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| Riot Girl |
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| Dynamic |
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| Millionaire Playboy |
Go to: The Batman '66 Project by Dylan Todd (via Dylan Todd)
9/26/2012
9/25/2012
Please Don't Browse
I'm in absolute agreement with Chris Schweizer when he states that one of the pleasures and advantages to visiting a bricks-and-mortar comic book store is the ability to peruse the comics before making the decision to buy them. I've also enjoyed the open-ended delights of wasting as much time as desired shopping at a well-stocked comic book store or bookstore. But that's not the case everywhere. His post made me reflect on how differently Filipino comic book stores deal with customers who like to browse. To put it bluntly, they kind of suck.
The first truly tangible Direct Market presence in the Philippines (as far as I can remember) was in the early Nineties, riding on the speculator-driven boom of the time. The most important retailers were Filbar's and Comic Quest. Business must have been good, because back then the two franchises dueled so fiercely it wasn't unusual to find competing branches at any large shopping center. Things haven't gone so well since, as both have scaled back their operations and diversified their offerings to the point were when one enters their stores, it either looks like a hobby shop or a newstand. But in terms of store layout, they were virtually identical. Both would bag or shrink-wrap their floppies and graphic novels, and put them behind the counter. Needless to say, this made it difficult for customers to examine the comics. They could if they wanted to, but that meant asking one of the uniformed salesladies (It was always a young woman) to pull a copy of the rack since they were the only people allowed access to them. So customers got a lot of individual attention, whether they wanted it or not. And as you can imagine, it's not easy finding enjoyment in a comic when someone's hovering over you. But at least the clerks (to steal a cliche from Tom Spurgeon) never had to yell at some no-good kid for messing-up the racks and not purchasing anything.
Things haven't changed that much. In the newer stores, the shelves are now located over-the-counter. But a lot of them still practice bagging and shrink-wrapping their comics. Or even funnier, putting them behind sliding glass displays. Oh well, I guess it keeps them safe and in good condition.
This is something I took for granted for a long time because that's just the general retail culture of the country. You can walk into any regular bookstore and expect to find that some of the books are bagged or shrink-wrapped. If National Bookstore doesn't exactly encourage leisurely browsing, don't expect anything different from the majority of comic book stores.
9/24/2012
9/20/2012
9/18/2012
Bad Movies: Resident Evil: Retribution
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| Li Bingbing and Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil: Retribution (via Aceshowbiz) |
The Resident Evil film series is pure crap. It's also a decade old, which is surprisingly durable for a movie franchise based on a video game. One wonders though. How much longer will lead actress Milla Jovovich be willing or able to perform its signature gun fu moves while wearing ridiculous fetish gear? As for this latest entry, there's this scene were Jovovich's character Alice is engaged in prolonged hand-to-hand combat with a zombie horde. She flips a gun clip into the air, where it stays up long enough for the audience to forget it exists, then falls back to earth at an opportune moment for Alice to catch it and reload. That's the film in the nutshell. Oh, now there are zombie soldiers who can shoot and drive. And apparently it's no longer just Alice who can be cloned. The Umbrella Corporation can clone programmable mooks from anyone who's ever worked for them. Hence the largely wasted returns of Oded Fehr and Michelle Rodriguez. Finally, can someone please explain to me why the homicidal supercomputer from the first film switched from trying to contain the T-virus to becoming a pale imitation of Skynet?
9/17/2012
Faramir on war and terror
"War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend..."So, does this make him a favorite of neocons, or of Al Qaeda?
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
9/13/2012
9/11/2012
Godzilla: The Half-Century War #1
Godzilla created by Tomoyuki Tanaka, Shigeru Kayama, Ishirō Honda, Eiji Tsuburaya
For those of you not familiar with the kaiju genre, the fifty year movie career of its most famous star Gojira (Godzilla) is divided by fans into three eras, each with its own distinctive approach. But what has remained the touchstone for every one of them is the 1954 movie that began the franchise. This grim and oftentimes heavy-handed story was a thinly-veiled protest of American underwater tests of the Hydrogen Bomb in the Pacific at the time. And it captured the recent and still sharply felt trauma of a country recovering from the devastation of WWII. It still embodies the nation's strong anti-nuclear sentiments. Needless to say, it's something of a revered object in Japan. Not that this stopped Hollywood in 1956 from heavily editing it by inserting Raymond Burr into some key scenes.
The first issue of Godzilla: The Half-Century War is another insertion into the original narrative. But one that's more self-conscious. The film's main plot is kept at arm's length, and the comic instead focuses on the street-level POV of Japanese soldier Lieutenant Ota Murakami. He gets to experience first-hand Godzilla's initial rampage on Tokyo as one of the tank operators sent in to stop the beast. And he later bears witness to it's destruction at the hands of the Oxygen Destroyer from Tokyo Bay.
That none of the film characters appear allows the comic to tell a very different story. It could even be said that writer/artist James Stokoe has found the action movie hidden within the original narrative. All that serious philosophizing about humanity's capacity for self-destruction or the folly of messing with nature is conveniently shoved aside, remaining only as subtext for the informed Godzilla fan. In place of introspection is a cool set piece. Much of this issue revolves around Ota's attempts to keep Godzilla distracted while the civilians are evacuated. It's gorgeously drawn and colored destruction-porn, captured mostly in wide-angle and from below as Ota stares up at the behemoth as it wrecks the city. The Hollywood-style attention to detail makes for a remarkable contrast to the dark and menacing silhouette stomping Tokyo in the 1954 movie. Unfortunately, Ota himself is a somewhat uninteresting character, coming mostly out of central casting. The stoic hero-act turns him into a typical Hollywood movie protagonist.
So this is a dumb comic, but one that nicely exhibits Stokoe's virtuosity as an artist. I'm a little curious to see if he's using this as a launching point for a completely different take on Godzilla, or whether he'll be touching on the various movie incarnations produced during its iconic half-century career.
9/07/2012
9/05/2012
9/04/2012
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Vol. 4
A lot of the unease is due to Usagi's antagonistic relationship with Chibi-Usa. She's the only person who openly distrusts the mysterious child's true motives, and doesn't understand why the others on the team are more willing to indulge her oddball behavior (I'm a little confused about that myself). When Chibi-Usa's latest escapade almost results in disaster for everyone, Usagi lets her have it. After all, the team's down to half-strength, the missing members could be dead for all she knows, and here's this obnoxious brat stealing her magical items and running around half-cocked. This also leads to Usagi and Mamoru's first lovers spat. Usagi resents Mamoru's affectionate interactions with Chibi-Usa. I know. Being jealous of a prepubescent girl isn't Usagi's finest moment. Late in the volume this almost gets her killed. And when Chibi-Usa reveals who she really is, the whole thing between the three acquires an even more twisted meaning. But so far, this pettiness is the most relatable emotion to come out of the series. Usagi and Mamoru do get to make up afterwards, only for creator Naoko Takeuchi to become more coy than a film director working under the Hays Code. So you'll have to decide for yourself whether they consummated their romance or not.
The big reveal of this volume (Spoiler Alert) is that Chibi-Usa and the Black Moon are from the future, where everything was fine until the Black Moon decided to take over the world and invade the past. So everyone gets to travel to the future and meet a new senshi, Sailor Pluto. What can I say. It wasn't that long ago when Pluto was stripped of its planet label. Whatever. For the needs of this series, Sailor Pluto is the guardian of the underworld (patterned after her mythical namesake) and this apparently makes her the guardian of time as well. So I guess we'll be seeing more for her. The whole time travel trope generates a new wrinkle on the series love vs. fate theme. Before, Usagi and Mamoru worried about repeating the past. Now they worry about whether the future is written in stone. Actually their future selves turn out alright. But the future in general is another thing altogether.
You know how you're supposed to believe that Bedford Falls is a hunky-dory place, while Pottersville is its undesirable doppleganger, but deep in your heart you find the former to be utterly drab and would prefer to hang out at the nightclubs of the latter? Future Tokyo is even more uninteresting than that sleepy American town, resembling Krypton from Richard Donner's Superman. It's an advanced, stable society where everyone is near-immortal. It's meant to be seen as a utopia. But it feels sterile. This future is seen mainly through the eyes of Chibi-Usa, who turns out to be a princess. She should be happy. It's apparent that she's a spoiled child. But she's downright miserable, subverting the classic princess fantasy. Living in the shadow of her charismatic mother. Not exhibiting any of the supernatural abilities that are her royal birthright and being teased mercilessly for it. And worse of all, stunted in her physical growth so that she has inexplicably remained a little girl for nine hundred years. Her existence sounds like a child's worst nightmare. And this revelation transforms her from a very unlikeable character into a truly pitiable figure. Why hasn't she joined the Black Moon and tried to overthrow the status quo?
Here's one explanation: The rebel leader Prince Demande is a creep. Aside from the mass murder he carries out in both the present and the future, he constantly threatens Chibi-Usa's life, forces himself on a helpless Usagi, and calls himself "prince" like it actually means something. His villainous grandstanding makes the previous wannabe-royal Queen Beryl look like a decent human being. Whatever moral ambiguity that could arise in other parts of the book is replaced by the simple desire to see someone kick this guy's ass. Unfortunately, that will have to take place in future volumes.
8/27/2012
Photo Gallery: Apollo 11
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| Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and the Lunar Module. |
Here's the photo I mistakenly attributed earlier. But I decided to give it its own post anyway. It's one of the most mesmerizing photos yet of two people walking on another world. Neil Armstrong was a pretty good photographer considering that those weren't the best lighting conditions to shoot in: Dark sky combined with a bright reflective surface, and everyone's wearing white. And then you have to work the camera while wearing those thick gloves. My hope is that I'll get to see this event replicated on a different world one day, even though I'm nowhere nearly as optimistic as I once was.
To Neil Armstrong, NASA, their Soviet counterparts, and all space explorers, past, present and future. Thank you.
Update: Charles Apple (via Robert T. Gonzalez) analyzes the dearth of good-quality images of the famous astronaut. I find it amusing that like many shutterbugs, Neil was actually camera-shy. He certainly took the majority of the Apollo 11 images, documenting Buzz's mission activities. It's also enlightening to find out that this famous portrait was manipulated. I knew that since the Hasselblad used by the crew exposes film in the 6x6 cm square format, the image had to at least been cropped at the sides. But it turns out that Neil was no different from most snap-shooters in that he tended to chop off people's extremities when taking their pictures. So the editors at NASA had to restore the top of Buzz's head and add in some extra sky to balance the composition. The results are aesthetically pleasing, but journalistically dubious to professional news organizations. Eh, I'm still okay running it for this blog.
8/26/2012
R.I.P. Neil Armstrong
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| Neil Armstrong inside the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. Photo from NASA archives, but presumably taken by Buzz Aldrin. |
Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012)
Thanks Neil. And send my regards to Yuri and Kudryavka.
8/23/2012
This can only end one way
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| From Wonder Woman #300 |
The two hooking up is old news.
Pre-Flashpoint? Pre-Crisis.
Cold, Superman. Real cold.
8/21/2012
Batman: Earth One
Batman created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger
Batman: Earth One is yet another retelling of Batman's origin story. Aren't we tired of hearing of it by now? It feels incredibly redundant. In fact, it feels like the comic book version for another Batman film adaptation. Like so many of those films, the plot strains to achieve some semblance of originality by tweaking the source material. Most of these changes are fairly distracting and seem to have been made just for the sake of contradicting earlier versions of the Batman mythos. But when the comic pokes and prods at every little thing about Batman's motivations, methods, and basic competence, he ends up looking less like a heroic figure and more like a delusional tool.
But this isn't an attempt at parody. It's a straightforward superhero adventure. In a scene reminiscent of Batman: Year One, Batman is shown chasing a suspect across Gotham's rooftops. His cable-gun tangles and he falls into the alley below. This Batman isn't just a rookie crime fighter. He seems to be in over his head. He pretty much blunders his way through the book. Bruce Wayne hasn't travelled the world mastering various disciplines. He stayed in Gotham learning from Alfred Pennyworth, now recast as a former Royal Marine. And throughout the book he disapproves of everything Bruce does: From the effectiveness of dressing like a bat to scare criminals as childish, to eschewing guns and extreme force as completely naive, to his belief that his parents murder was ordered by the mayor of Gotham as a lunatic conspiracy theory. All his criticisms are borne out. And it all adds up to a fairly realistic assessment of what would happen if someone actually did try to fight crime like Batman in the real world. The only problem is that this isn't the real world, it's Gotham City. Its aforementioned mayor is Oswald Cobblepot, never referred to as the Penguin. But portrayed as a bloodthirsty despot who keeps everyone in line with the services of a hulking serial killer who he pays off with young girls. It's a grim situation badly in need of a savior. So it's rather demoralizing when the one person who's actively opposing evil is proven to be basically wrong about everything.
Then there are the changes to the supporting cast seemingly carried out for the sake of being different. Lucius Fox is a young, nerdy inventor instead of an older father-figure. Alfred is a security consultant who fails to protect the Waynes instead of a loyal butler. Harvey Bullock is an attention-seeking Hollywood transplant instead of a slovenly, cynical Gothamite. And James Gordon is a corrupt cop instead of the only honest police officer in the GCPD. The last two have character arcs which imply that they will eventually develop into their more standard incarnations. But they begin their respective transformations by torturing a suspect for information.
I'm not usually a fan of artist Gary Frank, but his style worked pretty well for the book. His love for drawing creepy fake smiles on people's faces served to capture the decadence and horror of a Gotham under Cobblepot's control. And I kind of dig the home-made look of Batman's costume. It's somewhere between the traditional spandex look and the more elaborate body armor the film versions of the character prefer to wear.
The end of the book suggests that this Bruce is evolving towards a more competent crime fighter. Ultimately though, Batman: Earth One still feels completely pointless. As an alternate take on a well-known character, it doesn't posses a unique enough voice to make me want to read further installments of the series.
8/15/2012
Satire: Illegal Superheroes
Wonder Woman, aka the former goddess of Truth, was born in Themyscira and is an Amazonian citizen. She has entered the U.S. illegally as a member of the Justice League of America and while running operations out of Washington DC and Boston.
She is suspected to currently be illegally present within U.S. borders. To make a report, please leave a detailed message after the tone.
Thank you & God Bless America."
Go to: Artinfo, by Neil Rivas (via Kevin Melrose)
8/10/2012
More NonSense: Olympic Edition
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| Photo from Athlete, by Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein |
Despite my dig at the spectacle of sports being no match for the wonder of scientific discovery, I actually do know how to enjoy the drama that arises from competition between athletes, from time to time. I've been following the Olympics like many TV viewers, and this is one occasion I will indulge in the bizarre tribalism that comes from pitting nation against nation (Will the U.S. beat China in the final medal count tally? etc). I can't really stand it in other contexts. To my mind, nothing encapsulates the primal appeal of the Olympics as the impressive performances of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, a man who makes America's finest jocks look like veritable slowpokes. G#&*n, that man can run!
There's a tinge of narcissism involved when celebrating the achievements of athletes or in fetishizing their public images. They're held up as role models of what we mere mortals can achieve if we put our minds to it. Uh, not likely. Elite Olympians are real-world "mutants" whose genetics fortuitously suit the needs of their preferred sport. And who knows how long we humans will let natural selection have its way before we reinstate the foolish practice of eugenics to engineer even more extreme athletes?
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| Photo from Athlete, by Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein |
Awhile back, Nina Matsumoto posted full-body images from photographer Howard Schatz's photo project Athlete. She was making a point about how her colleagues needed to be reminded about the physical diversity of the real world, and that this diversity needs to be better reflected in the pages of comic books. Andrew Wheeler extended that by arguing that physical diversity is a reflection of good character design. Fair enough. It gets pretty monotonous when people in comics are drawn the same way. Off course, all the world's athletes only comprise a very narrow spectrum of humanity's overall diversity. But Wheeler was primarily concerned with comparing the portraits in Schatz's photos to comic book renditions of superhero physiques.
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| Sumōtori Emanuel Yarbrough. Photo from Howard Schatz website |
From what I understand of the Golden Age of comics, its artists weren't exactly aiming for "realism" when drawing superheroes. Like their ancient Greek counterparts, they seemed to be more interested in capturing an ideal of physical perfection, informed by the fitness and bodybuilding aesthetic of the era. In short, they were of their time.* But I strongly suspect that if I could observe that period's real athletes, they would not have demonstrated the same variety found in Schatz's book. Why? Individuals who crush previous sporting records, like the great Bolt himself, are not so much paragons as they are outliers. Mutants if you prefer. There's no such thing as a generic ideal that all athletes should train for. Only how far one can push a body's individual limits towards a certain radical direction in order to win at one's chosen sporting event. And today's athletes surpass their predecessors from decades past with more conditioned, functional, and specialized physiques. Their bodies aren't perfect, they're just better molded to fit the task at hand. But ideals about absolute perfection still circulate as aspirational fantasies among supermodels, bodybuilders, the fashion and beauty industries, celebrities and media types, and geeks who take the "Olympic level" descriptions in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe a little too seriously. So it's probably inevitable when fans and media pick on athletes for not living up to those unrealistic standards, irrelevant as they are to in-field performance.**
What's even funnier is that mutant or not, elite athletes are as a group still a whole lot better-looking, not to mention better conditioned, than the general population. As Keith Knight reminds us:
* Anyone who looks at the evolution of superhero art will notice how ideas about physical perfection have changed over time. And naturally, some artists are less interested in idealization and more known for grossly exaggerating and distorting human anatomy for aesthetic effect.
** not to mention sometimes becoming the recipient of sexist remarks.
8/09/2012
Cartoonists Celebrating Curiosity
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| HijiNKS ENSUE by Joel Watson |
Go to: ComicsAlliance by various
Nah, science is is still more exciting than sports.
8/08/2012
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Vol. 3
And wow, this is quite a third act, and would have made a fitting end to the manga had it been cancelled at this point. Half the book is taken up by the final showdown between the Sailor Senshi and what's left of the Dark Kingdom, which includes the series Big Bad, Queen Metalia. It's a knock-down, drag-out affair that moves from Tokyo to the Arctic Circle, and spills copious amounts of blood and gore, or as much gore as Naoko Takeuchi's art is willing to make explicit. Both important characters and many innocent people die. And the fate of the world hangs in the balance. And yet the war ends happily, at least for the good guys. Despite the sense of impending doom that began earlier in the series, the heroes do learn to avoid rehashing the tragic results of the ancient past, therefore managing to defy fate. There's even a hint that the evil henchmen, the corrupted Four Generals of Prince Endymion (aka Mamoru Chiba), are in some way redeemed through self-sacrifice. And the end marks the apotheosis of Usagi Tsukino. As the story's principal wish-fulfillment character, her triumph symbolizes the point when she graduates from reluctant hero to full-fledged leader and warrior-queen of a new Moon Kingdom.
This is an entertaining and empowering fantasy that the comics industry could stand to use more of. But I will admit to feeling a little dissatisfied with the arc. Mind you, I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the manga's target demographic. So this a bit nitpicky on my part. But as a reader I didn't find Usagi's evolution from goofy teenager to a more confident figure to be completely organic. Rather, it felt more like she was following a series of steps in order to upgrade to "hero" status. The schematic nature of her character development also applies to the plot as a whole. Maybe Takeuchi's uniformly quick pacing may have hurt the story a bit.
Takeuchi's art also continues to be a bit awkward. Personally, I love it on it's own merits. Her lines are elegant, the designs are slick and appealing, the poses are cute, and the Sailor Senshi look feminine while still appearing tough and heroic. It doesn't look like typical shojo manga. But her tendency to crowd the page with small, detailed, and occasionally borderless panels can often make the storytelling seem random and muddled. And sometimes her figures' physical movements don't quite convey the proper weight and direction. A key moment which supposably turns the tide of battle left me a little confused on the first reading as to what exactly just happened to Usagi and Mamoru.
The next arc, which comprises the bulk of the anime's Sailor Moon R season, initially proceeds as quickly as the first. It introduces new character Chibi-Usa, named because she looks like a chibi variant of Usagi. And lo and behold, she's just as annoying to some fans as her namesake. Not surprising given that soon after literally dropping from the sky onto Usagi's head, she points a gun at her, then later forces Usagi's family into letting her cohabit with them through hypnosis. She's a brat. But she's also a frightened girl who hides a secret that weighs heavily on her. Her appearance coincides with that of a new antagonist. There's an undeniable repetitiveness to the villains, as they're also another mysterious kingdom looking to reestablish their "splendid history" by forcefully acquiring the Legendary Silver Crystal, led by another sinister entity. Takeuchi's approach to keeping the series fresh is to upgrade the bad guys. They're definitely more ruthless. They don't start out with the M.O. of hypnotizing the population and draining their life force. They're fully capable of murder. And when they learn of the existence of the Sailor Senshi, they target them directly and attempt to kidnap them, one by one.
So yeah, the second arc is a variation on a theme. Or a formula if you prefer. But I get the sense that Takeuchi seems to be getting better at, or at very least is making an effort to master the pieces she's assembled. And in the end, aren't most long-running fantasy series about overmatched heroes facing a succession of increasingly ludicrous foes over a progressively grander scale? At this point, I'm still curious to see how things will turn out.
8/06/2012
The Ancient Art of Rubbing It In
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| Lyoto Machida bows after knocking out Ryan Bader. Photo by Esther Lin. |
I enjoy these displays of grace and humility after one fighter has thoroughly starched his opponent. I doubt that it makes the taste of defeat any less bitter.
Plus this photo makes them look like two drunks after a night of binge drinking.
8/04/2012
Blog: Connie to the Wonnie
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| Humans Ruin Everything |
Go to: Connie to the Wonnie by Connie Sun (via Heidi MacDonald)
8/03/2012
8/02/2012
A Parade of Mediocre Ideas
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| Photo from the Mascot Official Website |
Go to: The Beat by Heidi MacDonald
I hate Izzy with all my heart.
I don't mind Cobi though.
7/26/2012
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 2009
Obligatory warning: Major spoilers ahead:
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 2009 marks the completion of a narrative arc that began with Black Dossier. But it also works (whether or not the LOEG actually continues from here) as a fitting conclusion for the series as a whole. Having brought the Victorian-era cast right up to an apocalyptic Twenty-First Century, there isn't much left to do but to give them a fond sendoff. That is, if they can survive the rampage of Oliver Haddo's antichrist.
Admittedly, I was less engaged with the de rigueur tangle of cultural references found in this book. Partly, this might be due to the contemporaneous nature of what was being referenced. And the heavy Anglo-centric focus didn't really help, as it's something of a personal blind spot. So I'm pretty sure I missed about 99% of them on my first reading. While I picked-up on some of the James Bond allusions, I had already lost interest in that franchise even before Roger Moore left the role. But given the overall mood, I'm not sure it matters. In my review of Century: 1969, I noted an oppressive undercurrent just beneath a surface of gaudy colors and sexual liberation. Forty years later, things have become far worse. The year 2009 apparently discloses an exhausted world just waiting for an inevitable end.
Lest there be any doubt where everything is heading, LOEG's satire is far more blunt than in 1969. As the glorious monuments from previous adventures crumble, nuclear war is an ever imminent threat, British bobbies look and act like Imperial Stormtroopers, and popular entertainment as a whole is crude and apathetic. It's vaguely reminiscent of the Cold War ennui of Watchmen. The comic attacks the essentially bourgeois nature of pop culture, specifically through its biggest target: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. As principal characters Mina Murray and Orlando stand on the ruins of Hogwarts, the former comments "This whole environment seems artificial, as if it's been constructed out of reassuring imagery from the 1940s…" Just one of a continuous string of zingers castigating the mega-popular franchise. And yet nothing is quite as reactionary as Mina's own indictment of the new millennium: "People were desperately poor in 1910, but at least they felt things had a purpose. How did culture fall apart in barely a hundred years?" To which Orlando replies "By becoming irrelevant, same as always…"
Eh, whatever. But Mina was trapped in a madhouse for forty of those hundred years. So I can cut her some slack. Isn't her distress part of the point? Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill are most effective when capturing the inner turmoil of the cast. In 1969, they were grappling with the consequences of immortality. In 2009, they're dealing with an overwhelming sense of crushing defeat. Allan Quatermain in particular cuts a truly pathetic figure driven to the depths of despair by Mina's disappearance in 1969, yet manages to perform one last act of heroism before being killed by the antichrist's magical piss. I know that sounds ironic, but it's actually quite touching when read. Given how anachronistic a figure the "Great White Hunter" has become, it's as fitting a way as any to end Allan's life of adventuring. And after being put through the ringer, all of these vintage (but cleverly re-imagined) characters are just about ready to call it a century, and a career.
But if anyone has earned the right to be a crank baying at the world, it's Alan Moore. And if anyone has had cause to complain about the uninspired perpetuation of media franchises, it's also him. If he wants an underwhelming Harry Potter to be easily bought down by an equally unimpressed Mary Poppins (And not by the more conventional means of the mythical sword Excalibur), I'd say it's as clever a way as any to depict the fall of Western Civilization. So what comes next?
7/25/2012
T-Shirt Design: Super Embarrassing
Go to: May Contain Content by Kerry Callen (via Michael May)
People need to vote for Superman and Wonder Woman at Threadless.com to make the T-shirts available.
7/24/2012
Cartoon Series: A cartoonist's worldview
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| By Nicholas Gurewitch |
Go to: The Guardian, by various artists (via Tom Spurgeon)
7/12/2012
7/11/2012
7/10/2012
Comic-Con Album Pt 12
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| Jeff Smith |
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| Charles Vess |
Back at the Cartoon Books, a PA message declaring the official close of Comic-Con causes someone to pull out a bottle of champagne. Toasts are made. And there is a visible sense of relief over reaching the end of another convention.
Pt 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
7/09/2012
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Vol. 2
At the center of this cosmic struggle is the thwarted romance between Usagi Tsukino and Mamoru Chiba. The story picks up right where it left of, with the two finally confronting each other about their respective secret identities. What initially looked to be a case of simple teenage infatuation turns out to be something that has already managed to survive death and endured for ages. The significance of this doesn't go unnoticed by the series villains, the Dark Kingdom. So they go about abducting Mamoru and turning him into one of their agents. This is seen as a major catastrophe by Usagi and the Senshi not just for the obvious personal reasons, but also for reasons having to do with the story's cosmology. For evil's influence is both pernicious and irreversible. The present warring parties are basically reincarnated versions locked into repeating an ancient pattern. And the lone attempt to defy fate comes from an evil henchman momentarily shaking off the influence of his masters, only to have the evil poured right back into him.
The volume is also notable for the introduction of Sailor Venus, the often mentioned Sailor V playable character of the video game. Unlike the genki girl found in her own series, Minako Aino joins the team as the serious-minded and battle-hardened veteran. There seems to be a bit of retconning taking place in order to make the original Sailor V concept mesh better with Sailor Moon. This involves some narrative sleight-of-hand over who is the actual lost princess of the Moon Kingdom and the location of the legendary crystal. Both issues are quickly and cleverly resolved, and the team is finally complete. This shifts the focus to directly confronting the attacks of an increasingly bold and reckless Dark Kingdom
In the end, Vol. 2 serves as quite a contrast from the more straightforward Vol. 1. The melodrama, supplied backstory, expansion of the conflict, more intense battles, and the introduction of a more fatalistic undertone, all add up to an emotionally draining story. If there's a weakness to the approach of putting a series of obstacles in order to block Usagi/Mamoru's relationship, it's that the plot mechanics have upstaged character development, especially that of the other Senshi. But the volume ends with a suitable enough cliffhanger, with Mamoru's fate in the balance.
7/07/2012
Comic-Con Album Pt 11
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| The late Cynthia Myers is calling it a convention |
While there will be people who are going to feel embarrassed by the glamour girl component of Comic-Con, it's hard to deny that both cheesecake and beefcake are very much a part of the con's trashy pop-culture mélange. Luckily, those with more purist notions about how comic conventions should be run aren't completely devoid of events that cater to them.
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| And so is Lou Ferrigno |
Pt 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
7/06/2012
7/05/2012
Comic-Con Album Pt 10
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| Jeff Smith sketching for a fan |
Unsurprisingly, I was a little star-struck on my first Comic-Con. This made me hesitant to approach some of the exhibiting artists. But as any experienced attendee will tell you, most industry professionals are used to interacting with their fans at these events. And Jeff Smith was one of the nicest people I would meet at Comic-Con. At the time, he was still flush from the success of his self-published comic book series Bone, and was then promoting his collaboration with fantasy illustrator Charles Vess, the miniseries Rose.
Pt 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
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