Matt’s Week in Dork! (9/15/13-9/21/13)

I'm no flat tire. How 'bout a Gin Rickey?

    Trying to fit some reading and some writing in, but mostly just working and recovering from working.  Got a little cycling in.  Otherwise, mostly just stared at my walls.

Riddick:  “It matches your nipples.”  This movie is not horrible, and that’s about all I wanted from it.  I really enjoyed Pitch Black, and while I kinda enjoy Chronicles of Riddick, it never quite worked for me, seeing how it seems to take place in a totally different style of science fiction universe.  This third film feels more like Pitch Black in style, though it holds over some elements of the more fanciful Chronicles.  It starts as a Robinson Crusoe story, with Riddick left for dead on a hostile world, learning to live and thrive in the environment.  This is the best part of the movie, and I was a little sad to see him push the button that would summon more characters and shift the tone.  From that point on, it began to smell more and more of Pitch Black rehash, though it still wasn’t bad.  The dialog is frequently awkward (though nothing tops ‘you keep what you kill’ and a dozen other idiocies from Chronicles’ Necromongers).  As a science fiction movie?  This is pretty crappy.  As a fun, silly adventure film in space, this is exactly what I was looking for.  Again, if movies like this, After Earth, Oblivion, etc. were just more common, I’d be a bit harsher on them.  But as it is, big-idea, out there science fiction is still all too rare.

Beyond the Rocks:  I’m always happy to hear about movies thought lost that are rediscovered and recovered.  But, while the fact of its recovery is good, the movie itself is so-so.  A fairly bland romantic film with little to make it stand out.  Apparently, putting two big names in one feature (here, Valentino and Gloria Swanson) was unusual.  Sadly, neither seems to be especially energetic or interesting.  I’m assuming Valentino is better elsewhere, because as far as silent actors go, he did not impress in this film, and I know ladies went nuts for him once upon a time.

The Delicious Little Devil:  Not much to this short film.  It’s mildly amusing.  But it’s also pretty darned forgettable.

The Bad and the Beautiful:  Kirk Douglas’s eyes should be registered as deadly weapons.  The man can hate-stare so intently it makes women pregnant and men into women (who subsequently discover they are pregnant).  The rest of the cast is quite good.  I especially like Walter Pidgeon and Barry Sullivan (who was also awesome in the recently viewed Tension).  But it’s Douglas’s movie, and he’s a mad genius who takes no guff.  Hollywood is skewered from the inside by this expose sort of movie.  But it makes all the dirty backstage dealings seem sort of charming and exciting, anyway.  Gloria Grahame shows up briefly (somehow earning an Oscar for the part, which isn't much more than a glorified cameo) as a conniving, luxury hungry wife, and she’s quite good.

    Friday night, we all gathered at Robert’s place for a Barbeque and graphic novel club meeting.  We discussed Astonishing X-Men volumes revolving around the marriage of Northstar and his idiot boyfriend Kyle.  I was unable to read the whole assigned work for various reasons.  But as far as I made it, it was bloody awful.  I have come to hate the X-Men (and the Avengers right along side).  Just dreadful writing and awful characters.  Enough of this status quo maintaining mandated garbage.

Looks like Kyle read this garbage.

Valley of the Dragons:  I had never heard of this particular adaptation of a Jules Verne story, and I guess I can understand why.  It’s not especially interesting.  Still, I do love lost world stories.  And a lost world that is also on the Moon?  Cool.  Two big problems present themselves, however.  I don’t like when real animals are used as ‘dinosaurs.’  Partly, because they look terrible.  But mostly because I don’t like that so often it is clear that the animal was being mistreated to get the shot right.  No, I don’t think lizards have a great deal of mental capacity, nor are the self aware.  But needlessly causing pain to an animal, even to reptiles or insects seems barbaric and lacing in a degree of class.  The second problem is Rodan.  Yes, Rodan.  The giant kaiju from Japan seems to be flying around this moonscape.  I guess they had access to the footage and thought nobody would notice?  But I noticed.  Getting past that, the story of two rivals forced to work together on a hostile world is pretty good, and their adventures with the local population are nice.  The Neanderthals and whatever the heck the albino things were (Morlocks?) are especially disgusting.  Worth a watch if you’re into this sort of film, but not one to expend a great deal of effort tracking down.

    Saturday found me feeling pretty crappy, my weeks of not sleeping and stress finally catching up with me.  Some kind of cold or something.  Oh, boy.  I started going through my various con acquisitions and other sundry things that have been piling up of late.  In doing so, I read through three comics I got from local artist/writer Andy K.  Mind Games is a pretty gross little horror short.  The Secret Origin of John Elway is nuts.  And Neon Super Gladiator has a cool feel.  His stuff reminds me of something that might have been on Liquid Television back in the 90s.  Weird and uncomfortable.  I also read Jennifer Hachigian’s Pocket Editor Two, which she gave me because she liked my shirt (“Arthur Turing Fought Nazis With Science”).  It plays on that old video game thing with “All your base are belong to us” but manages to correct the grammar.  I flipped through super-nice guy Alex Fine’s Il Brutto, which re-imagines various movie characters as played by Charles Bronson.  And lastly, I looked through Sam Wolk’s Alpha Beasts and Alpha Bots, two collections of 26 drawings, each based on a letter (T is for Twiki, J is for Jersey Devil, etc.).  Quite cool.  I still have more stuff to get to, and some prints to frame.

    When I got home Friday night, I had a package waiting for me.  I keep forgetting that I’m a patron of the arts.  My old high school chum Serena Andrews is a musician and artist, and has a project she’s working on that involves a tour and a book.  I got some perks for my donation to the project, including a CD of music by Serena, which I listened to on Saturday afternoon.  Buried somewhere in the attic of my mother’s house is a cassette of Serena's music she put out back in the mid 90s.  I always liked her stuff, and still do.  It has a Tori Amos/Regina Spektor kind of thing going, with a bit of Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson.  All good in my book.

    And late Saturday night I picked up and finished the very short, but fun book Bright Young Things by Alison Maloney.  It’s a hand book for Roaring 20s living, with phrases, cocktails, party plans, and fashion, mixed with historic notes and cultural gossip of the time.  The book doesn’t go into a great deal of depth, but I think it would be a handy guide to have while reading fiction of the time (like The Great Gatsby), or history texts (like Flapper), or for those inclined, playing period roleplaying games (like Call of Cthulhu).  If you're looking for a sweet biscuit for barney-making, and you need to know if the bank's closed, this book ain't banana oil.  It's the elephant's instep, see.

-Matt

Comic Review: Hellboy (Library Edition) Volume 4: The Crooked Man & The Troll Witch

    I know I’ve written about this before, but Mike Mignola and Hellboy are largely responsible (with the instigation of writer/publisher/former boss/long suffering friend Dan Fleming) for me being a comic reader of any seriousness.  Oh, sure, I’d flipped through the occasional stapled together bit of fluff, typically purchased out of the bargain bins because some element of the art struck a note with me.  And sure, I read Heavy Metal here and there.  But other than a brief time in my youth reading G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the Archie series, even!), comics just weren’t my thing.  Superman?  Batman?  X-Men?  Blah!  They might make cool movies (sometimes), but weren’t anything I enjoyed reading about, even with pictures.

What?

    So, when Dan kept after me about comics, I’ll admit, I was a tough nut to crack.  He finally did it, though.  With a barrage of Crossgen, Metabarons, Tom Strong, and the real secret weapon, Hellboy.  I first read The Conqueror Worm, and that was it.  I was in for the long haul.  Lovecraft, pulp heroes, occult obsessed Nazi villains, European folk tales.  If he’d thrown in some naked ladies, he’d have had pretty much everything I like to read about, all in one package.

    When Dark Horse started releasing Hellboy in their “Library Editions,” handsome hard cover volumes collecting two previously released trade paperbacks each, along with some notes and sketches, I knew it was a series of books I’d have to have for my bookshelves, and I’ve not regretted a one (while constantly looking forward without much patience, to the next).  It felt like volume 4 took forever to come out, and annoyingly, when it did, my comic reading had hit a kind of deep lull.  I’d gotten into a kick of reading about technology and medieval history (with a few forays into the roaring 20s and the wretched 30s) and while new graphic novels kept springing up on my shelf, few came back down to be read, and most of those were very short, quick reads.  Volume 4 sat there, still wrapped in plastic, promising me something special, but also giving me pause, which I don’t fully understand.  I think something broke a week or so ago when I found out from co-Dork Brad that volume 5 had a release date.  I had my excuse to crack the plastic, and this morning I did just that.  I ate my breakfast, drank my cup of coffee, and sat down with the book, thinking to just read the introduction and maybe the first story.  Two hours later, found me flipping through the last few pages of sketches and commentary with a smile on my face.

    It all starts with The Crooked Man, set in the horror haunted hills of the American wilderness, in 1958.  Hellboy’s still a young man, not yet aware of the terrible destiny set before him.  So, when he wanders into some backwoods devilry, he’s an innocent, afraid of nothing.  Meeting another, less innocent wanderer, a quick and easy friendship is struck, with the common goal of righting wrongs.  Heavy dread and the shadowy antiquity of early weird tales lend the story strength.  A horrible figure of evil, witches, and ancient secrets try to consume all.  But Hellboy and his friend have other ideas.

    Following a couple very short stories, we get to one of my favorites, The Troll Witch.  It’s a sad story rooted in Norwegian fairy stories, but with typical Mignola twists.  I like how the series so often features brief glimpses of hope and joy, even when the overall essence is of impending, grinding doom.

    A few stories later we find Hellboy visiting a haunted house in Long Island.  The crazy twist in this one is beautifully right of the series, but I won’t reveal it here.  Suffice to say, long time readers should not be taken aback by what he finds when he opens that mysterious door.

    The last two stories, The Chapel of Moloch and Makoma make for a strong finish.  Moloch captures not only Mignola’s own feelings of artistic frustration (it was his first time drawing Hellboy in some time), but that loss of control and sense of otherness Lovecraft often associated with artists of various sorts.  The sculpture, squatting like a horrible toad, could easily have been in Pickman’s basement studio.

    All together there are ten tales of varying length contained in this book, spread over many decades of Hellboy’s career.  From Europe to Southeast Asia to the hill country of the States, Red is where the action is, even if he doesn’t know why.  This is the first of the hard covers to feature artists other than Mignola.  Richard Corben, P. Craig Russell and others all put their mark on the series, but none bends too far away from the overarching spirit of pulp infused horror and grimly humorous musings before the Apocalypse.  With two introductory essays and a concluding one, as well as the amusing commentary throughout the sketch pages in the back, one learns a little more about how the stories and the volume itself came about.  All very cool background for long time fans.

    If you haven’t read Hellboy yet, this probably isn’t the best place to start, though the story The Crooked Man might be a nice intro for fans of old time American folk tales.  But for those familiar with Mike Mignola’s creation, this is a must read, must have.  The Library Editions should find its way to your bookshelves, as these are works you’ll take down again in the years to come, to pore over the beautiful art, haunted characters, and grand adventure.

    Hellboy continues to be among my very favorite comic literature.  Reading it makes me want to read history, folk tales, pulp novels, and classic weird tales.  It makes me want to write and makes me wish I had some talent in drawing.  It makes me want to absorb more information and it inspires me to tell stories.   Mignola has crafted something special, built it upon the broad red shoulders of a doomed hero, and infused it with wonder and horror and so much joy.

Hellboy Volume 4: The Crooked Man - The Troll Witch
Author: Mike Mignola
Artists: Mike Mignola, Richard Corbin, & others
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
ISBN: 978-1-59582-658-9
Pages: 311


-Matt