand the CLI

I missed this, but the second chapter of Ubunchu! has been out for a bit. The original manga by Hiroshi Seo has been "open sourced", like its subject matter, into different language translations. It's pretty accessible, with the characters mostly conforming to type. The Windows guy is a cranky gamer set in his ways. The Mac user is an open-minded but naive comic book fan. And the Linux guru is smart, but a Command Line zealot. Krishna has also been touching on the same topic in his recent strips. This chapter contains the only attempt I'm aware of to explain the command pipe to laypeople in comic form.

Keith Knight is a Big Fan

The K Chronicles

Old vs. New Azumanga Daioh

The original Azumanga Daioh yonkoma published by MediaWorks are on the left. The 10th Anniversary Edition versions published by Shogakukan are on the right. As the side-by-side comparison shows, the redrawing of these comic strips are very thorough. The stylistic changes are also pretty clear-cut.

Greek Street #1

Greek Street is a typical high concept Vertigo book that self-consciously draws from and blends myth, fantasy, horror, and genre pulp fiction. These books are in some ways the mirror image of the super-hero universe titles that DC (and Marvel) maintain. Both fetishize violence and power in their own ways. And both can take too much pride in regurgitating their respective traditions. Vertigo's serials just prefer citing the likes of Lovecraft, Brothers Grimm, Sophocles or the Bible to Julius Schwartz or Stan Lee. This reinvention can certainly work. Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman have built their careers on it and have written some brilliant comics in the process. But over-reliance on any formula can also be used to mask a lack of originality or narrative weaknesses.

Set in modern-day London, Greek Street starts off on an unfortunately pedantic note when a stripper fends off the unwanted attentions of a patron by revealing that history is composed of "eternal recurrences" and people are like "Medea and Agamemnon...still playing at the temple of Dionysus." The scene shifts to the main protagonist and Oedipal figure as he reconnects with his long lost mother. Their story is a complete reversal of the classic myth in that the hero knowingly tracks down and manipulates his mother before their blood relationship is revealed. But after accidentally killing her, he becomes a latter day Orestes fleeing to Soho's Greek Street, but unable to escape his guilt over his dead mother.

The decision of veteran Vertigo writer Peter Milligan and artist Davide Gianfelice to reinterpret ancient mythology as noir fiction is on the surface a pretty self-evident choice. There's plenty of sex, violence, and general brutality in those old stories that can be easily transposed to the present, not to mention that the themes of murder causing an endless cycle of revenge make for great drama. But the compelling power of these myths have more to do with the immortal works that convey these stories than the basic ideas found in them. Greek Street contains some rather effective and disturbing imagery. But their impact is blunted by dense plotting and a brisk pace that leaves that little room to develop the dozen or more supporting characters that are thrown at the reader. Most of them only get to occupy a few panels before the story moves on to the next character. The action isn't actually helped by the Vertigo preference for moody monochromatic coloring or the interchangeable grimacing faces. As this is a first issue, it is mostly set-up for the rest of the series. But the overall impression I get is that of Milligan trying to cram in as many Classical references as he could within the forty pages of the issue. The resulting narrative doesn't quite mesh.

While it's always premature to judge the success of a series on reading just the first issue, Greek Street's #1 seems a bit too aware of its ancient predecessors to stand-out as a work worthy of being regarded on its own merits. The series might eventually prove to be better than this premiere suggests, but I doubt it will be turn out to be a particularly memorable achievement for Vertigo.

The Marvel Divas Problem

Marvel Divas, the latest female-oriented comic series from Marvel, has had virtually all-negative press coverage since it was first announced. There's that unfortunate title, awkward advertising copy, and that embarrassing cheesecake cover which has been roundly, and IMO justifiably, criticized on the web.


But this is pretty much par for the course at Marvel Central. And it's what their male-dominated fan base expects. Unlike DC with its numerous imprints, Marvel makes comparatively fewer attempts to publish material outside of their super-hero universe. They're consistent that way. But I don't see how anyone with half a brain at Marvel could have seriously believed that the cover would work with the Sex in The City crowd. This looks more like a disingenuous move to get fanboys to pick-up a title they would normally avoid.

The interiors are a different story altogether. The art by Tonci Zonjic and company isn't striking, but it's perfectly matched to the content of the story. And It's far superior to the solicited cover art. The characters look real, down-to-earth, and clearly delineated from each other with distinct faces and body types. The dialogue centers on the lead characters bonding over their particular problems balancing their professional careers and personal love lives. Hardly groundbreaking material, but different from the usual Marvel fare.


This raises the question of what is the point of setting this kind of series in a shared universe in the first place. The women here are mostly second stringers currently not involved with any super-hero teams. Their minor character status gives writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa more room to develop them in this particular direction. But they're still Marvel Universe super-heroes. It's only a matter of time before they're appropriated by another writer. Given how different in tone Marvel Divas is from the rest of Marvel, any newly acquired readers are unlikely to stick around. In the end the series seems less an attempt to attract more female readers than as a way to placate accusations of chauvinism among super-hero publishers. But this little experiment has no chance of appealing to most of Marvel's traditional fan base. So enjoy it while it lasts.

What The F#@k is Going On in Pyongyang?

Pyongyang by Guy Delisle

North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast Saturday in a show of military firepower that defied U.N. resolutions and drew international condemnation and concern. It also fired four short-range missiles Thursday believed to be cruise missiles.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency -- citing a South Korean government source it did not identify -- reported that five of the seven ballistic missiles landed in the same area, indicating their accuracy has improved.

- KELLY OLSEN Associated Press

Culinary Curiosities: The MOSDO and POTEDO

Mister Donut MOSDO menu モスド and ポテド

Here's the kind of fast-food fusion tailor-made to bring-out my inner Homer Simpson. The MOSDO is the brainchild of a partnership between popular doughnut chain Mister Donut and Japanese burger franchise MOS Burger. Each company makes its own product under this common brand name (A portmanteau of 'MOS' and 'Donut'). The Mister Donut variety is a doughnut burger - Burger on the outside but doughnut on the inside. The accompanyinng POTEDO (A portmanteau of 'Potato' and 'Donut') are french fry shaped doughnut sticks. Christopher Butcher enjoyed this inventive fast-food combo. Now I really want to go to Japan.

MOS Burger MOSDO モスド

The MOS Burger version has a traditional looking burger patty with a doughnut hole in the middle filled with wasabi mayonnaise. Mmmmm spicy. While not as clever as its Mister Donut counterpart, it still sounds like something that could only come from Japan.

Farewell Kodachrome

I've never personally used Kodachrome, as the film was already falling out of favor by the time I began experimenting with color photography. There just weren't many labs that could process it. But the discontinuation of another classic product marks one more step on the march towards an all-digital future. Ars Technica has a nice article about the film's landmark importance to the photographic world. And Kodak has put up an online gallery of Kodachrome images mainly from National Geographic photographers.

Cover Design: Azumanga Daioh: Hoshuu-hen

あずまんが大王　1年生

So that's what the post-Yotsuba&! version of Azumanga Daioh looks like. The minimal design, resembling a high school textbook, eschews the more conventional style used in the MediaWorks covers. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on Shogakukan's 10th anniversary editions partly because they will most likely not be reproduced in English by Yen Press (here). But I'm also enough of a nerd to want to own at least one Japanese language version of a preferred manga.

Update: Here are the rest of the Shogakukan covers:

あずまんが大王　2年生

あずまんが大王　3年生

Photo Lust: Olympus E-P1

Olympus E-P1

A compact camera body that uses interchangeable lenses, comes from a classic design lineage, has DSLR sensor image quality, and costs just a fraction of the price of a Leica body? Yes please.

Fully Booked

Returning to Manila after more than a decade, I've notice the significant growth of the Graphic Novel sections in bookstores. As with the U.S. this growth can be attributed to riding on the immense popularity of manga. A satellite market for American publishers, most manga in the Philippines are English language translations published by the likes of Viz or Tokyopop. What I find surprising is the strong presence of alternative comic books. The Fully Booked branch at the Rockwell Center had a graphic novel section composed of several shelves larger than the manga section. Much of that section was composed of Marvel and DC trade paperbacks. Even most Borders Books branches I've been to didn't have as large a collection of works from smaller publishers. Who in Manila reads these books? What's the extent of the overlap, if any, between the manga, alternative and superhero audience?

Something Will Happen

For this post I'm going to indulge my inner political junkie. I hope not do this too often.

More than twenty three years ago the Philippines was facing its own election crisis. Despite reports of widespread election irregularities, President Ferdinand Marcos was declared the winner. His rival Corazon Aquino called for coordinated strikes and mass boycotts of the media and other businesses owned by Marcos's cronies. Despite the popularity of these efforts, the turning point of the crisis was when certain government and military officials broke with the Marcos regime and set-up headquarters at two military camps in Manila. Goaded on by the local Cardinal/Archbishop, protesters congregated outside the military camps to act as human shields. Soon the crowds swelled to hundreds of thousands. A contingent of marines approached the camps but were blocked by people in the streets. This scene has been immortalized by photojournalists - nuns kneeling in front of tanks while the crowd around them lock their arms in order to block the troops. The marines retreated without firing a shot. This event was followed by a series of military defections which swelled the ranks of the opposition and inexorably led to the end of the Marcos regime.

Three years later protesters gathered at Tiananmen Square in Beijing to demand for more democratic reforms. Despite attempts by the police to disperse the crowd, their numbers soon swelled to a hundred thousand. Many of these protesters were college students, but they were strongly backed by working class people tired of government corruption. The protests at Tiananmen Square were mirrored in local college campuses and other public protests in other cities throughout China. The government was initially divided on how to deal with the protests. Attempts were made to negotiate with student leaders. But after seven weeks the Peaple's Liberation Army was sent into Beijing in the early hours of the morning. After a tense standoff the military fired on the protesters. The Square was cleared and the military continued to effectively block any attempts to enter it. The events after the crackdown were immortalized in images captured by journalists also unable to enter the Square, but watched from hotel balconies: A lone unidentified man successfully blocked a line of tanks before he was pulled away by the police. Despite demonstrations from other places in reaction to the crackdown, particularly Hong Kong, the government had effectively squashed the popular uprising.

At this time things have reached crisis levels in Iran. Reports of widespread election irregularities have been accompanied by massive street protests. Not suprisingly, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sided with incumbent and fellow conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He's endorsed the election results and condemned the street protests (here). There seem to be no legal means left to challenge the election results. A crackdown seems imminent. I'm no expert in Iranian politics, so it's not clear to me where the sympathies of the Iranian army and police lie. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are presumably with Ahmadinejad. But they don't constitute all of the army. Nor do I know the extent of the opposition's overall influence. If the military is ordered to fire on civilians, and if the opposition receives no support from within the establishment, then the street insurrection could end very soon.

Pluto Vol. 1

As much as the I've grown to appreciate Osamu Tezuka's importance to the comics medium, it's safe to say that my younger self wasn't exposed to his work at anywhere near the level that a certain generation of Japanese fans were as children. So I can only guess at the visceral reactions from anyone over the age of thirty when Naoki Urasawa's interpretation of Atom was revealed in the pages of Pluto. If hardcore Japanese fans are like hardcore fans everywhere else, some must have hailed Urasawa a genius while others must have wanted to strangle him for desecrating their precious childhood memories. As a long-time Star Trek fan, I was tempted to make comparisons with the case of J.J. Abrams recent re-imagining of the original Star Trek cast. But this is the frickin' god of manga we're talking about, so I wont.

Pluto is Urasawa's retelling of the very popular and influential "The Greatest Robot on Earth" arc from Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (Atom) manga series - something capitalized on by crediting both Urasawa and Tezuka in the title's byline. For those interested in reading the original Tezuka story in English Dark Horse published this story several years ago in paperback format. While it would be considered a model of brevity by today's standards, it is considered the first Astro Boy story to be told on an epic scale. The action-based tale of fighting super robots thrilled its preteen audience while building on Tezuka's arching themes of robot-kind's struggle for acceptance in a human world that treats them as slaves. Even the world's most destructive and villainous robots are but tools under the control of corrupt and greedy humans.

While Tezuka's robot combat could be seen as a metaphor for the arms race that took place during the Cold War, Urasawa's recall the more recent Gulf Wars. Some of the robot characters in volume one are veterans of the 39th Central Asian War - an invasion carried out to bring stability to the "Persian Kingdom." As the built-in programming known as the Robot Laws prevents the taking of human life, the robots fought and destroyed one another. The returning robots have been living amongst the general human population for several years when the story begins. But an unknown enemy starts targeting seven of the world's most powerful robots for elimination. One of those robots is main protagonist inspector Gesicht, a Europol detective investigating the case.

Graphically, Pluto pays homage to Tezuka, even utilizing his star system. Urasawa is very adept at facial expressions, and he seems to have relished adapting and expanding on Tezuka's considerably large ensemble of characters. Urasawa's more heavily cross-hatched and stippled style is less likely to provoke the accusations of racism that were raised against the more caricatured Tezuka approach (Although Urasawa still draws too many Westerners with large noses for my tastes). At the same time what he saw buried in the original story that appealed to him starts to become apparent. Firstly while Urasawa is able to draw objects which mimic that sleek futuristic design aesthetic typical of the 60s, what he really excels at and loves to illustrate is that decaying Central European ambience: Old neighborhood houses with narrow streets, classical facades, crumbling castles, ordinary people at work, large family gatherings in tiny rooms and children at play.

Secondly while volume one alludes to underlying tensions between the larger human population and the more powerful robots, the human-robot dichotomy is used to bring to the forefront Urasawa's interlocking pet themes: the nature of evil, the power of memory, and the indelible stamp of childhood on someone's identity. Robots were programmed not to harm humans. But as robots become more sophisticated, they acquire more human characteristics: They sleep, dream, eat, drink, get stressed and fatigued, fall in love, marry, and raise families (Volume one doesn't go into detail how any of this works). Isn't it possible they could learn to develop murderous intentions towards humans as well as other robots?

These themes converge in the set piece of this volume - the relationship between North 2, one of the seven robots, and Paul Duncan, a composer living in seclusion in Scotland. North is hired to be Duncan's butler, but what North really wants is to learn music from the master. Meanwhile Duncan is undergoing a creative crisis which is related to a childhood trauma regarding his belief that he was abandoned by his mother. North stoically endures Duncan's constant verbal abuse and disbelief that a weapon of mass destruction could want to be something more. The conclusion to their tale, which has North managing to uncover crucial information about Duncan's past, is heavy-handed in its application of sentimentality. In the pages of Monster, this might not have been so obvious. But when grafted to Tezuka's original material, Urasawa's stylistic predilections become more visible.

Any adaptation raises the issue of faithfulness to the source while updating it to more contemporary tastes. Urasawa is a fine manga-ka and shows a great deal of respect for Tezuka's work. Whether the reader enjoys Pluto will depend on their acceptance of the particular tropes Urasawa brings to the story - a meditation on identity, memory and human nature. I suspect that most Western readers will approach Pluto as Naoki Urasawa fans, having read Monster, rather than as Osamu Tezuka fans. They will find themselves mostly happy with the effort.

Resumption of Blogging

I've just completed a big move from Brisbane, which has left me little time to read or review. I did manage to catch the film adaptation of Watchmen before I left, and was planning to write about it. But I now don't have the energy, or the interest to clutter the internet with more commentary on the movie. I did react to the onscreen violence in much the same way that Jog did in his article:

There's no exchange of fists from the comics that can't be expanded into full-blown blocks ‘n throws combat. The Comedian doesn't just gas protesters from the eyes of the Owl Ship, he leaps into the fray and punches out the whole first line of protestors. If Gibbons draws lil' Rorschach biting a bully's cheek in one panel with speckles of blood on his face in the next, Snyder makes sure to close in on the flesh tugging and stretching and lavishly giving way to spilling grue. Even the generous splash of blood of that one guy getting his throat cut at the door to Rorschach's prison cell, one of the bigger bloody bits of the comics, is replaced by a major gore scene marked with a delighted close up of a buzz saw closing in on the man's arms, rending his skin and muscle to gristle...

Let's go back to that hard-rockin' fight scene with the Comedian. He takes what has to be a dozen or so direct hits to the face, flies through all sorts of objects, and we're specifically told he's not a superhuman - surely his face ought to be a lump of hamburger! But no, there's only a few trickles of blood, presumably because Gibbons only drew a few trickles of blood, which of course was because he and Moore were downplaying the entertainment value of the murder scene, i.e. exactly the opposite of what Snyder is doing, yet he keeps the trickle. That isn't the destruction of superheroes, that's Neal Adams' Batman in the ‘70s!

That is one reason why even when the film manages to be superficially faithful to the book, it actually undermines the original message in many little ways. It's doubtful that Watchmen will make cinematic history, but given the hyperbole that accompanies the graphic novel, it was inevitably going to disappoint many fans. This isn't an empty corporate property like Batman. The book itself is a singular achievement that can benefit from a frank reassessment.
*** I've just been going over my photographic film archives. I've been shooting in film twice as long as I've been shooting with digital. But there's no doubt that my digital output has recently surpassed my film output. Such is the convenience of digital photography. I haven't touched a traditional darkroom for more than seven years, and am unlikely to regularly use one from now on. All this has led to the realization that I need to digitize my film archives. I've been doing it on a piecemeal basis, but now I've got to get serious about it. But I need a better scanner than the one I have now. Just another thing to add to my wishlist.
*** Google is just as humourless as any large corporation. Or not.

PC Weenies

Whitewashing With Big Time Mediocrity

Whitewash

In my post on the Avatar film casting controversy, I expressed a lot of skepticism over the choice of M. Night Shyamalan as director. Those reservations were based on the films he has directed throughout his career. His style, preferred subject matter, and increasing pretentious quality, are incompatible with the kind of straightforward adventure found in the original series.

As for the casting controversy, while not absolving him of being involved in this mess, this casting call and the choice of four all-white tween heart-throbs might have been pushed on him by Paramount to maximize the film's mainstream appeal and profitability. Whether this is true, and whether he initially fought, or unquestioningly supported, those directives is something no insider has yet divulged (as far as I know). Even Avatar's creators have kept mum this entire time. The silence from everyone is deeply suggestive of something going on behind the scenes.

The replacement of one of the leads with Indian-British actor Dev Patel in some ways actually makes things worse. 1st: it comes across as tokenism calculated to assuage fans who have initiated letter writing campaigns. Coming off the success of Slumdog Millionaire, Patel is already a proven talent and thus a relatively conservative choice. But 2nd: he's being cast in the antagonist role, making him the villainous Oriental fighting against the heroic Caucasians. And 3rd: the casting of a South Asian to play a role closer to East Asian still smacks of cultural insensitivity. All Asians apparently still all look the same to Hollywood.

The casting controversy has engendered some rather vehement online denials over the show's problematic Asian identity. This being the internet, they can get as tiresome and monotonous as self-righteous fan outrage. So I'd rather single-out Derek Kirk Kim's post again, as well as that of Gene Yang. Matt Thorn's essay on the drawing styles of Japanese manga and anime serve the case of Avatar just as well.

Given how little information is available on what is still the preproduction phase, no one knows yet what the film will finally look like. Fans are assuming that Shyamalan is attempting to reproduce the Asian-flavored world of Avatar. Hence the yellowface accusations. But it's possible that before this is over Shyamalan will stray from the cartoon's premise and present us with some kind of corporate-defined multicultural setting in order to give the studio an excuse to sidestep those accusations. Such a hypocritical alteration would then be used to justify ignoring demands to recast the leading roles.

The creators of Avatar mirror the young audience's fascination with manga and anime - A phenomena Hollywood doesn't really get. It falls outside a certain narrow stylistic range of animation. It doesn't fit into traditional views of their audience. It must be Westernized, whitewashed, and watered-down by comitee into something mediocre. Given the stuff he has to work with, I'll be very surprised if Shyamalan somehow succeeds in forging this material into something truly original.

More on Avatar Racebending

Geeks in Love

Marie and Pierre

Kate Beaton has drawn some Valentine Day's cartoons.This one's my favorite. I am a little bit fascinated with the Curies. Is Marie trying to pour radium down the back of Pierre's neck?

Sulk #1-2

I have to admit that my exposure to Jeffrey Brown has been limited to his autobiographical work. But his latest project is a series of digest-sized books titled Sulk. Each volume is a standalone work so the reader isn't required to pick-up the other books. From what I understand, the series is a catch-all title for whatever subject matter Brown wants to tackle. So this is a good opportunity as any to explore the versatility of his output.

Issue one, which is titled "Bighead and Friends," features the return of his gentle superhero parody featuring a main character who's superpower is his unusually large cranium. The volume reads as a series of episodes representing the contents of several pamphlet issues. Brown's obviously well-versed in the various superhero conventions. Bighead battles an array of villains: some typical, others offbeat. He teams-up with other heroes. He has adventures as "Little Bighead." He dies and is resurrected. He even gets to encounter "The Author" in one story. Unlike the writer Grant Morrison revealing to Animal Man that he is a fictional creation, the Author simply torments Bighead with a bunch of seven year olds.


Brown's parody works so well in part due to the awkward and rubbery look of his characters. They're cute and appealing without being too obnoxious. His gags don't require any kind of insider knowledge of any pre-existing continuity to understand them. Brown just celebrates the absurd nature of superhero comics. In one story the police, frustrated by Bighead's interference in a sting operation to arrest drug addicts, send a clone(?) to battle him. After a lengthy fight someone emerges victorious. But the narrator neglects to mention which Bighead won that fight.

While not groundbreaking, "Bighead and Friends" is recommended to anyone looking for good superhero parodies to read.

Issue Two is titled "Deadly Awesome." It's a more ambitious volume composed of one story instead of several pieces. The subject is a mixed martial arts match. The story is structured to resemble a televised coverage of a fight: The pre-fight interviews, short bios of the competitors, a rundown of the rules, and analysis of the ringside commentators. Anyone who has watched enough TV fights can imagine the crowds screaming and the music blaring.

The fight itself is at first glance a stereotypical David vs. Goliath battle between a cagey veteran middleweight from Japan called Haruki Rabasaku, and a much younger light-heavyweight powerhouse from America named Eldark Garprub. Age vs. youth; East vs. West; Small vs. big; Skill vs. power. They're all familiar memes within the Asian fighting arts.*

Where the story departs from the conceit of a televised coverage is that the narrator uses thought balloons and narrative captions to expose the inner workings of each fighter's mind. Both fighters carefully consider their options rather than blindly rushing in to finish of the opponent. This helps to undermine any misconception that MMA fighting is a brutish affair for violent thugs.


It would seem at first that Brown's style isn't particularly suited to the subject matter. But while his figures still retain their elastic nature, they're drawn more realistically to more properly capture the athletic physiques of the fighters. The action is believably portrayed without exaggeration. Brown has either heavily referenced his characters or has watched enough fights to create a fictional fight from scratch completely while envisioning every technique. Brown also uses a greater variety narrative techniques to flesh out the action and each fighter's emotional state : In one panel little imaginary Rabasaku heads dance in front of the frustrated Garprub's face when he fails to land a punch despite gaining a superior position.

One limitation of the story is that the characters get little treatment beyond their abilities as fighters. As a result there is little emotional investment in the outcome of the match. It's well told, but no better than a real-life MMA fight.

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*The image of the tiny Oriental defeating the larger clumsy Westerner propagated in the popular media, has its basis on real-life challenge matches that took place in late nineteenth/early twentieth century East Asia. These were usually initiated by expatriate boxers in need of money or hoping to boost their reputations. If a native won, he was feted as a patriotic hero by the local press. Post-War American soldiers stationed in Japan would sometimes study Japanese budo. They tended to be the targets of bullying from their seniors who were interested in impressing on their foreign charges the inherent value of their skills.

While MMA has been cited as a test case to demolish the idea of the smaller skilled master defeating the larger man, this is not the first time the myth has been tested. Perhaps the best example can be found in Judo. Japanese judoka were initially ambivalent about enforcing weight classes before 1964. Their attitude changed after 1961 when The massive 6'7" Dutchman Anton Geesink crushed the best Japanese fighters in the open class competition of the World Championships. Weight classes were officially adapted when Judo became an official event at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. Brazilian jiu-jitsu continued the early Judo tradition of fighting in local challenge matches, an important precursor to the Ultimate Fighting Championships. The early UFC events had no weight divisions. During this period Brazilian jiu-jitsu exponent Royce Gracie developed a reputation for defeating larger opponents who were less experienced as Gracie was in this format. But as the skill level of American fighters inevitably rose, weight divisions were introduced.

January is The Cruellest Month

January Hate

(I have been a shut-in since November. Unemployment does that.)

The Fart Party creator Julia Wertz has a new book: I Saw You...

No Spirit

via aceshowbiz

Speaking of film adaptations...

I finally saw Frank Miller's version of The Spirit this weekend. While I never believed that Miller had it in him to stay faithful to Will Eisner's comic book creation, I wasn't prepared to be so bored with the experience. A lot of that could be blamed on the indifferent acting and poor characterization: Whether it was Gabriel Macht's interminable monologues as The Spirit, Samuel Jackson's overacting as the villainous Octopus, Dan Lauria's grousing as the disapproving Commissioner Dolan, or the several interchangeable femme-fatales, the movie's characters are nothing but tedious and cliched.

There was never any great demand for a Spirit movie. The character doesn't have the name recognition of more famous comic book heroes. And unlike other properties adapted into film, The Spirit has always been attached to a very specific milieu. That this film ever saw the light of day was probably due to Frank Miller being involved with it - Which is the point when things became problematic. Not only do Miller's present stylistic ticks conflict with Eisner's humanism despite sharing superficial similarities, Miller is also a rookie director. His stark visual design and framing of shots is similar to the comic panels he draws. But that doesn't mean he knows how to handle actors or pace his story. The result is a monotonously told narrative.

The Spirit not only shares little in common with its source material (No Ebony White, the hero has a healing factor) but shows a lack of synergy between its interpretation and the current comic book re-imagining being published by DC. While comic book fans would like to see this movie buried and forgotten, it's unfortunate that the movie, not the comic, will be for many their first and only exposure to the character.