Comic Review: East of West Volume Two

    In the second volume of Jonathan Hickman’s alternate-Western/Sci-Fi operatic epic, more deadly troubles are revealed, more hell comes a knocking, and Death pays a price for a little info.  The politics of the weird world grow more and more strange, as nations build for the coming war.  All the while, Death’s kid sits, deep inside a cyber-dungeon, waiting for the time when he can rise and become an instrument of apocalypse.

    By this stage in the story, there are so many threads, so many characters.  It really does feel like a grand epic.  Not only is it big storytelling, writ on a huge, Western inspired canvas.  But it’s also high emotional drama about families, dynasties, rivalries, revenge, and zealotry.

    East of West revels in the format, telling a massive, cinematic, operatic story in lush color and stark imagery.  I can not wait to see how this tale develops.  If the ending can live up to the beginning, this should stand alongside other great epics with no shame.  It’s a must read, and another reminder that companies outside of the Big Two are producing some swell graphic literature.

East of West Volume Two
Author: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Nick Dragotta
Publisher: Image Comics
ISBN: 978-1-60706-855-6

My review of volume 1 is here. 

-Matthew J. Constantine

Comic Review: The First Kingdom: The Birth of Tundran

    Admittedly, I’ve never been ‘in the know’ about comics.  While I tried them briefly as a wee lad, I didn’t stick with them, only returning to the medium in my late 20s with Hellboy, Tom Strong, and Metabarons.  However, I’ve always been friends with comic readers, and I’ve often been aware of various books and events in the industry, even if just in passing.  Also, what little interest I ever showed tended to be toward independent, sci-fi/adventure comics.  Yet, somehow, I’d never heard of Jack Katz and his The First Kingdom.  Having been a contemporary of several famous names, including Alex Raymond, Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee, I feel like I should have been more aware of the man and his work.  Anyway, now I am, and I’m glad of it.

    The First Kingdom is not a perfect book, nor is it going to appeal to the average, contemporary comic reader.  There is an old style, similar to that of classic newspaper strips like Flash Gordon or Terry and the Pirates, with a bit of 60s Marvel thrown in.  Sometimes the captions go on and on, and sometimes the word choices are peculiar to say the least (and I’m fairly certain, not always correct).  But this all lends it a strange quality that works here more than it does in something like early issues of The Fantastic Four or Challengers of the Unknown.  The writing style, along with the story itself help to give the whole thing a feeling of a grand myth cycle, like something out of ancient Greece or Scandinavia, or out of Tolkien’s Silmarillion (except this is readable) or The Bible.  You could also argue that Katz’s art has a tendency toward repetitiveness.  It is true, that many of his people look essentially the same, and on occasion I’ve had difficulty keeping one separate from another (especially his females).  And panels and pages often feature lots and lots of characters simply standing around, talking.  However, when the action does break out, when he does exercise his creativity, it can be gorgeous.  His environments and creatures are top notch.  And for those who are upset by the human body, you should know that the book features a good deal of nudity.

    The story is wonderfully grand and operatic.  Long after Earth was burned up in a nuclear war, humanity’s descendants are on their way up again.  Strange gods meddle with their affairs, while a young man breaks with tradition and sets off on a quest to give his people a new and permanent home, but he is destined to meet a violent end.  Epic quests, sinister villains, dangerous monsters, and fickle fate.  The stuff of mythology.  Odd bits of science fiction mix with copious amounts of fantasy, making me again think of the old Flash Gordon strips, as well as the works of people like Edgar Rice Burroughs.  So, while I don’t know that the general comic reader would appreciate this work, I think that fans of Golden Age science fiction, of pulp adventure stories, or of movie serials might really like it.

    I, for one, am excited to find out what happens next in this grand imaginary history.  Many forces are coming together into what should prove to be a dramatic conflict.

The First Kingdom: The Birth of Tundran
Author/Artist: Jack Katz
Publisher: Titan Comics
ISBN: 978-1-78276-010-8

-Matthew J. Constantine

Comic Review: Boxers & Saints

    Set during the late 1800s, Boxers chronicles the rise of a peasant revolution.  Bao is a happy young boy who enjoys the opera and idolizes the masked characters and his father.  But his whole world begins to crumble when his father is beaten and broken by ‘foreign devils.’  When a jovial martial artist arrives in the village, Bao finds a way to embrace his love of the heroes of opera.  What follows is part history, part Shaw Bros. fantasy adventure, as the villagers learn to fight, gather around Bao, and head to the foreign tainted Peking.  Fueled by nationalism, racism, and the pains of oppression, the so called Boxers fight back against the soldiers of the outsiders.

    Saints follows Four-Girl, a child raised under a cloud of family tragedy and ill omen, who tries to find herself in a rapidly changing world.  In an attempt to rebel, and to embrace her ‘cursed’ nature, she joins the foreign devil Christians, taking the name Vibiana.  Her journey is different, but she too ends up in Peking when the rebellion comes to its bloody climax.

    Each volume explores the protagonist’s relationship with various aspects of religion, tradition, and gods.  Bao and his fellow Boxers are inhabited by the spirits of the heroes of opera, while Four-Girl seeks guidance from some horrible raccoon demon, and then from the spirit of Joan of Arc.  Are these possessions and visions real?  Are they the dreams of youth, or delusion?  Are Bao, Four-Girl, and the rest simply mad from the horrors of their times?  It gives you a lot to think about, and I think a lot of interpretive wiggle room.

    As companion volumes, Boxers and Saints make for a good read, each looking at different aspects of the same historic event.  Each complements and juxtaposes the other.  The colorful palette of Boxers and the muted tones of Saints for example.  And the question of religion, of its use, its dangers, etc. seems to be left open.  All this makes for a compelling read with plenty to think about.  And like the best books, it makes me want to read more.  I’ll certainly be reading Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese.  But I also picked up a book on the Boxer Rebellion, and another on the Taiping Rebellion.  As much of my knowledge of China’s history and culture comes from martial arts movies and Hong Kong melodramas, I figured now would be a good time to read something more scholarly.  It should also help give me more context for enjoying those films.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (4/7/13-4/13/13)

    I figured before Brad went into fits, I’d best start up Deadwood again.  I’d started watching it a couple years back, during an awesome Western month, but things happened and I didn’t continue.  After cranking through Rome while I was on vacation last week…well, I wanted more Rome truth be told.  But instead I decided to pop this back in the old DVD player.  They sure do talk pretty in Deadwood.  C&%$suckers, @$$f*&%ers, $#!tkickers, c#!%s, and lots of other words I typically use old-style comicbook style profanity for.  There’s enough swearing in this show to make salty sailors blush.

The Seventh Seal:  “My flesh is afraid, but I am not.”  Young Max Von Sydow is bloody terrifying, with his blond hair and his chiseled face.  He has a very sinister way about him.  This meditation on death and the fear of death is set against plague ravaged medieval Europe.  Von Sydow and his worldly squire have just returned from the Crusades, tired, bitter, and nearing death.  When the Grim Reaper arrives, they begin a chess game to decide fates.  As the story progresses, we meet a traveling circus with a goofy clown, and his comely wife, and their young boy.  Each step along the way, we meet various people trying to come to terms with life and its meaning.  There are some great discussions both funny and touching about love and living.  And some dark delvings into fear and horror.  It’s bawdy and thoughtful, and rather strange.  Even Death himself is rather funny, and sinister.  Interesting combinations in the movie.

Excalibur:  “Rest in the arms of the Dragon.”  Oh, John Boorman, you mad bastard.  Stylized and surreal, Excalibur is anything but naturalistic or realistic.  It is operatic fantasy, an epic poem on film.  He even opens it with my favorite piece of Wagner, Siegfried’s Funeral March.  Everyone is Shakespeare acting, bellowing dialog at the top of their lungs like devotees of the great god Brian Blessed.  You can imagine that John Q. Public circa 1350 might have imagined the story playing out much like this.  No connection to reality or history, but dwelling in the deepest and strangest of mythology.  What always kills me about this story is how kind of awful the ‘heroes’ are.  It takes all of two seconds for Lancelot to betray his ‘best friend.’  Of course, it took all of two seconds for them to become best friends in the first place, and just as little time for Arthur and Guinevere fall in love.  It’s not that I want the film to be longer, but it feels like it is supposed to be.  It feels like large chunks are missing.

L’Incoronazione di Poppea:  “Your breast deserves a sweeter name.”  Rome still on my mind, I lucked into having this one come in.  I didn’t actually know it was about Nero and his devil-wife Poppea.  It’s well produced.  I was surprised to see that it was from 1984; it felt more recent.  I’ll admit that I’m not more than a rank amateur at this whole opera thing, but I’m pretty sure I don’t care much for Italian opera.  So far, I’ve typically preferred the German stuff.  But again, I’m kind of new to it all, and still testing the waters.  Part of it is the music itself.  I want something a bit more epic and sweeping, where the Italian stuff I’ve heard so far sounds like little more than a harpsichord and a few violins (even when there’s a whole orchestra).  If you silence the singers and listen to Wagner, it’s still compelling music.  If you silenced the singers in this opera, I’d be wondering what I should order from the wine list, and hoping the cream sauce isn’t too rich.  Now, I realize what follows is an awfully shallow observation, but I’m an awfully shallow guy.  The lead actress Maria Ewing seems built for the stage.  From a distance, like from where you would see her if you were in the audience, she appears beautiful.  But up close, she looks kind of like a Muppet.  It’s distracting.  I don’t know if it’s bad plastic surgery, weird make-up, or she’s just an odd looking woman.  But it kept weirding me out whenever the camera would zoom in.  I wonder if she’s from a coastal town, ‘cause she has a touch of the Innsmouth Look about her.  But then, the guy playing Nero looks kind of like the Fat Kid from every 80s teen comedy, so what do I know?

Prehistoric Women:  “Strangely enough, the swan dive was invented before the swan.”  You know what I like in a narrator?  I like a narrator to explain in detail exactly what’s happening on the screen.  That’s great.  It reminds me of the masterworks of Stan “The Man” Lee.  Due to a brief domestic dispute, a woman leads a bunch of her tribe away from the men (like five guys), to create a tribe of ladies who know how to do stuff (like fish unsuccessfully and get caught by giants).  Years later the children of this splinter faction return to get them some lovin’ from Not Russ Tamblyn and his buddy Not Sal Mineo.  The battle between the ladies and the men would later be echoed by the epic opening of Saving Private Ryan.  Truly harrowing.  I believe this is based on the same Shakespeare play that inspired Captain Caveman.  Certainly, the totally authentic prehistoric language, consisting of as many as 5 words, seem to encompass the range of human communication eloquently.  The film adheres to the great Raymond Chandler’s advice, “when in doubt, have two women wearing animal skins wrestle for a few minutes.”  As the narrator says, “it seems that women were women in those days, too.”  Boy, I’ll say.  I bet if you checked, you’d find that their legs went all the way up.  The erotic mating dance is pure interpretive genius.  The pteroducktyl may be the most terrifying use of stock footage of a waterfowl ever captured in cinema.  I hope the AFI will finally relent and name this one of the greatest films of all time.  It deserves the credit after all these years.  The discovery of tools, fire, misogyny, cooked meat, and how to drive off ducks all in one generation.  Amazing.  And the use of the grunting, hairy giant as a metaphor for our loss of humanity in an ever increasingly mechanistic society was thought provoking to say the least.

Spies-A-Go-Go:  “Ve noticed the sign und ve are rocking und rolling enthusiasts und ve are here for the dance.”  Everything is better when it’s A-Go-Go.  In case, like me, you find the comedy stylings of Benny Hill a bit too cerebral, there are options, like this fantastic spy adventure comedy staring Arch Hall Jr. and his amazing Giant Face.  See, you know it’s funny, because there’s zany music and ethnic stereotypes.  And of course, the funniest thing ever to happen in the history of funny things, a dwarf trying to rope a cow.  Pure.  Comic.  Gold.  Cowboy Jaws knows it.  Creepy, giant faced Arian monster Elvis, Arch Hall Jr. makes for a heck of a singing secret agent.  Forget Val Kilmer in Top Secret, it’s all about having a huge face and knowing how to mug the camera…mug for the camera.  Always remember to watch out for snakes.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture:  There’s not really much plot here.  It’s kind of a summation of all the various ‘find a supercomputer’ stories from the old show.  But it also lays the foundation for Trek to come, and ideas from this film echo on.  Ilia and Decker become Troi and Riker.  V’ger becomes the alien probe from The Voyage Home, and I think partially inspired the Borg, too.  The music is good.  The effects are nice.  And I like a lot of what makes it to the screen.  But there are some unnecessary scenes, and though I like a lot of the sequences of flying through space and around objects, there as room for trimming for sure.  But I don’t think this movie deserves the derision it typically receives.  I respect them for trying to keep Trek its own thing and not just follow Star Wars’ lead by making it action heavy, as they would do in Wrath of Khan.

The Vanguard:  This low budget sci-fi horror film has a deep running, very bent sense of humor.  There are hints of Evil Dead, Mad Max, Dog Soldiers and some other lower budget, fringe films.  It’s sort of what I was expecting from Bellflower (not the hipster snooze-fest I got).  Don’t get me wrong.  It has some serious narrative flaws, giving some character backgrounds that don’t exactly add up to motivation, losing the thread a few times, and it features a let-down ending.  Still, it has enough going for it that fans of low budget stuff should find something to enjoy.  The final blood explosion really doesn’t work, though, and it’s kind of a bad way to finish up, with a memorably ineffective special effects shot.  I did like the lead actor’s weird deadpan beard acting, though.

Beyond the Valley of the Doll:  “This is my happening and it freaks me out!”  Heavy weight philosophy, the dope, rock n’ role, an aggressive ambisexual, and more boobs than a Congressional subcommittee.  The wild world of Russ Meyer, the greatest dirty old man to ever point a movie camera at some bimbos in bellbottoms.  While it is obviously a ‘bad’ movie, it’s kind of great like only bad movies can be.  It’s so danged surreal, with scenes that don’t seem to have anything to do with the plot, characters acting in ways that don’t make any sense, and a tone that would be hard pressed to be less even.  Joke joke joke --Beheading!!!  Sing sing sing -- Attempted suicide!!!  Yet, for some reason (other than the enormous boobs), I was very entertained.

Lost, Lonely, and Vicious:  “Yes, I know how it feels to be lonely…Wanna Coke?”  They may not be rebels, but they’re sure without causes…and clues.  Johnny Dennis and his vacuous jerk buddies don’t know what they want but they’re willing to sit around in a café and bitch to get it.  A young James Dean type guy is about to screw up his whole life because it’s going too well.  The glitz and glamour ain’t all it’s cracked up to be…I guess.  One day I do want a cute young lady to hold my bongos.  If it’s at a lake, all the better.  This is a heartfelt movie, if not a very good one.  It feels like the MST3K boys should take a go at it, but at the same time, it really does have a lot of heart.  The ending feels false, though.

    I watched a few old shorts on Friday night.  Crisis in Morality was a delightfully stupid Christian fluff piece about how everything fun or worth doing is evil.  Hell is a Place Called Hollywood is a nice sleazy short about the dangers of going to Hollywood, which almost certainly is the product of exactly what it’s about.  It features a bunch of cheeky nudity in the name of education.  We need to see the young starlet take her clothes off in the story of a young starlet who is exploited and made to take her clothes off.  It reminded me of that awesome Social Disease short from Amazon Women on the Moon.  Those pesky reform school girls are the subject of the third short, Little Miss Delinquent.  The lead girl in that one is surprisingly good.  I wonder if she went on to anything, or if her weird side-bite kept her from success.  And it’s Canadian, which makes it extra special.

Jacktown:  “All of a sudden you’re like…Gettin’ headaches.”  Whenever I review a uh…movie, I think I’m gonna dramatically uh…pause.  This is how you know I’m very uh…serious.  The two dimwit punks we meet seem to have a uh…inability to talk about what they’re talking about.  It’s like those villain conversations where the bad guy talks about ‘taking care of’ someone, or somebody ‘having an accident,’ but never actually says what he means outright.  When Blondie McDouche gives an underage waitress the business in his sweet convertible, he goes to the slammer for the statutory rape.  What follows is a kind of After School Special type prison experience, as the emotionless surfer-dude goes through the prison paces.  Then, through the ultra-kindly platitudes of the warden and the ministering of his bobbysoxer daughter, he gets the Jesus in him and becomes a good boy.

Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks:  The beginning of the final stretch for classic Who, this is the episode I always think of when I remember Sylvester McCoy’s run.  The Doctor and Ace head back to 1963 and uncover some funny doings.  A annoyingly typical military dullard is in control of a unit of soldiers investigating, at odds of course, with the scientists who are trying to figure out weird energy sources.  Ace is especially cute in this one, letting her hair down a bit, and getting a chance to drop the hammer on some baddies.  She’s probably the closest companion the Doctor ever had to the great Leela.  The storyline makes interesting connections to William Hartnell, implying that he had some specific reasons for being on Earth at the beginning of An Unearthly Child that he was unable to accomplish.  I like when they build on the Doctor and his past, dealing with things he did even so far back as the first stories.  This is a pretty good Dalek story, and certainly feels more like traditional, pre-Trial of a Time Lord stuff.  One complaint I have is the voice of the Daleks; there’s something off about them here.  But I like their look, one group in white and gold, another in black or grey.  And the ‘special weapons’ Dalek is fab.

Monsters:  “The vibe just changed.”  Scoot McNairy does something I’ve rarely seen in film here.  At the beginning of the movie he makes you hate him so much; not because he’s bad, but because he’s just such a sniveling turd.  But as the movie goes on, he wins me over, growing as a character and maybe becoming more of a man.  And he does one of the only really effective drunk performances I’ve ever seen.  Beyond that, this low budget science fiction/horror film is surprisingly effective.  A photographer is tasked with getting his bosses daughter back home to the United States from Central America.  The problem is, most of Mexico is covered in what is known as the ‘infected zone,’ a region covered in invasive alien life.  I suppose there’s an element of social commentary, looking at how giant disasters effect those without the financial means to escape and the extreme methods people use to get to America (not to mention the advantage taken of those who try).  But overall, it’s a road trip adventure movie mixed with elements of classic Kaiju.

    I finished Scatter Adapt and Remember, a pretty darned good book about how we might survive an oncoming mass extinction.

    “The greatest Bruce in rock is Bruce Kulick, guitar player for Kiss 1984-1996, from Brooklyn.  Case closed.”  I read issues 7, 8, and 9 of Hawkeye.  It’s a fine comic, but I still don’t get what the big deal is; why people are going so apenuts for it.  There are some funny bits, and I like that they’re keeping a lot of the more outlandish superheroes and villains out of it.  But I still hate the art, and I still don’t see what makes people so gushy about it.  I guess it’s like E.R., or Seinfeld and Friends, or Richard Geer.  I know they’re popular, so they must have something that makes people watch.  But whatever it is is totally lost on me.

    “Gods are such beautiful creatures, I’ve never been more sure of that.  Because I’ve seen what they look like on the inside.”  I then read issues 2, 3, and 4 of Thor: God of Thunder.  Only one more issue to go in the God Butcher story arc.  The first issue was great, with a lot of ‘holy cats!’ kind of potential.  Once the story really gets going, though, it’s only pretty good.  I don’t know if maybe, like Godzilla The Half Century War, it should have been a bit longer, like say 10 issues, or if the idea wasn’t quite as good as it seemed like it might be.  I’ll have to read the final chapter in the story to find out for sure.  Still, I love the art and there are a lot of intriguing ideas.  I want more of Thor doing intergalactic P.I. work.  Even the appearance of Iron Man, which initially bothered me (the first panel, with the two of them flying together, gave me that heart sinking feeling when you’re hoping for a new pony but get a pair of socks), is handled pretty well.

    “Get the boys to load her into the car--Then you can dump her like a gentleman.”  On a roll, I figured I’d read the first two issues of the new Rocketeer miniseries, Hollywood Horror.  Now, I love the Rocketeer and I love Lovecraftian horror.  And I even see ways they might work together.  This ain’t it.  I dislike the narrator intensely and I absolutely hate the art.  It’s like a super-crappy kids comic, the sort of thing only kids would be so lacking in sophistication as to accept as passable.  It looks like the worst stuff Cartoon Network dishes out.  Anyway, in spite of my Rocketeer love and immense gladness that the property is being developed, I can only hope that this isn’t a sign of things to come, simply a speed-bump along the way.

    “I really hope that brown river has something to do with chocolate…”  Yeah, they’re not that great, but Futurama comics give me a nice bite sized chuckle.  The writing is about on par with later seasons of the show, not the classic amazingness of the first few.  The art is fine.  It’s not something anyone needs to rush right out and buy, but if you’re looking for something quick that gives you a laugh, it’s a pretty good choice.

    And to round out my comic reading for the week, I ended up finally sitting down to the two Morbus Gravis trades I picked up years ago.  Man, I like the art.  I don’t think much of the content, though.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (3/31/13-4/6/13)

    Things didn’t quite go as planned over the weekend, but that let me finish off Rome’s first season on Sunday.  Good times.  Heck of a show.  It makes me want to watch some more solid historic stuff.  Agora, Centurion, Spartacus (the movie!), that sort of thing.

Rome Season 1:  “Let his heart be filled with sacred rage.”  Getting past the clean, civilized veneer slathered on Ancient Rome by Renaissance painters and Hollywood production designers, Rome reaches into the history to show the underbelly of lived-in antiquity.  Life was cheap, justice was not, and the people were hardly more than savages, for all their creativity and cunning.  I think lewd graffiti gets at the heart of Rome.  Here was a powerful city built by champions, spawning heroes, that delighted in large phalluses and dirty jokes.  A city where the tastes and smells of the known world, stretching from the Atlantic to Asia, from the brutal lands of central Europe to North Africa, where blood sacrifice and public murder were embraced and the lauded political forum could daily explode in bodily violence.  Of course, there’s the shrewd machinations and back stabbings one expects, with powerful and spiteful women working behind the scenes, while daring and charismatic men inspire great public works and grim massacre.  The series also puts a more human face on many of the names out of history, while telling the story of two soldiers (the only two addressed by name in Caesar’s war chronicles).  Pullo, the gregarious lout and Vorenus, the honorable man, forced together by circumstance, forged by conflict into best of friends.  Their struggles with turbulent times, with perfidious and tumultuous women, and with societal expectations of masculinity, along with their seemingly god-favored ability to survive, thrive, and be in the right place at the right time, makes for a compelling narrative.  It’s interesting that we hold Rome up as one of Humanity’s heights of civilization, when the histories seem to show it was rather savage, even for the time.  Alexandria seems to have been a far more civilized city, for example (still a warren of superstitious savagery).  I’m a little bummed they skipped over a great deal of the Cleopatra/Julius Caesar story.   None of her visit to Rome in the days leading up to Caesar’s assassination, for example.  Though I gather she features more in the second season, she seems to be little more than a footnote in the first, which from what I understand shouldn’t be.  Still, they only had twelve episodes, so I guess they couldn’t get into everything.  “I believe I shall go home and stupefy myself with wine…Good day to you all.” -Cicero

Forbidden Planet:  “Sorry Miss.  I was giving myself an oil-job.”  It doesn’t get much better than Forbidden Planet.  Taking inspiration from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, it pushed special effects technology to whole new levels, and set the stage for science fiction to come, especially and particularly Star Trek.  This wasn’t, as so many other 50s movies, about a rocket ship to the Moon, or even a first voyage to Mars.  This was set in a future where those things had already long been accomplished.  This was the sort of future history Asimov and Heinlein were writing about, where Humanity was living among the stars, finding all sorts of marvelous things.

French Quarter:  Holy crap, the narration in this film is infuriatingly crappy.  I think it’s supposed to sound like some kind of ‘down home’ wisdom, but it just sounds like a dumb old man jibber-jabbering.  He refers to a person as ‘half child, half girl, all woman.’  What?  TV guest villain of the week Bert is looking for a topless dancer, and a desperate blonde bimbo is all about it.  Then there’s time travel or something.  This movie was obviously put together by someone in love with old timey New Orleans, it’s music and sleaze.  Sadly, it wasn’t put together by someone who could write or direct a film.  Even the ‘sexy’ bits are kind of awkward and weird.  Still, the film has its charm.  Not really, but the girls are cute enough...I guess.

The American Astronaut:  “It was soft and round.  Now get back to work.”  A somewhat surreal science fiction musical, this oddly charming movie is the kind of crazy that goes on in my head when nobody is looking.  Weird moments, crazy dialog, catchy tunes, and a distinct visual style.  If I had two pennies to rub together, this is the kind of thing I’d love to be making.  Not for everyone, but for those few, a treat.

    Hanging with Brad on Monday, I had the profound misfortune of catching the season finale of The Walking Dead.  There’s a show that sucks.  After a fairly promising start, this show quickly did two bad things.  First (though I understand the need) it departed drastically from the comic series.  It might not have been so bad, had they not cut the emotional impact of every major character event that remained.  Second, they seem to have hired writers with absolutely no sense of character or drama.  The only thing I can manage to feel about anyone on the show is rage and contempt.  The women are all shrill monsters and the men all petty dullards.  I’m glad I quit this show.

My smartness done dripped out my eye-hole.

This Gun For Hire:  “And people ask me why I back shows.”  Dang nasty opening.  Another Graham Greene story on the silver screen, this time about a nasty piece of work hitman, foreign agents, a pretty dame, and all kinds of baddies.  Everyone is after something, and looking to screw everyone else over in this Noir type caper.  The actors are awesome, playing their fractured and demented characters.  I love the somewhat charming, delicate fat man, who abhors violence while orchestrating murders.  This is not one of the better genre films I’ve seen, but it’s pretty good and worth a watch.  Some nice bad behavior.

Rome Season 2:  “I recognize your symptoms.  I have the same sickness.”  Vorenus and Pullo are back for more blood and twisted morality.  In the aftermath of Caesar’s death, Rome and its people are in a bad way.  Vorenus descends into some very dark places, and Pullo is there, watching his back.  The friendship of these two unlikely heroes is the heart of the show.  With all the other fascinating and strange characters going about their back stabbing and grand stage horrors, two soldiers take on the world together.  Very cool.  There are some truly vile people, too.  Atia’s crocodile tears are perhaps the most disturbing of all.  A truly vicious and foul human.  But her son, Octavian makes for a compelling historic figure.  A strange and sullen, sometimes sickly boy, more wrapped up in his books (scrolls) than politics, he none the less contained a heart of iron and a will to rival the greats.  The universe mistreats Pullo and Vorenus on a grand scale.  Seeing them battle the forces set against them is harrowing but most satisfactory.  There are some elements I wish had been explored a bit more, including Cleopatra’s role in things.  She’s little more than a footnote in this series, her relationship with Julius Caesar almost non-existent.  Still, with only a combined 22 episodes for the whole series, they didn’t have enough time to go over everything.  There have been a great many portrayals of the Greek/Egyptian queen, each trying to capture some essence of a mysterious but terribly important figure in the history of the age.  Here, she exists as some kind of half-mad hophead, like some manic pixie dream girl of antiquity.

Centurion:  “Her soul is an empty vessel.  Only Roman blood can fill it.” Not finished with Rome when the show was over, I had to pop Centurion in the DVD player.  Based on the myth of the Ninth Legion’s disappearance, it manages to be a darned fun adventure film, with lots of nasty violence, all with just enough historic trappings to satisfy this viewer.  It’s also got one of those great collections of UK character actors these sorts of films always manage to attract.  Sadly, it does rely somewhat on CG blood.  Not as bad as some, but it’s there, none the less.  It’s especially frustrating because there are a lot of well done practical blood.  The movie looks good, moves quick, and is generally good, if not amazing.  One technical problem with the film is subtitles.  They’re so crazy small that they’re hard to read when not on the big screen.  An HD TV would probably be OK.

    I watched another disk of The Clone Wars.  Frustrating show in some ways.  It’s so good, but is so weighed down by how crappy the prequels were.  99% of my problems with the show are directly tied to its connections to the films.  Season 4 isn’t as good as some of the earlier stuff, but it’s still pretty good.

Broken Arrow:  Jimmy Stewart faces off against the Apaches in this fairly typical Cowboys & Indians Western.  This is really the sort of thing that turned me off to Westerns as a kid.  Shockingly there’s a hot Native girl played by a hot non-Native girl who needs to learn about kissing and wearing nice dresses and such.  I guess it took movies like this to help change people’s perception of Native American, but it’s still awkward and weird.  The romance with the young Native girl storyline always plays out pretty much the same.  Lead guy shows up, girl falls head over heels in love with him upon first sight (for no discernable reason), she’s promised to another, they defy cultural expectations, the previously betrothed guy dies, paving the way for a happy ending.  The only variation in this is the final end of the Native girl.  On rare occasions (like ‘very special’ episodes of 80s sitcoms), she dies to give the movie Oscar bate acting at the end.  Usually, they both ride off together, letting you know that all will be perfectly well between the Natives and the White Man.

    “What do you know about gods?!”  I watched two original Star Trek pilots as part of my movie review series.  Yeah, they’re not feature films, but it’s my article, so…bam!  I really dig those first glimpses of Trek.  Had the show only lived up.  I love the original show.  There are some great episodes.  But too few that reach for it the way The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before do.

The Big Heat:  “You’re on a hate binge.”  Glen Ford and Gloria Graham revenge the hell outta everyone dumb enough to cross ‘em in this ugly, ugly Noir classic.  Don’t scald a drunken hottie with coffee, ‘cause she will mess your stuff up.  And if you’re gonna blow up an honest cop, make sure you don’t take out the wrong person, or he will take you down.  Punks, thugs, thieves, and jerks of all kind get theirs and get it good.  It goes in directions that twist your guts around.  Great stuff.  Lee Marvin’s woman slapping hood is an especially loathsome heavy, too.

Space Academy:  Not as good as Jason of Star Command, this is an OK 70s sci-fi kids show.  It’s about on par with Ark II, which means it’s more often disappointing than cool.  The idea of the show isn’t bad, but the cast and the writing aren’t there.  And Jonathan Harris.  That is just an actor I can not get behind.  His acting is so broad, so stilted, I don’t know.  It wasn’t good.  He’s not awful in this show.  Not like his many terrible guest appearances in other sci-fi shows, or his dreadful starring role in Lost in Space.  But gah.

Wozzeck:  “Brandy is my lifeblood.”  War man.  It messes with the head.  Alban Berg’s strange opera gets a super strange 1996 presentation, with spinning CG blocks heralding scene changes, disturbing masked children, little houses, shifting stages, and generally disturbing images.  Franz (Dale Duesing) is a nice guy, but the world keeps crapping on his head.  I do love all the scenes with Dr. Coffin-nail.  By far my favorite character in the opera.  He should get his own opera.

The Mist:  “Stoning people who piss you off is OK.  They do it in the Bible don’t they?  And I got plenty of peas.”  The only way to watch this movie is in black & white.  Frank Darabont tried to release it that way, but was not allowed.  However, on DVD he was able to put it out officially.  There are some movies that just look better this way, or at least look great.  Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Phantom Menace and yes, The Mist.  As far as the movie itself, this is a pretty good old-style monster movie, part siege film, part Lovecraftian nightmare.  I’m not the biggest Stephen King fan (read: not a fan at all), and this movie does feature some of his particular failings, especially when it comes to the Marcia Gay Harden character who is outright infuriating from moment one.  It’s the story of a weird mist that comes down out of the mountains, bringing with it something strange.  A bunch of random folks (played by half the cast of The Walking Dead) end up trapped in a shop in a small Maine town.  The vocabulary is right for Maine (WZON, Portland, etc.), though the appearance is all off (it’s apparently Louisiana).  Unfortunately, as the movie goes on, it relies more an more on characters being as appallingly stupid as humanly possible.  Stop screaming.  Stop going slow.  Stop backing up.  Just go, go, GO!  I wish there was more of the last 5 or so minutes, with the walker in the mist, and all that, than there was of the middle hour, with all the Marcia Gay Harden and the stupid people.  Still, some cool monsters and a great, totally mean spirited ending.  One interesting thing is that two of the most heroic deeds in the film are done by supporting characters.  The supporting cast is quite good, actually.  I just wish the middle of the film and the heavy handed, anti-human stuff were better done, or largely excised.

Bikini Girls from the Lost Planet:  “I do read comic books.”  This may come as a surprise, but in spite of the title, this is not a good movie.  I don’t know why I recently thought, ‘why don’t I rent a Fred Olin Ray movie,’ but it happened, and this is the result.  Of course, the director is listed as Nicholas Medina, so I have even less idea why I got this.  Is that a pseudonym?  I do not know.  A bunch of porn actors make a not-quite-porn movie.  All the bad acting, plastic surgery, and fake boobs; none of the ‘substance.’  Oh, boy.  And I’ll bet you $1. that Frosted Tips’ first choice was not pretending to have sex with a woman.  Was the space ship set left over from another movie?  Because it looks pretty good, and far, far better put together than anything else (including the women) in this film.

Looking at the cover, I don't know how this wasn't great.

    For the next graphic novel club meeting, I read the first trade of the new Hawkeye series.  I guess I won’t talk about it here.  I’ll post the review after the meeting.  But after that, I went on to read the sixth issue, since Brad had passed it on to me a while back.  Again, it’s OK.  Kind of funny.  The whole Russian mob thing is weird.  Is that building to something?  I don’t know.  I still hate the art.

    I also finished volume 3 of Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing.  Good stuff.  The final story, Strange Fruit, is a bit broad, a bit heavy handed.  Still, the overall volume is good.

    After what seems like a bloody eternity, the final issue of Godzilla: The Half-Century War finally came out.  Nice explosive finish.  The issue is super action-heavy, without a heck of a lot of dialog, so it ended up flying by a bit faster than I’d have liked.  This is one of those comics where part of me wants it to go on longer, while the other part of me worries greater length might have diluted the cool.  Still, I think a ten issue run, instead of five might have been better.  But what we got was a really great ground level view of the world under the shadow of the greatest Kaiju of all time.  It does for Godzilla something of what Marvels did for the Marvel Universe.  A nice storytelling technique for such a venerable franchise.

    I also read the third issue of the new Star Wars ongoing series.  Not bad, though I don’t think the writer has quite captured Han Solo.  Maybe I’m off on that, but something doesn’t seem quite right.  Still, I like the art, the time period it’s set in, and the story seems solid.  This is the kind of Star Wars story I like to see, even if it does focus on the movie characters (I would generally prefer they use the setting, but expand the universe with new characters and story lines unrelated to the films).

-Matt