Comic Reviews 18/2

A bit of a comic flavour this week. Some short reviews of what came home from the comic store with me. (BTW, The Comic Shoppe in Nepean, Ottawa – Highly recommended)

Batman – Streets of Gotham 9

Well, Paul Dini’s run on Detective a few years back was fantastic IMO. This book? Not so much. The current fill-in writer has turned in a two issue by-the-numbers story, with little to recommend it. 9 issues and any long-term plots get a cursory glance every few issues with no real progression. Disappointing but functional.

Deadpool 19

I like Deadpool. He was the most interesting addition to the X-family of characters in the 90’s, and has shaken off the black-mark of being a Liefeld creation quite successfully. Marvel have seen fit to milk him as a cash-cow in the same way they treated the Punisher and Wolverine. An overload of books (3 Ongoings at last count IIRC) and a slew of variants covers on almost every single superhero title over the past few months. This issue sees DP travelling to NY, looking for lessons on becoming a hero and leaving his homicidal methods behind him. And who else would you turn to but Spider-Man?

Character crossovers demand an initial misunderstanding followed by a tussle and then a grudging cooperation. This issue is fine up until they decide to introduce “Marvel’s Breakout character of 2010!” Hit-Monkey. Yes, a chimp, in a suit, wearing sunglasses, who kills hunters and assassins as vengeance for poachers killing his troop of monkeys.

No I’m not making that up. Words fail me…

Astounding Wolf-Man 21

The final story starts here, in Kirkman’s Invinci-verse title that never really got going. A shame really as the premise was pretty novel, just very slow to advance the plot and I believe it was shedding readers like a timber wolf sheds its’ winter coat (See what I did there?) so the series rushes headlong towards issue 25 and the fate of the Wolf-Man… Not quite sure where it’s going at this point, as there have been a number of big status quo changes at random, sudden moments in the series and I worry that the shortened series led to everything being thrown at the pages in an attempt to get all of Kirkman’s ideas for the book out there before cancellation. Mostly set-up, but promising signs of a big finale.

Green Lantern Corps 45

Mogo continues to be the GL writers’ favourite Deus Ex Machina. After his gravity well shenanigans of last issue, this time out he performs a full blood cleanse on the raging Red Lantern-possessed Guy Gardner. For a sentient planet, he certainly proves a lot more useful than you’d expect.

Green Lantern 51

Is it just me or is the fact that the death & zombie-centric Blackest Night crossover seemingly never ends, highly ironic? Is it meta-textual? Or is it a moneyspinner they’re keeping going for as long as possible? I know my thoughts on that one…

Where was I? Oh yeah, the primary members of each Lantern corps are here to fight the Black Lantern Spectre, embodiment of God’s Vengeance. Cheerful chap.

Green Lantern willingly allows himself to be possessed by the fear entity Parrallax in order to match the Spectre 1 on 1. It works. Spectre gets his mojo back, attempts to fry the uber-villain behind all of the crossover (No, not Didio, or Johns) Nekron. Only he can’t as Nekron has no soul. A bit like Michael Howard.

Nice art form Mahnke who’s taken the GL book as his own and put a great spin on what his predecessors set-up for him.

At this point, I’m not really caring why or how they win, I just want to know which of the Black Lantern zombie heroes get resurrected. J’onn J’onnzz and Ted kord please. oh and kill Barry Allen again while you’re at it…

Thought for the week: When life gives you lemons, fuck it, they’re free lemons right? Least you won’t get scurvy.

It’s kind of like Fern Gully, with prettier pictures…

Well, I finally caught up with the rest of the English speaking world and watched James Cameron’s Avatar this week.

While a lot of people have criticised the movie for being predictable and riddled with clichéd corny dialogue, I think they’re missing the point.

It’s a Jim Cameron movie. Terminators 1 and 2 were hardly the height of cutting edge dialogue. Aliens, while arguably one of the most awesome sci-fi movies of all time, was never going to win Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards. Let’s not even get started on Titanic…

Actually, thinking about it, Titanic might be the best place to start. Both Avatar and Titanic were self-confessed labours of love for the director. Both were in production one way or another for years and both required new technology to be developed to bring the director’s vision to life. Both are visually stunning and genuinely sumptuous to watch.

Unfortunately, both suffer from being too damn long. It took Hollywood a long time to get over their self-imposed 90-110 minutes limit and now it’s starting to feel like every director is taking the opportunity to make their next film into a mammoth opus. Cameron is very guilty of this with Avatar. it’s just shy of 3 hours long and boy does it feel like it. a good edit could cut that down to about 2 hours and make a much faster paced movie without compromising the overall plot.

I felt Cameron hadn’t padded the film, but he had taken such relish in creating this new world and all of it’s flora and fauna, that he wanted to show it all off as much as possible. He clearly put a massive amount of creativity and effort into this film and I get the impression that he wanted everyone watching it fall in love with the planet Pandora the same way he had.

Sorry, I’m rambling… Avatar is a very well-made movie and a great spectacle, but could do with losing about an hour of it’s running time and backing off the heavy-handed environmental message.

Sam Worthington is functional as the lead character, but seriously could they not have told him to pick one accent and stick with it? He swung between Aussie and American all through the film.

One last thing that stuck with me after the movie ended; lots of War on Terror symbolism. The human assault on the Na’vi Hometree had definite 9/11 imagery undertones as the tree fell, ditto with a lot of the dialogue. “Shock and Awe”, “Fight Terror with Terror”, “Winning the Hearts and Minds of the indigenous people” all sounded rather too much like Fox News circa 2002.

Whedon Wonderings

So, this week saw the cancellation of Dollhouse, Joss Whedon's 3rd attempt to replicate the success of his Buffy The Vamprie Slayer tv show.

At this point, with two failures (Dollhouse & Firefly) and one partial success (Angel arguably only lasted as long as it did by riding Buffy's coat-tails) has Mr Whedon's mojo gone?

Personally, I think Firefly is the best thing he's ever worked on, so I can sympathise with those that enjoyed Dollhouse.

For those who cry foul and complain that Joss' efforts are mishandled by networks or ignored by viewers, I can say only this: yes networks showing episodes out of sequential order is horrificly stupid (Exhibit A - Firefly) but if people aren't watching the show, it's not THEIR fault when it gets canned. They'll watch a show that interests them or catches their imagination.

It's awful to say it, but you can blame the creators; for trying something new and not pandering to the lowest common denominator.

One of Whedon's failings as a creator (Apart from an unhealthy obsession with teenage lesbianism) seem to be that he is trying too hard to put something different in front of viewers.

Kudos for trying, and commiserations for your cancellation.

Although he's probably used to it by now...

Welcome back

Some of you may have followed my previous blog, but problems with it have cause me to leave and migrate here.

I hope to be a little more productive here and post more often, if in smaller soundbites.

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