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July 28, 2003okay, you all remember when i posted about how ridiculous some of the JSA storylines got. well, they've outdone themselves with the family histories alone. here are the condensed histories of the JSA members: Black Canary- daughter of the Golden Age Black Canary, this one comes equipped with a sonic scream and fishnet stockings. Starman- son of the Golden Age Starman, Jack Knight turned the Gravity Rod into a staff, and then gave it to the new Star-Spangled Kid when he quit super-heroing. Jakeem Thunder and Johnny Thunderbolt- Jakeem's just some kid who accidentally got Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt. then, when Johnny Thunder was about to die, the Thunderbolt fused bodies with him, so now Johnny's running around as the new Thunderbolt. Sand- Originally Sandy, he ran around with the Golden Age Sandman. He got turned into a silicon-based life-form in some freak accident and now he's got some real powers. Captain Marvel- the same Big Red Cheese who has to say SHAZAM! to unlock his Superman-like powers. Powergirl- maybe a Kryptonian, maybe an Atlantean, maybe a feminist. no one knows for sure. The Crimson Avenger- accidentally bought the Golden Age Crimson Avenger's Colt .45s and has to avenge the wrongfully murdered by murdering someone else. Star-Spangled Kid aka Stars- Her stepdad is the original Stripe, but she got her powers from somewhere else. she also got Starman's Gravity Staff. Mr. Terrific- new guy with an old name. he's the JSA's Batman, except lots friendlier. Black Adam- alive since ancient times, Teth-Adam (who knew Prince Khufu, Chay-Ara, and the mystic Nabu) was given his powers by the same wizard that gave Captain Marvel his. originally a hero, his ancestor Theo Adam used the chanelled powers for evil. Teth-Adam reasserted himself and fought for good again, albeit a bit more forcefully than anyone else would like. Atom Smasher- nephew of the original Atom, and originally called Nuklon. he ran around with a stopid mohawk. Sentinel- the Golden Age Green Lantern has been imbued with the power of the Starheart (the thing that gives him his powers). he is now living green flame. Wildcat- the one and only, the original Ted Grant. Flash- the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick, still runs around a lot. Dr. Mid-Nite- new guy with old name, this Mid-Nite is actually a doctor. and he sees only in infra-red or ultraviolet waves. Hourman- son of the Golden Age Hourman, Rick Tyler takes the miraclo pill for enhaced strength like his father used to; however, Rick was also given a limited prescience by the android Hourman. sometimes, he can see exactly one hour into the future. Hawkman- where to fucking start... he was Prince Khufu in ancient Egypt who got access to Thanagarian technology (and memories) from a downed spaceship. Khufu was reincarnated lots of times, finally into Carter Hall, who ran across a Thanagarian ambassador, Katar Hol. they did the memory thing again when they were dead. then, Carter Hall got ressurected by Thanagarian mystics. Hawkgirl- take above, substitute Khufu for Chay-Ara and Carter Hall for Sheira Sanders, and you've got the gist. however, when Sheira died, she was reincarnated in the body of Kendra Saunders, Speed Saunders' niece. Dr. Fate- Hector Hall was born of Carter Hall and Shiera Sanders. he was a forgettable super-hero for awhile. elewhere, Kent and Inza Nelson shared the responsibility of being this age's Dr. Fate, a being of mystical power created by the ancient mystic Nabu. when the Nelson's died, others took over culminating in Jared Stephens, some vigilante punk who got skewered in the back with his own blade. Stephens and Hector Hall died at about the same time. Hector's soul rushed into the new body of his own child. then the Fate powers did the same and grew Hector back into adulthood immediately. he became the new Dr. Fate, complete with a whispering Nabu in his head. however, it has been recently discovered that the body Hector's soul inhabits is not his own child's, but the child of Hawk (later known as Monarch and Extant) and Dove, agents of chaos and order, respectively. i thought Hawkman's past was confusing. so there you go. most of this i had to piece together as i went along, and i'm almost positive that there's more to every last one of them. now reading: The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions)- T. S. Eliot, Michael North thecomicman spoke @
06:32 PM
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the Green Goblin head-butted me today was the most suck-tastic day at work ever. i had to count books, but i had started on Friday. then, a laptop decided to corrupt my disk and waste three hours of work. then, all the laptops decided to conspire against me by not having batteries and forcing me to go find an extension cord in the bowels of the store. somehow, i managed to almost finish. sometime in all of this, some schmuck decided to buy his dad three different statues (once asking me what i thought his dad would want... do i know this kid? no, no i do not) including the life-size replica of Spider-Man's head. so i went to the back to get said head and inadvertanly dropped the life-sized Green Goblin head replica on my own head. i was dazed for a few minutes. sometimes, i think the store hates me. now reading: Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Editions)- Joseph Conrad, Paul B. Armstrong thecomicman spoke @
01:58 AM
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July 26, 2003
what i do when no one else is around... besides dancing naked so, like i said before, last night i watched 'Full Metal Jacket.' then i watched about half of 'Apocalypse Now' Redux. then, feeling i'd had enough of the Vietnam War, i turned off the movie and got ready for bed. of course, 'Platoon' was on the tube, so i watched a little of it. then i went to bed. today, i went to a con and got some JSA back issues (a post on how confusing this book is will be up soon). then i went to go see 'Bad Boys II.' fun, but ultimately pointless. it went from crazy cop movie to specops-in-Cuba movie. that was kinda weird, but the rest of it was straight-up shoot 'em action. one super funny scene involved the two main characters interrogating Martin Lawrence's daughter's date. in between all of that (and the nekkid-dancing), i read a lot of British literature. i was a little behind in class reading, so i've sorta been trying to catch up. tonight, i shall read (at least half of) Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' and then finish up Redux. maybe i'll watch 'High Fidelity' again, too. we'll see how tired i am by then. tomorrow, i go to work to count books, and then go watch the new Angelina movie with my newly returned Sammie. yay! now reading: The Importance of Being Earnest (Dover Thrift Editions)- Oscar Wilde thecomicman spoke @
11:02 PM
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what those numbers up there mean is that Kubrick has two wins, two losses, and one draw. the draw was 'A Clockwork Orange.' the losses were 'Eyes Wide Shut' and '2001: A Space Odyssey.' the first winner was 'The Shining.' the second winner was so much better than the last one, that it cracked my top ten movies of all time list at number eight. ladies and gentlemen, i present to you the second best movie about modern warfare, 'Full Metal Jacket.' goddamn but did this movie rock my meerkats. it was so damn good. i could have done without some of Pvt. Joker's asides, but other than that, this movie was gold. from the Island to the 'Nam, it was non-stop hurt. from maggots to baby killers, from taking shots from the gunnery sergeant to taking more lethal shots from Charlie. the demoralizing nature of the USMC has never been plainer. unfortunately, it's never been more preachy either. it didn't bother me so much, but i did see it. plus, they all get to say, "This is my rifle, this is my gun (grabbing their crotch). This is for fighting, this is for fun (grabbing their crotch)." Kubrick gets another chance. and before all you bastards start harping on me, it's not everyday that someone breaks the top ten of all time. all nine guys on that super-short list get the benefit of the doubt all the time (except for Peter Jackson's 'Meet the Feebles.') for clerical purposes, these are the top ten of all time, with directors attached. 1. Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola now reading: The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)- Rudyard Kipling, Louis L. Cornell thecomicman spoke @
06:00 PM
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July 21, 2003she died five days ago and i just heard about it. if everyone could live like this women did, i wouldn't fear old age so damn much. she was as vivacious as any other woman i'd ever seen and there was always a smile on her face and a wiggle in her hips. rest in peace. thecomicman spoke @
10:55 PM
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July 16, 2003when i tried to explain to someone why Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction' were so good, it occured to me that not everyone knows what the difference between a 'hero' and a 'protagonist' is. (spoilers for 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction' ahead, but if you haven't seen these movies, you need to get off my blog and go watch them immediately.) i was saying that both of these movies were really good partly because they made the villains likeable. all the characters in both films (with one or two exceptions) is a bad guy. except for Mr. Orange, everyone is 'Reservoir Dogs' is a bank thief. bank thieves are bad guys. in most any other narrative, the audience would boo the bank thieves and instead root for the hero. this is just how it is. but what Tarantino did, is make the villains the protagonists. through the course of the movie, the audience gets to like the bad guys. you feel bad for them because the bank robbery has gone wrong. well, mostly you feel bad for Mr. White and Mr. Orange. at the end of the film, however, you find out Orange is actually a cop, and is the reason for the bank robbery failure. you don't like Orange so much anymore, and you feel even worse for White, because he stuck up for Orange. this is a strange thing. how is it that the audience is rooting the bad guy and booing the good guy? in 'Pulp Fiction,' you get the same kind of thing, except everyone is a villain. none of the main characters are heroes. Jules and Vincent are hitmen that work for Marcellus, a godfather of sorts. Butch kills a man in the boxing ring for personal gain. Mia is a coke fined who enjoys the life given to her by her unscrupulous husband. no one is a good guy. however, you get to know Vincent, and to a lesser extent, Jules, Mia, and Butch. Vincent talks with Jules about religion, events around them, and what burgers are called in Europe. simple, everyday, mundane stuff. when Vincent and Mia go on their 'date,' you learn Mia likes vanilla floats and was in a pilot. Butch has an attachment to a watch that belonged to his dad, who died in a POW camp. you get to like these guys and hope everything works out in the end. and for the lesser guys, it does. Butch gets away, Mia survives her overdose, and Jules leaves his profession for religion. however, Vincent dies. and the entire audience felt a pang when he fell into the toilet. we all liked this guy. we didn't want to see him die. but why? he was a footsoldier for a gangster. he was a fucking lackey who didn't care about anyone else except himself and possibly Jules. when he shoots off the guy's head in the car, what is he preoccupied with? not "Oh no, I've shot this poor bastard in the head," but, "Shit, we have to get this car off the road before a cop sees us and takes us in." when Mia ODs, Vincent's not worried about her life because she was a nice woman, but because his boss will kill him if she dies. but we cared. and we cared because the villain was the protagonist. when i tried explaining this to a certain someone, he said that Vincent was actually the hero of the narrative. this is incorrect. i have, i believe, made the case plain that Vincent was in fact the complete opposite of a hero. what Vincent was, was the protagonist. i understand that in some cases, these two words have become interchangeable. partly because in the standard narrative, the hero is the protagonist. but when viewing these two movies, or in dealing with any narrative where a villain, a bad guy, is the main character, these two words (hero and protagonist) cease to be interchangeable. i think this is what the person i was speaking with couldn't get past. when viewing these two movies, it is imperative that we all understand that part of their greatness, is making the audience root for the bad guy. thanks to Halifax, who introduced me to the basis of the likeable villain theory. thecomicman spoke @
12:08 PM
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July 14, 2003i watched 'The Boondock Saints' and i have realized i'm not entirely sure where i stand on vigilantism. sure, reading about Batman kick the shit out of some hapless carjacker is fun, but what if this happened in real life? as you may all know, i read tons and tons of comics. most of these comics feature vigilante justice. Batman may work closely with the GCPD and let the courts decide the carjacker's fate, but the man is not officially deputized. it's also true that Batman works within the law as best he can (although, kicking the shit out of some hapless carjacker is still assault), but again, he is not officially deputized, meaning any physical or violent action he takes against any bad guy (unless in self-defense) is illegal. Batman should be carted off to Stonegate Prison because of this. but Batman is a pretty okay guy. because he's fictional, i can see his personal life and his thoughts and i know he means well. if i were in Gotham, i wouldn't fear Batman because i have done nothing wrong. but is Batman right? a more extreme case is the Punisher. he does not work within the law. any bad guy he runs across usually ends up dead. he keeps certain bad guys alive if they are of any use to him in his one-man war against crime. how is he any better than those he kills? sure, he doesn't sell drugs to kids, but is that enough to make what he's doing okay? and how does he know these bad guys that he kills are actually bad guys? being a fictional character, the Punisher rarely screws up (i can't think of any time that he has, but i can't believe writers wouldn't have used this plot once or twice), but what happens in the real world. in 'The Boondock Saints,' the main characters have a guy who used to work for the mob and happens to know where all these guys live. the Saints believe him (they've been friends for awhile), and start in on the killing. the audience also knows that the guys they're going after bad guys, so they cheer for the Saints. but again, this is all fiction. if this were real life, how do these guys know who to hit? how they know when they've gone too far? should we as a society let them operate? legal red tape does take a long time, after all. should i cheer for these guys, even though i know what they are doing is illegal and not much better than what the bad guys are doing? guys like Batman, i can take. they don't kill, and they operate within the law as best they can. guys like the Punisher, i don't know. i don't know. thecomicman spoke @
02:55 PM
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July 13, 2003
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Review or, Why Lines are the Enemy of All People but Dirty Commies before i tell you all about 'League,' i'd first like to complain about lines. before i could go to the theater, i had to get my New York State ID because my California one had expired and i need one to fly. so i get there, and i have to wait in line. turns out, this line i'm waiting in, is just a line to wait in another line. the next line i wait is for the photograph. half-hour later, i get my picture and a number. when the number is called, i have to go to a window. this is better than waiting in a line because i can sit down, but i still have to wait. another half-hour passes and i'm done with the DMV for eight years (unless i do something stupid like learn to drive). as far as DMV visits go, this was cake compared to stories i've heard in the past. however, it was my only visit and i hate the DMV. then i wait for the bus to take me to Kips Bay. once there, i have to wait in the line for 'League' for an hour and a half (you have to get there early because seats aren't guaranteed for these free movie things). normally, i don't mind these lines because they are for a free movie, after all. however, while in this line, a bird shit on my head. this was a new experience for me as it had never happened before. i cleaned the offending fecal matter off my headphones and cap as best i could, and strove not to be under any more birds. plus, i was hungry all day. the day did not bode well and i was all set to be utterly disappointed by 'League.' read on to discover what happened to make me like the movie (spoilers of the movie and both comic book mini-series ahead). the movie was actually very enjoyable. i wouldn't recomend spending 10 bucks on it, but give it a spin once it's out on video. the inclusions of Tom Sawyer and Dorian Gray were not as offending as i had originally thought. Stuart Townsend was actually very good as Gray, although Shane West played Sawyer as a typical, hot-headed, shoot-first-ask-questions-later American (Quartermain even tells Sawyer, "If you have to shoot more than once, don't shoot at all."). for the less known characters of Allan Quartermain and Mina Harker, i felt enough introduction/exposition was given so that less read audiences would know who they were. Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Tom Sawyer, and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde weren't given any (or very little), and i felt this was okay as these characters have all been ingrained on the collective conscious of the American public in one way or another. the only slip-up was in Gray. there was absolutely no exposition and i felt he needed it the most (behind only Quartermain, possibly). as far as the plot goes, it was okay. it was more or less (more less than more) followed the first book's plot with a few elements from the second book. there is an evil character trying to take down Her Queen's Royal Empire by pitting the European countries against each other, and the enigmatic M puts together a team of remarkable fellows to stop said madman. just like in the first book, M turns out to be none other than Professor James Moriarty. and like in the second book, there is a traitor in the League's midst. this, however, was the best part, i thought. playing with audience expectations, all were led to believe that the Skinner (the Invisible Man) was the culprit, including the League themselves. however, it turned out to be Dorian Gray to be on the other side, and Skinner was missing only because he knew the League would suspect him and he instead followed Gray. my only major gripe with the film was in the three major action sequences. the League was split up (for whatever reason) and each one- or two-member mini-League had a fight with one thing or another. the way the film was edited was horrible. they kept cutting back and forth between each separate fight and the scenes just lost fluidity. i kept scratching my head as to what the hell i was supposed to be watching. again, maybe not worth ten bucks, but definitely a rental. p.s. as horrible as it may sound, making Nemo master of a martial art was a grand idea. now reading: Count Zero- William Gibson thecomicman spoke @
06:03 PM
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July 09, 2003
On Why 'The Hulk' was a Horrible Movie or, Don't Make Him Ang Lee; You Wouldn't Like Him When He's Ang Lee the long awaited 'Hulk' review commences.... now! (lots o' spoilers) first off, some good stuff: the Hulk cgi construct looked a lot better than i had originally anticipated, especially in the Hulk vs. the US Army scenes. he moved, jumped, punched, and grabbed almost exactly like the Hulk should. also, that entire scene is super-cool. him grabbing tanks and blowing shit up inside the desert compound is what most Hulk comics have; therefore, that is what the movie should be like. also, coolest Stan Lee cameo, which also featured Lou Ferrigno, TV's Hulk, sans green paint. now the bad stuff: the Hulk is a mutant!? i can understand not sticking to an origin story for storyline reasons, or for clutter's sake (e.g. in 'X-men' the original members are not those of the comics because those weren't the characters the the film guys wanted to work with, and instead of trying to explain 10-15 years of continuity in the film would have taken way too long, and we wouldn't have gotten the story we did), but what happened here was the complete opposite. no one's origin story is less cluttered than the Hulk's. he was caught in a gamma bomb explosion to save the life of another guy. you could leave the other guy out if you wanted to, but the script writers wrote this entire subplot with Banner's father and made the Hulk a mutant. ridiculous! then the entire gamma blast was recreated as a gamma burst. “perhaps the money wasn’t there,” i thought to myself, except that then i saw gamma bomb explosions three times later during the movie. the comic book panel shots were actually pretty neat the first time Lee used it, but then they got over-used. plus, an actual comic book layout has different things happening in each panel at different times (generally speaking); they don't have the same thing happening at the same time from different angles! gah! i firmly believe that the ending could not have been anymore confusing had monkeys with typewriters written and directed it. so, the military lets a known criminal yell at the guy who can turn into a huge, green rampage when angry for about twenty minutes and then the audience gets a fight scene that was computer animated into the dark. the audience has no clue as to what is going on, and Nick Nolte's lines don't really help ("I shall take your power from you." "No, wait, take it back." "I'm gonna freeze you in a lake and then disappear without a trace." what the good God? did Lee actually look at this and say, "Ya, that's good. Keep it." he must have because there it is. did any of the 'actors' even attempt to act? i got nothing in way of romance between Bana and Connely, Nolte hammed it for all it was worth, and whoever played Talbot was a huge schmuck. the only decently acted character was 'Thunderbolt' Ross, but his was the easiest character. again, Lee just didn't seem to care at all about what was going on. maybe he was absent for most of the filming. i seriously fought off sleep for the first hour and a half of this movie. this is a comic book movie. that shouldn't happen to me in a comic book movie. i am so glad that i didn't pay for this film. the next movie that i will possibly be very happy i didn't have to pay for: 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' on Thursday. i shall let you know via my blog. now reading: 300- Frank Miller thecomicman spoke @
10:58 PM
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