Napoleon Dynamite – The Animated Series?

16 Jan

In  many ways, I’m part of the problem.  I eat meat, I shop at big box stores, I drive a car, I don’t very read often, I don’t stay up on the news, I write a blog that celebrates TV shows, comic books and video games.  Specifically, though, I’m part of the Napoleon Dynamite problem.  I saw the flick in the theatres when it was in its incredibly limited run in 2004.  And I loved it.  I was among the throngs of fans that quoted every remotely humorous line and did everything possible to affect my own Napoleon or Kip impressions.  Like I said, part of the problem.

It’s eight years later and Napoleon Dynamite is coming back – to TV, in animated form, with all the original creative talent plus one Simpsons writer.  One of the things that makes the movie so successful is its insane obsession with the details of its characters’ universe.  Another is it’s shapeless non-narrative that just allows you to hang out with the characters.  Television is an intensely plot-driven medium; TV chews up and spits out stories at an alarming rate.  This speed increases dramatically in animation and we’ve been conditioned by two-and-a-half decades with the Simpsons to take in 3 or 4 complete stories in 22 minutes.

And this is primarily why the TV series doesn’t work.  Actually, scratch that – the reasons this thing doesn’t work are too numerous to mention.  Herewith, then, an exercise in futility:

1.) The film derived a lot of humor from the mundane, everyday lives of these characters.  They functioned within the rules that govern the real world, and a particularly boring version of the real world, at that.  The pilot episode of the series takes it’s marching orders from its medium and not from its source material, trading in jokes about awkward characters for jokes about pimple cream that gives its user super-human strength.  Oh, it also burns through the floor like Alien blood.  The pilot ends with a battle royale between Napoleon and Kip (on stilts, no less) in a Klingon-style death area in front of an audience of hundreds.  JUST LIKE YOU REMEMBER FROM THE MOVIE.

2.) Non-emotive human characters are funny.  To prepare for this write-up, I watched the film again.  Efren Ramirez’ ultra dead-pan Pedro is a supernatural asset to the movie.  His complete lack of emotion is unsettling – and pretty funny as a result.  But a non-emotive cartoon character?  It doesn’t mean anything.  It’s a still drawing.  And that’s just not funny.

3.) In transition, subtext became supertext.  Instead of Deb quietly, awkwardly flirting with Napoleon, she expresses cartoon lust for him.  Instead of technology being charmingly out of date, a teacher uses a large, punch-card style computer.  Instead of learning how to dance through sweat and practice, Napoleon becomes fluent at Japanese for the purpose of a lazy joke.  The movie actually does an admirable job of subtly stating its themes, but the show any seems to know how to shout.

4.) Both of tonight’s episodes featured chainsaws used as weapons.  Use that information however you best see fit.

5.) The movie is sorta dark.  There’s this oppressive atmosphere of despair that colors all of the proceedings.  It helps the audience identify with characters that aren’t all that likeable.  But the cartoon is vibrant and colorful and features lakes and cornfields instead of desolate desert roads and pathetic, outdated houses.  The setting is the same Idaho town in name only.

This is going to sound like too much of a compliment, but I’m reminded of the mostly-terrible Clerks animated series.  Both shows struggle to capture what was interesting about the source material while embracing a new format.  But while Clerks managed to crank out some amazing absurdist jokes and a compelling art style, I can’t see any redeeming qualities in Napoleon Dynamite.  Even when the creative roster is filled with names I respect like Mike Scully, Julie Thacker, Peter Avanzino and Tom Gamil, and the voice cast lists people like Phil LaMar, Maurice LaMarche, Amy Poehler and Jennifer Coolidge, I can’t get past the aggressive crumminess of this show.

Because I’ll never be on this topic again: The Clerks Animated Series.  The second episode is a clip show, but as it’s the second episode, it can only refer back to the pilot and things that happened earlier in the episode.  It’s subversive and creative and hilarious.  I’m gonna temp SOPA a bit and post these episodes.

Here’s the pilot:

And the second episode.

The rest of the series is up there on youtube.  It mostly gets worse from there.  But it’ll be a better ride than Napoleon Dynamite.

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Batgirl 5

13 Jan

DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point.  Fellow blogger Drew Baumgartner and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles.  We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Drew’s blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday.  This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Batgirl while Drew is hosting the discussion of Green Lantern.

Patrick: DC loves to populate their version of the United States with invented cities.  Superman hails from Smallville and stomps around Metropolis.  The Flash protects Central City and it’s sister city Keystone.  Green Lantern calls Coast City home and has been personally responsible for both destroying it and rebuilding it (maybe a couple times by now).  Most of these cities act as generic New Yorks that can be scattered all over the country, and are generally unremarkable urban backdrops for our heroes’ great adventures.  But then there’s the wholly unique case of Gotham City.

Gotham City is one of the great inventions of DC Comics.  It has history, it has culture, it has problems that have nothing to do with its exploding super hero and super villain populations.  Crime – normal, street level, violent crime – is a problem in Gotham City.  Economically, Gotham’s a mess – and this is something I’ve always been happy attributing to the extensive web of organized crime and corruption that governs the city.  But a scene toward the end of Batgirl #5 got me thinking about the totally mundane economic factors that are making it hard for the every-man of Gotham to make ends meet: there’s a Occupy Gotham protest at the proposed site of Bruce Wayne’s new skyscraper.  Bruce believes that the new skyscraper can act as beacon of economic recovery for the city and we’ve seen this ambition expressed across the line books that take place in Gotham.

I think now is the perfect time for Gotham city to resonate with readers – we’re deep into a recession that has now managed to drastically effect even the luckiest people I know and the distance between Gotham’s Haves and Gotham’s Have-Nots is starting to look more and more realistic.  What makes the whole issue really dynamic is that Bruce Wayne, the hero so integral to Gotham’s drama that Batman’s shadow is cast over every book that takes place in the city, is insanely wealthy.  He is philanthropic, certainly, but his new skyscraper is being protested because he wants to tear down historic buildings to make room for it.  And he’s been donating his family’s money for decades, but it never seems to get any better.

Sorry, some of the themes in the background of this issue really spoke to me and got me thinking about the nature of Gotham City.  Batgirl #5 achieves an awful lot in one issue: 1.) a new villain, Gretel, is introduced; 2.) Babs’ personal life is further explored; 3.) Batgirl is dragged in to the kerfuffle around Bruce’s Gotham-revitalization project; and 4.) McKenna, the detective who lost her partner in issue #1, is put on Batgirl-duty.

The villain is sort of a strange one – more akin to the Spinebender the shapeshifter from Babs’ cameo in Nightwing #4 than The Mirror from first arc of this series.  That is to say, there appears to be something supernatural about her.  Gretel has the ability to control people (possibly just men), is armed with sword and gun (which Barb notices is… different somehow), changes her hair from green to pink between encounters, and feels neither pain nor emotions.  Oh and she’s got an obsession with the number 338, making the men she controls equally obsessed with it.  This last bit is put to creepy effect when she makes a car hijacker demand $3.38 from his victims.  What does it mean?  Maybe it’s the address of one of the buildings Wayne wants to demolish?  Maybe that’s a coincidence – or maybe that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  I’m not totally sure how I feel about this character yet.  I see potential for her inability to feel to relate back to Babs’ paralysis, so that’s neat.  It’s just hard to get a bead on what motivates a character that feels no emotions.  Once we get that nailed down, I look forward to some mind-controlling menace from Gretel.  Also, if she is only able to control men, it puts Babs in a unique position to stop her.

I was hoping for some more exploration of Barbara Gordon Sr. in this issue.  I could be wrong, but I think we got the teasing of a mystery about Babs’ mother’s absence.  She very specifically says “I can’t tell you why I had to go” which sounds an awful lot like something a character says when they’re hiding something AWESOME.  And now she’s back in town as the Bats and the Owls are dueling it out for the fate of Gotham City.  I’m jumping to conclusions here, but that brisk conversation between Batgirl and her mother sent up some red flags for me – expect to see more of her in the future.

The art in this series remains strong, though I miss all the reflective bits that were littered across the first 4 issues.  Andrian Syaf’s action sequences are very clear and I appreciate that every panel in a battle sequence does a good job of making clear what just happened and what is about to happen.  It makes for very fluid fights that actually read as fun as an action sequence in a movie.  I might be imagining this, but it also seems to me like a lot of importance is placed on the characters’ hair is this issue.  Batgirl makes a point to mention Gretel’s change in hair color, and Gretel refers to Batgirl as “Red.”  This is reflected in the art by making this feature prominent on basically all the female characters.  I may well be imagining this and it’s just a case of lady-comic-characters-are-always-drawn-that-way, but check out the scene between the Gordons; their red locks fill every frame – including one that doesn’t show their faces at all.

Gail Simone got a few more chuckles out of me this week from Babs’ asides, but I’m really getting a kick out of how she’s writing the roommate.  We’ve praised Barbara’s voice and the relationship with her roommate in the past, but I’m starting to get the sense that Alysia is a well-developed character that I’d love to spend more time with.

As usual, I’m loving Batgirl.  I think there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing more cross-over-ish action between members of the Bat-family, but as we frequently discuss, there is a lot to love about most of the Bat-titles.  Drew, I’m seeing Batman as the center of the universe, but maybe that’s because I don’t read Detective Comics and stopped reading Batman and Robin.  What I’m saying is that anyone enjoying this book should probably pick up Batman as well.  While so many cross-over events set their stakes at “fate of the universe,” I am finding “the fate of Gotham” much more compelling.

One thing I didn’t get to, so I’ll start you off talking about it – what do you make of Commissioner Gordon setting McKenna on the trail of his own daughter?

Drew: This reboot is a weird thing, canonically.  Some characters (like Barry Allen) are having all but the most basic aspects of their histories erased or revised.  Others (like Hal Jordan) have more or less maintained their histories in their entirety.  Many characters (like Barbara Gordon) have kept parts of their histories while losing or changing others.  This week, Babs interacts with Bruce Wayne and his largely intact history, which begs the question: what happens to the relationships between characters when their histories are being handled differently?

The reason I bring this up is because, up until this point, I had been assuming that much of what was “canon” in Batman’s history hadn’t changed.  I based this assumption on the presence of Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian in the New 52 Universe, as well as the fact that Batman Inc. is still a thing. At the very least, this ties Bruce to the last ten  years or so of continuity, and big bits and pieces of the previous sixty years.  I’m by no means a continuity nazi — I’m not even sure I could pass muster on a simple continuity quiz — but one of the things I had assumed were part of the history was the Cataclysm and No Man’s Land.  I suppose the fact that there are numerous buildings in Gotham dating back decades (and in some cases, centuries), should have tipped me off, but the graffiti you point out makes it perfectly clear that Gotham has not been rebuilt in recent history.

I suppose it makes sense that this would be out, since other Batgirls played a pretty big role in NML and that we’re apparently operating in a world that has been without Batgirl between Babs’ injury and her recovery, but I was surprised to find this particular sentiment in Gotham.  Again, it makes sense — how could crime really exist in a city if Batman built it? — I just didn’t realize that Gotham’s own history was shifting in the reboot (and it may not be — I honestly am no continuity expert).  This makes for an interesting real world parallel, and brings the Court of Owl’s own protests regarding Bruce’s redevelopment plan down to a more relatable level.

I suppose one of the reasons I’m so interested in Babs’ new continuity is understanding how it ties in with the history of her parents.  Batman: Year One, long held as the origin story in modern Batman continuity, details the Gordons’ marital struggles in their first year in Gotham.  It’s also one of the first comics I ever read, and one I know perhaps better than any other.  Babs isn’t present in that story (which coincides with the birth of her younger brother) because in that continuity, she hasn’t yet been adopted by Jim and Barbara.  We talked last month about how that bit of Babs’ history has been changed, which means that B:YO also has to be tweaked a bit.  I understand that it not being canon doesn’t impact it one bit (they’re all imaginary, to paraphrase Alan Moore), but it does make me feel a bit unmoored in Batman history.  (Interestingly, B:YO also holds Batman’s history as Batman to be much longer than five years, unless that shot of James Gordon Jr. from Batman #1 is from the future.)  Ahh! I keep using our Batgirl write-ups as my space to pontificate on new continuity, which is a disservice to that title, anyone reading these write-ups, and myself (I really don’t care about canon this much, honest).  Back to issue #5.

Do we think Gretel doesn’t feel pain, or that she doesn’t mind it?  The cover calls her sadistic, but I’m getting huge wafts of masochism from her dialogue.  Then again, that beat where Gretel looks “like a heroin addict or something,” comes immediately after bashing Babs’ face, so maybe there’s some sadism mixed in there.  The point I’m driving at here is that I’m not sure there is anything supernatural about her — 338 may simply be a well-placed trigger word (like Zur En Arrh), for some almost plausible hypnotism.  Or it could be microwaves a la those hallucinations in Nightwing #3.  I suppose if our sci-fi is getting that outlandish, though, it may as well be magic.  At any rate, her motivations aren’t clear, and your suggestion that she may only be able to control men is intriguing.

I too, was hoping for more between Babs and her mom.  Plot-wise, this scene does very little other than tease what will clearly be a bigger story moving forward, but character-wise, it’s full of keenly observed moments that further humanize Babs.  Her sometimes thought, sometimes spoken catty remarks will be familiar to anyone who’s ever spent time with someone they really despise.  It’s a fun scene (as fun as a confrontation between an absent mother and an abandoned child can be), but it’s over far too soon.

I was initially distracted by the art in that scene.  The angles Adrian Syaf uses throughout are clearly protracted to obscure either Babs or her mother’s face, reminding me of a trick I used to use in art class to keep from having to draw too many details.  It’s distracting, but then I realized: it’s supposed to be.  These characters feel isolated from each other, and placing them alone in frame makes that isolation literal.  It’s a nice touch that’s carried over into the scene between Jim Gordon and Detective McKenna, which works there to establish McKenna’s secret obsession with Batgirl, whom she kind of blames for her some of Mirror’s crimes (which may or may not include the murder of her partner).

Getting to your question: it seems to be protocol in police fiction to put the partners of murdered cops on cases related to the deaths of their partners, if not on that case directly.  They seem to always acknowledge that this represents a conflict of interest, but it never seems to stop anybody.  I like that a kind of classic cop story can be nestled into the Batgirl plot, but I’m a little disappointed in Jim as a detective (or as a boss) for not noticing something’s up.  He even suggests that McKenna may not be objective, given her history with Batgirl, but he gives her the case anyway.  Maybe he’s got something up his sleeve here, or maybe I’m just so used to Sinestro that I expect everyone to be manipulating everyone.  Do we think Jim suspects it’s Babs behind the mask?  If he’s having a problem with Batgirl, couldn’t he consider taking it up with Batman?  I don’t really know — we’ll have to hash this out a bit in the comments.

The showdown with Bruce next month promises to be epic.  Gail Simone has kept Babs pretty honest about her abilities in hand-to-hand combat against big, well-trained dudes, and Bruce is kind of the biggest, most well-trained dude around.  Moreover, he’s a dude Babs doesn’t want to do any lasting damage to.  Last month, I made some predictions about what I did and didn’t want out of Bruce’s cameo here.  Leave it to Simone to totally blind-side me with a situation I couldn’t have anticipated.

This definitely feels more like a “putting the pieces in place” issue than any of the previous four, but I won’t really hold that against it; this was the opening of the second act, tasked with introducing a new villain along with developing the threads carried over from the first.  It was a big task, and all things considered, one it handled fairly well.  It’s a solidly made issue with two fun (and clearly drawn, as you pointed out) action scenes built around an emotional centerpiece.  I suppose it’s a testament to how much I’ve liked the previous four issues that I was less impressed with an issue that holds together as well as this one does.

Here’s a list of what we’re reading.  The list is Batman heavy, and we’re not going to write about everything.  That being said, feedback and suggestions on what to read and discuss are welcome.  Overlapping books in bold:

Animal Man, Batgirl, Batman, Batwoman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Nightwing, Swamp Thing, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin

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All 3 Punches, All 3 Kicks – Darkstalkers IV

11 Jan

There are some ideas I can’t get out of my head.  Ideas that I can’t do anything about.  These are the ideas that keep me up at night, that make me take 20-minute showers, that make it supremely difficult to focus my mind on projects I can reasonably hope to accomplish.  Most of these impossible-to-exorcize-ideas have to do with video games.  I like games a lot, and I always think of new games I’d like to play.  I don’t have the technical skills or the artistic skills to even come close to half-realizing any of my ideas.  Let’s add the problem of intellectual property rights, and it becomes increasingly clear that my maniacally imagined sequels and spin-offs are doomed to bounce around the inside of my skull forever.

A new Darkstalkers game has occupied this skull-space for a while.  I never much played the series when it was alive in arcades, but I was fascinated by the concept of Capcom tackling a fighting game where all the playable characters were monsters.  Many of the game’s innovations have essentially been co-opted by the Vs. Capcom series – so when Capcom started talking about reviving the series, I started to wonder what fundamentally successful elements of the series they would stay true to.  After all, that’s how you revive an old series: remember what works, and make it better.  By my count Darksalkers had exactly three things going for it at the time:

1. Fighting game built on the solid Street Fighter 2 foundation.

2. Unique, compelling character concepts and world

3. Rich, vibrant art style

Hopefully, I’ve been able to maintain all those aspects in my design while offering up some concepts that could begin to brand the franchise anew.  It’s not just about bringing the series back – it’s bringing the series back in a way that matters.

Art Style – Rip Off Sin City

Step number one is going to be addressing the style in which everything in the game is visually expressed.  The cartoon-esque sprites that were used for the original releases were absolutely wonderful, but that style has been used in all of Capcom’s big fighters for the last couple years – most noticeably in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (which contains three Darkstalkers characters).  The last thing I’d want is for the Morrigan, Felicia and Hsienko models from MvC3 recycled for this release.  It’s got to be bold.  I want to look at a screen shot and say “holy shit, that’s neat.”

Capcom has been aping from manga and American comic books forever.  Maybe it’s time they lift a more striking style – may I suggest Frank Miller’s Sin City?

From the Sin City short story "Silent Night"

I’m talking incredibly high contrast: black and white.  Imagine a stage like the scene pictured above, the snow obscuring the movements of the characters but their bold simple images popping against the solid black background.  Of course some characters could have accent colors, like the Yellow Bastard or Blue Eyes do in Sin City:

Blue Eyes and The Yellow Bastard - try to guess which is which.Another benefit of this art style is that it would change the way the characters are depicted based on their environment.  I mentioned the snowy field, but what about a completely white background with the character’s silhouetted in black?  Or a bar scene where the light source comes from a casually swinging overhead light, casting long shadows?  Maybe a colorful stained glass window that our silhouetted characters fight in front of.  Not all the levels need to be so dynamic, some  can be nicely drawn black and white (no gray) environments for our nicely drawn black and white characters to beat eachother up in.  And there could even be levels that take place in some kind of opium nightmare and are depicted as strange and colorful, like Wallace’s drug induced hallucinations in “Hell and Back.”

The Darkstalkers characters have always been a interesting mix of quirky and terrifying and giving them (and their world) the Sin City treatment would create an awesome synthesisof art and thematic material.  Also, it would be the only fighter to look like this on the market – and visually distinct from all the other drek that’s out there.  Except maybe LIMBO… but everyone loved LIMBO, right?

Roster – A Dozen Distinct Characters

The most recent Mortal Kombat game maxes out with 32 characters (with Kratos in the PS3 version and 4 DLC characters).  Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition has 39.  Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has 50.  This is more characters that you can ever hope to master.  For most players, it’s more than you’ll ever even play.  And I know there are real playable differences between Ken, Ryu, Akuma, Evil Ryu, Dan, and Sakura, but these guys have a lot of the same tricks.  Let’s trim the fat a here – we’ve already got some redundancies in the Dalkstalkers line-up.

The one of the left is named Lilith. The one of the right is named "My eyes are up here."

So, let’s just bring back the 8 most compelling characters from the series and then invent 4 more.  There should be no problem dipping into the deep well of folk-monsters to come up with fun, interesting characters to play.  Obviously, we have to choose between one of the two succubi above.  Morrigan seems like the right choice, because she shows up wearing the cameo badge in every single crossover title.  But maybe we want to mix things up and make the younger, less hilariously sexual Lilith the face of the franchise.  Going with Lilith would be a bold statement about taking the series in new directions while staying true to it’s spirit.  Quickly, my other character picks:

Okay, there are 8 here in addition to the Lilith/Morrigan pick.  The whole bottom row of characters could stand to have their designs radically altered, but in particular, I think that gold golem thing (Hutzil) could be re-worked.  So he’s there, but I want to see him re-imagined.

Digital Release – Low Price Point – Limited Availability – Frequent Events

Here’s where my suggestions get bold.  These kinds of games have such periodic release dates, we may as well embrace it from the get-go.  Let’s agree that there should be an updated version of the game every year.  But let’s not stop there.  I want a game that sticks to a strict real-world schedule that rewards me for coming back to the game.  Here’s my suggestion:

Build the game around the winter solstice.  The game can only be played in the three months before and three months after the solstice.  This means late September to late March, which is about the time we need media to be excited about – the days are getting shorter and colder and generally more depressing.  You’ll notice this is when new TV shows come back on the air.  This half of the year is also peppered with holidays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, the solstice, Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s.  I want to see new content (maybe playable characters, play modes, stages, etc.) associated with those holidays.  This way, the community can more frequently bond over the changes to the game.

The game would also be tracking which character you play the most, effectively determining your favorite.  After a month of play, the game makes you play a special story mode with that character that ends in the DEATH of that character.  DEAD.  Meaning you would be unable to use that character while he/she is dead.  Naturally, a month or so later you’d be able to resurrect the character somehow, but I like the idea that the game forces you outside your comfort zone, but would also force the community to mix up their own tactics as well.  Let’s say the first month of on-line play is starting to get tough because people are so well in-tune with their favorite character – but now, one month in, they are forced to explore the other characters.  It’s all in an effort to level the field without over-simplifying anything.

Oh and let’s keep this thing around $20.  Especially if it’s going to be taken away after 6 months.

A Few More Demands (as long as I’m making them)

No come-back mechanics.  The community is asking for this – no one wants to deliver it.  No hyper-combos, no super-arts, no ultras.

A sweet spot for combos – I’d like to see a number of hits that makes a combo deal more damage.  Let’s say 6.  A 6-hit combo gets an extra damage bonus.  5-hit doesn’t get it, 7-hit doesn’t get it.  It would make everyone more mindful of what exactly they’re doing.

Similarly, let’s get a ceiling on hits-in-a-combo.  I’m setting it here as 11.  Any combo greater than 11 hits can be interrupted by your opponent pushing any button and knocking you out of the combo.  It’s a good way of preventing infinites, but it also just keeps games civil – no one showing off with any kind of moronic 85-hit combo.  I mean 85 hits?  What’s the point?

ALSO, it’d be cool if the loser of the round got to alter one of those two numbers (sweet spot or hit ceiling), by making it one higher or one lower.  So if I lose round 1 because I was hit with too many six-hit combos, I can up that sweet spot to 7 and mess up the next round for my opponent.

More story mode options.  Everyone gets their own unique story – and a good one at that.  No more shitty half-animated cut scenes.  Also a full campaign mode like Mortal Kombat did.  In addition, I’d like to see some special event stories; remember that opium nightmare idea I had earlier?  Maybe you have to fight through a series of colorful surreal challenges before you earn the right to play in those trippy color-levels.  And the death and resurrection stories too.

Most of my suggestions are presentationally based.  But I think that is where fighting games are traditionally lacking, and it’d be worth it to have a game I wouldn’t mind showing off to my friends who aren’t fans of the genre.  And that’s all I’ve ever wanted: a fighting game I didn’t have to be embarrassed by.

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Six Reasons I Hate Numbered Lists

8 Jan

1.) An explanation of the list is always included in the first item.

The first item in every Cracked article or AVClub list always contains a little bit of information about the list itself.  It is as though the list makers wanted to include an introductory paragraph but then decided they couldn’t do anything to upset the precious list-form.  This is a minor complaint, but it is one that is directed strictly by the format, and that’s why it makes this list.

2.) Items in the list are arbitrarily ordered.

Even when the order supposedly reflects a ranking in quality, the items in any list are haphazardly organized.  I am often interested in the topic of lists but then find it frustrating when I have to scour the entire article to find the three entries I’m actually interested in.

3.) You’re not even tangentially familiar with WAY TOO MANY entries on the list.

Basically every Top __ Albums of 2011 went this way for me.  As a music and/or former musician, I like to think that I know something about popular music.  But the list articles were out to prove me wrong this year.  Even when there’s not this special case, I always find myself responding to about 40% of entries with a resounding “huh?”  Look, I’m all for learning new things, but I don’t read these articles to feel stupid.

4.) Many of the entries on the list seem like they shouldn’t belong there or you don’t understand their inclusion.

How frequently do you find yourself reading a list and getting to number 14 and you start thinking to yourself “No.  No, no.  No-no-no-no-no?”  This one is sort of the opposite of the previous entry because it makes me feel a thousand times smarter than the list-makers.

5.) Knowing how many entries are left makes me check out early.

You do it too.  Just skip to the end, that’s fine.

6.) What a terrible way to organize information.  Seriously.

If you were reading a story about a detective and suddenly all of his discoveries and adventures were presented in not in an order that reflected the order in which they happened or an order which is most dramatically compelling.  No – his adventures are presented randomly, or worse: from worst to best.  That’s no way to write something and it’s certainly no way to read something.

Bonus Reason: First of all, they always add these little bonus items – WHY BOTHER HAVING A NUMBERED LIST AT ALL?  But really, my biggest problem with numbered lists is that seems to be the only way the internet seems interested in exploring cultural concepts anymore.  What’s wrong with paragraphs?  Transitions?  Flow?  Well-reasoned, carefully structured arguments?

Aquaman 4

6 Jan

DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point.  Fellow blogger Drew Baumgartner and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles.  We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Drew’s blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday.  This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Aquaman while Drew is hosting the discussion of Nightwing.

Patrick: Aquaman is poised to make a comeback.  Stacked, even.  Writer Geoff Johns and artist Ivan Reis know what everyone thinks of the character and they’re making a very specific effort to make him one of the great heroes in DC’s stables.  And these titans of the industry attempt to accomplish this by making Aquaman out to be a mighty force for good, a nearly invincible warrior that saves a seaside village from gang of roving fish-monsters.

Here’s the thing: I don’t love the heroes I love because of their strengths.  Yes, I like big green constructs and batarangs and truth lassos, but I would never tune in to the Flash to see how much ass he was going to kick.  Look at all the other major heroes we’re reading right now: Batman struggles with his skepticism regarding the Court of Owls; Green Lantern reevaluates his priorities as well as his perception of good vs. evil; Wonder Woman turns her back on her people and her mother to help a stranger in need; Flash explores the infinite possibilities of a world where he can out-think time.  This is all markedly more interesting than Aquaman’s momentary “should I kill this civilization of man-eating monsters” dilemma.

Maybe a little context would help.  Issue 4 opens with Aquaman and Mera swimming down into the trench after the monsters that abducted the seaside villagers.  They see the inbred offspring of these fish monsters as well as their queen (so… wait a minute: if there’s a queen, I’m not really sure “inbreeding” would be an issue… look, they’re deformed or something) before rescuing the villagers and collapsing the trench.  Just before he seals off the trench (to either re-separate the monsters from the human world or kill them all, it’s not totally clear) Aquaman has this crisis about “boo hoo, the monsters are living creatures too and they’re just doing what they need to do to survive and who am I to decide human life is more valuable than theirs?”  I know they’re trying to play Aquaman as an outsider, but this is really too much – especially as it seems to have no bearing on his decision making process anyway.  Aquaman kills the monsters.  End of story.

Back on land, we’re treated to the one moment I actually enjoyed from this issue.  A little boy, freshly rescued from his monster-food-pod, says to Aquaman “You’re my favorite super hero!”  Awwwwwwwww!  No, wait, I didn’t like that very much.  It’s cheesy and cloying and plays back to Drew’s least favorite scene from issue 1.  After getting his kudos, Aquaman bounds off.  Once out a earshot, one of the cops on the scene says “I still don’t like him.”  And I like it so much because Aquaman’s not standing right there to whip out his phallic trident and start pounding his chest like a macho gorilla jackass.

And then Arthur and Mera take in a dog that they rescued in issue 3.  Deputy Sheriff Wilson suggests they name him Aqua-Dog.  I’ll let that sink in for a second.  Now, that may well be a joke.  There’s a lot of strong comparisons throughout this 4-issue run to Superman, so this could be a joke on how lame Krypto the Super Dog is.  Also, a lot of people have been calling Mera “Aqua Woman,” so the joke could be at the expense of the characters that don’t respect Arthur and Mera enough.  Either of these solutions would be fine.  But so help me god, if that dog puts on green and yellow fish scale armor and starts fighting crime, I’m walking.

With such an abrupt resolution to this trench nonsense, I wonder why we needed to spend any time with that crummy marine biologist in issue 3.  It’s possible that the scene at the bottom of the trench could have felt like the end of Aliens, where Ripley discovers the queens nest, but only if the audience is given the time to breath and draw their own conclusions about the creatures.  In Aliens, they play to the maternal characteristics of the queen, so  – even while she’s physically revolting – you almost empathize with it when it calls off its guards to let Ripley escape without burning the egg field.  There’s a moment where Ripley thinks she successfully reasoned with the monster, but not a minute later, the queen opens a nearby facehugger egg.  Resolved that there should be no peace between them, Ripley burns the fuck out of the whole field of eggs and blasts some grenades into the queen’s reproductive organs.  There’s not a word of dialogue in this scene, by the way.  Imagine if the bottom of the trench had played out more like that and less like Aquaman and Mera explaining things to each other before killing an entire race of monsters.  Best way to get me invested in what Aquaman is thinking is to make me think those same things.  No amount of “for the children” from the monsters is going to make me view them as anything but beasts.  Right?  They’re essentially depicted as piranhas with arms and legs, right?

Oh, there’s some art too, I guess.  I’ve read enough comics to know what sort of spreads are supposed to wow me.  A two-page splash filled with gigantic sea-monsters should be one of these wow-spreads.  Tell you what, Drew, I did not feel it.  Also, I have to say, coming off last week’s Flash/Wonder Woman double feature, Reis’ highly realistic characters and settings feel really boring to me.

Color me disappointed.  We’ve reached the end of the first story arc for the grand reintroduction of the new, cool Aquaman.  You gonna stick around to see what happens as the characters delve into the history of Atlantis?  Sounds like a lot of nail biting exposition to me!  Aquaman might not be as lame as he used to be, but his stories are just plain weak sauce.

Drew: Do you remember the experience of watching a movie you had taped from an airing on TV?  The experience of fast-forwarding through commercials, somehow developing a sixth sense for what kind of ad signals the end of commercial breaks?  I suppose this is still a common experience in the world of DVRs, but while a DVR recording runs the risk of lopping off the last minute or two of an episode of 30 Rock, VHS always had the danger of entire halves of movies being taped over.  Maybe my family was just bad with the VCR, but I have distinct memories of just never seeing the ends of movies, having to settle for brusque synopses of the final act.  That’s always disappointing, but that disappointment is sharpened when the movie you’re watching is terrible.  If I put an hour or two into a bad movie, I want to get the reward of resolution, or at least to see the big set-piece the whole movie has been building towards.

That disappointment is exactly how I’d characterize my experience in reading Aquaman 4, which is a feat, considering I actually read it.  I suppose this is just a way of saying that neither the emotional resolution nor the big set piece were rewarding.  We already knew the monsters were serving some kind of queen, so the only reveal is what she looks like (surprise: it’s a bigger version of the monsters), and we already knew Aquaman was going to fight the monsters, so the only reveal there was how he did it (an impersonal cave-in: the most exciting of all fights).  Reading the issue is no different from reading Patrick’s synopsis, except that the synopsis at least allows me to imagine that it may have been handled well.  Let’s be clear about this: I think reading this issue actually frustrates my desire for resolution more than not reading it.  If that’s not a sign that we should cut our losses, I don’t know what is.

That conclusion makes reviewing this issue feel about as hollow as… I don’t know, the emotional resonance of this story?  I’m sorry, I’m not even interested enough in this title to hate it, it just isn’t worth our time.  Johns plants enough seeds to get me to think of this Trench arc more as a first act to a larger story, but nothing is compelling me to stick around to see how it concludes.  I suspect Arthur might return to the trench for clues about Atlantis/round two with the monsters, but I have no hopes that it will be handled well, and no interest in sticking around to see it.

I actually liked the way over-the-top cheesiness of the back-on-land conclusion, at least, I liked it more than you did.  Johns is certainly laying it on a little thick, but the gee-wiz enthusiasm of that little boy reminds me of golden age Superman, as does Aquaman’s reunion with the cat he saved from the tree (er, dog he saved from the monster pod).  It’s all very corny, but it’s self-aware, and is clearly trying to make connections with classic Superman stories.  I at least found that goal charming, which is more than I can say about anything else in this title.

Sorry I don’t have more to say about this issue, but we really could just put up a big SKIP IT icon and call it a day.  Suffice it to say, I won’t be sticking with this one.

Action Comics, Aquaman, Animal Man, Batgirl, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Nightwing, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, Swamp Thing

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Fantasy Terra Nova Trophy Disaster

2 Jan

Like everything with the name ‘Terra Nova’ attached to it, my little fantasy game was doomed from the get-go.  So it is all too predictable that I come to you now with this story about the fate that has befallen the trophy that was to be awarded to the winner.  Gather round, my children, and I will spin you a pointless yarn with forgettable characters, plot holes and twists you don’t care about.  In addition, I promise at least one poorly rendered dinosaur.

Al's winning character Doctor Doctor. Not pictured: Al.

When I called it quits a few weeks ago, I declared my friend Al the winner.  His Doctor Doctor character won the contest, primarily with his doctoring skills.  If anyone else had won, I would have congratulated them and moved on.  But Al is a competitive individual and if there’s anything he loves more than winning, its getting a trophy proving that he won.  Now, I am a man of humble means, considerably humbler after my move out west, and commissioning an actual trophy is expensive.  But with a little ingenuity and a can of free gold spray paint, I was to construct this:

That’s right, sharpie, spray paint and dimestore toy dinosaurs.  I went all out.  Look, that picture’s even printed out in color.  Next step, I had to mail the thing to Salt Lake City.  I’m sorry to say that the trophy made it as far as the back seat of my car and no further.  Every time I drove by the post office or the FedEx store, I would see long Christmas lines and packed LA parking lots.  I kept saying “Yikes.  Well, next time I guess.”  After a series of next times, tragedy struck.

If I had to guess, I’d say it was crushed by a 12 pack of beer.  Possibly a 24 pack of diet coke.  I shall mend it best I can and return it to the backseat of my car.  Perhaps now in the new year I will be able to send it to its rightful owner.  In the meantime Al, here’s to your victory.  May it bring you some peace in a world cruel enough to inflict this show upon us.

And here’s that dinosaur I promised.  I think you will find this depiction more suitable than any that appeared on Terra Nova.

Wonder Woman 1-4

30 Dec

DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point.  Fellow blogger Drew Baumgartner and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles.  We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Drew’s blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday.  This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Wonder Woman while Drew is hosting the discussion of The Flash.

Patrick: The ladyfriend and I tried something new this evening.  I hooked my computer up to the TV and we read Wonder Woman 1-4 together.  She doesn’t read comics – I think the only thing she’s ever read was Batman: Year One, and if I recall correctly, I read it to her.  She’s not in to the whole genre, but she is a woman, and that’s a perspective that I think it always going to be important regarding whatever Wonder Woman series DC is running.  My point is, I got a little female insight into this character, expect to see it scattered throughout this write-up.

But let me start by saying that I really like Wonder Woman.  I never knew her that well before reading these monthlies, and most of what I did know was shaped by the gender disparity that plagued this character’s creation and most of her existence.  Remember when they tried to do a WW television show, but the pilot couldn’t get picked up?  The Deadman pilot has a better shot, and no one even knows who that is.  The point is Wonder Woman has a rough media history and in a lot of ways still only exists to be a girl version of Superman.

There were other reasons I didn’t get into the character before this – she’s an Amazon.  Like a real life Amazon.  I now realize this falls in the “duh” category, but when everyone else is aliens and speedsters and batmen, the concept of a super hero being an actual mythological creature was off-putting to me.  One of the ways this series in particular helps me get over this hurdle is by throwing me into it full force.  The first issue opens with Apollo entertaining some slutty guests at his penthouse suite in Singapore.  He uses them as Oracles to search for his missing father, Zeus, but they can only speak cryptically about the woman that bears his seed.  This woman – a Virginian redneck named Zola – is under attack by Centaurs sent by Hera.  With the help of Hermes and Wonder Woman, Zola is able to escape her attackers to Paradise Island.

Let’s throw on the breaks there for a second.  If you had any reservations about dealing with traditional elements and characters from Greek mythology, the first issue makes you confront that directly.  No hints, no implications – the gods are real, they still exist in 2011 and they still get into the same kinds of trouble the did in the good ol’ days.  And that’s the kind of story this is.  It’s a myth.  Most superhero stories borrow the forms, but this takes what was essentially religion, and makes it literally true in this fiction.  It’s like Thor – I remember being thrown way off when someone told me that he’s actually Thor.  Like the Norse god Thor.  Thor Thor.  But those mythological stories, while presented now as Important Stories, were probably just the comics of their day.  We place a lot of importance on Zeus and Hera and the gang because their slapped with that “god” title, but maybe if we called them Kryptonians or Mutants or whatever, we could recognize those myths for what they were probably intended to be – fun, pulpy stories about super creatures doing crazy shit.

So it was in this spirit that I started the second issue.  I stopped thinking of the mythological characters as being repurposed, and just accepted their presence.  Good thing too, because Hera and her daughter Strife start out the issue on Mount Olympus talking about Zeus’ transgressions.  Back on Paradise Island (which… is this the same as Themyscira? This series didn’t name the place beyond “Paradise”), Wonder Woman is warmly welcomed back by her mother, Queen Hippolyta, and not so warmly welcomed back by the rest of her Amazon sisters.  In addition to leaving them some time ago to live among the mortals, she now comes dragging this white trash chick and (gasp!) a man.  Or god-man-bird-thing, however we best describe Hermes.  There’s a nice scene between Zola and Hermes where he lays down the standard Silver Age (possibly Golden Age too, now that I think of it) Wonder Woman origin story: her mother made her out of clay, prayed for a miracle, and got it.  But the fun and festivities of Diana’s return are cut short when the Amazons appear to be under attack.  Wonder Woman is quick to identify that it is just confusion brought on by Strife, but not before the Amazons slay a lot of their own kind.  Strife reveals herself and indicates that she’s there to talk to her sister – Diana.

SCREEEETCH!!!!  That’s right, the perfect fatherless Amazon is actually just another one of Zeus’ bastard offspring.  This is the kind of character alteration the New 52 was designed for, and it better integrates Wonder Woman into the word of the Gods of Olympus.  Now, not only do I feel better about seeing Hera and Apollo and Hermes on the page, their presence illuminates Diana’s character and the whole world is richer for it.  I know there was some nerd backlash on this one, but come on nerds, sometimes change is good.—Issue three sees the Amazon’s burying their own and blaming Diana while Hippolyta recounts her romance with Zeus to her daughter.  Her sense of home and identity (they are closely bound) shaken, Diana decides to leave the Island and commit herself to protecting Zola and her unborn baby.  Really light on plot, but the pages give way to some really excellent character work.   Diana had already left her home, but she was still using her non-superhero name and had still been taking marching orders from her mother.  The games and festivals she participates in the second issue are all part of the culture she reluctantly returns to when she comes back to the Island.  Scorned by her people and her family, Diana embraces her Wonder Woman monicker and does the Amazon version of a microphone drop – lighting a series of funeral pyres from a touch using her mighty breath.  It’s a pretty cool moment and her first rejection of family.

Issue four is where things really pick up.  I think if we had reviewed 1-3, I would be more middling on this title, but the fourth issue really reinforces the idea that we’re reading a kickass series.  Apollo appears in Darfur, and as the place is war-torn, he easily locates his brother Ares.  Apollo asks for his brother’s participate when he makes a move for the throne, and Ares obliges.  Back in London, Wonder Woman is embracing her new-found normalness by going out to a bar and rocking out to some live music.  Hermes is there (rocking a hilarious disguise of a knit cap and what look like rayban sunglasses) along with Zola and Strife.  Strife makes some comments about how they are sisters now and, as family they need to stick together.  She even suggests turning over Zeus’ “pound of flesh” by simply taking the baby from Zola now.  But for the second time in as many issues, Wonder Woman rejects her family in favor of her friends and stands up for Zola.  Back at her flat, Wonder Woman chats with Zola about her life – her family.  Zola’s father has been in and out of jail and she and her mother were always on the outs.  Until her mother died.  It’s a simple story.  Not even a story really, just Zola offering bits of information in a shockingly undramatized fashion, like a friend mentioning they weren’t close to their mother any more.  Wonder Woman decides that, regardless of how she feels about the rest of the Amazons, she should make peace with her mother.  Using Hermes’ staff to teleport back to Paradise island, she discovers that her mother has been turned to clay by Hera to punish her for her affair with Zeus.

Now, I know that doesn’t necessarily mean the character is dead, but HOLY SHIT.  Hippolyta is a pretty big wheel in DC sidecar – I did not expect to see her eat in in the 4th issue.

There is some interesting violence happening just on the edges of this series.  Near the end of the third issue, two crabs are fighting, and one removes the other’s claw.  In issue four, a child soldier murders a man in Darfur.  It is as though the nature of the gods is affecting all creatures around them, and the real world echoes the conflict of the heavens.  It’s cool and mysterious and I want more of it.

There’s also some really great little touches in the writing that help individual issues cohere so well.  Issue two opens with Hera calling herself “Queen” and Strife lumping all the various baggage that word implies.  When she is called “Mother” moments later, Hera acknowledges the weight of that word.  Later, Hippolyta notes that “fear” is the word to describe how she feels, and at the end Diana accuses Strife of misusing the word “peace.”  I spotted similar unifying language themes in the other issues, but for the life of me I can’t remember them.  They’re all very clever and I tip my hat to Brian Azzarello for managing to squeeze them in amid the nicely paced story and character work.

The art in Wonder Woman is also fantastic.  All of my current favorites embrace this slightly cartoonier style and Cliff Chiang’s work on WW is no exception.  The characters are all elegantly designed and simply drawn.  Unlike Batman, I don’t ever have a hard time distinguishing one character from the next, even when everyone in the scene is a similarly dress Amazon warrior.  My girlfriend pointed out that a lot of the coloring in this title is softer – almost the jewel versions of those colors.  Pages frequently appear mostly pink, orange or teal.  She suspects it is all in an effort to feminize the action of particularly non-feminine women.  I’m not so sure that I agree, but if you compare the color palette to anything else we’re reading, you’ll definitely see a difference.

I feel like I’ve been writing for ever and haven’t touched on a lot of the things I liked about this one, but in the name of brevity(ish), I’m passing it over to you.  How do you feel about having Greek mythology in your comic books?

Drew: Maybe this is dumb to say, but the thing I’m liking most about the supporting cast being made up of greek gods is that I already have a passing familiarity with their abilities and motivations.  In the same way I kind of know that Wonder Woman is an Amazon who carries a lasso of truth, I know that Hera is constantly on a rampage about Zeus’s most recent extramarital conquest.  It’s an effective way to populate a story without devoting a time to the whos and whats.  This frees up time for the whys and hows, and some good character moments, to boot.  Where other titles may not even get around to properly introducing the supporting cast (Green Lantern Corps, I’m looking at you), Azzarello is able to jump right to nailing his characters’ voices.

I had some preconceptions coming to this title, mostly surrounding how she’s been treated in the past — and the present, for that matter.  My girlfriend thought I was crazy for calling Jim Lee’s ogling depiction of Wonder Woman, telling me that “that’s just how women are depicted in comics.”  While I admit that comics don’t have a great history of treating their female characters like, you know, people, I think the only way to change that is by holding writers and artists to a higher standard.  My soapbox aside, her point was that everybody draws Wonder Woman that way, at which point I was happy to point her to Cliff Chiang’s work on this title.  Sure, there’s occasional implied nudity, and the sexualities of some of the characters do play a role in the plot, but it never feels like anyone’s body is there for me to drool over.  In fact, Hera seems to use her nudity as a bludgeon to demonstrate how confident and powerful she is, an attitude that is effectively foreshadowed in Zola and Diana’s first meeting.

The acting here is also stellar.  Chiang’s faces and gestures convey both the subtle feelings of the quiet conversations and politicking going on, as well as the huge, raw emotions of the more dramatic scenes.  I’m also digging the little details he’s cramming into the frames.  Did you catch Strife hitting on the bartender in that club scene before she butts in on Zola and Hermes’s conversation?  It’s completely auxiliary to the plot, but it’s a fun detail that absolutely fits with her character.

But back to female empowerment.  The thing I’m liking most is the way femininity is permeating every aspect of this title.  There’s an emphasis here on manipulation with a subtlety I don’t think anyone would ever try to pull off in a title with a male lead (they’ve got to make room for all the punching), but what I’m most impressed by is the way the story is paced femininely.  Bear with me, here.

I think the easiest way to illustrate what I mean is to draw our attention to the other end of the spectrum with the macho-est title we’ve been reading: Aquaman.  In that title, emotional resonance is skipped in favor of speeding towards a climax that is over too soon (plus, he runs around with a big fucking phallic symbol).  We’ve already discussed how this is bad, but I’d like to posit that it’s also an inherently masculine way of pacing a story.  Wonder Woman, on the other hand, has only hinted at the “main event,” devoting much more of its time to emotional connections. This slow burn is much more feminine, and works thematically to turn Wonder Woman’s gender into an asset rather than just an excuse to put her in a skimpy outfit.

I mentioned in the comments for our write-up of Batgirl 4 that Wonder Woman (as of issue #3) was failing the “reverse Bechdel” test (suggesting that men are under-represented in the title).  By the close of issue #4, this is no longer the case, which is a testament to how well this past issue grew the world that this story is inhabiting.  Apollo is clearly going to be a big player in the issues to come, but he has yet to interact with Diana or the rest of the cast.  The fact that his journey hasn’t led him directly to Wonder Woman’s flat has me excited to see how his journey will play out.

I hate to make predictions about where I think plots are headed — they tend to always be pretty embarrassingly off the mark — but I can’t help but thinking that the child Zola is carrying is Zeus.  I know that doesn’t exactly make sense, but, you know, Jesus.  Anyway, I think it explains Zeus’s mysterious absence, and may work to explain the oracles’ prophecy in the first issue.

Anyway, this title is hitting all of the marks; it’s got good writing, art, and a compelling hero at the center of it all.  Diana has established herself as a strong character and a total badass, all without having to whip out any tridents.  Geoff Johns should take note.

Here’s a list of what we’re reading.  The list is Batman heavy, and we’re not going to write about everything.  That being said, feedback and suggestions on what to read and discuss are welcome.  Overlapping books in bold:

Action Comics, Aquaman, Animal Man, Batgirl, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Nightwing, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, Swamp Thing

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