The first thing one notices about a comic book or graphic novel is the art, which is also an important element in enjoying the story. Unfortunately, the art for this book isn’t good. It is in a semi-manga style, where everyone looks the same, with the only cues being costume and skin color. And then there’s the writing. Comics being what they are, dialog is of key import, and the dialog here is stilted and unnatural. It’s not as bad as the Chris Claremont stuff I gripe about whenever I drag X-Men into a discussion, but it’s not very good, either.
I know that inter-party conflict, and heroes fighting (or just being awful to) heroes is a long standing tradition in the Marvel universe, but the regular Avengers (as opposed to the Young Avengers) are so unrelentingly awful that they seem far more villainous than the traditional villains. How are these guys supposed to be heroes at all? And then the X-Men show up, and they’re even bigger dicks.
Everyone keeps talking about who the most powerful person/mutant is. It sounds like kids arguing about whose dad can beat up the other’s. And with the introduction of each new hero and each new villain, it’s like an arms race of one-upmanship. “Oh, yeah? Here’s Magnito! Oh, yeah? Here’s Dr. Doom! Oh, yeah?…” And when they’re not blaming each other for every misfortune and imagined slight in the history of the Marvel universe, they’re blaming themselves. It’s this cycle of flip-flopping emotions that reminds me of the worst part of dating, where the only thing you can be sure of is that anything you do or say, or don’t do or say will be wrong.
This whole book is like a shopping list of things I hate about comics from the Big Two. It’s like tuning in to a soap opera, where the same handful of plotlines are running at any given time, with characters rotated in or out. X mutant is a good guy now; Y mutant is a bad guy; A mutant comes back from the dead; B mutant gets killed. And nobody learns anything about anything, making the same mistakes and choices over and over again, sending the story back around for another turn of the same old same old. I feel like I could pick up an issue of The Avengers or X-Men from 1969, 1989, 2009 or today and essentially, nothing will be different.
Avengers: The Children’s Crusade Author: Allan Heinberg Artist: Jim Cheung, etc. Publisher: Marvel ISBN: 978-0-7851-3638-5
I read comics very briefly as a young lad, and I was never into the spandex heroes. Heck, I didn’t even care for the Christopher Reeve Superman movies and I wasn’t all that enamored of Tim Burton’s take on Batman. Just not my bag. In junior high, when a friend convinced me to try X-Men all my fears and prejudices were confirmed. Chris Claremont’s ‘writing’ was so shockingly appalling that even my young brain was disgusted. They were starting the story over at #1, right? So you can just jump in, right? Wrong. Page 1, issue 1 and there’s still 30 years of back story being referenced, a gigantic cast of characters you’re supposed to know, and long running storylines you’re supposed to keep track of. All that sucked. But what really sucked was the dialog. Comics are a visual medium, so unless you’re Stan Lee and it’s the 60s, there’s really no excuse for dialog bubbles explaining in detail everything happening in the panel. And when there are two characters talking to each other, they don’t need to use each other’s name in every bubble. When I talk to my co-Dork Brad, it doesn’t sound like this: “Brad, I need you to get me some chips right now, Brad.” “Matt, I’m not getting you any chips today, Matt.” “Brad, now I am punching you in the face, Brad.” “Matt, your punches are like those of Kitty Pride, another mutant that was once part of our team but is now not part of our team and living in Canada, Matt.” Seriously. Worst. Writing. Ever. And it convinced me that comics weren’t my thing, a belief I held for well over a decade.
When I did finally get into comics, I still avoided the bigger titles from Marvel and DC and X-Men didn’t even enter into the equation. While I enjoyed the X-Men movies (except Wolverine: Origins…yeesh!), my memory was still haunted by the craptastic comics I’d read all those years ago. So, when I recently decided to join a newly birthed graphic novel book club, and Astonishing X-Men was chosen as the first book, I experienced a momentary twinge of trepidation. But, hey, I was riding the high of having just seen The Avengers, and hitting up Free Comic Book Day. I was feeling no pain, geek style. And Joss Whedon, for all his faults, is a real writer who earned the title; he didn’t just get it out of a Crackerjack box (Claremont!!!).
Right from the start you’ve got to know that this isn’t some kind of re-launch or reboot. The story starts after a lot of stuff that I don’t know jack squat about has just gone down, and the characters are all recovering and licking their wounds in the fragile peace. I know a few of the characters, either through the movies or from things I’ve gleaned over the years. Kitty Pride can move through solid objects. I knew that from some old comic book covers. Emma Frost was bad, but she’s good now. That seems to be big in these long running comics. Good guys who go bad, and bad guys who go good. And of course, they all go back and forth over the years. And of course, Wolverine and Professor X and a few others, I know from the movies and various dork conversations over the decades. The nice thing about this story is that it usually gives you enough background on past events that you get a gist of what happened, without feeling like it’s bashing you over the head with exposition or flashback.
There’s a lot of Whedon in the dialog, so it’s still stylized and slightly unnatural. But it’s not stilted and Whedon doesn’t feel the need to expressly describe every event in caption or word bubble. That alone makes this 100 times better than the issues I suffered through almost 25 years ago. Beast and Kitty Pride (Shdowcat?) are easily my favorite characters here. I still just don’t like Wolverine. He seems too ‘13 year old boy’ to me, like Venom or Lobo. Characters engineered to be ‘awesome’ to a young kid dealing with puberty and parents who don’t ‘get’ him. Scott (Cyclopes) is still a douche. He’s a character that always seems to have the short end, because he’s shoehorned into the leadership position, and he’s clearly got that stick wedged up his ass. But of course, he’s not good with people, so he’s usually right but nobody wants to listen. Ugh. That kind of dramatic tension gets old FAST. But nearly 50 years later, X-Men hasn’t hung it up. And something that I guess is very popular among the long time fans, but has always annoyed the crap out of me is the seemingly obligatory fights between team members. Wolverine and Cyclopes, then Wolverine and Beast battle it out for little reason, without advancing the plot. It feels like the stuff they gave that creepy name in anime fanboy circles (panty shots, cat girl costumes, and similar sketchy crap): “fan service.” *Shudder* That term is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies.
John Cassady’s art is quite nice. And Laura Martin’s coloring. There’s nothing amazing; no image that stands out after reading the volume. But it’s solid all the way through. Not at all manga looking, which is so nice to get away from in modern comics. Also, not the four-color, muscles on muscles, super-distorted perspective, everything exploding all the time look that was so big in the late 80s and early 90s.
Did this comic woo me into being an X-Men fan. Not hardly. I still don’t care for them. Too much teen angst and frankly, they don’t make a lot of sense in the larger Marvel universe. Why, in a world where the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, and so many other strange, monstrous, and marvelous characters exist, would people give two craps about mutants? Sure, disconnects of this sort do exist. I mean, we live in a world where mass slaughter happens, where we’re about 3 billion people past the sustainability point, where our atmosphere is starting to go into a crazy spiral that will reshape biological life for thousands of years, and where people with political power are actually trying to engineer a Biblically based apocalypse (no joke, read up on it), yet many people think that a guy marrying a guy is something we need to be seriously concerned with. So, this kind of perspective skewing isn’t unheard of, but with X-Men, it seems out of hand. A big chunk of what X-Men is about is the fear and hatred the masses feel for them…but why? Sure, they give reasons, but those reasons don’t ring true. What I think it comes down to is, ‘we need the crowd to hate our heroes, so that’s how they’re written,’ which I think is bad writing. I know, it lets them do all kinds of moral analogy tales, be it racism, gender bias, or what have you. And, if the X-Men existed in their own world, where all those other over the top crazy Marvel characters didn’t exist, I think it could really work. But they don’t, and it doesn’t. However, that’s a conceptual issue I blame on the powers that be at Marvel, and while they effect this volume, they are not caused by it. As a comic, this is a pretty good read. Not really my kind of thing, but good, none the less. The book left me with a few questions about past X-Men events that I’m going to have to look into. Like what’s the deal with this mutant paradise, Genosha? And really, I know the basics of the Jean Grey story, but what’s up with her haunting like everything that ever happens around the X-Men? Jean Grey is to the X-Men what World War II is to Captain America, it seems.
The second volume picks up where the first wrapped, continuing the story of Emma Frost and her mysterious allegiance. As well as pushing forward the whole Breakworld/Colossus plot. This volume sees Whedon doing his darnedest to make Cyclopes less of a tool, and eventually, he kind of succeeds. It feels like Whedon had become more confident and pushed more of his style of storytelling by this point. The characters, especially the women, take on more of his usual female voice. The quips have that certain something that lets you know who’s writing.
The first half of the volume deals with some crazy psychic stuff about the Hellfire club and whatever. Though it has a few cool moments, and there are a bunch of important bits of growth for characters, the actual plot never captured my interest. I also think it had a lot of references I didn’t get. The whole business with the green blob? What was that all about? I guess this story is rooted deeply in Emma Frost’s past, which I don’t know and honestly don’t care about. And scared child Wolverine is even more annoying than regular Wolverine.
In the second half, the crazy gets ramped up, as all the alien stuff that had been talked about and implied takes center stage. A voyage to Breakworld becomes a mystery as the details of the overall plot are unraveled, with plenty of twists and turns. The action is ramped up. There are lots of changes in relationships, new allies, new romances, new enemies, and as it’s Whedon, you know not everyone is going to make it. It’s never a matter of will he take someone out, it’s only a matter of who and when. Working within the constraints of the Marvel Universe, there’s only so much he can do to change things. But, unlike the exceptionally frustrating Planet Hulk arc, this one doesn’t just have a ‘reset’ button pressed in the final issue to take everything back to status quo. By the end, things have changed, characters have come and gone. I don’t know where they took the story after Whedon’s run, but it feels like he moved the setting forward a bit, at least.
There is also a lot less of the ‘everyone hates us mutants, even in a world where there are tons of other freaks of various sorts that they don’t seem to have that much problem with, for some reason’ whining in this volume. Perhaps because it moves away from the ‘cure’ storyline to a more cosmic thing. I guess it’s no surprise I preferred the last part of the story, what with my usual interest in the more cosmic type comics. If the X-Men spent their time traveling to other worlds or battling aliens, I’d be a heck of a lot more interested than I am reading about a bunch of mopey teenagers and teachers sitting around a school in upstate New York, waiting for the next congressional subcommittee to outlaw them, or ban mutant/non-mutant marriage, or whatever current social allegory the writers wanted to focus on next.
Still reading comics, though my rate declined considerably this week. Not a lot of movies. A couple more Jean Rollin films, to remind me why I think being a filmmaker in the 70s in France may have been one of history’s best jobs.
The Moon-Spinners: A couple of snooty Brits show up unexpected and unwanted to a village on Crete to sample some of the local color. But there’s some funny business going on, and Eli Wallach is at the center of it. It’s a pretty good caper film, with a nice exotic location.
Hot Tub Time Machine: “Well that makes sense.” In the 80s, our movies kept looking back to the 50s. Now, in the 2010s, we seem to enjoy looking back to the 80s. This movie, featuring a…yes, a Hot Tub Time Machine, is a shockingly funny, often crass but oddly sensitive look back to that crazy time of T&A movies and hard partying, when rocking hard enough, skiing, and wacky fashion were the name of the game. I feel like I enjoy this movie far more than I should. But it is a good look at friendship, even when it involves friends who are a-holes.
The Venture Brothers Season 3: “I gotta go where the blacktion is.” I love that this is basically a show about failure. Professional and personal failure. Romantic and physical failure. And the overall failure to achieve dreams both grand and intimate. As perverse and offensive as it is on the surface, there’s a deep bitterness that rings true. And season three has a lot more animated penis than you might expect.
The Iron Rose: OK, let me get out my Jean Rollin checklist. Pretty young woman? Check. A graveyard? Check. Lots of beautiful shots of various random locations? Check. Choppy editing? Check. Not a lot of ‘plot’ type business going on? Check. The only thing missing is Rollin’s signature wall to wall nudity. There’s shockingly little actually, when he gives himself plenty of opportunity to put in more. Like most of his films, it doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it’s an oddly captivating bit of fluff. I guess his work is more like a painting that is nice to look at, but doesn’t seem to say much.
Alien: Resurrection: My love of this film has diminished over the years. I think in part, I had Star Trek VI Syndrome (aka: Revenge of the Sith Syndrome). You know, when the previous movie is so bloody awful that even though the next one sucks, it seems pretty good, because it’s SO much better than the previous. Anyway, the movie has some great stuff. Some really cool scenes and sets and costumes. There are some great ideas. But the script is wonky and some of the performances are not good. Winona Ryder especially is really awful but she’s not alone. The CGI ranges from good to crap, though it’s generally better than Alien 3’s. It’s probably the most overtly sexual of the films. In fact, probably the only one to expand on the first film’s hints.
Doctor Who: The Five Doctors: These episodes really don’t work, but they’re kind of fun because you get to see all the old actors back, not just Doctor incarnations, but a few of his companions, too; all the way back to Susan for crying out loud. Sadly, they also drag out The Master…yet again. The Death Zone, huh. The actor playing the first Doctor does a fair job, but it’s still a bit distracting having someone other than Hartnell in the role. John Pertwee looks amazingly good. Patrick Troughton is starting to show his age, but is pretty spry. Tom Baker is only a few years retried for the role. Seriously, they drag out so many companions. There’s a fairly interesting mystery/revelation. Not much plot, really. Just ‘here they are’…‘there they go’…‘yup, that was them.’ But considering how many long lost actors and characters they needed to work into the story, it’s pretty well done. And remember to always reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
Spy Game: As Brad Pitt was starting his transition from young shaved chimp to older actor (Oceans 11 being the turning point), he made this Tony Scott actioner. Head games, twists, turns, betrayals, and all kinds of spy business are committed to tinted, quick-cut, and generally Scotted film. He hadn’t reached the levels of Man on Fire or the extreme levels of Domino by this point, keeping things much more in the style of Enemy of the State. In fact, this would probably be a good companion film for that. Redford is less insufferable than usual, which is nice. A solid 90s spy/Mid-East conflict film along the lines of The Siege or The Peacemaker.
Requiem For a Vampire: How many clown shoot-outs did the last movie you saw have? If the answer is zero, then you’re missing out. Two young women dressed as clowns (who are likely Doors fans), wander around the French country side in that way women do in Jean Rollin films. I’d love to be the dialog editor on a film like this. Girl 1: “…” Girl 2: “…” Girl 1: “…” Classic. Obviously, there’s a graveyard (it is a Jean Rollin film). And there are beautiful girls and beautiful scenery. Not a lot of plot or talking. It has that vague logic-free feel of dreams, which I think might be the thing that keeps bringing me back to his movies. Its not that they’re good. They’re not. Yet, they’re oddly compelling in a way that transcends their schlocky Euro-trash T&A horror movie status.
Dragnet: As a boy, I thought this movie was the bee’s knees. It’s so 80s goofy. Back when Tom Hanks was the clown prince (well before his Oscar days). I absolutely loved the jokes, which are, to say the very least, corny. I loved the performances, especially Christopher Plummer. Today?…Well, it’s OK. There are some very funny bits, and Christopher Plummer is still awesome. But let’s be honest. It’s a dumb movie that pretty much spits in the face of the original show.
Prometheus: Well, it’s never pleasant when a highly anticipated film doesn’t live up. I try, and generally succeed, not to build up films too much before seeing them. Oh, sure, I want certain ones to blow me away, but generally, I’m just happy if it doesn’t suck and extra happy if it’s awesome. However, when a movie like this comes along, having SO much good going for it, yet doesn’t end up being all that great, I get pretty bummed. As so often happens, the biggest failure is in the writing. There’s a potentially cool story, but the end is crap. There is only one interesting character, and he isn’t explored very much at all. And if anything, this movie has too many connections to Alien, considering it really isn’t a prequel (seriously, think about it; it’s not; though yes, it’s in the same universe). I’ve never liked Ridley Scott’s idea that the alien was some kind of bio-weapon. I think it diminishes them as a species, taking away the glory of their evolutionary struggle. So, in a way, I was never going to be completely happy with this film. But, getting beyond that, after enjoying a lot of the first two thirds, the movie started to loose me when they introduced a new character, then totally lost me when they introduced…well, someone else (I’m not telling). And the finale was no good at all. The film looks flippin’ amazing, and there are some truly gorgeous images, both natural and very unnatural. The tech design is nice and the sets impressive. But it certainly doesn’t have the memorable and loveable characters that Alien had, which would have gone a LONG way toward making this a good film. Leaving the theater, I felt much like I did upon finishing Hellboy 2, empty. I want to grab the film by its shoulders and scream, ‘Why aren’t you better!?’
A thought I had after watching Prometheus is that a lot of folks making science fiction, especially in the realm of film (and TV) don’t really seem to get or like science. There is a lot of backward, superstitious thinking and fear, of technology, of the unknown, of truth. I think in part, it goes back to the fear that Lovecraft tapped into, the fear of understanding. I think for a lot of people, understanding that they are not important; that the universe will not register them or their lives in any grand-scale way; that they are, like everyone else, the product of millions of years of undirected, unplanned natural processes; makes them feel some kind of soul shaking terror. This fear creeps in to a lot of sci-fi movies, and it’s in Prometheus. There’s a difference between rational fear, that of a real danger and the fear of understanding. Rational fear makes you do things like properly prepare and attempt to avoid unnecessarily dangerous situations. Fear of understanding makes you stop looking, stop going forward. It makes you turn to musty old books of fairy stories, written by bronze age savages. It makes you hate well educated people (calling them elitist, as though knowledge is dirty). It makes you hold on to fetishes to ward off evil. It makes you ascribe will to natural phenomena. And give meaning to things that have none. I wish that movies, science fiction especially, featured a lot less magical thinking, and a lot more genuine thinking. Less fear of the unknown (which is really fear learning) and more love of the question.
I'm gonna do science on you so hard!
Now, Prometheus isn’t as science hating as movies like The Happening, Knowing, or 99% of science fiction made in the 70s. But the scientists act more like priests and failed seekers than men and women of science. The only one who seems to actually know what’s up is the one character in the film I genuinely cared about, the android. He seemed to be the only one to be curious and respectful of what he found. So, of course, he’s kind of a villain. Apparently to be a hero in a modern science fiction film, you’ve got to ‘let go’ and ‘just believe’ in some clap-trap. You certainly can’t use logic, ask questions, test a hypothesis, weigh results, or formulate a theory. No wonder we haven’t been to the moon in 40 years and 60% of the population thinks The Flinstones was a documentary.
As I said, I didn’t get as much comic reading done this week as I did last. But I read some fun stuff. Brad said he had some more comics to pass off to me, so those will be coming up.
Ed Brubaker’s run on Captain America was one of the first of Marvel’s ‘mainstream’ comics I think I read. I liked all the Cold War and World War II themes and deep history. The art was sure nice. And generally, I liked the story and writing. But, as I tend to do with long running comics, I got distracted and don’t think I ever finished the second story arc, Red Menace. I’ve kept up in the most passing of ways with the progress of Captain America since, through his death, the Civil War, replacement with Bucky, rebirth, etc. But I didn’t read any of the actual comics for any of that. So last week, Brad gave passed me the first five issues of the Bucky centered comic series Winter Soldier. Issue one gets right into it, with the Winter Soldier (Bucky) and Black Widow infiltrating and spy-smashing. Right off, there are lots of connections to both of their pasts with the Russians during the Cold War. Sleeper agents, mad science, and nefarious deeds. And a heck of an end. This is generally more my cup of tea than say the X-Men or the Avengers. I prefer the semi-realistic/semi-pulp vibe of Cap and Bucky and the spies and soldiers to the mutant powers. The art in this is strange. It looks at times like degraded photographs.
“I’m not losing my mind here…That gorilla just used a jetpack, right?” Issue 2 of Winter Soldier has the mystery getting deeper and the duo in hot pursuit of all kinds of shadowy figures. A brief appearance from Nick Fury doing some serious butt kicking is a nice aside.
The third issue of Winter Soldier features more investigation and weird tech, and lots of references to the larger Marvel universe and its recent history. As someone who doesn’t read much Marvel, it’s sometimes interesting to hear characters talk about events like the dismantling of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Reed Richards and such. And what’s up with Dr. Doom? I guess we’ll find out.
The plans within plans begin to unravel and be revealed, as the stakes are raised. Dr. Doom is a bit too Saturday morning cartoonish, and doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the comic. I guess they’ve got to keep him in line with how he’s normally portrayed, but it’s weird. I like all the spy stuff, and the assassination business. Even the crazy cyborg chick who wants to start a war is pretty cool. But I don’t know. Doom is kind of goofy.
The Longest Winter storyline of Winter Soldier wraps up in issue 5. The finale is pretty much one long action scene, with lots of jumping, machine gunning, and the like. The post climax revenge bit is pretty cool though. Overall, the five issue story is pretty good, though again, Doom is pretty silly. He seems like a character that could be pretty cool; a super-genius ruler of his own nation, in a kickass armored suit. But I think he’s just always been written like an old time movie serial villain, missing only a mustache to twirl.
What do you get when you put Garth Ennis on a Marvel MAX line? Well, lots and lots and lots of expletives, mostly. And some violence on occasion. Fury: My War Gone By could be a pretty cool comic. Issue one goes back to the 50s during the buildup to the Vietnam war. We find Nick Fury exiled because of an act of heroism that didn’t go unpunished. As various forces play chess in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Fury watches, trying to make the best of his lot. The look and feel is very retro, with a gritty, ugly look at life for soldiers during a tenuous peace. No superheroes or what have you. Just men and a woman in the sweltering heat as all hell rolls toward them. That all said, the constant use of expletives starts to feel almost like a parody at times. And what is it with comics that you can show all kinds of violence, but you can barely even talk about sex, and certainly not show it? I guess it’s the same on TV, though. There’s a weird phenomena in the Marvel universe, where a lot of their characters have been alive and relatively fit and young for a very, very long time. I’d kind of like to see them deal with that a bit more. Fury is a very, very old man. The Black Widow, though still looking quite young, has been active since what, the 50s? Many of the X-Men, Reed Richards, and others have been going fairly strong since the 60s. Shouldn’t that do something to people?
I guess the powers that be at Marvel felt they had to restart Captain America around the time of the recent film. I’m not sure why, as it’s still Ed Brubaker writing and follows the ongoing story. Getting past that, I still like Brubaker’s take on the character, with World War II always weighing heavily on his consciousness. I don’t know if Bravo is a new invention for this story. I’ll have to look. I’ll have to see how this series goes.
Keeping with the Captain America theme, I read the 70th Anniversary Issue (#616). It’s a collection of shorts with a kind of retrospective feel. The one really frustrating thing is that the Bucky story, Gulag part 1 doesn’t have a part 2 in this book, nor do I know where it appears. Still, the other stories are all self contained and as with most anthologies, vary in style and quality. My favorite is probably Howard Chaykin’s Opaque Shadows. My least favorite is easily Operation: Tooth Fairy, which is just goofy in look and content.
In preparation for the upcoming first meeting of Lisa’s new graphic novel book club, I read the first Astonishing X-Men (review coming after meeting).
A lot of this week was spent in a sort of anticipation of seeing Prometheus, plus, I’ve been kind of busy on a lot of nights, so I didn’t get to the reading I wanted to. I’m hoping this next week will not only give me a bit more reading time, but also some good weather to hit the road on my bike. I would not lament a week without a near constant threat of rain.
Chris Claremont is one of the comic industry’s stars, but having read a few things from him, I’ve been less than impressed. In fact, it was partially due to reading some of his run on X-Men that I had such a negative view of comics, which took a great deal of time and effort to overcome. This creates a big problem when reading Volume 2 of the Aliens VS Predator omnibus series (are there more coming?!), because it begins with and is dominated by the nearly 300 page arc Deadliest of the Species.
Almost three fourths of the book is comprised of that one story, written by Claremont, and sadly, not well. There are a few intriguing ideas, and a few cool images, but the story is pretty stupid, and the finale just awful. Much of the last 60 pages of the story is exposition, back story, and explanation, which more often than not doesn’t lead to any kind of satisfaction on the part of the reader. And when the big reveal of who is behind everything happens…well, let’s just say, it could have been better, less typical.
Once that story is finally done, the last hundred or so pages are a collection of mostly short stories that are entertaining, if brief. Though brief is pretty welcome by then. Hell-Bent and Chained to Life and Death are probably the best. I’m intrigued by the possibilities presented in Pursuit, but that short feels like the introduction to something. Is there anything more? Not in this volume.
Thanks largely to that massive and lackluster Claremont story, this volume isn’t nearly as enjoyable as the first volume. And sadly, to this point, I’ve seen no indication of another.
Aliens VS. Predator Omnibus Volume 2
Author: Chris Claremont, etc.
Art: Jackson Guice
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
ISBN: 978-1-59307-829-4
Pages: 458
Wow, the Golden Gate Bridge has taken some serious punishment in Hollywood. Check out the below PSA to truly understand it's cinematic staying power. And, yeah, we gotta keep Magneto away from this thing.
Imagine a world when Terence Stamp played James Bond. And John Wayne played Bill to Marilynn Monroe's The Bride. And Dolph Lundgren put on the symbiote Venom. That is the magical universe that master photoshopper Sean Hartter lives in and I want you to live in it too. Below are some of my favorites of his, but you should definitely check out his blog for more of these mad beauties. Thanks to Rue Morgue for the Facebook link.
