The Official Signal Watch TL; DR "Man of Steel" Discussion

I went to the midnight show of Man of Steel and returned home in the wee hours.  I left kind of a rambling initial reaction here.  I went to work, I came home.  I've seen the movie again (in 3D IMAX with Simon, Angela and Jamie), and I've had time to process the film much, much more.

And, since that first post, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to approach commentary on the movie.  As this will be one of my final posts going into hiatus, we might as well talk about this movie as the intersection between the two major topics of this blog: film and Superman.

A Tour of the Signal Watch Fortress of Solitude

I saw online some folks were doing tours of their Superman collections. Well, it seemed like a SUPER idea to participate.

My Fortress is in disarray at the moment as I'm currently consolidating my collection and removing large portions of it.  I'm going to humblebrag and note that what you see here is only part of what I had on display until recently.  I'm really winnowing it down to Superman and Wonder Woman these days.

I started collecting Superman stuff in college, and I don't have much in the way of vintage. So the collection takes you from the late 90's til now, I guess.

your entry from the hallway to the Fortress

"Superman: Unchained #1" Review

This comic was $5.  Five dollars.  Five hundred pennies.  Half of ten dollars.  It is worth roughly $2.25, on a very good day.

I'm realizing how spoiled I've gotten by reading $1 online comics from folks like MonkeyBrain.

Jim Lee likes to draw Superman sort of hunched over.  I don't really know why.  He also likes to draw his head sort of unusually small.  Also, as Co-Publisher of DC Comics he can apparently greenlight the single dumbest, least narratively driven, least impressive, most expensive fold out insert in a comic.  Ever.

I really needed a huge image of space debris to tell the story.  Thanks.

"Man of Steel" has now been witnessed

Well, yup.  It's 3:10ish in the AM and I am home.  Just saw Man of Steel with Kevin and Juan.

spoilers below

On sharing the creative object you've been working on

When I was about 22 I started working on a novel.  I've mentioned it here from time to time with varying degrees of clarity about what I was up to, because even now, 16 years later, I still work on the thing, hoping to finish one day.

and I mourn the fact it will not have a cover by Robert Maguire

I mention the book for two reasons.

1.  I like to retain transparency, so I'll share that part of why I'm going on hiatus is to focus back on the book.  My personal life, work and a confluence of events have often kept me from spending my time just finishing the darn thing.  I like writing, and I like blogging, but as well as re-charging my batteries to talk pop-culture when I get back, I'd like to make time for this project.

2.  Wednesday evening pal JuanD was good enough to join me for dinner.  He'd read a good chunk of the book as it is to date.  I figure I've got at least 1/3rd to go.  He's still got some pages left to arrive at the point where I've written to, but he made a heroic effort.  He's read, I guess 2/5th's - 1/2 of where this is all headed.  And then, he was kind/ brave enough to sit across the table from me and tell me what he thought and ask questions.

He did some things I really appreciate.

On expectations for "Man of Steel"

Man of Steel has mid-tier and lower reviews from a lot of sources and the aggregate score on Rottentomatoes ain't great.  But I think it boils down to a few things:

1.  Unlike Batman, who has been redone so many ways since 1966 in the public eye, and the Marvel heroes who, let's be honest, nobody had heard of before the movies, everybody's got an opinion on who they think Superman is.  And if the movie doesn't match that, it's going to cause problems.  Rex Reed (who is IN Superman: The Movie for 2 seconds) seems to not get who this Superman is and can't get past that.  And  declares "Mr. Nolan already ruined Batman" with a straight face.   I'm not sure "this isn't what I was expecting!" is a legitimate complaint, and seems to miss the pop-culture conversation on superheroes that's been going on since the mid-80's and around superhero movies since 2000 in favor of nostalgia.

I LOVE the nostalgia.  But I also know Superman leaps forward every once in a while.  Its been almost 40 years since Christopher Reeve put on the cape.  You kind of need to expect things will be different this go-round.

2.  It's Zack Snyder.  We always knew that meant this wasn't going to be the Superman movie of my dreams the minute he was put behind the camera/ CGI supercomputer/ fast-slow-fast machine, but I've had a long, long time to get used to that idea.  Usually when I say "I hope this doesn't suck" walking into a movie, I'm kind of being snarky.  With Snyder, I've seen 3.5 of his movies and have sort of suffered through all of them except for Sucker Punch, which I watched the second half of on HBO, and it's ridiculously, relentlessly not good.  The idea that this isn't going to totally suck is hard for me to imagine in a lot of ways.

Snyder has his issues and isn't a strong storyteller.  I can be open to the idea that maybe this just doesn't work as a tightly run piece of clockwork.

Noir Watch: The Maltese Falcon (1941)

I have no idea when the last time was that I watched this movie.  Likely 7 or 8 years ago when I got the DVD and again right after we moved back to Austin.

It's weird I don't watch it over and over, because there's a perfectly good reason The Maltese Falcon carries the reputation its got.  Smart, ruthless, and lean down to the bone, and with every actor in the film turning in terrific performances, its a great ride.  It carries the tone and at least the echo of Dashiell Hammett's spitfire dialog, and definitely retains the labyrinthine plotting that even Hammett's short stories are known for.

actually, those two guns belong to Elisha Cook Jr., but whatever

Supermarathon: All-Star Superman

Thanks to what's looking to be a busy week, this is the last installment of the Supermarathon as I'm booked pretty solid until Thursday night.  I hope I did us proud.

All-Star Superman adapts the 12 issue series that ran unevenly for years back when DC was playing havoc with schedules and you never really knew when a comic was coming out.  The art and story were worth it, and both were savaged at the time of the series' start, with the usual complaints about Morrison's writing drawing confusion and fans of the Jim Lee or Kubert school of illustration baffled by the stylized work of Frank Quitely.

You can view the film at Netflix Streaming.

No sooner than the series ended than word leaked that this comic was truly something unique, and - in what I've since come to simply expect when it comes to Superman - be it this comic or early reactions to Man of Steel, its fascinating to see the audience react to the core of the character and ask "why isn't the character usually like this?" or "where did this come from?" to ideas that were 40-50 years old at the time of the comic's publication.

That said, it took Morrison's storytelling and the voice he imbued in Superman and Luthor to make the series shine.  And, I'd argue, it took the clear, concise, character-driven storytelling of Dwayne McDuffie to take the comic and turn it into a movie that works despite the strange, episodic nature of the narrative.

For those who haven't read the comic, I won't bore you with what was cut to make the movie.  The DC Animation team managed to keep most of the story in place to keep the relevant bits intact and maintain the core of the story, even if its heart-breaking to know what might have been.  They also managed to keep much of the look of the comic, something I thought impossible, even if the 16x9 dimensions occasionally lose the impact of Quitely's page design.

Last Days of Krypton

Well, we haven't quite closed up shop yet.

When I came back to blogging after about 6 months of non-blogging, this site struggled a bit to find its footing, but eventually it found its place in the firmament.  Whereas I believe League of Melbotis was a much more personal journal, at The Signal Watch we've tended to stick to pop-culture review a bit more than just enthusiastic boosterism, and even at that, we stuck to a few topics more solidly than we'd done in the prior incarnation.  Superman.  DC.  Noir film.  Mainstream sci-fi franchises.  You tell me.  I don't know why you humans keep showing up.

I've appreciated that I do feel comfortable posting personal items here as well.  I think the ability to share some of my life here in Austin helped to contextualize where I'm coming from, and - sometimes I find the elliptical manner some web writers feel compelled to discuss their personal lives a gap in the reading.

a spot of housekeeping - we're wrapping it up for a while here pretty soon

On Thursday evening at Midnight, and again on Saturday afternoon next week, I'm going to see Man of Steel.  For several months I've had it in mind that on the heels of the release of this movie, I'd go on an indefinite hiatus with this blog.

That's still the plan.  

Come next weekend, I'll do a post of two on thoughts about the movie, and maybe a quick adios and then we're out.  I think I'm keeping up with the social media aspect, but we'll see.

When we come back, I'm not exactly sure what form that'll take.  Same blog.  New blog.  I dunno.  It's going to be a while, so we'll worry about it then.

If you need anything covered between now and next weekend, speak now or forever hold your peace.