Panem et Circenses: Signal Watch sees "The Hunger Games" (2012)

When Survivor launched in 2001, I don't think Jamie understood my revulsion to the concept.*  But I'd grown up watching Arnie's 1987 blockbuster, The Running Man, based on a Steven King short story, and had internalized a bit of what the somewhat clunky (yet awesome) story had to say about us.

The idea of "bread and circuses" isn't anything new, and clearly The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins (no I did not read the books) was aware of this as she penned her book, naming her nation "Panem".  And, Signal Corps, do not take offense when I say I'm not sure that The Hunger Games (2012) brings anything new to the screen.  I don't think originality is where the film succeeds (and it does succeed), but in its excellent and unflinching execution (pun not intended) as well as the performances of young and mostly unknown talent.

In many ways, the movie carries the same story as everything from Gladiator to bits of John Carter, but in many ways it reminded me most of the unnoticed, entirely forgotten American Dreamz (2006).  American Dreamz played on the insane popularity of American Idol, a flailing leadership, the ties between celebrity and leadership and the machinations behind legitimate government, popularity and the madness of crowds and those who stand to benefit from managing all of it.

Noir Watch: The Killers (1946)

Back in January in San Francisco I watched 1960's version of The Killers starring the lovely Angie Dickinson.

It had been a long time since I'd seen the 1946 version of The Killers, and maybe even longer since I read (and re-read and re-re-read) the Hemingway short story upon which both films are ostensibly based.

I bought the DVD of the film probably around 2004, and I've seen it a couple of times.  I still think large parts of it are phenomenal, even if watching it now, I realize how many amazing coincidences occur to help along Edmond O'Brien's good-natured insurance company gumshoe, Riordan, as he tries to find out what happened to Ole "Swede" Andreson (played by Burt Lancaster).

Signal Watch Watches: Transcendent Man (2009)

I really wish I had seen this movie when it came out, but it was just recommended to me by Co-Worker Ladd this morning.

As much as I like a good, Thunderdomish Dystopian look at the future, from a technology and academic standpoint, I fall much more in the camp of pointing at the shinier spacecraft and rocket pack visions of the future.  Prepping for a time of Robot Shock Troopers tends to make you start stocking ammunition and buying property in Queen Creek, Arizona, and I'm just not ready to cut the sleeves off all my camo jackets yet, and I look terrible in a crazy-man beard.

In fact, I like my job partially because its all about the future where we get flying cars and can download dissertations directly into our noggins.  Digital libraries!  Hoorary!

It seems that technologist and futurist Ray Kurzweil showed up as SXSWi 2012, and Co-Worker Ladd (yes, his name is Ladd) managed to see him speak.  Kurzweil is one of those names I've heard on and off for two decades, not quite the way you hear of Tim Berners-Lee, but he pops up on BoingBoing and is a name that technology hipsters tend to throw around.

Frankly, I should pay a lot more attention to these sorts of figures, because Kurzweil's personal innovations are incredible, even if that's not really the topic of the documentary, Transcendent Man (2009).  Instead, the doc follows Kurzweil as he moves around the planet as a bit of a Conference Personality, but as he also meets with figures from Colin Powell to William Shatner to an arena full of Church of Christ Conference attendees discussing the concept of The Singularity.*

As we all know, technology is advancing from all angles in ways predicted clumsily by Moore's Law.  What Kurzweil is looking at and discussing is that its not just processing power, but other technologies, falling into three areas of interest:  Genetics (bioinformatics), Nantotechnology and Robotics (or AI).  The Singularity is a point at which those things hit a point on the graph where the nature of humanity will be forced to change by the technologies so profoundly that it will rewrite our definitions of everything from technology to humanity to consciousness.

Basically, we're in a mad race to see if we create a race of super artificial intelligences, if we can rewrite our DNA to beat disease and aging while recreating the human body, or if nanotechnology will be merging us into machines while it has the ability to connect us to the super robot brains while rewriting our bodies into all looking like Fabio in 1994.  Or will we upload our consciousness to Facebook?

Here's the thing:  I think I know just enough about technology and SCIENCE to know I don't know anything, but I also tend to think that Kurzweil, while maybe jumping the gun on the timing, is probably right.

I intended to watch part of the show this evening and then return to it, but instead I watched the entire thing, slack jawed and in awe.  The movie manages to find genius after genius, players at the tops of their fields who all have different reasons to agree or disagree with Kurzweil in whole or in part, and its an absolutely gripping 80 minutes or so.  Especially as the director humanizes and builds a portrait of Kurzweil (a seemingly approachable gentleman, certainly) and digs into the basis for his quest and to see what drives him.

There are a tremendous number of questions occurring in the film, the sorts of things that have the longterm effects of global change, all without the pressure cooker or drive of a Manhattan Project.  Its happening now, and the minds pushing toward the future seem aware of the pitfalls and risks of the world they're creating, and seem to be sure that somebody else is going to deny the dinosaurs their Lysine.  Its absolutely riveting stuff.  And, again, this is a documentary.

The crowd that drifts into this blog is pretty smart and tech savvy, and I'd love to see what you guys have to say, if you've seen it or you get a chance to stream it from Netflix.

Highly, highly recommended.


*see my hilariously uninformed argument with my brother about the concept at his blog post from about a year ago.

Signal Watch Watches: John Carter (of Mars)

Disney won't call the movie by a decent title, so I will.  Let us call it John Carter of Mars, shall we?

As pointed out recently by The Alamo Drafthouse, the Summer of 1982 was an absolutely stunning summer for movies and culturally defining watershed for Gen X.  To celebrate this fact, Summer of 2012, they're having a Summer of 1982 celebration showing a movie per week from that year.

Not all of the movies were a smash at the time (see the final show of the summer, Blade Runner), but this was also the generation of the VCR and HBO.  I didn't see Blade Runner until 1988 or so, but I know when it was released (and you can bet I'll be fighting tooth and nail to be at the screening at the Alamo this summer).

So I'm going to start using Summer of 1982 as a sort of yardmarker for a movie I think could hold a certain distinction.

1.  The movie isn't being loved by critics who are failing to understand it at the time
2.  It likely won't be understood by the mainstream audience at the time
3.  The movie tries to be something grand, really swings for the fences
4.  The movie has the potential to endure in a way that surpasses just the nichey fans you can find anywhere on the internet, but becomes part of the sci-fi geek zeitgeist

Straight up, I @#$%ing loved John Carter (2012).  I believe that it is Summer of 1982 worthy.

You know, this is kind of a terrible poster

The movie is based not just upon the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, A Princess of Mars (1917), but on what I'd guess are a few of the Barsoom/ John Carter novels sort of pulped into a single volume.  That the movie was not just the first book is all right.  The story works well enough and moves at a better pace for the kids that were packed in all around us in the audience at the Alamo.

The movie of John Carter follows Carter (played more than ably by Friday Night Lights alum Taylor Kitsch) as a Virginia gentleman who, more than a decade after the Civil War, makes a hasty call for his nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs, to come to him.  By the time Burrows arrives, Carter is dead, sealed in a tomb which can only be opened... from the inside.

Signal Watch Reads - "Donald Duck - Lost in the Andes"

Wow.  You can tell a lot of love went into this book just by picking it up, looking at the binding, the reprint quality, the paper stock and the supplementary material.

I finally finished Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes from Fantagraphics Books over the weekend, and I am busting.  Not just about the actual comics, which were thoroughly enjoyable, but the whole package of the volume.

As I'm learning, you may be a fan of your favorite comic characters, but few American comics characters draw the kind of devotion that you see from Disney Duck fans, especially when it comes to the works of Carl Barks and Don Rosa.  And its not just been here in North America that you see that kind of enthusiasm.  The Ducks are a global phenomena, and I've come to really enjoy some of the work you see originating from Scandanavia as well.

The collection isn't a chronological reprinting of Carl Barks' work, but a sort of greatest hits package from the period with feature length stories such as "The Golden Christmas Tree" and a lot of shorts as well as one page gags, all circa 1948 or so.

I still love "The Fantastic Voyage"

On Saturday morning Simon, his ladyfriend Leta and I will made our way down to the Alamo South Lamar for a screening of The Fantastic Voyage (1966).  The Alamo South hosts Kids' Club, about once a month, and I've seen some classics like War of the Worlds as part of the series.  Frankly, its a testament to both the laziness of Austinites and the lack of interest in anything not involving beer that a free screening (FREE) starting at 11:00 AM of one of the sci-fi all-time classics wasn't better attended.

Their loss.

Signal Watch Watches: Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Before turning it on, I knew literally nothing about the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).  I didn't even know it was literally about hunting treasure in the Sierra Madres, just that it featured Humphrey Bogart, and it was not High Sierra.

By the time this movie got made by director John Huston, Bogart was a huge name and draw, and I think you see a bit of Bogart you don't normally get.  Sure, I've seen a desperate Bogart in Dark Passage and the end of High Sierra, but his character here never starts as the cool, collected sort he normally plays.  He's down on his luck from the start, and seems to spiral as the movie goes on.  It's an interesting turn.

Bogart plays Dobbs, an American unemployed in Tampico in 1925.  After a bad experience with what he'd believed to be honest work, Dobbs and fellow bum Curtin (Tim Holt) are sinking low when Dobbs gets his hands on some money through luck and teams up with fellow Americans Howard (Walter Huston), an aging prospector looking to strike it rich.

The Comics Canon Question

PaulT (aka: @placeslost) forwarded me a very interesting article.  Its a discussion of how a canon of known, quality comics is sort of percolating with folks during urbane drawing room conversations (I guess.  This has never happened to me.).  Whether or not there's an agreed-upon core group of classics in comics at this time is an interesting question, especially in a medium so young that seems to change tastes and values about every 10 years.

I'm going to risk some flames here and say the following:

Dear former Lit Major, 

I am so glad you read Ghost World that one time, and that thanks to the movie and profile you read somewhere, you're passingly familiar with Marjani Sartapi.  Because its now "hip", you'd like to talk comics and you know I read comics.  While I appreciate your background as a reader of Jane Austen and The Canterbury Tales, reading two or three comics and having a former boyfriend who was "really into Batman" makes you an interested tourist, and I welcome you, but please be patient (and, yes, we're all already aware of the homosexual undertones of Batman and Robin, so, thanks).   Also, please stop correcting me.  It's rude and weird and that person writing the article you keep referring to about "important comics" was also clearly new to comics to those of us not new to comics.  I am sad to say that what you saw there was a lot of enthusiasm, not the voice of experience.  Pop culture writers suddenly compiling lists online - especially about comics - doesn't actually mean anything.   

Trust me.

There's a lot that's going to go into a comics discussion that will, likely seem befuddling and not necessarily make sense.  Especially when we start talking about the relative merits of Jimmy Olsen comics or talk about Scrooge McDuck as a major literary character.

Comics are not books anymore than oil paintings are sculptures or a photograph of a horse is a horse.  I beg your patience.  Things are going to get weird.

The writer of this article seems like a semi-serious reader and lists his top 5 - seemingly off the top of his head - picks, and its an interesting assortment.

• Maus: A Survivor's Tale
• Preacher
• The Sandman
• Transmetropolitan
• Watchmen

I'm not sure I'm in agreement, but what the list did do was get me to think a bit.

Signal Watch (Finally) Watches: Some Like It Hot (1959)

While your faithful blogger has seen many, many movies and some movies many, many times, we also have huge holes in our mental inventory of flicks.  Not the least of these areas I need to take care of is pretty much everything directed by Billy Wilder.  No, I don't know why.

I especially don't know how I missed something starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.  Anyhoo, I finally watched Wilder's Some Like it Hot.

Yes, this is the one where Lemmon and Curtis (in terms of the film) successfully pass as women for an extended amount of time, and which spawned a million knock-offs like Bosom Buddies or Tootsie.

The pair play down on their luck musicians in 1929 Chicago who become accidental witnesses to (spoiler alert) the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (/spoiler alert).  Fleeing Chicago to avoid the mob, the two find work in disguise in an all-girl band.

Of course Monroe is the ukulele player/ vocalist in the band, and that's just going to be a problem when you're trying to keep anyone from figuring out that you're a dude.

The movie more than earns its reputation, and I can see why its a favorite.  I suspect that when this hit, it pushed as many buttons and was as "edgy" as current comedies like The Hangover that play with social mores and steps just enough outside of the expectations of an audience that the laughs come from the sheer surprise.  Of course, some of that's dated now (there's a bit about "why would a man want to marry a man?"), but actually very little, which is part of why I think the movie holds up well.  Its also plenty risque.

I suspect most of you have seen the movie, but I said I'd talk about every movie I watched in 2012.   I won't go on too long, but if you haven't seen it, I recommend.  Lots of great performances, and an oddball of a happy ending.  Frankly, Tony Curtis isn't someone whose work I know terribly well, mostly just a few viewings of Spartacus, so it was great to see him in top form here, and I'll be trying to learn his accent (you know the one) just to annoy Jamie.  And special props to Joe E. Brown.  He is terrific in this movie.

Monroe is particularly hilarious in this movie, and you can see how (aside from the visual cues) she was at the top of her game in this movie.  But, man, some of the dresses...  I don't know how they pulled that off.  Billy Wilder, you mad, mad genius.

Great movie.

Late edit:  San Diego's famous Coronado hotel does exteriors for a good part of the film, doubling for Florida.  J__Swift reminded me of this.  If in San Diego, I highly recommend a visit out there. 

Achewood seems to have actually returned

Its only hitting when Chris Onstad has energy and time to do a strip, but the results have been worth it.  I am glad to see multiple successive Achewood strips have been published.

Return to Achewood here.

I have a few questions for Mark Waid on "Irredeemable"

edit:  I have recently been informed that my comics conversations have gone way "inside baseball".  I suspect this is one of those.  I apologize in advance.


Also, this thing was riddled with type-o's.  Thanks for not pointing that out.

I just finished Irredeemable Volume 8.

Some thoughts:

As much as Kingdom Come was a commentary on the state of superhero comics in the mad, mad 90's, I have to look at Irredeemable in whole, if not in individual parts, as another bit of Waid's commentary, but (for me) its a bit like trying to hold mercury.  The Plutonian is not exactly a Superman analog, even when he clearly is.  There are hints of Squadron Supreme here and there, which was exactly a commentary on the Justice League, but maybe less so when JMS rebooted the Squadron a decade ago.  Hints of Wildstorm, bits of reflections of reflections of the JLA and DC line of books in Authority or a few dozen other replicas that mistook gloss for edge and grim violence for "realism".  But maybe this book is a reflection of that dark reflection.

In this issue, Irredeemable fights the ghost robot from space!*

Signal Watch Reads: Feynman

A few months ago Jim Ottaviani visited Austin during the promotional tour of his graphic novel, Feynman, a biographical sketch of famed physicist Richard Feynman.  It turns out that Jim's day job is in the field of digital libraries, and he had a sort of informal chat at the library, where it turned out he knew two of my colleagues from graduate school.

Its a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.*

A few things:  

1)  I struggled mightily in high school physics and stuck with geology as much as possible in college when asked to to take science (rocks!).  My investigations into modern physics (stuff they were not teaching at my high school) have been mostly catch-as-catch can through television specials, reading articles online and this, my third comic book on physics in any way, shape or form.  I know some basic principles, I know some names, I understand that light behaves like a wave and a particle, and aside from that, I sort of stop and start with what everyone who has ever owned more than one Pink Floyd album knows about Schroedinger's Cat.  And, as I understand it, what we consider the point of the experiment is incorrect.

2)  I don't pretend like I had ever heard of Richard Feynman before this book hit the shelves.  The pop-culture aspect of science also eludes me, and so I had not read any of Mr. Feynman's books or sat about urbanely quoting the man over coffee served in a small and delicate cup.  

3)  I have a hard time remembering the basic fundamentals of physics.  Every time I return to the material, that part of my brain re-engages, and neurons re-fire, but its not something I think about very often.  Its sort of how I wrote down what the Higgs-Boson is just so I had a place to go look it up every time I needed to know while reading an article on the LHC.

My hat if off to Jim Ottaviani for his handling and structure of a book that could have been an horrendous mess.  The book is really 85% biography, 15% physics lesson in order to explain why Feynman matters to Sally Q. Reader.  As he states in the afterword, I had no doubt that Ottaviani had done his research enough to both understand and not judge the man particularly one way or another, and to internalize what Feynman was on about enough to share it with an audience as clueless about physics as myself.

Signal Watch Watches: The Artist

Yes, The Artist is a silent movie.  Shot in black and white.  A period piece (it takes place during and immediately following Hollywood's silent era).  You will not recognize the two leads.

It comes to Austin on the heels of Hugo, an excellent handshake of a film to The Artist, the two acting as a sort of before-and-after look at the silent era of film, one looking at the earliest days of small film producers and this movie examining life for the stars within the studios as the transition to sound became a reality.

The territory will feel at least a bit familiar to the millions of us who love Singin' in the Rain,  and, indeed, our lead reminds me a bit of a love child of Gene Kelley and Douglas Fairbanks.  To catch you up: while sound revolutionized film, it also meant the end of many careers for working actors and actresses.  In Singin' in the Rain, Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont has a terribly annoying voice that doesn't match her aristocratic screen persona.

Signal Watch watches: Tintin

As I understand it, Tintin is a global phenomena that somehow never exploded in the US the way the character has entertained generations across good chunks of the rest of the globe.  Its telling that the release of The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn came to the US months later than the rest of the world.  Because it is not "ours", this has meant low-flying expectations for the boy reporter here in the states and a welcome not unlike how we treat foreign exchange students when they arrive at our high schools in clothes not bought at Foley's.

We're talking about the movie here for a number of reasons.  1)  It is based upon the comics by Belgian comics-smith Hergé.  2)  It is a high-flying adventure movie.  3)  Its the creation of a wide-range of geek friendly folks from Steven Spielberg to Steven Moffat.

At the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin, the pre-show rightfully showed clips of adventure serials, Indiana Jones homages, etc...  before the movie.  The comic strips in which Tintin appears actually pre-date Indiana Jones by about fifty years, so I want to make this clear to the legions of Americans who believe that action stars come in either Sylvester Stallone or Jason Statham models and find the idea of a Belgian action hero hilarious:
A)  Van Damme  B) this is the most pure adventure movie to hit the screens in the US in a decade.  And that sort of worries me about American movie-making.

Blog Spotlight - Down and Out: An Austin Love Story

So, some time this summer PaulT and I headed down to the Alamo Ritz to see Babyface because I was promised lots of Barbara Stanwyck (which it delivered in spades).  Prior to the movie, a lovely young woman sat down a couple seats down from PaulT, and because it turns out PaulT, myself and this person are all the sort of person who will talk to just random people, we talked a bit before the show began, and then afterward all wound up at a bar next door for a few drinks.

That lovely young woman was LT.  She's fairly new to town, a world traveler, highly educated, and now unemployed and trying to make a go of it here in Waterloo.  Turns out she can also turn a phrase, so I encourage you to check out her blog Down and Out: An Austin Love Story.

I think you'll find it an interesting read.  I know I do.  I'm personally totally rooting for LT, and it wasn't so long ago I was also unemployed in this town under very different circumstances.  So if you have a chance, give it a read.

Signal Watch Watches: Hugo

When the trailer hit for Hugo, I think a lot of folks were bemused or confused. Scorsese made his bones with some tough subject material, is closely associated with his gangster work like Casino and Goodfellas, and still turns out good stuff, the most recent that pops to mind for me is The Departed and the doc Public Speaking.

Of his contemporaries, Scorsese never went off the rails as much as Coppola and Lucas seemed to after their initial decade or two of success. He's been consistent, usually sticking to fairly mature material even when handling a costume drama like The Age of Innocence.  Thus it may have been, I raised an eyebrow when I saw he was doing a family movie for release at Christmas with 3D, storybook sets, a bright-eyed little boy a lead and dogs.  I still wanted to see what he'd cooked up, but more or less planned to write it off as Scorsese's holiday-film lark.

Firstly, Hugo is not at all the movie I believed it would be from the trailer. Nor the poster. And, I'd argue, its barely a kids' movie. Or, if it is for kids, its not going to slow down for your dopey kids as it goes about telling very exactly the story it has in mind.

Garth Ennis's "Battlefields"

A comic that's gotten sadly too little conversation, in my opinion, has been Garth Ennis' war comic, Battlefields.

Ennis is famous for Preacher, Hitman, Punisher: Welcome Back Frank, The Boys, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade and other over-the-top comics adventure stories aimed squarely at the 17-and-up crowd.  Yes, he knows how to a work a good de-nosing, be-facing, entrail gouge and other such entertaining topics into his work.  And, I admit, when I'm in the mood, I absolutely love that stuff.

But a number of years back now, Ennis did a two-issue, prestige format Enemy Ace story that more or less set up my current fascination with the character (especially after learning Pratt's work on War Idyll and the original Kanigher and Kubert work was so astoundingly good), and I'd highly recommend it as a good "here's a comic without superheroes" comic.

He went on to write some great stuff in his War Stories comics at DC, and, again, I'd recommend.

But a couple years back he started a new banner at Dynamite where he could tell short, 3 issue stories, called Battlefields.

Truthfully, I'm not sure if I've discussed his work on Battlefields here before or not.  But it bears discussion.

Unlike most of comic-dom that plays with facts, refuses to do so much as a Google search on even the historical figures or events they're talking about, or grossly misrepresents facts in order to "tell the story", Ennis clearly does his research.  He clearly knows his topics, from New Zealand army bombers to British tank commands during WWII.  And on top of that, he tells brilliant, human stories in the grinder that is war.  Sometimes sentimental, sometimes less so, but never with the varnish of a John Wayne war movie, nor the melodramatic flair of Platoon, Ennis actually carves out a pretty straightforward way of relating his stories, and that makes the tragedy surrounding the characters all the more grim.

If you get a chance, at least pick up that first collection.  Its of 9 issues, 3 separate stories on 3 separate fronts, and all chillingly well told.  I'm pretty sure it'll mean you go ahead and pick up Volume 2.

While Ennis most definitely gets a nod of respect, there's so much more internet ink spilled (and I suspect sales are much higher on) his books like The Boys.  And that's great, but its missing what a tremendously talented and versatile (and damned smart) writer Ennis really can be.

Nice Holiday and Muppets

Hey!  Welcome back from the Thanksgiving Holiday.

We had a very nice weekend.  For a brief rundown:  Thursday we didn't actually do Thanksgiving.  

I got up, watched the parade as much as I could, and thanks to a very busy schedule for the next few weeks, figured I better hang our Christmas lights.  So, that's done.  Dug and K arrived around 3:30, so we had a nice, oddly-timed meal (not quite lunch, not quite dinner), and then they headed down to San Marcos.

We watched the UT game at my folks' with some family friends, and, of course, enjoyed that outcome.

Friday I really didn't do a lot.  Austin Books and Comics was having a Black Friday sale on back issues (and who am I to not support local business?), so I headed down for 1/2 off on back issues between 8:00 and 10:00 AM, and then picked up 4.5 lbs. of back issues at the ABC Sidekick store, where they were literally (and hilariously) selling comics by the pound.

I have a lot of 70's-era Superman comics to get through.

My workout schedule was destroyed during all this, so in the afternoon I headed to the gym and did a few extra minutes on everything.

And then Friday evening I caught up with longtime pal ShaunaC and her husband, Fred.  It was terrific catching up.  Too long inbetween seeing each other, but what are you going to do?

Saturday we had Thanksgiving Dinner at Judy & Dick's in San Marcos.  My brother and folks also came down, along with longtime League-pal Heather "Daredevil" W.  

We capped off Saturday by coming back to the house and watching a slew of short subjects, many of which were Holiday themed, all of which were awful, including 1980's syndicated Superboy episodes and the now-infamous-at-our-house We Wish You a Turtle Christmas, a cynically, cheaply and quickly produced series of videos featuring live action turtles from the touring production, clearly with no script or real rehearsals.  There's something bizarre and dream-like about the entire production, with nothing making sense and everything sort of geared to drive you mad.  I'll leave it to Cinemassacre to explain the video as best one can.  

Anyway, that (and maybe a festive cocktail or two) is why this happened:

I should mention we were also screwing around a lot this weekend with the iPhone App that The Dug is currently employed to develop. It's called Vlix, and its actually really neat. They just released a holiday-themed version you can download for free. Just search for "vlix" on your app store.

The Holiday App and Vlix deal in short videos, so the Holiday app is really an easy way to make a video Christmas card.

Kid Friendly comics! Snarked and Donald Duck

Snarked!

I finally read the first two issues of Roger Langridge's Snarked.  Well, I read issue 0 and issue 1.

Playing off the public domain status of Lewis Carroll's stories, Langridge has grabbed the briefly mentioned Walrus and The Carpenter and decided to spin a story from what we know of them from the poem (told by Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Through the Looking Glass).  If you can still track down issue 0, its pretty chock full.  Not just of story, but of the source material Langridge will hope you're familiar with as he mines Carroll's material for his own purposes.

He includes pictures by John Tenniel, Carroll's artistic accomplice, in appropriate places, but the art is the same mad cap, cartoony style I really liked in his work on The Muppets comics (also from Boom).

I suspect that, with issue 1, Langridge plans to make this a closed story, that has a beginning, middle and end.  Originally, I'd believed it would be a gag book, or have one-off stories per issue, but instead it seems we're headed off on a bit of an adventure.

You see, the Red Queen has passed, leaving two children Princess Scarlett and Prince Russell IV (aka: Rusty), but now the Red King has disappeared whilst on a sea-faring voyage.  And the kids (a) would like to find their father and (b) get away from the folks who want to seize power.  Our friend The Cheshire Cat has an idea who can help them, even if The Walrus and The Carpenter seem to be, by all indications, cheaters, liars and cons.

The Walrus, The Carpenter and the offspring of the Red Queen & King

Good stuff.

The writing is sharp, the characters archetypes but cleverly done, and its a book that you can hand a kid, but I suspect you'd want to sit and read it with them.  Its pretty fun, and the language is very well thought out.

And if you have a picture of what a "snark" (the much discussed but unseen beastie) looks like, you may send it in.

I think this is one of those books you're going to wish you'd jumped on early.

Walt Disney Treasury: Donald Duck Vol 1. and 2 (and more)

Oh, so!

Yes, I've been reading Donald Duck again.  I know, I know.  I came to Disney comics so late, I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do.

I've had both these volumes for a while, but I just dug them out of my stack of comics I haven't yet read, and I plowed through them with pretty great speed.

I don't think Boom! will be carrying on printing these books now that Disney owns Marvel comics (a shame, because Marvel's collections edition has never seemed as together as I'd like) and Boom! was just really getting themselves together on their Disney collections front.  AND it was a nice compliment to the really fancy (but expensive) work Fantagraphics was doing on their archive collections.

Hubris, thy name is Donald

The two Donald volumes are pretty reasonably priced ($14.99 cover for a lot of comics) and contain pretty good stories in both.  I finally got to read a Plain Awful story in Volume 1, and the Uncle Scrooge/ Donald go into space to collect satellites story in Volume 2 had me rolling.  Both volumes contain work of the American creator, Don Rosa, who is one of two comics creators associated with Disney's ducks that all comics people should know (along with Carl Barks).  And coming off reading the Disney Four Color Treasury, it was nice to transition to the more modern Ducks era.

Its tough to explain the appeal of a Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge comic to the uninitiated, except to say that Duckberg is a very well realized place of goofiness and big hearted skinflint trillionaires and good-hearted crooks like the Beagle Boys, and its fun to see Donald in one story wrestling with space flight and in another trying to get the nephews to school.

Don Rosa is, in my estimation, one of the most creative talents in comics, with great understanding of narrative, gags, character, etc... and its just a huge pleasure to read his work.  And I suppose it says something about how under the radar the comics must have been for Disney for this to be one of the areas where any single creator was able to make a name for themselves.

 

Signal Watch Reads: Star Trek/ Legion of Super-Heroes Crossover

To begin with:  I've been utterly compromised.

In order to retain whatever passes for journalistic integrity around here, I should mention that Saturday night I had a couple of cocktails with Ms. @Allisontype and her husband, writer of this comic, Chris Roberson.  Excellent people.  All the stories are true.

Also - ask them about their Halloween cookies.

I had intended to do my review of this book prior to the evening, and failed.

So, here's more of an informal discussion of what I'll say up front is a really fun comic.

I am totally okay with Phil Jimenez doing nothing but drawings of Uhura and Saturn Girl forever