It's not really a big announcement, since 90% of the people who read this blog are friends and family, and I've already told all of them, but this is the point where anyone who just stumbled onto this blog while looking for Doctor Seuss fanfic and discussions of zombies finds out...
I'm now officially contracted to write 'The Crossover Companion', for TwoMorrows Press, due sometime in 2007. It'll be a comprehensive look at the crossover phenomenon in comics, starting from the earliest idea that each company's stories all took place in the same fictional universe, and moving forward to examine the "event" crossovers that became a permanent fixture of the industry (for good and bad) in the 80s, 90s, and on through the present day. It will also serve as a guide to these crossovers for anyone who wants to know what titles spun off out of 'Zero Hour', who wrote 'Secret Wars II', what happened in 'Unity', and who died in 'Extreme Prejudice' (assuming anyone on this Earth actually cares who died in 'Extreme Prejudice'.)
It'll be about 200 pages, and I'll give details on things like price, cover artist, and similar once they're forthcoming. I hope everyone enjoys it. I also hope they buy it, since I get a cut of every copy.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Friday, July 14, 2006
In Defense of the Status Quo
Let's face it--everyone hates the status quo. People equate the phrase with stagnation, boredom, lifelessness, and a flat unchanging nothing. Everyone insists that stories should "kick against the status quo" (especially in comics, where there's practically a jihad going on between people who hate it and people who love it.) And nobody seems to understand what the damn thing is. So here's a quick explanation of what a status quo is, and why you should love it.
Any series (not just comics series, but TV, movie, video game, manga, what have you--any setting that is designed to tell multiple stories based around a character or group of characters) must have a status quo. That status quo is the baseline setting and context for the series, and it functions as a generator of stories. That status quo can be anything from "a group of people in the workplace that don't get along very well" to "a man with a magic box that lets him go anywhere in space and time" to "a mystery writer who actually solves mysteries" to "a group of mutant superheroes that help a world that fears and hates them." (Obviously, these are just thumbnail descriptions: A real "status quo" for a series involves descriptions of each character, what makes them tick, the world they operate in, their relationships to each other, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.)
That phrase, "a generator of stories," is an important one. It means that there are stories you can tell about these people that come out of the setting and context you establish, stories that are interesting in and of themselves. Obviously, not all status quos are created equal. There are a lot more interesting stories you can tell about "a man with a magic box that lets him go anywhere in space and time" than you can about "a group of people in the workplace that don't get along very well", which is why 'Doctor Who' is still going after 43 years and even a great workplace sitcom like 'NewsRadio' only lasted five. Not all settings and contexts have the same number of interesting stories to tell about them; some have very few.
Now, this is where the comics community has bandied about terms like "real change vs. the illusion of change". There are two factions in comics that each have very strong views about making major changes to a comic book; the "real change" people insist that change is an important, naturalistic element of story-telling, and that by forcing the characters to conform to an unchanging model, they've made them stagnant and lifeless; the "illusion of change" people insist that when you make major changes to a character, you're losing as much as you gain, and all too often you can lose the thing that makes the character special.
But here's where our above definition of "status quo" comes in, because it not only explains away the seeming contradiction between the two, but also explains the existence of the third type of story that neither side seems to acknowledge: The story that is exciting without having either change or the illusion thereof. That type of story is the kind that the status quo generates directly out of its context and setting, and if it's a good status quo, you should be able to tell a lot of those. The X-Men can go out and save the world a lot without needing to make changes in their setting and context, and it'll probably be exciting.
But "illusion of change vs. real change" translates, here, into "deviation from, and return to the status quo vs. transition from one status quo to another new status quo." An "illusion of change" story is one where something happens to upset the status quo, the setting and context of the characters' lives, and their efforts to return things to said status quo. For example, the X-Men went through a very long "illusion of change" story from Uncanny X-Men #200-280, where Professor X left Earth, the team faked their deaths and moved to Australia, the mansion was destroyed, and several characters lost their memories of being X-Men, all before Professor X finally returned and helped set things to rights. (Which brings up an interesting point: That storyline wasn't well received, because it went on for a very long time and people were frustrated that there seemed to be no end to the changes. You can only deviate from the status quo so long and so far because "meaning" comes from setting and context--without a world to ground the story you're telling, it becomes pointless. Status quos are necessary because they provide that context. But I digress.)
"Real change" stories, on the other hand, change the status quo to an entirely new one. They demolish the old story-generating engine, and create a new one. For example, Batgirl got shot in the back, suffering permanent spinal damage that confined her to a wheelchair, and became the tech-savvy Oracle, leader and mastermind of the female super-hero team, 'The Birds of Prey'. That's a significant and permanent change--you're telling a completely different type of story with Barbara Gordon than you told thirty years ago. You have a different status quo.
So, here's where it all comes together. "Real change" fans think that they're advocating "no status quo", but you can't do that, because a status quo is simply a context and setting to your character's continuing adventures, which is absolutely necessary to give the story its emotional grounding. They're simply advocating that status quos should feel free to change. "Illusion of change" fans recognize the point brought up back near the beginning: Not all status quos are created equal. Not all story-generating engines have the same number of stories in them, nor the same quality. (Notice how 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' tended to founder a bit after they left high school? New status quo, not as many good stories in it.) Changing to a new status quo is only a good idea if the new status quo has as many or more good stories in it. Otherwise, you're just closing off interesting possibilities. Which means that changing the status quo shouldn't be done lightly or often, especially in comics--a lot of these status quos have managed to keep going for decades because there are so many interesting stories to tell with them; changing the engine could wreck it, and it takes time and effort to fix something like that. (Witness the 'Clone Saga'.)
There ya go. Why status quo is important, why it should be viewed as valuable, and why you shouldn't tinker with it too much when you're writing an open-ended series (like, say, having Scott Summers get mind-controlled by Jean Grey's ghost into falling in love with the White Queen, right before you leave the series.) And all in just a few hundred easy paragraphs.
Any series (not just comics series, but TV, movie, video game, manga, what have you--any setting that is designed to tell multiple stories based around a character or group of characters) must have a status quo. That status quo is the baseline setting and context for the series, and it functions as a generator of stories. That status quo can be anything from "a group of people in the workplace that don't get along very well" to "a man with a magic box that lets him go anywhere in space and time" to "a mystery writer who actually solves mysteries" to "a group of mutant superheroes that help a world that fears and hates them." (Obviously, these are just thumbnail descriptions: A real "status quo" for a series involves descriptions of each character, what makes them tick, the world they operate in, their relationships to each other, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.)
That phrase, "a generator of stories," is an important one. It means that there are stories you can tell about these people that come out of the setting and context you establish, stories that are interesting in and of themselves. Obviously, not all status quos are created equal. There are a lot more interesting stories you can tell about "a man with a magic box that lets him go anywhere in space and time" than you can about "a group of people in the workplace that don't get along very well", which is why 'Doctor Who' is still going after 43 years and even a great workplace sitcom like 'NewsRadio' only lasted five. Not all settings and contexts have the same number of interesting stories to tell about them; some have very few.
Now, this is where the comics community has bandied about terms like "real change vs. the illusion of change". There are two factions in comics that each have very strong views about making major changes to a comic book; the "real change" people insist that change is an important, naturalistic element of story-telling, and that by forcing the characters to conform to an unchanging model, they've made them stagnant and lifeless; the "illusion of change" people insist that when you make major changes to a character, you're losing as much as you gain, and all too often you can lose the thing that makes the character special.
But here's where our above definition of "status quo" comes in, because it not only explains away the seeming contradiction between the two, but also explains the existence of the third type of story that neither side seems to acknowledge: The story that is exciting without having either change or the illusion thereof. That type of story is the kind that the status quo generates directly out of its context and setting, and if it's a good status quo, you should be able to tell a lot of those. The X-Men can go out and save the world a lot without needing to make changes in their setting and context, and it'll probably be exciting.
But "illusion of change vs. real change" translates, here, into "deviation from, and return to the status quo vs. transition from one status quo to another new status quo." An "illusion of change" story is one where something happens to upset the status quo, the setting and context of the characters' lives, and their efforts to return things to said status quo. For example, the X-Men went through a very long "illusion of change" story from Uncanny X-Men #200-280, where Professor X left Earth, the team faked their deaths and moved to Australia, the mansion was destroyed, and several characters lost their memories of being X-Men, all before Professor X finally returned and helped set things to rights. (Which brings up an interesting point: That storyline wasn't well received, because it went on for a very long time and people were frustrated that there seemed to be no end to the changes. You can only deviate from the status quo so long and so far because "meaning" comes from setting and context--without a world to ground the story you're telling, it becomes pointless. Status quos are necessary because they provide that context. But I digress.)
"Real change" stories, on the other hand, change the status quo to an entirely new one. They demolish the old story-generating engine, and create a new one. For example, Batgirl got shot in the back, suffering permanent spinal damage that confined her to a wheelchair, and became the tech-savvy Oracle, leader and mastermind of the female super-hero team, 'The Birds of Prey'. That's a significant and permanent change--you're telling a completely different type of story with Barbara Gordon than you told thirty years ago. You have a different status quo.
So, here's where it all comes together. "Real change" fans think that they're advocating "no status quo", but you can't do that, because a status quo is simply a context and setting to your character's continuing adventures, which is absolutely necessary to give the story its emotional grounding. They're simply advocating that status quos should feel free to change. "Illusion of change" fans recognize the point brought up back near the beginning: Not all status quos are created equal. Not all story-generating engines have the same number of stories in them, nor the same quality. (Notice how 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' tended to founder a bit after they left high school? New status quo, not as many good stories in it.) Changing to a new status quo is only a good idea if the new status quo has as many or more good stories in it. Otherwise, you're just closing off interesting possibilities. Which means that changing the status quo shouldn't be done lightly or often, especially in comics--a lot of these status quos have managed to keep going for decades because there are so many interesting stories to tell with them; changing the engine could wreck it, and it takes time and effort to fix something like that. (Witness the 'Clone Saga'.)
There ya go. Why status quo is important, why it should be viewed as valuable, and why you shouldn't tinker with it too much when you're writing an open-ended series (like, say, having Scott Summers get mind-controlled by Jean Grey's ghost into falling in love with the White Queen, right before you leave the series.) And all in just a few hundred easy paragraphs.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
"And I'd Survive, Too!"
Unbidden, the memory of reading about the medical condition known as "hyponatremia" popped into my head last night--it's a dangerous medical condition caused by over-hydrating (usually done by marathon runners who are over-eager to prevent dehydration) where the sodium levels in the blood drop too far. It can lead to all sorts of unpleasant symptoms, and can even be fatal.
It got me thinking about marathons in general, and I had to wonder, "How did all this get started?" I mean, yes, we've all heard the legend about the Battle of Marathon, and the Greek soldier who ran all the way from Marathon to Athens, proclaimed the Athenian victory, then keeled over dead.
What I wanna know is, who looked down at the guy's corpse and said, "I bet I could beat his time"?
It got me thinking about marathons in general, and I had to wonder, "How did all this get started?" I mean, yes, we've all heard the legend about the Battle of Marathon, and the Greek soldier who ran all the way from Marathon to Athens, proclaimed the Athenian victory, then keeled over dead.
What I wanna know is, who looked down at the guy's corpse and said, "I bet I could beat his time"?
Friday, July 07, 2006
The S-Word
I read 'X-23: Innocence Lost' and 'NYX: Wannabe' recently, the two books that brought X-23 into the Marvel Universe (X-23 is a clone of Wolverine that, for various reasons, wound up being female). I'm not generally a person who goes into these things seeing any sort of political or subtextual agenda, and I generally enjoy my comfortable obliviousness to said agendas, but...wow, these books are pathetically sexist.
There. I've said it, and I'd say it again if I had to.
Basically, there's a certain element of laziness to X-23's origin story. She's "Wolverine as a teenage girl". Her origin is pretty much exactly the same, beat for beat, except where they felt they should change things to make them more "female". And that's where the sexism comes in. Because, you see, while Weapon X escaped from the project because they were torturing her, X-23 had a female scientist who acted as surrogate mother to the clone and felt all maternal to her (see, she lost her scientific detachment and went all gooey for the girl once she was born, because that's just what women do.) And it was Mom who helped X-23 decide that she needed to escape (because X-23 wouldn't have done it on her own, or something.) Mom dies in the escape, and X-23 is left on her own...
...and when we next see her, she's a hooker.
Do I even need to add anything to that last statement? Do I even need to explain what is so staggeringly, pathetically, loathesomely sexist about the idea that any woman who winds up on her own in a large city for more than a week winds up under the thumb of a domineering pimp, even one who can leave people's body parts in different zip codes and doesn't need money to survive? Do I need to point out that there's absolutely no explanation given for her career move--she just shows up in the book, and hey look, she's a hooker, and the writer (who is also, disappointingly enough, the editor-in-chief of Marvel) just expects us to accept that, no questions asked, because that is after all what women do?
Sometimes I wonder about this medium.
There. I've said it, and I'd say it again if I had to.
Basically, there's a certain element of laziness to X-23's origin story. She's "Wolverine as a teenage girl". Her origin is pretty much exactly the same, beat for beat, except where they felt they should change things to make them more "female". And that's where the sexism comes in. Because, you see, while Weapon X escaped from the project because they were torturing her, X-23 had a female scientist who acted as surrogate mother to the clone and felt all maternal to her (see, she lost her scientific detachment and went all gooey for the girl once she was born, because that's just what women do.) And it was Mom who helped X-23 decide that she needed to escape (because X-23 wouldn't have done it on her own, or something.) Mom dies in the escape, and X-23 is left on her own...
...and when we next see her, she's a hooker.
Do I even need to add anything to that last statement? Do I even need to explain what is so staggeringly, pathetically, loathesomely sexist about the idea that any woman who winds up on her own in a large city for more than a week winds up under the thumb of a domineering pimp, even one who can leave people's body parts in different zip codes and doesn't need money to survive? Do I need to point out that there's absolutely no explanation given for her career move--she just shows up in the book, and hey look, she's a hooker, and the writer (who is also, disappointingly enough, the editor-in-chief of Marvel) just expects us to accept that, no questions asked, because that is after all what women do?
Sometimes I wonder about this medium.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
DC Zombies
After reading 'Ultimate Fantastic Four Volume Five' (now a strong contender for Awesomest Thing Ever), I'm fully up to speed on the Marvel Zombieverse--an alternate reality just like the regular Marvel Universe, except that "three days ago", one of the super-heroes got infected with a virus that gave him an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Human, and super-human.
And now, every super-hero in the Marvel Universe is a rotting, insane, super-zombie.
So naturally, that led me to think: How would the DC version of this go? So here's the basic plot of the three issue "DC Zombies" mini-series.
Issue One: Outbreak. Access (the DC/Marvel jointly-owned character who can freely travel between continuities) teleports into Gotham City, looking for help from its heroes. But he's already infected, and by the time he finds Robin, he starts gnawing on him instead of asking him for assistance. Robin fends off his assailant, but a trail of victims tells him that Gotham's already in trouble. The infection spreads through the city, snagging both Nightwing and the Mad Hatter (who are locked in combat at the time.) Nightwing delivers the Mad Hatter to Arkham before succumbing to the infection himself.
At dawn, Batman returns to the Batcave, having narrowly escaped infection several times, and broadcasts word to the JLA that he needs help quarantining the city. Superman arrives, bringing with him Wonder Woman, the Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern, but it's already too late--isolated reports of infection have come through from Metropolis and Fawcett City, and it appears to be spreading west. Then worse news arrives, as dozens of super-zombie-criminals break out of Arkham, led by a zombie Amygdala and a zombie Killer Croc. The JLA attempt to contain them, but the issue ends with Kiler Croc chomping down on Superman's shoulder.
Issue Two: The Hunt. The battle with the JLA concludes in disaster, as Superman flees the battle, and Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter are both infected. Green Lantern is forced to retreat, and zombie Wonder Woman and zombie Martian Manhunter begin circling the globe spreading the infection. Batman goes into zombie-infested Gotham to find Nightwing and Robin, getting updates from Oracle as he does so. (Oracle is on a Blackhawk plane, circling the globe herself, and is hence safe from the plague, but she's already starting to worry about refueling.) Oracle delivers updates from Coast City, where Hal Jordan tries to hold off zombie Sinestro, from Fawcett City, where Captain Marvel is nowhere to be found (we see Billy Batson starting to shout "Sha--" before a zombie sinks its teeth into his cheek), and all over the world.
Superman, meanwhile, contacts Batman to tell him that his powers aren't enough to hold the infection at bay, and he's losing control to the hunger. When he fled, it was to attain orbit--the more sunlight he gets, the more powerful he becomes and the better he can fight the infection, so he had to get out of the atmosphere to avoid atmospheric scatter. But it's still not enough. He informs Batman that he's flying at top speed towards the sun--he'll either get strong enough to burn out the infection completely, or he'll vaporize in the sun's heat. Either way, the world will be safe from him.
Meanwhile, Oracle continues to receive reports of heroes fighting zombies. Swamp Thing is attacked by zombie versions of Doctor Fate and Zatanna, and is forced to abandon his physical body, only to discover that he's brought the infection into the Green itself. Buddy Baker, meanwhile, finds that he's done the same with the Red. Nature begins to eat itself as the infection spreads.
We cut back to Batman, in the Batcave. The JLA teleporter has been disabled. Nightwing and Robin are pinned to the ground with Batarangs through their hands and ankles, each one muzzled to prevent accidents. And Batman begins working on a cure.
Book Three: The Cure. Oracle acts as pronouncer of the end of the world, from two miles above it. Her reports come in from every city, and she dutifully relays them to Batman. The Green Lantern Corps has abandoned Earth and recalled its ring-bearers. (Back on Oa, we see a zombie Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, and John Stewart slugging it out with the rest of the Green Lanterns, in the first battle of the Green Lantern Corps and the Green Lantern Corpse.) The few people immune to the zombie plague are being killed. (Hawk, Dove, and Black Adam, each with magical bodies, are being ripped apart--literally--by the JSA.) Nobody knows what's happened to Captain Marvel. (We see a young boy, his jaw half-ripped-off, shouting "a-am!" ineffectually through shredded lips.) Poison Ivy's own plants have attacked her, infecting her, and the Floronic Man has spontaneously zombified. Things have gone from bad to worse to worst...
Then they go to the level past worst, as zombie Power Girl and zombie Supergirl each take a wing of Oracle's plane and make a wish. But back in the Batcave, Batman's made a breakthrough. He's got a drug that appears to be able to stem the hunger, like methadone for a heroin addict. It doesn't cure the infection, but the patient becomes rational. He makes the dangerous test of it, releasing zombie Nightwing from his muzzle...but Dick's sane now. He doesn't attack.
Power Girl does, though. She and Supergirl come smashing into the Batcave, its location supplied to them by zombie Oracle. Batman fires darts filled with the "cure" at them, but their bullet-proof skin repels it, and he's forced to flee. Dick and Tim are left behind in the Batcave, the formula for the "cure" unfortunately lost in the Batcomputer that was buried under tons of rubble in the fight, and knowing they'll succumb to the hunger without it.
Batman, meanwhile, flees for his life through zombie Gotham. He manages to elude Power Girl and Supergirl by ducking through lead-lined subway tunnels, and thinks he's escaped...but one of his own Batarangs slicing into his Achilles tendons tells him otherwise. He limps away, expecting to see Nightwing when he turns...but instead it's zombie Oracle, wheeling herself towards him with an evil grin. She pulls him down, and begins to feed...
Two weeks later, and Superman finally returns. He's cured--it took a plunge into the very heart of the sun, a risk he'd never have taken if not for the need to cure the infection, but he's free of it now, and more powerful than ever. He's ready to save the world! But he sees, as he arrives, that it's too late. He's met by the zombie super-hero population, everyone from zombie Ambush Bug to zombie Zatanna. The very trees, the animals, every single form of life on Earth has succumbed to the infection, and the hunger it brings. And then he understands what he must do to save the world. Superman's never unleashed his full power before, but he does now--and he destroys Earth and everyone on it. Alone, in space, the last son of two worlds looks for somewhere new to call home.
And on Apokolips, a boom tube opens. Darkseid himself looks toward the noise, and sees his estranged son, Orion, cross the threshold. But why does he look so...pale?
And now, every super-hero in the Marvel Universe is a rotting, insane, super-zombie.
So naturally, that led me to think: How would the DC version of this go? So here's the basic plot of the three issue "DC Zombies" mini-series.
Issue One: Outbreak. Access (the DC/Marvel jointly-owned character who can freely travel between continuities) teleports into Gotham City, looking for help from its heroes. But he's already infected, and by the time he finds Robin, he starts gnawing on him instead of asking him for assistance. Robin fends off his assailant, but a trail of victims tells him that Gotham's already in trouble. The infection spreads through the city, snagging both Nightwing and the Mad Hatter (who are locked in combat at the time.) Nightwing delivers the Mad Hatter to Arkham before succumbing to the infection himself.
At dawn, Batman returns to the Batcave, having narrowly escaped infection several times, and broadcasts word to the JLA that he needs help quarantining the city. Superman arrives, bringing with him Wonder Woman, the Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern, but it's already too late--isolated reports of infection have come through from Metropolis and Fawcett City, and it appears to be spreading west. Then worse news arrives, as dozens of super-zombie-criminals break out of Arkham, led by a zombie Amygdala and a zombie Killer Croc. The JLA attempt to contain them, but the issue ends with Kiler Croc chomping down on Superman's shoulder.
Issue Two: The Hunt. The battle with the JLA concludes in disaster, as Superman flees the battle, and Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter are both infected. Green Lantern is forced to retreat, and zombie Wonder Woman and zombie Martian Manhunter begin circling the globe spreading the infection. Batman goes into zombie-infested Gotham to find Nightwing and Robin, getting updates from Oracle as he does so. (Oracle is on a Blackhawk plane, circling the globe herself, and is hence safe from the plague, but she's already starting to worry about refueling.) Oracle delivers updates from Coast City, where Hal Jordan tries to hold off zombie Sinestro, from Fawcett City, where Captain Marvel is nowhere to be found (we see Billy Batson starting to shout "Sha--" before a zombie sinks its teeth into his cheek), and all over the world.
Superman, meanwhile, contacts Batman to tell him that his powers aren't enough to hold the infection at bay, and he's losing control to the hunger. When he fled, it was to attain orbit--the more sunlight he gets, the more powerful he becomes and the better he can fight the infection, so he had to get out of the atmosphere to avoid atmospheric scatter. But it's still not enough. He informs Batman that he's flying at top speed towards the sun--he'll either get strong enough to burn out the infection completely, or he'll vaporize in the sun's heat. Either way, the world will be safe from him.
Meanwhile, Oracle continues to receive reports of heroes fighting zombies. Swamp Thing is attacked by zombie versions of Doctor Fate and Zatanna, and is forced to abandon his physical body, only to discover that he's brought the infection into the Green itself. Buddy Baker, meanwhile, finds that he's done the same with the Red. Nature begins to eat itself as the infection spreads.
We cut back to Batman, in the Batcave. The JLA teleporter has been disabled. Nightwing and Robin are pinned to the ground with Batarangs through their hands and ankles, each one muzzled to prevent accidents. And Batman begins working on a cure.
Book Three: The Cure. Oracle acts as pronouncer of the end of the world, from two miles above it. Her reports come in from every city, and she dutifully relays them to Batman. The Green Lantern Corps has abandoned Earth and recalled its ring-bearers. (Back on Oa, we see a zombie Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, and John Stewart slugging it out with the rest of the Green Lanterns, in the first battle of the Green Lantern Corps and the Green Lantern Corpse.) The few people immune to the zombie plague are being killed. (Hawk, Dove, and Black Adam, each with magical bodies, are being ripped apart--literally--by the JSA.) Nobody knows what's happened to Captain Marvel. (We see a young boy, his jaw half-ripped-off, shouting "a-am!" ineffectually through shredded lips.) Poison Ivy's own plants have attacked her, infecting her, and the Floronic Man has spontaneously zombified. Things have gone from bad to worse to worst...
Then they go to the level past worst, as zombie Power Girl and zombie Supergirl each take a wing of Oracle's plane and make a wish. But back in the Batcave, Batman's made a breakthrough. He's got a drug that appears to be able to stem the hunger, like methadone for a heroin addict. It doesn't cure the infection, but the patient becomes rational. He makes the dangerous test of it, releasing zombie Nightwing from his muzzle...but Dick's sane now. He doesn't attack.
Power Girl does, though. She and Supergirl come smashing into the Batcave, its location supplied to them by zombie Oracle. Batman fires darts filled with the "cure" at them, but their bullet-proof skin repels it, and he's forced to flee. Dick and Tim are left behind in the Batcave, the formula for the "cure" unfortunately lost in the Batcomputer that was buried under tons of rubble in the fight, and knowing they'll succumb to the hunger without it.
Batman, meanwhile, flees for his life through zombie Gotham. He manages to elude Power Girl and Supergirl by ducking through lead-lined subway tunnels, and thinks he's escaped...but one of his own Batarangs slicing into his Achilles tendons tells him otherwise. He limps away, expecting to see Nightwing when he turns...but instead it's zombie Oracle, wheeling herself towards him with an evil grin. She pulls him down, and begins to feed...
Two weeks later, and Superman finally returns. He's cured--it took a plunge into the very heart of the sun, a risk he'd never have taken if not for the need to cure the infection, but he's free of it now, and more powerful than ever. He's ready to save the world! But he sees, as he arrives, that it's too late. He's met by the zombie super-hero population, everyone from zombie Ambush Bug to zombie Zatanna. The very trees, the animals, every single form of life on Earth has succumbed to the infection, and the hunger it brings. And then he understands what he must do to save the world. Superman's never unleashed his full power before, but he does now--and he destroys Earth and everyone on it. Alone, in space, the last son of two worlds looks for somewhere new to call home.
And on Apokolips, a boom tube opens. Darkseid himself looks toward the noise, and sees his estranged son, Orion, cross the threshold. But why does he look so...pale?
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Nummy Thing Of The Day
Marvel's putting out a line of little pocket-sized "Marvel Adventures" books. They're seven bucks, they collect four issues of stand-alone, all-ages stories in a format about like the manga books that are slowly but surely taking over entire shelves at your local Barnes and Noble, and they're so much fun it hurts. I can't stress this enough--they are cheap, portable, light-hearted, all-ages comics. If they sold these things at super-market checkout lines, everybody in the world would be a Marvel fan.
They're very much worth tracking down.
They're very much worth tracking down.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Die-Cut 'Stigmata' Cover!
Not even sure what part of my comics-saturated brain came up with this one, but it's terrifyingly easy to imagine the New Testament as done by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The covers practically draw themselves in your head:
Issue #15: Mary Magdalene kneeling by the body of Lazarus, saying, "NO! The Pharisee has killed Lazarus!" But standing right behind her, his fists clenched, is Jesus, shouting, "Not if I have anything to say about it!"
Issue #27: Jesus, struggling against two Roman Legionnaires, with a thought balloon over his head, saying, "It can't be! One of my disciples...has betrayed me! But WHO???" At the bottom, text reads: "You must not miss...the Kiss of Death!"
Issue #32: Jesus on the cross, his teeth clenched as a Roman Legionnaire prepares to thrust a spear at his ribs. Text reads: "64 pages! No ads! THE DEATH OF JESUS!"
Issue #35: The tomb in the hillside, with the rock that forms its entrance shattering from a blast of cosmic energy. Text reads simply: "Guess Who's Back?!?"
And of course, it'd all end with Jesus giving super-powers to his disciples before going off to have cosmic adventures in space, which leads to the spin-off series: The Disciples! "Disciples Determine!"
Amen, True Believers!
...i'm so going to hell for this...
Issue #15: Mary Magdalene kneeling by the body of Lazarus, saying, "NO! The Pharisee has killed Lazarus!" But standing right behind her, his fists clenched, is Jesus, shouting, "Not if I have anything to say about it!"
Issue #27: Jesus, struggling against two Roman Legionnaires, with a thought balloon over his head, saying, "It can't be! One of my disciples...has betrayed me! But WHO???" At the bottom, text reads: "You must not miss...the Kiss of Death!"
Issue #32: Jesus on the cross, his teeth clenched as a Roman Legionnaire prepares to thrust a spear at his ribs. Text reads: "64 pages! No ads! THE DEATH OF JESUS!"
Issue #35: The tomb in the hillside, with the rock that forms its entrance shattering from a blast of cosmic energy. Text reads simply: "Guess Who's Back?!?"
And of course, it'd all end with Jesus giving super-powers to his disciples before going off to have cosmic adventures in space, which leads to the spin-off series: The Disciples! "Disciples Determine!"
Amen, True Believers!
...i'm so going to hell for this...
Friday, June 16, 2006
Super-Heroes Were Insane In the Fifties
Reading a black-and-white digest volume of classic Silver Age Justice League stories, and...wow, it's some seriously crazy shit, here. I mean, Grant Morrison on his craziest day could not come up with anything this batshit insane. The Weapons Master has traveled back in time ten thousand years to test his super-arsenal out on the JLA (see, he's surrounded by cops, and he knows that one of his super-weapons can stop the police, but he doesn't know which one, so he's traveled back in time ten thousand years to figure out which one is the best, so he can then travel back into the present and use it on the cops. Just typing that sentence destroyed brain cells.)
So as I say, the Weapons Master wants to test his weapons on the JLA. His plan--trap the JLA in a force-field (which he won't use on those pesky cops), and then as they escape one by one, drop a cryptic clue as to his future whereabouts so they'll chase him there and he can test his weapons. The first clue, given to the Flash, is "When the ghost walks at Hesperus on the second day of the moonless month, I am waiting to do battle!"The Flash knows that "when the ghost walks" is theatrical slang for payday, and finds out from an encyclopedia that "Hesperus" was Homer's name for Venus. So from that, he instantly deduces that the Weapons Master will be attacking a planned rocket launch to the planet Venus from Florida that takes place February 1st!
And he's actually right.
Super-heroes were insane in the Fifties.
So as I say, the Weapons Master wants to test his weapons on the JLA. His plan--trap the JLA in a force-field (which he won't use on those pesky cops), and then as they escape one by one, drop a cryptic clue as to his future whereabouts so they'll chase him there and he can test his weapons. The first clue, given to the Flash, is "When the ghost walks at Hesperus on the second day of the moonless month, I am waiting to do battle!"The Flash knows that "when the ghost walks" is theatrical slang for payday, and finds out from an encyclopedia that "Hesperus" was Homer's name for Venus. So from that, he instantly deduces that the Weapons Master will be attacking a planned rocket launch to the planet Venus from Florida that takes place February 1st!
And he's actually right.
Super-heroes were insane in the Fifties.
Monday, June 12, 2006
*wave*
Haven't posted much lately because I haven't had much to say--I've been filling my brain up with so much comics lore lately (Hint #1 about the book in a series! Collect them all!) that it renders it hard to think about anything else. I am, right now, one of the most boring conversationalists in the world.
Unless you happen to be into comics too.
Unless you happen to be into comics too.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Theodore Geisel's 'Serenity'
When River fights with Reavers, it's a River-Reaver battle.
When she cuts them with a cleaver and she hits them in the liver, it's a River-Reaver-liver-cleaver battle.
And when River fights with Reavers with her Reaver-liver-cleaver and she hits them in the liver and she slaughters them like cattle, it's a River-Reaver-liver-cleaver-cattle-battle.
Then she says, "Our fight is done sir, you're dead so I think I've won, sir."
(Next time on Theodore Geisel Theatre, we present "Theodore Geisel's 'X-Files'. "If sir, you sir, want to chew sir, on the black goo Krycek knew sir, do sir!")
When she cuts them with a cleaver and she hits them in the liver, it's a River-Reaver-liver-cleaver battle.
And when River fights with Reavers with her Reaver-liver-cleaver and she hits them in the liver and she slaughters them like cattle, it's a River-Reaver-liver-cleaver-cattle-battle.
Then she says, "Our fight is done sir, you're dead so I think I've won, sir."
(Next time on Theodore Geisel Theatre, we present "Theodore Geisel's 'X-Files'. "If sir, you sir, want to chew sir, on the black goo Krycek knew sir, do sir!")
Thursday, June 01, 2006
No Wonder He Uses Mind Control
So exactly how does Charles Xavier sell Xavier's School For Gifted Youths to the average parent?
"Yes, it's a lovely campus, with small class sizes..."
"Accredited? Well, no, not so much accredited per se, but our staff is world-renowned. For example, well-known mutant terrorist and criminal Magneto once--"
"Students? Well, I started with five, but now we have well over a hundred children learning--"
"Graduation rate? Well, the initial five all graduated, and, um...one or two since then, I think, I'd have to go back and check. Oh, it's easy to speak with the graduates--most of them still live at the school, or at least hang out there. The surviving ones, that is."
"Oh, no, don't worry, our death rate is actually quite low! We've had a suicide recently, and a handful of gunshot victims, and of course the riot...but really, it's relatively safe. Most of them come back to life at some point anyway. Eventually."
"Tuition? Yes, I can see how you'd find it a bit high, but there are a number of expenses to consider. We have a supersonic jet to maintain, and of course the on-premises supercomputer, and the 'Danger Room'..."
"No, no, that's just a name. It won't actually put the students in any danger. The whirling blades, flamethrowers, energy blasters, and solid-light holographic simulated mutant killers are programmed to stop before they really hurt people. Although there was the one time that the computer developed sentience and tried to kill everyone..."
"Yes, it's a lovely campus, with small class sizes..."
"Accredited? Well, no, not so much accredited per se, but our staff is world-renowned. For example, well-known mutant terrorist and criminal Magneto once--"
"Students? Well, I started with five, but now we have well over a hundred children learning--"
"Graduation rate? Well, the initial five all graduated, and, um...one or two since then, I think, I'd have to go back and check. Oh, it's easy to speak with the graduates--most of them still live at the school, or at least hang out there. The surviving ones, that is."
"Oh, no, don't worry, our death rate is actually quite low! We've had a suicide recently, and a handful of gunshot victims, and of course the riot...but really, it's relatively safe. Most of them come back to life at some point anyway. Eventually."
"Tuition? Yes, I can see how you'd find it a bit high, but there are a number of expenses to consider. We have a supersonic jet to maintain, and of course the on-premises supercomputer, and the 'Danger Room'..."
"No, no, that's just a name. It won't actually put the students in any danger. The whirling blades, flamethrowers, energy blasters, and solid-light holographic simulated mutant killers are programmed to stop before they really hurt people. Although there was the one time that the computer developed sentience and tried to kill everyone..."
Monday, May 29, 2006
White Crosses
This is a reproduction of something I wrote some time ago, for a previous online column I did back before it was called "blogging" (sometime in 2000/2001, IIRC.) I'm putting it up here because it seems appropriate today.
"The local radio station's been running promos all weekend, talking about how Memorial Day isn't just about the paid vacation, or the long weekend, or barbeques or fishing trips. They're having their DJs record little messages, talking about remembering the men and women who've served this country, who've defended our freedom, and how proud they are to live in such a great country.
"The local radio station's been running promos all weekend, talking about how Memorial Day isn't just about the paid vacation, or the long weekend, or barbeques or fishing trips. They're having their DJs record little messages, talking about remembering the men and women who've served this country, who've defended our freedom, and how proud they are to live in such a great country.
"Which is fine, I suppose, as far as it goes, demonstrating to us that one of the littler-understood holidays has a purpose (Labor Day, I think, is the other one that seems to be less celebrated than used as a convenient excuse for a day off.) But I don't think they've got the right end of the stick, here. I could be wrong, but I don't think they're understanding Memorial Day at all.
"It's not about celebrating the men and women who've served our country and defended our freedom. Surely that'd be Veteran's Day? And I can't imagine that it's a day to think about how proud we are to be Americans...I think Independence Day would be more appropriate for that. In fact, I think that patriotism actually interferes with the true purpose of Memorial Day.
"Memorial Day is a day to remember the dead. It is a day in which we contemplate the wars that have been fought, for politics, for kings, for territory, for hatred, or for no reason at all. It is a day in which we consider the North Vietnamese soldier fighting to reunite his country, his flesh burning with napalm, and the day in which we consider the American soldier dying half a world away from the people he loves with a sniper's bullet lodged in his head. It is a day when we look to Russia and imagine a generation of young men decimated by war, a country bled white by the invading Nazis, and in which we try to imagine what it must have been like for the German soldiers as they froze to death fighting for the dreams of a madman. It is a day when we look at the world around us, and at the millions of graves that we've already dug, row upon row of white crosses staring back at us, and ask ourselves, is this something we want to do again?
"Perhaps it's no wonder that people prefer to think of it as an excuse for barbeques and fishing trips."
Saturday, May 27, 2006
X-Men 3: Spoiler-Free Review
On the whole, a good movie, but it makes two major mistakes that keep it from continuing the "each X-Men movie is better than the previous one" trend.
First, they give Halle Berry more screen time. This is problematic, because she gives every line about the same exact reading, which is to say a disinterested, vaguely snappish monotone. She has no screen presence at all; at any given moment, you'll be more likely to watch for background cameos by minor X-characters than you will be to pay attention to whatever she's saying. And given that for one reason or another, Scott, Jean, Xavier, and Rogue don't get much screen time, she has to carry about half the movie. And that's 51% more than she can successfully lift.
The other is (not a spoiler, because it was in the trailers) Jean's back from the dead. This is a story arc that deserves its own movie, but they've decided to try to fit it in at the same time as the "mutant cure" arc that forms the story's A-plot. Which means that neither one has enough time to really work, and further means that the work of establishing the new X-characters (because as previously mentioned, Scott, Jean, Xavier and Rogue are all, for one reason or another, absent for much of the movie) goes unfinished. Beast is nice enough (although the make-up is lousy), but you never get a real sense of who he is. Kitty and Colossus remain cameo-level characters even though they're supposed to now be first-team X-Men. This hurts the movie in all sorts of little knock-on ways. Really, Jean should have come back at the end, and they should have had enough confidence in the franchise to believe that they would do a fourth.
But that's the bad stuff. The good stuff? Everything else.
First, they give Halle Berry more screen time. This is problematic, because she gives every line about the same exact reading, which is to say a disinterested, vaguely snappish monotone. She has no screen presence at all; at any given moment, you'll be more likely to watch for background cameos by minor X-characters than you will be to pay attention to whatever she's saying. And given that for one reason or another, Scott, Jean, Xavier, and Rogue don't get much screen time, she has to carry about half the movie. And that's 51% more than she can successfully lift.
The other is (not a spoiler, because it was in the trailers) Jean's back from the dead. This is a story arc that deserves its own movie, but they've decided to try to fit it in at the same time as the "mutant cure" arc that forms the story's A-plot. Which means that neither one has enough time to really work, and further means that the work of establishing the new X-characters (because as previously mentioned, Scott, Jean, Xavier and Rogue are all, for one reason or another, absent for much of the movie) goes unfinished. Beast is nice enough (although the make-up is lousy), but you never get a real sense of who he is. Kitty and Colossus remain cameo-level characters even though they're supposed to now be first-team X-Men. This hurts the movie in all sorts of little knock-on ways. Really, Jean should have come back at the end, and they should have had enough confidence in the franchise to believe that they would do a fourth.
But that's the bad stuff. The good stuff? Everything else.
Friday, May 19, 2006
Disturbing Geek Moment of the Day
I was, for no particular reason, thinking about Spider-Man's webbing, when suddenly my chain of thoughts slipped a couple of notches in the gear, leading to a disturbing realization I must now share with you all. It works as follows:
Peter David once commented on how much money Peter Parker could make just by patenting and selling his web-fluid. He talked about all its potential uses, from medical (sutures, stitches, and temporary casts that dissolve on their own after an hour) to law-enforcement (web-bombs that incapacitate crowds of protesters without hurting them is practically the holy grail of SWAT teams.) But, I suddenly realized, he'd left an important one out.
If the webbing is, as we've always been told, an adhesive so powerful that no human can break it, no matter how tightly they struggle, that dissolves on its own after an hour, and that won't stick to certain chemically treated fabrics, well...you could make billions by marketing it to bondage fans. "Bondage gear in a can--spray on, and they won't move for an hour."
I didn't even have time to ponder the story implications of that disturbing realization, though (although it involves an unscrupulous chemist, Peter realizing he'd never actually patented the web-formula, and a lot of public humiliation when crooks start referring to him as "that kinky sex vigilante!") because my brain had already skipped to the next logical step...
Peter and Mary Jane must have used his webbing like that already.
I mean, they were newlyweds, Mary Jane's always been presented as a fairly freaky chick, insofar as the Comics Code can present such, and every couple goes through at least one "it seemed like a good idea at the time" sexual encounter. At some point, she must have decided to use the web-shooters on Peter to keep him from going out and fighting crime while she was in the mood. At least once.
And you just know the whole rest of the day, when Peter was webbing up super-criminals, he was getting weirded out in a big way.
Peter David once commented on how much money Peter Parker could make just by patenting and selling his web-fluid. He talked about all its potential uses, from medical (sutures, stitches, and temporary casts that dissolve on their own after an hour) to law-enforcement (web-bombs that incapacitate crowds of protesters without hurting them is practically the holy grail of SWAT teams.) But, I suddenly realized, he'd left an important one out.
If the webbing is, as we've always been told, an adhesive so powerful that no human can break it, no matter how tightly they struggle, that dissolves on its own after an hour, and that won't stick to certain chemically treated fabrics, well...you could make billions by marketing it to bondage fans. "Bondage gear in a can--spray on, and they won't move for an hour."
I didn't even have time to ponder the story implications of that disturbing realization, though (although it involves an unscrupulous chemist, Peter realizing he'd never actually patented the web-formula, and a lot of public humiliation when crooks start referring to him as "that kinky sex vigilante!") because my brain had already skipped to the next logical step...
Peter and Mary Jane must have used his webbing like that already.
I mean, they were newlyweds, Mary Jane's always been presented as a fairly freaky chick, insofar as the Comics Code can present such, and every couple goes through at least one "it seemed like a good idea at the time" sexual encounter. At some point, she must have decided to use the web-shooters on Peter to keep him from going out and fighting crime while she was in the mood. At least once.
And you just know the whole rest of the day, when Peter was webbing up super-criminals, he was getting weirded out in a big way.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Odd Businesses
All seen on actual checks at work:
"Interstate Meat Service" (it's even written in 70s porn-movie font)
"Wagner's Meat" (continuing the 'meat' theme--and yes, I know it doesn't sound too bad, until you see the slogan at the bottom of the check. "You can't beat Wagner's meat." I hadn't actually intended to try, thanks.)
"Linco Iron Erection" (never fails to bring a smile to my face, that one.)
"Kuntz Electric" (presumably one hopes they never entered into a partnership with Linco Iron Erection.)
"Interstate Meat Service" (it's even written in 70s porn-movie font)
"Wagner's Meat" (continuing the 'meat' theme--and yes, I know it doesn't sound too bad, until you see the slogan at the bottom of the check. "You can't beat Wagner's meat." I hadn't actually intended to try, thanks.)
"Linco Iron Erection" (never fails to bring a smile to my face, that one.)
"Kuntz Electric" (presumably one hopes they never entered into a partnership with Linco Iron Erection.)
Friday, May 12, 2006
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
If I Could
If I could have any super-power from comics, I think I'd want Multiple Man's powers. It just seems like the most effective power for a person who's not going to be fighting any super-villains; super-speed doesn't really help when you're working with computers, talking to people, or really doing anything other than running. Super-strength? Yeah, how often do I need to lift really heavy things, exactly? Stretching, flame powers...invisibility has some potential, but really, duplicating yourself is where it's at.
Suddenly money's not a problem--you can work twenty jobs, and only have one person's rent bill. You can finally sit down and really grind out levels in that MMO, because you can have one of you dedicated to doing exactly that 24/7. Reading? Watching movies? Feel free to suddenly become the most educated person on the planet, because you can read a whole library in a week. It's like suddenly having 40 times as much free time.
Not to mention you always have someone intelligent to talk to.
Suddenly money's not a problem--you can work twenty jobs, and only have one person's rent bill. You can finally sit down and really grind out levels in that MMO, because you can have one of you dedicated to doing exactly that 24/7. Reading? Watching movies? Feel free to suddenly become the most educated person on the planet, because you can read a whole library in a week. It's like suddenly having 40 times as much free time.
Not to mention you always have someone intelligent to talk to.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Ted Kord Lives!
For anyone who remains bothered by the death of Ted Kord, the Silver Age Blue Beetle, in the recent "death-tastic" crossover 'Infinite Crisis', there's an easy 'get out of jail free' card in recent continuity. When Blue Beetle joined the SuperBuddies a few years ago (don't ask--no, really, just don't, it's a textbook example of You Probably Don't Want To Know), the team traveled to a parallel universe and met their own evil counterparts. Except for Blue Beetle, whose evil counterpart was strangely absent. Oh, and he suffered a mysterious bout of amnesia during that story.
So there you go. The Blue Beetle that Max Lord shot was the evil counterpart, who had taken the opportunity to swap places with his good version when they passed through. In our universe, he had started to take his first steps towards redemption, inspired by the heroes of this world...and it cost him his life.
Actually, that's even more depressing than the version that DC published.
So there you go. The Blue Beetle that Max Lord shot was the evil counterpart, who had taken the opportunity to swap places with his good version when they passed through. In our universe, he had started to take his first steps towards redemption, inspired by the heroes of this world...and it cost him his life.
Actually, that's even more depressing than the version that DC published.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
State of Horror
I watched 'The Fog' yesterday--it was the original version, not the re-make, but they had a trailer for the remake included on the DVD, and it's interesting to see. Because it does seem to be a snap-shot of the way horror movies have changed for the mainstream audience.
1) Everyone's younger. Every single character in the re-make of 'The Fog' (and from the looks of the trailer, it was a pretty literal re-make) is easily ten years younger than the same character was in the original. Some are twenty or thirty years younger. It's as though you can't make a movie about anyone other than photogenic twenty-somethings anymore. (Which could be a movie idea in and of itself...a mysterious force "deleting" everyone over a certain age from history, smoothing over things and leaving a Calvin Klein-ready community in its wake?)
2) There's much less gore. OK, this isn't immediately evident from the trailer, but it is evident from the rating they put at the end of the trailer. Back in 1980, every horror movie had to have the gore and nudity amped up to R-rated levels, because the big bucks came from teenagers sneaking into R-rated movies. They wouldn't bother with a PG horror movie--too wimpy. Now, theaters enforce the ratings more stringently, and so the big bucks come from skimping on the gore just enough to get that rating down to PG-13 and getting those 13-16 year olds to see the film. Which means that there's far less scares, and far more "atmosphere" (read: far less scares, and far more long shots of dark areas with spooky music.)
3) The technical elements of film-making have improved greatly. While the original 'Fog' did have some classic B-list actors and great direction from Carpenter, the overall cinematography and special effects did betray that it was an early 80s horror film. The current 'Fog', for all of the problems listed in 1 and 2 above, does look like a more lavish, slicker production. Less money now looks nicer than more money did back then, which is a good thing for future film-makers.
So what does all this mean? That most horror movies, as we see them today, are pale and weak descendants of bloody ancestors. They give not real horror, but the pretense of horror. Audiences haven't really been shocked and scared in a long time by these imitation horror movies.
I think, though, that what hope there is comes from 3. With the costs of making a slick, lavish-looking horror film dropping, it's entirely possible that we could see a new wave of horror films that don't need to be big hits in theaters, that don't need to wimp out to cater to bored 13-year olds. They can do what they want, be as edgy as they feel like, and see the profits on DVD. (Hopefully, 'Slither' will bear me out on this when it hits DVD.)
Of course, I think the most shocking thing to people reading this blog will be finding out I care this much about horror movies. :)
1) Everyone's younger. Every single character in the re-make of 'The Fog' (and from the looks of the trailer, it was a pretty literal re-make) is easily ten years younger than the same character was in the original. Some are twenty or thirty years younger. It's as though you can't make a movie about anyone other than photogenic twenty-somethings anymore. (Which could be a movie idea in and of itself...a mysterious force "deleting" everyone over a certain age from history, smoothing over things and leaving a Calvin Klein-ready community in its wake?)
2) There's much less gore. OK, this isn't immediately evident from the trailer, but it is evident from the rating they put at the end of the trailer. Back in 1980, every horror movie had to have the gore and nudity amped up to R-rated levels, because the big bucks came from teenagers sneaking into R-rated movies. They wouldn't bother with a PG horror movie--too wimpy. Now, theaters enforce the ratings more stringently, and so the big bucks come from skimping on the gore just enough to get that rating down to PG-13 and getting those 13-16 year olds to see the film. Which means that there's far less scares, and far more "atmosphere" (read: far less scares, and far more long shots of dark areas with spooky music.)
3) The technical elements of film-making have improved greatly. While the original 'Fog' did have some classic B-list actors and great direction from Carpenter, the overall cinematography and special effects did betray that it was an early 80s horror film. The current 'Fog', for all of the problems listed in 1 and 2 above, does look like a more lavish, slicker production. Less money now looks nicer than more money did back then, which is a good thing for future film-makers.
So what does all this mean? That most horror movies, as we see them today, are pale and weak descendants of bloody ancestors. They give not real horror, but the pretense of horror. Audiences haven't really been shocked and scared in a long time by these imitation horror movies.
I think, though, that what hope there is comes from 3. With the costs of making a slick, lavish-looking horror film dropping, it's entirely possible that we could see a new wave of horror films that don't need to be big hits in theaters, that don't need to wimp out to cater to bored 13-year olds. They can do what they want, be as edgy as they feel like, and see the profits on DVD. (Hopefully, 'Slither' will bear me out on this when it hits DVD.)
Of course, I think the most shocking thing to people reading this blog will be finding out I care this much about horror movies. :)
Saturday, April 29, 2006
As Played By Troy McClure
Watched a bit of the NFL draft today...they were talking about a young receiver that got picked by San Francisco in the first round, and as with all the players they talked about, they showed highlights of his college career, accompanied by short descriptive phrases that flashed up on the screen. So we learned he is/has "Intelligence"..."Hands"..."Leaper"...which I, unfortunately, read as "Leper".
Presumably, those "Hands" are only temporary.
Presumably, those "Hands" are only temporary.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
State of Comics
I'm currently reading 'The Legion Companion', a book I picked up because I knew next to nothing about the Legion of Super-Heroes but was aware they had a devoted fanbase, and wanted to find out why. It's been of sod-all use in that regard (it's a collection of interviews with various Legion writers and artists, designed to be read by people who are already intimately familiar with the LSH), but it does give me an idea of why comics today are failing.
Reading these interviews, you'll find old writers, editors, and artists talking about comics at newsstands (when was the last time you saw a comic sold outside of a comic shop? OK, yes, maybe a bookstore, but they don't sell them in drugstores, at supermarkets, or anywhere the direct market can't reach.) They talk about letters columns (vanished as well.) They talk about how they wrote self-contained stories for the casual reader (multi-part stories used to be taboo at DC, now they're mandatory everywhere.) They talk about doing eye-catching covers (sure, superdickery.com jokes about 50s DC covers, but as crazy as they were, they certainly made you want to buy the issues.) They talk about how they didn't expect anyone to be into comics for more than two years, so they had to keep doing things to get new readers interested (nowadays comics writers assume every reader is a long-time reader and is intimately familiar with the characters' backstories and key historical points.)
It's like a glimpse into an alien world.
Now, I'm not saying every single one of these changes was a bad thing--I'd be crazy to suggest that there's no room for multi-part stories, for example. But it does occur to me that comic books, as they were constituted for the first sixty or seventy years of their existence, were designed for the general public (if only the juvenile element of the general public), and that they had a goal of getting as many people as possible to look at a comic, see the cover, and at least consider purchasing it. For the last twenty or thirty years, they've marketed to an increasingly smaller, self-selected market, counting on brand loyalty to outweigh the fact that nobody knows their product exists anymore. And they wonder what's going wrong...
I'd have to say, if I were to be put in charge of Marvel/DC, the first thing I'd do is market a "Comics Treasury" monthly. It'd be a magazine, say 100 pages, and it'd have four or five self-contained comics featuring flagship characters on a rotating basis, it'd have letters and spaces for fan-art, articles on the company's history, continuity, and so forth that would be fun, interesting, and glorified ads for their other products...and most importantly, it would be marketed wherever anyone had a magazine rack. And the advertising department would make sure, every month, to have at least one page of ads for local comics stores, and those local stores could purchase ads at a discounted rate.
That'd be just the start--I'd also tamp down on excess continuity, rampant cross-overs, reboots, et cetera, and ramp up the newsstand programs and bring back the letter columns...but at the very least, I'd want a single product out there aimed at casual readers that would increase visibility of my entire line of products.
Something like that is necessary, I think. They have to start growing their business again. Because at this rate, comics will soon be down to the point where they're trying to sell every single copy to one very rich fan. And that's just not a viable business model.
Reading these interviews, you'll find old writers, editors, and artists talking about comics at newsstands (when was the last time you saw a comic sold outside of a comic shop? OK, yes, maybe a bookstore, but they don't sell them in drugstores, at supermarkets, or anywhere the direct market can't reach.) They talk about letters columns (vanished as well.) They talk about how they wrote self-contained stories for the casual reader (multi-part stories used to be taboo at DC, now they're mandatory everywhere.) They talk about doing eye-catching covers (sure, superdickery.com jokes about 50s DC covers, but as crazy as they were, they certainly made you want to buy the issues.) They talk about how they didn't expect anyone to be into comics for more than two years, so they had to keep doing things to get new readers interested (nowadays comics writers assume every reader is a long-time reader and is intimately familiar with the characters' backstories and key historical points.)
It's like a glimpse into an alien world.
Now, I'm not saying every single one of these changes was a bad thing--I'd be crazy to suggest that there's no room for multi-part stories, for example. But it does occur to me that comic books, as they were constituted for the first sixty or seventy years of their existence, were designed for the general public (if only the juvenile element of the general public), and that they had a goal of getting as many people as possible to look at a comic, see the cover, and at least consider purchasing it. For the last twenty or thirty years, they've marketed to an increasingly smaller, self-selected market, counting on brand loyalty to outweigh the fact that nobody knows their product exists anymore. And they wonder what's going wrong...
I'd have to say, if I were to be put in charge of Marvel/DC, the first thing I'd do is market a "Comics Treasury" monthly. It'd be a magazine, say 100 pages, and it'd have four or five self-contained comics featuring flagship characters on a rotating basis, it'd have letters and spaces for fan-art, articles on the company's history, continuity, and so forth that would be fun, interesting, and glorified ads for their other products...and most importantly, it would be marketed wherever anyone had a magazine rack. And the advertising department would make sure, every month, to have at least one page of ads for local comics stores, and those local stores could purchase ads at a discounted rate.
That'd be just the start--I'd also tamp down on excess continuity, rampant cross-overs, reboots, et cetera, and ramp up the newsstand programs and bring back the letter columns...but at the very least, I'd want a single product out there aimed at casual readers that would increase visibility of my entire line of products.
Something like that is necessary, I think. They have to start growing their business again. Because at this rate, comics will soon be down to the point where they're trying to sell every single copy to one very rich fan. And that's just not a viable business model.
When Brains Attack
Ever noticed how sometimes, it doesn't necessarily seem like you're in control of your own brain? I mean, you'll be watching/listening/reading something, and it's clear that the person who created it has a very specific thought or feeling in mind for you to have in response to it, and your brain just decides to jump up and transmit thoughts you had no idea were even out there?
Today's example comes from the classic horror movie, 'Day of the Dead'. It opens with survivors checking out a Florida town to see if anyone else survived the rise of the zombies; as they call out with a bullhorn, hordes of zombies slowly converge on their location, and it becomes clear that this is a city inhabited by nothing but the dead. The endless shots of living dead, walking the streets in broad daylight is supposed to convey a sense of mounting horror at the realization that humanity's day is over...
But all I could think of was, "Doesn't Florida get hit by a lot of hurricanes? How exactly do the zombies deal with 80 mph winds?" And then I start hearing, in my head, one of those very serious weather announcers you get in those situations, reminding people, "Please remember to clear any stray zombies from your property! Hurricane-strength winds can propel a loose zombie through six inches of solid concrete!"
I'm fairly sure this was never the intent of the film-maker.
Today's example comes from the classic horror movie, 'Day of the Dead'. It opens with survivors checking out a Florida town to see if anyone else survived the rise of the zombies; as they call out with a bullhorn, hordes of zombies slowly converge on their location, and it becomes clear that this is a city inhabited by nothing but the dead. The endless shots of living dead, walking the streets in broad daylight is supposed to convey a sense of mounting horror at the realization that humanity's day is over...
But all I could think of was, "Doesn't Florida get hit by a lot of hurricanes? How exactly do the zombies deal with 80 mph winds?" And then I start hearing, in my head, one of those very serious weather announcers you get in those situations, reminding people, "Please remember to clear any stray zombies from your property! Hurricane-strength winds can propel a loose zombie through six inches of solid concrete!"
I'm fairly sure this was never the intent of the film-maker.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Under the Hood: Manos
Yes, I know it's insane, but if you're talking about remaking and improving bad movies, then certainly you have to talk about one that actually has attained a perverse fame as the Worst Movie Ever Made. So let's discuss Manos--the Hands of Fate.
For starters, let's recap what we laughably refer to as "the plot". A couple vacationing with their child and dog get lost (in a long, dialogue-free sequence) and winds up at a mysterious ranch home run by a weird guy named Torgo with big knees. Torgo takes care of the place "while the Master is away". Oddly, the couple sweet-talk Torgo into spending the night there, then change their mind, then have to stay there anyway because their car won't start. Then Torgo makes a pass at the wife, the kid finds a room full of sleeping women (and a sleeping guy, the Master), the girls wake up and start wrestling, Torgo gets his hand cut off, and finally the Master enslaves the wife and daughter (which is really icky, because she's about eight.) And the husband becomes the sort of New Torgo for the next batch of unlucky travelers. All this is intercut with scenes of two cops chasing necking teenagers.
So, OK, let's go back to square one, and improve the budget, production values, acting, and keep the skeleton of the plot. A couple is on vacation with their teenage daughter (we'll push her age up about ten years, to make that less weird.) They get lost, in a much shorter scene, and wind up stopping at a house in the desert to ask directions. Their passing is witnessed by two teenagers, who wonder why anyone would drive down a road that leads nowhere.
As soon as they stop the car, it dies and won't restart. They're forced to ask the caretaker for a place to stay for the night. Still Torgo, still with the lumpy and unusual body, but this time we're actually going with the production team's original intent, which is that it's lumpy because he's not human anymore. Manos, the god of primal darkness, slowly changes anyone who stays too long in this sacred place, and Torgo's body is metamorphosizing.
They bring their stuff to their rooms and Torgo insists that they have to leave in the morning, and shouldn't poke around. The parents agree (because they're sensible), the daughter doesn't (because she's rebellious.) She sneaks off to take a look around. She goes down into the basement, and finds that there's more basement...and more, and more, and more. And at the heart of all this, she finds a black altar with a sinister man lying on it, completely immobile, and several women, all also immobile, on altars of their own. The women are all in various states of transformation--all beautiful, in their own way, but many in a fashion that's clearly no longer human. The daughter's approach awakens them, and their inhuman eyes snap open...
Meanwhile, the cops come to harass the two teenagers, and the teenagers give them attitude about how they should maybe go harass that other couple that drove up the road with the teenage girl. The cops call their bluff, and tell the teens to show them where they went.
Back at the house, Torgo lures Dad away with the promise of finding them something to eat in the kitchen, then knocks him out and stuffs him in the pantry. He then goes back and starts macking on the mom, with promises that are (to her) nonsensical, promises of finding a way to escape the house together. (He realizes that with Dad here, Torgo's now redundant.) She freaks when he takes his shirt off and she sees that a) he's not human under all that, and b) he's seriously macking on her and she doesn't know where her husband or daughter is. She flees deeper into the house.
Daughter, meanwhile, is fleeing out of the house. The Master has awakened, and he's planning to add her to his collection of "brides of Manos". He's struck a deal with the dark god; he procures fresh brides, and he gets to stay immune to the corruption that affects everyone else. The god's power makes it more difficult to leave the longer you stay; after a while, you just can't bring yourself to leave, no matter how urgent it seems. Once the Master leaves, the women discuss whether it would be more merciful to just kill the new arrivals. This discussion gets violent, as one of the "eldest" brides, who is furthest along in her corruption, insists that although they can't rebel, the new brides still might have the strength.
The Master bumps into Torgo, and decides to take this opportunity to deliver his termination papers. He accelerates the corruption until Torgo's nothing more than a misshapen beast, then sends the beast to hunt the girls. They, meanwhile, have bumped into each other, and are looking for Dad. Instead, they find the cops and the teens, who are fairly surprised to see a decades-old house where there was nothing but desert a few days previously. The cops deal with the Torgo-beast, and go looking for Dad.
Dad, meanwhile, has been released from the pantry...by the Master. He's already been corrupted, just slightly, and feels compelled to obey. He sets about luring the group deeper into the house.
At the edge of the basement, though, Daughter panics. She's been there, she knows what's down there, and she's not going any further. She runs back for the cars. Mother is torn between following her daughter and finding her husband; the other teenage girl, though, makes it easy for her by offering to follow Daughter and make sure she's OK.
The remaining four descend into the basement, where the Master has re-established his hold on his brides. Dad is by his side as his new servant, and all around him, the darkness rustles with the sounds of movement. See, he has room for any number of brides in the harem, but he only needs one caretaker...
From out of the darkness, dozens of fully-corrupted brides spring forth. They drag the teenage boy into the shadows and consume him--one of the cops, though, manages to get a shot off at the Master. He falls, dead. The brides, all of them, stop their assault. They smile. Could it be that they're free?
Nope. From out of the Master's corpse, darkness boils up--Manos itself, god of primal darkness. It flows into one of the cops, entering through his mouth, nose, and eyes, and when he looks up, he's filled with dark power. He commands the brides, and they rip apart his former partner. Then he sends them after the two remaining girls.
Back upstairs, the girls are headed out...except that one of them can't seem to make herself leave. She sees Daughter crossing the threshold, running for the car, but...she just can't do it herself. Behind her, she hears the brides coming for her. Daughter encourages, pleads, even grabs her arm and yanks, but it's of no use. She's been trapped here. She hands the keys to Daughter and tells her to go and don't look back. Daughter, being no dummy, does exactly that.
The epilogue is substantially as in the original: A new set of victims drives up to the same house, and we see Dad at the steps, wearing baggy clothes that conceal his transformation, explaining that "he takes care of the place while the Master is away." In the basement, we see Mom and the teenaged girl, asleep and already some distance along in their transformation...
Of them all, I think this is the one that has the best chance of actually getting made--after all, you make remakes to capitalize on the notoriety of the original, and if there's one movie that has plenty of "notoriety", it's 'Manos'.
For starters, let's recap what we laughably refer to as "the plot". A couple vacationing with their child and dog get lost (in a long, dialogue-free sequence) and winds up at a mysterious ranch home run by a weird guy named Torgo with big knees. Torgo takes care of the place "while the Master is away". Oddly, the couple sweet-talk Torgo into spending the night there, then change their mind, then have to stay there anyway because their car won't start. Then Torgo makes a pass at the wife, the kid finds a room full of sleeping women (and a sleeping guy, the Master), the girls wake up and start wrestling, Torgo gets his hand cut off, and finally the Master enslaves the wife and daughter (which is really icky, because she's about eight.) And the husband becomes the sort of New Torgo for the next batch of unlucky travelers. All this is intercut with scenes of two cops chasing necking teenagers.
So, OK, let's go back to square one, and improve the budget, production values, acting, and keep the skeleton of the plot. A couple is on vacation with their teenage daughter (we'll push her age up about ten years, to make that less weird.) They get lost, in a much shorter scene, and wind up stopping at a house in the desert to ask directions. Their passing is witnessed by two teenagers, who wonder why anyone would drive down a road that leads nowhere.
As soon as they stop the car, it dies and won't restart. They're forced to ask the caretaker for a place to stay for the night. Still Torgo, still with the lumpy and unusual body, but this time we're actually going with the production team's original intent, which is that it's lumpy because he's not human anymore. Manos, the god of primal darkness, slowly changes anyone who stays too long in this sacred place, and Torgo's body is metamorphosizing.
They bring their stuff to their rooms and Torgo insists that they have to leave in the morning, and shouldn't poke around. The parents agree (because they're sensible), the daughter doesn't (because she's rebellious.) She sneaks off to take a look around. She goes down into the basement, and finds that there's more basement...and more, and more, and more. And at the heart of all this, she finds a black altar with a sinister man lying on it, completely immobile, and several women, all also immobile, on altars of their own. The women are all in various states of transformation--all beautiful, in their own way, but many in a fashion that's clearly no longer human. The daughter's approach awakens them, and their inhuman eyes snap open...
Meanwhile, the cops come to harass the two teenagers, and the teenagers give them attitude about how they should maybe go harass that other couple that drove up the road with the teenage girl. The cops call their bluff, and tell the teens to show them where they went.
Back at the house, Torgo lures Dad away with the promise of finding them something to eat in the kitchen, then knocks him out and stuffs him in the pantry. He then goes back and starts macking on the mom, with promises that are (to her) nonsensical, promises of finding a way to escape the house together. (He realizes that with Dad here, Torgo's now redundant.) She freaks when he takes his shirt off and she sees that a) he's not human under all that, and b) he's seriously macking on her and she doesn't know where her husband or daughter is. She flees deeper into the house.
Daughter, meanwhile, is fleeing out of the house. The Master has awakened, and he's planning to add her to his collection of "brides of Manos". He's struck a deal with the dark god; he procures fresh brides, and he gets to stay immune to the corruption that affects everyone else. The god's power makes it more difficult to leave the longer you stay; after a while, you just can't bring yourself to leave, no matter how urgent it seems. Once the Master leaves, the women discuss whether it would be more merciful to just kill the new arrivals. This discussion gets violent, as one of the "eldest" brides, who is furthest along in her corruption, insists that although they can't rebel, the new brides still might have the strength.
The Master bumps into Torgo, and decides to take this opportunity to deliver his termination papers. He accelerates the corruption until Torgo's nothing more than a misshapen beast, then sends the beast to hunt the girls. They, meanwhile, have bumped into each other, and are looking for Dad. Instead, they find the cops and the teens, who are fairly surprised to see a decades-old house where there was nothing but desert a few days previously. The cops deal with the Torgo-beast, and go looking for Dad.
Dad, meanwhile, has been released from the pantry...by the Master. He's already been corrupted, just slightly, and feels compelled to obey. He sets about luring the group deeper into the house.
At the edge of the basement, though, Daughter panics. She's been there, she knows what's down there, and she's not going any further. She runs back for the cars. Mother is torn between following her daughter and finding her husband; the other teenage girl, though, makes it easy for her by offering to follow Daughter and make sure she's OK.
The remaining four descend into the basement, where the Master has re-established his hold on his brides. Dad is by his side as his new servant, and all around him, the darkness rustles with the sounds of movement. See, he has room for any number of brides in the harem, but he only needs one caretaker...
From out of the darkness, dozens of fully-corrupted brides spring forth. They drag the teenage boy into the shadows and consume him--one of the cops, though, manages to get a shot off at the Master. He falls, dead. The brides, all of them, stop their assault. They smile. Could it be that they're free?
Nope. From out of the Master's corpse, darkness boils up--Manos itself, god of primal darkness. It flows into one of the cops, entering through his mouth, nose, and eyes, and when he looks up, he's filled with dark power. He commands the brides, and they rip apart his former partner. Then he sends them after the two remaining girls.
Back upstairs, the girls are headed out...except that one of them can't seem to make herself leave. She sees Daughter crossing the threshold, running for the car, but...she just can't do it herself. Behind her, she hears the brides coming for her. Daughter encourages, pleads, even grabs her arm and yanks, but it's of no use. She's been trapped here. She hands the keys to Daughter and tells her to go and don't look back. Daughter, being no dummy, does exactly that.
The epilogue is substantially as in the original: A new set of victims drives up to the same house, and we see Dad at the steps, wearing baggy clothes that conceal his transformation, explaining that "he takes care of the place while the Master is away." In the basement, we see Mom and the teenaged girl, asleep and already some distance along in their transformation...
Of them all, I think this is the one that has the best chance of actually getting made--after all, you make remakes to capitalize on the notoriety of the original, and if there's one movie that has plenty of "notoriety", it's 'Manos'.
Friday, April 21, 2006
To the Tune Of... (again)
I'm so very, very sorry for what I'm about to do to your brain...
He was a boy
She was a girl
Can I make it any more obvious?
He, a Jedi
She was a queen
What more can I say?
He wanted her
She'd never tell secretly she wanted him as well
But all of his friends
Stuck up their nose
He couldn't have sex 'cause of Jedi oathes
He was a V8der boi
She said see you l8er boi
He was just far too young for words
She had a pretty face
When he met her out in space
He used that "angel" line on her
Five years from now
She sits at home
Having his baby
She's all alone
Obi-Wan stops by
Guess what she sees
V8der boi messin' up Jedi kids
She calls up her friends
They already know
And they started
Rebelling long ago
She tags along
Has kids and dies
Thinking of the man that choked her throat
He was a V8der boi
She said see you l8er boi
He was just too creepy for her
Now he runs the Death Star
He has a cool facial scar
Does your pretty face see what he's worth?
He was a V8der boi
She said see you l8er boi
He was just too creepy for her
Now he runs the Death Star
He has a cool facial scar
Does your pretty face see what he's worth?
Sorry girl but you missed out
Tough luck that boy's mine now
We are more than just good friends
This is how the story ends
Too bad that you couldn't see
See the Sith that boy could be
There is more than meets the eye
I see the evil that's inside
He's just a boy
And I'm Emperor
Can I make it any more obvious?
We are in love
Haven't you heard
How we rock each other's world?
I'm with the V8der boi
I said see you l8er boi
I'll meet you here after you go
And kill all the young Jedi
You'll love watching them all die
Like Sandpeople you used to know
I'm with the V8der boi
I said see you l8er boi
I'll meet you here after you go
And kill all the young Jedi
You'll love watching them all die
Like Sandpeople you used to know
He was a boy
She was a girl
Can I make it any more obvious?
He, a Jedi
She was a queen
What more can I say?
He wanted her
She'd never tell secretly she wanted him as well
But all of his friends
Stuck up their nose
He couldn't have sex 'cause of Jedi oathes
He was a V8der boi
She said see you l8er boi
He was just far too young for words
She had a pretty face
When he met her out in space
He used that "angel" line on her
Five years from now
She sits at home
Having his baby
She's all alone
Obi-Wan stops by
Guess what she sees
V8der boi messin' up Jedi kids
She calls up her friends
They already know
And they started
Rebelling long ago
She tags along
Has kids and dies
Thinking of the man that choked her throat
He was a V8der boi
She said see you l8er boi
He was just too creepy for her
Now he runs the Death Star
He has a cool facial scar
Does your pretty face see what he's worth?
He was a V8der boi
She said see you l8er boi
He was just too creepy for her
Now he runs the Death Star
He has a cool facial scar
Does your pretty face see what he's worth?
Sorry girl but you missed out
Tough luck that boy's mine now
We are more than just good friends
This is how the story ends
Too bad that you couldn't see
See the Sith that boy could be
There is more than meets the eye
I see the evil that's inside
He's just a boy
And I'm Emperor
Can I make it any more obvious?
We are in love
Haven't you heard
How we rock each other's world?
I'm with the V8der boi
I said see you l8er boi
I'll meet you here after you go
And kill all the young Jedi
You'll love watching them all die
Like Sandpeople you used to know
I'm with the V8der boi
I said see you l8er boi
I'll meet you here after you go
And kill all the young Jedi
You'll love watching them all die
Like Sandpeople you used to know
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Meet 'N Greet #1
As previously noted, this blog is here for little creative bits that I don't think will make me any money anywhere else, but that I want to share with other people because I'm immensely egotistical and think I'm very clever. So, in that spirit, I thought I might share some of the character concepts I've used on "City of Heroes/Villains", because if there's anything that fits the above definition, it's that.
Today, we meet Isaac Barnes. Isaac was an ordinary man, a homeowner who paid off his mortgage quickly due to a bit of luck with the lottery. He found himself with some spare cash, and decided to build a deck in the backyard. As it turned out, the project was a great success--aesthetically pleasing, increased the value of his home, and nice for barbecues. The people at the local home improvement store were a great help.
So he decided to add on a bit more, expanding the master bedroom. It turned out to be another easy, economical project. Isaac started to suspect he had a gift for this sort of thing. He then moved on to expand the living room, widen the garage, and he was thinking of adding a spare bedroom when he realized there was a small problem. He was out of property. Naturally, there was only one thing to be done.
Isaac built himself a suit of power armor, an army of robot followers, declared martial law, and annexed his neighbor's house.
From there, things spiralled out of control pretty rapidly. Now, Isaac Barnes is no more. Obsessed with home improvement projects, he has become...The Home Despot!
Today, we meet Isaac Barnes. Isaac was an ordinary man, a homeowner who paid off his mortgage quickly due to a bit of luck with the lottery. He found himself with some spare cash, and decided to build a deck in the backyard. As it turned out, the project was a great success--aesthetically pleasing, increased the value of his home, and nice for barbecues. The people at the local home improvement store were a great help.
So he decided to add on a bit more, expanding the master bedroom. It turned out to be another easy, economical project. Isaac started to suspect he had a gift for this sort of thing. He then moved on to expand the living room, widen the garage, and he was thinking of adding a spare bedroom when he realized there was a small problem. He was out of property. Naturally, there was only one thing to be done.
Isaac built himself a suit of power armor, an army of robot followers, declared martial law, and annexed his neighbor's house.
From there, things spiralled out of control pretty rapidly. Now, Isaac Barnes is no more. Obsessed with home improvement projects, he has become...The Home Despot!
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
And the Winner Is...
Got an odd mental picture at work today, can't even remember what I was thinking of that led into it...oh, wait, now I can. I was thinking about 'Only Human', a Doctor Who book about someone attempting to create a "better" dominant species, send it back in time, and have it supplant humanity like we supplanted the Neanderthals. And I paraphrased the message of the book as, "Why? It's not like there's a prize awarded at the end for 'Best Evolved Species'!"
And then I thought, "What if there was?" It's not a very 'Doctor Who' idea, more 'Monty Python', but you have to admit, you can picture it. God stepping out from behind the firmament, saying, "Yes, thank you all very much for turning out, I certainly hope you enjoyed yourselves. Now, before the Apocalypse, I have a few prizes to give out..."
"The 'Best Evolved Species' Award goes to...the cockroach! Yes, sorry humans, I know you made a jolly nice run and I'm sure you'll win it next time."
"And the 'Best War' goes to...World War II! A tour de force production for all involved, with a twist ending I'm sure nobody saw coming."
"The 'Most Likely To Succeed' Award goes to Augustus Caesar...better luck next time, Napoleon!"
"And, for 'Best Prophet In a Religious, Sacred, or Fortunetelling Role', the award goes to...drum roll please...the Prophet Mohammed! Yes, wonderfully done. Unfortunately, My son was ineligible for the award."
"Again, thanks all for coming, and I sincerely hope you enjoy the total destruction of the material realm. Orange drink and cookies will be served."
And then I thought, "What if there was?" It's not a very 'Doctor Who' idea, more 'Monty Python', but you have to admit, you can picture it. God stepping out from behind the firmament, saying, "Yes, thank you all very much for turning out, I certainly hope you enjoyed yourselves. Now, before the Apocalypse, I have a few prizes to give out..."
"The 'Best Evolved Species' Award goes to...the cockroach! Yes, sorry humans, I know you made a jolly nice run and I'm sure you'll win it next time."
"And the 'Best War' goes to...World War II! A tour de force production for all involved, with a twist ending I'm sure nobody saw coming."
"The 'Most Likely To Succeed' Award goes to Augustus Caesar...better luck next time, Napoleon!"
"And, for 'Best Prophet In a Religious, Sacred, or Fortunetelling Role', the award goes to...drum roll please...the Prophet Mohammed! Yes, wonderfully done. Unfortunately, My son was ineligible for the award."
"Again, thanks all for coming, and I sincerely hope you enjoy the total destruction of the material realm. Orange drink and cookies will be served."
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
To the Tune Of...
Ahem-hem...
Scratched by thorns of roses or by claws of kittens
Smacked by large men wearing thick lead-lined mittens
Beaten with mallets and dropped out of planes
These are a few of my favorite pains!
Kicked by large ponies and burned by hot streudel
Rapped with a large brass bell right in the noodle
Hit by two fast-spinning steel weathervanes
These are a few of my favorite pains!
Girls choking my throat with their blue satin sashes
Fires that burn off my nose and eyelashes
Needles injecting things into my veins
These are a few of my favorite pains!
When the dog bites
When the bee stings
It makes me feel glad
I simply remember my favorite pains
And why I love feeling bad!
[Repeat all verses until you pass out from the pain]
Scratched by thorns of roses or by claws of kittens
Smacked by large men wearing thick lead-lined mittens
Beaten with mallets and dropped out of planes
These are a few of my favorite pains!
Kicked by large ponies and burned by hot streudel
Rapped with a large brass bell right in the noodle
Hit by two fast-spinning steel weathervanes
These are a few of my favorite pains!
Girls choking my throat with their blue satin sashes
Fires that burn off my nose and eyelashes
Needles injecting things into my veins
These are a few of my favorite pains!
When the dog bites
When the bee stings
It makes me feel glad
I simply remember my favorite pains
And why I love feeling bad!
[Repeat all verses until you pass out from the pain]
Friday, April 14, 2006
No, The Other Superman
Been reading a few DC comics lately (Starman had a very sad ending, I thought), and it reminded me of an old writing exercise I set myself in my early twenties. Never going to be of any use, since DC generally doesn't look kindly on writers who suggest they start an alternate-universe imprint with their flagship characters, so...
The idea was, every so often DC continuity gets utterly messy. That's because they decided to work under the idea that all their stories are part of the same continuity, the same fictional universe, the same history. This wasn't always the case. Back in the 50s, they just made new versions of them and went with those versions, and left it for later decades and more continuity-minded writers to explain how it all "fit together". So you wanted a new Green Lantern? Sure. Totally different man, different origin, just took the "power ring" idea and went with it. Wasn't until the 90s that they explained how Alan Scott fit in with all that.
So, with that in mind, I thought: What if I did the same thing? What would my starting premises be for a New DC Universe, if I didn't have to explain how it fit into the old? So, here are the concepts I came up with...and the caveat, which is that technically Batman and Superman should be the same Batman and Superman they've always been. They're too iconic to mess with. But I did anyway. Oops.
Superman: A self-made billionaire, athlete and adventurer, Jason Clark is the perfect human being in every way. He's the epitome of human ability in every field, and that's come with only one cost: He bores easily. As such, he's always on the look-out for strange and unusual challenges that test his abilities to their limit.
Batman: Latest in a line of mystic protectors whose roots come from the Native Americans, Brian Oake has it in him to summon the totemic spirit of a bat to aid him in his never-ending battle to keep the world safe from the Chaos Demons that constantly seek a way into our universe.
Wonder Woman: Laura Burke, formerly of the FBI, has gotten a new government job. She's the government's latest Wonder Woman, the official super-hero of the United States of America. Truth to be told, the job's supposed to be nothing more than public relations, staged appearances, and good press. But Laura didn't sign up for a fake super-hero job, and she's finding some very real super-villains.
The Flash: Anna Martinez thought she was an ordinary librarian until the day she was struck by lightning. That day, she learned that she had always been unusual, a human capacitor with the ability to store and discharge electrical energy. Now, she's decided that she has to use her abilities for good.
Green Lantern: Alec King was an ordinary beat cop until the day the starship crashed into his city. It was a ship filled with dangerous specimens, and one of them escaped onto him--a parasite with the ability to form and manipulate energy constructs. Now, he and the parasite are reliant on each other for survival, but there's a catch. Every time he forces the parasite to use its powers, it gains a little more control over him.
Manhunter: Lisa Duval is a professional bounty hunter who specializes in the criminals that even the cops can't catch. She's got an arsenal of cutting-edge technology, contacts in every city in the world, and most importantly, the instinct of a hunter.
Aquaman: Contact with a mysterious life-form in the Marianas Trench turned marine biologist Eric Saunders into a being made of "living water". Now, he has to find a way to turn himself back into a human being.
And last but not least, the Justice Department of America: Authorized by the government to form a strike team to deal with threats to the nation's security, Wonder Woman deputizes six of America's leading super-heroes to form the Justice Department.
Of course, the fun part would come twenty years down the line, when someone tried to tie it all in to the regular DCU...
The idea was, every so often DC continuity gets utterly messy. That's because they decided to work under the idea that all their stories are part of the same continuity, the same fictional universe, the same history. This wasn't always the case. Back in the 50s, they just made new versions of them and went with those versions, and left it for later decades and more continuity-minded writers to explain how it all "fit together". So you wanted a new Green Lantern? Sure. Totally different man, different origin, just took the "power ring" idea and went with it. Wasn't until the 90s that they explained how Alan Scott fit in with all that.
So, with that in mind, I thought: What if I did the same thing? What would my starting premises be for a New DC Universe, if I didn't have to explain how it fit into the old? So, here are the concepts I came up with...and the caveat, which is that technically Batman and Superman should be the same Batman and Superman they've always been. They're too iconic to mess with. But I did anyway. Oops.
Superman: A self-made billionaire, athlete and adventurer, Jason Clark is the perfect human being in every way. He's the epitome of human ability in every field, and that's come with only one cost: He bores easily. As such, he's always on the look-out for strange and unusual challenges that test his abilities to their limit.
Batman: Latest in a line of mystic protectors whose roots come from the Native Americans, Brian Oake has it in him to summon the totemic spirit of a bat to aid him in his never-ending battle to keep the world safe from the Chaos Demons that constantly seek a way into our universe.
Wonder Woman: Laura Burke, formerly of the FBI, has gotten a new government job. She's the government's latest Wonder Woman, the official super-hero of the United States of America. Truth to be told, the job's supposed to be nothing more than public relations, staged appearances, and good press. But Laura didn't sign up for a fake super-hero job, and she's finding some very real super-villains.
The Flash: Anna Martinez thought she was an ordinary librarian until the day she was struck by lightning. That day, she learned that she had always been unusual, a human capacitor with the ability to store and discharge electrical energy. Now, she's decided that she has to use her abilities for good.
Green Lantern: Alec King was an ordinary beat cop until the day the starship crashed into his city. It was a ship filled with dangerous specimens, and one of them escaped onto him--a parasite with the ability to form and manipulate energy constructs. Now, he and the parasite are reliant on each other for survival, but there's a catch. Every time he forces the parasite to use its powers, it gains a little more control over him.
Manhunter: Lisa Duval is a professional bounty hunter who specializes in the criminals that even the cops can't catch. She's got an arsenal of cutting-edge technology, contacts in every city in the world, and most importantly, the instinct of a hunter.
Aquaman: Contact with a mysterious life-form in the Marianas Trench turned marine biologist Eric Saunders into a being made of "living water". Now, he has to find a way to turn himself back into a human being.
And last but not least, the Justice Department of America: Authorized by the government to form a strike team to deal with threats to the nation's security, Wonder Woman deputizes six of America's leading super-heroes to form the Justice Department.
Of course, the fun part would come twenty years down the line, when someone tried to tie it all in to the regular DCU...
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Lessons In Real Life, #1
I've always thought that there are some things that they should teach you in school that they don't (big shock, right?) But seriously, there are just some things that everyone should know that will help them, and I'm going to share them, as and when I think of them. So, learn for today:
1. Whenever any politician starts talking about immigration, they're trying to distract you from how shitty they are at their job.
2. Whenever a rich man proposes a new tax plan, they're really just trying to find a way to pay less taxes.
3. Everyone promises more than they can deliver when campaigning for public office; only a fool attempts to keep every promise they made, and only a bigger fool believes that they will.
4. Whichever presidential candidate tries to suggest fewer debates is the guy you shouldn't vote for. He's the guy who's worried that in an unrehearsed high-pressure situation, he'll do or say something stupid that will cost him votes. Since he'll be spending the next four years in nothing but unrehearsed high-pressure situations, you don't want a guy who tries to avoid them.
5. A good, reliable field-goal kicker is worth his weight in gold. They score you points, they can make the difference in a game, and they all have long careers because nobody's allowed to tackle them.
1. Whenever any politician starts talking about immigration, they're trying to distract you from how shitty they are at their job.
2. Whenever a rich man proposes a new tax plan, they're really just trying to find a way to pay less taxes.
3. Everyone promises more than they can deliver when campaigning for public office; only a fool attempts to keep every promise they made, and only a bigger fool believes that they will.
4. Whichever presidential candidate tries to suggest fewer debates is the guy you shouldn't vote for. He's the guy who's worried that in an unrehearsed high-pressure situation, he'll do or say something stupid that will cost him votes. Since he'll be spending the next four years in nothing but unrehearsed high-pressure situations, you don't want a guy who tries to avoid them.
5. A good, reliable field-goal kicker is worth his weight in gold. They score you points, they can make the difference in a game, and they all have long careers because nobody's allowed to tackle them.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Review: House of Wax
This would be the remake, not the William Castle original. I'm not qualified to comment on that, as I haven't seen it.
But if you wanted to describe the remake in two words, they would be: "Aggressively Unwatchable". This is a film that actively dares you to care about anything happening on-screen. It's a 100-minute movie in which absolutely nothing happens until easily the 45-minute mark. Seriously. The dramatic highlight of the first forty-five minutes is that a truck flashes its high beams at the main characters for a minute or so, then leaves. (Later on, it's presented as a plot point that a character drives THAT SAME TRUCK! Cue musical sting...except that last I checked, flashing your high beams at a bunch of rowdy campers until they break one of your headlights with a beer bottle, then driving away isn't exactly sinister behavior. Certainly not sinister enough to drive the inexplicable guilt reaction the character shows.)
Even after the 45-minute mark, the story spends a good twenty minutes or so ambling into the events we should have gotten to five minutes before the movie started, with the Cute Survivor and her Doomed Boyfriend wandering around the Creepy Town and finding the eponymous House of Wax. (Which is so blatanly silly that I must pause to explain: It's a literal House of Wax. As in, "made out of." I defy anyone to make a house which has load-bearing girders made out of wax, and further defy them to construct the house in a fashion that you could put a furnace in the basement.) From there, more non-scares ensue--there's a few creepy moments, but in general the director puts a lot of effort into trying to make you believe something's about to happen when it's not.
Oh, and it's got the worst "twist ending" you've ever seen. Finding out your pop's gone flat when you open the bottle has a better "twist ending" than 'House of Wax'.
All in all, it says a lot about how awful this movie is that I can honestly say Paris Hilton's not the worst thing in it.
But if you wanted to describe the remake in two words, they would be: "Aggressively Unwatchable". This is a film that actively dares you to care about anything happening on-screen. It's a 100-minute movie in which absolutely nothing happens until easily the 45-minute mark. Seriously. The dramatic highlight of the first forty-five minutes is that a truck flashes its high beams at the main characters for a minute or so, then leaves. (Later on, it's presented as a plot point that a character drives THAT SAME TRUCK! Cue musical sting...except that last I checked, flashing your high beams at a bunch of rowdy campers until they break one of your headlights with a beer bottle, then driving away isn't exactly sinister behavior. Certainly not sinister enough to drive the inexplicable guilt reaction the character shows.)
Even after the 45-minute mark, the story spends a good twenty minutes or so ambling into the events we should have gotten to five minutes before the movie started, with the Cute Survivor and her Doomed Boyfriend wandering around the Creepy Town and finding the eponymous House of Wax. (Which is so blatanly silly that I must pause to explain: It's a literal House of Wax. As in, "made out of." I defy anyone to make a house which has load-bearing girders made out of wax, and further defy them to construct the house in a fashion that you could put a furnace in the basement.) From there, more non-scares ensue--there's a few creepy moments, but in general the director puts a lot of effort into trying to make you believe something's about to happen when it's not.
Oh, and it's got the worst "twist ending" you've ever seen. Finding out your pop's gone flat when you open the bottle has a better "twist ending" than 'House of Wax'.
All in all, it says a lot about how awful this movie is that I can honestly say Paris Hilton's not the worst thing in it.
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Spring Cleaning
Wow, has it really been February since I posted here? Um, I can explain, really.
See, I've actually been posting all this time, but Internet dogs ate it. All those posts, every single one. Internet dogs. They're big and angry, and they love text. That's why it sometimes seems like there's nothing on the Internet but porn--it's because the dogs ate everything else. They look kind of like Rottweilers, but they're all in ASCII.
You're not buying this, are you?
OK, seriously, every time I was about to post something, a man came along and took it. He had a scar over his left eye, and he claimed his name was "Ramon", but I think that might have been an alias.
No?
Fine. Firefox ate my Bookmarks folder, so I forgot that this site existed, and I didn't post to it.
No, that's actually really it.
Yes, there is such a thing as a Firefox. It's a giant fox made of flame, and it waits at the center of the Earth. Occasionally it will manage to get its jaws out, and it eats Bookmark folders whole...someday, it will loose its bonds, and devour all the folders in the world, and nobody will know where anything in the Internet is.
Except the Internet dogs. They can track by scent.
See, I've actually been posting all this time, but Internet dogs ate it. All those posts, every single one. Internet dogs. They're big and angry, and they love text. That's why it sometimes seems like there's nothing on the Internet but porn--it's because the dogs ate everything else. They look kind of like Rottweilers, but they're all in ASCII.
You're not buying this, are you?
OK, seriously, every time I was about to post something, a man came along and took it. He had a scar over his left eye, and he claimed his name was "Ramon", but I think that might have been an alias.
No?
Fine. Firefox ate my Bookmarks folder, so I forgot that this site existed, and I didn't post to it.
No, that's actually really it.
Yes, there is such a thing as a Firefox. It's a giant fox made of flame, and it waits at the center of the Earth. Occasionally it will manage to get its jaws out, and it eats Bookmark folders whole...someday, it will loose its bonds, and devour all the folders in the world, and nobody will know where anything in the Internet is.
Except the Internet dogs. They can track by scent.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Geek Parody Theatre
The following is an actual call from the Onslaught archives.
WOMAN: Hello, Onslaught? I just got into an accident, on--
ONSLAUGHT: I know where you are. I know everything. The powers I stole from Magneto, the puny whelp, have already repaired your pathetic vehicle. But you, I have judged guilty of crimes against mutant-kind. The penalty is death.
WOMAN: I--ARRRRGH!
The Onslaught system costs you only your free will and eternal allegiance to the unholy combination of Charles Xavier and Magneto. And isn't that a small price to pay for peace of mind? Total peace of mind? Enforced, soul-crushing, will-deadening peace of mind?
ONSLAUGHT: Emergency services are on the line. Hello?
AMBULANCE: Yes, Onslaught?
ONSLAUGHT: We've had an automobile crash on the Santa Monica Freeway. I crashed it, the woman has died.
AMBULANCE: Excellent, my lord.
ONSLAUGHT: There'll be another crash about five miles away in three minutes--I don't like the color of that Lexus. Finish off any survivors, would you?
AMBULANCE: Of course, mighty Onslaught!
The Onslaught system comes installed on all GM vehicles, whether you want it or not, and can't be removed. Press the red button to unleash the might of Onslaught!
WOMAN: Hello, Onslaught? I just got into an accident, on--
ONSLAUGHT: I know where you are. I know everything. The powers I stole from Magneto, the puny whelp, have already repaired your pathetic vehicle. But you, I have judged guilty of crimes against mutant-kind. The penalty is death.
WOMAN: I--ARRRRGH!
The Onslaught system costs you only your free will and eternal allegiance to the unholy combination of Charles Xavier and Magneto. And isn't that a small price to pay for peace of mind? Total peace of mind? Enforced, soul-crushing, will-deadening peace of mind?
ONSLAUGHT: Emergency services are on the line. Hello?
AMBULANCE: Yes, Onslaught?
ONSLAUGHT: We've had an automobile crash on the Santa Monica Freeway. I crashed it, the woman has died.
AMBULANCE: Excellent, my lord.
ONSLAUGHT: There'll be another crash about five miles away in three minutes--I don't like the color of that Lexus. Finish off any survivors, would you?
AMBULANCE: Of course, mighty Onslaught!
The Onslaught system comes installed on all GM vehicles, whether you want it or not, and can't be removed. Press the red button to unleash the might of Onslaught!
Monday, February 06, 2006
Hulk 2
A recent discussion prompted this out of my memory, one of those ideas I know I'll never get to use, so...my idea for 'Hulk 2'. It draws freely on comic elements, in particular those of Peter David's run on the Hulk (in fact stealing one scene outright, but since it is an adaptation, I think that'd probably be alright assuming he was credited. Which he is, here.)
Basically, it picks up where the first Hulk movie left off--Banner's on the run, hiding out in some Third World country and trying not to get "angry". The US government suspects they might know where he is, but they don't have extradition treaties with that country, so they hire, through back-channels, an ex-KGB mercenary named Emil Blonsky to go retrieve Bruce Banner, dead or alive. He's briefed on the Hulk situation, but is very confident (over-confident, even) that he can take care of the situation without problems.
Meanwhile, Bruce is approached by a man calling himself "The Leader". He's an insurance salesman who was contaminated by waste products from Bruce's gamma experiments, and his intelligence has been increased a hundred-fold; however, without the stabilizing nanites and Bruce's genetic alterations, the gamma radiation is killing him. He's super-intelligent, but doesn't have Bruce's background in the field. He offers Bruce a deal; if Bruce stabilizes his condition, he can a) take care of Blonsky, whose pursuit is news to Banner, and b) stabilize Bruce's condition. (The Leader also implies that if Bruce doesn't stabilize his condition, he has it in him to sic Blonsky on him as a last act.) Reluctantly, Bruce agrees.
The two begin working together--Banner is the expert in the field, but the Leader's natural intelligence allows him to quickly outstrip Bruce's knowledge. While they're working, the Leader displays other, disturbing aspects of his power--he can use the power of his mind to control others with a form of hypnosis. Banner wonders why the Leader didn't just control him, but the answer is simple--he can't implant suggestions into another gamma-irradiated person. Finally, the process succeeds and the Leader is stable. Now, the same process can be used on Bruce...
...but Bruce doesn't get time to test it right away, as Blonsky makes his move, kidnapping Betty and forcing Bruce to come after her. Blonsky thinks he's outplayed Banner with this trick, forcing Bruce to drug himself rather than risk Blonsky hurting his girlfriend, but Blonsky hasn't reckoned with Bruce's new ally. The Leader helps Bruce defeat Blonsky and rescue Betty, taking her back to his base for "safe-keeping." Blonsky's fate remains a mystery...for now.
With that out of the way, Bruce is free to try his cure......but Bruce discovers too late that the Leader double-crossed him. The process doesn't stabilize Bruce Banner, it stabilizes the Hulk, creating a new creature not as smart as Banner, not as strong as the Hulk, but with many of the properties of both. This new, grey Hulk is also totally amoral, and quickly agrees to help the Leader boost his mind-control powers a thousand-fold and take over the world's governments.
An appalled Betty tries to get through to the Hulk as they work on the device, but the Hulk is unswayed and steals the necessary parts from the US military in a major action sequence. The Leader assembles the device and activates it, enthralling not just the world's leaders but every human being on the face of the planet, save the Hulk and himself. The Hulk is actually fine with this--until he finds out that Betty, too, is now a mindless slave of the Leader, and that the Leader plans to use her as nothing more than a "brood mare" of his new humanity. With that, the alliance is off and the fight is on--despite his avowed lack of morality and conscience, he still deep down loves Betty Ross.
The Leader is more than a little irked, since he can't control the Hulk. He can't implant suggestions into the mind of any gamma-powered being. Luckily, he explains as Blonsky bursts into the room, he can implant suggestions into someone and then transform them. Blonsky turns into a larger, uglier, scalier, mutated Hulkish thing that the Leader dubs, "My own personal Abomination", which then proceeds to stomp nine kinds of hell out of the weaker, grey Hulk.
The Hulk fights valiantly, but the Abomination gets him into a choke-hold. As his brain begins to die from lack of oxygen, we zoom through his eye to his mental state, and see him start to lose his hold on the mental "cages" he's trapped Banner and the green Hulk in. The green Hulk breaks free and the two of them fight, the grey Hulk refusing to relinquish the body he's fought so hard to attain, even if he dies in it. Their battle is inconclusive, finally ending in the two of them strangling each other to death even as the Abomination strangles his physical body...
...and then Banner steps up to the pair. He says, "That's enough. This stops now. I'm stopping it. Because you might be stronger out there, but in here?" BAM! One punch and the grey Hulk drops. "Banner is strongest one there is!" He turns to the green Hulk. "Go. Save Betty."
...and we zoom back out through the eyes as they change from grey to green, as the Hulk grows more massive, stronger, greener, breaks the Abomination's hold, and Round Two begins. The Abomination just isn't a match for the stronger green Hulk, and their conflict destroys the lab and the Leader's equipment. The Hulk breaks out with Betty as the lab is engulfed with fiery explosions, seemingly killing both the Leader and the Abomination.
After a time, the Hulk reverts to Banner. He explains to Betty that the changes the Leader made further fragmented his mind and body. What was a struggle between himself and the Hulk is now an uneasy three-way war between himself and two Hulks that hate each other, him, and probably everyone else...and it's not safe to be around her, or anyone. With that, he turns and heads off into the night, leaving Betty to wonder when she and Bruce will ever be free of the curse of the Hulk.
Basically, it picks up where the first Hulk movie left off--Banner's on the run, hiding out in some Third World country and trying not to get "angry". The US government suspects they might know where he is, but they don't have extradition treaties with that country, so they hire, through back-channels, an ex-KGB mercenary named Emil Blonsky to go retrieve Bruce Banner, dead or alive. He's briefed on the Hulk situation, but is very confident (over-confident, even) that he can take care of the situation without problems.
Meanwhile, Bruce is approached by a man calling himself "The Leader". He's an insurance salesman who was contaminated by waste products from Bruce's gamma experiments, and his intelligence has been increased a hundred-fold; however, without the stabilizing nanites and Bruce's genetic alterations, the gamma radiation is killing him. He's super-intelligent, but doesn't have Bruce's background in the field. He offers Bruce a deal; if Bruce stabilizes his condition, he can a) take care of Blonsky, whose pursuit is news to Banner, and b) stabilize Bruce's condition. (The Leader also implies that if Bruce doesn't stabilize his condition, he has it in him to sic Blonsky on him as a last act.) Reluctantly, Bruce agrees.
The two begin working together--Banner is the expert in the field, but the Leader's natural intelligence allows him to quickly outstrip Bruce's knowledge. While they're working, the Leader displays other, disturbing aspects of his power--he can use the power of his mind to control others with a form of hypnosis. Banner wonders why the Leader didn't just control him, but the answer is simple--he can't implant suggestions into another gamma-irradiated person. Finally, the process succeeds and the Leader is stable. Now, the same process can be used on Bruce...
...but Bruce doesn't get time to test it right away, as Blonsky makes his move, kidnapping Betty and forcing Bruce to come after her. Blonsky thinks he's outplayed Banner with this trick, forcing Bruce to drug himself rather than risk Blonsky hurting his girlfriend, but Blonsky hasn't reckoned with Bruce's new ally. The Leader helps Bruce defeat Blonsky and rescue Betty, taking her back to his base for "safe-keeping." Blonsky's fate remains a mystery...for now.
With that out of the way, Bruce is free to try his cure......but Bruce discovers too late that the Leader double-crossed him. The process doesn't stabilize Bruce Banner, it stabilizes the Hulk, creating a new creature not as smart as Banner, not as strong as the Hulk, but with many of the properties of both. This new, grey Hulk is also totally amoral, and quickly agrees to help the Leader boost his mind-control powers a thousand-fold and take over the world's governments.
An appalled Betty tries to get through to the Hulk as they work on the device, but the Hulk is unswayed and steals the necessary parts from the US military in a major action sequence. The Leader assembles the device and activates it, enthralling not just the world's leaders but every human being on the face of the planet, save the Hulk and himself. The Hulk is actually fine with this--until he finds out that Betty, too, is now a mindless slave of the Leader, and that the Leader plans to use her as nothing more than a "brood mare" of his new humanity. With that, the alliance is off and the fight is on--despite his avowed lack of morality and conscience, he still deep down loves Betty Ross.
The Leader is more than a little irked, since he can't control the Hulk. He can't implant suggestions into the mind of any gamma-powered being. Luckily, he explains as Blonsky bursts into the room, he can implant suggestions into someone and then transform them. Blonsky turns into a larger, uglier, scalier, mutated Hulkish thing that the Leader dubs, "My own personal Abomination", which then proceeds to stomp nine kinds of hell out of the weaker, grey Hulk.
The Hulk fights valiantly, but the Abomination gets him into a choke-hold. As his brain begins to die from lack of oxygen, we zoom through his eye to his mental state, and see him start to lose his hold on the mental "cages" he's trapped Banner and the green Hulk in. The green Hulk breaks free and the two of them fight, the grey Hulk refusing to relinquish the body he's fought so hard to attain, even if he dies in it. Their battle is inconclusive, finally ending in the two of them strangling each other to death even as the Abomination strangles his physical body...
...and then Banner steps up to the pair. He says, "That's enough. This stops now. I'm stopping it. Because you might be stronger out there, but in here?" BAM! One punch and the grey Hulk drops. "Banner is strongest one there is!" He turns to the green Hulk. "Go. Save Betty."
...and we zoom back out through the eyes as they change from grey to green, as the Hulk grows more massive, stronger, greener, breaks the Abomination's hold, and Round Two begins. The Abomination just isn't a match for the stronger green Hulk, and their conflict destroys the lab and the Leader's equipment. The Hulk breaks out with Betty as the lab is engulfed with fiery explosions, seemingly killing both the Leader and the Abomination.
After a time, the Hulk reverts to Banner. He explains to Betty that the changes the Leader made further fragmented his mind and body. What was a struggle between himself and the Hulk is now an uneasy three-way war between himself and two Hulks that hate each other, him, and probably everyone else...and it's not safe to be around her, or anyone. With that, he turns and heads off into the night, leaving Betty to wonder when she and Bruce will ever be free of the curse of the Hulk.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Top 5 Lines You'll Never Hear In A 'Frosted Flakes' Commercial
5. "Gee, Tony, I've never knocked over anything bigger than a liquor store!"
4. "Gee, Tony, I've never gotten past second base with a girl before!" (This one presumably would bring new meaning to 'brings out the tiger in you'.)
3. "Gee, Tony, the picketers outside this abortion clinic look pretty scary!"
2. "Gee, Tony, she looks cute, but she's only thirteen!"
1. "Gee, Tony, I just don't think I have the guts to kill myself."
4. "Gee, Tony, I've never gotten past second base with a girl before!" (This one presumably would bring new meaning to 'brings out the tiger in you'.)
3. "Gee, Tony, the picketers outside this abortion clinic look pretty scary!"
2. "Gee, Tony, she looks cute, but she's only thirteen!"
1. "Gee, Tony, I just don't think I have the guts to kill myself."
Thursday, January 26, 2006
*boggle*
So, on a whim, I decided today to try to find a webpage that would give me some information on DC's latest cross-over, 'Infinite Crisis'. (Not to be confused with 'Identity Crisis', or 'Crisis on Infinite Earths'. DC seems to be in full-on panic mode way too often for a universe that has Batman and Superman. Marvel seems much calmer.) And so I made the horrible mistake of trying to read a FAQ on IC.
DEAR GOD. Seriously, this is the most convoluted, over-complicated, bloated mess that any human being could conceive of--in fact, almost certainly moreso. It sincerely looks like if you want to make any goddamn sense out of the current DC storyline, you have to have read every single DC comic since 1985...minimum. They're bringing back every single bad idea that they got rid of in 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' (well, every one they hadn't already brought back--they brought back Krypto the fucking Super-Dog a few years back, which was probably a sign of the end times then and there), they've turned every single super-hero in the DC Universe into a paranoid psychotic, and by the time I've finished writing this, they plan to jump the entire universe a year ahead and release a 52-issue miniseries explaining what happened in the missing year. (OK, it happens next month, but almost certainly by the time anybody reads this, that'll happen.)
I'm of two minds about this. One, the sensible part, which has listened to comics gurus like Warren Ellis and Alan Moore, and who isn't part of the completist grind anymore (and don't fool yourself, it is a grind. If you want to be a comics collector, you have to read a lot of shit to "keep up" with developments in the fictional universe you enjoy some stories in. Otherwise you'll be reading a fun Garth Ennis book like 'Hitman' and wondering, "Who's this Keanu-looking doof who's claiming to be Green Lantern?") This part of me is shrieking, "Have you gone out of your ever-loving minds, DC? This--this abomination of a bloated mess--is why comics readership is declining! With comics being as expensive as they are nowadays, if you make your readers choose between following everything in order to understand the events of the one or two books they like, and dropping comics altogether, they're just going to drop everything! You must, must, must release books that appeal to the casual reader, and stop huge bloated 'event' cross-overs that just perpetuate the insane soap-opera that only masturbatingly-obsessive DC continuity freaks care about! Listen to Warren Ellis! Short, sweet, self-contained, well-written! Not never-ending, bloated, and forcing you to read each panel from each book released over the course of two years in order to understand what all the different Luthors are doing fighting each other!"
Then there's the other, either more realistic or more cynical part, which says, "Screw it. Maybe they're right. Maybe it's just not possible for DC to get the casual readers anymore, maybe their continuity is just too entrenched and convoluted to get rid of, and maybe their only hope is to pander to the small obsessive, rich, DC fanboy market for all it's worth, using the trade paperbacks as a lure to that extremely rare marketing segment that picks up an issue of something like 'Infinite Crisis' and, instead of saying, "This is incomprehensible shit!", says, "I have got to know what this is all about." And hoping that niche market is enough to sustain them.
We'll see which part of me is right in ten years' time. If it's the first part, I'm buying the rights to Hawk and Dove. That series rocked.
DEAR GOD. Seriously, this is the most convoluted, over-complicated, bloated mess that any human being could conceive of--in fact, almost certainly moreso. It sincerely looks like if you want to make any goddamn sense out of the current DC storyline, you have to have read every single DC comic since 1985...minimum. They're bringing back every single bad idea that they got rid of in 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' (well, every one they hadn't already brought back--they brought back Krypto the fucking Super-Dog a few years back, which was probably a sign of the end times then and there), they've turned every single super-hero in the DC Universe into a paranoid psychotic, and by the time I've finished writing this, they plan to jump the entire universe a year ahead and release a 52-issue miniseries explaining what happened in the missing year. (OK, it happens next month, but almost certainly by the time anybody reads this, that'll happen.)
I'm of two minds about this. One, the sensible part, which has listened to comics gurus like Warren Ellis and Alan Moore, and who isn't part of the completist grind anymore (and don't fool yourself, it is a grind. If you want to be a comics collector, you have to read a lot of shit to "keep up" with developments in the fictional universe you enjoy some stories in. Otherwise you'll be reading a fun Garth Ennis book like 'Hitman' and wondering, "Who's this Keanu-looking doof who's claiming to be Green Lantern?") This part of me is shrieking, "Have you gone out of your ever-loving minds, DC? This--this abomination of a bloated mess--is why comics readership is declining! With comics being as expensive as they are nowadays, if you make your readers choose between following everything in order to understand the events of the one or two books they like, and dropping comics altogether, they're just going to drop everything! You must, must, must release books that appeal to the casual reader, and stop huge bloated 'event' cross-overs that just perpetuate the insane soap-opera that only masturbatingly-obsessive DC continuity freaks care about! Listen to Warren Ellis! Short, sweet, self-contained, well-written! Not never-ending, bloated, and forcing you to read each panel from each book released over the course of two years in order to understand what all the different Luthors are doing fighting each other!"
Then there's the other, either more realistic or more cynical part, which says, "Screw it. Maybe they're right. Maybe it's just not possible for DC to get the casual readers anymore, maybe their continuity is just too entrenched and convoluted to get rid of, and maybe their only hope is to pander to the small obsessive, rich, DC fanboy market for all it's worth, using the trade paperbacks as a lure to that extremely rare marketing segment that picks up an issue of something like 'Infinite Crisis' and, instead of saying, "This is incomprehensible shit!", says, "I have got to know what this is all about." And hoping that niche market is enough to sustain them.
We'll see which part of me is right in ten years' time. If it's the first part, I'm buying the rights to Hawk and Dove. That series rocked.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Hot Stoves and Brick Walls
At some point during our Thing With Iraq (it can't be a war, since we declared victory; people get very shirty if you call it an occupation; and I'm not sure if we really want to try to explain why we're "liberating" them with torture centers, guns, tanks, and in a few rare cases, body armor)...well, at some point, the administration pretty much waved the white flag in the "moral authority" department. Basically, the argument has gone, "Alright, yes, there were no weapons of mass destruction. Yes, the intelligence was, at best, shoddy, and at worst so overtly shoddy that it's blatantly obvious that we were willfully misreading it to construct a causus belli, and everyone knew it even at the time. Yes, the entire war has been nothing but a blatant power grab. BUT..."
The new conservative rationale for the war. "Now that we're there, we have to win, because the alternatives are too horrible to contemplate."
Discussing a pull-out of the troops is considered to be "defeatist" talk, the same sort of thing that people did in World War II because they secretly supported Hitler or something. We're told that this "hurts troop morale", because after a long hard day of getting shot at, watching your friend get scissored in half by a chunk of shrapnel the size of a cat, and missing your wife and kids desperately, nothing will really lower your morale like hearing that people back home want to get you the hell out of Iraq.
The fact of the matter is, any realistic discussion of the war in Iraq must consider the question, "What are the conditions for victory, and are those conditions still attainable?" If the answer to the latter half of the question is "No," then it is not defeatist to say that we should cut our losses and go, any more than it would be defeatist to suggest that we shouldn't try to break a brick wall with our skulls. We can't do it, and we'll probably do ourselves serious harm in the process.
The current administration is refusing to consider this question. They have sub-ordinated the best interests of the American military, the realities of public policy, and quite possibly the well-being of the nation for the forseeable future, to the egotistical belief that they will be vindicated by history if they can simply pour a sufficient amount of resources into the war. By attempting to salvage their reputation, they are in fact making it worse. It's like touching a hot stove, and instead of pulling your hand back, holding it there to prove how tough it is.
So, let's take a moment and actually consider the question. "What are the conditions of victory in Iraq?" The answer would seem to be, "The creation of a stable, humane, US-friendly government in the country." If this is, in fact, the answer, we should pull out now, because that was never an achievable goal and never will be. Any government that is stable is stable because it is responsive to the needs of its citizens; any government that is humane is humane because it values its citizens; any government that is US-friendly (in the terms we are attempting to impose upon Iraq) values our goodwill higher than it does its own citizens. Meaning that any government that is US-friendly will either have to resort to violence to keep power, or else ask us to do it for them. "Stable, friendly, humane" is the "cheap, close, nice" of nation-building: Pick two.
So what's a realistic "condition of victory" in Iraq, one we can actually achieve that won't make us feel that this is a total failure (or worse--a chaotic, unstable Iraq would be a total failure, a stable-but-actively-hostile-to-the-US Iraq would be worse). This is something that is changing day to day, which is another thing that the Bush administration is failing to understand, or possibly deliberately refusing to understand. "Events are in the saddle, and ride mankind." It was spoken of Vietnam, but it's equally true here. The statement, "We have to stay until we win," presumes that there will always be an existing condition of victory, that we have an unlimited supply of time, money, manpower, material, and goodwill (both of the US and Iraqi public) to accomplish our aims. We do not. The clock is ticking.
It may already have run out.
The new conservative rationale for the war. "Now that we're there, we have to win, because the alternatives are too horrible to contemplate."
Discussing a pull-out of the troops is considered to be "defeatist" talk, the same sort of thing that people did in World War II because they secretly supported Hitler or something. We're told that this "hurts troop morale", because after a long hard day of getting shot at, watching your friend get scissored in half by a chunk of shrapnel the size of a cat, and missing your wife and kids desperately, nothing will really lower your morale like hearing that people back home want to get you the hell out of Iraq.
The fact of the matter is, any realistic discussion of the war in Iraq must consider the question, "What are the conditions for victory, and are those conditions still attainable?" If the answer to the latter half of the question is "No," then it is not defeatist to say that we should cut our losses and go, any more than it would be defeatist to suggest that we shouldn't try to break a brick wall with our skulls. We can't do it, and we'll probably do ourselves serious harm in the process.
The current administration is refusing to consider this question. They have sub-ordinated the best interests of the American military, the realities of public policy, and quite possibly the well-being of the nation for the forseeable future, to the egotistical belief that they will be vindicated by history if they can simply pour a sufficient amount of resources into the war. By attempting to salvage their reputation, they are in fact making it worse. It's like touching a hot stove, and instead of pulling your hand back, holding it there to prove how tough it is.
So, let's take a moment and actually consider the question. "What are the conditions of victory in Iraq?" The answer would seem to be, "The creation of a stable, humane, US-friendly government in the country." If this is, in fact, the answer, we should pull out now, because that was never an achievable goal and never will be. Any government that is stable is stable because it is responsive to the needs of its citizens; any government that is humane is humane because it values its citizens; any government that is US-friendly (in the terms we are attempting to impose upon Iraq) values our goodwill higher than it does its own citizens. Meaning that any government that is US-friendly will either have to resort to violence to keep power, or else ask us to do it for them. "Stable, friendly, humane" is the "cheap, close, nice" of nation-building: Pick two.
So what's a realistic "condition of victory" in Iraq, one we can actually achieve that won't make us feel that this is a total failure (or worse--a chaotic, unstable Iraq would be a total failure, a stable-but-actively-hostile-to-the-US Iraq would be worse). This is something that is changing day to day, which is another thing that the Bush administration is failing to understand, or possibly deliberately refusing to understand. "Events are in the saddle, and ride mankind." It was spoken of Vietnam, but it's equally true here. The statement, "We have to stay until we win," presumes that there will always be an existing condition of victory, that we have an unlimited supply of time, money, manpower, material, and goodwill (both of the US and Iraqi public) to accomplish our aims. We do not. The clock is ticking.
It may already have run out.
Friday, January 06, 2006
The End of the Conversation
(Go watch 'Anne', the first episode of Buffy Season Three. Pause it right at the end of Scene 15, the conversation between Giles and Joyce. This is what I always figured Giles must have said.)
"She's a young woman who's been placed under any number of burdens, Ms. Summers. Some of them are the same as any other girl her age, but others are absolutely unique, and she has borne them when any number of others would have broken. She's saved my life on more than one occasion, and more than that, she's saved the lives of her friends, of her family, of total strangers and of every man, woman and child in the entire world. I realize that it's a bit hard to take in a phrase like that, so I will repeat it so that you don't miss it.
"Every living being on this planet today owes their life to your daughter. In fact, we all owe her our lives several times over; her courage and skill has saved the entire planet more than once. She saved all these people without thought of the considerable danger to herself, without any wish for reward or recompense, and indeed at great personal cost. If you have to put that into a single word, Ms. Summers, I believe the one I'd select would be 'hero'...and frankly, if you wish to place the 'blame' for that onto my shoulders, I take it as the greatest of compliments. Good day to you."
At which point Giles walks out, leaving Joyce to maybe feel a bit bad about the way she's been handling things.
"She's a young woman who's been placed under any number of burdens, Ms. Summers. Some of them are the same as any other girl her age, but others are absolutely unique, and she has borne them when any number of others would have broken. She's saved my life on more than one occasion, and more than that, she's saved the lives of her friends, of her family, of total strangers and of every man, woman and child in the entire world. I realize that it's a bit hard to take in a phrase like that, so I will repeat it so that you don't miss it.
"Every living being on this planet today owes their life to your daughter. In fact, we all owe her our lives several times over; her courage and skill has saved the entire planet more than once. She saved all these people without thought of the considerable danger to herself, without any wish for reward or recompense, and indeed at great personal cost. If you have to put that into a single word, Ms. Summers, I believe the one I'd select would be 'hero'...and frankly, if you wish to place the 'blame' for that onto my shoulders, I take it as the greatest of compliments. Good day to you."
At which point Giles walks out, leaving Joyce to maybe feel a bit bad about the way she's been handling things.
One Tiny Thing
Changed my mind about 'Purge', by Bif Naked. It's dreamy. (I must have been in a bad mood the first time I listened to it.)
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Alternative Ending to V for Vendetta
(Or, I Can't Be The First Person To Think Of This)
We enter the scene with Finch, the detective assigned to track down V, staggering into Victoria Station. He's heavily under the influence of LSD, a drug he took to try to understand the enigmatic killer, and although it's exacted a heavy mental toll, it's done its work well. He's finally close to V's lair...and its secrets.
He heads down into the abandoned Underground. At last, he spots V himself. He pulls out his gun...prepares to fire...
And suddenly a vast dog leaps past him, spoiling his aim! The dog, some sort of breed of Great Dane, lets out a strange and poignant howl. In Finch's drugged state, it almost seems as if it's calling out, "Roverrr here!"
V turns. He spots Finch, but seemingly just as importantly, he spots the massive dog. He moves towards the pair with a swift, gliding motion, and Finch knows they're both doomed...
When suddenly, a giant net drops from the ceiling onto V, entangling him! Finch stares in utter confusion as four people step from the shadows, four civilians who've managed to do what the entire British government could not--capture the terrorist known as V.
"Good work, Scooby!" they chorus, as one of them, a young man dressed in green, scratches the dog's head. Another, dressed in white, steps forward to V, who's only managed to free his head from the weighted net. "And now, let's see who V really is!" With a flourish, they remove the mask.
Everyone, even Finch, gasps. "Old Man McAllister!" they shout. The girl with spectacles nods knowingly. "Of course. He was using the V costume to frighten people away from organized governmental authority...and the old mill!"
"That's right," snarles V. "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if not for you meddling kids...and that dog!"
We enter the scene with Finch, the detective assigned to track down V, staggering into Victoria Station. He's heavily under the influence of LSD, a drug he took to try to understand the enigmatic killer, and although it's exacted a heavy mental toll, it's done its work well. He's finally close to V's lair...and its secrets.
He heads down into the abandoned Underground. At last, he spots V himself. He pulls out his gun...prepares to fire...
And suddenly a vast dog leaps past him, spoiling his aim! The dog, some sort of breed of Great Dane, lets out a strange and poignant howl. In Finch's drugged state, it almost seems as if it's calling out, "Roverrr here!"
V turns. He spots Finch, but seemingly just as importantly, he spots the massive dog. He moves towards the pair with a swift, gliding motion, and Finch knows they're both doomed...
When suddenly, a giant net drops from the ceiling onto V, entangling him! Finch stares in utter confusion as four people step from the shadows, four civilians who've managed to do what the entire British government could not--capture the terrorist known as V.
"Good work, Scooby!" they chorus, as one of them, a young man dressed in green, scratches the dog's head. Another, dressed in white, steps forward to V, who's only managed to free his head from the weighted net. "And now, let's see who V really is!" With a flourish, they remove the mask.
Everyone, even Finch, gasps. "Old Man McAllister!" they shout. The girl with spectacles nods knowingly. "Of course. He was using the V costume to frighten people away from organized governmental authority...and the old mill!"
"That's right," snarles V. "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if not for you meddling kids...and that dog!"
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Getting an Idea Out of My Head
As is usual when I have what I think is a really great idea that I have no way to convey to the people who could do something about it, I'm just going to blog the idea and hope that someone who has some power to do something about it sees it. It's sort of like setting a bottle adrift at sea, except that that a bottle adrift at sea has less chance of being found by a person who was really just looking for porn sites.
So, with that in mind, and hoping that Joss Whedon Googles his own name just to see what people are saying about him (I can't be the only person who does this), I suggest:
A Firefly line of novels.
Seriously, the movie apparently didn't do enough business to bring out another $25 million film, and that seems to be the end of it...but unless I've been lied to repeatedly by a variety of different publishers, authors of TV tie-in books don't get paid 25 million dollars. I think that there's definitely a devoted following of the series that's willing to shell out regular dough for a series of decently written books, and that it could be sustained as a profitable line. And one of the advantages of writing a book based on a TV series is that TV series are designed as "story machines"--ie, the setting and characters are meant to generate a large number of story ideas, just because they need to have a large number of stories over the lifespan of the series.
So. Let the word-of-mouth campaign spread from this tiny little blog, read by a bare minimum of people (and probably fewer since I post so infrequently now.) Let it become a vast tide of public opinion which will reach the ears of publishing houses everywhere. Firefly: The Novels! Or Serenity Joss Whedon Nathan Fillion Universal ...let's see, what other keywords would get me hits?
Right. Hot Asian shaved.
So, with that in mind, and hoping that Joss Whedon Googles his own name just to see what people are saying about him (I can't be the only person who does this), I suggest:
A Firefly line of novels.
Seriously, the movie apparently didn't do enough business to bring out another $25 million film, and that seems to be the end of it...but unless I've been lied to repeatedly by a variety of different publishers, authors of TV tie-in books don't get paid 25 million dollars. I think that there's definitely a devoted following of the series that's willing to shell out regular dough for a series of decently written books, and that it could be sustained as a profitable line. And one of the advantages of writing a book based on a TV series is that TV series are designed as "story machines"--ie, the setting and characters are meant to generate a large number of story ideas, just because they need to have a large number of stories over the lifespan of the series.
So. Let the word-of-mouth campaign spread from this tiny little blog, read by a bare minimum of people (and probably fewer since I post so infrequently now.) Let it become a vast tide of public opinion which will reach the ears of publishing houses everywhere. Firefly: The Novels! Or Serenity Joss Whedon Nathan Fillion Universal ...let's see, what other keywords would get me hits?
Right. Hot Asian shaved.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Jazz Textures
Something I was wondering tonight at work, when someone tuned to the "smooth jazz" station...
Are there other textures of jazz? Like rough, abrasive jazz, which you can put on in the background, but it'll eventually wear away at your nerves and make you tense, irritable, and in the mood to fight.
Or sharp jazz. You'll be listening to it, it doesn't really register much, then BAM! You suddenly get a big jagged chunk of jazz straight in your ear. (Presumably necessitating a tetanus shot.)
Or perhaps, moving in the opposite direction, soft downy jazz. Jazz so inconsequential it puts you to sleep.
Liquid jazz, which presumably conforms itself to any listener's contours...
Gaseous jazz, jazz so inconsequential you don't actually notice you're listening to it. (This last jazz is, of course, a purely theoretical jazz texture, as by definition, it's impossible to notice the existence of true gaseous jazz. In fact, I could be listening to it right now.)
All of the above is, of course, "free jazz" when heard over the radio, and only becomes "expensive jazz" when heard in concert.
Are there other textures of jazz? Like rough, abrasive jazz, which you can put on in the background, but it'll eventually wear away at your nerves and make you tense, irritable, and in the mood to fight.
Or sharp jazz. You'll be listening to it, it doesn't really register much, then BAM! You suddenly get a big jagged chunk of jazz straight in your ear. (Presumably necessitating a tetanus shot.)
Or perhaps, moving in the opposite direction, soft downy jazz. Jazz so inconsequential it puts you to sleep.
Liquid jazz, which presumably conforms itself to any listener's contours...
Gaseous jazz, jazz so inconsequential you don't actually notice you're listening to it. (This last jazz is, of course, a purely theoretical jazz texture, as by definition, it's impossible to notice the existence of true gaseous jazz. In fact, I could be listening to it right now.)
All of the above is, of course, "free jazz" when heard over the radio, and only becomes "expensive jazz" when heard in concert.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Oh, What the Heck...
(The "sporadic posting" continues, and will continue for some while--my hours have ramped up at work, and that's just how it is. I'm used to it now, I'm even more used to the nice extra money, but it does bite into Mr. Free Time a bit. Anyhow, away from my boring life...)
On the radio a few weeks back, they had an ad for a jewelry store that said that they had wedding rings that "scream how you feel about her." It's an ill-chosen metaphor, but when thought about literally, it paints an even more disturbing picture...
CUSTOMER walks into jewelry store. There is an unearthly din all around, as though he has walked into a pet store that sells only trained parrots. A SALESMAN walks up to him.
SALESMAN: Good day, sir. Are you interested in a wedding ring?
CUSTOMER: Well, yes, I am. (Looks around.) What's with all the--
SALESMAN: Perhaps this one might interest you? (Holds up a small velvet box, and opens it.)
RING #1: I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I--
CUSTOMER (hurriedly pushing box closed): No. No, I don't think that's the sort of thing I'm looking for at all. In fact, I--
SALESMAN: Say no more, sir. Perhaps this one is more to your taste. (Opens a second box.)
RING #2: I JUST DON'T WANT TO DIE OLD AND ALONE! I JUST DON'T WANT TO DIE OLD AND ALONE! I--
CUSTOMER (closes that box as well, by now looking utterly horrified): No! I just want--
SALESMAN (with a knowing nod): I understand perfectly, sir. (Holds up another box.)
RING #3: I KNOCKED YOU UP! I KNOCKED YOU UP! I KNOCKED YOU UP! I KNOCKED YOU UP!
(Ring continues to repeat as panicked customer flees shop.)
On the radio a few weeks back, they had an ad for a jewelry store that said that they had wedding rings that "scream how you feel about her." It's an ill-chosen metaphor, but when thought about literally, it paints an even more disturbing picture...
CUSTOMER walks into jewelry store. There is an unearthly din all around, as though he has walked into a pet store that sells only trained parrots. A SALESMAN walks up to him.
SALESMAN: Good day, sir. Are you interested in a wedding ring?
CUSTOMER: Well, yes, I am. (Looks around.) What's with all the--
SALESMAN: Perhaps this one might interest you? (Holds up a small velvet box, and opens it.)
RING #1: I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I--
CUSTOMER (hurriedly pushing box closed): No. No, I don't think that's the sort of thing I'm looking for at all. In fact, I--
SALESMAN: Say no more, sir. Perhaps this one is more to your taste. (Opens a second box.)
RING #2: I JUST DON'T WANT TO DIE OLD AND ALONE! I JUST DON'T WANT TO DIE OLD AND ALONE! I--
CUSTOMER (closes that box as well, by now looking utterly horrified): No! I just want--
SALESMAN (with a knowing nod): I understand perfectly, sir. (Holds up another box.)
RING #3: I KNOCKED YOU UP! I KNOCKED YOU UP! I KNOCKED YOU UP! I KNOCKED YOU UP!
(Ring continues to repeat as panicked customer flees shop.)
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Review: Superbeautifulmonster (Bif Naked)
Latest by Bif Naked, and it's nice. I'll admit to being a bit flat on 'Purge', her sophomore effort, but this one hits a lot of the same notes that 'I, Bificus' did. Very much in the mode of Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, and other female vocalists who weren't afraid to display emotions beyond "love" and "worrying about the man you love". She's capable of showing anger ("Let-Down", which is a snarky anthem for every garage-band kid in America), sorrow (an excellent cover of "Nothing Else Matters"--I hated covers when I was a teenager, but I've come completely to the opposite view and think that a good cover song is a thing of beauty), and she's not afraid to admit that she's got a sex drive as healthy as most guys. ("Funeral for a Good Grrl" contains a few lines that made me blush--"I don't want your diamonds/just a necklace of pearls" and "You be the kid and I'll be the candy store" being two of them.)
And "The World Is Over" is a song so damn good that it should be playing hourly on every radio station in America.
So, yeah, this is another very good album from a very good artist. Go. Buy.
And "The World Is Over" is a song so damn good that it should be playing hourly on every radio station in America.
So, yeah, this is another very good album from a very good artist. Go. Buy.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
L'Esprit D'Escalier
I didn't get a chance to say this at the time, but to the woman who wrote the column in my college newspaper, back when I was a student, talking about how everyone was too quick to label independent woman as "angry", and who wrote the line: "Everyone's talking about Alanis Morrisette as an 'angry young woman' just because she wrote about having flies in your champagne"...
No, dear, I think it was the one about "Every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back I hope you feel it" that got her labeled as an 'angry young woman'.
Nice to finally get that off my chest.
No, dear, I think it was the one about "Every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back I hope you feel it" that got her labeled as an 'angry young woman'.
Nice to finally get that off my chest.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Great Bad Movie Lines, #3
Not so much a bad line as a bad delivery, really. In 'Day of the Dead', the helicopter pilot is rebelling against the evil (well, not so much evil as cracking under the pressure) soldiers. One of them pulls a gun on him, but the leader realizes that the helicopter pilot is the only one who can fly them out of there, and stills his men with the command, "Wait. We need his ass."
Unfortunately, he doesn't say, "We need his ass," suggesting that they can't do without him and have to keep him alive. No, he says, "We need his ass," suggesting that perhaps the remaining body parts are expendable, but that fine ass of his is just too important to lose.
It's not much surprise that the pilot makes a run for it, really.
Unfortunately, he doesn't say, "We need his ass," suggesting that they can't do without him and have to keep him alive. No, he says, "We need his ass," suggesting that perhaps the remaining body parts are expendable, but that fine ass of his is just too important to lose.
It's not much surprise that the pilot makes a run for it, really.
Friday, October 21, 2005
I...Still...Function...
Yes, two Transformers references in three posts. I'm on fire!
Watched 'Land of the Dead' for the second time last night, and I'm still struck at how the whole thing is a huge allegory for the need for the working classes to revolt and set up a communist society inside the United States. You have the two sets of underclasses, the living (led by a white guy) and the dead (led by a black guy) set against each other in an irreconcilable conflict so that neither side will notice how they're both exploited by the rich. Cholo (John Leguizamo) is someone trying to get ahead by doing the rich's dirty work, but he'll never get anywhere because he's Hispanic and the rich are all racist under the skin.
Eventually the whole system breaks down. Cholo tries blackmail and terrorism, but these tactics are morally reprehensible because they threaten the underclass he should be supporting, and fail. Only when he dies (and joins the underclass in spirit as well as body--"I always wanted to see how the other half lives") can he truly make progress in the People's Struggle. Meanwhile, the living and the dead set aside their differences and slaughter the true source of all evil--the rich. Once that's completed, the dead leave the living in peace and the underclasses prepare to live a new live in their socialist Utopia.
It's a blatantly obvious reading--I'm just amazed he was able to get away with it.
Watched 'Land of the Dead' for the second time last night, and I'm still struck at how the whole thing is a huge allegory for the need for the working classes to revolt and set up a communist society inside the United States. You have the two sets of underclasses, the living (led by a white guy) and the dead (led by a black guy) set against each other in an irreconcilable conflict so that neither side will notice how they're both exploited by the rich. Cholo (John Leguizamo) is someone trying to get ahead by doing the rich's dirty work, but he'll never get anywhere because he's Hispanic and the rich are all racist under the skin.
Eventually the whole system breaks down. Cholo tries blackmail and terrorism, but these tactics are morally reprehensible because they threaten the underclass he should be supporting, and fail. Only when he dies (and joins the underclass in spirit as well as body--"I always wanted to see how the other half lives") can he truly make progress in the People's Struggle. Meanwhile, the living and the dead set aside their differences and slaughter the true source of all evil--the rich. Once that's completed, the dead leave the living in peace and the underclasses prepare to live a new live in their socialist Utopia.
It's a blatantly obvious reading--I'm just amazed he was able to get away with it.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Light Posting...
...because of floods, home repairs, 52-hour workweeks, and if there's a plague of locusts headed towards the Midwest, you now know why. Will get back up to speed later, assuming no meteor strikes.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Junkions
Anyone remember these guys? From 'Transformers: the Movie', made out of discarded bits of other robots, leader voiced by Eric Idle (as part of a surprisingly star-studded cast that included Leonard Nimoy, Orson Welles, and Robert Stack...OK, it's surprising for a movie about "robots in disguise")...but the main thing was the way they talked. Just as they were made up of discarded junk, so too was their entire culture, the way they spoke and acted, made up of nothing more than discarded one-liners, old pop culture references, and quotes from TV shows and movies.
Sometimes I think we're turning into them.
Only without the ability to turn into a motorcycle and also with way too few laser guns.
Sometimes I think we're turning into them.
Only without the ability to turn into a motorcycle and also with way too few laser guns.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Partial Review: Hitch-Hiker's Guide
Watched as much of the 2005 film as I could stand (up through the scene where all the main characters meet on the Heart of Gold), and so, here's a review.
The facetious version: Watching this movie unfold is like being a pregnant woman, going into labor and being wheeled into the delivery room, fully aware of the magnificent potential of the nascent and beautiful life to come...only to have the nurse say, "Your regular doctor is unavailable, so we've brought in Leatherface to deliver your baby. He knows a lot about anatomy, right?"
The lengthier, more accurate version: It's like watching the real Hitch-hiker's Guide movie, as re-enacted the next morning by the guys around the office who were pretty drunk when they saw it, aren't necessarily sober now, and don't remember it really well. The film tries to "improve" on the original (in all its various forms) by botching punchlines, snipping those long talky bits in favor of a romance between Arthur and Trillian, taking great descriptions and turning them into unfunny sight gags, and then having the whole thing be performed by a cast of actors who wouldn't be able to make the cut in a high school production of 'Our Town'.
Martin Freeman completely misdelivers one of the best lines in the story ("We've met") so thoroughly that you have to believe it was on purpose as a means of showing his contempt for the other actors, Mos Def delivers each line as though he expects the director, at any moment, to shout "ACTION!", and I'm firmly convinced that Sam Rockwell is trying to kill me, using his acting as the murder weapon so that the police won't suspect him. His delivery of the line, "Hey baby, is this guy boring you? Why don't you come and talk to me, I'm from another planet," is eye-bleedingly, tooth-grindingly, hideously, Shatnerianly bad, and he just gets worse from there. Zooey Deschanel is decent enough as Trillian, but her character has suffered the most from being rewritten, to the point where we're actually supposed to believe that a smart, clever, witty woman usually asks guys she's just met 15 minutes ago at a party to quit their job, sell their home, and travel to Madagascar with them...and thinks the guy's boring when he doesn't do it. Yeah, something tells me that's a recipe for perpetual disappointment.
Oh, and Marvin looks like a stormtrooper who's just swallowed a weather balloon.
I'm still of the opinion that a good Hitch-hiker's movie can be made. But this is as far from it as you can possibly get short of having it be a one-man show starring Carrot Top.
The facetious version: Watching this movie unfold is like being a pregnant woman, going into labor and being wheeled into the delivery room, fully aware of the magnificent potential of the nascent and beautiful life to come...only to have the nurse say, "Your regular doctor is unavailable, so we've brought in Leatherface to deliver your baby. He knows a lot about anatomy, right?"
The lengthier, more accurate version: It's like watching the real Hitch-hiker's Guide movie, as re-enacted the next morning by the guys around the office who were pretty drunk when they saw it, aren't necessarily sober now, and don't remember it really well. The film tries to "improve" on the original (in all its various forms) by botching punchlines, snipping those long talky bits in favor of a romance between Arthur and Trillian, taking great descriptions and turning them into unfunny sight gags, and then having the whole thing be performed by a cast of actors who wouldn't be able to make the cut in a high school production of 'Our Town'.
Martin Freeman completely misdelivers one of the best lines in the story ("We've met") so thoroughly that you have to believe it was on purpose as a means of showing his contempt for the other actors, Mos Def delivers each line as though he expects the director, at any moment, to shout "ACTION!", and I'm firmly convinced that Sam Rockwell is trying to kill me, using his acting as the murder weapon so that the police won't suspect him. His delivery of the line, "Hey baby, is this guy boring you? Why don't you come and talk to me, I'm from another planet," is eye-bleedingly, tooth-grindingly, hideously, Shatnerianly bad, and he just gets worse from there. Zooey Deschanel is decent enough as Trillian, but her character has suffered the most from being rewritten, to the point where we're actually supposed to believe that a smart, clever, witty woman usually asks guys she's just met 15 minutes ago at a party to quit their job, sell their home, and travel to Madagascar with them...and thinks the guy's boring when he doesn't do it. Yeah, something tells me that's a recipe for perpetual disappointment.
Oh, and Marvin looks like a stormtrooper who's just swallowed a weather balloon.
I'm still of the opinion that a good Hitch-hiker's movie can be made. But this is as far from it as you can possibly get short of having it be a one-man show starring Carrot Top.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Actual Review: Hitch-Hiker's Guide
Thoughts, in no particular order:
1) This is talking about the six-episode BBC series from 1981, not the recently-released movie. Don't have much interest in the recently-released movie, probably will never bother to see it. It's not exactly to the book what 'I, Robot' was to Asimov, but I was a bit underwhelmed by the bits I saw nonetheless.
2) Sandra Dickinson is probably the single biggest factor in dragging this series down...but it's not really her fault. She's been saddled with an outfit that makes her look like one of Ming the Merciless' concubines, her hair is just relentlessly 80s in a painful way, and the director has told her to deliver all her lines in an American accent that a) she can't do, b) doesn't make sense for a character from Islington and c) makes her sound like Vanilla Whore in 'Scott of the Sahara'. All that together, and her ability to be convincing as an intelligent, centered astrophysicist dies upon hearing her first line (and it doesn't help that her first line is one that you'd expect to be delivered by an air hostess.)
3) The other big factor is, of course, The Other Head. Yeesh. The actor playing Zaphod does the same awful cod-American accent as Trillian, but it works better on him than it does on her, because he's meant to be larger than life, silly, and not too very bright.
4) The actor who plays Ford Prefect would make a good Doctor, if you went into a parallel universe and took the part away from Colin Baker. (Not that I dislike Colin Baker in the part.) He does have a tendency to underplay every line, delivering them all with this sort of weirdly soothing drone, but he gets the sensibility of Ford right, and that's what counts.
5) The actor who plays Arthur seems a bit too arch for my tastes (it's as though I want to take him and Ford and hook them up to a giant "Charisma Transference Device" and just take a little off the top for him and give it to Ford) but does do what he needs to do for story purposes.
6) Marvin is, of course, magnificent.
7) Production values are low, but then again, it is early 80s BBC. And they get lots of positive style points for keeping to the story's digressive, excursive, ramblingly brilliant style. The general myth about 'Hitch-Hiker's' is that it's horribly plotted, but very funny; the actual truth is that it's cleverly plotted, but that the plot is mostly going on while the characters aren't looking and they don't necessarily notice the plot even after it's happened.
8) It really bothered me at the time that they went straight from the Magrethea stuff to the Milliways stuff, instead of sticking to the source material. You may all now laugh at my youthful ignorance.
9) The actor playing Number One (of the Golgafrinchians) didn't understand he was in a part that was, by its very nature, impossible to overact in. He's way too subdued. (Although, again, this could be the director.)
10) I really, really miss Douglas Adams.
1) This is talking about the six-episode BBC series from 1981, not the recently-released movie. Don't have much interest in the recently-released movie, probably will never bother to see it. It's not exactly to the book what 'I, Robot' was to Asimov, but I was a bit underwhelmed by the bits I saw nonetheless.
2) Sandra Dickinson is probably the single biggest factor in dragging this series down...but it's not really her fault. She's been saddled with an outfit that makes her look like one of Ming the Merciless' concubines, her hair is just relentlessly 80s in a painful way, and the director has told her to deliver all her lines in an American accent that a) she can't do, b) doesn't make sense for a character from Islington and c) makes her sound like Vanilla Whore in 'Scott of the Sahara'. All that together, and her ability to be convincing as an intelligent, centered astrophysicist dies upon hearing her first line (and it doesn't help that her first line is one that you'd expect to be delivered by an air hostess.)
3) The other big factor is, of course, The Other Head. Yeesh. The actor playing Zaphod does the same awful cod-American accent as Trillian, but it works better on him than it does on her, because he's meant to be larger than life, silly, and not too very bright.
4) The actor who plays Ford Prefect would make a good Doctor, if you went into a parallel universe and took the part away from Colin Baker. (Not that I dislike Colin Baker in the part.) He does have a tendency to underplay every line, delivering them all with this sort of weirdly soothing drone, but he gets the sensibility of Ford right, and that's what counts.
5) The actor who plays Arthur seems a bit too arch for my tastes (it's as though I want to take him and Ford and hook them up to a giant "Charisma Transference Device" and just take a little off the top for him and give it to Ford) but does do what he needs to do for story purposes.
6) Marvin is, of course, magnificent.
7) Production values are low, but then again, it is early 80s BBC. And they get lots of positive style points for keeping to the story's digressive, excursive, ramblingly brilliant style. The general myth about 'Hitch-Hiker's' is that it's horribly plotted, but very funny; the actual truth is that it's cleverly plotted, but that the plot is mostly going on while the characters aren't looking and they don't necessarily notice the plot even after it's happened.
8) It really bothered me at the time that they went straight from the Magrethea stuff to the Milliways stuff, instead of sticking to the source material. You may all now laugh at my youthful ignorance.
9) The actor playing Number One (of the Golgafrinchians) didn't understand he was in a part that was, by its very nature, impossible to overact in. He's way too subdued. (Although, again, this could be the director.)
10) I really, really miss Douglas Adams.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Spoiler-Free Review: Serenity
So they do the thing, with the--the zoom, and the whoosh, and the big--omigod, and they--oh, wow, and the bit with the fight, and when the guy does the--and that scene where Mal--it was SO COOL!
It's not the kind of movie you can give a spoiler-free review of. Go. See it for yourself. I'll just give you one line as a bonus.
"Doctor, I'm taking your sister under my protection here. If anything happens to her, anything at all, I swear to you I will get very choked up. Honestly. There could be tears."
It's not the kind of movie you can give a spoiler-free review of. Go. See it for yourself. I'll just give you one line as a bonus.
"Doctor, I'm taking your sister under my protection here. If anything happens to her, anything at all, I swear to you I will get very choked up. Honestly. There could be tears."
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