("This time" as opposed to last time we got our hopes up: http://randomramblings-absentmindedprofessor.blogspot.com/2012/02/aw-nuts.html)
Cheers, and Ad Astra!
Wednesday, September 26
Maybe this time?....
("This time" as opposed to last time we got our hopes up: http://randomramblings-absentmindedprofessor.blogspot.com/2012/02/aw-nuts.html)
Cheers, and Ad Astra!
Saturday, September 15
The DCnU 52: One Year Later!
Single
favorite title (so far): Action Comics (with
honorable mention given to newbies Worlds' Finest
and Earth 2 – in
fact sometimes I wonder if I'm really liking that little corner of
the DCnU better even than Action)
Most
gratifying to me personally: Aquaman.
Nuff said. My first favorite superhero.
Biggest
surprise: Batwing. I
didn't even consider buying it at the beginning, figuring it would be
the first to go. The name sounds a bit stupid and frankly the idea
of a “Batman for Africa” didn't sound appealing. I quickly heard
such good things about it on the Internet that I tried it out
digitally – a convenience for which I thank DC, but the fact is
they themselves benefited from it, at least in my case – and was
preordering the print copies by issue 4 or 5 – and have picked up
the print copies back to #1 to boot!
Most
relief I felt at how a title developed as opposed to my fears based
on the original solicits: Supergirl
– and while the solicits continue to present it as if she's the
angry super-brat that we first feared, that ain't the way Green and
Johnson are writing what we're actually getting. Usually I don't
like such a degree of dissonance between solicit and product, but in
this case, Thank God!
Another
major relief – that we didn't lose the recently “retrobooted”
“original” Legion of Super-Heroes
so soon after recovering them, and that Levitz is still at their
helm.
Biggest
disappointment: Justice League
– I think everyone
had huge, high hopes for this, but it's been a train-wreck on
virtually every level, albeit a good-looking train-wreck. Not really
gee-hawing with other titles featuring the same characters, not
making a whole lot of logical sense – as currently portrayed,
supposedly in the present now, there is no damn way those heroes have
been working together as a team for five years!
Biggest
disappointment – runner up: Their decision to renumber even
Detective Comics and
Action Comics. I've
read and understand their reasons. I do not agree with them.
Biggest
frustration: Increasing evidence they didn't have this thought
through very thoroughly – Teen Titans (how many such teams have there been?, or is this the first?), Robins (how many have there been? - in five years?!, was Tim Drake one of them?); Also, the radically
different presentations of characters from one book to the other,
especially the Justice
League characters between their own books and the team book. Now
that as of issue #7 JL
is ostensibly present-day, there's no excuse for the radically
different flavor to Wonder Woman between her own book and JL
– and even more so, Green Lantern,
which is written in both places by the same individual.
Is Geoff Johns himself schizophrenic? Does he
know how they connect?
I'm
currently reading my way through the titles DC published in August –
by and large the #12's – and in a one-off appearance of Kid Flash
Bart Allen in DC Universe Presents
#12 (which I'll be reviewing later as part of my monthly round-up),
on the first page, Bart's typically hilarious recap of events leading
up to those depicted here end with what I think is pretty much dead
on regarding DC's attitude toward “continuity”: “Continuity
doesn't really matter! Clarity is overrated!”
In the context of the story it comes off as something typically
“Bart.” Unfortunately, I get the feeling that's really DC
Editorial's position!
Character(s)
I miss most from before Flashpoint:
Stephanie Brown Batgirl,
Supergirl by Sterling
Gates and Jamal Igle, Conner Kent Superboy,
the “guardian of time” Booster Gold, the marriage of Superman and Lois, Oracle.
Favorite
New 52 character(s): Starling in Birds of Prey
– the girl next door as a badass fighter and secret agent. Don't
change a thing!
Favorite
New 52 version of an old character: Vandal Savage in Demon
Knights – Paul Cornell has
made me like a character I couldn't stand before
Worst
New 52 version of an old character: Billy Batson Shazam
… but there's a lot of competition. There are opposing views, among them Paul C.: "Why The Curse of Shazam is the right move for Captain Marvel"
Most consistently laughably stupid – and worst – title I get: Detective Comics – which has converted me from wondering why there were so many “Tony Daniel haters” to joining their ranks. Not really true. I don't hate him – but I now have no use for his writing, and frankly have become embittered toward what objectively is generally pretty good, if chaotic and lacking in story-sense, art. In fact, his name has become a disincentive for me to buy something, much as Azarello's work on Wonder Woman has. That latter is a funny case – I didn't initially plan to get it, decided to just because she's “the third person of the trinity” (dodging lightning now), and really liked the first issue. Or, on reflection, the ideas put forth in the first issue. But it dropped like a rock in my estimation after that. And I finally dropped it like a hot potato. In any case, Tony Daniel is leaving Detective fairly soon, but not soon enough, and hopefully things will pick up for DC's eponymous title.
Philosophical
aspect of the DCnU that I like the best: Superman was the first
public super-hero … “public” has to be included as a qualifier
because it's apparent that Batman must
have been active if only in secret before five years ago … but I
like at least some primacy being given to Superman
– Yes,
I know those two things are mutually exclusive, but they didn't have
to be. Return to the Multiverse with the Golden Age Super-heroes on
an older Earth would have been a better way to go, regardless of the
fact that I'm really digging James Robinson's Earth 2.
You could have eventually even brought in a third
“Middle Age” Earth based on the Silver-Bronze Age conceptions.
Imagine that!
Stupidest
constraint on the creators: The Five Year Timeline.
Stupidest
way to effect a Reboot: The way they did it, as a partial
Reboot, trying to have their cake and eat it too, keep a couple of
franchises virtually unchanged while so radically changing everything
else. Also, beginning in media res
as they did, making the creators beholden to a continuity that hasn't
been established yet. Even worse, as much as I like Action
Comics, which is set in the
past, to then make Superman
in the present beholden to stories that are being concurrently told
in the past, so that the creators here
have no real idea what might be published next month there
in Action
that will invalidate what they created this
month in Superman.
And this is made worse by Grant Morrison's notorious reticence what
he's up to, and editorial's hands-off attitude toward him – which
led to their being forced to continually tamper with the product of
one of the industry giants in George Perez on Superman
because of Morrison's whims. I like much of what Morrison does ... when I can get my mind around it! (I find him one of the most "rereadable" writers out there) ... and really like what he's done in Action. But it is a position that Perez never
should have been in, especially if he was not informed from the
beginning what the situation was. Rob Liefeld's experience seems to
corroborate the feeling that it's pure chaos there, but then
continued developments give me the impression the latter must be really hard
to get along with in any case.
Better
way to effect a Reboot: A clean slate. All in. Oh, but that would
alienate some existing readers who like what was being published
before? Duh – that happened.
Better-still
way to effect a Revival:
Good stories respectful of the past but not chained by specific
timeline. Be vague as to the passage of time. Don't pin yourself
down. That's how comics were written for decades, and it worked for
the most part. The artificial adherence to some kind of seamless
continuity is never going to work – especially when not everyone
agrees from one day to the next what the continuity actually is. See
the first part of my “Biggest frustration” above.
Most
consistent irritant: The design esthetic (or lack thereof), both in
the heroes' uniforms – way too busy and complicated – and in the
villains' – among whom it seems quasi-zombies in bad makeup
predominate, along with quasi-Lovecraftian horror-movie
Cthulhu-wannabe rejects. As far as heroes' uniforms, Superman's gets
special mention. In and of itself, it isn't bad although it could
(a) lose some of the extraneous lines, and (b) tone down the overly
complicated belt, which could also be helped with an accent of gold,
but try as I might a year into the New 52, I don't see this as
Superman. Make fun of it as much as we might, the red trunks are,
after seventy years, an intrinsic part of his image. It would be
easier for me, I think, to accept some modification to the S-shield
than it has been to accept ditching the speedos. Ditch every other
hero's briefs, but not Superman's. If they've gotta go, see the much
better design over in Smallville Season 11.
Most
disconcerting (? word choice? ) development: Removing some bits of
diversity in physical type for certain characters – the most
notable example of course being the “healing” of Barbara Gordon,
removing her as a shining example of a character heroically dealing
with and overcoming a disability every single day of her life, but
also the “fashion modelization” of former obese characters Amanda
Waller and Etta Candy. DC's trumpetted its new diversity in such
areas as Cyborg now being a founding member of the Justice League,
which I have no problem with, but also by reimagining certain other
established characters in “sexy,” trendy, politically-correct
ways as “race-bending” Morgan Edge from white to black (also Etta
Candy, so she's a twofer, I guess) and recreating Alan Scott, the
Green Lantern of Earth 2 (originally the Golden Age Green Lantern),
as homosexual. You want more minority characters, create more
minority characters, don't fundamentally change previously existing
characters. (Note: As far as race goes, I personally think you've
got a bit more latitude when it comes to casting a live action movie,
e.g. Laurence Fishbourne for Perry White in Man of Steel,
as Pete Ross in Smallville,
for supporting characters.
Main characters, it's a bit more iffy, since that is
a fundamental change to the very nature of the central character.
Like it or not, we are not and will not be for some generations, I
believe, a totally color-blind society. But when you change the race
of even a secondary character – or the sexual orientation of a main
character – the change itself makes that character into a statement
rather than a person.
Aren't we supposed to see people as individuals, without these
qualities becoming their definition? That is, a person should
described as white or
black (adjectives) rather than identified as
a white or a black (nouns) (ditto regarding sexual orientation). To
do otherwise is to implicitly dehumanize them.)
I
could add in here what I call the “Marvelization” of the DC
nUniverse – the idea that the super-heroes are feared and hated
rather than looked up to by society, the general darkening of the
stories and overall atmosphere – but that had really been happening
for some time before so I don't necessarily identify it just with the
DCnU.
Overall
assessment. Although I am reading and enjoying much of what I'm
seeing in the New 52, I miss many elements of the old DCU and
question whether such a radical reimagining as so many characters
received was really necessary. One thing goes without question.
Overall, from a financial standpoint, at this juncture it must be
judged a success, with ramifications that extend beyond DC Comics
itself. The overall comics industry got a much needed shot in the
arm, and the effects have endured. Perhaps the same effect could not
have been achieved without such a radical shift. That's a
hypothetical question that can never really be answered definitively
one way or another. But one thing goes without saying. For all my
ranting, I am a fan of DC Comics, and I likely always will be, to one
degree or another. I will be with them until the bitter end, which
now seems slightly less likely to occur within my lifetime than I
feared before. As long as I live and breathe – and have the
financial wherewithal, of course – I do not see myself ever giving
up comic books completely. I derive too much enjoyment from them,
even if I do not agree with certain directions they have taken
through the years and most recently in the DCnU Reboot. As with
everything, there is good to be found with the bad.
There
have been too many other such reflections and ruminations on the
success or not of the DC Relaunch of 2011 for me the list here. A
few noteworthy ones are, however:
The Comic Geek Speakers look back on the year in their podcase: "DC's New 52: One Year Later."
Newsarama's
series: “One Year of DC's New 52: The 10 Best Things” and “The 10 Worst Things” as well as “The New 52 One Year Later: Title-to-Title Winners and Losers” and
others, including their article on unresolved questions after one year.
Siskoid's
Blog of Geekery:
“The New 52 and DC's Communications Failure” including the comments
which are similarly excellent.
Paul
C, the Last of the
Famous International Fanboys
– always thought-provoking and worth reading even if I often
disagree with him – mounts a defense: “The New 52 Continuity: It Ain't So Bad!”
And
for laughs, something I've not seen any of the many other such
reflections on the past year do:
Title
that I'm most anxious to see introduced: DCnU:
The Lost Generation
– the adventures of Stephanie Brown, Donna Troy, Wally West, Garth
– suddenly appearing in this new world and wondering what the hell
happened. With the thematic substitution of Steph for the original
Teen Titan Dick Grayson Robin, you could even call it Titans
Lost. This could be the cover:
Think about it – their double-take on meeting the now red Beast
Boy; Starfire sexually mauling Wally as Donna stands there shocked
and speechless at the change in her old roommate. Those two scenes
could be worth the whole New 52! [I unfortunately did not note where
I first came across this image – I think it was shared by someone
on Facebook, but I can't be sure. Whoever it was, Thanks!]
*
* *
Just for
comparison's sake, here are side-by-side comparisons of what I was/am
buying from DC before and after Flashpoint ushered in the New 52 last August-September 2011:
January 2011
– a few months
before
|
January 2012
– a few months in
|
October 2012
– about a year in
|
|
Digital
|
Digital
Digital
Weeklies
|
So,
although I started out about at parity in number of titles I was
getting before and after the “Relaunch” (especially if you
discount the “First Wave” fiasco titles First Wave,
Doc Savage, and The
Spirit, which were tanking in
early 2011 and clearly weren't long for publication anyway), by about a year
in I have increased the number of titles I'm getting from DC
somewhat. Not by a huge amount – about 20% – but somewhat. And
they've managed to keep me with most
of the titles that I jumped on at the beginning. In that sense, even
with me the New 52 is a success.
Cheers!
– and Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, September 11
We Must Remember, and Take Heed
My own comments have not changed in substance.
* * *
The Long and Short of It
As a historian, one of the things I teach my students is how we periodize history. Division of history into various "ages" and "periods" is, of course, a product of the human mind's need to impose order on chaos, to organize information into easily comprehensible form. It is always retrospective, an attempt to understand the past, to establish periods that have some common theme that set them apart from what went before and what came afterward. Although my own specialty of study is the so-called "Middle Ages" or "Dark Ages," of necessity since I have at times had to teach much wider spans of time, basically from the beginning to the present day, I have given some thought to the matter of periodizing modern history. As of yet I have remained uncertain exactly what is the significance of 9/11 in that context.
Commonly, "Modern History" is considered (or at least I consider it) to be the period from 1789, the French Revolution, to the present. Before that, basically back to ca. 1650, is "the Early Modern Period." (You can use "history," "period," and "age" somewhat interchangeably in these terminologies; e.g. "the Middle Ages" vs. "Medieval History" vs. "the medieval period.") Of course, you can always subdivide periods. A common division of the Modern Age is to count 1789 to 1914 as "the Long 19th Century," because the French Revolutionary Period and the Napoleonic Wars that followed finally reached an equilibrium ca. 1815 that established a balance that would endure more or less until it shattered in the beginning of World War I. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 sparked a conflagration that through not one but two World Wars would quickly destroy that world of the 19th century with its great European Empires essentially dominating the globe and by 1945 leave the United States and Russia in the form of the Soviet Union as opposing forces for most of the next half century -- the "Cold War." But, of course, between 1989, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that new balance that waxed and waned in favor of one or the other side finally was itself ended. Usually, on the big "Periodization of History" sheet that I give my students even in the Early World Civ survey as a tool of orientation, I count 1914 to 1989 as "the (Short) 20th Century," followed by 1989 to ? as "the 21st Century." I first concocted that periodization in the 1990s at the beginning of my teaching career, informing my students for the first few years that they were already living in a very different world from that of their parents. What exactly would be the nature of that world, I said, remained to be seen. Since 11 September 2001, however, I have added a parenthetical note to that "21st Century": "The Significance of 9/11?"
Basically, the question would be, was 9/11 itself a demarcation point in history that is of such significance that it literally brought a changing of the ages, or was it "simply" the defining moment in a new age that was already in progress? My money would be on the latter. I think it was at that moment that the nature of the new post-Cold War world became clear. Islamic terrorism was already rising in the 1990s in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union as well as the first US action in Iraq, the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991, in a somewhat under-recognized crescendo that would culminate in the attacks of 9/11. It was, in my opinion, only then that some recognized that the United States was already in a war that had been raging for a decade or more. Many, however, to this day refuse to recognize that fact.
I have some profound differences in political ideology from President George W. Bush, but one thing I give him credit for is that, however imperfectly he might have framed and prosecuted the subsequent "War on Terror," President Bush more than just about any other leader of the day -- indeed almost alone among them -- recognized that reality and took action whatever the consequences to his own political fortunes. Because the reality is that there are people out there who want to kill us. Whether we want to admit it or not. And furthermore, whether we would prefer to frame it in such terms or not, from their perspective the conflict is at least framed as a religious war. I personally believe they are largely sincere in that conviction. Sure there are cynics among their ranks willing to use believers' faith as a tool for their own ambitions, but there are a lot of those believers who become willing tools. That fact gives our enemy a clarity of purpose that is unfortunately lacking in our own resistance. A few years ago, in an article that appeared in our local newspaper (The Natchitoches Times, 28 January 2005) about the recent publication of a couple of my scholarly publications (to be found here and here if you're interested in a peek at my professional life), I said this:
"Both of the just-published articles focus on the 10th century, the period in which notions of Christian service and sacrifice crystalized in a desperate defense of Christian Anglo-Saxon civilization against pagan Viking invaders. Similar ideas, a century and more later, would motivate the first crusaders in their efforts to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims.
"Faith has always been a powerful motivating force. Throughout history, religion has always provided one of the essential foundations for societies and states, and conflict against other societies and states has often been framed in religious terms when religion was not the outright cause for such conflict. In the modern context, we need look only at the clarity of purpose displayed by Islamic terrorists who conceive theirs as a conflict against a western society that they identify as Christian.
"To draw a parallel, the 10th-century Anglo-Saxons knew against whom they were fighting, and why; Osama bin Laden knows against whom he is fighting, and why; in the war against terror, do we know against whom we are fighting, and why?"
To this day, I'm still not sure if as a nation we really know. And if we don't figure it out, this may be the last days of Western Civilization regardless of whether they began in 1989 or 2001. For my part, I believe that our hope, perhaps our only hope, is in recognizing, embracing, and defending our civilization's traditional self-identification as a Christian civilization.
11 September 2011
Thanks for reading. We must remember, and take heed.
Sunday, September 9
Wayne of Gotham (2012)
This is a very difficult prose novel to write
about. I don't know if ultimately I will decide I liked it or
loathed it. I have very mixed feelings about it. I had been looking
forward to it ever since I'd seen it announced, and rather than avail
myself of the cheaper SFBC edition as I usually do these kinds of
things, or even wait until a cheaper paperback edition appeared, I
ended up paying virtually full cover price – a whopping $26.99 (I
find hardcover prose book prices even harder to swallow, oddly
enough, than graphic novel prices in which you objectively get far
less story. But I also recognize that there are significantly
different economic realities underlying the two genres) less a
membership discount at Books-a-Million. But then I found it a very
hard book to get through. In fact, I put it aside a couple of times
for rather lengthy periods and ended up being almost six weeks from
start to finish. And then have let it sit for some time before
deciding I have to write something and get it off my back. So here
it is – most likely even more than typically rambling.
The overall plot is a parallel story of
Bruce Wayne in the present discovering horrible things about his own,
his parents', and Gotham City's past with Thomas Wayne in the past
participating in a rather dubious secret program of medical
experimentation, “Project Elysium,” with the aim of reforming
criminals into model citizens via behavioral engineering by means of
viral-borne DNA modification that goes grotesquely wrong and
ultimately results in his own and his wife's deaths and the creation
of the Batman. Of course, those long-buried events are now having
repercussions in the present leading Batman to confront the reality
of a father who was far less than the paragon he always believed him
to be. And along the way Martha Wayne doesn't come off much better.
I'm conflicted in how to feel about this. To a real degree it
cheapens the ideal for which Batman has always fought, but the
reality is that he only saw his parents through the eyes of a child
who witnessed the center of his life ripped away from him in a moment
of violence and to believe that his memories of perfection were but
an idealization is reasonable. But for almost three hundred pages
this book rubs the reader's nose in it, from a very off-putting
opening with a repulsive depiction of the abuse that young Thomas
suffered at the hands of his own father to the revelation that in a
real sense Thomas Wayne contracted his own murder!
And it's carried off very inconsistently.
On the “cool” side, Hickman very effectively depicts Batman's
technology, his ever-evolving equipment and constant upgrades, and at
first glance seems to use a lot of canon in this tale of an aging
Batman who is now feeling the effects of a lifetime of
crime-fighting. At first glance it seems very much a post-Crisis,
pre-Flashpoint continuity, perhaps set in the future. The
“present” is not specified, although 9/11 is more than a decade
in the past (p. 31). Seemingly hard dates are established for the
past sequences, but there is considerable inconsistency – Thomas
Wayne is said to have been born on 26 November 1935 (p. 293), but in
the second paragraph of the prologue, set on 21 September 1953,
reference is made to “his fifteen years of life” (p. 1); the
murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne are dated at 15 August 1971 (pp.
292-293) and 26 June 1974 (pp. 43-44). (Along the same lines of
sloppy editing, I noticed several instances of bad word usage,
although I only jotted a reference to one – p. 214, “site” for
“sight.”) Regardless, Bruce's own birth is placed in 1963, which
would necessarily put him in the range of fiftyish years of age at
the unspecified “present” date.
There is considerable use of the rich
Batman mythology with regard to the Rogues Gallery – a wide
range of villains appear or are referred to in the course of this
story – but there is nary a mention of any of Batman's many allies
and proteges, under either their “civilian” or heroic identities.
The closest is Bruce's spur-of-the-moment use of the name “Gerald
Grayson” when he needs a quick alias. He is truly alone
here. The geography of Gotham City is, as far as I can tell, pretty
consistent with the map established around the time of No Man's
Land – although I don't think that cataclysmic story was ever
referenced – with frequent mention of the various streets,
avenues, parks, and so forth named after the many creators of the
Batman mythos over the past seventy years such as has been
common, I think, in the past decade's comic stories (e.g., Moldoff
Avenue, Robinson Park, Wayne Manor is in Burnley just across the
river to the north of the island on which is built Gotham City, and
so forth). So what you have here is a mixture of what seems very
familiar but distorted so that it's almost unrecognizable as if seen
through in a funhouse mirror, especially the relationship between
Bruce and Alfred as a result of the latter's vigorous efforts to
maintain a cover-up that was begun by his father to keep knowledge of
Thomas Wayne's actions secret from the world and most importantly
from his son. And we are asked to believe that it was so effective
that Batman knew nothing of a period of intense chaos in Gotham City
that resulted from those same actions – a reign of terror on the
underworld carried out by a group of mutant super-humans called “The
Apocalypse” – the misbegotten progeny of Project Elysium.
Sitting down and trying to write
something about this book has not helped me to come to my own
consensus, either, and I'm ready to give up on it. The
reviewers on Amazon.com seem to be as a whole conflicted as well.
Probably the best review I've found of it is by one Eric
Garneau at The Mind Hut and I might as well refer
you there and be done with it. It's not a book I can recommend.
Thanks for reading.
Saturday, September 8
Dynamite Comics – Oct 2012
“The
Fire of Creation, Part Four”
[ previous issue ]
Aboard
a junk in Shanghai harbor – or possibly somewhere else on the
Yangtze River (I think) – , the Japanese criminal Kondo tells the
Chinese crime warlord Wong and a Chinese general the story of one
Kent Allard, basically the story of the origin of the Shadow without
intimate knowledge of the details of what happened to transform a
wastrel into a supernatural arch enemy of crime. Meanwhile, Lamont
Cranston and Margo Lane are accompanying a military expedition
searching for Kondo and Wong – and following the Shadow's wake of
destruction. Margo as well as a implicitly “invert” (Cranston's
term) British diplomat get a graphic introduction to the realities of
the atrocities the Japanese are inflicting on the Chinese, leading
Cranston to soliloquize to Margo on the evil that is growing in East
and West. Their boat catches up with their prey only to see it blown
up by a mine. I'm enjoying the pieces and parts of this story
without being able to really see the overall picture yet.
“7:
The New Guy / The Concrete Jungle 1 of 2” [
previous issue ]
This
is the first half of an apocryphal story occurring between Tarzan
of the Apes
and The
Return of Tarzan,
set in Baltimore where Tarzan is working manual labor to earn his way
back to Africa. He has by now become a minor media celebrity.
Inevitably he comes into conflict with the crime boss whom he's
already humiliated, Canler – and again humiliates him in front of
his men. Canler knows how he can strike back at Tarzan, though –
through Jane Porter. Not
a good idea, as I'm sure we'll find out along with him next time!
Canler is also involved in some plot with an unnamed Russian who's
obviously the villainous Rokoff of the next two novels. Tarzan's
unacknowledged – to say the least – cousin Cecil continues to
show himself an ass. Esmeralda continues to show herself more
perceptive than the white aristocratic Porters and Greystokes put
together. And Jane is obviously having second thoughts about the
choice she made. A good filler tale.
“Worms
of Mars, Part 2 of 2”
[ previous issue ]
This
completes the apocryphal bridging story between Gods
of Mars
and Warlord
of Mars
(ERB's novel). John Carter, Carthoris, and company, with the help of
the deceased “goddess” Issus' granddaughter Linea find and
destroy the anti-Atmosphere Plant, but Linea is fatally injured in a
fight with its guardian “worms of Mars” – really sea-serpents
called silians.
In the end, she professes regret for her haughty treatment of
Carthoris, who had so obviously fallen for her … despite her color.
That's an interesting, perhaps metatextual twist – John Carter,
the one-time Confederate officer, now married to an oviparous
non-human (strictly speaking), sees great advantage in a prospective
dynastic union of the royal houses of Helium and the Black Pirate
First Born of Barsoom in reply to a rather glum (having just again
been figuratively kicked in the balls by Linea) Carthoris' comment,
“But she's … you know, she's … / black...”.
Anyway, as she dies, Linea does also order the First Born, as the
last command of the last descendant of Issus, to make peace with the
red men. From John Carter's journal: “All First Born resistance
ceased shortly after the deactivation of the Doomsday Factory. / My
son never spoke of Linea again, but I do not think it was because he
wished to forget her –no. / It was because remembering was too
painful.”
 |
| 50% alternate cover (Somebody's getting poked!) |
[“The
Boora Witch, Part 4”]
[ previous issue ]
In
Helium, the possessed Dejah Thoris seems to triumph over her father
and grandfather, but at the moment she is about to execute them,
Kantos Kan returns. He had discovered the truth in the Toonolian
Marshes, bringing back the Boora Witch's body. “Dejah Thoris”
tries to bluff him, but he calls her on it – and beheads the body.
This destroys the witch and restores Dejah Thoris' soul to her own
body. The Boora Witch was originally an Orovar woman who obtained
forbidden knowledge to prolong her own life through possession of a
series of bodies. In the end, although nominally forgiven, Dejah
Thoris exiles herself from Helium. I'm not sure if the next issue
will be considered a continuation of this arc or the beginning of a
new arc – or a bridging story before a new arc takes up. In any
case, this has been the end of a very disappointing, very un-ERB-like
tale, and hopefully we can look forward to something better. ERB did
not write Swords and Sorcery
tales – at least in his Mars
series.
[“Gullivar
Jones and John Carter of Mars, Part 2”]
[ previous issue ]
Our
heroes make their way to the Thither People city in the southern
wastes of Barsoom, intent on rescuing the abducted Dejah Thoris. But
meanwhile Zar-Hap casts the princess of Helium into a pit to coerce
her into revealing the secret of Gullivar Jones' carpet. There Dejah
Thoris longs to see her deceased mother – and the carpet brings
Heru to her. When John Carter and Gullivar Jones attack, they are
all united and escape with Dejah Thoris commanding the carpet, which
now responds only to her. Gullivar Jones and Heru are reunited, but
she cannot stay. With his lost Barsoomian love fading back into the
dead, Gullivar Jones determines to see the future of Mars. Dejah
Thoris commands the carpet to respond to him … and he reappears one
thousand years later [caption] – on an ocean.
Besides the fact that this is all utterly uncanonical, it's not a
bad story this go'round. I've not been terribly impressed with the
past couple of issues, but this one was fine. One random comment:
John Carter on p. 3 looks so much like Russ Manning's image of Tarzan
that I did a double-take.
 |
| Russ Manning's Tarzan vs. Jack Jadson's John Carter |
Cheers!
– and Thanks for reading!
Friday, September 7
Quick Hits
Very
quick notes on some stuff I've read or watched of late that I've not
blogged about for whatever reason....
Father
Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul,
by Tony Hendra (2004)
Green
Hornet: Year 1, Volume 2 – The Biggest of All Game
by Matt Wagner and Aaron Campbell (Dynamite 2011)
Batman:
Earth One by Geoff Johns
and Gary Frank (DC 2012)
Alphas
(2011 ff.)
Mad
Men (2007 ff.)
The
Tudors (2007-2010)
The
Books of Magic, by Neil
Gaiman and Company (DC-Vertigo 1990)
Caprica
(2009-2011)
I read this about a month ago at the
suggestion of one of the members of our Monday night Bible Study
group. I should have written something up before now, and I really
didn't take good notes, so here you've got mainly just some long term
memories and impressions. The author is a former writer and editor
of National Lampoon – and probably more recognizable as the
band manager in Spinal Tap – an unlikely spiritual writer if
there ever was one! – telling the story of how he initially found
faith through the inspiration of a particularly holy if somewhat
unorthodox Benedictine monk of Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, was
for several years heady with the conviction that his own vocation was
to be a monk of Quarr, suddenly found his faith as mysteriously
vanished as it had appeared, devoted himself to another god, that of
Comedic Satire, for a couple of decades during which he continually
felt a draw back to Quarr and always needed the approval of Father
Joe with whom he maintained contact and who never, ever, judged him,
and eventually found his way back to a more mature faith. It is a
fascinating story, although frankly I do not believe I would like Hendra at all – and find aspects of Father Joe's theology a
bit dodgy. (Bear in mind, however, that here we do not get a direct picture of Father Joe, but rather Father Joe filtered through the lens of Tony Hendra.) And yet the book as a whole is quite touching, especially
the ending, when after Father Joe's passing Hendra discovers that
there was far more to this simple monk than he ever dreamed.
There is one line I noted from the book and want to pass on. "You only parody what you once loved, and now loathe" (unknown page number as I long since returned the book to my friend). I think there is a tremendous amount of truth to that statement, and I think it helps me understand why I have quite seldom ever cared for parody or satire.
There is one line I noted from the book and want to pass on. "You only parody what you once loved, and now loathe" (unknown page number as I long since returned the book to my friend). I think there is a tremendous amount of truth to that statement, and I think it helps me understand why I have quite seldom ever cared for parody or satire.
I read the first volume about a year and
a half ago, not long before I started this blog. I should have gone
back and reread that one before picking this one up, but managed to
pick up the story pretty well starting at the mid-point of the
twelve-issue series as I did. I could quibble over a few details
where I know the status quo
here doesn't match that of the radio show – not that I've heard
that many episodes, but one that I have listened to is one where
Britt tells his father what he's been up to, only to have his father
tell him of another such masked man in their ancestry. With the
William Tell Overture
fading in and out as he did so, although some kind of legal reasons
kept the radio show from invoking the name of that masked man, you know who it is.
Unfortunately, the website where that episode was available in mp3 is
gone now – probably, again, for legal reasons. Anyway, in this
comic series, the death of the elder Reid is part of the story and
occurs before Britt assumes the identity of the Green Hornet.
Overall, however, writer Matt Wagner evokes very well the pulp-noir
world of the 1930s, complemented very effectively by the art of Aaron
Campbell.
I surprised myself by enjoying Superman:
Earth One immensely when,
after a considerable amount of time post-publication I succumbed to a
Science Fiction Book Club offer and picked it up cheap. “Surprised”
because – as highly as I regard Babylon
5 – I've not been much of a
fan of J. M. Straczynski's comic book writing. You can see more of
my thoughts on that here.
Anyway, I went ahead and preordered Batman:
Earth One and received it
along with my July month-end comics. I figured, as it was by Johns
and Frank, it would have to be good. Boy was I mistaken. If you've
not bought it, don't bother. The characterization of Batman here is
unrecognizable. And the story continues certain trends in Geoff
Johns' writing – and the new DC Comics in general – that are
becoming more and more annoying to me. One being that he seems to no
longer be able to write adolescents that are not annoying snots that
you want to punch in the mouth. That's Johns. You can't even
explain it as young Bruce's understandably angry reaction to the
murder of his parents, because it's the kid's own rude arrogance that
helps to bring about their deaths. I also noticed the continuation of
the trend that established characters with significant “flaws” or
departures from our cultural ideal of attractiveness are being
reinvented as more cardboard punchout images of “perfection.”
Here it's the famously slovenly Harvey Bullock recast as one suave
dude who I figured, at initial glance, must be the equally famously
handsome Harvey “Apollo” Dent before getting half a face-full of
acid. Alfred also, to a degree. I have some more to say about this
in my “New 52 One Year Later” retrospective that is in the
works, so I'm going to leave it at that for now. Think about it,
though, and you'll come up with plenty of examples before I even
mention them. Anyway, the story's pretty sucky too, with a
stereotypical sadistic monster who preys on children for the story's
shock value. Don't waste your time or money.
Who
says advertising doesn't work? I'd heard of this show but not much
more, until last month's stack of DC comics with its full-page advert
brought it to mind again. I did a little research, found out that
the first season of eleven episodes (twelve TV-hours) is available
for streaming on Netflix, and checked it out. Why
have I not heard more about this show?
It's great! Nothing quite matches the first season of Heroes,
which the basic premise is most like, but this is easily light-years
better than the second and subsequent seasons of that show. And
Rachel … whoa.
We were only a couple of episodes into the second season currently
appearing on the used-to-be-Sci-Fi-Channel (I refuse to use that new
name), so with a minimal cost to purchase those episodes from iTunes,
I'm pretty much up to speed.
One
interesting little fact that I've learned – Alphas
occurs in the same universe as the same channel's recently wrapped up
Eureka!
(which a friend has been encouraging me to watch) and Warehouse
13.
I caught the first couple of episodes of the latter on Netflix
streaming and surprisingly liked it – I say surprising because the
commercials had never piqued my interest. But when I found out there
have been character cross-overs I thought, what the heck, it doesn't
cost anything to check it out. And I will get around to Eureka!
– eventually.
Actually,
I watched the first season of this before I fell into Alphas.
I can't blame anything except my own ennui for not picking it up
before. There's a lot of well-deserved buzz about it. Several of my
fellow professors are devoted viewers. Netflix, you're wonderful.
I'm just old enough that the world portrayed is very much the world
of my childhood … well, not the big city rat race, of course, but
the early 1960s. When I run out of Alphas
I'll be jumping back into it – with classes going again, I don't
have nearly as much time to work my way through TV series, so it may
be Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. Unless something else strikes
my fancy (cough – Warehouse
13
– cough).
Can
you tell it was summer break? I had actually started this over
Christmas break, I think, watching BBC America reruns that I'd DVR'd.
I think I actually finished it out via Netflix as well, before I
took up Mad Men.
Really good, in most respects. I know just enough of that period in
English history (I'm more a medievalist than a Ren-Ref/Tudor guy)
that I could catch them in historical faux
pas, but not quite
enough that they messed it up for me. I could doubtless have written
more, but it's been a couple of months since I actually finished it
up, so let's just leave it as something I would recommend. I particularly liked a very believable depiction of a sweet young girl warped by the repeated emotional traumas she was subjected to through the years into what history would know as Queen "Bloody" Mary Tudor. And Sir
Thomas Boleyn is probably the single slimiest, most evil character I've ever
seen – anywhere.
No,
that's not Harry Potter.
I've
had this volume for several years but never got around to reading it.
Since Tim Hunter and the Books of Magic are showing up in Justice
League Dark
these days, I figured it might be a good time to try to get up to
speed. Gaiman, of course, is most famous in comic circles as the
author of the long-running title, Sandman
– which I've actually only read in the first two trade volumes.
Something else I keep meaning to get around to. Actually, I'm
investing in the current deluxe hardcover volumes of The
Annotated Sandman
and may well tackle it that way. There are a lot of arcane
references that annotated versions can help the reader appreciate.
In fact, I found it helpful to dig up a set of annotations to get the most out of this volume here.
Briefly,
The Books of Magic
was originally published as four “Prestige Format” issues wherein
one after another four representatives of DC Comics' supernatural
genre took a young English boy – whose mother is dead, who wears
glasses, and has a pet owl (although it predates Harry
Potter,
Gaiman himself professes no belief that J. K. Rowling was even aware
of his character when she came up with her own) – on a tour of the
supernatural side of the DC Universe. They are, in order, the
Phantom Stranger, John Constantine, Doctor Occult, and Mister E, and
Timothy is faced with a choice, to live a normal life or to live a
life in constant danger – but as the most powerful magician in the
universe. Although Gaiman did not continue with the character, the
foundation he had lain was firm enough that it resulted in a fairly
long-running and highly regarded series following Timothy's further
adventures – because you know
what he chose. I'm anxious now to acquire the bound volumes of the
Books of Magic
ongoing series.
I
almost forgot about this prequel/spinoff from the re-imagined
Battlestar
Galactica
that I watched early in the summer. I actually intended from when I
finished it to give it an in-depth post, but it looks like that will
never happen so this will have to do. It is a show that makes you
think. I think it says some interesting things about our own
society, and even more so the culture of the Hollywood creators
behind it. It's too simple, I think, to say that the overall spirit
of the show is “anti-religion” or results from the typical
liberal/atheistic predisposition to disdain religion. It's more a
result of the clueless modern liberal/atheists' total misconception
of religion. I think the most telling line in the series comes about
half-way through, in episode 11, delivered by their archetypical evil
religious person, Sister Clarice: “I offer you a religion that
removes the need for faith.” Isn't this our modern world's idea of
a true, pure religion … that would ultimately mean nothing?
As
a prequel to Battlestar
Galactica,
unfortunately I think this series fails. I just don't see how you
can get from here to there. There are too many discrepancies. And
falling back on the shock value of killing off the kid, Willie Adama,
whom we'd sort of been getting to know over the course of the series
and assuming would grow up to be Admiral Adama (although I'd already
suspected there was something wrong with their time-line), in the
last episode and giving lip service to a younger brother being
subsequently born and named in his memory is just lazy and
manipulative. Didn't they do the same thing with Jimmy Olsen on
Smallville?
And
I think that actually catches me up, more or less, at least with
regard to those things I consider “blog-worthy”....
Cheers,
and Thanks for reading!
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