As the Tweeks recover from their whirlwind Comic Con 2014, here’s a recap of their adventures at the San Diego Convention Center. There was a lot of fan girl apparel, comic books, and toys purchased, as well as many interviews conducted. Keep a look out for more coverage on their hometown Con.
The nicest thing I can think to say about Lucy is that it is exactly how I would have remade 2001: A Space Odyssey if I had done it when I was 16 years old. I would have replaced the male astronaut with an attractive woman, kept the trippy end sequence and replaced the first two-thirds of the movie with a mediocre tribute to Hard Boiled. I also probably would have struggled to fill 90 minutes and would have added some really strange filler to get it to a marginally respectful run time like 89 minutes. Thankfully no one was willing to give me $65 million to make a movie when I was 16 (unfortunately no one will do it now) but we’re stuck with what Luc Besson made here. I was stuck at least; you might still be able to save yourself. (more…)
Honey West and T.H.E. Cat: A Girl and Her Cat, by Win Scott Eckert and Matthew Baugh • Moonstone Books, 180 pages • $6.99 paperback, $5.99 digital
Way, way back in the early-1960s, the Chicago Sunday Tribune had a separate section devoted entirely to books. Books, as Craig Ferguson explains frequently, are bound collections of sequentially numbered pieces of paper called “pages” that are, in fact, extremely long tweets. In that book section of yore, there was a “paperback books” columnist. Paperback books were collections of sequentially numbered pages, each in a size smaller than the original, bound in soft cardboard. At the time, most of these paperbacks cost thirty-five or fifty cents.
Stop shaking your heads, Boomers, and go back to finding nibs for your fountain pens so you can sharpen up your cursive. Yes, we are old. Just deal with it. Being a ComicMix columnist, I am honor bound to digress. Ahem.
As I was saying, the Tribune’s paperback columnist was a fine writer and a sincere gentleman named Clarence Peterson. He passed away three years ago after living long enough to see his hallowed newspaper turn to shit. He devoted one column to explaining why the heroic action paperback series of the time – he cited as examples Matt Helm and Travis McGee (and maybe Shell Scott) – were the comic books of the day. We’ll forget the fact that, in that day, there were real comic books: they were few and, in those days before the Marvel expansion, it seemed as though their numbers were dwindling. Compared with one decade before, they most certainly were.
That was cool. I was about 12 at the time, a voracious reader who had already read most of Edgar Rice Burroughs and James Bond novels and was looking for more… and better. So I picked up a Matt Helm book and a Travis McGee book, and I was not disappointed in the least.
Now I am a full-fledged adult (according to my driver’s license) staring at a near-future social security check, but I am doing so from underneath a pile of comic books so high the Empire State Building would cross its legs. I’ve been checking out some of the “new pulp” stuff that is being published these days, mostly due to affordable print-on-demand and electronic publishing. And I’ve liked a lot of what I’ve been reading.
Case in point: Moonstone Books’ Honey West and T.H.E. Cat: A Girl and Her Cat, by Win Scott Eckert and Matthew Baugh. Moonstone is the comics publisher that handles a lot of licensed properties as well as a smattering of original material and has branched out to paperback originals and anthologies: The Avenger, Kolchak, The Green Hornet, The Spider and many, many others. But when I saw the character names Honey West and T.H.E. Cat, I hit my Amazon account with curiosity and enthusiasm. Once again, I was not disappointed.
This is not Moby Dick, and if you thought it might be, what the hell’s wrong with you? This is Honey West, the (allegedly) first female private eye, teaming up with a teevee original, T. Hewett Edward Cat. His show only lasted a year and, for some stupid reason, NBC Universal has yet to release it on DVD, Blu-Ray, or digital download… the last time I checked. The digital streaming and download field is expanding like spring snakes out of a peanut brittle can. It gave the world a regular home to Robert Loggia, as well as to a slew of fine writers and directors. I loved it, and I’ve resented NBC for its cancellation for over four decades. Those bastards!
A Girl and Her Cat is a fast-moving action thriller at the top of the form, complete with foreign agent bad guys and a buxom Asian villainess with… wait for it… jade eyes. Ah, tradition! Honey is hired to find a serum that could cause a plague that would wipe out two-thirds of humanity, and some of the bad guys (there are several different groups) bring T.H.E. Cat in to help Honey out… as well as other stuff that would fall under the heading of “spoiler.”
A chunk of the action comes from the guest appearances from a whole slew of mystery, movie and television characters – each quite recognizable, but never fully named lest they invoke the fury of the Intellectual Property Police. Hey, it’s an homage, guys!!! This folderall funfest never gets in the way of the story. If you get it, it’s a value-added experience. And if you get a certain couple of them, then we want you to write for ComicMix.
This may be the most unpretentious, straight-forward heroic action piece I’ve read in any medium in a long time. Kudos to all, and I’m looking forward to the sequel.
I don’t always get out to see movies these days and I’ve missed some this summer that I wanted to see. My Mary and I had a chance to sneak in a film this week and we chose to catch How To Train Your Dragon 2 before it disappeared from the movie theaters. We had seen the first one and I had been impressed: good story, good animation, and a sense of things having consequences.
I liked the sequel even more.
I should note that sequels can be notoriously difficult to pull off well. You’ve already told your story. What else do you have and, if it’s any good, why didn’t you tell it first? Mind you, there are notable exceptions to the rule. Godfather II is not only better than the first film, it’s often described as one of the best films of all time. The Empire Strikes Back is also a better film than its predecessor and, for many Star Wars fans, the best of the bunch. The Dark Knight was, for me, the best Batman film thus far.
However, you have others that just don’t live up to the original. Iron 2 was rather sucky, for example. Superman 2 was not as good as its predecessor. Babe is a favorite film in our house; Babe 2… rarely watch it. Once upon a time Warner Bros considered making a sequel to Casablanca. Fortunately, they never got around to it.
The problem with a lot of sequels is that they exist, not because the creators have a new vision but because the studio, seeing how much money the first one made, wants another bite of that apple. Sometimes, all you get is a refried version of the first movie.
So – what makes How To Train Your Dragon 2 even better than the original? (Mandatory spoiler warning now issued. If you haven’t seen it yet – and you should – you may want to avoid the rest of the column. I’ll be as circumspect as I can.)
Written by Cullen Bunn. Art by Javier Fernandez and Dan Brown
I’m perpetually locked into trying new books, so sometimes I nearly forget to catch up on those I’ve most recently enjoyed. Lucky for me that the marvelous Magneto has magnetically adhered itself to the top of my pile. It was a fairly light week. For those not keeping score, I can’t recommend this series any more than I already have. What I can do now instead is really spend my time with the titular man (and mutant) hunter and see how he ticks in accordance to Cullen Bunn’s pen.
At the onset of the relaunch (if one would consider this book a relaunch) Bunn’s Magneto sees himself a grey wound in a black and white world of scar tissue. Unhappy at the atrocities that have continually befallen his species, Erik Lehnsherr decides that he will rise to become the judge, jury, and executioner of those charged with murdering a mutant. In issue #6, the deathpool expands to those mutants who have killed their own kind. Mr. Sinister’s Marauders – as Magneto helpfully expounds to himself throughout the issue – are pawns and grunts serving a higher power. It is boy coy and intelligent then that Magneto denotes (again, to himself, I suppose) that he too once raised an army under his fist. In his case though, his pawns were at least decidedly homo-superior. No black-on-black crime for this angry Jew!
Because Cullen puts us in the position of a fly on the shoulder of the master of magnetism, it’s inevitable that we come to see him as our hero. And it’s hard to not be swayed by his joie de vivre when he brutally murders a murderer. Painted as a more elegant Frank Castle, it’s hard to deny Magneto is doing good of a sort. But any follower of Charles Xavier sees then the other side of that coin.
Do I believe in capital punishment? No. Simply put, I don’t feel man has any right – regardless of sin – to take the life of another man. I’m not overly religious (if at all), but the agnostic in me says that when murder is done in the first degree it is a pox on the species at large. I should note I’m a huge fan of corporal punishment. I say why let Hitler enjoy the freedom of death when you can pummel him daily? But I digress. In the case of Magneto, our protagonist is vindicated in his justice in spite of breaking the law in doing so. For making as many mutant killers pay the ultimate price, we see the forest for the trees. This is either Magneto doing as much righteous damage before he’s killed himself, or he’s making a final gambit to become a Batmanesque myth; to become an immortal price to be paid upon those who so choose to hunt homo-superior.
Magneto’s barely scathed in his quest. After laying several Marauders to rest (by way of some of the most inventive and gory methods one could imagine), the plan is set: Magneto will reprogram the next batch of cloned Sinister Slaves to become a new suicide-bomb-ready army of Brotherhood pawns. I don’t know if Mr. Sinister himself is still alive in the 616, but if he is, I’ll assume I should purchase flowers and a condolence card for whomever makes those crazy metal ribbon capes.
The story and pacing throughout the issue is slow, but methodical. A B-story regarding the now limbless Scalphunter leaves a few cryptic beats, and is much needed in the book. The opposing A-plot simply shows Magneto on yet another murder mission. Six issues in and Bunn has the tone and style down. From here on out – and trust me, he’s captured me – I want to see some sharper left turns. Simply put, there’s only so much hard justice a man can take without knowing the true master plan. And if the plan truly is just a death march, it can be said now, and spare us too much more of the same.
Artistically Javier Fernandez and Dan Brown continue to deliver a book that looks as gritty as it reads. The book’s hard shifts in color are some of best I’ve seen in modern comics. The heavy inks here well placed. And Fernandez’s textural shifts showcase a look that simply should not be in a Big Two book… and he’s commended for it. There’s little left to say to the art aside from simply picking favorite moments. The death of a Prism is done so well with simple storytelling that you could almost hear the faint crickle-crackle of eminent shattering. When a book is heard in your head when you’re reading it, the artists are doing their job well.
Ultimately, Magneto #6 is hopefully the last stop on the simplistic potential swan song of Erik Lehnsherr. The book has style, grace, grit, and vigor. My hope then now is to see a plan emerge, and from it, a continuous look into a villain fit to be grey in the continuously simplified world of cape and cowl comics.
If my eight year-old self had seen Earth to Echo this weekend he would have loved it. It’s vaguely science-fiction-y and soft sci-fi was my jam back then. It features clever resourceful kids and clueless adults and what kid doesn’t like to think themselves cleverer than their oppressors? Earth to Echo also has a good pace to it, it goes quickly from action piece to action piece with very little fluff holding it down. Unfortunately I had to see this movie as my 30 year-old self and so I enjoyed it a bit less but I would probably recommend it to my non-existent friends with kids in this age group who absolutely had to take their kids to a movie in a theater.
There is so much to love about Littlest Pet Shop! Not only are they just about the cutest little toys ever with their big eyes, and bobbly heads, but they also have a cartoon series on Hub that Maddy is obsessed with. And now they also have a comic book series thanks to IDW! Oh and did we mention Blythe Baxter’s perfect hair and a pair of diabolically evil twins? Watch our review & then ask yourself, as we do often, why there isn’t a Brony-like following (yet) for LPS.
Now that the Big Two are deep into their mandatory summer crossovers – as opposed to their mandatory winter crossovers, their mandatory spring crossovers, and their mandatory fall crossovers – I can’t tell the players without a scorecard.
At the core of both series is the same plot: all or most of the sundry parallel universes are going to collide into one, if, indeed, that many. This does not envelop either series in an aura of originality, particularly when Marv Wolfman and George Pérez did this 29 years ago. You may not think they did it better way back in the early days of the Gilded Age of Comics (and you’d be wrong about that), but at the very least you could understand that story. Original Sin and Future’s End… not so much.
At least Marvel’s Original Sin is built around a clever plot point: somebody offed The Watcher and stole one or both of his eyes… and then, one eye exploded implanting various deep dark secrets held by various characters into the brainpans of those who were within the blast radius of the eyeball.
No, I don’t know how big the blast radius of a Watcher eyeball is. And I’m a bit pissed off at offing the big bald guy anyway, but it’s comic books, where death has no meaning whatsoever. If they ever kill Aunt May off, she’ll be back in a few months with a bionic bustle.
DC’s Future’s End simply makes no sense. Batman Beyond is sent back in time to prevent the end of the world as we know it, but he misses his mark and arrives later than he was supposed to. Well, fine. That’s it. The hero blew it and it’s over, right?
No such luck. All the characters wander around slapping their foreheads and mumbling woe is me a lot. It doesn’t help that this series features the New 52 version of the DC Universe, which really hasn’t been very well-defined or thought out, but has been compromised after-the-fact by bureaucrats who wouldn’t know a good comics story if they bothered to read one.
It was time to retire the mega-event crossover before we started worrying about Y2K. But these puppies make money, so the Big Two are going to keep on hitting the event button like a crack whore with new kneepads.
It’s easy to understand why comics fans like the Marvel movies. They exist in a comparatively small universe with clear roadmaps. DC doesn’t have that goodwill going for them, and Man Of Steel offered little hope.
But we continue to hope. These are great characters. We love them, and we hope that someday the powers at Warners and Disney start to trust those characters as much as we do, before the core audience is all on catheters and people start to view Superman and Wolverine the way we view The Lone Ranger and Buck Rogers.
Before time runs out.
Disney television animation has slowly but surely been expanding its stable of decidedly “Non-Disneyish” series. From Phineas and Ferb to Gravity Falls, there’s a rising tide of irreverent and wacky series that bring a breath of fresh air to the various Disney cable channels. Their latest show seems much more like a 90s Warner Brothers show, and it comes by that honestly, being executive produced by Tom Ruegger, one of the gifted madmen behind Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain.
The 7D is a new take on the Seven Dwarfs, with no Snow White in sight. The band of bitsy brothers reside in Jollywood, a starter-level enchanted kingdom ruled by the daffy Queen Delightful (Leigh-Allyn Baker) with the assistance of her aide de camp, Lord Starchbottom (Freakazoid!‘s Paul Rugg, who’s also writing for the show). When crisis looms, she calls on the 7D, who hie hither hastily from the gem mine to provide assistance in their own madcap fashion.
The voice cast for the show is an all-star list. Folks like Maurice LaMarche, Billy West, Kevin Michael Richadson and Bill Farmer (the current voice of Goofy) voice the dwarfs, with guest stars like Whoopi Goldberg as the Magic Mirror and Jay Leno as the crystal ball. In her first but very successful foray into voice work, Kelly Osbourne plays Hildy Gloom, a beginner baddie whose plan is to take over Jollywood to help pad her fledgling resume.
The names are all that remain from their original appearance – this team of tiny titans are all action, with the adventures and craziness running hot and heavy as they combat Hildy and her new husband Grim (played by Jess “Wakko Warner” Harnell). The show is aimed at the young tween audience, but as was true of Ruegger’s past creations, there’s plenty of comedy to keep the adults happy as well.
The 7D premieres Monday, July 7th at 10AM on Disney XD.
Written by Mark Waid and Kieron Gillen. Art by Mark Bagley, Andrew Hennessey, and Jason Kieth
After last week’s insane rant, I came onto a book like Original Sin: Hulk Vs. Iron Man with both arms up. Let’s face facts: Hulk and Iron Man seem to fight once a year. If not in the 616, then in the Ultimate Universe, or any other iteration of the Marvel U. It’s like they’re a match made in pugilistic heaven. One man, the unstoppable juggernaut… the other a walking arsenal. It’s short range versus long range. It’s rage versus hubris. And really… it’s beating a dead horse by now, isn’t it? Each time they fight, Tony unloads a continent-stopping amount of tech and boom-boom-booms on the emerald giant, who is phased long enough to get pissed, and then we cue epic punching. Tony flies and flails, maybe has a little inner-caption angst party, and then we repeat the cycle. Maybe Steve Rogers or Maria Hill jump in after a while to stop the fracas. Suffice to say, Hulk and Iron Man have been done just about as much as Batman and the G-D-Joker.
How amazing is it then that Mark Waid and Kieron Gillen play a little retcon-history gambit and come out unscathed! This issue, spending most of its running time setting the scene, is a shining example of being able to use common tropes in all the right ways. Here is an issue that truly is made better by the sum of its parts, than it is when you deconstruct it. And what an amazing segue that was. Let’s cut this sumbitch’ open then, aye?
So, the skinny is simple: The Watcher was murdered. A mort came out and declared he was the dude who done did it. He didn’t. But he was able to attack a ton of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes with a psychic bob-omb. And with that attack, each hero – or pair of heroes in this case – get a big ole’ chunk of Watcher-vision in their brainpans. Specific to this book, Tony and Bruce Banner share their memories chained to the fateful detonation of a gamma bomb. And the SPOILER retcon of it all: Tony tinkered with Bruce’s bomb. Yup, while both Mr. Stark and Banner were science bros at one time in their youth… at a pivotal time when they were truly working to hone their identities, they ended up on either side of a potent fence. Bruce, the pacifist. Tony, the war monger. And one pithy, snarky barb begat another, and soon thereafter, Tony (in his alcoholic days, mind you) took Bruce to task for potentially inhibiting his gamma bomb. Throw in Thunderbolt Ross, and presto! Revisionist Marvel history that bleeds into why this book should matter.
And matter it does. As I’d noted before, there’s little to no need now to show another green goliath versus the tin can man bout. But, like Vince McMahon, Mark Waid and Kieron Gillen know that with the right story even the umpteenth fight can matter a whole lot. By introducing this snag into the history of the Hulk, and layering it over the current storyline in Waid’s Hulk-ongoing – where Bruce himself is now laced with Extremis in his cerebral cortex – we end up with a fight that is built on far more than another silly misunderstanding. And because the Extemis in Hulk’s brain now brings Banner to the forefront of his angrier half, there’s a level of threat raised here to an all-out extreme. An angry Hulk is still handicapped by his less-than-stellar thought capacity. But a smart Hulk is indeed a scary thing. Especially true when the whole “the angrier he gets the stronger he gets” card is played.
I’d noted above how this was a book of tropes. And let it be stated for the record: this is. Waid and Gillen’s plot is so by-the-numbers, it nearly stings. Or maybe it just stinks. Having to use revisionist history to create conflict is such a comic-book thing to do, I’m left again wondering if that is the modus operandi of Gillen – who I called out for doing as such in his recent stint on Iron Man. I’m all about playing to the cheap seats mind you (I do love pro-wrestling… I mean… sports entertainment after all). But when the rest of the script is really just getting us from point A to point B, there’s little to celebrate specifically about the delivery. There’s really just the employment of typical flashback – flash forward presentation after an action-packed cold-open. Maybe I’m still grumpy over Future’s End, but when I see Waid’s name on a cover these days, I expect greatness.
Artistically, you can’t get more straight-line-bombastic than Mark Bagley. He’s kinetic, epic, and clean in his storytelling. He doesn’t try to bend the rules… he doesn’t need to. It’s akin to Ocean’s Eleven as recreated by Soderbergh – this is a master playing a riff on common themes. As we all know Bagley’s ability to whip out acceptably modern comic book pages, you’re getting exactly what you’d expect from this book. And as a bonus Scooby snack… we also get a few attempts to stretch the common style. Andrew Hennessey’s inks, and Jason Kieth’s colors render an even slicker Bagley page than one is used to. Specifically Kieth’s bold choice of colors, and smart use of glows and knockouts elevate the final product to the epic-crossover level one can appreciate. Knowing that this is Marvel’s flagship blockbuster for the summer, here the art team does their job swimmingly, in giving us visuals that play to the strengths of the script.
Original Sin: Hulk Vs. Iron Man is the kind of popcorn-comic I can get behind. While it’s a bit of a copout to need to introduce new history in order to carry a story, here things move so briskly we hardly have time to savor it. And because of that smart pacing, we’re left with an inaugural chapter amidst the ever-winding checklist within the event that gives us real foot holes to anchor ourselves in for the next chapter. While I’m still not at all interested in who killed the Watcher, I can hang my hat on Hulk’s deserved rage. And therein lies the real point to why I’ll celebrate this book one week and trash DC’s attempt just seven days prior. Original Sin pays attention to the story and reasoning behind it, rather than merely announce “it’s time for punching and new team affiliations!” While the underlying structure may not be all that different, at the end of the day it’s the technique and execution that elevated Mickey’s efforts far more than the Brothers Warners has in a good long while.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
Stephen Colbert, we have your writer for “The Chronicles of Amber”!
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