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Sat Oct 31, 2009 — by Alexandra Honigsberg
When Vampires Suck: a review of 'How to Catch and Keep a Vampire'
Diana Laurence’s How to Catch and Keep a Vampire: A Step-By-Step Guide to Loving the Bad and the Beautiful
I kept wanting to like it. I love vamp lit. I’m published in the sub-genre several times over and love to play in that playground. I’ve watched the suckers ever since I was a little girl and first saw Bela Lugosi as The Count and said, “Oooh! He’s cool! He wears capes and goes to the opera!” and lusted after Frank Langella and loved Rice’s The Vampire Lestat (and I’m an adult, so I despise Twilight – vampires don’t sparkle!) and can geeble with the best of them over Vampire Bill and his delicious-but-inaccurate accent! So I get the whole fascination-not-fear idea and how that can be played for amusement. We are not amused.
Laurence’s vamps tend toward the True Blood variety, but with added bonuses. Yes, they drink real blood and synthblood, but they can also eat and they have a drink called Light Shade that enables them to walk in the sun plus an elixir that makes their pale skin more normal looking. They aren’t damned, but are immortal (societal prejudice smear campaign). Flying is merely hypnosis on their victims – they don’t do it. They used to sleep in coffins out of superstition but don’t, anymore. They don’t shape shift – more myth and hypnosis. The worst parts about being a vamp seem to be that they can’t use mirrors and the alienation they have from loved ones due to prejudice and the mere fact that the vamp will live forever (barring staking) and other types of humans won’t (oh yeah, they’re human…they have souls!). Oh, and if you drink a vamp’s blood but are caught in time, you can be drained of all your now tainted blood, have it replaced with synth blood ‘til they can get your proper blood type, and prevent a turning before it’s acted upon all your blood cells and they’ve acted upon the rest of the cells in your body. But it has to be done fast.
It’s all just a bit too neat and tidy and convenient and…well…flat. It should be seductive, like its subject. It’s not. Dry. How can you make talking about vampires, one of the most fun subjects in the world (every culture has a type of vampire myth!), boring? This manages. Not quite sure how. But it does. And that sucks. Excuse the bad pun. I just couldn’t help myself.
Fri Oct 30, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: 'Red Snow' by Susumu Katsumata
Gekiga stories of Japanese rural life a hundred years ago
Red Snow
By Susumu Katsumata
Drawn & Quarterly, October
2009, $24.95
From a Western perspective, it would be understandable to assume “gekiga” meant “short, depressing Japanese comics stories,” even if that’s not the most accurate definition. (Gekiga can also be long depressing Japanese comics stories, of course.) And, since the current exemplar of gekiga for those of us in the English-speaking world is Yoshihiro Tatsumi, there’s a sense that those short, depressing stories need to be set in the modern world, that gekiga is a literature of urban ennui and the dislocations of modern capitalism.
But gekiga is wider than that; Katsumata is another one of its masters, and his collection Red Snow is filled entirely with stories of a rural, pre-war Japan – but one as filled with bitter unhappiness and struggle as any badly-thrown-up Tokyo apartment building of the ‘60s. His rural landscapes have nothing of nostalgia about them; these are insular, stifling, dull little farming communities, full of equally dull and small-minded people, out in the middle of nowhere.
A few of these stories have supernatural elements, but the only creatures that appear are kappa – mischievous water spirits that fill the role of leprechauns or pixies in Japanese folklore, and were thought of as being equally as common and prosaic. The fantasy in Red Snow isn’t numinous or uplifting – it’s just yet another annoyance in a small village full of them, just one more damn thing to have to deal with. Kappa are no worse than the rich guy in town who thinks he has the right to seduce any woman around – who’s also called “kappa.”
Continue reading Manga Friday: 'Red Snow' by Susumu Katsumata ›
Tue Oct 27, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'James Bond Encyclopedia'
James Bond Encyclopedia
By John Cork and Collin Stutz
334 Pages, DK Publishing, $40
Nobody does it better. DK Publishing continues to put out the best assortment of visual reference books on pop culture and as we near the holidays, they keep pumping out one must have collection after another.
Few literary figures have endured changing eras and tastes likes Ian Fleming’s spy, James Bond. Fleming created the spy in the 1950s and continued his exploits through the dozen novels and nine short stories before his death in 1964. He got to see his creation catch the attention of a world made uncomfortable by the Cold War, giving them a clear cut hero to root for as he traveled the world and dispatched the Red Menace in all its guises.
Bond has endured despite the constant change in performer, indelibly begun by Sean Connery and carried through by George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and currently Daniel Craig. The world has remained transfixed by the globe-trotter spy, equally adept with women and firearms, always looking best in a black tuxedo. The films, themselves, have gone from depicting the counterintelligence threat from Eastern Europe to megalomaniacs, trying to change and reflect the times. Much like Batman, Bond reflects the tastes of the masses. As a result, we went from the taut thrillers like Goldfinger to the buffoonery that was Moonraker to today’s reboot, a harsher, less disciplined Bond for a darker world.
All of that and more are covered in the 332-page James Bond Encyclopedia, lovingly assembled by writers John Cork and Collin Stutz. A visual treat thanks to DK’s art department, the oversized tome introduces to all things Bond. The writers wisely broke things down into categories, updating from the 2007 edition to include Quantum of Solace. We have an introductory piece on Fleming, profiles of the six men to play James Bond, and the sections on The Bond Style, The Role of Bond, Bond Villains, Bond Women, Supporting Cast, Vehicles, Weapons & Equipment, and finally, backgrounds on the making of each movie. The book concludes with a comprehensive index that’s quite useful.
The Barry Nelson television version, the Casino Royale satire, and Never Say Never Again are omitted – consider this the canonical Bond reference book. Each entry, where appropriate, compares the film version with its prose origins, and differentiates between the differing interpretations such as M, Q, Moneypenny, and Blofeld. If the character appeared on screen and said something, they were included, making this exhaustive and fun to flip through (I had totally forgotten Minnie Driver was in one of the films, for example).
While Cubby Broccoli, Harry Salzman, Barbara Broccoli, and Michael Wilson get their due for guiding the films through the years, I wish a little more attention had been given to the musicians who helped make each film an event. Visually, a section dedicated to Maurice Binder’s stunning opening credits would have been a treat. Overall, though, this is a book every fan of Bond should have.
Mon Oct 26, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Saturday Morning Cartoons 1970s Vol. 2'
The 1970s remained a good time to be a kid, as the three networks continued to program Saturday mornings with hours and hours of programming aimed right at them. On the other hand, it was clear that finding new series to click with the evolving kiddie set was harder and harder so series seemed to come and go at a faster clip with shows from earlier years revived to fill gaps or revamped to bring the familiar to new audiences.
While super-heroes were largely done, magic, fantasy, and real adventure found their niches with series starting to be aimed at the younger set earlier and slightly more mature offerings as the hour grew later. All told, the dozen shows represented in Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s
For that younger set, there is Help! It’s the Hair Bear Bunch, which ran from 1971-1974, and featured three fairly stupid bears – Hair, Square, and Bubi – who escaped the Wonderland Zoo each episode, had an adventure and wound up back behind bars.
For those weaned on the reruns of the CBS sitcom, The New Adventures of Gilligan continued following the castaways, with most of the actors reprising their voices and a hideous laugh track for what was rather unfunny fare. It was just one of many prime time sitcoms to make the transition – none successfully other than Star Trek.
Older fans were offered Sealab 2020, a solid episode of which is here, showing that attempts were being made to bring in real world themes, plus attempts at characterization and serious stories.
Included here is Shazzan, which is an oddity considering it originated in the 1967-1968 season and was never rerun in the 1970s. Two siblings find halves of a magic ring, which summoned a genie named Shazzan when put together. They were taken to a fantasy world with the hopes of finding their way home but had adventures along the way, getting rescued at least twice a story by the magical being. The two-disc set’s sole extra is The Power of Shazzan as a number of folk look back at the show, marveling at Alex Toth’s strong design and ridiculing the state of writing in the 1970s.
Another show that debuted in 1968 and was gone by 1970 and is therefore in the wrong set is the atrocious Banana Splits Adventure Hour. Inspired by NBC’s Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, four guys in costumes, designed by Sid and Marty Kroft (who got better when left to their own devices) performed short bursts of slapstick humor accompanied by two music videos that owed something to the Monkees. Interspersed throughout were three adventure shows. Two were animated: Arabian Knights and The Three Musketeers and we get their debut stories in this inaugural show. Both were standard cookie cutter H-B fare, largely unmemorable and gone after a season. The third was Danger Island, attempting to turn Jonny Quest into a live-action show that was largely dubbed and poorly performed. Of note here is that the “hunk” was young Jan-Michael Vincent, well before Airwolf. What is astonishing given how bad the humor and the drama are is the fact that the entire first season was directed by Richard Donner. Yes, that Richard Donner.
Better was the two season show, Valley of the Dinosaurs that saw the Butler family accidentally lost in this time-frozen world accessed from the Amazon River. While seeking a way home, they were befriended by Gorak and his family. The mixed families formed the spine of the show as they struggled to learn from one another and survive dinosaur attacks.
Less memorable is Inch High, Private Eye, which brings the bumbling secret agent to animation in the form of the diminutive detective, aided by his attractive niece, Lori, and the dim-witted would-be detective Gator (imagine Jethro Clampett). The episode included was entirely forgettable and unamusing.
Returning from volume one is The Amazing Chan Clan, along with the familiar Batman, Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes.
Studios were increasingly having their hands bound by parents groups and network regulators who didn’t want the viewers adversely affected by the violence they saw while eating their cereal. Much of the conflict was reduced or removed, with the writing suffering greatly for this as witnessed by the witless Hair Bear Bunch or the edits made to Road Runner reruns. Even when Captain Marvel arrived in the live action Shazam! (sadly missing from this set), he could barely touch the bad guys let alone duke it out with them.
Clearly, the Golden Age for Saturday morning had passed and quality fare for children would have to wait for the advent of cable television and the plethora of channels able to cater to their needs with verve and imagination.
Sun Oct 25, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Saturday Morning Cartoons 1960s Vol. 2'
With three networks programming cartoons from 8 a.m. until just about noon throughout the 1960s, there was a rich variety of characters, situations, and styles. While Hanna-Barbera pretty much owned the first half of the decade, Filmation and others arrived and brought some different looks.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell from the second volume of Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s
New for the second volume, which was sent for review, are The Space Kidettes, Samson & Goliath, and The Adventures of Gulliver. The Kidettes, a show I had forgotten about, ran for a single season, 1966-1967, and featured four adorable tykes living in their space clubhouse (a converted Gemini capsule) and outwitting the nefarious Captain Skyhook. Two cute for words.
Samson may have inadvertently inspired Roy Thomas with a teen, Samson, gained an enhanced form and super-powers by clanging together his bracelets, saying “I need Samson Power” and transformed into an adult hero. Clanging them a second time turned his trusty dog into a powerful lion, Goliath. No secret identities and lots of fighting evil organizations. The stories are predictable and Samson seems devoid of personality.
The one featurette, Completely Bananas: The Magilla Gorilla Story is short but points out this 1964 series was the end of an era for animal-centric series with H-B’s Jonny Quest about to debut and a move towards more human adventures. And as the super-heroes rapidly burned themselves out after just two seasons, networks sought other stories such as ABC’s The Adventures of Gulliver. The disc provides the pilot episode showing how the boy, Gary Gulliver, and his dog Bib survived a shipwreck and washed ashore on the very “lost” island they sought with Gary’s dad, now presumed missing. While Gary is drawn straight, the Lilliputians are cartoony and comical but a détente is achieved.
The disc also includes fresh installments of Wally Gator, Ricochet Rabbit, Mushmouth and Pumpkin’ Puss and their template, Tom & Jerry. And assorted other features far more familiar than the above.
The two-disc set does not feel as fresh and inviting as the first and that could be because the mix isn’t as strong this time or, the nostalgia has worn after since the first volume came out earlier this year. Clearly, this is for the late Baby Boomers hoping to relive those years.
Once again there’s the absurd advisory about the material not suitable for this year’s kids.
For a true feel for the decade, we should have had Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, Fireball XL-5, Jonny Quest, Superman, Spider-Man, Banana Splits, Wacky Races, and of course George of the Jungle. Rights issues, no doubt, prevented this from being properly representative.
Thu Oct 22, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Review: 'Stitches' by David Small -- a comics memoir of an amazingly bad childhood
Stitches: A Memoir
David Small
W.W. Norton, September 2009,
$24.95
You can’t write a memoir these days unless you had a bad childhood – call it the Law of Oprah. You have to have some horrible secrets, either your own or those of your parents/keepers/guardians, that you can reveal, tearfully, to an enthralled TV audience when called upon. You may not make it to that TV-show couch, since the competition for a bad-enough childhood is fierce, but that’s the aim. Memoirs of anything positive are utterly passé – even a book like Eat Pray Love needs to start with heartbreak before it can get to happiness.
Then there’s the unrelated but equally unsettling requirement that only non-fictional graphic novels can be taken really seriously by the outside world. From Maus to Persepolis, from Fun Home to Palestine, it’s only respectable if it’s real. As far as our mothers and cousins and next-door neighbors know, “graphic novels” means expensive comic-book stories about either superheroes or the author’s tormented relationship with his family.
Stitches is perfectly positioned at the intersection of those two publishing trends: it’s the true story of author David Small’s appalling childhood, told as comics pages with cinematic “camera motions” that will appeal to readers not used to reading comics. Even the art style Small uses in Stitches adds to the seriousness; Small has a sketchy, loose line of variable width here, strong to define the figures and lighter and looser for backgrounds, and washes in various tones of grey. In fact, the whole book is grey – even the black line looks like just another shade of the murk.
Thu Oct 22, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'The Marvel Encyclopedia - Updated and Expanded'
The Marvel Encyclopedia, Updated and Expanded
400 pages, DK Books, $40
These days, you can’t follow Marvel’s or DC’s continuities without a scorecard and thankfully more than a few reference sources have arrived to help out. The latest is DK’s 70th Anniversary contribution, a revised version of 2006’s The Marvel Encyclopedia. What a difference three years can make to continuity.
The key difference in the editions is the addition of pages, bringing the total to a hefty 400 pages. DK did everyone a favor and kept the cover price consistent at $40. Frank Cho’s cover is replaced with a Brandon Peterson piece that attempts to reflect the full history of the Marvel heroes. Matt Forbeck deftly took the original text, written by a quintet of experts such as Tom DeFalco and Peter Sanderson, and brought dozens of entries up to date in addition to adding entirely new ones where warranted. The crack design team replaced only a handful of images to existing entries but where they expanded or added new entries, the art nicely reflects the subject matter.
Forbeck’s updates take readers into the Dark Reign era but merely its beginnings so many of the events in the second half of 2009 are not reflected in the text. It might have been better to cut things off after Secret Invasion. As it is, some key events -- Aunt May’s wedding to J. Jonah Jameson’s father, Brother Voodoo not listed as next sorcerer supreme, Firestar’s cancer -- are missing. I also think Emma Frost, Nick Fury, Rick Jones and Speedball’s current situations get short shrift. And while many new entries are welcome, some stand out characters are missing such as Jameson’s father, Peter Parker’s new supporting cast, Ezekiel, Valeria Richards and each member of The Twelve. Also, the war and western characters are barely represented which is a shame. Similarly, only a few of the 2099 and M2 characters are here.
New spreads covering the significant modern day events – Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Annihilation – make the book feel nicely up to date but then older events such as the Kree/Skrull War and Secret Wars now feel overlooked. It would have been nice if the Fifty- State Initiative spread actually listed which heroes covered which states or which humans were replaced by Skrulls in the SI spread but these are minor nits. A larger nit is that a few characters receive spreads showing Key Moments and while I agree that House of M is major, I refuse to accept Spider-Man vs. Anti-Venom a key moment. Fortunately, the book ends with a spread on the more prominent parallel universes which will help the less devout reader.
Production demands meant that many entries had artwork reduced to fit in new entries but overall the pages do not feel overly packed and are easy to read. From what I can tell, just a few characters were dropped in favor of more current figures so say bye-bye to Marlo Chandler, Hornet, Libra, N’Garai, Candy Southern, and, Tana Nile.
Of the art chosen, I have very few quibbles over choices made but would have preferred a Gene Colan Dracula and would have updated the mis-proportioned Don Heck illo for Pepper Potts.
Clearly, this is a much neater and more effective updating than DK’s second edition of The DC Encyclopedia (which I was a coauthor on). You won’t want to miss picking up this fact-filled tome.
Mon Oct 19, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Comical Lives: A Paired Review of 'Little Nothings 2' and 'Giraffes in My Hair'
Autobiographical comics from Lewis Trondheim and Bruce Paley & Carol Swain
The impulse to anecdote is ubiquitous in mankind; we all
want to tell our own stories. Since those stories happened to us, we naturally think that they’re fascinating…and
sometime are surprised when the rest of the world doesn’t agree with us. Comics
creators have been spilling out their lives onto their pages for a few decades
now – since the undergrounds, if not before that – and the autobiographical comic
is now its own cliché. But there’s still room to do interesting things with autobiographical
materials – at least, I hope
there is, since it seems that we’re destined to be deluged with books of true
stories…
Little Nothings, Vol. 2: The Prisoner Syndrome
Lewis Trondheim
NBM/ComicsLit, March 2009,
$14.95
Trondheim mostly makes fictional comics – Dungeon and Kaput and Zosky and Mister O and many more – but he also has kept a comics blog in French, mostly focused on the small moments of his life. Three collections from the blog have been published in his native France; the first two have been translated so far for the English-speaking world. (I reviewed the first one here back in March of last year.)
For the “Little Nothings” blog, Trondheim works in watercolor, mostly in single pages – each one the record of a single event, or a short conversation. The emphasis is on observation – each strip is a crystallized instant, and clearly the blog as a whole is not intended to seriously chronicle Trondheim’s life. As with the Dungeon books, all of the people are drawn anthropomorphically – Trondheim and his family are various kinds of bird, and most of the others look like different kinds of mammals – rats and dogs and cats. (In the usual unsettling way of anthropomorphic comics, Trondheim’s family also has a pair of real cats, Orly and Roissy, and other actual animals show up from time to time.)
Either Trondheim travels an awful lot or travel is more conducive to diary comics than his regular life, since a clear majority of the comics here are about trips – to the Angouleme comics festival (a year when he was the Guest of Honor), several other comics events, and vacation in Greece, Guadeloupe, and Corsica. That does keep Prisoner Syndrome from being a succession of Trondheim-sitting-at-his-desk pages – there are a number of those, of course, since that’s where a cartoonist spends most of his time – and ties nicely into the title. In one of the early strips in this book, Trondheim learns about “Prisoner Syndrome,” in which people who spend all of their time in the same place gradually get more and more tired from doing less and less – and so he decides to go to more comics festivals, to keep himself healthy.
There are no grand gestures in Prisoner Syndrome, no deep thoughts or big moments – the series is called Little Nothings for a reason. But there are many thoughtful little moments, of the kind that make up all of our lives, and Trondheim is an artful and nuanced portrayer of his own internal life. It’s a lovely book of the small things that go together to make up an everyday life.
Continue reading Comical Lives: A Paired Review of 'Little Nothings 2' and 'Giraffes in My Hair' ›
Wed Oct 7, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Lego Star Wars the Visual Dictionary'
Lego Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary
By Simon Beecroft
96 pages, $21.99, DK Publishing
It used to be that Lego would never feature licensed characters. Instead, you could construct moon bases or pirate ships and make up your own characters to tell tales plucked straight from your imagination. Then came the first license, Star Wars, which proved so successful that there is now an entire line of licensed Lego toys which in turn have spawned video games and related merchandise.
Now, DK Publishing this week provides readers Lego Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary which breaks George Lucas’ universe into sections: the Movie Saga, The Clone Wars, Specialist Sets, and Beyond the Brick. A handy timeline upfront shows you the explosive growth of the line with every set properly displayed and identified for completists.
Each section properly displays each figure or vehicle with a handy guide to the number of pieces, their set number and which film the construct relates to. Along the way, the capsule descriptions provide information not only about the figure or vehicle but about their construction and history. You learn some interesting facts and I discovered to my surprise and delight that set 7163 features a Jedi Bob (must find!).
This is a treasure trove of information for the diehard Lego collector but written for those 7 years old and up, it also is engaging and entertaining with information about the characters and their adventures.
The book, as is typical of DK’s output, is a visual treat and the bottom corners feature, respectively, storm troopers and Luke Skywalker so flipping through the pages you get a sense of animation.
Not being a kid anymore, I found the Beyond the Brick section the most fascinating to see the level of detail that went into their construction as Jens Kronvold Frederiksen, Design Manager, has a nice interview about the entire Star Wars line for Lego. There’s even a final spread about the Lego Star Wars merchandising which is a growing subset of the overall Star Wars phenomenon.
As with any Lego line, there’s something special here. The book comes complete with an exclusive Luke Skywalker minifigure which begs the question if the book is ruined by taking out the toy to play with his compatriots.
Tue Oct 6, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Pixarpedia'
Pixarpedia
300 Pages, $40
DK Publishing
I doubt there has been a studio to start out with as long a streak of consecutive hits as Pixar. Not only have they succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, but they have helped rewrite the rules for family entertainment and created an armload of pop culture characters that are likely to endure for decades to come. The secret, it seems, has been to take iconic themes and figures and distill them down to their essence then tell engaging stories that never lose sight of character.
You are reminded of those relatively simple and obvious lessons while reading DK Publishing’s Pixarpedia, which was released some weeks back. Written with their core audience in mind, it’s geared for 9-12 year old readers and is a treasure trove of information about every feature and short film they have produced along with details on each character seen in the films.
The book is divided into thirds with the bookend sections about the studio. You can trace their progress from a small company owned by George Lucas to its sale to Steve Jobs and its explosive growth. The final third, Behind the Scenes, provides cast and crew credits and assorted trivia tidbits about each film along with sidebars spotlighting members of the company with career capsules. It’s amazing how many shout outs there are for beloved movies and people) especially Mickey Mouse) hidden in each film. You are shown many, but certainly not all, of them in this section.
The largest third is the movie by movie section that provides information about the major and minor characters. Unlike too many DK books, the visual design is clean and colorful, easy to read and chock full of detail. Sprinkled throughout are “Did you Know?” bullets with factual information that supplements each film. You get a plot summary, character descriptions, lavish looks at the sets and lots of fun reading.
Paging through the oversized book is a treat and overall, you come away with a greater knowledge about the characters than you might have imagined possible. At the end of this portion, there are pages dedicated to the themes that carry through the films and its their dedication to these simple dictates, like “You’ve got a Friend in Me”, that places their output head and shoulders above the competition.
Mon Oct 5, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Snow White' on Blu-ray
Truth be told, I was never a big fan of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
The basic children’s fairy tale was simplified for the 1937 film, starting with the excising of Snow’s mother in favor of just presenting the wicked stepmother. When the Queen tries to do away with Snow White, it took her three attempts which Walt cut down to just the poisoned apple. On the other hand, Walt’s idea of having the Prince’s kiss wake her up is superior to a piece of apple being dislodged from her throat. It would have been nice if the Queen was forced to watch her step-daughter happily marry the Prince, wearing red-hot iron shoes as her punishment.
Wisely, Walt simplified the story to fit it in the constraints of then-current film-making. Additionally, he played up the part of the Seven Dwarfs, giving each a distinctive personality that have become memorable. In the story, after she sought shelter in their home, they agreed to let her stay with them in exchange for her services as cook, maid, and, laundress. Instead, Snow here takes it upon herself to do the cleaning first, ingratiating herself to the dwarfs before meeting them. Of course, that allows for the animators to let the forest creatures come to her aid set to song.
Still, it’s a charming story, simply told; an experiment that paid off handsomely, catapulting Walt’s studio ahead of all other animators.
Now, the studios’ crown jewel is coming to Blu-ray, going on sale tomorrow. The Blu-ray edition has two discs, one for the film and one for the copious extras. Also included is a standard DVD version so this combo pack is the one to buy for now and the future. While the standard disc contains extras, the supplemental Blu-ray disc has them and much more.
The original film has been meticulously restored and the lush color and design has never looked better. The sound is crisp and the imagery a wonder. Clearly, this is the best the film has ever looked.
Blu-ray owners will enjoy having the Magic Mirror act as the Disney Smart Navigation interface. The mirror guides you through both discs and has enough intelligence ot know if you’ve played this before and whether to resume where you left off. BD Live adds to his functionality and practical use such as time and weather information. If you don’t like the letterbox bars, you can switch to Disney View which features new art extensions prepared by Toby Bluth, complete with some new information about their creation.
Extras include Backstage Disney: Hyperion Studios, an exhaustive look at the original home for Disney and his animation team complete with virtual tour of the first house that Walt built. A ton of archival material has been unearthed for presentation to diehard fans with every department well represented. Along the way you will watch two Silly Symphony cartoons from the early days and be treated to commentary and tours from current animators including Pixar’s Andrew Stanton. You learn much about how it all began through a series of short features but it requires effort to poke and prod through every doorway and department within the virtual studio.
Snow White gets its due in “The One That Started It All” that offers up some new information and insights.
One of the more interesting featurettes is Snow White Returns. Recently uncovered archival material indicates Walt may have been toying with a sequel and we spent nearly 9 minutes reviewing the data. Deleted scenes include the “Soup Eating Sequence” and the “Bed Building Sequence”.
Resurrected from previous editions are “Dopey’s Wild Mine Ride” game, “Heigh-Ho”, a karaoke sing-along and “Disney Through the Decades”, “Animation Voice Talent” (featuring Caselotti). Unfortunately, some of the 2001 edition features are absent.
This belongs in every videophile’s library and under the Christmas tree of children from coast to coast. The charm and whimsy endures as witnessed in this beautiful collection.
Fri Oct 2, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: Supernatural Teens
Reviewing Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales: Sanctuary, Yokai Doctor, and Amefurashi
Where would comics be without the stories of young people with amazing powers? Oh, sure, you could cobble together a world canon of stories with no supernatural stuff at all, but it would have to be a masterpiece of the gerrymanderer’s art. And why would you want to – when you can have all of the moody, or conflicted, or ridiculously innocent teenagers with amazing abilities you ever thought of? Like the main characters of these three books, for example…
Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales, Volume 1: Sanctuary
Written by Melissa Marr; Art by
Xian Nu Studio
Tokyopop/HarperCollins, May 2009,
$12.99
Wicked Lovely is the name of a novel by Marr, and it also seems to be the umbrella title for her novels about teens and faeries (and teen faeries, and faerie teens) in the modern world. The novels seem to be about a girl named Aislinn – no self-respecting teen-novel heroine ever has a name like Doris or Mabel – and her travails in high school and the Faerie Courts. But this manga volume – it says on its back cover that it’s “manga,” if you don’t believe me, and never mind that it reads left-to-right and was written by an American – is set somewhere in the western desert, where once-mortal Rika lives quietly, trying to avoid both humans and the local faeries.
Rika was discovered and turned – not exactly “seduced and abandoned,” since she wasn’t able to give him what he wanted – many years ago by the Summer King, Keenan, who turns up early in this book to give an excuse for some backstory and to fail to get her to swear fealty to him. She refuses, of course – she’s solitary now, and happy that way. What does it matter if most of the solitary fay are nasty enough to make “mischievous” a very weak term to describe them?
But they’re just there for spice; this is a series for teenage girls, which means Rika has to see a cute boy – Jace, who paints, like she does – and save him from those nasty fay, who try to kill him for no good reason. He’s sweet and innocent enough to stare wide-eyed at her abilities – those nasty wild fay don’t give up, or there wouldn’t be a plot here other than “elf girl and artist boy meet cute and gaze into each other’s eyes,” – and the book is low-key enough that they’re just mildly kissing by the end. (Which seems awfully tame for a fairie who’s hundreds of years old.)
Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales: Sanctuary has too many colons in its title and a thin plot, but I have to expect that it’s just the kind of thing teen girls will want: a bit of angst, a wish to be alone that doesn’t actually lead to loneliness, and a cute boy that the girl gets to protect and pursue. I’m just twenty years too old and the wrong gender to appreciate it properly.Thu Oct 1, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'High Moon' Volume One
High MoonDave Gallaher & Steve Ellis
DC Comics, 192 pages, $14.99
DC’s online imprint, Zuda Comics, has certainly been a hit or miss affair but when it hits, there’s a pleasure in discovering new talent or new concepts. While Bayou was a breakout hit, the most consistent entry remains High Moon, written by former ComicMix contributor Dave Gallaher, illustrated by Steve Ellis and lettered by Scott O. Brown.
Gallaher had this notion for years but managed to earn one of the inaugural slots when Zuda went live in late 2007 and the strip won the first reader contest. It has since received plaudits from around the field and now DC is releasing the first three stories in a trade paperback.
The three stories comprising the first volume mix the western and horror genres with a dash of steampunk and overly, it’s a breezy, entertaining read. The focal point surrounds the Macgregor family, a line of detectives, currently working as a branch of the famed Pinkertons. Matthew Macgregor takes center stage in the first story while brother Tristan arrives for the second tale and then Tristan and Fergus deal with demons in the final tale. Linking all three, though, is Eddie Conroy a werewolf with a haunted past.
Each tale takes place in a different locale, starting with the drought-stricken Blest, Texas, then moving on to Ragged Rock, OK before concluding in South Dakota.
Across these stories are vampires, werewolves, demons, sexy Indians and a lot of atmosphere. We are given details in drips so reading the three stories in one sitting helps build the world of High Moon and it’s a nice place to visit. Gallaher’s dialogue is spare and distinct while Ellis works wonders with the static format of the Zuda reader, playing with page design when the action demands it. His use of color goes a long way towards giving the strip a nice atmosphere.
We could use a little more grounding in the time and place when these stories take place and what the ground rules are for the occult aspects but these are minor quibbles for what is a strong series which returns to the web with a fourth installment this fall.
Wed Sep 30, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Fathers and Sons: reviews of Danica Novgorodoff's 'Refresh, Refresh' and 'The Big Kahn' by Neil Kleid and Nicolas Cinquegrani
I should start by quoting something weighty – the most obvious would be that old Tolstoy saw about happy and unhappy families – but let’s take that as written, shall we? Comics have given short shrift to families for the past seventy years – at least, the American comic-book industry has, though strip comics grew fat and bloated on the hijinks of aggressively “relatable” families for that long and longer.
Even the undergrounds – typically about countercultural types, who occasionally complain about their parents but try to avoid them as much as possible – and the modern alt-comics movement (Alienated Loners R us!) avoided family dynamics. Sure, there are exceptions, from Will Eisner to art spiegelman, but the average American comics protagonist is an orphan – or wishes he was.
Maybe that’s starting to change, or maybe I just have a couple of anomalies on my hand. Either way, today, I have two books where that isn’t the case – not to say that these dads might not be dead, absent, or problematic, but they’re definitely part of the story. And their sons care who, and what – and where – their fathers are.
Refresh, Refresh
A graphic novel by Danica
Novgorodoff, adapted from a screenplay by James Ponsoldt based on the story by
Benjamin Percy
First Second, October 2009,
$17.99
What do men do? For many in the comics reviewing world, that’s an easy question: men punch each other in the face. But they don’t have Refresh, Refresh in mind when they say that. This graphic novel is set in a small Oregon town, just a couple of years ago, where most of the adult men are off fighting with the Marines in Iraq. And their sons – mostly Cody and Josh and Gordon, three highschool-aged boys who are at the core of this particular story – talk about joining up when they’re old enough, or working in the local factory, or maybe even getting out.
But Refresh, Refresh is based on a literary short story, and if there’s one thing we all know, it’s that there’s no getting out of a story like that – it’s all doom and gloom until the moment-of-clarity ending. So this town is stifling and without any options, the boys drifting – from backyard boxing to underage drinking in bars to racing around on motorbikes and sleds – as they rebel without any fathers to drag them into line. (The narration – presumably taken from the original Percy story; I don’t want to blame Novgorodoff for any of it – is particularly heavy-handed in that area, such as this sequence from p.83: “We didn’t fully understand the reason our fathers were fighting. We only understood that they had to fight. ‘It’s all part of the game,’ my grandfather said. ‘It’s just the way it is.’ We could only cross our fingers and wish on stars and hit refresh, refresh, hoping they would return to us.”)
What they hit “refresh, refresh” on is their e-mail in-boxes; that scene recurs several times in the story. Oddly, though, it’s the only incursion of modern technology into a story that could otherwise be Vietnam-era. They don’t follow their fathers’ platoon on CNN.com or an Armed Forces website; don’t call each other on cellphones; don’t think about or track or seem to notice the war on TV or the Internet; even their laptops seem to be screwed down to tables, for all the moving they do.
Refresh, Refresh is a very traditional story about young men in small towns; I could probably quote half-a-dozen Bruce Springsteen songs on roughly the same topic, and with pretty much the same moral and tone. (And that’s without diving into the world of the realist short story, where kitchen-sink dramas almost require young men with promise to be squandered.) Novgorodoff tells this version with a bit too much self-conscious artistry – too many deer looking up at airplanes, too many of those explaining-the-theme narration boxes – but she keeps the focus tight and specific, on these three boys and their world, their choices and possibilities. A story like this is nearly always about badchoices, though, so it would be best to come to Refresh, Refresh with a MFA-teacher’s fatalism, and not expect anything so comic-booky as a happy ending for the boys who punch each other in the face.
Mon Sep 28, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Two Bleak Futures: David Ratte's 'Toxic Planet' and 'Ball Peen Hammer' by Adam Rapp and George O'Connor
Everything is going to hell. Everything is always going to hell, and always has been, of course, but it’s going to hell even more now than it ever has been, and quicker, too. And so we get ever more stories about those hells – like these two very different books that I have to talk about today. They even both have people with gas masks on the cover!
David Ratte
Yen Press, August 2009, $12.99
Sometime in the future, the world is so crowded and polluted that everyone wears gas masks all of the time, and the natural world is essentially forgotten. Toxic Planet is a satire – and a broad, obvious one at that – so there’s no point to asking what kind of food these people eat; it’s not designed to show how this world actually works, but to make obvious points about our own world.
Our hero is a factory worker named Sam; his blonde wife and aged grandmother are never named, but that’s OK; they’re all such broad characters that real names are superfluous anyway. Other characters include an unnamed owner of the plant and his young son, the President of the United Global States, who is an odd combination of Bush and Sarkozy, and the union rep Tran, who gets to be the voice of reason (reason here being very much a relative concept). Later on, Sam’s long-lost parents – they’re ecologists, which is about as popular and mainstream in this society as a combination of Muslim, Communist, and child molester would be in darkest Alabama – return from the countryside (yes, the world is completely polluted everywhere, and yet there’s still an unspoiled “countryside,” but don’t ask), with his younger sister Orchidea, and they get to be the even more obvious voices of reason.
Toxic Planet is funny here and there, and dull and axe-grinding equally as often. And it’s really much, much too long for the message – yes, we all agree that polluting the entire planet, declaring war on defenseless countries, and similar things are Really Bad, but we don’t need to keep seeing heavy-handed double-reverse sermons on the subject over and over for more than a hundred pages. Ratte’s world isn’t clever or interesting; he just wants to make it dirty and unpleasant, and he succeeds. The one interesting part of watching the axes grind are the times when Ratte’s French ideas of what’s obvious and true – so much so that he doesn’t have to say them, just have his characters parroting whatever he considers the opposite – aren’t at all clear to a North American audience, and so the reader can’t quite tell what he’s so worked up about.
Ratte’s art almost makes up for that, even laboring under the constraints his writing has given it – no faces, only gas masks, and characters who have to be differentiated mostly by hairstyle and typical clothing – with an appealing lightness and energy. But Toxic Planet is the kind of book that can make a reader want to drive a SUV to McDonald’s for lunch and then go prospect for oil in a wilderness, just out of spite.
